The Answer Within
After the weekend and two days of major-subject classes, the midterm exams had finally begun.
Simon, for his part, had spent the time deliberately pushing all thoughts of Manus from his mind and devoting himself to his written studies.
"Don't be nervous. Just perform as well as you've prepared to."
Aaron said this as he rested a hand on each student's desk in turn, face-down exam papers waiting before them.
"Cheating results in an automatic zero. I won't tell you not to do it — but if you can pull it off, go right ahead."
Befitting the Summoning professor, Aaron's method of catching cheaters was unique. Dragonfly-like summons studded with dozens of eyes drifted lazily through the air around him.
He checked the clock and spoke.
"Begin."
It was a grueling ordeal.
The major-subject exams ran a full four hours or more — a merciless battle of concentration, where even the call of nature had to be endured. Simon bent over the weighty paper and the black ink scrawled across it, working through each problem one by one.
Every professor had their own peculiar way of policing the midterms, and watching them in action was a small amusement in itself.
The Summoning Department professors brought out summons that supplemented sight and hearing. Jane calculated the very dimensions of the lecture hall and arranged her teaching assistants along the back and sides without a single gap. Hong Peng climbed up onto the lectern and loomed over the students like a hawk pressing them to the ground.
"Pardon me for a moment, everyone."
Bahil placed a curse on the 'space' of the lecture hall itself. Like a scene torn from a horror novel, the students trembled and shook through their exams inside a classroom gone blood-red.
It was all the more terrifying because no one knew how the curse worked. None of them had any intention of cheating, but if the curse were to misfire — that would be a catastrophe.
"Hmm."
Having delegated anti-cheating duty entirely to his own curse, Bahil spent the exam ostentatiously 'patrolling' the room while diligently reading over Simon's answer sheet.
'Th-this is way too much pressure!'
Simon, the student in question, felt like crying. During the essay questions especially, whenever he put pen to paper, Bahil would lean in so close that Simon could feel his excited breathing at the back of his neck.
— Magnificent! Magnificent! Magnificent! Magnificent!
Being watched like that from behind left Simon's scalp prickling.
At last, the sight of an exam proctor so thoroughly forgetting his duties proved too much, and the head teaching assistant Chehekl smacked him on the back, subdued him, and hauled him away.
And the hardest exam of all, unexpectedly, was Royalty Studies — held on the very last day.
— Baldwin Kingdom, northern-southern table setting. Select every item in which the angle of the plates and silverware is incorrect.
— Select the item in which the order of the multi-course meal is wrong. Note: the season is summer, and the dress code is black.
'What does the dress code have to do with the order of a course meal?!'
The etiquette of Royalty Studies felt like some malignant prank invented by the nobility. It seemed absurd that a pleasant meal should demand this much painstaking attention.
The easiest exam, on the other hand, was the one held right after it.
"...What are you doing?"
Faran, the professor of Holy Defense Studies, asked with a look of utter bewilderment.
"Ah."
Simon, who had flipped his paper face-down and gone prone a mere five minutes into the exam, sat up.
"Finished it."
Disgusted glares shot at him from all around, but he had no leisure to care about anyone else's eyes. Exhaustion had piled up on him, and he simply flopped back down and closed his eyes.
One hour later, a clear bell rang out.
"It's over!"
"We're free!"
The students tossed their exam papers into the air and cheered. Their faces were gaunt and the shadows under their eyes deep, but every single one of them looked utterly euphoric.
Yet Simon couldn't afford to celebrate just yet.
One more test — every bit as important as the midterms — still lay ahead of him.
'Let's hurry back.'
He had gone all-in on the midterm exams. Now it was time to return to the Manus Dullahan.
Two days remained.
Simon headed not for the Mutant Club, but for Pier's Ruins, where the legion's Ancient Undead resided.
— Something that horrifying needs to be scrapped, right now!
The truth was that when Benya had learned Simon had been injured while crafting the Manus Dullahan, she'd flown into a fury and demanded that Manus be decommissioned on the spot. But Simon had shaken his head.
— The injury was entirely my own mistake. And I don't think it's time to abandon the research yet.
Benya had worried, but ownership of Manus belonged to Simon, so she hadn't pressed him further. Since keeping him locked in the club basement was dangerous with the first-years around, Simon had decided to move Manus somewhere secure — the ruins.
[Khehehe! There you are, Boy!]
[You've returned, Young Master.]
[Commanderrrr~]
Simon's Ancient Undead.
Pier, Akemus, and Erzebet greeted him warmly. Herseba, the lich staff floating in midair, waggled her body from side to side in greeting as well.
"Everyone been keeping well?"
Simon exchanged greetings as he made his way forward, and there on the altar of the ruins he saw Manus's skull, resting in place.
"Nothing strange happened with Manus while I was at my exams?"
[Khehehehe! No. He stayed quiet as a grave.]
Simon sank down onto the spot and began pulling out his Dullahan crafting materials.
Erzebet approached him, worry written across her face.
[Are you quite certain you should be at work so soon after your examinations, Lord Commander? Surely today you ought to rest.]
"No."
Simon spoke with grave seriousness as he took out his working tools.
"It's already too late for that. From here on, it's do or die — I have to show results."
Simon drew a zombie out of his subspace.
"Want to come out too, Prince?"
He spoke to the gray ring on his left hand, then brought it into contact with the zombie's body. Crack! Black lightning flashed down onto the zombie, and its form shifted into Prince.
[Hahahaha!]
The moment he appeared, Prince thrust out a hand and pointed straight at Manus.
[Serves you right, Manus! How's it feel to be nothing but a head?]
Prince and Manus had once fought over dominion of Deathland. Simon shook his head slowly.
"Manus's consciousness flew away ages ago."
Oblivious or uncaring, Prince carried on teasing Manus without pause.
Simon let out a small chuckle and began hauling materials out of his subspace.
'Alright. Let's start over, slow and steady.'
Simon had managed to craft a Dullahan from Abaddon.
But that alone wouldn't let him beat Hector or Asseraz — much less the other students who had secured a Guardian. Somehow, he had to complete the Manus Dullahan.
'Still, the exam period gave me time to get my thoughts in order.'
The Dullahan creation process, condensed to its absolute simplest, went as follows.
1) Draw two summoning circles — one on the head, one on the torso.
2) Link the two summoning circles with the Rune of Linking.
With this done, the two parts were undeniably separated, yet the undead's head would control the torso through the Rune of Linking.
At first glance, the method looked hopelessly inefficient — but there was a reason behind every step of it.
'...The Dullahan's explosive strength and output.'
When a Dullahan drank in vast quantities of mana and sent its Jet-Black Engine raging, flooding jet-black mana through the entire construct, an enormous load bore down on the body.
If a summoning circle existed inside that body, the rampaging jet-black would tear it apart in under a minute.
Just like a ghoul that disintegrates after Reno's Golden Line is used, a Dullahan built that way would have been a use-once-and-discard undead.
But the modern Dullahan stores its vital summoning circle inside the 'head'. That is what made it possible to send the body into full rampage without any risk of damage.
'Amazing, no matter how many times I think about it.'
The creator of the very first Dullahan had taken the flaw of a severed neck and transmuted it into a strength.
That much had been covered in the Summoning professors' special lectures.
However, the Rune of Linking used in Dullahan creation only worked, by its very nature, when the head and body came from the same undead.
This was precisely where Simon had found himself stuck, unable to break through.
"Another failure."
Simon flopped down flat over the dismal results from his practice materials, and Pier cackled — Khehehe! — as he lumbered over.
[How about you simply abandon that 'Rune of Linking' thing altogether?]
"I'm sorry?"
Pier plopped down beside Simon.
[I know little of human black magic, granted, but that rune-script of yours cannot link two separate beings.]
"But—"
Simon crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
"That's the very heart of the Dullahan. Without the Rune of Linking and its core formulas, you couldn't even call it a 'Dullahan' in the first place."
He'd even considered assembling Manus as a skeleton instead — but fitting Manus's head onto another skeleton's body would never let him unleash its true power.
Above all, the promise he'd made to Aaron in exchange for learning the Bone Dragon was this: to craft the finest 'Dullahan' among his peers.
The Bone Dragon — the second-years' ultimate goal — was something he absolutely could not give up.
[Might I offer a word, Young Master?]
At that, Akemus cut in.
[To the undead, the body they bore in life holds great meaning. It is exceedingly rare for a body from one's living days to be driven by a consciousness other than its own. Of course, if there were a single exception—]
"If there is?"
[Chimeras. And among them, the Abomination.]
Something unusual flickered in Akemus's eyes.
[As an undead myself, I hardly regard such things favorably — but do Abominations not move as a jumble of different flesh, all woven together?]
The moment he heard those words, Simon shot to his feet.
"You're asking whether one undead's consciousness can drive another undead's body?"
Simon had come to Grelion's laboratory — the cave so remote that one needed to ride that rickety minecart, the very one he'd visited on the first day of Summoning Materials class.
The heart of the cave was thick with a hazy humidity, and the air reeked of sweat.
"Hoo. Hoo."
In the middle of the cavern, Grelion was lifting a barbell and lowering it, over and over. Rocks of equal size hung from both ends of the iron bar.
'...How does a human lift that?'
Simon watched the spectacle, mouth agape.
Thud!
Only when Grelion set the barbell down did he finally come over. Wiping the sweat from his face with the towel around his neck, he looked — undeniably — leaner than before.
He'd been like this ever since the battle in the Frigod Autonomous Region, apparently a backlash from the technique that had chimera-ized his entire body.
"Why the sudden interest in that?"
Simon quickly stepped aside.
Grelion hadn't been coming toward him at all — he'd merely been reaching for another piece of equipment. This time he seized a great lever-like contraption connected to the cave wall with both hands and began squeezing it open and shut, again and again.
Groooan!
Gruh-GRRRRUMBLE!
Each time, the entire cave shuddered as though wailing.
"I'd say students ought to be focusing on their Dullahan work about now."
Simon smiled awkwardly and spoke up.
"The thing is..."
He laid out the whole story honestly for Grelion. The Guardian he currently possessed was body only, and he wanted to make that Guardian's body move using another undead's head.
When he finished, Grelion burst into roaring laughter.
"What a fascinating idea! Most people who dream something like that up dismiss it as a fantasy and leave it at that — but you came all the way here, in dead earnest, to ask for help! That alone is delightful!"
Thud!
He dropped the lever and came closer.
"Just like Aaron said."
"Sir?"
"No, never mind. Nothing. To answer your question: can one undead's consciousness link with another being's body? Under certain conditions, yes — it is possible."
He pulled a stack of books from his subspace.
"You came here thinking of the Abomination, I'd wager."
...How did he know?
Professors really are on another level, Simon thought, and nodded obediently.
"First, the rune-script an Abomination uses looks like this."
The moment Simon saw it, his eyes went wide.
'It's — it's hard.'
Difficult, yes — and the entire system was different from the rune-script Simon himself used.
"And here's the thing. An Abomination looks like a jumbled mess of assorted flesh, but in truth it's processed through chimera technology so that multiple bodies operate as a single body. That's an entirely different matter from driving two separate bodies."
"...Ah."
Thud!
Grelion slammed his fist against the cave wall.
"I'm going to ask you something, Simon Polentia."
"Yes! Ask me anything."
"Your concept is unquestionably revolutionary."
Grelion's mouth curled upward at the corner.
"So why isn't your method the least bit revolutionary?"
"...!"
"Why do you keep reaching for the existing knowledge of summoning, and why do you insist on confining yourself to the rune-script that already exists?"
Grelion raised one massive arm.
"I call your idea a delusion. But you are seriously trying to make that delusion real. Why? Simply because it would be nice if it worked? Because it would look cool? Because it would be impressive if you pulled it off? None of the above."
His fingertip came to a stop in front of Simon's forehead.
"It's because you truly believe you can do it."
"..."
"The answer is already inside your head. Tell me honestly — can you say, with conviction, that you are using every single means at your disposal to build that delusional Dullahan?"
It felt like taking a hammer to the back of the skull.
Suddenly his heart was pounding, hard and fast.
He didn't think he'd been handed anything that important, and yet an ember kindled in his chest all the same.
"...Thank you!"
At last a smile spread across Simon's face.
"I — I think I can do it now."
Grelion smiled as he watched Simon's retreating back.
— If Simon ever comes to you for help with his Dullahan, don't lecture him on technique. Point his direction instead.
'...Aaron was right about his own disciple. The diagnosis was spot on.'
And so the days slipped by.
At last, the day of the Single Undead Operation performance evaluation had arrived.