The Intruder in the Forbidden Forest
'Blood Golem. Blood Golem~'
Maybe it was because Aaron's promise to teach him a brand-new summoning spell had him so worked up — Simon couldn't get the words Blood Golem out of his head all day long.
The excitement carried over into the next morning. Waking up and realizing it still wasn't next week was a letdown, but he resigned himself to waiting with a happy heart anyway.
"……Seriously, stop already."
On the way to the dining hall, Dick spoke with the weariness of a man at the end of his rope.
"Blood Golem this, Blood Golem that! You've been humming that thing since last night, haven't you?"
"H-have I?"
A wave of embarrassment washed over him, and Simon quickly looked away, feigning ignorance.
"Oh, you have! At this rate I'll be able to play the melody on piano soon! Blood Golem~ Blood Golem~"
"Now you've infected me. Ugh!"
When Dick howled in despair, Simon burst out laughing.
Scold me, blame me, say whatever you want. I'm learning Blood Golem, and that's all that matters.
"Anyway! From now on, every time you say 'Blood Golem,' you get one smack on the—"
Meow~
A sudden cat's cry stopped the two of them mid-stride.
Near a low stone wall, they caught sight of a girl's back — bat wings folded at her shoulders.
'Camibarez?'
No wonder the silhouette looked familiar. She was crouched down, playing with a litter of kittens.
One was white, the other black.
When Camibarez beamed and held out a finger, the kittens swatted tiny punches at it with their little paws.
"So cute~"
Simon and Dick crept up quietly behind her.
"Cammy?"
"KYAAAA!"
The sudden greeting startled her so badly that the wings on her back flapped in a frantic flurry. Pressed flat against the stone wall, frozen in alarm, she finally recognized the two of them and let out a belated sigh of relief.
"Y-you scared me!"
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh, um, that's……"
Meow meow.
A kitten climbed up onto Camibarez's knee and began nuzzling her affectionately. She scratched the black kitten's head with a look of pure adoration, and it answered with a contented rumble.
"Ah, no, you can't go in there!"
Camibarez caught the white kitten as it tried to wriggle up under her skirt and lifted it back onto her lap.
"……Hm."
Dick's expression turned serious.
"Those might not actually be cats."
Simon brushed off the joke and joined in the play instead.
"They can't be more than a few weeks old."
The kittens warily eyed Simon as he drew near.
But when he stretched out a finger and wiggled it slowly back and forth, they forgot their caution entirely and went wild — gnawing at his hand with painless baby teeth, tumbling and romping without a care in the world.
"Ooh, looks fun."
Dick waded in too. But the moment he stuck his face in, a claw caught him square on the cheek and he was sent reeling.
Simon roared with laughter while Camibarez snatched the kittens up in her arms, aghast.
"Y-you shouldn't do that! Are you okay, Dick?!"
"Aw, that stings…!"
Dick rubbed his face and glared at the kittens nestled snugly in Camibarez's arms.
"Those things really might not be cats."
"Not funny. Bad joke."
"I'm not joking! I mean it literally — they could be monster spawn! Look at that! There's a horn growing out of the middle of its head! It's tiny, but it's there!"
"……A horn?"
Simon's expression grew solemn as he felt along the kitten's head.
Sure enough, something sharp and pointed pressed against his fingertips. A very small horn lay hidden beneath the fur.
"Th-that's impossible! Whitey and Blackie are NOT monsters!"
Camibarez hugged both kittens to her chest and wailed in protest. Apparently she'd already named them.
Dick shrugged.
"And your evidence that they're not monsters?"
"They're this sweet and this cute — there's no way they're monsters!"
"Appealing to sentiment, how cheap. Damn you."
"You absolute BREAD ROLLS!!"
A sharp shout rang out from behind them, and a water flask came flying at Dick's head.
He turned around at precisely the wrong moment — the flask smacked into the very spot the kitten had scratched. He toppled over with a grunt.
"We were supposed to be waiting for you at the Academic Building dining hall!"
Meilin came storming over, her sky-blue hair whipping behind her.
"It's been twenty minutes! Twenty! Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to sit all alone in a crowded cafeteria?! People were whispering as they walked past — 'look at that girl eating by herself'!"
Dick touched the lump forming where the flask had hit him.
"Well, while we're at it, maybe you could use this time to reflect on why you have no one else to eat with."
"I have PLENTY of friends!!"
Meilin shrieked, her face going red.
"Shut it! If you three made me late over something this stupid, I swear I'll— huh?!"
Meilin's eyes landed on the kittens cradled in Camibarez's arms.
Her fury melted away like spring snow, and a radiant smile spread across her entire face.
"SO CUTE!!"
"Right? Right?!"
The two girls fell head over heels for the kittens' charm, squealing over their every tiny movement.
Simon rose to his feet, and Dick pulled out his notebook with an air of ceremony.
"Ahem, I suppose I should contact the Watchers~ A wild monster has appeared on Kizen grounds. Immediate extermination required."
"……"
Meilin shot Dick a withering glare. Camibarez clutched the kittens tighter, horrified.
"P-please don't! Dick! I'll take good care of them, I promise!"
When her big violet eyes brimmed with tears, Dick panicked and backpedaled.
"No, look, that's not the problem here—!"
"Honestly, you were raised on nothing but manners. How dare you say 'extermination' in front of these adorable little darlings? Go on, call the adults. Just try it. I dare you."
"Guys."
Simon quickly stepped in as mediator.
"I'm against exterminating them too, but Dick has a point. If we leave them on campus and they really are monsters, and something happens, we're the ones in trouble. We need a plan."
"Hm."
Meilin mulled it over for a moment, then spoke up.
"Fine. First, let's take them to the girls' dormitory. I'll hand them over to some henchmen I know, and bring in someone who can identify whether they're actually monsters. Deal?"
Simon nodded quickly, and Dick agreed too — though he scratched his head, clearly baffled by all the fuss.
"Honestly, does it have to be this much of an ordeal? Leave them be and their mom will come collect them eventually."
"……Did you forget this is a necromancy school? What if they get snatched up by some weirdo and used for experiments?"
"Whoa. That… didn't occur to me."
And so the matter was settled. The four of them headed for the girls' dormitory, kittens in arms.
"WAHAHA! Good day to you!"
Entering forbidden territory, Dick made himself impossible to ignore, grinning wider than anyone. Meilin shot him warning looks, but he'd already cornered a henchman he knew and struck up a conversation.
"Um, e-excuse me…!"
Camibarez, kittens in her arms, approached the storage keeper of the girls' dormitory. She explained the whole situation from the beginning and asked whether the kittens might be allowed to stay in the dormitory courtyard for a while.
"There's always at least one group of students every year who pull this."
The henchwoman heaved a deep sigh.
"Student, I feel for the poor cats, but we have our own work to do. We can't be tending beasts indefinitely."
Camibarez promised she would handle all the feeding and every other chore herself, and pleaded that they only stay until the mother was found — but it was no use.
"Ahem."
Behind her, Meilin cleared her throat once.
"I hear the price of Roque Island's mana stones has been climbing lately. Or was it about to climb?"
"……"
The henchwoman's face froze solid. Simon winced and tried to intervene.
"Meilin. Don't use your power for things like this."
"Who, me?"
Meilin smiled like a queen upon her throne.
"I'm simply concerned about inflation."
No pet-keeping inconvenience was worth making an enemy of the Ivory Tower.
In the end, the henchwoman relented — exactly two months. Whether the kittens turned out to be monsters or not, they would be kicked out at the end of it, with the storage shed as their home in the meantime.
"Thank you so, so much!"
Camibarez bowed again and again.
The newly liberated kittens, meanwhile, wandered in a circle around the yard, seemed to recognize their new feeder, flopped down in front of the storage keeper, and began acting cute with everything they had.
Even the keeper went soft at the sight, though she forced a stern cough in front of the students.
"Off you go, students. You have classes to prepare for."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Thank you for your kindness."
Everything had wrapped up more smoothly than expected. The three of them were on their way out of the girls' dormitory when Dick, fresh from his chat with the henchmen, came sprinting up, out of breath.
"WAHAHA! Big news! Big news!"
Dick began pouring out the piping-hot information he'd just picked up.
"Swords, spears, maces, arrows — Kizen is buying up every weapon in Rochest! And that's not all — word is they're sourcing weapons directly from Langestin!"
Simon's eyes gleamed.
"It's got to be connected to the theme of the next exam, right?"
"Right. That's what I think too."
Camibarez tilted her head, puzzled.
"It's, it's strange, though. It's an exam to evaluate dark magic, so weapons feel a bit out of left field."
"Or maybe it's something like this?"
Meilin whipped up an idea on the spot.
"Everyone picks one weapon, and then we all fight each other in a big free-for-all in the Colosseum!"
"Nah, no way."
Dick shook his head and went on.
"The weapons Kizen's buying are mostly cheap, mass-produced junk. Might as well just use magic tools instead of bothering with those."
Kizen is stockpiling weapons.
That single piece of information wasn't enough to pin down the exam's theme — but there was no denying it was an important key.
'Weapons, huh.'
Simon's thoughts grew tangled.
By the time afternoon classes ended, night had fallen.
Simon went over the wall again that night, as he did most nights. His plan was to stop by Pier's ruins and discuss his newly acquired power — Cloud — with Pier himself.
Strolling through the Forbidden Forest at a leisurely pace, he glanced up at the sky.
'The moon's really bright tonight.'
The air was colder than usual, so Simon shrugged his shoulders against the chill and quickened his pace. The path was one he walked every single time — by now it even felt comforting, familiar.
'……Huh?'
But the moment that familiarity turned strange, Simon dropped into a crouch.
There were footprints on the ground.
'I came at a time that avoids the Watchers' regular patrols — could this be an unscheduled sweep?'
On closer inspection, though, the tracks weren't human. Their shape kept changing, and the stride was wildly uneven. They looked like a monster's — but no monster with tracks like these existed in the Forbidden Forest.
Killing every trace of his presence, Simon followed the footprints with painstaking care.
"……!"
A chill crawled straight up his spine. Simon slipped behind a tree, then peeked out just enough to see ahead.
-Squelch. Squelch-squelch-squelch.
A bizarre black creature was sweeping the ground with a tentacle as it moved. Its shape brought to mind a walking squid, its body undulating and slithering like a slime.
Its skin was black as the night sky, and its head bore no face at all — no eyes, no features, only a pair of horns jutting out to either side.
From where a mouth should be, a jagged organ protruded, dragging along the ground as it traveled. It bustled about, as though searching for something.
'What on earth IS that thing?'
A monstrosity he'd never once seen all semester was ransacking the Forbidden Forest. Jet-Black radiated from its body, which meant it was undead — but the more Simon thought about it, the less it seemed like anything belonging to Kizen.
-Kiriririk.
Simon flinched and looked down.
'……Gah. You scared me.'
One of Erzsébet's corpse spiders was gesturing at him, signing something with its whole body. Then it scuttled a few steps away and wiggled its rear — unmistakably a signal to follow.
Simon took one last look at the creature, then raced after the spider. A short distance off, a tall skeleton stood waiting.
"Pier!"
Pier was in full battle array — his cloak of shadowless night draped over his shoulders and the Doom Greatsword already in hand.
"You saw it too, Pier? Over there just now—!"
[I saw.]
Thick fury rolled off Pier's thoughts.
[Damn it all! To think that vermin could move this quickly.]
"You mean… it really is…"
[Yes. An Ancient Undead sent by Magnus.]
Simon bit his lip. It seemed Magnus had traced Pier's thought-waves and dispatched his minions in pursuit.
[The Ancient Undead 'Thalaze.' Including it and its split bodies, I have located seven undead in total.]
Pier hauled the greatsword out of the earth and slung it over his shoulder, his face twisting.
[For now, Erzsébet is weaving a web barrier around the forest to keep those monsters from escaping it. Even so, it's only a matter of time before they reach the ruins.]
"……Ugh. What should we do?"
[Magnus has sensed my thought-waves. I will leave Roque Island and draw them away.]
Simon shook his head at once.
"I can't allow that, Pier."
Pier was the single most important figure in the Legion — its Manager. No matter how closely Magnus had tracked him, Simon couldn't dangle his heart outside his body.
"You told me yourself — even a Legion Commander can't set foot on Roque Island while Nephthys guards it. Staying here on the island is the safest thing you can do."
[And what do you propose instead? If Magnus uncovers the Seventh Legion's identity, everything we've built turns to ash.]
Simon pressed his lips into a thin line and thought, hard and long. At last, he spoke with grave weight.
"If running changes nothing, then I'll gladly take the bait. We destroy Magnus's Ancient Undead."
[……Listen here.]
"Magnus stole my father's undead. I have no intention of staying on friendly terms with him, either."
Truly, like father, like son, Pier thought.
But offering wise counsel to the young Legion Commander was Pier's own role to play.
[Thalaze's ability is extraordinary. It is not built for combat or destruction, but Magnus's power has made it formidable. If it slips away from us, this becomes a full-scale war between Legion and Legion!]
"We can handle it. We haven't exactly been sitting idle all this time, have we?"
Simon drew a notebook from his subspace pocket, scrawled a quick note in flowing cursive, and held it out to the corpse spider.
"Deliver this note to Kajan in Room 409 of the boys' dormitory. He knows our situation, and he'll help gladly."
[Kiiiik!]
The corpse spider took the paper from Simon, spun a strand of web to bind it to its body, and darted swiftly out of the forest.
"Now."
Simon turned back to Pier.
"It comes down to this — we destroy Thalaze here and now, so it never reports back to Magnus. Tell me about Thalaze's abilities. Pier."
There was no escaping it now.
A battle between Legion and Legion was imminent.