The New Card
"Well done."
Aaron nodded as he watched the shattered bamboo fall to the floor.
"It's still at the level of just prodding things with bones, but being able to repurpose a destroyed skeleton as an attack—that's a brand-new card in your hand. Keep training it until you can actually use it in the field."
"Thank you, Professor!"
Simon, glowing with happiness, bowed his head quickly. Aaron tapped the ash off the cigar pinched between his fingers.
"I heard Professor Jane put a Cyclops hunt into the performance evaluation?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Are you competing?"
Simon shook his head.
"A student on my team named Meilyn is taking the field instead."
"Wise choice."
Aaron drew in a mouthful of cigar smoke.
"Focusing on supporting your teammates is important work in its own right. You'll learn a lot from it."
"Yes, sir!"
"And one more thing."
Aaron tossed the spent cigar into a nearby wastebasket and turned his back.
"This was a supplementary lesson. Nothing more, nothing less."
With those words, he left, and Simon bowed once more in farewell.
* * *
After Aaron's private lesson ended, Simon arrived at the practice room where he was supposed to meet his teammates.
They had apparently already gotten started—the contents of the cauldron were bubbling away merrily.
The three of them had each been sitting around it in their own idiosyncratic way, but the moment they spotted Simon, they all shot to their feet at once.
"Simon!"
"How did it go?"
They all came rushing over, breathless. Simon answered with a smile.
"It was really nothing—"
"Did he hit you? Did he actually hit you? I knew it—!"
"Corporal punishment during the Student Protection Period? That's outrageous!"
"I heard Kizen's punishments are absolutely brutal. They chain you up, strip your shirt off, and then take this long whip and—"
Simon broke out in a cold sweat.
*What on earth are they talking about?*
"He just gave me a supplementary lesson."
"What?"
Three pairs of eyes converged on him.
"Professor *Aaron* tutored you? No way that happened!"
Meilyn refused to believe it.
"I bet the whip cracked him across the head something fierce."
Rick rested his chin on his hand.
"Simon, are you really okay?"
Camibarez pressed her hands together, her eyes brimming with tears.
"......."
There was clearly no getting through to them, so Simon simply walked past the three of them toward the cauldron.
"How's the potion coming along?"
"Perfectly! Someone made sure of it!"
Meilyn snapped right back into her usual confident expression and waved her index finger.
"Water levels, ingredient measurements, boiling time, even skimming off the impurities—all flawless! Twenty more minutes on a low flame and it's done."
"Nice work."
"Hmph! Now you all know, don't you? Just put your faith in me and follow my lead!"
Rick plopped down in his seat and drummed his legs on the floor.
"Ahh, my legs are all stiff from holding this 'pose.' Mind if I get a little 'hands-on' with them—"
"HEY!!"
While Meilyn and Rick bickered at full volume, Simon and Camibarez chatted pleasantly about the potion.
Having just smacked Rick down with the corner of her textbook, Meilyn looked at the two of them and made a curious face.
"Hmm~ you two have gotten kind of close, haven't you?"
"Have we?"
Simon brushed it off casually, but Camibarez had gone red all the way to the tips of her ears.
"Come on, spill it. Forget the Watcher chase—something happened between you two that night, didn't it?"
Rick, who had been knocked flat on the floor, lifted his head.
"Told you nothing gets past her eyes—owk!"
Meilyn hurled the textbook with practiced timing. Rick let out a howl and rolled across the floor.
"Commoners are always so vulgar."
"Th-that kind of prejudice isn't very nice, Meilyn."
Meilyn turned her head back toward the other two.
"So. Are you going to tell me or not?"
Camibarez shot a quick glance at Simon, who answered without a flicker of expression.
"Nothing happened. We just got lost in the forest and it took a while to find our way out."
"Really?"
Meilyn looked at the bandages and wraps plastered all over Simon and Camibarez, then sighed.
"Fine."
Thankfully, she let it go without pressing further. Just then Rick came over holding an empty bottle.
"Potion's done boiling! Time to bottle it!"
Rick turned the handle attached to the cauldron, tilting it carefully, and held the bottles up to catch the liquid as it poured. Everyone watched in quiet silence.
"We all worked so hard on this. I really hope it works!"
Camibarez said. Rick held out the first full bottle to Meilyn.
"Curious whether it'll actually work? Then it's time for our illustrious team leader to take the first drink as our official test subject!"
"....You keep running your mouth like that and I'll put you six feet under."
Meilyn's eyes flashed into razor blades, and Rick hastily ducked his head and went back to work.
"Ugh. If this were anywhere but Kizen, you'd be arrested for insulting a noble."
"Inssultin' whom, m'lady? I'm too uneducated to know what that means, suh."
"Both of you, stop fighting!"
Chattering away about this and that, they filled every bottle—five in all.
It was decided that Meilyn would store three in her subspace and Simon the remaining two.
"Now we have something to present in the next Basic Dark Magic class."
"While we're all together, let's figure out what we're going to say in Professor Jane's class tomorrow!"
"Sounds good!"
The four of them tidied up and headed straight off to find an empty lecture hall.
* * *
Kizen's school life swept along in such a blur that the Priest incident was briefly blacked out of Simon's mind entirely. In the second Basic Dark Magic class, each team took turns presenting their strategy before Jane.
"One main dealer, one summoner, two curse specialists."
Jane, reviewing Team 7's materials, looked up. Simon and his teammates stood before her with tense faces.
"Your members all have different majors, yet your role distribution isn't exactly diverse."
*Here it comes.*
Meilyn placed a hand on her chest and spoke in a brimming-with-confidence voice.
"Of course it would be nice if everyone's roles were clearly differentiated, but we decided this was the best setup because we believe taking down the Cyclops quickly and efficiently is the top priority."
"So you consider this composition optimal."
"Yes! Absolutely."
Jane turned her head.
"And what does Simon Polentia think?"
*'Ugh.'*
*She's coming at me out of nowhere.*
Simon's face went taut as he thought. He could more or less guess what kind of answer Jane wanted. But—
"We're aware that our team lacks a certain creativity in our combination of dark magic."
*It's the Student Protection Period, after all.*
This presentation wasn't about grading the students' strategies—it was about correcting them.
Which meant that holding on to the team's current chemistry and momentum mattered more than bending to a professor's opinion.
"We believe nothing is more important than stability. We'll hunt the Cyclops more reliably than any other team, and we'll make up for the creativity deductions by scoring high on our own team's unique strengths."
Meilyn clenched her fist, silently cheering *Nice.* Jane let out a soft laugh and nodded.
"Well, if you put it that strongly, I can accept it."
Her gaze shifted.
"Camibarez Ursula."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
Camibarez answered, her face rigid with nerves.
"The Hemomancy aspirant who should be spearheading our offense has given up her field position to a Curse aspirant and taken on curse support instead. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this situation."
*...Brutal.*
That seemed far too harsh a question for the timid Camibarez to handle.
When Simon stole a sideways glance at her, sure enough, her pupils were doing the earthquake shuffle.
*'Cami, you have to nail this one.'*
If she answered with even a hint of *I stepped aside because Meilyn is simply better than me*, she'd be disqualified as a Kizen student on the spot.
Even if that were the truth of it, she absolutely could not say so in front of Jane.
Just then, Camibarez's eyes darted toward Simon. Her pleading look seemed to say, *What do I do?*
He couldn't answer for her in front of a professor.
There was no time to feed her the whole answer, either.
But this much, he could do.
Simon mouthed a single word to her.
*'Cyclops.'*
Her eyes went wide. Then she turned back to face Jane.
"It's, it's because of the special nature of the Cyclops, the monster we'll be facing!"
*Yes!* This time it was Simon who clenched his fist tight.
"What do you mean by that?"
"The Cy-Cyclops's tough, resilient hide is extremely difficult to crack with hemomancy. We judged that Meilyn's Dark Flare, which can burn it alive, would be far better suited to taking down the Cyclops—that's why we made this decision!"
The anxious faces of Meilyn and Rick, who had been watching breathlessly, brightened at once.
"I see."
Jane rested her chin on her hand and let slip an enigmatic smile.
"Then what if the enemy turns out to be something other than a Cyclops?"
"Th-th-then...!"
Her hands trembled with tension.
Camibarez was timid by nature, but this was a moment she had to win the battle against herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and shouted.
"Then I'll be the main dealer—!"
Her voice rang out incredibly loud on that final cry, complete with a little squeak at the very end.
When the quiet girl suddenly yelled, even the teaching assistants nearby blinked in surprise.
"I'll remember that statement."
Jane smiled faintly.
She seemed even more satisfied with Camibarez's answer than with Meilyn's or Simon's.
In a way, it was the best possible outcome.
*'Nice going, Cami!'*
Unable to bear the embarrassment, she buried her face in her palms. Simon couldn't help thinking what an impossible girl to dislike she was.
"And finally, Rick Hayward."
At Jane's call, Rick, who had been standing at the very end of the line, answered with vigor.
"Yes, Professor!"
Rick's body went taut with readiness.
He had stayed up half the night preparing three hundred anticipated question patterns and their answers. Whatever she threw at him, he could knock it right back with total confid—
"Stop chatting with the person next to you during class."
"....I'm sorry, what?"
"That will be all."
She rapped the stack of documents twice and handed it off to a teaching assistant.
"No need to repeat the questions that overlap with Camibarez's answers, of course. Well done, Team 7. Team 8, come forward."
The nerve-wracking presentation session was over in a flash.
Team 7 filed out of the lecture hall behind the TA.
Only the team whose turn was next waited on standby and entered; once a team finished presenting, their time was their own. Freedom, Kizen-style.
And then—
"Oh my, Simon? You're sitting right next to me?"
Meilyn winked and shot him a signal, and Simon nodded. A moment later, the two of them spoke in unison.
""Stop chatting with the person next to you during class!""
"GYAHAHAHAHA!"
Having finally seized on one of Rick's weaknesses, Meilyn gleefully paid back everything she'd ever taken from him. Rick pulled a face like he'd bitten into something foul.
"Hey. Is that actually funny? Because it's really not."
"Nope, it's hilarious! Utterly hilarious! Ohohoho!"
Simon smiled as he watched the two of them scuffle.
He knew perfectly well that Meilyn's teasing and Rick's bluster were all, in their own way, for Camibarez's sake.
And no wonder—Camibarez still hadn't managed to shake her blunder in front of Jane from her mind, and was sitting there with her face buried in her palms.
"Cami."
Simon spoke to her quietly.
"For lunch—smoked chicken or steak. Which one?"
"....Oh."
She slowly lowered her hands and peeked out.
"I, I'll have... it's been so long, so the chicken...!"
"Chicken it is! Chicken for lunch!"
Rick bellowed, charging to the front. The four of them headed for the dining hall amid the warm, cheerful din of laughter and chatter.