That's What an Academy Is
The morning of the fifth day dawned.
Despite the ugly incident the day before, the academy resumed normal operations without missing a beat. They still couldn't identify the mastermind behind the affair, and the damage from the mental contamination had been lighter than expected. Apparently the administration had decided that pushing the academic schedule forward on the back of this mess would actually benefit the students more than grinding everything to a halt.
It might look a little irresponsible, but honestly, they were right. This place was already a magnet for petty disasters. When you pack that many people together, the strange thing would be if nothing exploded. If they suspended the semester every time something like this happened, no one would ever get a proper class in. Whether you looked at it from the outside or the inside, that wouldn't produce good results.
The people who applied here came to get stronger for real—not to collect some hollow prestige. People grow fastest when they're thrown into a crisis and forced to feel it with their own bodies. It was the same hard-earned truth that only those who roll around in the field ever really understand. The first-years had, knowingly or not, tightened their resolve. They had witnessed the aftermath of a brutal crime with their own eyes, so the danger villains represented—and their own hunger for power—had only grown sharper.
That was why the academy side decided to treat the whole thing as a lucky filter for sorting the real gems from the rest.
After burning myself out obtaining the skill, I had simply collapsed into my room and slept like the dead. It was basically throwing an entire day away, but with investigations and noise filling the halls outside, there wasn't much point in moving around anyway. I decided to rest.
At some point academy staff showed up at my door wanting a statement about the incident. Half-asleep, I mumbled something about mana exhaustion. They left me a form and told me to write a proper report later. Mana exhaustion—what a perfect excuse. Who cares? As long as I'm comfortable, that's what matters. Sure, the rumor that I'm some kind of mana premature-ejaculator might spread, but I didn't give a damn. If some idiots actually believed it and came smirking at me thinking I was running on empty, I could smash their faces in head-on. Rest and a trap in one package—two birds with one stone.
I buried myself in the bed for half a day. The last four days had been a nonstop sprint. Run too hard and you collapse mid-race. Pacing yourself matters most at times like this. I lectured myself like that and drifted off. When I closed my eyes and opened them again, it was morning. No dreams.
I changed into my uniform, stuck a CalorieMate in my mouth, and headed to the classroom. I'd slept plenty, yet somehow I was still sleepy. The thought of getting chewed out by Hong Su-ah again if I dozed off made me treat the statement form like a survey. I poked at my device first thing in the morning and filled in the blanks with whatever looked vaguely official, then sent it off. Every sentence was pure window dressing. I had zero motivation.
The class atmosphere was just as heavy and sharp-edged as you'd expect after yesterday. That probably made the lethargy worse. A few of the quicker-to-recover types tried to lighten the mood, but even that felt forced. Time is the best medicine for this kind of thing—just rest and forget. Instead they were wasting energy on pointless cheerleading. Force it and someone always pushes back. A few faces already looked sour. The only reason they were swallowing it was because Ban Taewung was right in the middle of the effort. Anyone else would have been called clueless, but when the man himself stepped up, even the kids who had been reading the room with gloomy eyes forced themselves to try returning to normal, however awkwardly.
Spending time with people and stacking new feelings on top of the old ones to push the sludge out—I guess that counts as a method. I don't get it, but if it can fix this wrecked atmosphere even a little, fine by me.
Still only day five, huh.
It already felt like thirty days had passed, yet we were barely starting the fifth. Day one was adaptation, day two was proof, days three and four were for gauging your own strength and everyone else's. Day five was the challenge of seeing just how far that strength actually reached.
To be honest, days two through four had been almost entirely combat-focused. Combat types naturally stole the spotlight, which made the whole process pretty unfriendly for non-combatants. That was exactly why the final stretch—days five and six—was built so they could shine. Until now every class had been run by the homeroom. This time it would be handled by specialists in each field. Swordsmen would be tested on swordsmanship, mages on magic, priests on healing and holy power. Beyond that, it would be a stage for discovering possibilities you never knew you had, or for deepening a power that felt completely different from before.
Of course a few idiots would start whining: "If we're going to do this anyway, shouldn't we have started with it from the beginning?" Soft nonsense. Anyone who lacked the grit to make it this far would have already cracked under the pressure and stress of rolling around in the field and dropped out. No point giving them attention.
Besides, the idea that support types can't fight is ancient history. Support jobs can fight just fine. The best proof sits among the world's top rankers. The strongest alchemist, who earned the epithet Sage King, shoved combat specialists aside and planted himself firmly inside the top ten. With precedents like that, the climate shifted: even support types were expected to fight and gather their own materials. Those conditions became a kind of preferential treatment. People want good jobs, so non-combatants gradually drifted closer to the "supporter" mold—healers, buffers, that sort of thing.
Hong Su-ah walked in for morning assembly and took her place at the podium.
"Today, regardless of class period, you may receive missions from professors or instructors. The exact gathering points will be sent to your devices. Obtain pass stamps from at least two of the classes you selected."
She spoke more calmly than usual, without the usual heat, then sighed and continued.
"Failing today doesn't matter. The deadline is tomorrow, and you can keep challenging as many times as you need. But the final cutoff is six o'clock tomorrow evening. Anyone who hasn't proven their skill by then is expelled on the spot."
Murmurs rippled through the room. Some clenched their jaws and ground their teeth at the word "expelled." Others burned with the determination to prove their worth once and for all. Hong Su-ah let out a shallow sigh at the reactions.
"Sunday will proceed as planned with the freshman welcome party. Until then, I hope each of you can earn recognition from the faculty that you belong at Sunrise Academy. That concludes morning assembly. Tomorrow you don't need to come to school—just head straight to whatever mission you're assigned. Dismissed."
She gathered her papers and stepped away from the podium. At the same time a notice arrived on my device, listing the locations for the missions of the subjects I had chosen: Monster Studies, Exploration, and Summoning.
Ah.
Looking at the list, I suddenly remembered that every single one except one overlapped with the protagonist. I had to fight to keep my face from crumpling. I should have refused back then. Was this whole thing just setup for that? A sigh escaped on its own.
Ban Taewung was already surrounded by the kids who had picked close-combat classes. Perfect time to slip out. If I timed it right I could finish the missions without running into him at all. And if I cleared everything today, tomorrow would be a perfectly legal free day.
I headed straight for the lecture hall where the Summoning class was being held. A few students who had apparently chosen the same track overlapped with me along the way. Unlike me, who had skipped the first session, they seemed to have already broken the ice and were chatting in little groups. Most of them still carried the same heavy gloom as our class, though.
Rattle.
While we waited inside the classroom, a cat strode in through the door as if it owned the place. A beautiful cheese-colored cat, soft brown and white. The strange part was that it walked on two legs and wore a perfectly tied bow tie. Just looking at it told you this was no ordinary animal.
That was a summon. More precisely, it felt closer to a familiar that shared a soul the way Hives did, rather than a simple contracted beast. I couldn't be sure on first meeting, but that was the impression.
The cat hopped onto the podium with natural grace, blinked, and began washing its face with its front paws. Then it looked around, spotted me in particular, gave a little nod, and opened its mouth.
"Nya-nya, long time no see-nya. I explained last time, but in case anyone forgot, I'll introduce myself again-nya! I'm Soria Mauni, in charge of the Summoning lectures-nya. Looking forward to working with you-nya!"
Fluent human speech mixed with half-hearted meows, creating something ridiculous. Watching it lick its jelly-pads and groom itself, the tense, gloomy faces of the students gradually loosened. It was doing it on purpose, of course—fully aware of how cute that body looked.
"Nya! Then I'll announce the Summoning mission-nya!!"
Pop-pop!
The moment it clapped its jelly-pads together like hands, a magic circle bloomed above its head and dozens of creatures burst out. Some looked ordinary, others were unnaturally tiny, some had elemental auras rising from their bodies, some were the wrong color, and a few were little more than floating fluff that barely counted as living things. All of them took the forms of animals you see every day in a city—sparrows, pigeons, dogs, bugs, and so on. The common feature was that each one wore a bow tie somewhere on its body, just like the cat. The ties had clearly been equipped on purpose.
"From now on, all you have to do is defeat the things I just summoned-nya!"
Before any student could move, the creatures scattered in every direction. Some cleverly opened windows and slipped out, others boldly kicked the classroom door open, and a few simply phased through the walls as if they weren't there. They moved so naturally, closing the door behind them like it was the most obvious thing in the world, that you could tell this wasn't their first time running this drill.
Find these tiny things across the entire sprawling academy? Tough, sure, but not impossible—especially with the bow ties as a dead giveaway. A few students visibly relaxed at what looked like an easy difficulty. I looked down at them with cold eyes. After five days of experiencing the academy's teaching methods firsthand, they still had the nerve to look that complacent? Unless yesterday's incident had given them memory damage, they simply weren't thinking.
"However! You are not allowed to leave this classroom-nya! The only ones who can go outside are the summons-nya!!"
Sure enough, Soria Mauni delivered the bomb with a sly smile that looked far too cunning for a cat. Some students even cupped their ears, wondering if they had misheard the cheerful voice saying something so vicious.
"What!?"
"That's...!"
I ignored the ones standing there in blank shock and walked straight to the window, opening it. Mana gathered at my fingertips. What I called forth was our eldest—my reliable adjutant and the watchtower that never lost track of an enemy.
"Hive."
Snap!
"Cawww!!"
The moment the mana condensed, Hive appeared in midair and shot toward the far sky. Everyone in the classroom immediately began calling their own summons. I quietly closed my eyes and poured mana through the link connecting me to Hive. Power rippled across its body, and in an instant a storm of shadow crows erupted, painting the surrounding sky black.
The order was simple.
"Find them and kill them."
"Cawww!!! Caaaaawww!!!!"
Hundreds of crows scattered as if swearing to carry out my will. No matter how far they flew, the Hive bridge kept control easy. Ordinary crows flying nearby even joined the hunt, searching for any living thing wearing a bow tie.
Less than a minute after they spread out, twelve were already down. The targets had tried twisting their bodies among normal animals or using blind spots to hide the ties, but trying to conceal something shiny from crows—creatures that live for shiny things—was pure arrogance.
"Crazy..."
"What the hell is that...?"
The ones panicking were the lower-class students. Around them floated maybe one or two creatures at most; even the ones who had summoned a lot only managed around ten. Every gaze in the room turned toward me—the one who had called Hive. Some looked jealous, some awed, some afraid, some simply empty.
"Nya, nyaa~ I didn't see this coming-nya... Guild Raven, of all things. It's been ages since I last saw one-nya..."
Even Soria Mauni in cat form seemed caught off guard. Her eyes went wide and her tail thumped the podium. I walked up to her.
"How many do I need to take down? I've already killed about thirty."
"Ah, aah... Normally this wouldn't be allowed-nya. The whole point of the mission was to train your resonance so you can control summons even when they're far away-nya. I was going to teach the class by fixing failures one by one, but a certain student just wrecked the entire plan-nya..."
Sharp cat eyes locked onto me. Those cat's-eye pupils looked no different from a predator that had just spotted prey.
"You're already linked, so it doesn't count-nya. That's cheating-nya. A total cheat-nya...!"
The look that seemed to see straight through me made me quietly impressed.
So she's not a professor just for show.
She had figured it out just from seeing me and Hive. The cat licked the corner of her mouth with her tongue, then blinked and returned to an innocent expression, pressing a jelly-pad stamp firmly onto the back of my hand.
"...Still, a success is a success. Jang Sinwoo, you pass-nya! As expected of an S-Class summoner-nya!"
Then she casually hopped toward me, fully expecting to be caught. A stubborn impulse made me try to step back.
Twitch!
My body locked up as if something had grabbed me, and I ended up half-catching the cat in an awkward embrace. Looking down, I saw a pitch-black hand emerging from my own shadow, clamping onto my leg.
What the fuck is that? How long has it been there?
Even while I could see it, spreading mana to sense it gave me nothing. That was when I realized the thing was using some kind of skill—infiltration, stealth, or something equivalent.
If Growl had been here he might have caught the scent or presence, but realizing it after my back was already seized was pointless.
"For now, clear those things out so they don't interfere with the other students' missions-nya. And if you leave too quickly my pride will be hurt, so be my cat tower for one hour-nya."
"...Do I get a right of refusal?"
"Would that be okay-nya?"
She tilted her head and looked up at me with pure innocence. Goosebumps prickled across my skin. For a split second the grip on my ankle tightened, as if promising to snap it and force the full hour if I refused. More than that—the way she had just spoken wasn't the cat-speech act. She had genuinely asked.
I gave up. I recalled Hive and reeled the shadow crows back in. The act was apparently registered as "submission," because my stats spiked for a moment, but I deliberately shut the skill off and they returned to normal.
"Caw?"
"...Good work."
I praised Hive as it hopped closer and tilted its head at my strange state. The cat in my arms watched Hive carefully, then suddenly spoke.
"Nya-nya, that's a pretty high-completion familiar-nya. Doesn't it hurt-nya?"
"Pardon? Yes, I'm fine, but... is there some kind of problem?"
That tone again. Kang So-seon had asked the same thing, and now this professor too—why did everyone keep asking if it was hard when they saw a familiar? As far as I knew, side effects were almost nonexistent. Creating a familiar was strict only at the first condition; after that it was nothing but advantages. Like wine that only gets better with age. That was my understanding of familiars.
The cat rolled her eyes at my reaction and sighed.
"This is why geniuses are..."
Who was calling whom a genius? I was just living a second life by accident. There was nothing genius about it. I wasn't mature from weathering the years—I was already an adult. I simply had more knowledge.
I had no intention of spilling all that, so I put on a shameless face and played dumb.
"Your concept is breaking."
"Shut up-nya! While we're at it, I'll extend last class-nya! Everyone listen carefully-nya!"
Against my will my body moved on its own and arrived at the center of the room. The fact that something else was controlling me pissed me off. In pure spite I went completely limp—yet somehow I didn't fall. The shadow rippled in what looked like panic and stretched more hands to lock me in place.
Ah. This is comfortable. Really comfortable. Next time something's a pain I should just stuff it into a shadow. It'd be useful in combat too—I need to remember this. Since it's a summon under this professor, I can figure out its identity later, right?
"Don't casually use my summon like that-nya!!"
"Then let me go if it bothers you."
"If I let go, will you hold me properly-nya?"
"I'll throw you."
"Then no-nya!!"
What the hell does this cat even want? The other students' faces looked about the same as mine. Noticing the reactions late, she clutched her head and muttered things like "Nya-nya... my dignity as a professor..."
With that appearance and that speech pattern, dignity was never on the table to begin with. She ignored my openly annoyed expression—apparently used to it by now—and used mana to grab a piece of chalk, writing on the blackboard.
"Nya-nya, remember last time when I said summoning is broadly divided into two types-nya?"
Tap-tap-tap.
Two overlapping circles appeared on the board. One side was labeled Contract, the other Servitude.
"Contract summoning creates a soul link through a contract as the medium-nya. The other side, servitude, is what's commonly called taming-nya. You take something with no prior connection and carefully build a soul pathway from scratch so it can function as a summon-nya!"
Which is why it takes a long time. But her explanation left me with a question. If you invest that time to create a familiar, doesn't that solve the remaining problems? I kept the thought to myself. Listening to the rest would probably answer it.
"But there's a method that overlaps in the middle-nya. A summoning that's similar to a contract and at the same time is also servitude. That is—"
Tap-tap.
She wrote the word Ritual in the overlapping center of the circles.
"Ritual summoning-nya."
I immediately understood that this was the method for creating familiars. A summoning that was like a contract yet also servitude—exactly the creation of a familiar.
"Ritual summoning is, as the name says, creating your own familiar through a ritual-nya. This body is one, and the crow that student Jang Sinwoo showed earlier is another-nya."
She patted her own body proudly, then her expression suddenly turned cold and she continued in a flat voice.
"Ah, for reference, I strongly recommend you don't try it carelessly-nya. Attempt it half-heartedly and your soul can tear, leaving you a vegetable on the spot-nya. If your sense of self isn't strong enough or you lack conviction in yourself when the ritual succeeds, your ego can mix with the familiar's and turn you into a monster, so extreme caution is required-nya."
At those words the faces of the students who had been thinking "maybe I could too" went deathly pale.
"The danger of the ritual lies in tearing the soul apart and stitching it back together-nya. Anyone who can't clearly separate and visualize the familiar's information from their own form during that process fails the ritual and is crippled for life-nya."
An extremely high-risk process. But for anyone with a reasonably solid mind, it wasn't impossible.
"More than anything, the process is agonizingly painful-nya. While your entire body feels like it's being torn apart and burned, you still have to hold the image of the familiar-nya. After that you have to endure the sensation of foreign things mixing in and then recombining, all while keeping a perfect image of yourself-nya."
Because of that, some people who succeed still suffer phantom pain for the rest of their lives. As she listed the examples and hammered home the danger, the classroom atmosphere froze solid.
"...Is that all?"
"That's everything-nya. Some people say they feel the pain again every time they summon their familiar, but looking at you, student, you seem so full of conviction in yourself that you have no aftereffects at all-nya. I wonder how someone so young managed that-nya."
What? That was all she was trying to scare me with? I thought there was some side effect I didn't know about.
"Nya-nya... treating the act of tearing a soul, mixing it, and stitching it back together as if it's nothing is what's strange-nya. Student, your head is weird-nya. Maybe you've already gone crazy from pulling it-nya."
"Don't treat a perfectly normal person like a cripple."
"Look at this-nya! Talking back to your great professor without hesitation-nya!!"
That's because you look easy to talk back to. And if I don't speak, nothing gets across. The last thing I want is to become the kind of sucker who just listens and does as he's told.
I sighed. In the end I had worried for nothing. They call that a groundless fear, right? I wish I could just search for this stuff and have all the related information pop up in a neat list instead of all this secret-technique nonsense.
The reason I chose to grind away at the academy wasn't only the promise with the headmaster. It was because the faculty here held information you simply couldn't get outside. In a world where raw power equals status, the moment you dig even a little deeper they slap "restricted information" on it and censor everything. Risk of misuse, they say.
I had rejected the heavenly job and chosen summoner, then tried every way I could to gather related knowledge. Official sources only ever gave the basics; everything else was pure speculation and "I heard from a guy who heard from a guy." Even I couldn't separate the fake from the real inside that mess. I was collecting information precisely because I lacked experience—yet the situation was hopeless.
Of course, for people with no skill or only mediocre skill, the censorship made sense. Creating a familiar is genuinely painful, but if you keep your mind straight it's not unbearable. Fail and you lose precious talent, so they scare people on purpose. The heavy censorship is partly about villains, but mostly because there were that many idiots who charged in without proper preparation.
I understood. Even after living more than ten years with my eyes open in this world I still hadn't fully adapted—how much harder must it be for people born here? I just couldn't empathize with the "it's hard" part. Prepare properly and the result is guaranteed. After that it's all belief and confidence.
If you have confidence in yourself and the skill to back it up, you naturally excel and stand out. That's the law of nature. Even if you try to hide it, it shows. For this incident, let's just say I dug especially deep into the fundamentals.
Still, that's one down already.
Only one more until the target of two. I had confirmation that if I just sat here for an hour she'd let me go, so I started thinking about which class to hit next. Monster Studies would help fill the encyclopedia, but better to compare both and pick whichever would let me grab the second stamp faster.
I let the cat's endless nya-nya explanations wash over one ear while I sincerely prayed for this miserable hour to end as soon as possible.