The Funeral Rite Experiment
"Practice drill!"
"It's starting!"
At Simon's outstretched arm as the signal, his ghoul charged ferociously at the modified skeleton.
The skeleton tilted its axe and took a ready stance as well.
If I rush in carelessly, I'm dead.
Simon lowered the ghoul's posture even further, then sent it lunging in with the hand opposite the axe—
Whoosh!
The axe came sweeping down in a vicious arc. The ghoul barely ducked under it and slipped around behind the modified skeleton.
Krigik—
The modified skeleton couldn't turn its head right away. First the waist rotated, then the legs followed.
Its turning radius is slower than I expected. And—
Compared to the front, protected by armor, the rear defense was laughable.
Using the ghoul's mobility to strike the back is the whole point of this drill!
By the time the modified skeleton caught up with the ghoul circling behind it, the ghoul had already overtaken it and looped back around in the opposite direction.
It had stolen the timing perfectly.
Now!
Thwack!
The ghoul kicked off the ground and leapt. At the exposed back of the neck—clearly the skeleton's greatest weakness, left completely unguarded by its armor.
The moment the ghoul opened its jaws to sink its teeth into the neck—
Krdduduk!
The axe blade caught up in an instant and buried itself in the ghoul's head.
He'd been thoroughly beaten.
The ghoul crashed to the ground with a thud!, and the modified skeleton, looking thoroughly pleased with itself, brought the axe down and destroyed it.
"First attempt failed. Simon Polentia has eleven ghouls remaining."
The Head Assistant's flat voice drifted over from behind the modified skeleton she was piloting.
Simon grimaced and clutched his head.
When a summoned creature was completely destroyed, the mental feedback of its lingering thoughts struck the necromancer still connected to it.
Glancing around, he saw several students already wearing dazed expressions or down on one knee.
Hector was no different.
Everyone had gotten hit.
"Next," the Head Assistant said tonelessly. "Please bring out your second ghoul."
"……"
The other assistants repeated the same words. The students gritted their teeth, opened their subspace, and summoned their ghouls.
Simon brought his out too, lowering the hand that had been pressed to his head.
I didn't even have time to cast Funeral Rite.
He had tried—slicing a diagonal across the magic circle the instant the ghoul's teeth sank into the skeleton's neck, aiming to sever the head with the rite's effect.
But the movement had been read.
And above all, the ghoul's feet had been too slow.
Time to change my thinking.
Simon's mind shifted into high gear.
At my current level, the Berserk duration is only about a minute—but that's enough. No matter how the opponent reacts, I cast Funeral Rite first and attack second.
The Head Assistant, who had been standing with her hands behind her back, raised her right arm.
"Whenever you're ready, come at us as much as you like."
Her voice was far too relaxed.
Simon, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, raised his right hand in a sharp gesture.
The ghoul crouched low, then kicked violently off the dirt floor and bounded forward.
Let the fight run long. Warm it up.
To cast Funeral Rite, the jet-black circulation flowing through the summoning circle had to be running at full capacity.
Only when every rune and modifier was working properly could he draw Reno's Golden Line and have all that power delivered where it needed to go.
Warm it up. Keep warming it up.
Simon's ghoul circled round and round the modified skeleton, moving with just enough precision to stay a hair inside the boundary line.
All the while, he fed jet-black into the circle, readying himself to score a line into one corner of it.
Tak!
Eventually the skeleton on the other side raised its axe and charged first.
Dodge!
Whoom! Whoom!
The instant the ghoul slipped narrowly clear of the axe blade, its summoning circle grew sharper, brighter.
The entire circle—the entire ecosystem that made up the ghoul—was running flat out without a shred of slack, broadcasting its will to win this fight.
Simon realized this was the moment.
When you draw the line, be bold!
Professors Lyn and Rune's voices echoed in his memory.
Drawing the line slowly amounted to cutting your own magic circle apart with your own hands. To fool the jet-black into mistaking that line for a new circuit, it had to be scored in a single blistering instant.
Hnngh!
Simon sent the jet-black moving, cleaving the ghoul's summoning circle with a line. The power that had been circulating through the circle like a living ecosystem now flowed along the freshly drawn path.
Did it work?
The effect was immediate.
The ghoul's eyes changed.
He could feel jet-black flooding through the undead's entire body.
Tereng!
Propelled by explosive jet-black, the ghoul launched off the ground and swung around behind the modified skeleton. It vaulted high, clamped its teeth onto the neck vertebrae, pinned the waist with its hind legs and the arm with its forelegs.
"Got it!"
"Simon's got it!"
"Hector too!"
WAAAAAH!
The watching students roared.
While the other five had long since lost their ghouls and sat slumped on the ground, Simon and Hector had both managed to get their ghouls mounted on the modified skeletons' backs.
The modified skeletons thrashed wildly.
"The aces, as expected!"
"Just a little longer!"
Sweat pouring down their faces, Simon's and Hector's eyes turned to each other. Both of them whipped their heads away at the same moment.
I'll be faster!
The instant the two boys' concentration hit its peak—
BOOM!
The ghoul's Funeral Rite duration ran out first. Unable to withstand the skeleton's violent struggling, the ghoul was slammed into the ground. The axe came down right after it, and with a thock! its head split open.
Crunch!
Immediately after, Hector's ghoul was subdued as well and met the same fate. Both boys grimaced and swayed on their feet.
Once again the Head Assistant's cool voice rang out.
"Second attempt failed. Simon Polentia has nine ghouls remain—"
That was when it happened.
FWOOOM!
The ghoul's body—the one whose head had just been crushed—suddenly ballooned up like a balloon and exploded. Even the Head Assistant flinched in surprise, and small screams rang out here and there.
An explosion?
There hadn't been much force behind it, of course. The ghoul's remains had simply splattered all over the modified skeleton.
Simon, panting, straightened his posture.
"One more time, please."
"……"
The Head Assistant's eyes narrowed.
What was he trying to do just now?
As the students murmured among themselves, Professors Lyn and Rune came bouncing forward.
"Well done, well done! You two dears just produced some respectable results!"
"Shall we all look together at why it failed?"
The twin professors spread magic circles in the air.
"The five dears who failed earlier all—"
"—failed because they drew their lines too tentatively."
Scoring a line through the summoning circle they'd worked so hard to create—cutting it in two with their own hands—took considerably more nerve and boldness than it looked.
Every other student had drawn the line too slowly, or hesitated, and failed.
"But the two dears who at least managed to imitate the Funeral Rite drew their lines boldly! However!"
The twin professors unfolded Simon's and Hector's magic circles side by side.
The lines were all dead straight.
"The problem is they were too bold!"
"You don't just slash a straight line across—you have to trace through the circle's internal mechanisms as you go! A gently curving S-shape!"
Simon nodded; Hector clicked his tongue.
Easy to say. In actual combat, that's not something you can just do on command.
The Head Assistant said, hands behind her back, "Then please prepare your next ghoul."
Once again all seven summoned their ghouls.
Everyone's face had gone pale, their expressions strained. Casting Funeral Rite required a strong connection of lingering thoughts with the summoned creature—and the sensation of that creature being hacked apart by an axe flowed straight back to the necromancer.
The mental toll was simply enormous.
Even the students watching winced and clicked their tongues.
"……Everyone's got at least nine live rounds left, so they can try nine times, technically."
"Question is whether their minds will hold up."
Even amid all this, Simon clenched his fist, resolve burning.
This was already his third turn.
The goal was to pass the exercise here, then enter the real test with a minimum of nine ghouls.
Let's do this.
The third attempt began. Once again, Simon kept the ghoul circling, evading attacks.
Everything was better than in the previous attempts.
He was reading the attack patterns now, so he could dodge the modified skeleton's strikes more boldly, and he could raise the ghoul's circulation rate and condition faster.
Now!
The moment he felt the timing arrive, Simon drew the line through the ghoul's circle without a flicker of hesitation.
KWAKWAKWA—!
A massive surge of jet-black erupted from the ghoul's body and it charged like a shell. The Head Assistant's eyes went wide.
A frontal assault?
No circling, no flanking—it came straight down the middle. The modified skeleton brought its two-handed axe down with all its might, and the ghoul's body streaked past in a trail of ink-black.
Crack!
A gasp rippled through the watching students. The axe-wielding skeleton's arm was hanging in the ghoul's mouth, bitten clean off.
"Whoa! So fast!"
"When did it even take the arm—!"
The ghoul spat the arm out with a ptoo and lowered its stance.
The modified skeleton drew its second weapon, a dagger, from its waist and swung—but the properly Funeraled ghoul was simply bashing the dagger aside with raw arm strength.
WAAAAH!
The students, engrossed in Simon's display, cheered. As if going around to the back was no longer even necessary, the ghoul vaulted onto the modified skeleton through sheer force and pinned it down.
Even having succeeded at Funeral Rite, why would he charge in head-on and hand me his weakness on a platter?
The Head Assistant bit her lip.
Time to teach him the price of arrogance.
Chwup! Tuk!
Adhesion force took hold of the modified skeleton's body, and the arm the ghoul had spat onto the ground snapped back onto its shoulder. With those two arms it seized the ghoul in a powerful grip.
Simon's circle is nearly a straight line again, not an S. In a few seconds, the Funeral Rite's duration will run out.
But—
Forget a few seconds; nearly a full minute passed, and the ghoul's strength hadn't faded at all.
Its eyes burned with bluish jet-black, and ink-dark energy rippled endlessly across its whole body.
What on earth is going on?
CRUNCH!!
The ghoul slammed its head into the modified skeleton's forehead.
The skull shattered completely, and the impact stomped hard on the skeleton's own summoning circle, damaging it.
Victory sealed, the ghoul threw its head back toward the sky and let out a ferocious howl.
The first success of the exercise had arrived.
The students cheered loudly in celebration. Hector, who had clung tenaciously only to lose his own turn heartbreakingly close, was pounding the floor with his fist.
"……Impressive."
The Head Assistant, clutching her forehead as the connection of lingering thoughts was forcibly severed, had no choice but to admit it.
"Simon Polentia, you pa—"
But—
His focus hadn't broken yet.
More than the exercise in front of him, more than having felled his enemy, Simon's pupils were trembling as he fixated on something else entirely.
What did you do?
"Assistant."
Then Simon, eyes glazed, opened his mouth.
"Look out."
The Head Assistant felt a chill race down her spine and threw up a jet-black shield. At that very instant—FWUMP!—a huge cloud of dust and earth erupted around the ghoul.
GGGGRRRMBLE—
"Haaaah."
Simon finally exhaled a long breath and checked the time.
One minute fifteen seconds.
He had measured the duration of the Funeral Rite.
"Hold on, Simon!"
"What did you just do?"
Professors Rune and Lyn rushed over. Simon looked at them and answered.
"I was trying to extend the Funeral Rite's duration."
"How?"
Simon explained without a hitch.
"The way a zombie casts Corpse Explosion—I drew the line while overloading the circle from the very start. Then I took the jet-black surging through the ghoul's whole body, recirculated it, and fed it back into the circle to maintain the state."
The assistants' eyes went round as saucers.
Even the students who hadn't fully grasped Simon's theory understood at once.
This was an extraordinarily dangerous thing he'd done. The twin professors shared the same thought.
"The idea is good, but—the risks far outweigh the benefits."
"Techniques that dangerous are banned from now on."
"Yes, sorry."
Regardless, Simon had safely passed, preserving a full nine ghouls for the main test.
Another student promptly filled his vacated spot.
"Simon! Great work!"
As Simon returned to his seat, Toto came hurrying over from nearby.
Simon immediately pulled a ghoul out of his subspace.
"Toto."
"What?"
"I—"
Simon's eyes turned grave.
At first, it had been nothing more than an experiment to lengthen the Funeral Rite's duration. But—
"I think I can make ghouls explode too."
"...Huh?"
Toto gave him that look again—the one reserved for a certified madman.