The Blank Check
The first Kizen student to take the podium was Kajan.
He was nothing like the students who had twisted themselves into pretzels trying to curry favor with the judges. With an impassive face and a flat, toneless voice, he read through his own paper as if reciting lines from a school textbook.
His presentation was as unstoppable as a tank charging in a straight line. Even the judges—who until now had been all too eager to cut speakers off mid-sentence and tear into the students—were so taken aback that they couldn't find an opening to interject.
"That concludes my presentation."
A presentation that hadn't even lasted five minutes.
The audience was engulfed in an enormous silence.
"You are... rather baffling, I must say."
Thesis Shredder Vintra held his copy of the paper far from his eyes as he spoke.
"A Core Penetration Method for Summoned-Type Monsters? Isn't this more a matter of Magic Combat than Summoning?"
"I believe it's information necessary for Summoning as well."
Kajan replied without so much as a flicker. Even someone brazen enough to wear shamelessness like a mask would have struggled to answer that openly.
"No, more than that! This thesis has a critical disqualifying flaw!"
Source Hell Calaban thrust her glasses up her nose.
"The student has entered no sources whatsoever in the citation section at the very back of the paper. To fail at something this basic—this fundamental—"
"It instructed me to cite sources when using academic materials. I used no academic materials, so I wrote nothing."
"I beg your pardon?"
"My sources are Thieves' Guild intelligence."
Kajan spat the words out flatly.
"All intelligence guilds, the Thieves' Guild included, encrypt and protect the identities of their informants. Would anyone seriously ask an intelligence guild to reveal its sources?"
Pfff—!
A ripple of laughter spread through the audience, and Source Hell Calaban's face flushed bright red.
"Ahem!"
And Proof Spammer Latoni, seated at the far left, was scowling in evident discomfort. Since the paper was about clubbing undead to death based on non-academic field intelligence, there was hardly anything he could demand a proof for.
"Enough!"
Thesis Shredder Vintra bellowed, his face contorted.
"Your attempt to analyze a monster's weaknesses in detail using intelligence guild data is commendable, but the content has nothing to do with Summoning. This is garbage too! Zero points!"
Once again, Kajan's thesis was ripped to shreds in Vintra's hands.
Kajan gave the judges a look that said he couldn't care less whether they approved or not, then spun on his heel and walked off without a backward glance.
"You—young man...!"
"The youth of today, honestly!"
Bang! Bang!
Thesis Shredder Vintra slammed the table, silencing the surroundings.
"We've wasted enough time! Next!"
This time, Serne stepped up to the podium. She spread a flower-garden backdrop around herself and flashed a bright, sunny greeting to the judges and the audience alike.
"I'm Serne Aindark~"
At the sound of her name, the judges let out small gasps of recognition.
"The successor to the Ivory Tower, of whom so many rumors are told."
"An unexpected choice, coming to Pentamonium to present a thesis."
"This one may be worth looking forward to."
Like the students before her, Serne used her crystal ball and mana projector to throw an enlarged view of her thesis into the air.
<Making Serne's Feather Soldiers>
In Simon's opinion, the title was... passable. He'd let it slide.
But why was the thesis background a picture of a weasel?
"Using my innate ability, I created an original undead I call the Feather Soldier!"
When she flipped the screen, an astonishingly dense wall of text appeared. Half text, half whitespace.
Simon's eyes began to ache, and the three elderly judges had to crane their necks out like turtles or fish their glasses out of their pockets just to read it.
"The feathers I produce with my ability are one hundred percent compatible with Jet-Black! I can even convert them into magic circles. So I thought—what if I used these feathers to build summoning circles? The Rune Script used is..."
As Simon listened to Serne chatter away at a rapid-fire clip, he sank into pure, innocent bewilderment.
But seriously—why the weasel background?
"So I adjusted the equations like this!"
Every time she flipped the screen, the weasel's pose changed too.
No matter how he turned it over in his mind, Simon could not fathom what weasels had to do with Summoning. The font color would suddenly shift to rainbow, or a photo of the pet dog she'd raised at her estate would pop up—it seemed she had simply hurled in everything she personally thought was cute.
His eyes kept drifting not to the equations, but to the weasel.
"Now, a live demonstration!"
Serne dropped a few feathers to the floor. They broke apart, forming a magic circle on the ground, and several more feathers drifted down onto it.
The feathers melted and flowed together, and a moment later, out popped a soldier of pure white—geometric, sculptural, beautiful in its form.
"Just as necromancers command undead with their will, I can command these feather soldiers as I please! I'm still a beginner, so my limit is ten at once! Right here, on the spot! Now, as for why I used the Abel equation in my formulas—"
"..."
The audience seemed to have given up on understanding midway through, but the three necromancer judges were glittering with interest.
"Fascinating!"
"That's the Ivory Tower for you!"
For the first time, the judges were nodding their heads.
It was hard to believe, but Serne's presentation—utterly incomprehensible to Simon beyond the fact that the weasel was cute—was actually landing.
—So this is what works on the mad-scientist eccentric necromancers of academic conferences.
It was exactly what Aaron had predicted, having reviewed Serne's thesis beforehand.
A thesis about making Feather Soldiers with Serne's unique ability was of use to absolutely no one but Serne herself. In other words, its academic value was close to zero—and yet the judges loved it.
These were all necromancers who had grown as old and as rotten as one could grow in the field of Summoning. If the presentations that had been shredded earlier had struck the judges as statements of the obvious—"one hundred plus one hundred is two hundred," "eating too many sweets is bad for you"—then Serne's talk felt like someone explaining how a sloth swims.
The judges felt a rush of freshness at the "new fact." And they would never in their lives become sloths themselves.
"I can feel brain muscles I haven't used in years starting to twitch."
"The content was novel."
And so Serne became the second student to walk away with her thesis intact. The judges were delighted, but the audience and the other students wore expressions of sheer disbelief.
And then—the final turn of the presentation conference.
"My name is Simon Polentia."
Simon stepped up onto the podium. Every eye in the hall converged on him.
"Kizen's Special Admission No. 1."
The judges looked over Simon's profile.
"House Polentia? I've never heard the name."
"Best not to expect too much. Let's observe calmly."
"Mm. Quite."
Simon bowed to the judges, then handed each of the three a copy of his thesis.
"I'll begin now."
Simon's gaze turned to the three judges.
Source Hell Calaban. Thesis Shredder Vintra. Proof Spammer Latoni.
The three opponents he had to face were right there before his eyes.
"The topic I will be presenting is—"
The final turn of the student thesis conference.
Perhaps the elderly judges' concentration had waned, or perhaps Serne's fresh, stimulating presentation had exhausted their interest; either way, they were resting their chins on their hands or slumping deep into their chairs with weary eyes.
"—Skeleton Mages that cast Corpse Explosion."
"What?"
Vintra jolted upright as if launched by a spring. A clamor rippled through the audience as well.
"Student! This is an academic conference! Not a fantasy novel reading!!"
Vintra roared, every trace of drowsiness blasted from his face. The other two judges cut in sharply as well.
"An undead ordering another undead to self-destruct? Does that even make sense?"
"How could a Skeleton Mage possibly perform a complex dark spell like Corpse Explosion—!"
Simon filed his papers square with a confident grin.
"It's possible."
Simon opened a subspace and drew out a zombie and a Skeleton Mage.
"Before the explanation, the demonstration."
Simon glanced back and gave the signal, and Serne flicked a feather from her finger through the air.
The feathers stabbed into the floor around the podium and wove a protective barrier over the zombie.
Simon rapped lightly on the barrier with his knuckles to confirm it was safe, then stepped back a pace and gave the order to the Skeleton Mage.
"Corpse Explosion."
KRAKOOM!
The Skeleton Mage extended its staff. The moment a magic circle unfurled at its tip, the zombie suddenly flinched and straightened its body upright.
And then, as light seemed to shimmer from its eyes and mouth—
BOOOOOOOOOM!
It truly exploded.
The audience recoiled and ducked low, shrieking in a chorus of panic at the sudden thunder. The judges flinched too, jerking backward in their seats.
KUGUGUGUGU!
Simon looked at the inside of the barrier, now thick with explosion smoke, and smiled in satisfaction.
"Something like this."
Before long, Serne flicked out one more feather, venting the explosion cloud away with a ventilation spell and dropping the barrier.
Murmur murmur murmur!
While everyone was still reeling, Thesis Shredder Vintra shouted impatiently.
"Qu-quickly! Explain how in the world you did this!"
"Yes, honored judge."
Simon had drawn his hint from the siege-themed practical exam, where he had detonated Gwaegong with Corpse Explosion.
Originally, he had used Skeleton Mages only as auxiliary support when casting Corpse Explosion on Gwaegong—but then the thought struck him: what if a Skeleton Mage simply cast Corpse Explosion with its own native power?
"For the materials, I selected a monster called the Muspel. A flame-attribute monster that lives in lava fields and pops like a bomb. You'll know it well, since it's frequently used as material for flame-attribute Skeleton Mages."
Two of the mages Simon owned were indeed Muspels. He walked slowly around the stage as he laid out his explanation.
"From this Muspel, we create a pair—one zombie and one Skeleton Mage."
"Oh-ho!"
"A zombie Muspel—that's a first for me!"
The principle wasn't difficult. Carve the same Rune Script into both the summoning circles of the 'Skeleton Mage' and the 'Zombie.'
The Rune of Transmission.
The very same rune Simon had used when he attended Aaron's Magister System lecture.
"The Rune of Transmission is the heart of Muspel Corpse Explosion."
A Muspel born in the lava fields has a lifespan of only one or two years after reaching maturity. At the end of that life, it is fated to be unable to contain the heat of its own body and explode.
However, the world has long believed that when a Muspel is killed and made into a zombie or skeleton, the explosion effect vanishes entirely—
"I focused on that 'explosion effect' it possessed in life, and on recreating it through Corpse Explosion magic."
Simon's theory was unprecedented—a revolution in itself.
Ordinary Corpse Explosion works by overloading only an undead's core or its summoning circle until it bursts. But Simon had zeroed in on the unique traits of the Muspel as a monster.
Free, creative thinking unshackled by academic convention. Every time Simon unveiled one of his runes or formulas, the necromancers seated in the audience gasped aloud.
"Radical!"
"A stroke of genius!"
"An explosion using the physiological traits of a monster from its living days...!"
"How does anyone even think of this?"
The audience was working itself into a frenzy, and the three judges had begun to sweat in rivulets.
"That concludes my presentation."
Simon finished and smiled warmly.
He hadn't revealed every formula or every principle—he had cut things off at just the right point. Because he intended to sell this thesis.
The moment the presentation ended, groans of disappointment erupted from every corner of the hall, but that was simply what Pentamonium was.
"Is there no risk that a stored Muspel zombie might explode on its own?"
Thesis Shredder Vintra raised a question.
"As I mentioned, once a Muspel is zombified, its explosion property disappears. And the Corpse Explosion spell cast by the Muspel Skeleton Mage works on the principle of forcibly creating a switch that wasn't there—and pressing it."
This time, Source Hell Calaban adjusted her glasses and spoke.
"And the reason you failed to list your sources at the back of the paper?"
Simon shrugged.
"Every idea came out of my own head."
Calaban had already skimmed the thesis herself—there wasn't a single line of it that overlapped with existing research.
Her mouth clamped shut, and this time Proof Spammer Latoni sprang to his feet.
"This is a grand swindle! You clearly intend to insult Pentamonium itself!"
"I'm sorry?"
"The Jet-Black signals sent through the Rune of Transmission belong to an entirely different domain from an ordinary central nervous system! How can you prove that the Muspel's explosion was induced artificially?"
"If you'd like."
Simon pulled over the wheeled blackboard nearby.
"I'll prove it."
And with that, he began to write out the proof formula for the Rune of Transmission across the blackboard.
Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
In the breath-held silence, the only sound was Simon's chalk moving.
His hair and the hem of his shirt swayed as he traced out equations with the fluency of a man possessed.
Theoretical insight.
Simon had long since completed that process—and fully analyzed it in terms of Jet-Black Mechanics as well. Laying out a rune's detonation process as a sequence of equations was no difficult feat for him.
Thank you, Professor Eric Aura!
Everyone in the hall watched Simon's hand as it swept across the blackboard.
Before long—tap!—Simon drove the chalk down in a final emphatic stroke and let his hand fall.
"Is that sufficient?"
It was a flawless proof, through and through.
There was nothing left to say.
This is...
Thesis Shredder Vintra felt his spine shiver down to the marrow.
This was no mere radicalism. It was a revolution.
The creativity and audacity of that seventeen-year-old boy had charted a new path through the rigid, calcified world of necromancy.
The fossilized common sense he had always taken for granted—the certainties he'd believed simply had to be that way—crumbled and lay scattered on the floor, and a brand-new castle now stood towering right before his eyes.
Clap.
Vintra clapped his hands.
"Magnificent!"
Clap. Clap.
Applause rippled out across the audience seats.
And then—
Clapclapclapclapclap!
—WAAAAAAAHHH!
It swelled into a thunderous roar of cheering and applause. Several professional necromancers even rose to their feet, faces flushed with excitement, for a standing ovation.
Even the notoriously exacting Source Hell Calaban and Proof Spammer Latoni clapped along with dazed expressions on their faces.
Simon bowed to them all in thanks.
"This—this is exactly what I'd been hoping for!"
Vintra leapt up from his seat in excitement.
"Many have questioned the level and the very purpose of this 'student thesis conference.' But today, student Simon Polentia has proven its necessity! A fresh approach from the students! The radical daring that comes of youth! We may well be witnessing, all together, the moment a new history begins. Splendid! Simply splendid!"
"I'm honored."
"You do intend to register this thesis with Pentamonium, yes?"
"Ah—yes."
"Come here, then!"
Simon had no idea what Vintra intended, but he walked over to him all the same.
"Take this."
What Vintra held out was a white slip of paper. The judges beside him, who had stolen glances at it, let out cries of shock that went beyond mere astonishment.
"Judge Vintra!"
"This is the presentation conference! Such a thing, out of nowhere—!"
"There's no law saying one must not purchase a thesis during the conference, is there?"
Vintra's eyes were glistening—half his mind already devoured by greed.
Simon lifted the paper with a bewildered look.
It was a check. The payer's signature read Vintra, but the amount line was completely blank.
"Honored judge. This is..."
"A blank check."
Murmur murmur MURMUR!
At those words, the audience exploded into an uproar.
"Wh-what is the meaning of this!"
"Have you no shame, a man in your position?"
"If you want to buy it, bid like everyone else and compete fairly!"
As the professional necromancers shouted, faces crimson, Vintra gave a crooked smile.
"Bid or whatever else—I will simply purchase it at the highest price offered. That's how the market works, is it not?"
For a brief moment, Simon thought that the man before him was a necromancer down to the very marrow of his bones.
"Come now! Write down whatever sum you like! The amount is of no consequence!"
He spread his arms wide and boomed, then added in a voice low enough for Simon alone:
"Necromancer students studying Summoning are always desperate for money. That's why you joined this conference in the first place, I'd wager."
"..."
A blank check.
Whatever amount he wrote would become entirely his.
He could even buy the Life Vessel heart of a Lich.
In a way, it was an honor. How many times in a man's life would he ever be handed something like this?
Simon's hand moved slowly.
"Yes, yes, that's it. Quickly now, the amount—"
"Honored judge."
Simon gripped the blank check.
And then, slowly—
so that Vintra could see it clearly—he raised it up lengthwise.
"What are you do—"
RRRIIIIIIP—
"!!!"
In that instant, the entire hall fell into a dead silence.
No one could move. No one could breathe.
RRRIIIIIIP—
While everyone in that space stood frozen, the only thing moving was Simon's hand—tearing the blank check.
Rrip—snap.
At last, having torn the check cleanly in half, Simon turned toward Vintra, who was trembling uncontrollably, his face a mask of horror.
"You feel awful, don't you?"
Simon smiled brightly and stacked the two torn halves together.
"You went to all that trouble out of consideration for me. It'd be a shame to waste it."
And then he began tearing again—crosswise this time.
"Our students got the same treatment."
RRRIIIIIIIIP—
The sound of paper tearing lingered long in everyone's ears.
From Aland, Sierra—even Moiran—every student shot to their feet, eyes blazing.
"Even buried in our brutal schedules, everyone who took part in this conference gave everything they had. The size of our efforts may have differed, but not one person here didn't try."
—No preparation, no care, no thought at all—just filling pages with the same tired platitudes. The ones who disrespected Pentamonium first were you.
"An act of disrespecting Pentamonium, you say? Unless I've lost my mind, how could a single student possibly disrespect Pentamonium?"
—Kids these days have no class at all.
—What are they even teaching at Sierra?
"Nobody starts out good. We did our best with what we had. Were the judges good from the very beginning?"
—Garbage. Zero points.
And then, at last, Simon looked at Vintra—whose composure had crumbled completely, leaving nothing but trembling lips.
Shred. Shred. Shred. Shred.
Exactly as Thesis Shredder Vintra had done to everyone before him—
Simon let the blank check, torn to ribbons, fall at Vintra's feet.
"We are not garbage. Honored judge."
No one in this world—
has the right to laugh at someone who worked hard.
