The Original Dark Poison
That night, the Toxicology teaching assistants were busier than ever.
Having gotten permission from the dormitory staff, they went door to door, personally seeking out every aspiring Toxicology student who had joined the boycott to deliver a single message.
Professor Byeolya has something to say to you herself.
The news reached Claudia as well. She summoned every student from every class who had joined the boycott to the front of the dormitory.
"So what are we going to do, Claudia?"
A boy with a large metal patch on his head spoke with a dissatisfied look.
"The BMAT is right around the corner. Forget it — let's just ignore her."
"He's right. She should be the one apologizing, and instead she sends her assistants to herd us all together like this? She still thinks we're nothing."
Some of the students had moved past simply condemning Byeolya's classes. They now regarded her as an enemy who needed to be driven out.
"Let's go."
But Claudia, the de facto leader of the group, shook her head.
"If Professor Byeolya has had a change of heart, then we have no reason not to go."
The other students nodded along.
"But if she just spouts more nonsense, or tries to push the poison-drinking classes again, we walk out. No listening, no arguing."
"Yeah."
"That's the right call."
Claudia's expression stiffened slightly. She had thought herself the most passionate one in the boycott — but at some point, the ordinary students had become the radicals.
She'd have to rein them in a little.
"Remember this. Our goal is not Professor Byeolya's retirement. We want the poison-drinking classes stopped and our rights as students guaranteed. That, and nothing more."
With that, Claudia and the students headed for the meeting place the assistants had given them.
It was a research building tucked away in a forgotten corner of the Kizen campus. They descended a dark, dust-choked staircase into a basement room.
"Creepy atmosphere."
The basement was bare and empty, nothing in it at all.
"Typical. She's obviously trying to seize the psychological high ground."
Claudia pressed a finger to her lips, as if to tell them to calm down.
A short while later, footsteps echoed down the stairs, and Byeolya entered with her assistants in tow.
……
The students glared at her with eyes full of a strange tension. At last she came to a stop in front of them, the assistants filing in behind her in a neat line.
"Everyone here?"
Byeolya said. Among the students, Claudia stepped forward as their representative.
"Yes, we're all here. We heard you had something to tell us, Professor."
"Ah, right, I did."
Byeolya answered in her usual lazy drawl. Claudia fired first.
"Are you willing to give up the classes that force students to drink poison?"
"Do I look insane to you?"
The students' expressions turned ugly at once.
Claudia faltered for a moment, but quickly recovered and pressed on calmly.
"Then why did you call us here?"
Byeolya scratched at her spiky, gray-brown hair like a bristling hedgehog.
"Somebody asked me to."
"Pardon?"
"Said I should have a talk with you."
She laced her hands behind her back and began to prowl around the room, murmuring to no one in particular.
"The more I think about it, the funnier it gets. I told him I'd grant him any favor he wanted — and he spends it arranging a meeting for strangers he has no connection to whatsoever."
Simon was starting to grow on Byeolya more and more.
"……I'm afraid I don't follow, Professor."
"Doesn't matter whether you do or not."
Byeolya stopped mid-step with a shark-toothed grin and looked Claudia dead in the eye.
"Fine. Let's talk. The antibody classes where you drink poison? Those end soon anyway. And after that, I'll show you what the dark magic I'll be teaching actually is."
"!"
An earthquake went off behind Claudia's pupils.
"Let's just go! She's still making us drink poison! There's nothing left to discuss!"
The boy who had argued earlier put a hand on her shoulder, but Claudia shook it off hard.
"Show us."
Byeolya smirked and spread open her palm.
A magic circle assembled itself in her hand with astonishing speed, and from it an olive-colored thornvine surged upward. She cut off the ejection, seized the vine, and swung it.
WHAAAAAAM!
The students cried out and dropped into stances. The thornvine whipped overhead and slammed into the basement wall.
Sssssssss!
From the point of impact, the basement wall began to melt away like liquid.
"Wh-what was that?"
"Was that poison?"
Claudia turned to Byeolya, her look a demand for explanation.
"A technique you all know well. Poison Whip."
"Th-that's Poison Whip?"
"Impossible!"
Commonly called Poison Whip, the technique involved binding the venom of a potion together with Jet-Black and then swinging it out long like a whip — a ranged attack. But the Poison Whip Byeolya had just demonstrated was far larger, far thicker, far more powerful — and above all, she hadn't used a single drop of poison potion.
In that instant, Claudia understood.
"……Don't tell me — the Dark Poison System?"
"Elite, all right. Nailed it on the first guess."
There was a time when Toxicology had been a subdiscipline of Jet-Black Mechanics.
There were Rune Scripts that conjured fire and ice, wind and earth, even magma and unknown elements — surely there had to be runes that conjured poison.
But this school of dark magic, the Dark Poison System, had been utterly destroyed during the 100-Year War with Efnel. The greatest problem was that the composition of Dark Poison System toxins never changed.
Priests, having grown accustomed to the same poison over and over, could shake off poisoning with a single purification spell — and after taking a few hits, they even developed antibodies to the venom, until eventually they no longer needed to cast purification at all.
Worse, even monsters began producing numerous breeds that had adapted to Dark Poison System venoms.
In the end, the poison mages reached for alchemy to survive. They artificially complicated the composition of their toxins, crafting poisons that priests couldn't easily purify and new venoms that worked even on monsters.
That was the origin of the modern poison mage. Toxicologists of the present day wielded poison-soaked potions and vessels, scattering their toxins through dark magic or amplifying their potency.
And yet.
Now she wants to teach the abandoned Dark Poison System?
Byeolya curled up the corner of her mouth.
"I can read every thought on your face. Well then — how about this?"
She spread a magic circle across her other palm.
To Claudia's eyes it was unmistakably the same Poison Whip circle — but this time a pink thornvine burst out. Byeolya grabbed it and flung it at the opposite wall.
SPLAT!
The whip struck the wall, but unlike before, nothing melted. Instead, the wall's color changed to a sickly yellow, the discoloration spreading wider and wider.
The structure of the magic circle was identical — but the type of poison changed!
The other students finally caught on as well, and the basement fell silent.
"What I'm going to teach you isn't that characterless, by-the-book Dark Poison System of old."
Byeolya said, lowering her arm.
"It's an original. One I developed myself."
"Ah……!"
If it was true, then Byeolya's original Dark Poison System could only be described as the marriage of everything good from past and present.
No risk of being countered the way the old, predictable poison compositions once were.
No more wasted time on tedious steps like fumbling potions out of subspace, as in the present style.
"To use this technique, you must first master Blood Poison — the art of turning your own blood into venom. That's why I had you all building up antibodies: to prepare your bodies before you learn it. I intended to teach you this technique before the 3rd BMAT."
……
A heavy silence settled over the basement. Claudia, her face burning scarlet, couldn't even bring herself to meet Byeolya's eyes.
"Now you have exactly two choices."
Byeolya snapped her fingers, and the assistants scrambled to lay poison sets on the floor before each student.
"You skipped class with that absurd boycott of yours, so you'll eat every last one of these backlogged poisons by tomorrow, build up your antibodies, and then come back."
At the words by tomorrow, the students' mouths fell open.
"This is what happens when you brats act like idiots. I don't care if the side effects from rushing the doses kill you or whatever. But if you manage to catch up, I'll teach you my original Dark Poison System before the BMAT, as planned."
She crossed her arms and went on.
"Or, I suppose I may have misjudged you. Maybe you truly refused my classes out of some grand mission about that man's universal rights and all the rest of it. Even as necromancers, hm?"
At those words, Claudia's face turned as red as an apology.
"Anyone like that is free to turn around and walk out right now. I'll congratulate you on the birth of a true human-rights activist, marvel at the size of your convictions, and even applaud you on your way out."
……
Ten minutes passed like that.
Not one of the students who had entered the basement left.
Survival at Kizen, a struggle that had lost its purpose, and a fistful of pride — for a necromancer, there was no need to weigh them on a scale.
All of them stood with their heads bowed deep, unable to squeeze out so much as a syllable.
"I'll take that as all of you following my orders."
Byeolya waved her hand briskly.
"Grab those and go. I expect every seat filled when class starts tomorrow."
"Yes, Professor!!"
Claudia and the students hurriedly gathered up the poison cases and climbed the stairs.
Somewhere along the way, night had fallen, and a cold wind was cutting through the dark.
"Haah! Haah!"
"Claudia! Wait up!"
Claudia was running, hugging the poison case tightly and possessively to her chest.
I'm such an idiot! Hopelessly, pathetically, tear-jerkingly clueless!
Her eyes brimmed with tears — but her mouth was stretched wide in a smile. Since it had come to this, she even let out a great, roaring WAHAHAHA! for the whole world to hear. Let them point and call her mad.
The relief of being freed from that miserable collective crusade. The reassurance of getting to learn from a professor every bit as brilliant as the heads of any other department.
This, Claudia thought, was the happiest night she'd had since enrolling at Kizen.
The next day.
The news that Claudia's group had been summoned by Byeolya spread through Kizen like wildfire.
"So who won?"
"Has to be the students. I mean, Professor Byeolya was the one who called them in first, right?"
"But weren't they all freaking out this morning with rashes all over their faces? Looked like they'd eaten poison to me."
From the dormitory corridors on out, the chatter about Byeolya and Claudia's group never let up.
"Claudia and everyone who went — not a single one of them will say a word about it."
Dick said, looking every bit as curious as the rest.
"Seriously, what happened after they got summoned to Professor Byeolya?! Uuuugh! I'm dying to know!"
Simon, who had a pretty good idea, just grinned and stretched his arms to the sky.
Thank you, Professor Byeolya!
There were no morning classes today. It was supposed to be Spirit Magic, but all four members of Group 7 had dropped the subject, leaving the slot empty. They planned to use the time for BMAT training.
All of Group 7 rose early, got their leave permits issued, and agreed to meet at the beach. Simon and Dick picked out a carriage parked in a long line at Kizen's entrance, and before long they arrived at the shore.
The beach was crowded again today. Dozens of students with no classes were wading into the sea for underwater combat drills.
"Simon! Dick! Over here!"
"What took you so long?!"
Camibarez and Meilin were already changed into their swimsuits and mid-stretch. Once Simon and Dick joined them, Meilin, as group leader, drew everyone's attention.
"This is our last beach training session before the BMAT! Let's work hard so we have no regrets!"
"Okay."
"Yes!"
All four of them tore across the sand at full sprint and plunged into the surf.
Cutting through the current faster than anyone, Simon stretched his arm above his head.
⟨ Bone Armor — Handgun Mode ⟩
CHAK! Chak!
Chak!
Skeleton bones flew out of subspace and locked themselves onto his right arm. Simon dove straight beneath the surface.
Glub-glub-glub!
First, he checked his mental link with his skeleton.
Much better than before.
Undead lost potency the moment they entered salt water, but with help from Benya at the Mutant Club, their bones had been coated with a compound that could withstand it.
Next, he unfolded a magic circle in front of the handgun's muzzle. It was a newly developed dark magic, built by extracting the core formula at the heart of Jet-Black Torpedo.
Fire!
The bones launched from the muzzle and passed straight through the circle — and the speed of the bullet slicing through the sea jumped dramatically.
He had applied the drag-reduction formula from Jet-Black Torpedo.
Okay, first test, success!
Simon surfaced again. This time he took a little extra care drawing the circle, then laid it directly onto the handgun.
The magic circle melted into the bone bullets like a coating, flowing over them.
Simon immediately took aim at a point beneath the surface and gave the fire command.
Fwoom! Fwoom!
The bones tore off with the same force as before. He felt certain now — he could land a hit even on a Kizen student.
Offensive spells are all set. Last up……
Simon opened subspace above his head and called a new summon down into the sea.
With a tremendous splash, a huge spray of water erupted as the summon landed.
Simon climbed onto its back.
"Let's ride, Deimos."
His goal for the 3rd BMAT: first place overall.