Ghoul Supply Operation
Time had slipped by swiftly while Simon learned a new curse in Bahil's laboratory.
Now the two of them both had to prepare for their next classes. Simon bowed politely to Bahil and stepped out of the Curse Department building.
“……”
He needed to hurry back to the lecture hall, but his hands were itching so badly he couldn't help himself.
The diagrams and symbols Bahil had shown him refused to leave his mind.
Might as well try it real quick.
Stopping in front of a tree, Simon drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. The Sleep magic circle he had used countless times unfolded cleanly across his palm.
Then came Bahil's advice.
Layering new symbols and shapes onto the existing formula, he spread out a second magic circle linked to the first's center, shifting the rotation angle and pattern values.
The key is the release form extending outward beyond the runic core.
From a serial formula to something closer to a circle.
Artificially pull the effective magic value upward.
Recalling Bahil's points one by one, Simon's eyes snapped open.
Bahil Remake — Sleeperz
Shaaaaaaak—
The moment the circle activated, grey smoke spread outward from his palm. Simon blinked.
“Something happened. Did it work?”
Just as Simon was reacting with uncertain skepticism—
Thud.
Tap.
The birds perched in the tree dropped into the grass. Simon staggered backward in alarm.
Every one of those birds was asleep.
It worked!
A wide-area Sleep that dealt a single fair stack of the curse to every target in the vicinity.
Granted, its potency and duration were far weaker than the Sleep he'd always used, but succeeding on the very first attempt was a tremendous result.
Though I do feel a little bad about it.
Simon smiled sheepishly and clapped his hands with a sharp snap!
The sparrows sprawled across the grass blinked groggily, then jerked upright one after another. Catching sight of Simon standing close by, they startled and fluttered away in a panic.
Watching the birds scatter into the sky, Simon turned on his heel and set off toward the Summoning Department building.
“……”
And on the fourth floor of the Curse Department building, two people had been watching the whole scene.
“A professor who improvises a wide-area magic circle on the spot from where he's sitting, and a student who devours it whole and lands it in a single attempt.”
Chehekl, the Chief Teaching Assistant of Curse Magic, folded her arms.
“Geniuses really are something else.”
Bahil quietly leaned back against the window.
“You are quite the possessor of talent yourself, Chehekl.”
“I feel like I should be groveling at your feet.”
“In any case.”
Bahil gripped his top hat and pressed it firmly onto his head.
“The new semester has only just begun, and already an attempt to steal away my Simon. An excellent start, I must say.”
“…Please, please drop that filthy modifier. It frightens me to think who might overhear.”
Bahil brushed the protest aside with a lift of his lips.
“An unanticipated variable has appeared. Senior Aaron will have no choice but to be shaken to his core.”
“You mean the transfer student of rumor, this White?”
“That's right.”
A complicated expression crossed Chehekl's face.
“…I've never actually heard the full story of the 5th Legion Commander Magnus's days as a Kizen student. Everyone keeps it hushed. Is the mere resemblance between that man and student White really enough to shake the whole school?”
Bahil lifted his head and gazed at the sky beyond the window.
“It cannot be otherwise. An event unprecedented in all three hundred years of Kizen's history.”
His eyes sank into something cold.
“The incident of a student murdering a Kizen professor.”
The next morning.
Intermediate Major Summoning class.
Scritch—
Tap. Tap.
Chalk danced roughly across the blackboard. Aaron was absorbed in the lecture as if nothing at all had happened.
On the surface, there wasn't the slightest tremor in him.
And yet, to Simon, who sat listening, something was different. His usual style — the loose, unhurried pace, the languid voice carrying one beat of ease ahead of the material — had grown noticeably fervent.
Like a man burying himself in work to force something out of his mind.
The Summoning students, who knew nothing yet, actually liked the change in Aaron's style.
It was easier to concentrate this way. The students were scribbling notes at a faster tempo than usual.
Simon turned his head toward White, seated in the very last row. He was taking notes just like everyone else, perfectly ordinary.
“That's theory done.”
Tap.
Setting down the chalk, Aaron strode over and picked up the attendance book resting on the lectern.
“When I call your name, stand. Coiter Pizn.”
A student named Coiter rose from his seat.
“Yes, Professor!”
“When a dead ghoul's blood-reactive sample turns blue, explain the chain formula for the Summon Ghoul a necromancer must use.”
Faced with a question he'd never anticipated, Coiter's pupils wavered. He dragged out the seconds with a series of umms and uhhs, wringing his brain dry, then stammered out an answer.
“Frenzy-Binding-Constriction-Hardened Bone!”
“That's for a yellow reaction. One penalty point. Laubel Brenmus.”
The next student shot up with a “Yes, Professor!”
“Blue.”
“Frenzy-Binding-Near Constriction-Congealed Blood!”
“You swapped Binding and Near Constriction. One penalty point. Pierre Buckler.”
Aaron kept calling students to their feet, rigorously checking whether they had committed the formulas to memory properly. Panicked by this sudden bombardment of penalty points, the students scrambled to flip through their textbooks — until the teaching assistants swept the room with wide eyes and shut every one of them.
“Hammer this formula deep into your skulls.”
Aaron tapped his own forehead with a fingertip.
“So you can recall it in a flash, even in the thick of an emergency.”
Once the test was over, the practical training began immediately.
Aaron handed each student a list bearing a different set of conditions, and they had to construct a ghoul magic circle to match them.
Fifty-two students grunted and groaned as they assembled their ghoul circles.
“By the end of today, you will have mastered the ghoul.”
Aaron declared it, hands clasped behind his back as he paced the room.
“Second period after my class is Summoning Materials, third is Summoning Funeral Studies. I understand your majors run back to back. I'll guarantee you this much — if you make it through today's curriculum, you'll be handling ghouls with total freedom.”
All in a single day?
It was such a radical claim that the students preparing their magic circles began lifting their heads one by one.
“And tomorrow.”
Aaron announced:
“You enter a field performance assessment using your ghouls.”
Aaron's class had drilled the theory and the summoning circle into them thoroughly, and the next lesson was already waiting.
Grelion's Summoning Materials Studies. The students rode a teleportation circle to the class site.
It was their first outdoor lesson in a while — beneath a vast stretch of cliff face, somewhere unidentifiable.
“All personnel, attention!”
The Summoning Materials teaching assistants, heads shaved bare and dressed in bizarre garb, stood in a distinctive pose — legs braced wide, arms crossed.
And beyond them appeared Grelion, wearing nothing but trousers, his torso baring rugged slabs of muscle, sunglasses perched on his nose. He crossed his arms in the very same pose as the assistants.
“Uh… is it just me, or does Professor Grelion look bulkier up every time I see him?”
Toto, standing beside Simon, murmured quietly. Simon nodded in agreement.
“You'll have heard the details from Professor Aaron already! Believe me, I'd love to keep pushing ahead with our chimeras, but the curriculum is the curriculum. Can't be helped!”
He uncrossed his burly arms and planted both hands on his hips. The muscle bulged unsettlingly with every movement.
“Today! You will go out and gather fresh ghoul materials with your own two hands!”
Grelion roared in a voice that rattled the cliffs — so loud that debris clattered down from the rock face above.
One of the female students shot her hand up eagerly.
“Eshu Zelua, Professor! Couldn't we just buy them in Rochest?”
“Absolutely not!”
Grelion thrust out one muscled arm and clenched his fist.
“For skeleton-types, maybe. But monsters that reuse an existing body and muscle — ghouls like these — lose quality alarmingly fast when bought from undead factories or necromancer shops. Nothing beats a necromancer catching his ghouls on-site, in the flesh!”
He pointed a finger.
“You!”
“Y-yes yes yes sir! Toto Amori!”
Toto answered with a face on the verge of tears. It was the look of a boy thinking, Why is it always me?!
“Explain the primary ingredient of a ghoul!”
“A R-Ratcher!”
“Correct!”
Grelion adjusted his sunglasses.
“The Ratcher is a common monster, danger grade three! Gungwis, gremlins, and Ridons have all been made into ghouls in the past, but more than ninety-four percent of ghouls in today's necromantic world are Ratcher-based. Ever since Teacher Drion's ghoul formula was standardized and spread far and wide, the Ratcher ghoul has stood as the superior model of every individual variant — it's no exaggeration to say that in the modern summoning world, a ghoul is a zombified Ratcher!”
The students all nodded along.
“From this moment on, I will teach you how to pick out a good Ratcher for your ghoul!”
Grelion launched into the lesson without warning. With no desks to be had, the students scrambled to spread out their notebooks and copy down his every word.
“Avoid any Ratcher with a reddish tinge on the back of its neck! That's a sign of old age. You want a young one — firm muscle, perfect for ghoul conversion!”
“When using arrows or blades, aim for the neck! Taking the head clean off is fine too, but if your weapon buries itself in the leg or arm muscle, the quality drops sharply!”
Holding up the corpse of a furry Ratcher, Grelion crisply walked them through every strike point. The students, living up to their second-year status, boldly closed in to examine it up close.
“Proper dissection technique is equally essential!”
Thud!
Grelion laid the Ratcher's corpse onto a table and drew out a carving knife.
“Truth be told, you could carve the summoning circle straight into the monster the moment it dies and suffer no great inconvenience! But you are Kizen — the continent's finest elite! This is the craft required to draw out near-perfect ghoul performance!”
He pointed at the Ratcher's calf.
“Everyone, come in close! Can you see this spot?”
“Yes!”
“You score an incision here with a small blade, size seven or smaller.”
Shhhk—
He drew the knife along the shin.
“You open a path for the Jet-Black to flow through.”
“B-but it's an undead built on muscle… and you're punching holes in it?”
“An undead's athletic capacity is nothing like a living creature's! Keep those heads soft and leave room to accept the unconventional! Next — this spot here!”
Crrrack!
When he wrenched open the muscle around the shoulder blade with nothing but raw grip strength, shoulders flinched all around the class.
“Don't look away! Yes, you, girl in front! Eyes open and watch properly!”
Grelion bellowed.
“The performance of every summoned beast you build from a monster is tied directly to your lives — to the lives of the people you mean to protect!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Preparation is everything. Once an undead is complete, its absolute performance is often fixed then and there. The moment of creation matters most of all! Am I understood?!”
“Yes, sir!!”
His knife work was relentless. Cutting away the heavy, useless lumps of fat, the internal organs that hindered movement, and more, he then activated his dark magic and etched the ghoul spell into the Ratcher.
—Gerrrulk!
The ghoul sprang upright from where it lay.
“Behold!”
At Grelion's gesture, the ghoul kicked off the ground ferociously, tore across the floor, and swung its arms. The students burst out in gasps of admiration.
“This is the ideal ghoul's movement — and the summoning circle used was a perfectly standard one!”
It turned on a dime, leapt high, even threw aerial somersaults. Its movements were so dynamic and dazzling it was hard to believe this had been a lifeless corpse mere moments ago.
Its athletic capacity had, ironically, vastly improved from its days as a monster. This corpse seemed to overflow with more life than any living creature.
“I trust you all watched closely!”
Grelion set down his carving knife.
“Then — practical training! This Lamakan rock zone is crawling with Ratchers as far as the eye can see! Over the course of this lesson, you will each secure at least nine ghouls' worth of materials!”
He spread two thick fingers.
“This practical has no graded scores. Instead, it's beautifully simple — Pass or Fail! Any student who fails to secure nine sets of ghoul materials receives an automatic 'F' in tomorrow's field assessment and is stripped of the right to attend the next Funeral Studies class as well! Since you'll come up short on your supplies, you see!”
A low buzz rippled through the students.
Fail to prepare a ghoul, and it was an automatic 'F' — meaning they'd lose the very qualification to sit tomorrow's exam.
Thud!
Grelion slammed his two enormous fists together at center.
“The ghouls you secure and prepare yourselves this hour will be used straight through the next lesson and the field assessment! Chief Assistant!”
“Yes.”
The Chief Teaching Assistant raised a timer.
“Means and methods, all fair game — bring me nine sets of ghoul materials within two hours! Anyone short of nine is disqualified! If my judgment says your materials' quality is beneath common sense, you're disqualified too! Too harsh? Bah! You are Kizen!”
Click!
The Chief Teaching Assistant started the timer.
“Operation Ghoul Resupply — begin!”
At those words, the Summoning Department students didn't so much as glance back — they stamped Jet-Black into the ground and launched themselves forward.