The Visitor in Room 409
"Excuse me—aren't you Agent Seywir?"
Seywir, who had been slipping out through the back door with his office belongings in hand, flinched hard at the shoulder.
"You *are* Agent Seywir, right?"
With Simon at their head, the group members swarmed around him.
"E-everyone...!"
Seywir wanted nothing more than to crawl into a mousehole and hide, but with the students closing in around him, his window for escape had closed.
"Hm."
Dick said coldly, eyeing the bundle in Seywir's grip.
"Looks like you got cut from Vengeance."
Seywir's face tightened for a moment, then he bowed his head deeply.
The man who had once strutted about slapping his forehead and confidently recounting his own heroic exploits was gone without a trace. What remained were hollow, sunken eyes and sagging cheeks, a filthy beard, and stringy, matted hair.
He looked like a completely different person.
"What happened to you?" Simon asked.
Seywir finally bowed his head all the way down and explained what had befallen him.
He had been investigated by the Dark Alliance. Looking at outcomes alone, this whole affair had weakened the Holy Federation's influence in the Neutral Zone, and the Alliance had come out ahead—but the crime of falsifying official duty was a heavy one.
In the end, the verdict came down: permanent expulsion from the necromancer community.
"P-permanent expulsion..."
Kind-hearted Camibarez drooped her eyebrows and let her sympathy show, but Dick, hands stuffed in his pockets, answered coolly.
"He brought it on himself."
Seywir flinched. Meilyn piled on.
"First time in ages I agree with the commoner. I'll never forgive him for hiding that communication orb until the very end, either."
As Dick and Meilyn pressed in, Seywir's already cowed head sank lower, like a flower wilting on its stem.
"I—I have no words to offer you students. It was all my greed and my rash actions. ...I will spend the rest of my life atoning. I am sorry."
Hmm.
Seeing someone who'd been so bursting with confidence just then groveling with the expression of a man already half-dead, Meilyn—sins aside—felt a flicker of pity for him as a human being.
"Seywir."
Just then, Agent Block and the secretary came over as well, and Seywir's head dipped even lower.
"Take care of yourself."
"You caused nothing but trouble the whole way through, but you did put in the work while you were here."
The two of them were more matter-of-fact than expected.
"And I owe you both an apology as well... I'm sorry."
Seywir shuffled out of the building with heavy, dragging steps. Watching his back recede, Block sighed.
"Bittersweet, that."
Dick took up the thread.
"I thought you'd be glad to see him go."
"He was nothing but an accident waiting to happen, bleeding the organization dry at every turn—but there was a reason we kept him around. Whatever else you say about the man, his illusions were absolutely masterful."
The secretary nodded too.
"Exactly. He could've just been content with intelligence work, but he kept trying to punch above his station, and look where it landed him."
"..."
"Anyway, enough about the man who's gone. Students, let's get you back to Kizen before you're late. I'll see you off."
At that moment, Meilyn stood with her arms crossed, wearing an extraordinarily serious expression.
"Meilyn?"
"Ah—yes."
Somewhere along the way, the rest of the group had already started following the secretary. She forced a smile.
"Cami, I'm going to run to the bathroom before we take the teleport."
"Okay, got it."
Meilyn hurried toward the bathroom—but mid-stride, she spun on her heel and slipped out through the same back door Seywir had left by.
She could still see him trudging away, shoulders slumped.
"Mr. Seywir. Do you have a moment?"
Seywir turned around.
"M-Miss Meilyn?"
"Here."
She pulled a business card out of her inner pocket and held it out to him.
Seywir accepted it with a dazed look on his face.
"...What is this?"
"You said you can never be a necromancer again, didn't you? Then it's time to find a different path."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave a little cough.
"It's the business card of the owner of the Langestin theater. Take it to the Grand Theatre and ask to see the owner. Say Meilyn Villenne sent you—he'll know what that means."
Whatever else you say about the man, his illusions were absolutely masterful.
Meilyn agreed with Agent Block's assessment.
Especially that first time they'd gone to Kelso Village looking for Sasha—he had conjured illusions of that many priests, and pretended to take every single one of those attacks himself. In a strange way, it had been genuinely impressive.
After all, everyone except Simon had been completely fooled.
And as for his face... he had that greasy, fading-actor look about him, but all in all he was reasonably presentable.
Maybe not as a necromancer—but wasn't he remarkably suited to being a stage actor?
"Go there and beg them to give you any work they have. They'll take you in."
Seywir, card in hand, still looked somewhat dazed. It seemed theater had never once crossed his mind.
"Th-thank you for thinking of me. But how does a Kizen student have connections in the theater world...?"
"Ah—! None of your business! Don't ask!"
Meilyn barked, face flaming red, and fled the scene.
Seywir stared blankly at the spot where she'd vanished, then looked down at the card again.
Louiva Grand Theatre, Langestin
Louiva — Theatre Owner
A second life...
Seywir's eyes would not leave the card.
"Finally back at Kizen!"
Dick shouted, both arms thrown high in the air.
It was the teleport circle hillside they all knew by heart now, and far below, the grounds of Kizen Academy stretched into view.
"Great work, everyone!"
"You all did so well~"
They exchanged bright smiles and cheerful farewells.
"Man, even a day in the outside world is plenty! The Neutral Zone is so bleak—Kizen really is the best!"
Simon answered Dick's outburst with a grin.
"Funny, when we were heading into the Neutral Zone it was all 'Kizen is so stuffy, can't wait to get some fresh air.'"
"Well, everyone's mindset differs before and after they've been to the bathroom."
A ripple of laughter ran through the group. Meilyn checked her wristwatch.
"We've got time to spare. Then let's all rest up for the day and meet tomorrow with fresh eyes! Dismissed!"
Simon headed for the boys' dormitory, while Meilyn and Camibarez made for the girls'. Dick, muttering about needing to check how his businesses had run in his absence, went straight off toward Rochest.
It really feels like I was away for months.
When Simon stepped inside the dormitory, the usual boisterous bustle was missing—most of the students out on their Dispatched Evaluations hadn't returned yet, it seemed.
He climbed the stairs up to the fourth floor.
It was a familiar sight, one that felt like coming home—
Hm?
Except for one unfamiliar thing.
A wet trail of blood was smeared across the fourth-floor corridor floor, stretched out like a road.
The languid look drained from Simon's eyes in an instant, replaced by grim alertness. Every hair on his body stood on end as tension coiled tight through him.
Holding his breath, Simon followed the trail of blood, step by careful step.
Ugh.
Of all places, the trail led straight to Room 409.
Face taut, Simon gripped the door handle.
Open Gate.
Six subspaces bloomed open around him, and Overlord readied itself to burst out at a moment's notice.
Then he opened the door.
Click!
The instant the door swung wide, Simon saw a figure sprawled across the floor of Room 409. A gray-haired man lay soaked in blood on the dormitory floor.
"Ka—Kajan!"
Dropping to one knee, Simon shook him by the shoulder.
"Stay with me! Kajan!"
"He wouldn't answer, you see."
"!"
A third person's voice drifted out of the seemingly empty room.
Simon shuddered and looked up. There had been no sign of anyone inside a moment ago—but now he caught the sight of a person's long hair drifting on the air.
Someone was seated at the window.
Hair long enough to mistake him for a woman at a glance, a slender jaw, and a voice that crawled over the skin like insects.
"I told him to simply wait, yet he insisted on attacking me. In any case—"
Simon realized that the worst crisis of his life had just arrived.
"—I wanted to meet you. Simon Polentia."
That thick, viscous jet-black power—Simon had never laid eyes on this man before, but he could guess what he was.
The same jet-black as that used by Thalaze, the Ancient Undead he had fought long ago.
Magnus Alban.
The 5th Legion Commander stood before him.
...
His body and thoughts froze solid.
They say that when shock runs deep enough, the words won't come—and this was exactly one of those moments. The color fled his face; his lips went bone-dry.
If he mishandled this, even slightly—
He dies.
[Be careful, boy.]
Pier's voice ringing in his mind had gone utterly grave.
[The man already has your throat in his grasp. Open a subspace—buy yourself the moment. Once I am free, I can face him.]
Summoning the Legion openly inside the school might cost him his life at Kizen—but right now, his life was on the line either way.
Steeling himself, Simon raised his head.
"...Who are you?"
He let his hostility show first.
The man had attacked his roommate; a reaction like this was only natural.
"I recently heard a very interesting report."
Magnus didn't answer; he simply changed the subject.
"In a place called Kelso, in the Neutral Zone, an incomplete Saintess of Purification was born—and the one who brought her down was said to be an unidentified wanderer. A lone wanderer breached the barrier, and yet they found traces of a large-scale battle. Intriguing, isn't it? So I sent my subordinates to investigate."
The corner of his mouth curled upward.
"And they found a wavelength matching an Ancient Undead I have been desperately searching for."
Dry saliva scraped down Simon's throat.
"At the time, most of my surveillance forces were occupied with a little girl named Lorraine, and that was precisely when it happened. So it isn't her. And—coincidentally enough—among the students assigned to that mission was a certain name."
Magnus leaned his head forward.
"A name I have been watching all this time. Simon Polentia!"
Shrrrrrrrrk!
Judging Magnus's movement as an attack, Overlord's waiting blades rained down in a deluge.
WHANG!
CLANG!
But every blade slammed into something like an invisible wall and was stopped dead.
"Hm."
He caught one of the blades that had lunged straight for his face, examined it in his bare hand.
"I don't sense the Legion's power in this."
FWOOOOOOSH!
Simon's revulsion burst flew at his jaw. Blocking it with a flick of a single raised finger, an annoyed look on his face, Magnus spoke in a languid drawl.
"None of these tired old tricks."
His opposite hand shot toward Simon's throat.
"Show me your real power. Or else, right here, you die—"
CRACK!
A red spike shot down from the ceiling and drove through Magnus's palm, pinning his hand in place.
Magnus looked up with an indifferent expression.
"What now."
Before Simon's eyes, a man clad in Bone Armour of crimson bone had appeared out of nowhere.
CRRAAASH!
Magnus, who hadn't so much as flinched until now, took the man's kick full in the body and went hurtling through the window, shattering it to pieces.
Simon looked up in astonishment as the skeletal mask slid away from the man's face, revealing a familiar one.
"It's dangerous—stand back."
Simon's eyes went wide.
"Professor Aaron!!"