The Thesis Shredders
Simon spent the day wandering through Pentamonium, taking in the various events the festival had to offer.
There was plenty to see—demonstrations of mecha undead, lectures from high-tier summoners—and he enjoyed himself thoroughly. Before he knew it, the sun had set and he was back at the lodge. He and Kajan took one room, and Serne took the other.
He was studying curses at a leisurely pace and had just pulled out a book to read before bed when—
"Let's have a talk."
Kajan called him out. Even away from the dormitory, the spot where they met never changed. When Simon climbed up to the lodge's rooftop, Kajan was gazing up at the night sky.
Come to think of it, the moon's full again tonight.
Simon walked over to him. "What about the wine?"
"I'm on duty. Pass."
As Simon dropped down onto the seat beside him, Kajan spoke.
"Let's get straight to the point. The reason I called you out here is—"
His eyes flashed like a blade.
"—to report on the mission."
Simon swallowed hard and nodded.
* * *
The next morning, the dreaded hour finally arrived.
"Aaaah, my heart's pounding!"
"My voice keeps cracking—what do I do?"
The morning's schedule was the 1st-Year Necromancer Student Thesis Presentation.
Simon was leaning against a wall, skimming rapidly through the script for the thesis he'd prepared in advance. Since Serne was running late, Kajan had gone to fetch her.
"Ooh~ Look at you, working so hard. Kizen."
Just then, a boy in a green plaid uniform came over and spoke to him.
Simon searched his memory. Aland, first year—Benz, was it? The one who'd shaken his hand with a bone-crushing grip.
"Ah, don't be so defensive. Today there's none of that other business—purely—"
Swoosh!
He flourished a thick stack of thesis paper.
"—a contest of pure summoning skill."
If that was all it was, Simon was more than happy. He smiled brightly. "Looking forward to it, Benz."
"!"
At those few words, Benz's face flushed an embarrassed red.
A Kizen student remembers my name—what an honor—no, wait!
He suddenly smacked both his own cheeks with a sharp clap! clap!
Don't get happy over something like that! Where's your pride!
Then he turned toward a nearby pane of glass and studied his reflection.
"Who am I?"
Muttering to himself, he straightened his uniform tie and flashed a grin at the boy in the glass.
"A proud student of Aland."
"……"
Simon decided to pretend he hadn't seen any of that.
"Anyway!"
Self-esteem freshly recharged, Benz pointed straight at Simon's chest.
"This year's Pentamonium thesis presentation is the worst in history! Watch yourself!"
"Why is it the worst in history?"
"Heh. You know nothing! Look over there!"
Where Benz pointed, three judges sat in a row.
"From the right: Source Hell Calaban, Thesis Shredder Vintra, and Proof Spammer Latoni."
"Wh… what?"
"The most notorious judges in all of Pentamonium. Normally you'd be lucky to get even one of the three in a given year, but this year—horrifyingly—all three musketeers gathered in one place."
Benz rubbed his shoulders as if goosebumps had broken out across them.
"Yesterday was brutal too. Every one of our second-years had their minds snapped—they kept saying they were worthless, that they needed to rethink their futures. Some of the upperclassmen were crying pathetically back at the lodge."
"……It's that bad?"
"They're demons that gnaw your confidence down to the bedrock."
Having said his piece, Benz let out a deep sigh.
"But we've only just started following a proper dark magic curriculum this year, right? Even if you make students write theses, how original can they be? This is just a setup designed for us to get flayed alive."
"Hmm."
"So I prepared the most difficult vocabulary and logic I could, so the judges wouldn't be able to understand a word of—"
"And what are you two up to?"
A pleasant voice like a spring breeze slipped into the conversation. Benz whirled around and staggered backward in shock.
"Y-you're—!"
Her ivory-bright hair rippling like a photoshoot, Serne approached with her hands clasped behind her back. Then she bowed slightly, her foxlike eyes crinkling in a smile.
"Bullying Simon again?"
"N-no! I was—!"
Benz's lips trembled too hard to form proper words.
This person was the sun. It felt like taking the light pouring down from a noble sun in a direct, frontal strike with nothing to shield him. Benz felt as though he were being scorched from head to toe, shriveling up like a squid over a fire.
Merely meeting her eyes felt like an undeserved honor. Simply standing here felt like an imposition. He ought to be gazing up at her from far below. He ought to be flat on the ground, crawling at her feet.
"Serne."
Just then, Simon spoke in a tone of gentle reproof.
"?"
As she turned toward him with a soft smile, Benz finally felt the pressure squeezing his chest begin to melt away.
"E-excuse me!"
Benz fled down the stairs like a man running for his life. Serne watched his retreating back for a moment, then asked, "What were you talking about?"
"Just the thesis judging."
"Serne Aindark. That's your second warning."
Kajan said as he caught up, sighing.
"Waste your strength on one more trivial matter, and I'll report it to command and send you back to Roc Island."
"That's so mean~ I haven't done anything at all, I've just been sitting quietly!"
Serne's lips jutted out in a pout, but Kajan brushed it off without a second glance.
Strangely enough, while Serne would snap at Lorraine, Nephthys's daughter, tooth and claw the moment she saw her, she tended to actually listen to what Kajan said.
Simon could only guess it was because Kajan happened to be on her recruitment list.
"Take your seats."
And so the 1st-year thesis presentation began.
Among the necromancer academies, Sierra went first. A first-year girl in a red uniform was fidgeting in place, anxiously reading the room around her.
"It hasn't even started yet, and already my vision's going dark."
It was Thesis Shredder Vintra, seated at the center, who spoke.
"Yesterday's second-years were bad enough. One aside, none of them were worth the paper."
That was Source Hell Calaban, seated on the right.
"Dreadful as the level may be, we are professionals nonetheless. Do not let emotion sway you; judge fairly."
And that was Proof Spammer Latoni on the left.
The judges exchanged light banter before the presentations began, but through the students' eyes, it was nothing short of a gathering of demons.
Before long, Vintra in the center spoke with a grave expression. "Begin."
"Y-yes, sir!"
The girl projected her visuals from a mana crystal sphere, placed both hands over her heart, and took a deep breath. Then she opened her eyes wide and faced the judges.
"I am Ellaria Lecrel, a first-year Summoning major from Sierra. My research topic is the habits and physiology of the swamp undead 'Yonggolgwi,' and its operation."
The words had barely left her mouth before all three judges slouched back into their chairs with bored expressions. The aura of I don't care was already radiating from their faces and body language.
The Sierra girl faltered for a moment, but she pressed on without breaking stride.
"The Yonggolgwi is an undead that mainly inhabits swamps, and is most commonly found within the territory of the Carlos Kingdom. Its body length is approximately two to three meters, its tail length thirty centimeters, its shoulder height—"
"Next."
"Ah, yes! My apologies! The Yonggolgwi is known to transform into an undead as the corpses of monsters sink into swamps and decay. Especially in deeper swamps—"
"Next."
"Although the Yonggolgwi is classified as a skeleton, the species' particular traits make Bone Restoration unusable on it. Instead—"
"Next!"
They weren't even giving the student who had prepared her presentation a chance to speak properly. The girl's pupils had begun to tremble with anxiety.
But she was a necromancer student, and she boldly took the gamble. Skipping eighty percent of her content, she flipped straight to the back pages of her thesis and pulled out the information she hoped the judges would want to hear.
"Please look at the projected screen. These are the summoning circle formulas for the Yonggolgwi that I designed in advance."
Only then did the judges sit up.
"As you can see, the core rune is 'Funeral Rite.' And the formulas supporting it are—"
"One moment."
This time it was Source Hell Calaban who cut in. Her eyes glinted behind her glasses.
"I'm aware that research papers on creating Yonggolgwi using the Funeral Rite rune already exist. Cite your sources."
"M-my sources—!"
While the girl scrambled in panic, Calaban opened a subspace and manipulated something inside it, and several documents popped out one after another. Using magnification magic, she enlarged them so the entire audience could see.
"Assembly-Centric Modeling Methodology for Yonggolgwi Design, and A Summoning-Theory Interpretation of the Funeral Rite Rune. Two of them, just from a cursory search. So, student Ellaria? What, exactly, is the difference between these two papers and yours?"
The audience began to murmur, and Ellaria stammered out a reply.
"O-of course there are prior papers on the Funeral Rite and the Yonggolgwi! But I applied the Kandal formula to the strain and rotational values of the formulas—!"
"Prove it."
This time Proof Spammer Latoni cut in.
"Prove, with sound reasoning, why you believed the Kandal formula suited Yonggolgwi design."
"Ah—ah, yes!"
She hurriedly scribbled a few equations onto the chalkboard, but Latoni merely scoffed.
"It's plain to see you've simply forced your own ideas into the framework of the existing Summoning-Theory Interpretation of the Funeral Rite Rune."
"Y-yes?"
"Then prove why the author of that paper used simple calculation instead of the Kandal formula."
Latoni rose from his seat and began writing equations on the chalkboard. The student thesis presentation had suddenly transformed into a lecture.
The irony of a judge teaching the presenter. But no mere student could dream of interrupting a man who was one of Pentamonium's elders.
Even after Latoni had wrung her out completely, the assault continued.
"Why is there no source citation for your equations?"
"That is no way to handle a Yonggolgwi. Have you ever actually assembled a Yonggolgwi corpse?"
"Setting everything else aside—what on earth do they teach children at Sierra?"
The judges were like hyenas. Show them the tiniest opening and they would latch on and tear at it relentlessly, raising a hellish uproar as though they meant to kill.
One look at the girl's frantic face made it clear her composure had shattered.
"I will now render my evaluation."
Finally, Thesis Shredder Vintra lifted the girl's thesis.
"Garbage. Zero points."
And then, right before her eyes, he began methodically tearing the thesis apart. He scattered the shredded pieces at her feet and said, icily:
"Did you take Pentamonium too lightly? Did you think you could slap something together like a chimera and call it done?"
"Do not think us cruel."
Source Hell Calaban said coldly.
"Filling pages with obvious content—without the barest preparation, effort, or thought. You were the one who disrespected Pentamonium first."
A hush fell over the hall, and the girl descended the steps like a condemned criminal, head bowed low. When her friends rushed over and patted her on the back, the tears she'd been holding back finally burst free.
That seems a bit much.
Simon, watching from the stands, grimaced.
Certainly, Ellaria's thesis had its shortcomings—that much was true. But he couldn't help wondering whether there was any real need to grind down a student who was only just beginning to learn dark magic that severely.
SLAM!
Thesis Shredder Vintra smacked the table with his palm and bellowed.
"Today is off to an unbearably disgusting start! Next!"
* * *
As the turn order progressed, the atmosphere in the hall grew bloodthirstier by the minute.
"Garbage. Zero points. Next!"
The floor of the podium was soon carpeted with thesis paper torn to ribbons.
"And you call THIS a thesis?! I'd sooner call it homework!"
"This is exactly what's wrong with the generation of peace! Back when I was a student, from start to finish—!"
"Setting all else aside, there is no sincerity and no courtesy. Would it not be standard practice to at least learn the basic formatting required of a Pentamonium thesis before arriving?"
Rip, rip, rip, rip.
Like a threshing machine in motion, the composure of every student who took the podium was shredded to chaff. Sierra, Aland, and Moiran alike could not escape the blade.
Almost.
"Passable."
A Moiran boy—the very student who had stood before Simon yesterday spouting talk of cutting down Kizen—received a fairly decent evaluation.
"Still lacking a great deal, but the best of this lot by far."
"We hardly expect the world of you. This much, and we'll simply let it slide."
For the first time, his thesis was returned to him without being torn to shreds by Thesis Shredder Vintra.
As he came down to a smattering of polite applause from the audience, the boy's gaze found Simon naturally, unerringly.
"Now, then—it's their turn."
Thesis Shredder Vintra said, arms crossed.
"Come up, Kizen!"