The Summoner's Roadmap
“Simon Polentia.”
Simon rose from his seat.
Aaron's earlier question had asked after the meaning of the Skeleton Knight's strength that does not require direct control.
“An ordinary skeleton requires precise undead control. Because it's an undead built by binding bones together with Jet-Black, even a simple impact is enough to knock it down.”
Simon turned his head to look at the Skeleton Knight Aaron had crafted.
“But a Skeleton Knight wears armor and has proper protection built in. As long as the caster keeps the thought-link connected, I believe it can do its share of the work without the caster having to micromanage it.”
“Precisely. Correct answer.”
Applause broke out around the room. Toto, seated beside him, was clapping with particular enthusiasm.
“You may sit. A Skeleton Knight wears equipment. That's precisely why restoration spells unique to skeletons — Bone Armour, Bone Spear, Bone Wall — are restricted.”
Aaron waved his hand through the air, and the Skeleton Knight's bones disassembled and drifted weightlessly up into the air.
It seemed he was attempting a Bone Spear, but the armor got in the way and the pieces wouldn't move properly. Some of the bones, weighed down by the heavy plates, simply sank toward the floor.
“A knight can't use restoration spells, but when you leave combat to your summon while preparing other dark magic, it can perform far better than an ordinary skeleton. That's enough explanation. Open your textbooks to page two.”
Rustle, rustle—
The sound of pages turning echoed through the room.
“The difference between a skeleton and a Skeleton Knight, and the knight's unique traits. This is a guaranteed question on the midterm. Memorize all of it.”
There followed a stretch of scribbling notes.
A peaceful atmosphere.
Simon rested his chin on his hand, copying down the key points Aaron wrote on the board.
Then again, once this class ends, I'll probably just keep using regular skeletons.
Just as Aaron had demonstrated, a knight was useful for buying time to prepare one's main technique. And for students whose undead control was lacking, the knight was an expensive but far better alternative.
But Simon had always been exceptionally confident in his undead control, and he didn't think the knight offered enough of an advantage to replace the restoration spells he relied on as his bread and butter.
Once this class ends……
“Some of you must be wondering.”
Simon's head snapped up at Aaron's words.
“You've been doing just fine with skeletons until now. Why bother learning the Skeleton Knight at this stage?”
Clack.
Aaron picked up the chalk again.
“I'll explain the reason now. It's not in the textbook, so pay close attention.”
The students swallowed hard. Aaron moved to the far left edge of the board and wrote Skeleton Knight right at the margin.
“To create a Skeleton Knight, you must first master the Rune of Reminiscence and the formulas built upon it. It is a technique that controls residual thought-essence to draw out an undead's techniques from its life far more powerfully.”
He wrote Rune of Reminiscence beneath the Skeleton Knight, then drew a long line forward.
“And the Rune of Reminiscence you learn here becomes a core ingredient of the Ghoul — a higher-tier form of the zombie.”
Aaron wrote Ghoul on the board.
“To make a Ghoul, you need to master modification formulas that induce mutation in corpses, along with the corruption mutation equation. Then, combining the Ghoul's corruption mutation equation with the Rune of Reminiscence you learned from the Skeleton Knight—”
Clack. Clack.
He drew lines linking the two undead to a converging point, where Aaron sketched a new circle and inscribed its name.
“—you can create the magical undead, the Devourer.”
Aaron's chalk danced across the board. Each rune and formula learned was combined to produce a new kind of undead, and the formulas required for each new creation were in turn combined with other, even higher-tier undead.
Aaron was drawing, right now, an enormous roadmap.
“Night Terror. Colossus. Crypt Guard.”
At the recitation of those legendary powerful undead, the faces of the Summoning students grew progressively flushed with excitement. When needed, Aaron even borrowed runes and techniques from other departments.
He added the vampiric formulas of Hemomancy to the existing undead Death Bat to create the Blood Bat, and bolted on curse formulas to produce the Nosferatu.
Every time a new undead appeared on the board, the students' mouths hung open wider. And at the very end of the chalkboard, at last—
Screech—
Screech—
Screech—
Every rune and every formula from the entire board converged from left to right into a single point.
“This, too, is this semester's goal. When you have built all of these fundamentals, only then will you be able to—”
Tak—
“—create a Tier-3 undead: the headless knight, the Dullahan.”
A collective gasp erupted from the entire lecture hall.
One of every summoner's romantic dreams. A monster that fell to no attack and knew no exhaustion, cleaving through enemies with overwhelming power and devastating slashes.
The very creature that had ended the Great Era of Knights that once swept the continent — the most notorious of summons.
“I won't demand that you use every undead you learn here in actual combat.”
Aaron raised his chalk and pointed it at his own head.
“But every scrap of knowledge and experience you gain while creating undead becomes your foundation, and it will allow you to create and command even higher-tier undead.”
Simon smiled as he studied the formulas required for the Dullahan.
Unlike the Lich — whose Life Vessel was a matter of pure talent and instinct — the Dullahan could not be built on innate gifts alone.
Knowledge.
This single summon demanded rock-solid fundamentals and a vast body of summoning lore. And as all of it accumulated in his head and became truly his own, Simon was certain he would grow far stronger than he was now.
Truthfully, even now, if you asked me to make a Lich from scratch, I wouldn't be confident I could pull it off like I did back then.
He had relied far too heavily on Compello, of course, and the Lich's creation had required help from so many people.
There had been the pure accident of the autonomous wand fusing with Herseba, too. He couldn't lean on luck and happenstance forever.
Time to study.
Simon's eyes gleamed.
He resolved to make every last piece of it his own, no matter what.
“Any questions?”
One boy, worked up by Aaron's lecture, thrust his hand into the air and shot to his feet.
“Matt Comer! Are you saying we can really make a Dullahan in a single semester?”
Within the standard Kizen curriculum, the Dullahan was firmly understood to be a third-year undead. But Aaron nodded without ceremony.
“Of course. Assuming you can keep up with the class.”
“Th-then!”
Toto bolted upright out of nowhere.
He was so excited that he'd forgotten to announce his name before asking.
“A Dullahan in the first semester! Then next, can we make—”
His voice swelled.
“The dream of every summoner! The Death Knight!”
At the name Death Knight, the lecture hall fell into a heavy silence.
Instead of answering, Aaron allowed himself a faint smile.
“Toto Amori. That too is something you'll have to survive until next semester to find out.”
“……Oh.”
Perhaps the embarrassment caught up with him a moment too late — Toto went red and sank back into his seat.
“That's enough motivation. Theory ends here.”
Aaron checked his wristwatch.
“Now for the practical. You'll build a Skeleton Knight using the materials you brought. I trust I don't need to explain how important it is to get that first stitch right.”
“Yes, sir!!”
While the students hurriedly unpacked their remaining materials, Lorraine in the next seat smiled faintly.
“Professor Aaron really can teach.”
Come to think of it, Lorraine was a student from the back class. Simon smiled brightly.
“Expect great things going forward.”
The Dullahan. And the Death Knight, no less.
Only now did Simon feel as though he'd finally become a true Summoning major.
The students all set to work on their Skeleton Knights in a relaxed, free-flowing atmosphere.
The TAs circulated the room, helping students whose work had stalled. Being the first class, there was still a scattered, unsettled air to things.
“Anyone got bone adhesive to lend?!”
Plenty of students hadn't brought a single one of their required supplies. An orange-haired girl was busily poking around the room when she spotted Toto in the seat in front of Simon and waved her hand.
“Hey! Death Knight Boy over there!”
Pfft!
Simon, mid-assembly, couldn't hold back his laughter.
Thanks to the incident earlier, Toto had somehow become known among the department as the Death Knight Boy.
“Don't laaaugh, Simon!”
Toto shouted, his face bright red. At that moment the orange-haired girl came over.
“Can I borrow your bone adhesive?”
“M-me?”
Toto's chronic condition flared up. The moment the girl approached, his face went crimson and he began to stammer.
“Quicklyyy~ can you lend it or not?”
“Uh, um. Yeah!”
Toto, head bobbing back and forth in indecision, clutched his bone adhesive. Simon watched the whole display.
And he hasn't even started his own bonding work yet.
Simon let out a small sigh and held out his own adhesive.
“Just use mine.”
Both Toto's head and the girl's turned at the same time.
“Ooooh, thanks, President!”
She accepted the adhesive with both hands, beaming.
“During class, just call me Simon.”
At that, she paused for a beat, then let out a little hmph through her nose and grinned.
What was that supposed to mean?
“Anyway, you — thanks for the entrance ceremony, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Aha! Playing dumb, are we! When we were crossing the skeleton bridge, you saved me with that weird technique of yours!”
Oh. That time.
Simon nodded. It had been too dark to see clearly, but he supposed it must have been her. He smiled warmly.
“Glad you weren't hurt.”
“Hah.”
The girl smirked, her eyes narrowing into slits.
It was a look that said, aren't you the sly one.
“Anyway, whatever — I'll use this and bring it right back!”
Humming a little tune, she skipped back to her seat.
Simon was about to return to his own assembly when—
“Simon~?”
A chilling voice drifted over. Simon pretended not to hear it, but when the voice called Simon~ a second time, he had no choice but to turn around.
Serne, who had arrived late and claimed the seat diagonally beside his, was holding two bones and attempting to press them together with a click.
“I can't do this. It's way too hard for me~”
……If that's too hard for you, why on earth did you choose the Summoning department?
Simon forced out an awkward laugh.
“You're trying to connect bone 34 to bone 102 — of course it won't work. Check the textbook and match them in the proper order for each body part.”
“It's far too difficult, though? Can't you come over here and help me?”
“Ah. That one.”
At that moment, a sturdy male student seated behind Serne raised his fingers.
“The one in your left hand is 34, and the bone under your elbow right now is 35. You just need to fit those two together.”
Perhaps he was hoping to curry favor with the Ivory Tower's heiress, because he explained it quite patiently — only for Serne's frosty gaze to lock onto him.
“……”
A short while later.
That same boy was sitting with unfocused eyes, licking a skeleton bone like a dog chew toy.
“Serne! Not again!”
Lorraine, unable to stand the sight, came rushing over, and another fight broke out.
“What's all this racket?”
In the end, Aaron came over to mediate and began personally instructing the problem child, Serne. With her lips jutting out in an exaggerated pout as she connected the bones, she looked so much like a duck that Simon had to suppress a laugh.
Clack-clack-clack!
Clack!
In the short time Simon's attention had wandered, the elite students' progress had grown remarkable.
Rank 3, Hector.
Rank 5, Aseraz.
And Fitzgerald, from the same Mutant club.
The students marveled as those three stacked their skeletons at a breakneck pace.
Alright. Time for me to focus too.
He had no intention of losing.
Simon flexed his fingers and threw himself into building his knight in earnest.