The Headless Knight
“Finally, we get to see one.”
“I'm so nervous!”
The Summoning Department students threw on their coats and robes with faces full of excitement and filed out of the lecture hall.
A Dullahan.
No one carried more anticipation than Simon. Doing his best to ignore the weight of that expectant gaze, Aaron straightened his coat and spoke.
“Looks like everyone's here. Let's begin.”
With a simple gesture, he opened a subspace. A massive leg emerged from within and stamped down into the snow.
Whooaaa—!
Had he built an undead out of a giant? The Dullahan Aaron wielded was enormous, its body sheathed in jet-black armor, a greatsword strapped across its back.
Where a neck should have been there was nothing but empty air, dark energy rippling across the flat cross-section.
It strode forward, swinging its huge arms with practiced ease, and the students who had rushed ahead for a closer look scrambled backward in fright.
“Gwaaah!”
“Kyaaaa!”
Shrieks of terror rang out from all around. The thing in its hand was the Dullahan's own head.
Holding its head by the hair and swinging it around to survey the surroundings, the undead exuded a characteristic, bone-chilling menace that left several students green around the gills.
“Whoa! Whoa! That's insanely cool!”
“So we get to use one of those now?”
Of course, some students were purely burning with a necromancer's fascination and curiosity. Among them was Eshu, so worked up that she was hopping from place to place.
“Eshu.”
Simon grabbed the wrist she'd left sticking out like a sore thumb and pulled her back.
“Dangerous.”
Whoosh!
The head-carrying Dullahan's arm swung down right in front of Eshu's nose. She had nearly been clipped.
Her eyes went wide with shock—then the corners of her mouth curled up as she let out an appreciative ooooh~.
“……What's 'ooooh' supposed to mean?”
“Hehe, nothing, nothing~ Thanks, thanks!”
Thud! Thud!
Having completed a full circuit of the area, the Dullahan returned to stand before Aaron.
There was no mistaking it—this was an undead on a completely different tier from the zombies, ghouls, and skeletons they'd seen so far.
“The Dullahan holds several combat advantages.”
Aaron began his explanation. At the same time, the Dullahan raised the arm holding its own head, securing its line of sight.
“It doesn't rely on sight, given that the head is detached. It has exceptional durability. It can wield a knight's aura. But the thing I want to explain today is—”
Shring!
The Dullahan stared straight ahead and drew the greatsword from its back. Aaron painted a magic circle and attached it to the undead's back.
“Its transcendent strength and physical capability.”
Something was about to begin.
While the assistants pulled the students back, they also produced skeletons designated as targets. The Dullahan immediately kicked off the ground and leapt.
FWOOSH!
The enormous frame seemed to soar across the sky, and the moment it landed, it swung its sword.
BOOOOOM!
At the crisp, devastating sword strike, the students' hair all blew straight up toward the sky.
The strength and speed were hard to believe coming from such a massive frame. Every time it cut through a skeleton, the creature shattered from crown to toe.
Crack!
When it finally split the target boulder cleanly in two, a great cheer erupted from the crowd.
Immense power was a given, and its swordsmanship as a knight was utterly without waste.
“Halt.”
At Aaron's command, the Dullahan froze. The mere wind pressure from its movements had swept away all the piled snow around it, leaving the ground stark white.
“Hector Moore.”
Hector, who had been watching with his arms crossed and an arrogant air, answered at once with respectful formality when his name was called.
“Yes, Professor.”
“What do you think was the source of the power and speed that Dullahan just displayed?”
Aaron's indiscriminate questioning—the thing students feared most.
Yet Hector answered without a flicker of hesitation.
“Dark Aura.”
Aura was a technique of knights who implanted mana into their bodies. Dark Aura, then, was naturally the concept of an aura forged not from mana but from jet-black.
“A textbook answer—but wrong. This Dullahan didn't use aura just now.”
Hector wrinkled his nose. A reaction of disappointment.
“Toto Amori.”
“Yes? Ah, y-yes yes yes! Toto Amori here! Th-the, uh…… the power of a superior physique……!”
“Wrong.”
This time Aaron's gaze shifted to Toto's neighbor.
“Simon Polentia.”
“…….”
Simon thought for a moment, then spoke.
“Mana.”
Confused head-tilting broke out here and there. Hector's faction even snickered openly.
“Interesting. And why do you think the source of an undead's power is mana?”
“Just now.”
Simon stretched out his hand and pointed at the Dullahan. The Dullahan, in turn, moved its held-up head to look at him.
“I saw the surrounding mana being sucked into it.”
Only then did a few other students seem to catch on as well, and a murmur spread through the ranks.
“Oh, now that you mention it……”
“I think the mana concentration around us has dropped without anyone noticing……”
Aaron nodded slowly.
“Correct.”
Ohh—!
Exclamations burst out around them.
Eshu whooped, 'That's our Student Council President!' while pounding his shoulders, and Hector clicked his tongue in irritation.
“The Dullahan is commonly called a mana-eating monster. Just as a necromancer inhales mana with each breath and converts it to jet-black through the core, the Dullahan draws in the ambient mana wholesale, converts it to jet-black, and makes it its own strength.”
Aaron spread a magic circle of pure mana in front of the Dullahan's chest. The moment he did, the circle's framework didn't survive even one second before collapsing and being sucked toward the undead.
“Because that mana absorption exceeds all imagination, a mage can neutralize a Dullahan simply by getting close. It's also useful against priests, who convert ambient mana into divinity. Everyone, give it a try.”
The students rushed forward one after another and spread their mana circles, and the Dullahan gulped them all down. The farther away they stood, the longer their circles held—and jet-black circles, naturally, were unaffected.
Truly, the undead that remained mainstays even in the modern era were different in some fundamental way.
Aaron continued his explanation, tracing the Dullahan's body with his hand. This Dullahan alone had a total of eleven apertures for drinking in mana.
“Now, back to the main topic. Do you remember 'Reno's Golden Line,' the ghoul funerary technique you learned in Summoning Funerary Studies?”
“Yes, sir!”
“A ghoul sacrifices its summoning circle in exchange for spreading that explosive jet-black through its whole body, gaining tremendous power for a minute or two. Think of the Dullahan's explosive strength as working on a similar principle.”
An undead berserker that devours the surrounding mana indiscriminately, then burns the jet-black it produces as fuel to fight like a madman.
That was exactly what a Dullahan was.
“Because of these traits, a Dullahan is generally deployed for a short, brutal fifteen to twenty minutes straight after being pulled from subspace. In siege warfare it's used to smash gates, and beyond that it serves as the key card that turns the tide of battle—pursuit and annihilation, securing retreat routes, crushing encirclements. Of course, there are Dullahans built to fight for two or three hours, but in those cases the power they unleash in a given instant is reduced.”
Asseraz raised a hand.
“Asseraz Mikel here! Then shouldn't the Dullahan have an organ equivalent to a necromancer's core?”
“It should. For the record, in short-term mana conversion rate alone, the Dullahan's jet-black organ surpasses a necromancer's core.”
The students murmured among themselves.
“There are trade-offs, of course. The Dullahan's jet-black organ is specialized purely in releasing jet-black, and after about twenty minutes of use, its efficiency degrades sharply. Keep that in mind.”
Just then, the assistants approached and set something down on the table in front of Aaron.
“And this is the Dullahan's core.”
Ba-dump… ba-dump…
It was a massive, fleshy organ that looked like a hunk of living tissue, a magic circle drawn across its surface.
“A Dullahan is the engine that drives enormous hardware—the living organ that converts mana into jet-black. A Dullahan requires two summoning circles, and one of them is drawn on top of this organ.”
As Simon stepped closer to examine the circle, Aaron waved a hand and the circle turned translucent.
“I intend to teach it in class anyway, so no need to rush. We'll now begin a simple performance evaluation.”
“?!”
At the words performance evaluation, tension flooded the students' faces.
“I will provide each of you with the organ of a Bigfoot—a monster native to this region—capable of substituting for a Dullahan's jet-black organ. Using everything you've learned so far, construct a magic circle on the Bigfoot organ. Make it as close as possible to the Dullahan's jet-black organ.”
While the students wavered, Aaron continued calmly.
“There's no need to worry too much. This is a free-creation exercise, conducted before you learn the codified knowledge in your textbooks. Failure costs you no points and carries no penalty. However, students who produce results will receive additional credit.”
The assistants bustled about, setting up desks and chairs outdoors. Aaron checked his wristwatch.
“Then—prepare yourselves immediately.”
The students all took their seats at the outdoor desks. On each desk sat a single broad organ of living tissue.
As if some dark-magic apparatus had already been fitted to it, the organ was busily drinking in the surrounding mana. But it couldn't produce jet-black with it—the energy simply hissed out through the exhaust vent below.
Making that jet-black actually discharge was the goal of this performance evaluation.
“I'll provide the basic setup.”
The assistants laid boards with half-drawn magic circles onto the students' desks.
“If there are materials you want to use, take whatever you like from the side.”
Beside the practice grounds stood shelves stocked with all manner of materials. Aaron clapped his hands.
“Begin.”
The students started drawing their magic circles all at once. Each of them had been given exactly one living organ—one slip, and it was over.
“……This assignment is way too hard.”
“How are we supposed to build something we haven't even been taught yet?”
Most of the students were feeling lost. A few vented their frustration under their breath.
“If we could just whip up Dullahans on our own, what would be the point of classes or professors?”
“You said it.”
As students gave up one after another and began staring blankly into space, three figures moved without a moment's hesitation.
Hector, Asseraz, and Fitzgerald.
“A solo sprint by the ones whose families stuffed them with advance study, huh.”
“Ugh, forget it. I'm out.”
While the grumbling students threw down their pens and glazed over, there were others who knew nothing yet but watched the three with shining eyes.
Hector grabbed the opal.
Asseraz too, same thing!
Are opals essential?
Students bolted from their seats and grabbed the same materials the three had taken.
A fierce game of watching and counter-watching began, and scuffles broke out between students scrambling to secure materials.
“Hey, hey, no fighting!”
“There's plenty of material for everyone!”
While the assistants struggled to keep order, Simon—ranked first overall—still stood silently in place with his arms crossed.
“Simon! Aren't you starting?”
Toto asked, arms laden with an armful of opals and other materials.
“In case the supplies run out, I figured I'd grab them first just in——”
“Why would Professor Aaron…”
Simon's expression had gone serious.
“…have us build a Dullahan's jet-black organ he hasn't taught us yet?”
“Uh, huh? Beats me.”
Simon was recalling the scenes and words from Aaron's first lecture in second-year Summoning.
“To craft a Skeleton Knight, you must acquire the Rune of Remembrance and the modifiers built upon it. The Rune of Remembrance you learn at this stage also becomes a core ingredient of the ghoul, the higher-order evolution of the zombie.”
“To create a ghoul, you must master the mutation formula that alters a corpse and the decay-mutation formula. Then, by combining the ghoul's decay-mutation formula with the Rune of Remembrance you learned from the Skeleton Knight, you can create the magical undead known as the Devourer.”
Aaron had written out the countless formulas and rune-tongues for the undead they would learn that semester across the blackboard. Then he had gathered every one of those lines together, drawn them into a single strand, and collected them at the very center.
“When you have built up all of these fundamentals—only then will you be able to create the Tier-3 undead, the headless knight: the Dullahan.”
“……Toto.”
Simon snapped out of the memory with a wide grin and finally picked up his quill.
“The truth is, we might already know the way.”