The Secret of the Headless Knight
The Summoning Department's training camp had begun at basecamp.
Given Kizen's infamous reputation, the moment the students heard the word "camp," suspicion was their first reaction. They half expected to be tossed a tent riddled with holes and told to figure out food, sleep, and even starting fires on their own before the professors vanished without a trace.
But—
"It's actually... kind of nice?"
Picture-perfect log cabins spread out among the snow-covered fir trees. Snow lay in soft drifts on the roofs, and warm smoke curled up from the chimneys. There was even a water pump, and spaces set aside for preparing meals.
"Look, a puppy!"
"It's so cute!"
A little white dog panted happily, wagging its tail, and the girls—led by Eshu—stampeded over to it.
The largest cabin at the center was bigger than most lecture halls at Kizen, and plenty of smaller ones stood alongside it, more than enough to house all fifty-two students comfortably. The place was so unexpectedly clean and cozy that warm, cheerful laughter spilled out everywhere—but some students still refused to let their guard down.
"Don't fall for it, you guys."
"We literally just saw a monster outside."
Then Aaron stopped walking and turned to face the students.
"Attention."
Everyone fell silent at once and looked at him.
"You've done well getting here. I understand the excitement, but we're not here on vacation. We're running behind schedule, so the special lecture begins now."
The Head Assistant, clutching the attendance register to her chest, stepped forward.
"Students, please proceed to the lecture hall! The rest of the assistants, assemble. Anyone assigned to barrier maintenance, move out immediately."
The students filed toward the largest building in the center. Simon's tenth squad was no different.
"You guys! Isn't the vibe here amazing? A camp in a place like this! It's the best!"
Eshu, unable to contain herself, bounced around the room, and Simon nodded with a smile.
"Yeah. Should be fun."
"Th-There's definitely a hidden mission somewhere, though."
Toto said, glancing warily around. Loraine stood with her eyes closed, wearing a troubled expression.
"What's wrong, Loraine?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Squad 10 stepped inside as well, and Eshu pressed her fur-gloved hands to both cheeks with a squeal.
"It's so warm! I love it!"
Heat from the fireplace already filled the room, driving away the deep winter chill. One after another, the students shed their thick coats and winter robes, took their seats, and chattered away.
Before long, Aaron and the assistants came in as well, deep in conversation about the camp—but the students in the front rows pricked up their ears, convinced some secret assignment was being discussed.
"How's the barrier holding up?"
"Fine, Professor. There are quite a few monsters roaming outside, but nothing we can't handle."
"Keep an eye on the numbers. If they multiply, cull them a little."
"Yes, sir."
Having given his orders, Aaron stepped up to the podium. The assistants carried in an enormous blackboard and hung it on the wall.
Sreeeak—
Apparently he'd been cold too, because Aaron shed his coat as well. The moment that magnificent winter coat came off, out came his usual short-sleeved shirt and baggy shorts. The students smothered their laughter.
Aaron picked up a piece of chalk and began to write, slow and deliberate, across the board.
The Dullahan Special Lecture
"First, to all the students of the Summoning Department—it's a pleasure to see you at this special lecture."
The students applauded and smiled back. A heartwarming atmosphere from the very start.
"Now, let's open with an easy question. Can anyone tell me the primary ingredients of a Dullahan?"
Whip!
Asseraz, ranked first in the year for notes, shot her hand up in a flash—but Fitzgerald, seated in front, beat her by a hair. Aaron called on Fitzgerald.
"Fitzgerald here. Ogre Lord, Abaddon, and Guardian."
"Correct."
Hmph. Fitzgerald smirked and pushed up his glasses as he sat back down.
"However, the most important ingredient is missing."
The glasses he'd been so smugly raising slid askew.
"There exists a material more powerful than the three you've listed. A Dullahan made from this material is the finest of its kind. Anyone know what it is?"
The lecture hall went quiet. Even the students who had studied ahead for the midterms had done nothing but drill the phrase 'Ogre Lord, Abaddon, Guardian' into their heads. Beyond that, they knew nothing.
"The finest ingredient for a Dullahan is—"
Aaron's voice cut through the silence.
"A human."
'?!'
The students turned to one another, murmuring in confusion. Eshu rubbed her shoulder with a stiff look on her face.
"As you all know, most summoning-type undead that necromancers use take 'natural undead' as their model. Zombies, skeletons, ghouls—all of them already exist as natural undead."
But. Aaron let the pause hang.
"A Dullahan has no natural form. It is an undead created directly by humans, for their own desires and their own gain. That is the Dullahan."
None of this had ever appeared in a textbook, so the students hung on Aaron's every word, their faces tight with focus.
Aaron beckoned to a student in the front row.
"Joseph. Tell me the single most defining feature of a Dullahan."
The student, never expecting to be called on, shot up from his seat in alarm.
"Joseph Varga, sir! Um, uh... the question..."
"The most defining feature of a Dullahan. I said."
Forty-one pairs of eyes converged on him.
It looked as though he hadn't studied, but Joseph's mind was churning desperately. Then something seemed to come to him, and he opened his mouth.
"The—the neck, sir! It has no neck!"
"Exactly."
Scritch. Tap. Tap.
Aaron began drawing something on the board.
"Three key characteristics of the Dullahan so far. It has no neck. A human is its primary material. It is an undead created by human hands. Now—any idea what the secret of the Dullahan might be?"
A hushed stillness settled over the room. Aaron wasn't much of an artist, but he captured the essentials clearly: two tall pillars, a blade suspended between them on ropes, and a wooden frame built to hold a face and two outstretched hands.
"That's..."
"No way."
It was a guillotine.
The students grimaced. Then, having mercilessly sketched in a headless corpse as well, Aaron set down his chalk.
"Stealing severed corpses like this one to study them—that is where the Dullahan began."
Long ago, there had been an age when knights and mages ruled the continent.
Necromancers, at the time nothing more than third-rate outcasts, were hunted and persecuted, driven deep into dark corners of the world to escape the witch hunts.
But the necromancers had no intention of living in misery forever. To fight the knights who held overwhelming numerical superiority, they threw themselves into research—again and again—on turning dead knights into undead.
It was not easy. No matter how powerful a knight's corpse they obtained, the undead they made could not preserve the strength and skill the knight had carried in life. Whether it was a common soldier or an aura-wielding knight, once reduced to a skeleton, they all amounted to roughly the same thing.
Just as necromancers were giving up on 'the research of making knights into undead' one by one, a single necromancer obsessed with the work refused to quit.
He studied knights and knights alone. When his supply of knight corpses ran dry, he went to execution grounds and black markets to acquire the bodies of beheaded knights.
It was an age of endless warfare, yet knights encased head to toe in heavy armor were notoriously hard to kill on the battlefield. Far more often they failed to flee because of their armor's weight and were taken prisoner, or fell victim to feuds and political scheming and were sent to the guillotine instead.
Beheaded knight corpses, on the other hand, were relatively easy to come by—and the necromancer studied how to turn those corpses into undead.
His colleagues laughed at him. In that era, it was common knowledge that a severed corpse was worthless, because a summoning circle was inscribed on the skull of every undead.
But he stood proud.
"Laugh at me all you like now. History will prove my research."
Five years after he began his research into knights—
The results started to come.
"His idea was this."
Aaron drew a simple head and a headless corpse on the board, then inscribed a summoning circle onto each of the two parts.
"The insight was to use two summoning circles—one for the body, one for the head."
A murmur of awe rippled through the students. Until now they had known the Dullahan only as "a really strong undead," and hearing the mechanics laid out in such detail was something entirely new. Their concentration hit its peak.
"But the result was nothing more than two helpless undead—a torso and a head that moved independently of each other. So the necromancer refined his research, over and over—"
Scritch—
"—and at last arrived at Gemini. What we commonly call the Rune of Linking—Gemini—had to be the main rune language."
The instant he said it, Asseraz already had her hand raised, waiting. Aaron smirked and called on her.
"Aseraz Mikel, sir! In the modern era, the Rune of Linking Gemini appears in large-scale communication magic and teleportation circles. Its role is to link two separate magic circles together."
"Well answered."
Asseraz sat down looking thoroughly pleased with herself, while Hector—whose hand had come up too late—pointedly kicked at a scrap of wood on the floor.
"Rather ironically, the first Dullahans were built using components from communication circles. Just as sending and receiving magic connects two mages, the head and the torso were connected in the same fashion."
Chalk in hand, Aaron drew lines binding the torso and the head together on the board.
"This is the most primitive form of the Dullahan. As time passed, the formulas and rune language were steadily refined, until we arrived at today's form: two summoning circles linked into one."
Aaron lowered his chalk and swept his gaze across the students.
"And so, born of a fool's stubbornness—all those beheaded knight corpses lying about, so we might as well use them—the Dullahan at last..."
Aaron's voice rang through the lecture hall, now sunk in deep silence.
"...ended the Age of Knights."
Excited gasps broke out all around the room.
"The Dullahan became the necromancers' supreme weapon against knights. It took three or four knights to face even one, and every knight who fell to a Dullahan was made into a Dullahan himself."
The idea that an undead could surpass the strength it held in life shattered every convention of the age.
"The fall of the Talhern Empire—once called invincible—is counted among history's defining events symbolizing the end of the Age of Knights. The Emperor sent an army of fifty thousand to Kizen, and that very army, turned wholesale into undead, wheeled around and attacked the Empire's own capital. That was the Rose Retreat. And at the very vanguard of the Rose Retreat marched a Dullahan."
The more belligerent boys burst into cheers.
"Even now, the Dullahan carries enormous weight in the world of necromancers. For a summoner to say they can wield a Dullahan is proof, plain and simple, that they are a first-rate summoner."
This time cheers rose from the back rows too. The heat in the lecture hall climbed and climbed.
"That opportunity now falls to you. Over the course of this special lecture, I expect every one of you to complete a Dullahan of your own. That is all."
WHOOOOAAA!
At last, an eruption of cheers burst from the fired-up students.
With motivation running at a perfect boil and the lecture off to a flawless start, Aaron allowed himself a small smile and turned his back to them.
"Everyone outside. Time for a Dullahan demonstration."