Two Hundred and Sixteen
Summoning Hall, third-floor practice room.
Like a monk deep in meditation, Simon slowly drew his concentration inward, then opened his eyes.
Before him, on the practice room desk, sat a row of plates, each holding a 'heart.' They were experimental specimens — hearts harvested from toads, small mammals, and the like — shrinking in size from left to right. Naturally, the smaller the heart, the harder the task.
"Ready?"
Behind him stood Aaron, the Summoning professor, holding a stopwatch. Simon nodded, his voice bright.
"Ready, Professor!"
"Begin."
Simon strode toward the leftmost heart on the desk. First, he floated a few Tool magic circles in the air to assist himself, then lifted the heart with a shroud of Cloud, suspending it at eye level. Careful not to burst it, he began etching micro-scale runes across the organ's outer surface.
The first band.
The circle activated. Jet-Black poured out, slowly arcing around the heart until it formed a perfect ring.
"Got it!"
Even after Simon withdrew his hands, the heart stayed afloat, held steady in the air. Aaron gave a nod.
"Good. Next."
A single band was flowing around the heart, spiraling clockwise at a slight tilt. Simon built a second band right beside it, this one running counter-clockwise.
Two down, all clear.
The real trial began here.
He had to forge a third, smaller band inside the two others — one that crossed them in an X, drifting back and forth along the heart's length. Simon raised both arms with meticulous care.
Focus...!
He drew the circle onto the heart and had barely gotten halfway through the compatible third band when—
Pop!
The heart exploded. Blood sprayed in every direction and nearly painted the whole room, but Aaron's pre-laid transparent barrier caught it.
"Too hasty."
Aaron clicked off the stopwatch.
"You were so desperate to forge the third band that you failed to read the flow of the other two. That's how this happens."
"...Ah."
"You must understand how every element harmonizes, Simon."
Aaron demonstrated it himself. He inscribed a circle onto a suspended heart and unfurled two bands in quick succession.
"Now — watch closely how the third band comes into being."
Thump! Thump!
The heart still beat under the dark magic. Aaron traced his circle and began looping the third band around it.
The third band did not draw itself at a constant speed from start to finish. It paused with every beat of the heart, resumed, paused again, resumed again — over and over.
"Yield to the harmony. Accept the flow."
When the first band completed one revolution and the second eight-tenths of one, the third band sprang to life.
"Like the workings of a piano. Understand how the smallest element shapes the whole."
And so the third band was complete.
It swung left and right around the heart's center — and the speed of each pass exactly matched the heart's own rhythm.
So that's it.
It wasn't a matter of simply winding an eternal band around the organ at all. It looked, rather, as though the pumping heart itself were driving the three bands — as if they belonged to it.
Harmony.
Simon thought these three simple bands circling the heart were the very pinnacle of elegance.
"Do not go thinking of the Life Vessel as nothing more than an undead's heart."
Aaron said quietly.
"You are grafting a living, breathing heart into the chest of the dead. It is a rite that goes beyond summoning and borders on creation itself — approach it with reverence. Abandon any notion of winging it, and control every last detail from beginning to end."
"I'll remember that, Professor."
Aaron raised the stopwatch once more.
"Plenty of hearts left. Again."
"Yes, sir!"
Simon failed again and again, bursting heart after heart.
But every failure handed him something to refine.
I have to hang on to the very end.
He did not fear failure.
Each time he stumbled, he gathered up the scattered pieces of success one by one, stuffed them into his pocket, and sprinted onward.
What went wrong just now?
He recalled the theory in his mind, refuted it himself, and repeated the cycle. The larger the sample size, the more reliable the hypothesis became.
Failures piled up, and from them he built himself a higher and higher stepping-stone.
And then, at last—
"The sixteenth attempt today. On the two hundred and sixteenth attempt in total."
Aaron clicked off the stopwatch.
"Congratulations on your success, Simon."
Before Simon's eyes, three bands revolved in perfect unison.
His pupils were half-unfocused as he stared at it in a daze, but the tingling thrill rising through his body brought both fists clenching tight. And then—
"Woo-hoo!"
He threw both arms up over his head and toppled right over.
He was drenched in sweat and spattered with blood from the burst hearts, but the sheer sense of achievement wrung a laugh out of him.
Aaron watched his disciple with satisfaction, then turned his back.
"Clean up, then come out."
"Yes, sir! Thank you, Professor!"
The moment Aaron opened the practice room door and stepped outside—
"Hwagh—?!"
A strange sound greeted him.
Camibarez stood there hunched at the shoulders, a bundle of fresh towels and a water jug hugged to her chest.
"A-ah! H-hello, Professor Aaron!"
Her face scarlet, she bowed at the waist.
A faint smile crossed Aaron's lips.
"Camibarez Ursula. Do you have business in the Summoning practice room?"
"W-well, um, that is..."
"Only joking. Go on in."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Camibarez darted inside, crying Simon's name at the top of her lungs.
"Doing school life properly, I see."
With a middle-aged man's smile, Aaron shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled away, slippers dragging along the floor.
"Alright, you lot! Ready?!"
Afternoon, Toxicology class. Professor Byulya bellowed at the top of her lungs.
"Swallow!"
The students all swallowed the pills clenched between their teeth at once. Hives broke out across every body in the room in an instant.
"Form your Blood Poison and shock the immune system — kick that resistance into gear! The second your hives vanish, raise your hand and get checked off by a TA!"
Simon closed his eyes and focused on the flow within his own body.
This was Byulya's immunity curriculum, the natural continuation of the infamous 'poison-eating class' that had been the talk of the school since the start of the semester. It had moved beyond simply enduring poison: the graded assessment now measured how quickly the body could adapt when a harmful foreign substance entered it — how fast it produced antibodies and restored stability.
Simon's Jet-Black Blood Poison array was, in itself, unremarkable dark magic. But in this immunity class, he stood in a league of his own.
The origins of it, he suspected, went back to that hunt for the Desert Scorpion with Camibarez.
He had been infected by the monster's venom, blacked out, and come within a hair's breadth of death — but in the end, he had conquered that poison outright. Since then, his dark-magic-based resistance system had climbed to a considerable level, and in the Class A classroom he was consistently the first to stop breaking out in hives.
There!
At last, Simon checked the mirror, confirmed his face was hive-free, and thrust his hand up. A TA saw him and glanced at the timer.
"Simon Polentia! Six minutes, ten seconds!"
Murmurs rippled through the room.
The Head TA gave Simon's body one more thorough check, then wrote his name at the top of the leaderboard on the blackboard.
"Hector Moore! Six minutes, forty-three seconds!"
"Damn it all!!"
Hector slammed his fist down on his desk in fury. Byulya cackled at the sight.
"Hey, nice work, Dragon! Second place is nothing to sneeze at!"
Hector's expression flipped in an instant as he bowed respectfully to Byulya. Watching him, Dick snickered and called him 'Two-Faced Hector' under his breath.
One by one, some faster than others, every student in the class successfully formed their resistance system.
"You're all getting too good at this. Class dismissed! Have a good weekend~"
"Thank you for the lesson!"
With that, Byulya's Toxicology class — the last class of the day — came to an end.
Simon and Dick were chatting their way back toward the dormitory when two boys from Class A, both aspiring Toxicology majors, caught up to them.
"Simon! What on earth did you do to raise your resistance like that?"
"Come on, teach us!"
He had nothing worth hiding, so Simon told them about the Desert Scorpion hunt he'd been on with Camibarez. The two boys went pale.
"S-so we'd have to get stung by a Desert Scorpion too?"
"You do know there are about a thousand ways that ends in suicide, right?"
Dick snickered and told them to dream on.
So the four boys were ambling along, trading idle banter, when a girl came into view lingering outside the practice building — clearly waiting for someone.
A skirt cut short, eye makeup done with real skill, and cream-colored hair.
"Whoa."
One of the boys let out a completely honest sound of admiration.
"Who is that?"
"Hey — hey. Watch your mouth."
Dick elbowed him, aghast.
"That's a second-year senior."
To the first-years, Kizen's second-years were beings of absolute authority. The boy hastily clamped a hand over his own mouth.
"Ah!"
Right then, the second-year senior waved at them.
"Sooooldier~"
"?"
They all glanced around, wondering who she was calling — and Simon's eyes went wide.
"Senior Benya!"
Simon asked the other three to excuse him and bolted over. The three left behind wore expressions thick with envy.
"Benya... as in THE Benya Vanilla?"
"...Life's not fair."
From a distance, they could see the two exchanging cheerful greetings, talking back and forth about something. Then Simon grabbed Benya's wrist, his face alight with excitement, and took off running. Startled, she yelped 'Wait, soldier!' as she was dragged along.
"Ohhh."
The envy in the three boys' eyes swelled to new heights.
"...Simon's bolder than he looks, huh."
"Dick!"
Just then, Meilyn and Camibarez came running up behind them.
"Where's Simon?"
Dick shrugged.
"Grabbing a beautiful senior by the wrist and dragging her off somewhere?"
"He's what?"
"Excuse me?"
Camibarez and Meilyn's expressions froze simultaneously.
At last.
The time had come.
The moment he had dreamed of — the creation of his Lich — was at hand.
Tonight. Simon intended to begin.
"Wait up~!"
Simon glanced back to see Benya puffing and panting as she ran after him, far behind. No matter how she rode the Jet-Black, she couldn't match his pace.
Only then did Simon realize he'd gotten carried away, and stopped in his tracks.
"Sorry about that!"
"Oh, honestly!"
Benya cracked open a sub-space and pulled out a Skeleton Horse. Hopping onto its back in one fluid motion, she spread her arms wide and shouted.
"Catch!"
Thwack!
Simon caught her hand, stepped up onto the horse's body, and settled into the seat behind her.
"Did you read up on riding?"
"Yes! Shall I take the reins?"
"Please."
Benya swung her legs to the side, and Simon reached past her to grip the reins. The Skeleton Horse tore off at full gallop, carrying them to Rochest in no time.
"That was practically instantaneous!"
Simon dismounted first and helped Benya down like a gentleman.
"Thanks."
She alighted lightly on the ground and tucked the Skeleton Horse back into her sub-space.
"It's this way — let's go!"
"Right behind you, senior."
Simon had made serious money at this term's Pentamonium Academic Conference, and he had resolved to spend it properly, in one decisive move.
What he had commissioned from the Vanilla workshop this time was Herseba's Heart.
A Life Vessel component for a Lich, worth a staggering 25,000 gold — and it was waiting for him in Rochest, right now.