The Bone Dragon's Tier
“What about a Bone Dragon, Simon. How long until you can handle one?”
Hiding among the orange autumn leaves was a dragon reduced to bare bone, and Simon found himself utterly mesmerized by its beautiful form.
In his first year, Simon had capped his studies by creating a Lich.
And now, as a second-year, Aaron had set the creation of a ‘Dullahan’ as the term's goal.
“Before the end of my second year—”
A radiant smile spread across Simon's face.
“I'll make it my goal to create one. No—I swear I'll build one and master it.”
As Nephthys watched Simon clench his fist and declare his resolve, she smiled warmly.
“Yes. Go get 'em, my Student Council President!”
* * *
The next morning.
Aaron's Intermediate Summoning class began.
Following the creation of Skeleton Knights on the first day, the second day's lesson was a practical session on operating them and using their signature skill, ‘Bash’.
The class was held at the outdoor training grounds.
The students spread out across the wide space, each standing beside the Skeleton Knight they had made the day before. All around, the knights swung their swords through the air, one powerful stroke at a time.
“Let the Jet-Black flow out of the summoning circle and concentrate it into the blade.”
Aaron walked among the students with his hands clasped behind his back, offering guidance.
“The monster materials used to make Skeleton Knights all understood the concept of Aura in life. There's no need to force the magic circle. Guide the undead to recall the memories of its past life and let it reproduce the technique naturally.”
Aaron turned and raised his voice.
“One more strike. All together.”
Whum!
Every knight's blade came down. Among them, a few swords turned jet-black before fading back to normal. The students who succeeded let out cries of joy.
“Good work,” Aaron said. “Aura is the technique of planting mana into a blade—the very symbol of the knights of old. Think of this as recreating it through your undead's Jet-Black.”
“Yes, sir!”
“One more strike.”
Aaron left the rest of the session to the Head TA and went around giving each student individual feedback.
“Alibaran Phines. I know you have a background in swordsmanship, but stop obsessing over the knight's posture. The point of this training is to find the path of the sword that the knight swung most comfortably in life. Once that path is complete, Bash will begin to emerge on its own.”
“Thank you, Professor!”
“Hector Moore. You're too rigid. Your will is so powerful that yesterday's knights can't keep up with it. Control your tempo and the balance between strong and weak strikes.”
“Yes, sir.”
After correcting the students one by one, Aaron turned his head.
‘Simon Polentia.’
This kid had already pulled off ‘Bash’.
The black energy on his Skeleton Knight's sword wasn't just flickering—it was holding steady on the blade for quite a long time.
‘But why is he so fired up today, of all days?’
Simon's eyes, fixed straight ahead, kept flashing with an intense, serious light.
Aaron knew exactly what those eyes were.
The very same eyes Simon had worn back when everyone else was making Skeleton Mages while he alone dreamed of a Lich.
Aaron had assumed it would take a bit more of student life before this kid ‘triggered’ again, but had something happened last night? Or a change of heart?
Curiosity got the better of him, and Aaron approached.
“Simon Polentia.”
He called the name, but Simon was so absorbed that he didn't register a voice speaking right beside him.
Aaron waited quietly, and with the Head TA's cry of “One strike!”, the knight under Simon's control brought its sword down.
Whum!
The clean, sweeping arc of the blade was a beautiful thing to watch.
The knight had a defective hip, so the stance wasn't perfect, but it was delivering the best possible result given the circumstances.
Finally breaking out of his concentration, Simon wiped the sweat from his forehead with a long exhale.
“Simon Polentia.”
Simon spun around, startled.
“Ah—yes! Professor!”
“The ‘Bash’ that knights use is a striking technique that gathers Jet-Black into a single line and detonates it all at once. What you're having your knight do right now is closer to an enchantment than a Bash.”
“Ah, that's...”
Simon scratched the back of his neck.
“The truth is, I was searching for the trajectory that best suits my knight, and this is where it led me.”
Aaron's eyes widened in surprise.
Without a word of advice from anyone, had he independently steered himself toward a creative direction?
His expression soon returned to its usual calm as he turned away.
“In that case, carry on.”
“?”
Aaron said nothing more and walked off to correct Toto's knight's swordplay.
* * *
After the practical session, they were given thirty minutes of break time. Aaron sat on a chair at the edge of the training grounds, watching Simon with a peculiar look in his eyes.
‘At this point, his diligence is almost frightening. What on earth happened?’
Simon's training continued even during the break. When he commanded his Skeleton Knight to spin, the knight's body whirled like a top.
With the Bash effect layered on top, this time it was a jet-black top.
Toto tossed a rock at it, and with a crack, the stone was shredded to pieces. Simon and Toto cheered and high-fived.
“Oh, right—Toto! Watch this too. I've been developing a new technique.”
“What is it? What is it?”
“It's still in the experimental stages, but...”
Simon opened a subspace toward the front.
ShhhhrAAAAAK!
The instant the subspace opened, three Skeleton Knights came spinning out of it like tops, tearing through the air as they passed.
This was no longer the simple hip-spin of the first Skeleton Knight. From the tips of their toes to their upper bodies, their entire forms were rotating.
“Th-that's amazing!”
Toto shouted. The other students, taking their breaks around the grounds, watched with gleaming eyes.
But the stopping motion wasn't quite perfected yet—at the same moment they spun, the knights' bodies blew apart and bone fragments went flying everywhere. Simon sprinted around gathering the pieces, and Toto hurried to help.
“Simon! You had three more knights? Where did those come from?”
Toto ran over cradling an armful of bones and asked. Simon glanced warily at Aaron and the other TAs, then whispered.
“I actually bought them in Rochest yesterday. To test this technique out.”
“Ahh!”
“I even came up with a rough name for it. Blade Storm?”
“How about Whirlwind?”
From a distance, Aaron watched the pair, covered his face with one hand, and let out a deep sigh.
‘...This lunatic.’
And a short while later.
While Simon and Toto were away at the restroom, students began trying to spin their own Skeleton Knights, one after another.
A strange new fad was sweeping through the Summoning major's class.
* * *
That was the end of the morning practical. Aaron led the students back to the lecture hall. Practicing Skeleton Knights was all well and good, but the textbook curriculum had to move forward too.
“Come to think of it, yesterday several students asked me the same question.”
Aaron tapped the blackboard with his chalk as he spoke.
“Suppose we set out to make the 3rd-tier headless knight, the ‘Dullahan’. The question was: what does this term ‘tier’ actually mean?”
Students like Aseraz and Hector, who had done advance studying, burst out laughing.
And Simon was rolling his eyes.
‘I don't know either.’
“Quiet.”
At Aaron's word, silence fell over the room once more.
“It's natural not to know—this concept isn't covered in the first-year Summoning curriculum. I'll explain.”
He wrote the word Tier on the blackboard.
“As you all know, it's a term meaning ‘stage’ or ‘rank’. I'm not particularly fond of it, but since it's used constantly in the field, we'll go over it.”
The chalk in Aaron's hand danced across the blackboard.
“In summoning, tier is a slightly different concept from ‘grade’. Every one of you has a maximum number of undead you can control simultaneously.”
Simon nodded along.
In Simon's case, without drawing on his Legion Commander's power, he could currently handle eight summoned undead at once. He'd reached eight around the second semester of his first year, and the number had stubbornly refused to grow since.
Of course, through cross-operation he could make it seem like he was controlling far more, and by deploying Cloud with his ‘Royal Guard’ spell, he could command twenty-four undead and beyond.
“I can manage five,” Toto's voice rang out.
“I can manage eight,” Fitzgerald said, pushing up his glasses.
As the students murmured among themselves, Aaron resumed his explanation.
“The maximum number of undead you can manipulate with mental focus varies enormously from person to person. And for example, let's say there's a necromancer who can control up to ten undead at once.”
Aaron sketched out numbers on the blackboard.
“This necromancer can control ten 1st-tier undead, five 2nd-tier undead, and up to three 3rd-tier undead.”
‘I see!’
Simon's eyes widened rapidly.
‘So it's a measure of the mental focus required to control undead!’
“You should have a rough idea by now,” he said, lowering the chalk. “Undead with strong wills and originality of their own consume considerable mental capacity to command. With undead like that, controlling even a few means you can't handle any others.”
The students nodded in unison.
“But as I said at the start, I don't like this concept or its terminology. We shouldn't be planting needless prejudice in students' minds. First: tier is a relative concept.”
Since manipulating undead with mental focus is fundamentally a matter of willpower, it can differ from individual to individual.
Take several necromancers who can all control a maximum of ten undead—one might handle five 2nd-tier undead, while another handles five 2nd-tier plus a single 1st-tier. There are even necromancers who need less mental focus to control a 4th-tier undead than a 3rd-tier one.
“Don't treat it as an absolute measure. Just think of it this way: the higher the tier, the harder the undead is to control—but the more powerful it is. And second, the maximum number of undead you can control does not indicate a summoner's strength.”
He began writing a person's name on the chalkboard.
“For instance, Renzi Mahoms, an active member of the Crow, is a professional necromancer who can only control three undead at most. And yet that alone was enough to climb to the very pinnacle. The ‘Golem Three Brothers’ he commands are counted among the strongest summoned-unit combinations in existence.”
The students began taking notes with fascinated expressions.
“And last—third—tier comes with all sorts of variables. Some of you know this, some don't, but a ‘Lich’ is a 1st-tier undead. The same tier as an ordinary zombie or skeleton. But is a Lich truly equal to a skeleton? Of course not.”
Aaron looked around the room.
“The reason that's possible lies in a trait unique to Liches: they house their heart outside their bodies, in what's called a ‘Life Vessel’. And then there are 0th-tier undead.”
“0th-tier?!”
“What's that?”
At a student's question, Aaron grinned and wrote out a seven-character phrase.
“Ancient Undead.”
“...!”
Simon felt his heart lurch.
“These ancient beings have no need of a necromancer's mental focus. They are themselves capable of commanding other undead as minions. And likewise—”
Above it, he wrote: ‘Legion Commander’.
“Legion Commanders can control thousands, tens of thousands of legion-type undead without any regard for concepts like these. They are unbound by numbers.”
“Whoaa...!”
“That's not fair.”
As Toto grumbled beside him, Simon wiped away a cold sweat behind a smiling face.
“Of course, I hear that Legion Commanders don't rely excessively on undead units led by Ancient Undead, either. They're said to command their own direct summoned undead to near perfection.”
Aaron glanced at the clock on the wall.
“We're almost out of time. Any other questions about the lesson?”
As the students fell quiet, a hand went up.
It was Simon.
“Simon Polentia.”
Aaron nodded, and Simon rose from his seat, speaking with earnest eyes.
“This might be a bit of an odd question, but—what tier of undead is a Bone Dragon?”
The murmur of the students cut off abruptly. Aaron looked at Simon with an unreadable expression and answered.
“A Bone Dragon starts at a minimum of 10th tier. There are said to be Bone Dragons so formidable that one doubts whether a human could ever control them at all.”
Simon's heart pounded like mad.
An ultra-high-difficulty undead he couldn't yet create, let alone control.
That was the Bone Dragon.
‘This is great. Having a concrete goal just fires me up even more!’
Seated again, Simon burned with determination. And from far away, watching him, Aaron's expression grew steadily graver.
‘Don't tell me that lunatic is actually—’
He could only pray that he was wrong.