Pass or Fail
Thwack!
Thud!
The small boy, getting pummeled under the blazing sun, thought to himself.
How on earth did it come to this?
Unable to find a single Ratcher's breathing hole no matter how hard he searched, Toto had stumbled—purely by luck—upon a Ratcher lying dead nearby, an arrow lodged in its body.
Someone must've abandoned it!
He examined it closely. The arrow was buried deep in its muscle. Apparently it hadn't met Professor Grelion's standards for Summoning Materials, so someone had tossed it aside.
And that was when an idea flashed through Toto's head.
Granted, this thing wouldn't earn him a passing grade on its own—but what if he turned it into a ghoul and used it to track down the other Ratchers?
Toto put the plan into action immediately, and succeeded in converting the Ratcher into a ghoul.
Except.
Thwack! Thud!
The moment the ghoul was complete, it pinned him down and started beating him senseless.
"I forgot about post-mortem instincts, owowow!"
He desperately shielded his head with his Kizen uniform, but it hurt like hell. His head snapped side to side with every blow, and his nose had burst, blood streaming freely down his face.
"Ah."
As he took the beating from the very summon he'd just created, Toto's gaze drifted past the ghoul to the sunlight swaying beyond it.
Am I... going to die like this?
If he did, it would probably be splashed across the front page of every newspaper on the continent.
"No! Not that! Anything but thaaat!"
With a strangled howl, Toto poured every last drop of Jet-Black into both feet and kicked the ghoul away. It toppled over backward, and Toto crawled along the ground, wheezing for breath.
-Kyeeeeeh!
Refusing to let its prey escape, the ghoul leapt and landed square on his back again.
Watching the sharp claws come flashing down, Toto screamed:
"S-Save me...!"
Thwack!
The ghoul took a hit from something and went rolling across the dirt.
-Kyeee!
"?"
He jerked his head up and looked to the side. Small, strange doll-like figures were pinning the ghoul's limbs to the ground.
And beyond them—
"......"
A girl stood there, wearing the expression of someone who'd seen something she wished she hadn't. Toto's ears burned red to the tips.
Of all people—right in front of a girl!
She cleared her throat quietly.
"I'll keep it a secret."
Muttering those words in a distinctly unimpressed voice, she turned and walked away. The instant she withdrew, the dolls restraining the ghoul began to fade as well.
The bindings were coming undone.
"Nnngh!"
Tears of pure humiliation streaming down his face, Toto yanked a single skeleton bone out of his subspace and gripped it like a club.
"Graaaaaaagh!"
With a roar of anguish, he brought it down again and again on the ghoul's skull as it struggled free of its restraints.
And that day,
Toto awakened to Matu.
The two hours Grelion had promised were drawing to a close.
Students were arriving at the starting point one by one.
"Assistants! Begin the evaluation!"
"Yes, sir!"
The students lined up their Ratcher corpses on the mats. The evaluation criterion: possession of nine or more mid-quality Ratchers.
The assistants carefully inspected each Ratcher's condition and spoke.
"Student Pierre Buckler, nine Ratchers confirmed. Pass."
"Yes!"
The boy pumped his fist in celebration, and the assistant wrote his name on the list before moving on to the number column beside it.
"Do you have any more Ratchers in your subspace? All of them must be brought out."
"Huh? Isn't nine enough? The ones I left behind aren't in great condition, so..."
"All of them must be brought out."
The assistant repeated the same words like a machine. Resigned, the boy pulled three more Ratchers from his subspace.
"Two fail quality inspection. With one substitute added, ten confirmed in total."
He then produced some kind of stamp and pressed it firmly over the Ratchers' bodies, one after another. It was a mana stamp, powered by mana itself.
Why bother with a stamp?
"Good work. Next."
Students who'd completed the inspection returned to rest, and a short distance away, Grelion watched the whole scene—beside him, a middle-aged man bowing and scraping, rubbing his palms together.
"Oh, Professor! Thank you so much for bringing your students here at a time like this! Though a little advance notice would have been nice!"
The man was none other than the lord who governed this entire region. Grelion adjusted his sunglasses.
"It's merely a class. No thanks necessary."
The surrounding area had been suffering from an explosion in the Ratcher population lately.
Occasionally, wandering necromancers or people from the undead factories would come by claiming they'd make ghouls of the things, but that barely made a dent. Ghouls only lost value over time, so they weren't exactly a popular product even at the undead factories—and no one expected a large-scale purge from a handful of visitors.
Still, having the students come out like this took a weight off his shoulders. His territory could even leverage the goodwill to encourage trade caravans to pass through.
"It's nothing grand, but we've prepared a few simple refreshments!"
The lord gestured toward a cargo wagon. The resting students' eyes lit up at the sight of cool water, bread, and fruit packed inside.
Grelion looked indifferent at first, but seeing the students' reactions, he nodded.
"We'll accept it as patronage. Assistants! Distribute these to the students who passed!"
"Yes, Professor!"
Around this time, Simon also arrived.
With about ten minutes to spare, he laid out his Ratchers, and the assistants recorded his name.
"Student Simon Polentia, twelve Ratchers in total. Pass."
Only then did Simon let a smile break through and exhale in relief. He had his twelve Ratchers stamped, collected his water and snacks, and moved aside.
Right behind him, Lorraine was setting down a single enormous Ratcher. The students murmured at its sheer size.
"Student Lorraine Archbold, ten Ratchers in total. Pass."
A ghoul made from something that big would surely have the advantage in tomorrow's performance evaluation.
Simon cast a quick glance around.
Hector, ranked third, and Asseraz, ranked fifth, were already there. Fitzgerald from the same club had just arrived as well, and Simon could see him pulling out his nine Ratchers.
And White?
White, the transfer student under scrutiny, had yet to appear.
Toto was missing too.
Grelion checked his wristwatch.
"Three minutes. Only students who arrive at camp on time will be evaluated."
At those words, the students nibbling their bread looked up and shouted toward the figures sprinting in the distance.
"Hey! What are you doing? Run!"
"Three minutes left!"
The students running toward the starting point blanched and picked up speed. Some of them were even using Internal Jetting of Dark Magic, legs pumping like machine guns.
Grelion checked his watch again.
"Two minutes."
As the earlier arrivals shouted for the stragglers to hurry, one male student heaved a theatrical sighhh~ and rose lazily from his seat.
"Everyone's gotten soft now that we're second-years."
Chewing his gum with slow, exaggerated snaps, he was the only Summoning Department student to have secured twenty Ratchers within the first thirty minutes of the exam.
"Why are you cheering them on, telling them to hurry? Fewer people passing means fewer competitors. It's supposed to be rough—that's what Kizen's all about."
"What are you planning this time?"
His friend asked with an anxious look.
"I'm going to slow them down, obviously."
"You lunatic. The professor and the assistants are watching like hawks. How?"
"Obviously I can't interfere directly. Just watch and learn."
As if to say keep your eyes on me, he drew a magic circle and activated something.
Vrrrm—
A ripple spread out from the ground, tearing through the earth as Ratchers burst forth all around. Even the cliff face began raining down Ratchers.
"Wh-what?!"
The students who'd already gathered their Ratchers and were running in froze in panic. Ratchers had erupted out of nowhere and were blocking their path.
"What is this?!"
"Just run!"
Shooting down Ratchers with dark magic as they went, the students kept moving.
Despite the whole commotion, Grelion did not step in. He stood rooted in place, watching his watch.
"One minute."
Simon had come forward too, tension written across his face. Then—tap!—a hand gripped his shoulder.
"Seen Toto anywhere?"
It was Fitzgerald. Simon shook his head, his face tight.
"N-no, not yet. You?"
"Me neither."
Aaaargh!
The final runners came pouring in, Ratchers dangling from their arms and legs.
"Son of a—! Who the hell dumped all those Ratchers in my way at the end?!"
The student, hacking out breaths like a dying man, glared wildly around him. The culprit, for his part, was whistling with a perfectly blank expression.
Grelion spoke.
"Thirty seconds."
"Hnnnngh!"
Benz, the transfer student from Aland, came riding in like a jockey atop a Ratcher he was controlling through Taming.
"How many are we missing?"
"Fifty are here out of fifty-one!"
And in that exact moment—
BOOM—
A massive white sphere rose into the sky. It skimmed the ground as it surged forward with a roar, and in the blink of an eye it was inside the starting point.
"Kyaaaaa!"
The students ducked low, hunching against the staggering shockwave. The white sphere that had torn its way inside dimmed out like a lightbulb switching off, and from within, the transfer student White dropped to the ground with a light thump.
Then he looked around at the other students with a flat, bored expression, as if nothing had happened at all. It was quite the spectacle.
"Ten seconds."
Fifty-one now.
The Summoning Department students began the countdown for the final one.
"Five seconds!"
"Four!"
"Three!"
"Two!"
"One!"
FWOOOOOSH!
A hole ripped open in the ground and a giant worm-like monster burst out of it.
"A—a Death Worm?"
It was the Death Worm, one of the notoriously difficult-to-control undead summons.
The thing unhinged its jaw with a gurgle and—thwock!—spat something out. Amid a puddle of foul-smelling green liquid, something black was visible.
A person.
"Time."
Grelion declared, and the Head Assistant stopped the timer.
The students erupted in cheers. All fifty-two had made it in time.
Simon and Fitzgerald rushed over and hauled Toto out of the green liquid.
"AHAHA! That gave us a scare, Toto."
Said Simon, grinning ear to ear.
"No way a Mutant Club member would go down over something like this."
Fitzgerald added, pushing up his glasses. Toto, seemingly beyond the strength to speak, could only roll his eyes in circles with an uuurgh expression.
Grelion extended his arm.
"Students who just arrived—let's inspect your haul."
White had a full twenty Ratchers.
And Toto had scraped by with exactly nine.
The ninth and final Ratcher—the one with the arrow in its thigh—had been borderline, but Grelion came over and judged it personally.
"The arrow wound will slow it, but the upper skeleton is well developed, so I'd expect decent raw strength. It's close, but it passes."
"Yesss!"
Toto threw both arms into the air, and Simon doubled over laughing. How had things possibly worked out this way?
"That arrow-hit one? I caught it, but figured it wouldn't pass, so I just left it there."
"Seriously? Thanks, Simon! You saved my life!"
Grelion slammed his foot into the ground with a thud! and struck his signature pose—legs planted wide, arms crossed.
"All of you, attention!"
Every student's gaze snapped to Grelion.
"Don't get too pleased with yourselves—this much is simply expected at Kizen! Still, I'll give you your due. This class, all fifty-two Summoning Department students: Pass. Congratulations."
The students high-fived the classmates around them, beside themselves with joy.
"And one more thing."
Grelion lowered his sunglasses.
"In this Pass-or-Fail test—which isn't even graded—someone went out of their way to sabotage their own classmates."
His burning, raptor-sharp eyes flashed toward one male student. The named party flinched visibly.
"That's not competition. That's the dirty trick of cowards too afraid to compete fair and square! Other professors might let it slide, but I have no taste for that kind of gamesmanship. If you're Kizen, then prove it the Kizen way—compete on skill in tomorrow's performance evaluation!"
Click.
Grelion said nothing more, slid his sunglasses back on, and looked over the students.
"Thirty minutes of rest, then we return to Kizen for the next class! Use the break to go ahead and finish the ghouls from the materials you've gathered today."
"Yes, Professor!"
The corner of Grelion's mouth curled upward.
"Prepare thoroughly. The next assignment for you brats will be far more demanding."
Simon was nodding along silently when Benz, the transfer student from Aland, sidled up to him and asked:
"...Hey, Simon. So who exactly are these 'brats' you're talking about?"
Simon grinned slyly.
"You're in for quite the surprise."