Welcome to the Forbidden Realm
Clank! Clank! Clank!
The cavern the train descended into was astonishingly deep. There was no telling where its end might lie.
So a place like this existed inside Roc Island.
And the deeper they went, the stranger the sights became — things no one wanted to see with their eyes open. Monster heads hung in clusters from ropes like fruit on a vine, and elsewhere the long stomach of some creature lay coiled like a serpent, slowly writhing.
"Hiek!"
Thoroughly terrified, Toto clung tightly to Simon's arm, letting out shriek after shriek.
"S-Simon... when this class is over, are we actually going to see the sun again?"
"Don't worry. We'll be fine."
Simon smiled calmly and tried to soothe him, but Toto still flinched at the smallest of sounds. Beside them, Hector sat with his chin resting on his hand, utterly indifferent.
-Aaaaaaaagh!
-Kyaaaaaaah!
Then, from the train that had departed ahead of them, a tremendous scream rang out. It faded in an instant, echoing through the cavern like a reverberation.
"Something's happening up ahead again!"
Toto's face went deathly pale.
Screech— screeee—
Simon caught the change in the rails' song and the shift in the gradient, stretching his legs out straight until they pressed against the end of the car. Hector had noticed too; he gripped the train with both hands and locked himself firmly in place.
"Toto."
"Yeah?"
"Hold on tight."
The moment Toto opened his mouth to answer, his hair shot straight up toward the ceiling.
What lay behind that sensation was a rail plunging down a steep slope, straight into darkness.
Whoooooosh!
Without warning, the train began hurtling downward at high speed.
"Kiyaaaaaaaaah!"
Starting with Toto, the students burst into screams.
As the small-framed Toto lurched about as though he might go flying, Simon grabbed his left arm, and Hector — grimacing — seized his right shoulder.
"Ueeeegh! Aaaaaaah!"
"Just hold on a little longer, Toto!"
Screech— screeeee—
Before long, the train gradually slowed and came to a halt. The teaching assistants of Summoning Material Science spoke up.
"Now then, students. Please step off."
The students staggered to their feet one by one. Simon helped the dazed Toto up, while Hector simply strode off on his own without so much as a backward glance.
Where are we?
It was a place straight out of a storybook — something like an altar of darkness.
At the center of a circular chamber stood a massive altar, ringed by tables that curved around it. Upon them lay all manner of undead materials, or hung from long hooks that connected to the ceiling above. Candles burned along the walls, and a shallow channel carved into the floor carried groundwater in a quiet trickle. The channel was narrow enough that one needn't fear a misstep soaking anyone's shoes.
What could possibly happen in a place like this, what kind of class would unfold here — Simon couldn't begin to guess.
Soon the last train arrived and the students disembarked. Every single one of them stared at the gloomy cavern with the same expression of terror.
"Alright, students. Step back from the tables, please."
The TAs moved in to herd the students back, then lined themselves against the wall with their hands folded respectfully.
"Professor Grerion is entering."
A short distance from the altar where the students stood — a spot shrouded in darkness, too dim to make out clearly — a flash of blue light crackled once.
Simon recognized it at once. The light of a teleportation circle.
Thud—
Thud—
Heavy footsteps reverberated through the cavern. From the darkness, the students could make out some enormous shape drawing near.
Before long, stifled gasps broke out all around.
A muscular man, bare from the waist up, was approaching with a mountain of a boar monster — drenched in blood — slung over his shoulder.
Th-that person is...
A professor?
Thud—
Thud—
Overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the man, the students couldn't even breathe loudly. With every step he took, the cavern's echo swelled louder.
Then he dropped the monster onto the altar with a mighty boom!! — and the entire cave shook.
Simon's eyes grew serious.
There are signs of battle.
Had he been fighting right up until the moment he stepped through the teleportation circle? Small wounds covered his skin, and the monster's legs still twitched intermittently — its breath hadn't been fully cut off after all.
Swish!
Grerion turned and took down two dissection knives hanging from the cavern wall.
The blades rang against each other with a keen metallic sound, and he took up one of them, approaching the still-writhing monster.
Thrust!
He drove the knife into its belly.
Shhhraaaaaak!
Then he dragged it downward, slicing the stomach open. A mist like steam billowed out, and the reek of blood washed over the students, making them recoil.
The dissection show continued.
Professor Grerion's dissection knives moved without hesitation. Every time he cut, every time he reached his hands inside and pulled them back out, the still-pulsing organs sloshed free and spilled into the open.
Hissssssss!
Jet-Black poured out from behind him. It painted a magic circle in the air, then began etching smaller circles across the materials scattered on the ground.
Chak! Swish!
Dissection knives of every size and purpose spun and wheeled through the air along the currents of Grerion's Jet-Black, and when he reached out his hand, exactly the ones he wanted came gliding down to meet him.
It was astonishing multitasking.
"Chimera, Aganndeiro."
He fitted a few materials from the ceiling onto pieces he'd just pulled from the monster's body, then dropped the result to the floor. An organ with an eye began crawling about under its own power.
"Chimera, Worjak."
"Chimera, Admo."
He was building chimeras on the spot, right before their eyes, using nothing but the materials of the monster he'd just hunted down.
He grafted legs onto a zombie missing its lower half; he filled the hollow innards of an empty undead until it stirred and moved again.
Chak!
Swish!
The students all stared, dazed, as chimeras great and small piled up across the floor.
Legs walked about on their own; arms wrapped in black liquid fused with a monster's tail to become something new. He stitched organs from different monsters together into a wriggling mass — an Abomination.
Finally, he cleaved off the boar monster's head and attached it to a two-headed beast, granting it a third. Having produced a Triple-Head Chimera, he wiped the blood splattered across his face and set down his knife.
Twelve chimeras, born in an instant from a single monster corpse.
The work was finished, but the students, still crushed under the weight of what they'd witnessed, couldn't even bring themselves to applaud.
"I am Grerion."
At last, his mouth opened.
"You."
Grerion pointed. Of course — of all people, it had to be Toto again, who froze stiff and hiccuped in place.
"Y-yes! I'm Toto Amori...!"
"Tell me what a chimera is."
Toto's mind raced, his face taut with tension.
"It refers to a being... f-formed from two or more living creatures fused together...!"
"That's the definition people throw around most often. Then you!"
This time a female student beside him spoke up.
"An undead possessing multiple powers, created by a necromancer through artificial grafting."
Grerion nodded and strode away, footsteps ringing on the stone.
Then he stopped, snapped his head around, and looked directly toward Simon.
"A chimera is a creature of pure, extreme practicality."
His eyes gleamed, fierce and sharp.
"Give a necromancer two or more species of creature or undead in hand, and there is no monster — however mighty — that he cannot create. It is the single most essential tool for a summoner, whose minions burn away faster than anything."
He took hold of his own throat, which had been rumbling throughout, and shook it lightly from side to side.
"Back in my active days, when my summonses ran dry, I raided a ranch on the outskirts of my territory, assembled its ten pigs, and wiped out an entire fortress."
"...!"
"For a necromancer, those are the kinds of battles that happen."
The corner of his mouth curled upward.
"What's the name of this class?"
"Summoning Material Science!"
"It's part of the official curriculum, so I can't help that — but I don't care for the name."
He swept his gaze slowly across the students.
"Call it Chimera Design Theory. I'll teach you the study of materials, yes — but also how to use them to forge powerful chimeras. Every scrap of materials knowledge in my class exists for one purpose: to create chimeras of overwhelming power."
He scooped up a scrap of the monster's still-twitching flesh from the floor and smiled a dark, unsettling smile.
"Welcome to the forbidden realm."
For the modern summoner majoring in Summoning, chimera crafting was an indispensable discipline.
There was once an era people called the Age of Chimeras — necromancers' chimera-crafting techniques had advanced to such extraordinary heights that the runes, formulas, and techniques derived from them left their mark on nearly every branch of summoning magic.
In other words, from the second year at Kizen onward, most summoned minions simply couldn't be used without a working knowledge of chimera techniques. It dovetailed directly with Professor Aaron's Intermediate Summoning curriculum.
And beyond the academic reasons, Simon figured there was nothing to lose in learning chimera crafting anyway.
"Begin the grafting."
Fortunately, the very first chimera class involved no animals or monsters.
Before the students lay potted flowers and aquatic plants in water tanks.
Their first assignment was to graft the roots of an aquatic plant onto an ordinary houseplant. The goal: to create a flower that could float on water and thrive there without harm.
The key was preserving the nature of both plants while simultaneously drawing out the aquatic plant's strength — the ability to live and grow on water without dying.
"Press the two cut surfaces together, bind them with mana tape to hold them in place, then cast a healing spell. Once the cut surfaces knit together, water, nutrients, and plant hormones will begin flowing between the two plants."
Simon calmly joined the flower to the aquatic plant and set it afloat on the tank.
Toto tried the exact same thing beside him, only for his flower to wither on the spot, its roots sinking under the water — but Simon's flower floated along, perfectly alive and healthy.
Success!
Simon pulled his hands away from the plant and allowed himself a satisfied smile.
Chimera crafting, huh. This class is fun too.
A chimera wields the strengths of both species at once.
Even a simple graft could produce a plant that grew potatoes at the root and tomatoes on the stem. But weave dark magic into the process, and make the grafted material undead rather than living — and changes beyond the limits of human imagination become possible.
A living chimera must be assembled from closely related species to avoid rejection, but undead suffer little to no such rejection no matter what they're fused with.
Of course, there was no guaranteeing their operating time or lifespan.
Now it really feels like I'm a major student.
The depth of second-year techniques truly was on another dimension compared to first year, when the best he could manage was handling skeletons and zombies.
"Crafting a chimera requires a vast breadth of knowledge."
Grerion explained.
"No two chimeras in this world are ever identical. Even if you built a thousand units from the same two species of monster, the formulas used would inevitably differ. What matters most in chimera crafting — before talent, before anything — is a complete understanding of the creatures used as materials. From now on, you will memorize every single handout I give you."
Groans of despair erupted from every corner of the cavern.
After all the students had gone, the teaching assistants began cleaning up.
Dissecting a massive monster had left the surroundings drenched in blood. Grerion himself was tidying up alongside the TAs. At his command, the chimeras squelched their way across the floor, heading deeper into the cavern.
Pop!
Just then, a flash of blue light sparked at the far end of the cave — the sound of a teleportation circle activating.
Grerion straightened up to receive his guest.
"So you came, Aaron."
Aaron walked in, sweeping back his long shaggy hair, and bowed his head.
"It's been a while, Professor."
"To think the wet-behind-the-ears kid from back then is now the professor in charge of second-year Summoning. A lot of time really has passed."
Grerion chuckled. Aaron took a seat and let out a weary sigh.
"How were the students?"
"I heard quite a few promising ones came into the department this year — and sure enough, there were more than a few faces that stood out."
Hector, Aseraz, Lorraine, Serne. And Simon Polentia, the sitting Student Council President himself.
"What about Simon Polentia?"
"He didn't particularly stand out."
Grerion answered plainly.
"It was only the first class, and all he did was graft a plant — hardly enough to judge anyone by. Assistant! Bring me Simon's work!"
"Yes, sir!"
A TA brought over Simon's plant in its water tank, and the two professors examined it.
"Completed, but ordinary. I suppose chimera work just isn't his talent."
He lifted the plant out of the tank.
Then he unwound the tape.
"...!"
His eyes widened.
The cut surfaces had fused together almost perfectly.
"You used something other than the dark magic I taught, didn't you."
Aaron smiled, as if he'd expected exactly that.
"That sounds like him."
"What do you mean?"
"When he was learning to build Skeleton Mages, he was the one making a Lich."
Grerion's eyes flashed.
"Is that so."