The Fish Market of Port Ballott
The Toxicology class had begun.
By now, Simon felt almost guilty about making eye contact with the TAs who set out the poison kits on the desks.
He silently tossed an antibody capsule into his mouth.
Tastes like hair today.
They said humans were creatures of adaptation, and after weeks of this routine, his body had grown used to it. He no longer needed to count seconds — he could feel it when the drug had spread far enough.
He picked up the poison and ate it.
The revulsion, the sense of something foreign in his body — all of it had dulled.
There was only the wish that this agonizing stretch of time would pass quickly.
Uuuuugh.
Feeling the poison spreading through him, Simon lifted his quill.
By now, Byeolya had the class fill out a checklist after consuming each poison. What it tasted like, what pain and symptoms followed, what kind of poison it seemed to be, which of the poisons learned from the textbook it most resembled.
Finally, she demanded they define the poison they had just swallowed in a single word, according to their own personal concept.
Simon wrote 'hair.' His mind was so fogged that thoughts flowed straight out through the pen without ever passing through his brain.
These days, far fewer students vomited after eating the poison the way they had in the first class, and even the pain had improved considerably compared to then.
Someone had joked that adapting to this kind of thing made you feel like a monster, and Simon agreed with that sentiment.
Having finished one poison quickly, Simon immediately moved on to the next drug.
This one tastes like fingernails.
He'd never actually eaten hair or fingernails, but some image like that kept popping into his head.
Glancing sideways, he saw Dick writing down fruit names, Meilin writing lipstick shades, and Camibarez writing colors.
By the time he finished the second poison and reached for the third, Meilin pulled her familiar envelope over her head with practiced ease. Camibarez started sniffling, and Dick stood up the instant he swallowed the third poison and announced he was done.
Among the members of Group 7, Dick had the fastest tolerance for poison.
Simon endured his own painful stretch of time, then raised his hand to the TA and reported he was in stable condition.
After submitting his checklist, he was heading for the neighboring lecture hall, where theory class was underway, when—
"Hold on a second."
Byeolya called out to Simon.
She was sprawled across the very back row of seats rather than at the lectern, supposedly to keep watch over the students. Not that anyone knew she was back there — everyone was too busy wrestling with their poisons.
As Simon approached, she let out a long, drawn-out yawn and tapped her own shoulder with her fist.
"Sorry, but give it a rub, would you?"
Hearing that, a TA rushed over in a panic, offering to do it in her place.
"It's fine."
Simon smiled warmly, walked behind Byeolya, and took hold of her shoulders.
Byeolya, who had been completely expressionless, flinched in surprise and straightened her posture — then, before long, relaxed and let her body settle into it.
Somehow, the area had gone quiet. She looked like a cat seized by the scruff of its neck, stiff as a broken toy, and Simon had to hold back a laugh.
"Hee-ya, you're good at this."
Byeolya's voice was full of genuine admiration.
"You ever study massage or something?"
"I just massage my mom's shoulders a lot at home, so I'm used to it."
"Heh heh. A filial son, eh."
After kneading her shoulders in silence for a while, Simon spoke up quietly.
"Professor Hong Peng worries about you, you know."
Byeolya gave a dismissive snort.
"That woman? The one who hasn't said a word to me since I got kicked out of the steppes, like our ties were cut clean through?"
"Professor Hong Peng has been planting toxin-expelling herbs all over Roc Island, and she keeps feeding students drinks made from them. Probably."
Simon added, in a very small voice:
"Because of you, Professor Byeolya."
"……."
There was a long silence. Simon couldn't see her face — he was standing behind her.
Then suddenly, her hand shot out from behind and grabbed Simon by the cheek.
"Well, well, little Misher?"
"Lithening to you, you're thuch a tyke. Who do you think you are, thticking your nothe in grown folk'th buthineth?"
She grinned playfully and yanked his cheek.
Agh, that hurts!
It genuinely stung enough to bring tears to his eyes. Simon crouched down in place, resisting.
"You brat~"
She bared her jagged, shark-like teeth as she finally let go.
Rubbing his cheek, Simon shot her a resentful look.
"How's your prep for the next BMAT coming?"
Simon blinked at the sudden question.
"Ah — yes, sir. I'm working hard at it."
"If you hit a wall with anything, come find me."
She gave Simon's shoulder a light pat.
"Whatever you need, this noona will help you out with it. One favor, on the house."
!
He wasn't sure exactly what it would entail, but it felt like a huge windfall for a shoulder massage. He made absolutely certain to file this away in his memory.
"Thank you, Professor!"
"Oh, so formal. When it's just the two of us talking, call me noona."
"Yes, Professor!"
"HAHAHA! No flexibility at all, you brat!"
Byeolya had offered her help, but he couldn't just barge up to her and ask her to hand him a solution for underwater combat. He figured the right approach was to first settle on a rough style — how he'd fight at sea, what techniques he'd use — and then seek her advice on the gaps.
As the classes rolled on, Simon's worries only deepened.
Sure enough, the professors taught absolutely nothing about dark magic suited for fighting at sea. Doing so would have been tantamount to handing out the answers.
At most, they dropped the occasional hint or helping hand — Professor Jane lecturing on binding magic circles, Professor Bahil teaching formulas for non-summoning curses.
The faculty seemed to be saying: how you fight at sea is something you have to figure out for yourselves.
And so class after class slipped by, and time flew.
Everyone was slowly sketching out the shape of their sea combat style, but Simon, beyond figuring out how to breathe underwater, hadn't managed to nail down anything concrete.
"An undead that can be used at sea?"
"That's right."
Simon had dropped by the Mutant Club room for the first time in a while.
And while repairing Overlord alongside Benya, he tossed out the topic as casually as he could manage.
"Hmmm…"
Benya, carefully rubbing down one of Overlord's legs with a rag, thought it over before answering.
"A Nether Whale!"
"…I don't think I could control an undead of that caliber yet. And I have no way of acquiring one, either."
Apparently he hadn't given enough context. Simon explained the theme of the third BMAT in detail, and only then did Benya nod, finally understanding.
"I see! So you're looking for an undead that can fight alongside you at sea?"
Having finished wiping down one of Overlord's legs, she cried "Hup!" and rose from her seat.
Walking off with her uniform skirt flapping carelessly, she rummaged through the books on the shelf as she spoke.
"Fundamentally, undead are ill-suited to being used at sea in the first place — you all know that, don't you?"
"Yes! Of course we do."
"But for the grand ambition of world conquest, one simply cannot overlook the mighty stage that is the ocean."
Every single time, he was reminded: it was necessary to filter this eccentric undead engineer's words through a healthy dose of skepticism.
"Monsters from the sea make somewhat better material for undead, though. How do you like this image?"
She opened a book to a page with an illustration. It was an undead built from the bones of some enormous whale.
"That's incredible! Could I actually get my hands on something like that?"
"If you're lucky?"
The premise was shakier than shaky. While Simon hesitated, Benya set the book down.
"Instead of staring at pictures a hundred times, better to go see it with your own eyes!"
"Sorry?"
"Can you clear some time this weekend? I'll take you somewhere interesting."
The weekdays had been eaten up by the mission assessment, so the weekend arrived quickly.
Benya had told him to come out to Rochest, but Simon had assumed the "interesting place" she mentioned was somewhere on Roc Island.
Yet when he arrived at the meeting spot, there was a teleport magic circle waiting for him — prepared by the Vanilla family, no less.
…First Serne, and now this. Rich people really do live in a different world.
She had even filed the teleport notice with Kizen in advance, so there were no complications there.
Benya personally ran quite a few undead business ventures, which was why Kizen made accommodations for her in these matters.
Simon stepped onto the magic circle with a nervous face. Before long, his feet lifted off the ground and the location changed.
"Welcome to the port city of Ballott, my friend!"
When Simon opened his eyes, a vast, boundless sea stretched out before him, as if it had no end.
Countless fishing vessels came and went. It was the first time he'd seen a port of this scale.
"To get a good undead, you first need good materials."
Benya pointed a finger. A massive fish market came into view, its entrance already swarming with people.
"The fish market at the Port of Ballott boasts the largest scale in the whole Dresden Kingdom. Shall we go conquer it and see what fine goods have come in?"
"Yes!"
The two of them strode into the fish market, where the distinctive briny smell of seawater and the reek of fish greeted them in full force.
His eyes darted around restlessly at a scene he was witnessing for the first time in his life.
Fish, as far as the eye can see!
He was overwhelmed by the number and scale of the stalls. It felt as though every fish that existed on this continent had been laid out for display here.
Behind the garishly colorful stalls, fishermen and merchants bellowed at the top of their lungs about how good today's catch was. When your eyes so much as met theirs, they waved their hands furiously, beckoning you over — it gave Simon the feeling of having stepped into the raw, cutthroat thick of people's livelihoods.
"!"
And there wasn't just fish — there were sea monsters too.
Buried in a block of ice, a creature with teeth so long it was hard to believe it was any kind of fish was still gaping its jaws as if alive.
The sign read: Caught yesterday. Danger Class 4 — "Gerontos."
"Come on in! How'd you know our Gerontos here is good today? Care to try a slice?"
A merchant with a rough, scruffy beard drew a fish knife and, in a single fluid motion, sliced into the Gerontos's skin, carved out a sashimi cut, and laid it on the cutting board.
It's still alive! That's too far!
This fish market was full of sights that would make even a necromancer — a professional handler of corpses — recoil in horror.
"Don't be shy, have a taste!"
"I-I'm quite alright!"
Simon spread his palms and declined with his entire body, but Benya stepped right up, plucked off a piece of flesh, and popped it into her mouth.
"Mmm~"
Benya chewed and nodded.
"Delicious! How long ago was this one caught?"
"Came in just last night. Fresh as it gets."
When Simon showed his disgust, Benya pointed instead at a relatively normal-looking sashimi platter beside it, made from the flesh of a dead monster.
"Your first monster sashimi? Come on, give it a try."
…Ugh.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Simon tasted it. The sashimi slid into his mouth, and he chewed through the thick slab of flesh.
"!"
Thick, with a faint tang of acidity. The rich, meaty fat gave it a depth of umami — it was less like eating sashimi and more like eating a proper cut of meat.
Born in the mountains, he'd rarely had the chance to taste sashimi in his life, but this was the best he'd ever had.
"Flesh from land monsters is notorious for tasting terrible, right? But here's the funny part — most sea monsters are considered premium sashimi-grade."
"…That's news to me."
Benya turned to the merchant.
"We're necromancers — do you happen to have anything suitable for making undead?"
"Oh, young folks like you are necromancers? I used up everything from today's batch for sashimi, so nothing left, I'm afraid."
"Then we'll come back another time!"
"Sure, sure. Stop by whenever you like."
And so the two of them made their way deeper into the fish market. Benya kept up a running explanation.
"Ballott sits exactly halfway between Kizen — the holy land of necromancers — and Langestin, the capital. Thanks to that geography, along with fish, the corpses of all sorts of sea monsters flow in here. It's a popular spot for necromancers hunting for materials, too."
"Oh, I didn't know that."
He had a feeling he'd be coming here often to hunt for materials.
At last, the two of them reached the market's deepest reaches.
"Right there! That's it!"
An alley came into view, decorated with the bones of ferocious shark monsters — the sight alone radiated an eerie, sinister air.
Even the fish market folk wouldn't so much as glance that way. When they absolutely had to pass by, they did so at a brisk, urgent pace.
"Heh heh! That was the ordinary fish market. From here on is the real world of the necromancer! Ready?"
Simon swallowed nervously and nodded.
"Ready."
A new undead!
Vowing that he would absolutely find his answer to underwater combat here, Simon set off down the alley.