A Crossroads Called Mistake
After all the gossip and grumbling, the Dark Festival had finally drawn to a close, and a fresh, quiet routine returned once more.
The professors came back from their vacations and, as if they'd been waiting for this very moment, dropped a bombshell of assignments on their students, driving the class pace forward at a merciless clip.
The students, who had assumed they'd finally get to catch their breath now that the festival was over, found themselves desperately clinging to their sanity under a workload that made the festival look like a nap.
The Summoning Department professors who had returned were especially fired up. It was all well and good that their students' second-place finish had restored the faculty's honor — but it only poured fuel on the assignment fire.
Grelion, who taught Summoning Materials Studies, was no exception.
"Begin!"
UUURRRRR!
This was Grelion's Cave, the very place Simon had used for a while as the hideout of the 'Ever Kire Countermeasures Team.'
But today, the Summoning Department students were charging out of it in their groups, snatching up materials as eagerly as shoppers sweeping the shelves of a discount store.
From Simon's Group 10, Loraine and Toto stepped forward.
"Ready, Eshu?"
Simon asked, pulling on his work gloves.
"Just leave it to me! President — I mean, Group Leader!"
Eshu, assigned as his assistant, thrust her arm into the air and cheered. The dolls around her mimicked their mistress, raising their adorable little hands in solidarity.
This Summoning Materials practical evaluation was Building a Skeleton Chimera.
The materials were skeletons treated with the White-Peacock process.
This 'White-Peacock Treatment' was a very special chimera-crafting method: soak an undead's bones in the special solution of a monster called the White Peacock, and the bones turn a pale sky-blue.
Bones that had undergone this process grew weaker in durability — but in exchange, they could be joined to the bones of entirely different kinds of skeletons and move as one body, without any serious side effects.
To give an example: you could attach a flying monster's wing bones to a land monster's bones and they would bond with reasonable compatibility. Combinations that would normally be impossible to join became possible with a White-Peacock-treated skeleton chimera.
"Remember! You must attach the bones of at least two different kinds of undead!"
Grelion bellowed as he prowled between the students. Apparently he'd done nothing but work out all vacation, because he was properly bulked up.
"Recall the formulas you've learned! Think of the combination of skeletons that will produce the greatest synergy!"
"Yes, sir!"
On the materials shelves, all manner of White-Peacock-treated bones stood at the ready.
It started with the bones of common monsters — orcs, ratmen, gnolls — and went all the way up to harpy-type bones that could ride the sky, and the bones of aquatic monsters that could swim the seas.
Pick whatever suited your taste, and make it your material.
And Simon's Group 10 had already finished debating and settled on exactly what kind of chimera they would build.
"Simon! Catch!"
With Loraine's shout, a huge clump of bones came whistling through the air. Simon caught it safely and set it down on the work table.
The most basic step first.
Simon picked up a carving knife. These bones had been steeped in the White-Peacock solution for a long time, and as they were, they were far too heavy to make an undead from.
It was best to shave off the thick, crusty residue of the solution clinging to the bones.
Scrape — scrape —
The same sound echoed from the tables around him. Simon's team and every other crafting team, Eshu included, had all started on the same task.
It was the most labor-intensive work, and the part that took the longest.
"Eshu, shave the joint areas especially thin — just thin enough that the white of the bone barely peeks through."
"Okay!"
Simon handed that portion of the work off to his assistant and moved on to assembly.
Chak! Chak!
With every flashy movement of his hands, the bones found their places. He built up the spinal line as if stacking a tower, then — apparently dissatisfied — scattered it and rebuilt the whole thing from start to finish.
Eshu's eyes went wide as she watched.
Wow, he is genuinely insane at skeleton assembly.
He wasn't even looking at the blueprints. Armed purely with the knowledge and instinct in his head, he was fitting the bones together freely, as easily as breathing.
"Good."
Simon finished the upper-body assembly in one pass and turned his head.
"Eshu, the Dark Vessel?"
"Right here!"
Eshu, still at her own work, dispatched the dolls in her stead. The dolls heaved and hauled together, carrying the Dark Vessel over.
Now it was time to thread the thick vessel through the gaps between the bones. Like the wiring of a machine, this vessel would carry the Jet-Black, serving as the channel that delivered it to every part of the skeleton.
Once the vessel was firmly anchored, he breathed Jet-Black into the joints and worked through the linkage step by step. The upper body of the undead was rapidly coming together.
"Simon! Is the base about this good?"
Toto and Loraine, the materials team, had come back and were preparing the magic circle. Simon looked over the circle the two of them had drawn together and let out a whistle of admiration.
"That's seriously well done. Keep it up."
"Yeah!"
Of all their classes, Toto in particular had the most talent for chimeras.
Where other undead had rigid, difficult summoning formulas, chimeras let him deviate freely to suit his tastes rather than following a fixed procedure — and that seemed to be exactly what he loved.
So it went, each part of the construct completed one after another — and then it happened.
"I-I'm sorry, guys!"
Disaster struck.
While Eshu's dolls were carrying a batch of treated bones, they collided with other students rushing back and forth and dropped them.
"There's a crack in the hind leg bone."
White-Peacock-treated bones were extremely vulnerable to outside impact until their natural drying was complete.
"Simon! I don't think there are any left!"
Toto hurriedly checked the materials line and reported that no replacements remained.
So we have to make this work somehow.
Simon gazed at the ruined section, lost in thought for a moment.
"Lucky it was the hind leg that got damaged. Let's change direction."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"We increase the Scorpion's share."
Group 10 had planned to combine the bones of two monsters: a Scorpion and a Bleto.
The Bleto was a four-legged monster that buried itself in the dirt and ambushed its prey.
The Bleto was fast, but its teeth and claws were weak.
The Scorpion, meanwhile, could maneuver its long tail freely, snatching monsters up with great efficiency — but it was slow to move.
So they'd thought: what if we combined the two?
The Bleto also had a sharp barb at the tip of its tail, and its primary hunting method was to impale prey on that sting. Group 10's idea was that, given the Scorpion's long tail, it would handle the weapon even better.
But with the leg bones ruined, they'd have to give up on speed.
In that case—
"Instead of mobility, we reinforce something else."
With all the work finished, the evaluations began.
The group that earned the highest score was Asseraz's Group 8, which had attached Jet-Black feathers to its wing bones to enable high-speed flight.
And then there was the finest chimera maker in Kizen's second year — Fitzgerald's Group 11, which had blended four different types of undead. Grelion, finishing his checkmarks on the clipboard, nodded with satisfaction.
Simon, who had finished his work a little later, waited anxiously for his group's turn alongside the rest of Group 10.
"Ugh, this is so annoying!"
One of the girls complained as she plucked wheat stalks from her thigh.
"How does wheat grow in a cave?"
Simon winced.
Sure enough, off in the distance, the teaching assistants could be seen sighing heavily as they cut the wheat down with sickles.
"We pull and we pull, and it never ends."
"We asked Professor Byeolya for a herbicide. Spraying it should help a little."
They had cleaned up after themselves, but the wheat's survival instincts were simply too strong, and stalks still lingered. Simon offered them a silent apology.
"Next group. Step forward."
At last, Group 10's turn. Simon and Loraine came forward, followed by Toto and Eshu.
"We will now begin our presentation."
Simon said.
"Our group combined a Scorpion and a Bleto to build our chimera."
The watching students craned their necks. A flat-bodied monster stood on four legs, planted on the ground.
Two-thirds of the upper body was Scorpion; only the head and front legs were Bleto. The tail held the tail bones of two Scorpions and was considerably long, but one look told you mobility was out of the question.
Grelion spoke up.
"According to the proposal you submitted, you planned to mount a Scorpion's tail on a Bleto's body. Why the change?"
The standard move here was to explain the Scorpion's merits, then describe all the various reasons the group had shifted its direction—
"There was a mistake during the work."
Simon answered honestly.
"The hind leg bones were damaged mid-process, so we had no choice but to rule out preserving mobility. However—"
Simon extended his hand and pointed at the undead.
"Thanks to that, we're confident we produced something better."
Grelion stroked his chin, and this time the Head Assistant spoke.
"Simon. For all your talk of a better result, this creation's mobility appears markedly poor. It seems to me there was no real need to blend in a Bleto at all — a construct made from Scorpion bones alone would have performed better."
The other students nodded in agreement, and Simon smiled faintly.
"I'll keep it short and simply show you!"
Grelion's Cave was already equipped with all manner of stage sets, including a water tank for aquatic-type undead.
Simon moved the undead to the sandy-floor set and gave it a command through intent.
"Hide."
FWOOSH-BOOM!
The chimera dug into the earth with its front limbs. In an instant, its entire body vanished beneath the ground, lying in wait.
"Please consider this our prey."
The moment Loraine set the target down on the floor, a SHWAAK! split the air and a tail bone came flying up out of the ground, skewering the dead center of the target.
Ohhh!
Gasps of admiration rose from every corner.
Watching the long tail bone quiver beneath the dirt, Grelion grinned from ear to ear.
"I see — you shifted the concept to an ambush-type summon."
This time Loraine tossed a ball into the air, and the tail bone struck the target with perfect accuracy. Both its power and its speed were superb.
Then Asseraz raised his hand and stepped forward.
"I have a question for Group 10."
At Kizen, free discussion and questions between students were permitted during evaluations.
"A Scorpion alone is more than enough to move a tail bone. I don't see why the Bleto was necessary at all. Was the Bleto merely there to dig quickly with its front legs? Or was it simply to meet the formal requirement that the practical evaluation use two types of undead?"
It was a thoroughly aggressive question, openly laced with the intent to cut him down.
Eshu's face crumpled and she started to step forward, but Simon blocked her and answered with perfect calm.
"Questioner."
"Yes."
"Your understanding of the materials is insufficient."
Ooooh~
The spectators whistled from all around, thoroughly entertained, and Asseraz's eyebrows twitched.
"Do you know how a Scorpion hunts?"
"What does that have to do with crafting an undead chimera—"
"A Scorpion's tail is covered in a thick, tough shell, and its primary prey — the small desert monsters — can be hunted simply by bludgeoning them with that tail. More importantly—"
Simon raised Jet-Black to his fingertips, letting it dangle like drops of water.
"A living Scorpion has venom, doesn't it. So a Scorpion's hunting method amounts to either nicking its prey with the tail to inject venom, or knocking a small monster out with brute force — bludgeoning it. But what happens after it becomes an undead? All that's left is bone. No venom, no sturdy flesh or strength. The living Scorpion's tail-swinging method of hunting simply doesn't apply."
Asseraz had made the error of assuming that a monster's hunting method would remain identical before and after it became undead.
With the momentum in hand, Simon took a step forward.
"That's why we used a Bleto for the skull — and the hunting intent is the Bleto's as well. Even in life, a Bleto succeeded in a hunt only by precisely piercing a monster's nape with the barb on its tail, and that instinct remains. Give it a long tail, and it threads the target like a fish that's finally found water."
The students turned their eyes toward Grelion.
Grelion nodded.
"Simon is right. An undead's hunting method is strongly shaped by its life."
With even Grelion's endorsement, Asseraz bit his lip in disappointment and withdrew.
A flurry of other questions followed, but Group 10 parried them all with ease.
"That's enough."
Grelion rose from his seat.
"A wonderfully practical undead! But more than anything, what impressed me most was this—"
He looked around at the students as he spoke.
"You admitted your mistake honestly."
The room went quiet.
"Necromancers have an obsession with mistakes. An error in a magic circle brings an explosion and a safety accident. Fit a bone into a summon wrong, and you get a construct that's off-kilter somewhere. The professors are strict about mistakes too. But!"
His voice swelled.
"Chimera crafting is different. Make mistakes. Make more of them. They say the world's most famous dessert was born because someone forgot to add flour to a cake, and that a musician fumbled a few notes and produced something even better."
He swept his massive arm through the air.
"Mistakes are fine — but never give up because of one! A mistake isn't a wrong; it's a crossroads onto a new path. Accept it with a big, easy laugh!"
"Yes, Professor!"
He looked around at the students once more.
"Now, assemble! I'll announce the grades!"
The students lined up in a rush of shuffling feet. Asseraz stared at Simon from beside him with wary eyes.
"You got your revenge for the humiliation. But what about the results?"
Simon smiled gently.
"That harpy chimera you built. It was impressive."
"Quite the relaxed one, aren't you."
Just then, Grelion raised the folder.
"Then — starting with the highest-scoring group!"
At the same hour, in Nephthys's office.
"Uuuuh! The Grand Duchess won't take my calls again today!"
Nephthys sat in her chair, kicking her short little legs.
"She's mean! So mean!"
Vice Headmaster Jane, long since accustomed to her superior's sulking, set a stack of documents on the desk with an indifferent expression.
"By 'the Grand Duchess,' you mean the commander of the 2nd Legion?"
"Yeah!"
"The Carlos Northern Territory she rules is beset by blizzards year-round, which makes crystal-orb communication difficult. I would think you could understand that much."
"No! No!"
Nephthys puffed up in defiance.
"She's obviously ignoring me on purpose! It's too much! It's not like I asked her for anything that difficult!"
At that, Jane let out a sigh.
"And there's the reason. Though I have no idea what you're asking her for."
"I've doted on that girl ever since the Grand Duchess was thiiiis tiny!"
"Memories from an age the Grand Duchess herself probably can't recall, aren't they."
Thud—
Nephthys flopped face-down onto the desk, cheeks ballooning in a pout.
"Fine. If she's going to keep playing hard to get, then I have plans of my own!"
Jane shook her head slowly.
"After Magnus, I would very much prefer we avoid making yet another Legion Commander into an enemy."
"Into an enemy? Who said anything about enemies!"
Nephthys seized her quill and began dashing off a letter with vigor.
"If it's come to this, I'll just make her an offer she can't refuse!"