The Pied Piper's Funeral
“……”
The lecture hall lay smothered in a混乱 of stunned silence.
And then, striding up to the podium, came the twins.
Arms crossed in identical poses, standing with their weight on the same hip, wearing identical scowls, they stared the students down.
Then—
“Haaaah.”
They both let out a long, deflated sigh at exactly the same moment.
“Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless, Rin.”
said the girl on the left.
“Are we seriously expected to teach these disasters from the ground up? Run.”
replied the girl on the right.
“My chest already hurts.”
“We asked for third-years at the very least.”
“We should've just told Nephthys we wouldn't do it.”
“But then Nephthys would sulk.”
“And she might stop playing with us.”
And with that, the two of them began muttering away to themselves.
The students' disappointment at the image their new professors presented was matched, it turned out, by the professors' own disappointment in the students.
“Professor Rin. Professor Run.”
At that moment, the Head TA stepped forward with a practiced smile.
“You've taken the podium now, so wouldn't it be proper to introduce yourselves to the students?”
A charismatic, middle-aged Head TA — anyone might have mistaken her for the professor instead.
“'Professor' sounds so weird, Head TA.”
“It gives me the creeps, honestly, Head TA.”
“But you asked so nicely, I suppose we have no choice.”
“Right.”
The two girls clasped hands with a crisp snap and raised them toward the class.
“Hello. My name is Rin.”
“My name is Run.”
Was… that it?
Just as the students were exchanging puzzled looks, Rin, on the left, spoke up.
“Any questions, children?”
Whoosh!
Hands shot up as if they'd been waiting for exactly that, and one male student rose from his seat.
“I'm Pierre Buckler. Are you two professors not human?”
“Can't you tell by looking? Pierre.”
“Silly Pierre. We aren't human — we're undead.”
Simon nodded. That settled it beyond any further doubt.
The two were undead — and not just any undead, but Ancient Undead, the most mysterious beings in the world.
This time a girl raised her hand.
“I'm Eldarin Ruhr. You both look quite young, so may I ask your—”
At those words, the twin professors recoiled a full step back, faces stricken with horror.
“Monstrous! Manners, Eldarin!”
“Asking a lady's age! Eldarin!”
“That's five penalty points!”
Eldarin flinched, then immediately protested with a look of pure injustice.
“Th-that's unacceptable! Penalty points just for asking an age?! Kizen operates on strict meritocracy, and—!”
[Meritocracy?]
In an instant, the twins' expressions turned glacial.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Eldarin felt a chill crawl over her entire body even as an immense pressure bore down upon her.
[How amusing. You're right. Kizen is a strict meritocracy.]
[We stand at this podium because we have merit, and we used that authority to assign you penalty points.]
[If you wish to resist that authority, come up here and prove your merit.]
[Prove that you surpass us.]
From behind the two Ancient Undead came the echoing laughter of the other students, ringing like wailing ghosts through the hall. Eldarin's lips turned blue.
“Th-that's…!”
Just then, a hand smoothly tugged at Eldarin's sleeve.
Rank 5, Aseraz Mikel, was shaking her head with a firm, decisive expression.
“Sit. Down. Don't wreck the mood of the entire department.”
And from somewhere behind her came a low, chilling voice.
Hector Moore, representative of the Summoning Department, was muttering coldly through clenched teeth.
In the end—
“I-I'm sorry. I'll accept my punishment.”
Eldarin bowed deep and apologized to the two girls.
Rin and Run sighed and waved their hands as if to say sit down — and even in that, the timing and speed of their waving was perfectly identical.
Then the Head TA stepped forward once more.
“Professors Rin and Run have served as faculty at Kizen roughly ten times. Since their last lecture was nearly fourteen years ago, it's understandable that the students wouldn't recognize them. And one more thing.”
She looked around at the students.
“These two professors are Ancient Undead who contracted directly with Lady Nephthys. I'll say no more.”
As the students buzzed with murmurs, Toto, seated in front of Simon, muttered under his breath.
“I-I dunno, it just feels kinda weird. An undead teaching humans.”
Simon tilted his head.
“Why? Doesn't seem weird to me at all.”
“R-really?”
After all, Simon had only just come from Pier's lessons yesterday.
The weekend teachings of the Ancient Undead were one of the key engines of Simon's growth. He could practically hear Pier's alter ego letting out a low 'Kheheheh!'
'More importantly, Pier. Did you hear that?'
[I heard it, boy!]
'They said those two contracted with Lady Nephthys. Then… don't tell me Nephthys is a Legion Commander too?'
[Kheheheh! Not a chance. That woman is simply an extraordinary case all her own.]
By the rules of the world, only Legion Commanders could contract with Ancient Undead and wield them as their right hand. But Nephthys was a necromancer so far beyond the standard scale that common sense no longer applied to her.
She was said to maintain her contracts with Rin and Run through somewhat different means.
And of course, those twins were the entirety of her Ancient Undead roster — something no other necromancer could hope to imitate.
“Now then, professors. If you'd kindly begin the lesson—”
“Got it. Head TA!”
“We're squeezing every last debt out of Nephthys for this! Head TA!”
As the twin professors strode to the blackboard and gestured, a piece of white chalk and a piece of pink chalk flew into their waiting hands, one each.
Tap- tap- tap-
They rose onto their tiptoes and began writing the word 「Funeral」 on the board. Even down to their penmanship, the two of them split every single stroke precisely in half between them.
When it came time to draw the final circle, they each started from the same point, drew half apiece, and met in the middle with a soft tick.
“So then.”
“Any questions about—”
The twins turned back around once the word was complete.
“Oh.”
More than ten students had their hands raised, waiting eagerly.
Their earlier fluster at the professors' appearance had evaporated the moment class actually began.
Professors who docked five points over a mere question. The students had quickly analyzed them as the type to shower the whole class with bonus points and penalties alike through Q&A.
Who stood at the podium didn't matter.
All that mattered was what they could get out of it.
The twin professors seemed quietly satisfied at the students' engagement at last, and allowed themselves a small smile.
“Oh, we'll take questions, of course—”
“But 'the concept of Funeral magic'? That's far too obvious, isn't it?”
Then the two of them asked, in perfect unison:
“Can any child here explain the origin of Funeral?”
The difficulty had just spiked.
All ten students with raised hands sullenly lowered them.
“Nobody?”
“Really, nobody?”
Rin and Run swept their gazes around the room — and then their eyes lit up simultaneously.
“Loraine! There she is — Loraine!”
“I see her too! So she was here all along!”
Loraine gave the professors a polite nod, smiling.
“We read her 'The Pied Piper' stories her entire childhood! Why didn't you raise your hand, Loraine?!”
“Present! Stand up and present! Hurry, Loraine!”
As every eye in the room turned to her, Loraine gave an embarrassed little laugh and rose from her seat.
“I am Loraine Archbold.”
Her calm voice rang through the hall.
“Shall I tell the tale of the Pied Piper, then?”
The twin professors nodded briskly. She gave a single answering nod, called the story to mind, and began.
“Long, long ago, there lived an evil necromancer in a certain village.”
That evil necromancer was the lord who ruled the territory, living in luxury on the taxes and blood he wrung from his people.
But not a single villager could stand against him. The undead he commanded were simply too powerful.
Then one day, a devastating drought struck, and the villagers found themselves on the brink of starvation. Unable to bear it any longer, they poured into the streets to protest against the crushing taxes.
The evil necromancer declared it a rebellion. He dispatched his formidable undead to scatter the villagers, then demanded payment for their crime: each family would send one of its members to his undead laboratory.
Those who refused — every member of their families died.
In the end, the villagers had no choice but to submit. Those who chose death for their families' sake, those drawn by lottery, newborn infants and children too young to understand, the elderly — they were all dragged away and killed.
And so the villagers survived — on the sacrifice of others.
But survival was no life at all. The shadow of every sacrificed family member hovered in their minds, tormenting them without end. Better to die than to live like this, they thought.
“Then one day.”
In a lecture hall where everyone leaned in, breath held, Loraine's voice rang out clear.
“The Pied Piper came to that village.”
The Pied Piper was a necromancer too. The villagers, hearing of his reputation, told him everything and begged him to defeat the evil one.
And the Pied Piper said:
— You shall never defeat the evil necromancers alive. But dead, you can. What say you?
The villagers, wracked with guilt and misery, ultimately took their own lives and became the Pied Piper's undead.
The Piper led the dead villagers in an assault upon the evil necromancer's castle.
But even with the villagers' power as undead, they could not overcome the mighty undead the evil necromancer commanded.
“And that was when the Piper played his flute.”
The melody that poured from the flute was the screaming of the family members who had been chosen and executed before them.
The undead villagers loosed howls of pure fury, and with monstrous strength they tore the evil necromancer and his undead apart, alive, with their teeth.
“And so the villagers completed their vengeance upon the evil necromancer, and closed their eyes in peace at last. Or so the story goes.”
Loraine sat down. The students murmured among themselves, trading opinions about the tale.
“…A brutal fairy tale. Very Dark Alliance of it.”
“Every kid hearing that one's gonna cry.”
“So is it a happy ending or a bad ending?”
“Probably neither.”
“Quiet! Quiet!”
The Head TA hushed the class. The twin professors were nodding along, looking thoroughly satisfied.
“We'd love to give Loraine five bonus points!”
“But she didn't volunteer to present, so we won't!”
Loraine smiled.
“That's quite all right.”
The twin professors returned to the blackboard.
“From that story — who can pull out the key point about Funeral?”
Simon, Hector, and Aseraz thrust their hands up in a flash. But by the narrowest of margins, Aseraz was first.
She rose from her seat with visible delight.
“Aseraz Mikel! Funeral is a black magic that strengthens undead. In the final scene, the Pied Piper recreated the screams of the sacrificed with his flute performance, turning them into a funeral dirge — and this awakened the strength of the villagers turned undead, allowing them to defeat the evil necromancer they could never have beaten otherwise.”
“Correct, Aseraz!”
“Five bonus points! Aseraz!”
Aseraz shouted her thanks and sat down. Hector, unable to contain his frustration, drove his fist into his own desk.
“The human term and concept of 'Funeral' is based on this very Pied Piper tale.”
“Funeral is black magic that empowers undead.”
“The summoned undead you humans wield have no means of powering up once they're complete. They simply wear down and weaken from their finished spec, little by little.”
“But! Funeral is virtually the only means of making undead stronger!”
The twin professors snapped their fingers.
The waiting Head TA opened a subspace and pulled two undead up onto the podium.
“Ghouls!”
When the Head TA raised both arms, the two ghouls lunged at each other, fighting and tearing with their teeth.
Their strength was perfectly, utterly even.
The Head TA spread her arms wide, pulling them apart once more.
“And now—”
The twin professors stepped in, each placing a hand on a ghoul's head.
“What happens when we cast Funeral on just one?”
FWOOSH!
The ghoul beneath their hands burst into black flame. Empowered with fire, it overwhelmed and burned its counterpart to death with overwhelming force.
“Whoooaa!”
Watching the ghoul drool fire from its mouth, the students broke into enthusiastic applause.
“And that's not all!”
“There are Funerals of all different effects!”
The Head TA produced four more ghouls and stepped back, and the twins passed among them.
Each time their hands touched a ghoul, it transformed — one with cold coursing through its body, one turned mirror-transparent, one sprouting spikes all over its frame.
And then, at the fourth and final ghoul—
“We're casting 'Hypertrophy' on this one! Rin!”
“No way! It has to be 'Proliferation'! Run!”
The two began arguing over which Funeral to apply, and the students burst into quiet giggles.
“Ugh! Fine, then!”
“Let's just cast both!”
The two girls pressed their hands to the ghoul's face simultaneously, and its body began to swell up, bulging like a balloon.
It grew grotesquely bloated, and then—
POP!
The ghoul's body, unable to endure it, exploded. Students screamed and ducked, diving behind their desks. Chunks of undead flesh splattered wetly against the walls and windows.
“This is what happens when you badly combine two types of Funeral!”
“Greed is bad, children!”
The two professors breezed past as if it had all been planned from the start. The TAs, apparently well accustomed to this, calmly swept the mess away with cleaning magic.
“Now then!”
“Field exercise!”
“Today, you're all going to become the Pied Piper yourselves!”
“You're going to experience the origin and fundamentals of Funeral firsthand!”
Every TA in the room raised both arms high.
Before anyone noticed, a massive magic circle had begun to glow across the entire floor of the lecture hall.
'When did they even lay down a teleportation circle?!'
Professors Rin and Run grinned slyly.
“Off we go!”
“Depart!”
In a blinding flash, the twin professors and the students vanished from the lecture hall without a trace.
* * *
“……”
As the sensation of floating faded, Simon opened his eyes and looked around.
The students who had been seated in the lecture hall were landing hard on their rear ends, blinking at their surroundings.
“Wh-where are we?”
Countless tombstones jutted up all around them, out of nowhere.
This was the Public Cemetery.