The Card Necromancer Takes the Stage
“First, allow me to introduce the necromancer who will be presiding over this 4th BMAT.”
Aaron flipped the page of the script in his hand, and though his expression stiffened slightly at what he read next, he carried on without letting it show.
“The hottest necromancer of our era. A genius administrator born of the Langoustine Kingdom, selected by the Vernette Company as ‘Most Influential Man of the Week’ and ‘The Necromancer I Wish Would Put an Arm Around My Waist’ — and.”
Aaron's voice, which had been skimming breezily down the page, turned serious at last.
“One of the Ten Continental Mysteries.”
Braaap! Braaap!
People in flamboyant clown costumes burst onto the stage above the podium, blaring trumpets and playing all manner of instruments.
In an instant, the entire Great Auditorium was swept up in a festival atmosphere.
To the upbeat music that set shoulders bouncing, the troupe members began to sing and dance. Especially when two clowns appeared mid-air, tumbling through somersaults, the students cheered and applauded.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
The lights suddenly blazed to full brightness, and a dazzling fireworks show erupted across the ceiling.
While everyone's attention was glued to the spectacle overhead, someone was walking toward the center of the podium.
“I present to you.”
Aaron said.
“The man known as the ‘Card Necromancer’ — Endolas Vaudeville!”
From the sky, countless cards — too many to count — came cascading down with a rustling hiss, weaving themselves into the shapes of various animals. At last the cards formed a door upon the stage, and through it stepped Endolas.
His entire face was painted white, with green around his eyes. He wore a hat with an enormously long brim, and from beside it, curls like a malignant perm sprouted up in wild profusion, giving him a comical appearance.
Before long the music stopped, and when the man raised both arms, thunderous applause erupted like a raging fire.
“Greetings, beloved students of Kizen! I am Endolas Vaudeville!”
He pinched the brim of his hat between his index finger and thumb, tipping it slightly in greeting. Every single one of his movements radiated pure showmanship.
“It's really Endolas!”
Dick shouted, beside himself with excitement.
Simon, naturally, had never heard of the man. And yet — not just Dick, but even Meilin and Camibarez, unlike their usual selves, were staring ahead with stunned faces.
“Wh-who is he?”
Simon asked cautiously. Dick snickered and thumped him on the arm.
“You really are worth the effort of explaining things to.”
“...Shut up.”
Simon replied, flushing with embarrassment. Dick went on.
“You know about the Ten Continental Mysteries, right?”
“I know the concept, but I don't know what all ten of them actually are.”
“That's plenty. Of those ten mysteries, two of them are human beings — and that man is one of them.”
Simon blinked.
“Then who's the other one?”
Dick answered with a sly grin.
“The Death Witch!”
Having received a voice-amplifying crystal orb from a henchman, Endolas Vaudeville began his address.
“Thank you for the warm welcome! The honor is entirely mine, to lay eyes on the finest elites of the continent, who will one day lead the Dark Federation into the future! And above all!”
He pointed a thumb at his own chest.
“I, Endolas Vaudeville, am delighted to announce that I shall be presiding over this ‘4th BMAT’!”
WaaaAAAAAH!
The students roared back their approval.
When Endolas spread his palm open, the cards that materialized from it shot up into the air all at once and formed into magic.
“My ability is to use these cards to create special ‘rooms.’”
Light shimmered across the cards, painting a variety of scenes across the ceiling.
A castle that walked on legs, a maze writhing with serpents, a dragon's lair spraying torrents of flame, and even a chamber where gold lay piled up like mountains.
“As I envision it! As I imagine it! I can recreate any adventure whatsoever! You may enter the worlds within the cards and choose whichever adventure you desire!”
Choose whichever adventure I desire?
What is any of this supposed to mean?
“Allow me to offer some supplementary explanation.”
At Aaron's signal, the henchmen activated mana projectors, unfolding an enormous screen at the center of the hall.
“The testing grounds for the 4th BMAT are the 1st-year campus of Kizen and the entirety of Roc Island. Lord Endolas has personally hidden two thousand cards across the island.”
On the map of Roc Island, the locations of the two thousand cards appeared as examples.
“Should you happen to find a card, you will enter the ‘room’ that card generates and take your test inside it.”
On the central screen, a henchman who had entered the library on Roc Island stepped on a card — and promptly slipped inside it.
The screen then changed. In the blink of an eye, the henchman was lying somewhere deep in a forest. Monsters could be seen charging toward him.
“Once you enter a room, the clear conditions for the test will appear. In this case, it would be eliminating thirty kobolds within twenty minutes. A student who passes the test safely claims the card in question.”
Aaron flipped to the next page of the documents he was holding and continued.
“The baseline condition is to possess six or more cards by the time the exam ends. Five or fewer means you fall short of standards and will be expelled. At least fifty students will be expelled this time as well, so bear that in mind.”
As he listened, Simon's eyes gleamed and he nodded. This 4th BMAT was a card-scramble.
“Now, now! Let me, Endolas, your game's gracious host, explain once more!”
Endolas stepped forward, waving his hands. The screen changed, revealing cards of many different colors.
“Each card bears a different color. For this portion, I would be grateful if you would consult the rulebook I crafted with my own hands!”
The fireworks show on the ceiling ceased, and books came raining down like a downpour, drifting into the hands of each and every student.
Simon stretched out his arm and grabbed one of them.
Simon unfolded the flat, rectangular rulebook. It wasn't actually a book at all, but a single sheet of paper folded into many layers.
When he spread it out wide, a detailed explanation of the game appeared alongside a map of Roc Island.
Meilin, reading the instructions, smiled.
“I thought it'd be complicated, but this actually sounds pretty fun!”
First, there were seven card colors.
■ Red — Curse Magic
■ Orange — Jet-Black Mechanics
■ Yellow — Summoning
■ Green — Spirit Magic
■ Blue — Hemomancy
■ Teal — Toxicology
■ Purple — Magic Combat
Each card color corresponded to a specific subject.
For instance, if you entered a red card, the odds were high that the game inside would relate to Curse Magic.
Moreover, the card colors appearing in each zone of Roc Island were divided up as well.
Green cards, for example, tended to appear in the forest, while orange cards tended to appear around the Kizen campus.
Details like these were things the students would have to figure out for themselves as the game unfolded.
“Whoa! This is straight-up guaranteed to be insanely fun!”
Dick shouted, poring over the rulebook.
“There's even a siege-warfare theme! It says thirty people split into an attacking team and a defending team and fight it out!”
“Ooh, ooh! The fairy race theme looks fun too!”
Hmm.
Simon was looking at the ‘Skeleton Assembly Contest Against the Undertaker’ theme. He genuinely, desperately wanted to try that one.
“Ugh, you dummies! Forget those — just look at the back page for once!”
Meilin said.
“There are card combos too!”
“Seriously?”
By default, each card was worth 1 point. But if you collected all seven cards of a single color — all reds, say — you gained an additional +3 points.
“Hmm.”
Dick put on a thoughtful expression.
“So we can't just grab cards willy-nilly. We'll need a proper strategy.”
Simon was also studying the card combo section of the rulebook.
Forget the other combos — let's check the top of the list.
The higher up the list, the greater the combo's point multiplier climbed.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, teal, purple.
Collecting one of every color to make a set of seven: points ×2.
Fourteen points.
And above that, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-teal-purple plus something called a ‘Golden Card’ — eight cards in all — meant points ×3.
A whopping twenty-four points!
Completing it would guarantee a Top 10 ranking. It was that kind of combo.
However, no special explanation of the Golden Card was provided. It only said the card could be obtained during the game.
Of course, even failing to find the Golden Card left him with fourteen points, which wasn't bad at all.
All right.
Simon had decided.
The competition will be brutal, but obviously the right move is to aim for the ultimate combo and prepare accordingly.
“Now, attention!”
At Aaron's voice, the students who had been buried in their game rulebooks lifted their heads.
“You'll have plenty of time to plan your strategies, so everyone fold up your rulebooks and place them on your knees.”
The students let out a disappointed “Awww—”. Aaron's eyes flashed.
“On your knees. Now.”
There was no second act of rebellion. The students did as they were told and set the rulebooks down.
“Hmmm, how coercive Kizen is.”
Endolas put on a displeased look.
“The students are devoting themselves so wholeheartedly to my game, and you would interrupt!”
“My apologies. The announcements must continue.”
Aaron bowed his head in a scrupulous apology, then turned back to the students.
“Once you've played Lord Endolas's game a single time, you'll get the hang of it right away. But there are important notices that come separately.”
Aaron looked around at the students before continuing.
“As you've no doubt heard through the rumor mill, a number of controversies surrounding the BMATs have come to a head. The entire Integrated Second Semester curriculum has revolved around the BMATs, leaving coursework progress and performance evaluations piling up. And remember — if your performance evaluation scores fall short, you cannot advance to the second year regardless.”
At the mention of second-year advancement, tension settled over every face.
“That is why Kizen will be adopting a new system. Namely.”
Aaron's mouth opened.
“The After-School BMAT.”
The After-School BMAT.
Yet another unfamiliar concept, so every student craned their neck forward, hanging on Aaron's every word.
“The 4th BMAT was originally scheduled to run as a grueling, two-night-three-day card scramble across Roc Island under Lord Endolas's direction.”
...Two nights and three days? Straight?
The students wore woozy expressions. Some, like Camibarez, let out sighs of relief.
Endolas, the host himself, on the other hand, stood with his arms crossed and his face turned away, disappointment written all over him.
“Kizen has grown far too soft! Ugh, tsk tsk. Shrinking my game like this...!”
Endolas grumbled his complaints, but the measure had been approved all the way up by Nephthys — there was no room for it to change.
Aaron pressed on with his explanation.
“As I said before, the entire second semester has skewed far too heavily toward the BMATs. So the academy has decided to hold the BMAT only twice a week, for four hours after class, in order to ease the students' burden and allow them to focus on their coursework as well.”
Simon nodded. Put that way, the load really did shrink dramatically.
“But here's the thing.”
Dick, on the other hand, was resting his chin on his hand with a dissatisfied look.
“Doesn't that just mean we're doing the BMAT by carving into our free time? That's kind of...”
“There will no doubt be students with complaints about that as well.”
At Aaron's follow-up, Dick shut his mouth, looking sheepish.
“And so, for your sake, we intend to lift one significant burden from your shoulders.”
Aaron raised a fresh sheet of paper and read from it.
“The second-year advancement examination will be replaced by the 5th BMAT.”
“WAAAAH!”
Cries of joy burst out from all corners of the hall.
And no wonder — the second-year advancement exam's infamy was the stuff of legend. If it was being abolished, of course they welcomed it with open arms.
“That said, the 5th BMAT's difficulty will rise accordingly. As a side note — when Kizen headquarters ran the simulations, based on your current skill levels as of the 3rd BMAT, if the present enrollment of 797 students were to take the 5th BMAT as-is.”
Aaron lowered the papers and looked at the students, speaking with icy calm.
“We project that a minimum of five hundred will fail to meet the standard and be cut.”
Murmur murmur murmur!
The students' faces went white.
“Therefore, Kizen headquarters' directive is as follows. Over the course of this 4th BMAT and the performance evaluation season, you will achieve at least a 1.5-fold improvement in ability. The faculty has accepted this as well. In other words, the meal you all just ate—”
A sinister smile curled across Aaron's lips.
“Consider it your Last Supper. From here on, it only gets harder.”
“...”
Just as a quiet tension began to hang over the Great Auditorium—
“This is an outrage! I can bear it no longer!”
The Card Necromancer, Endolas, raised his voice.
“We stand on the very eve of the 4th BMAT — why do you already wag the 5th before our faces?! Let the students devote themselves fully to my game, Professor Aaron!”
It seemed Endolas, too, had quite a few grievances banked up.
“The conflict between Endolas and the faculty is gonna be bad.”
Dick whispered sideways to Simon.
“Endolas takes insane pride in his ‘games,’ and the faculty wants the students focused on their own classes. That's basically the whole thing.”
“Hmm.”
Simon nodded, convinced by Dick's commentary.
Aaron, for his part, bowed meekly in a gesture of apology.
“That concludes the faculty's announcements. From this point on, if anyone has words they wish to say to the students, please speak freely.”
“Ahem, ahem!”
At last, Endolas stepped forward wearing a satisfied smile.