Compellonia
Simon stepped into Bahil's office.
...Oh.
How should he put it—it was very Bahil. Where the other professors' offices tended to be cluttered or half-organized at best, Bahil's space was so immaculately tidy that it practically screamed at a clean-freak patient's obsessive-compulsive retreat. A simple interior of black and white tones, flower beds arranged here and there, expensive masterpieces hanging on the walls. The whole room carried a pleasant aroma of coffee.
And on the farthest wall, an enormous blackboard stretched from edge to edge, covered in the countless ghostly traces of formulas written and erased over and over again.
"Have a seat."
"Ah, thank you, Professor."
The moment Simon settled onto the sofa, Bahil returned with coffee. It must have been prepared quite a while ago, because it was already going cold.
Clack.
Then, the instant he set the cup down on its saucer, the coffee began to bubble and steam itself hot again.
Simon watched the phenomenon with fascination.
"I believe I've said something similar before," Bahil remarked, crossing his legs and lowering his hat from his head onto the table. "It saddens me that curses carry such a one-sided reputation for harm. Among the magic circles that enrich human daily life, there are in fact hardly any that don't incorporate curse formulas somewhere."
Simon nodded quietly and raised his cup, taking a sip of the coffee. Warm and faintly sweet, it lifted his mood for some reason. He'd expected Bahil to savor something bitter and expensive, but this tasted almost suspiciously aimed at a young student's palate.
"Since the semester is nearly over, let me get straight to the point."
Bahil opened a subspace shaped like a bookshelf in the empty air, drew out a thin volume, set it on the table, and slid it smoothly across to Simon.
Simon pulled the book toward himself and opened it. It was a text describing the structural components of curse magic circles.
"Professor, this is..."
"Simon Polentia. This is a curse set developed exclusively for you," Bahil said in a remarkably cheerful voice. "You won't find it in any book anywhere. These are curses that exist, quite literally, only once in the world."
More than joy, Simon felt a wave of bewilderment as he looked at Bahil. "Why would you do something like this for me...?"
"What is an educator for, if not to teach when a gifted student appears? Call it the bond of master and disciple."
Simon nearly dropped the book in alarm. "P-Professor Bahil! This is far too much for someone like me. I've barely earned—"
"Ahh—no need to say another word."
Bahil raised a hand and smiled. "There's nothing ulterior behind it. When a student is Special Admission No. 1, every professor dreams of leaving at least some small mark of their own on you. You are a student, and learning is your duty—so simply accept it."
With a touch of genuine emotion, Simon turned to the book's contents. Bahil was not a man given to hollow gestures. If he claimed something was one of a kind, it truly was.
The book contained four curses in total.
Strangely, though, the explanations were sparse to the point of excess. The formulas were barely annotated, and even the effects of each curse were never definitively spelled out.
"You'll notice the explanations are thin," Bahil said, clearly aware of it. "There are several reasons, but the largest one is to avoid compromising your creativity, Simon."
Education inevitably imposes definitions on the learner. Because students prioritize absorbing knowledge, they can fall into the habit of accepting instruction exactly as given, never questioning it. But those flashes of ingenuity Simon had shown the moment he cast Exhaust—to preserve all of that, Bahil had deliberately left room for him to ponder and puzzle things out on his own.
"The second reason is that I want you to master the framework of curse study itself."
"Ah..."
There was no such thing as kindness without a price, as the saying went. Learning the four curses Bahil had given him would demand no small amount of work.
"If you master all four curses in this book by the end of the integrated second semester, I will give you a gift."
"A gift?"
"Yes."
Bahil raised four curse magic circles into the air, floating them to the east, west, south, and north, then drew only the bare, empty base of a new magic circle at their center.
What is he planning?
Next, Bahil stretched out a fingertip and drew out specific runes and formulas from each of the four circles, transferring them into the central base. Like plates at a buffet, only the formulas he needed were plucked and gathered to form the new circle—and then just a few brand-new formulas were added on top.
"This is a circle you can only truly learn once you've mastered all four magic circles."
In truth, the four curses in the book were nothing more than a means to an end—a stepping stone for teaching Simon this single curse.
Vrroom! Vrroom!
With a sound like an engine turning over, the central magic circle began to spin, blazing forth brilliant light. Simon, who had been quietly watching it, let out a gasp of awe before he could stop himself.
It's beautiful...
They said a magic circle was like an ecosystem. He couldn't comprehend every formula and flow within it, but of all the circles Simon had ever seen, he thought this one was the most intricate. And that was precisely why it was beautiful.
"The name of this curse is Compellonia," Bahil said. "It is a curse capable of artificially wrenching open the target's compéllo."
"Compello?"
"The realm of absolute truth that the greatest necromancers are said to occasionally experience—a domain of transcendent instinct. You've brushed against it a few times yourself, haven't you?"
The corner of Bahil's mouth curled upward. "In every battle, at every crucial moment—haven't you worked miracles so tremendous that even you never knew how they happened?"
A shiver ran down Simon's spine.
Of course he had. Time and time again. When he'd rebuilt the Island Ratman skeleton into a Gray Rat in his very first class. When he'd donned the Prince's Crown and cast Corpse Explosion, a spell he'd never been taught. When he'd cut down a Saintess. When he'd sanctified an army of zombies and unleashed Holy Explosion.
Miracles exactly like those.
...And I could pry it open whenever I want?
"Professor!"
The moment Simon left the office, Head TA Chehekl, who had been waiting nearby in an agony of suspense, hurried inside. "Nothing went wrong, right? You didn't make some bizarre blunder with a student again, did you?"
"Of course not. It went perfectly."
Bahil gave a relieved smile and gestured that they should head out. But as they walked the corridors together, Chehekl let out a low groan.
"Honestly, I wonder if you really need to go this far."
"I completely understand that your feelings are hurt, Chehekl, now that the attention that was once devoted entirely to you has been divided among others."
"Approve my resignation letter from last time, please."
"My, my. You've made it impossible to even joke around."
Watching Bahil actually laugh out loud—utterly unlike his usual self—Chehekl shook her head. "There's something I'm curious about, Professor."
"Ask away."
"You worked so hard to develop that magic circle for Simon, yet you're teaching it in such a slapdash way. With your personality, I'd have expected you to seat that beloved student down and spoon-feed him every detail from start to finish."
Bahil gave a faint chuckle. "I spent the entire first semester trying to drag Simon into curse studies. And failed, if you'll recall. I learned a great deal from those failures."
"Oh?"
"Simon is not a student you can break in that way."
The word break in did not sit well with her, and Chehekl furrowed her brow. "And what exactly are you trying to say?"
"This calls for a demonstration. A hundred words won't do."
Bahil and Chehekl cast a perception-dulling curse on themselves and entered the Kizen library. Classes had let out for the afternoon, and crowds of students sat at the desks, deep in their books.
The two of them had no trouble spotting Simon.
Thud!
He set down a tower of stacked curse textbooks and placed Bahil's volume right in the middle, already bent over it in study.
He's happy as a king, isn't he.
Chehekl stole a glance at Bahil's expression and thought wryly.
"To summarize: I realized that no matter how much interest I show, it might be a burden to someone else," Bahil said.
"Wow. Congratulations on figuring that out just now. Truly groundbreaking."
"That is precisely how one brings Simon to heel. Not by spoon-feeding, but by kindling a powerful motivation and letting him seek out knowledge on his own. Look at him. See how utterly absorbed he is in the study of curses?"
Bahil spoke with evident satisfaction. Chehekl shrugged. "Well, I'm glad your failures taught you something. But that's not the kind of curse a first-year can pick up by self-study, is it?"
"Then he'll come find me. I told him that after curse class, any time he has something that won't unravel, he's welcome to come ask."
"So it's the supplementary-lesson approach. Which makes this, hmm—wait a moment!"
Chehekl's eyes narrowed to slits. "This is Professor Aaron's method from the Summoning department, isn't it!"
For the briefest instant, a flicker of guilt crossed Bahil's face before vanishing. "I fail to see what Senior Aaron has to do with anything, Chehekl."
"I knew it! You benchmarked Professor Aaron's style! No wonder you've been so uncharacteristically understanding of people's feelings lately."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Chehekl sighed at his coolly guileless face.
"Simon!"
Just then, someone's voice rang out calling for him. Both of them turned—and there was the boy who was always glued to Simon's side. Rick Hayward of Class A.
"Yo, traitor! Studying all by yourself again?"
Simon smiled wryly. "Just for a little while."
"Tomorrow's the weekend! Meilin says the four of us should go hang out at Professor Hong Peng's villa?"
"Oh, seriously? Count me in, obviously."
Simon scraped back his chair and gathered his textbooks. And Bahil, watching Rick, was visibly trembling with fury.
Chehekl threw her arms around him and shouted. "You lunatic! What spell is that?! You cannot curse a student!!"
"It's only a problem if I'm caught."
"Argh, this scheming old professor, I swear—!"
The weekend flew past like a shaft of sunlight.
Simon spent it studying the new Hemomancy technique and Bahil's four-curse set, and in his spare time he visited Pier's Ruins, where he drilled legion operations with his undead.
Meanwhile, Kizen posted notice that the second BMAT would begin this very week. Students who had assumed they had at least another week were thrown into an uproar and scrambled to prepare.
By now, word had spread far enough to become common gossip.
Kizen had pulled off a rather nakedly brazen move—'sweeping up every weapon in the kingdom'—and rumors had followed that treasure hunters and trap specialists from across the country were being summoned to the academy. The professors, for their part, had been focusing their classes almost entirely on defensive and detection dark magic.
So most students had concluded that the theme of this exam was 'dungeon exploration' and prepared accordingly. They formed treasure hunter study groups and drilled trap disarming. The quickest among them even hired actual treasure hunters for private lessons over communication crystals.
Everyone at Kizen was scurrying about, desperate to survive however they could.
"Can't say I love it, though. This isn't the kind of information war I wanted," Rick said as they walked toward the dining hall. From his standpoint, the intel had leaked far too easily.
"From Kizen's perspective, it's only right to design the exam so students know enough to prepare for it," Simon said.
"Huh?"
Meilin, walking on Simon's other side, took the opposite view. "Since when does Kizen ever coddle its students like that?"
Camibarez nodded along in agreement. "Wouldn't it be more Kizen-like to spring a total reversal of everyone's expectations as the theme?"
"Now, now," Simon cut in. "Remember what Professor Aaron said at the opening ceremony? That the theme could be somewhat extreme. In other words, even the excellent students Kizen has marked as favorites can fail. Last time, in the first exam, even that Class B ace—Rikon, was it?—the one who scored 90 in Spirit Magic, got dropped."
"So you're saying the variables are just too big."
When Simon chimed in on his side, Rick nodded along eagerly. "Exactly! And more than anything, the real purpose of a school exam isn't even measuring students' abilities—it's about motivation, deep down. Going by the current intel, it's got to be dungeon exploration and trap evasion!"
"By the way," Simon said, turning his attention to Rick's outfit. "What exactly is going on with those clothes?"
Rick had a gaudy golden chain around his neck, fashion subspace rings on all ten fingers, and a flashy top from some cutting-edge designer draped over his uniform.
He let out a sinister snicker. "Kuhehehehe!" "Been handling some money lately. Thought I'd treat myself!"
"Handling money?"
"The second the intel dropped, I bought up every treasure hunter manual on the market and resold them at one gold a copy."
Meilin and Camibarez nearly leapt out of their skins.
"Hey! What's with that insane markup?!"
"Rick! One gold is way too much!"
"It's not gouging, it's style. Style, people. They're the ones buying—who's gonna stop them? And some poor suckers are reselling theirs at three gold a pop, can you believe it."
"Making money is fine and all," Simon said, eyeing Rick with more than a little concern, "but you do realize it's all pointless if you're the one who flunks out?"
"...Huh?"
Apparently that hadn't occurred to him. Rick clapped his hands together with a blank look.
Meilin clicked her tongue at him in pity.
"Simon! Student Simon!"
Simon turned. A Summoning department TA he vaguely recognized was sprinting toward him.
"Professor Aaron needs to see you right away!"