The Only Request for Tarados
The next evening, at the Summoning Major Dormitory, the second-year students had gathered in the lobby in a murmuring crowd.
Before them, at long last, stood the two bulletin boards they'd all been waiting for — the ones bearing the Mission Assessment request forms.
"Hold on a sec."
Simon wove his way out of the throng and planted himself in front of the boards. When Toto, squeezed in among the mass of bodies, flailed helplessly, Simon grabbed his hand and hauled him free.
"Th-thanks, Simon!"
Simon gave him a brief smile before his expression turned serious again as he studied the boards.
Professor Aaron was right.
The easiest White Requests were gone. The majority of what remained were Blue Requests, and Red Requests heading into the Neutral Zone were scattered liberally among them.
And stealing everyone's attention were the precious few of the highest difficulty — the Black Requests. Missions that led straight into the Holy Federation.
Murmurs rippled from every corner of the crowd.
"...The Black ones are on a whole different level. There's even an assassination job."
"Espionage? You have to disguise yourself as a Holy Federation citizen and infiltrate?"
"A necromancer would get caught the second they set foot in there."
"Ending: executed by an Inquisitor. Guaranteed."
Simon listened quietly to the chatter and smiled to himself.
Espionage inside the Holy Federation. If they handed him one, he'd be reasonably confident in his own way — but right now, there was something far more important on his mind.
Tarados. Requires major cleanup.
He was going to Tarados.
He would track down the organization that had abducted Karl, and if they had a base of operations, he would crush it and take him back. To gather every one of his father's Ancient Undead — and to face his enemy Magnus — he had to recover Karl's remaining half, whatever it took.
It'd be nice if there were a request in Tarados.
Simon combed through the boards meticulously. The names of territory after territory passed before his eyes — Langestin, Arnish, Parona, Hobbe — but Tarados never appeared. The place was so remote that apparently not a single request had come from it.
"Simon! I've decided — this is the one!"
Toto held up a Blue Request form.
"Monster Colony Suppression!"
"Ooh, you picked a tough one."
There were plenty of safe, ordinary jobs available — bodyguard duty for dignitaries, escorting trade caravans — but Toto had chosen a genuinely demanding first mission.
"Want to do it together?"
Toto asked, eyes gleaming.
"Sorry. I've already got my mission picked out."
"No, no! Can't be helped, then!"
Toto scurried off to persuade Fitzgerald, and Simon straightened up again and went over the request forms with renewed focus.
Really nothing, huh?
He seemed to have covered the front of the boards, so now he was stubbornly digging through the forms hidden behind others, barely visible at the back.
Ha!
He found it. Out of all those dozens of requests, there was exactly one.
Registered Request: Corpse Separation
Request Grade: F
Reward: 5 Gold
Location: Dresden Kingdom, Tarados Territory
Details: Monster corpse separation work; labor services provided
Special Notes:1168798164
What is this?
This was the kind of request students jokingly called a "free lunch" — the classic no-effort job. A task with zero danger, nothing required but simple manual labor.
But requests like this usually only showed up on the White Request boards. An F-grade request landing among the Blue Requests was extraordinarily rare.
Corpse separation, huh.
Simon tore the request form from the board and examined it closely.
The only Tarados request among this sea of hundreds. And above all, that Special Notes line was nagging at him.
Special Notes: 1168798164.
"Simon Polentia."
He was deep in concentration when a voice called his name from beside him. He looked up to find Hector, towering like a hill, arms crossed.
"Hector?"
"Get that guy out of here before the seniors spot him."
Hector jerked a thumb behind them with a bored expression. Simon turned, and his eyes went wide.
Kajjan!
Kajjan of the Magic Combat department was strolling casually into the Summoning dormitory. Several students had already noticed a student from another department walking in and were whispering amongst themselves.
Entering another department's dormitory wasn't forbidden by any written rule — but among the students, it was taboo.
I asked Kajjan for a favor, but I never expected him to come here in person!
Before things could blow up, Simon hurried over to him.
"Who the hell is that!"
A beat too late. A third-year heading toward the shared kitchen had heard the second-years' commotion and bellowed out.
"Magic Combat? What kind of shameless bastard—!"
"Been a while, Daniel."
The blunt, informal greeting came out of nowhere.
Kajjan was scratching absently at the scar over his right eye as he spoke. He wore the red mark of a second-year on his collar, yet the third-year flinched visibly.
"K-K-Kajjan? Y-you were—?"
"Good to see you. Same class back in first year, wasn't it?"
Hands jammed in his pockets, Kajjan strode closer step by step.
The watching second-years wore puzzled expressions. A senior third-year — practically a god in their eyes — was trembling in fear at a sophomore.
Kajjan Edvalt, Kizen's one and only repeater.
An undefeated record in the Duel Evaluations, a merciless personality — and after the violence incident back in first year, even mentioning his name had become taboo among the current third-year class. Especially for the students who'd shared a classroom with him back then.
"Something you wanted to say, Daniel?"
He had been an object of pure terror.
At Kajjan's gloomy voice, the third-year squeaked out a strangled "N-nothing at all!" and fled the lobby as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.
"Hmph."
Kajjan scratched the scar by his eye.
"Kajjan!"
Simon rushed over and grabbed his shoulder.
"Too many eyes here. Let's talk outside."
"Fine."
The two of them stepped outside the dormitory.
Kajjan handed Simon a handful of request forms the moment they were out the door.
"Like you asked — I filtered out requests from regions near the Tarados Territory."
"Good news. Looks like we won't need to visit any of them."
Simon grinned and showed him the request form from the Tarados Territory.
"It was the only one posted on the Summoning department's board."
Kajjan tilted his head.
"Surprising. I heard Tarados is a closed-off, impoverished territory. Didn't think they'd have the money to post a job with Kizen."
A request cost an enormous registration fee on top of the reward paid out to the students. After all, hiring Kizen was hiring Kizen, even for a lowly student.
"But look at this. There's something strange written in the Special Notes."
"1168798164."
Kajjan picked up the form between two fingers, raised it high above his head, and studied it from below.
"It's a cipher."
"What?"
Kajjan tucked the request form into his coat without a moment's hesitation.
"I'll have it decoded by tomorrow."
Simon let out a wry smile.
"We're not departing until the weekend, so take your time."
"I'll have it done by tomorrow."
Was he imagining it, or did Kajjan seem... pleased? Maybe it was just the thrill of running into a cipher to crack.
And as the two of them chatted away—
"..."
—a student was hiding behind the wall, eavesdropping on every word.
"Mmm, is that so~?"
The firewood storage shed behind the Summoning dormitory, a spot where few students ever ventured.
There, Serne sat enthroned like a queen, legs elegantly crossed. Perhaps fresh from a bath, her honey-blonde hair was still slightly damp, tied back with a cord. And her seat was not a chair — it was a person, face-down on the floor.
S-s-scary!
The faction student who'd come to report to her trembled in fear.
Stuck into the nape of the boy sprawled on the ground was one of her feathers, and taped to his face was a note that read: I will never bother you again.
"So during this weekend's Mission Assessment, Simon and Kajjan are planning to head to Tarados~"
Her tongue flicked out playfully.
"I can't imagine why they'd want to go to some ramshackle place like that — but this might just be my chance to put Simon in my debt and collect another coupon stamp."
"...Coupons?"
The reporting student raised his head.
"What are you talking about, Serne?"
"Oh, it's a little thing I have~"
Serne smiled sweetly.
"But did I ever give you permission to ask questions?"
Thwip!
A feather buried itself in the back of the faction student's neck. His eyes glazed over, and he let out a warbling "wheeeek" as he scratched at the floor and scuttled in circles around her.
"I really don't understand why you people insist on such reckless curiosity with me."
Delighting in the antics of her classmate-turned-pet, she took a sip of wine.
Her heavy-lidded, dangerous eyes glinted with unmistakable relish.
A dark underground chamber.
A woman with a face swallowed by shadow walked forward.
Even with light shone directly upon her, her face could not be seen. In truth, no one here had ever seen her bare face.
The men standing by around her bowed their heads.
"You've arrived, Lady Nirrti."
"Mm."
She raised a hand to accept the greeting.
"You've returned from Langestin quickly."
"The experiment comes first. What about today's subjects?"
"Twenty secured. Some of them are in decent condition."
"Good."
Nearby, gaunt, skeletal figures in white patient gowns shuffled along, their hands bound — the very subjects in question.
Every one of them had hollow, unfocused eyes, drained of any will to live. Each step was a labored struggle.
"Get them ready quickly. To stay on the Elder's schedule, we'll need to move the experiment date up."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The men herded the patients away.
The shadowed woman turned her head toward something resting in a coffin within the darkness.
Grrrrrroowl—
A slithering, viscous green lifeform writhed inside the vessel.
She pressed her palm against the glass as if entranced, gazing at it, and an expression of pure, unbounded satisfaction spread across her lips.
"How lucky for us that you fell into our hands, Ancient Undead. I promise your suffering will not be in vain."
GUOOOORGH!
The thing thrashed as if in fury, but trapped in its coffin, it could do nothing at all.
"Lady Nirrti!"
This time, heavily armed soldiers came sprinting toward her.
"Now what?"
"We've captured a key member of the Tarados Revolutionary Army!"
The soldiers forced a young man to his knees before her — a young man bearing the marks of brutal torture across every inch of his body.
But the revolutionary was laughing, and the soldiers wore faces of utter bewilderment.
"What's going on here?"
Nirrti asked, reading the strange mood.
"F-forgive us. We blocked every route leading out of the territory, but somehow — by some means we can't determine — it appears they've posted a request with Kizen."
That, apparently, was why the revolutionary kept laughing even as blood dripped steadily down his face.
"Kizen?"
Nirrti's reaction was one of genuine surprise.
"What reason would someone wealthy enough to hire Kizen have to attach themselves to these gutter rats?"
"W-well, it's not an official request. You know that thing, right? The one where they assign missions to Kizen students, the—"
"Students?"
KYAHAHAHAHAHA!
Nirrti burst out laughing before he'd even finished.
"What? What did you say? Students?"
She strode over and seized the revolutionary by the hair.
"Absurd. A time when even the Crows themselves couldn't get in — and they thought a bunch of children playing at fieldwork could liberate Tarados?"
"Ghhk!"
"I swear it on everything — until this experiment is complete, not a single one of you Tarados rats will be spared. Every last one of you will serve as experiment subjects."
Her eyes burned bloodshot. An fury and hatred too vast for words flickered in both her pupils.
"Light will never come to Tarados. Never."
SLAM!
She flung the revolutionary aside and turned away.
"Prepare troops, just in case. And besides — their little student mission is basically a sightseeing trip, isn't it? When they arrive, give them just enough of a result to feel satisfied, keep them from ever reaching us, and send them on their way."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Her eyes flashed.
"Yes. No one — no one — will stand in the way of my plan."
"Hmm."
Simon, who'd been talking with Kajjan outside the dormitory, suddenly wrinkled one eye and rubbed at his ear.
"What's wrong, Simon?"
"Huh? Nothing."
Simon lowered his hand with an embarrassed smile.
"My ear just suddenly itched, that's all."