What They Call an Academy (8)

“Grr!”

At Growl’s cry I leapt backward hard. The ground heaved, and black bones erupted skyward, thrashing through the air before plunging back into the earth. Cold sweat poured down my face without stopping. A fraction of a second slower and my body would have been ventilated with neat little holes. Fuck, did I really have to go and provoke it?

No. Think positive.

If I’d let that thing slip away here, it would have mass-produced those goddamn abominations for sure. And I still had a way out whenever I wanted. This was actually a golden opportunity. The bastard even carried the title of Named.

If I could kill something like that, the mountain of experience points and the loot would be more than worth it. The deliberation was short. Let’s go.

If it really turned out to be impossible, I could just declare a clear and bail.

“Hold out until Hive gets here!”

That thing was no longer a goblin. The only resemblance left was the color black. The skulls dangling from it like ornaments were goblin, sure… but in my view, the ritual had summoned an entirely different entity.

Its base was bone, yet it wore the shape of a plant, so maybe I should just call it a plant? That thought dragged up the reason I’d come to this dungeon in the first place, and irritation flooded in. Flowers. Always fucking flowers. Even the names were similar.

Dumpynight. Nightshade.

Both carried the word “night,” so they were clearly creatures that thrived in darkness. Dumpynight had cultivated flowers that inflicted status ailments, hadn’t it? This one was bound to pull something equivalent.

Whether it was my imagination or the aura the thing was pouring out, the brightness around us seemed to drop another notch, and that only made me more pissed off.

Let’s test the waters first.

I scooped up every goblin weapon and rock lying nearby and hurled them at the creature without discrimination. Every so often a skull cracked with a wet pop, but the stems themselves didn’t look badly damaged.

Still, it wasn’t completely immune, which was a relief. Anything I threw with mana behind it left dents or cracks in the bone when it connected.

“…Its durability isn’t that high?”

I found it a little strange, but then I remembered the dungeon was only E-rank and the monster’s base had been goblins. I had no choice but to nod. That ominous black aura was real, but that was all it had going for it.

No matter how powerful the energy, the thing was still just a Named. The System—the will of the world—had already driven a stake through the idea that this was the dungeon’s boss.

It had turned its back on the natural order, sacrificed its own kin, and performed a vile ritual, yet this was the result. Even after dying itself at the end, it had never escaped the rules; it had become nothing more than a half-baked existence.

Casting pearls before swine—wasn’t that exactly the phrase for this situation?

“I can do this.”

No—I had to do this.

If not now, then when? I clenched my fist until the blisters burst and raw flesh scraped. Pain slammed through my skull, but I didn’t loosen my grip. I squeezed even harder, pouring mana into the pipe as blood and fluid ran down it.

Something inside me felt like it was leaking out in a steady stream. A throbbing headache started, yet strangely my mind grew crystal-clear.

The only thing filling it was how to bring the enemy down.

“Growl.”

“Grr!”

I didn’t give a separate order. The link between us bypassed spoken words and carried intent cleanly. The rest I would leave to him—this place had to become his stage alone.

“Let’s go.”

“Awoooooooo!!!!”

A howl thicker than usual echoed in every direction. Because we were on a mountain, the large and small answering cries sounded as if other wolves were answering him. The System must have recognized it as resonance; the power flooding my body grew even stronger.

“…Hah.”

It felt like watching a perfectly scripted game cutscene. Direction, plot, composition—everything was turning this place into a boss fight. Coincidence? Or maybe I was living through something the protagonist was supposed to experience.

If there had been two or three beings with that kind of aura instead of one, this dungeon could easily have become a hellscape no one would ever call E-rank.

I still didn’t know what the original story even was, or how many threads were tangled up in this academy. What future my current actions would drag in—I knew nothing.

Maybe the god had dropped me here with zero information precisely because that was what it wanted. The thought that the bastard might be watching right now and yanking my strings made me want to spit.

But paradoxically, even knowing the truth changed nothing.

I still had to live my own life. If this world went completely off the rails, my everyday existence would collapse with it, and that was the one thing I had to stop at all costs.

Yes. Everyday life.

No fancy modifiers needed. No matter what else happened, this one thing was certain.

I would kill them.

I would kill every bastard that stood in my way. Crush anyone who interfered. Clear away anything that dirtied the path I walked. A peaceful daily life, days where I didn’t have to do a damn thing—everything for a better future of my own.

“Die.”

For no one’s happiness but mine.

Thud!!

We both shot forward at the same instant. But Growl pulled ahead first.

“Graaaaaaaa!!!!”

A roar closer to a monster’s than a wolf’s, and at the same time a dark-crimson aura exploded from Growl’s body.

The red current rose like dry-ice vapor, swelling his frame even larger and beginning to bite and swallow the black aura flowing around us.

Clack, clatter, clack.

Sensing the threat, the skulls hanging like fruit began chattering their teeth, producing a racket. The dark energy thickened, pushing back against the red, and at the same time fleshy petals slapped wetly onto the ground and began to writhe upright.

“Ge… rerr…”

“Guree…”

They were melted goblins. Nothing but flesh, no bones left—blood-clots stewed together with darkness, starting to move. Without warning, bones rained down from sky and earth alike.

Growl and I split left and right to divide the attacks. He charged the main body; I went for the grotesque things.

“Gege. Gegegege.”

“What the fuck are you even saying.”

Thwack!!

I swung the mana-charged pipe into the side of its head. The impact felt dull, like striking water. The sensation was completely different. Its head burst and sprayed everywhere, but there was no satisfying feedback. Damage had been done, yet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it wasn’t dead.

“Gu… gre…”

Proof: even with its head gone, the thing kept making noise from the remaining neck and flailing its arms. Black flesh ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flew with every swing, reeking, so I kindly pulverized the torso the same way I had the head.

Clatter.

From the stewed darkness a half-crushed goblin skull popped out. Without me even touching it, the thing cracked on its own, crumbled to powder, and scattered like dust on the wind.

Rumble…!

The ground began to shake. I scrambled clear just as black bone roots erupted where I had stood, blasting the earth apart. Before the bones could sink back, I swung the pipe with everything I had.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Clang!!!

The impact rang far louder than bone meeting iron had any right to. The recoil traveled up my arms and set my whole body humming, but the feedback was better than when I’d been smashing zombies.

Crack…!

The clustered bone roots snapped and fell, thrashing like the severed legs of a living creature. Only for a moment, though—then they curled along their joints into tight coils and finally went still.

“Ugh.”

It was disgusting. I’d expected bone to just snap cleanly and be done, but watching it thrash and die like a living thing crossed the line from grotesque into pure revulsion.

Worse was the marrow that leaked from the broken bones. Thick and black as tar, the moment it soaked into the ground the grass withered and the earth itself turned dead black.

It happened so fast it might as well have been filmed in high-speed reverse. My wariness ratcheted up another notch.

“It has poison too?”

Minion summons, constant bone attacks, and poison running through its body. The bastard really was packing every gimmick in the book. I was sincerely grateful it was stuck at E-rank.

With only E-rank potential it could already do this much. If it had been given more sacrifices and more time, I didn’t even want to imagine the result.

Clang!

“There’s seriously no end to these.”

No matter how many I killed, more zombies kept forming to fill the gaps. No—the spawn rate was so high that killing one just made two more appear in front of me.

BOOM!!!

The real problem was that this flood of numbers was happening while Growl, who had detonated his stored Wildness, was still fighting the main body. My last attack had created an opening; bone branches with skulls attached were raining down, but the effect on the stem I assumed was the core remained minimal.

Worse, black flesh was already welling up inside the fallen skulls, birthing the same zombies I had just finished off. I was clearing them as fast as I could, but the intermittent bone attacks kept stealing time. At this rate sheer numbers would overwhelm us.

“Grrrr…”

Growl himself seemed to know it; he had pulled back a little to catch his breath. The only way to break this stalemate was overwhelming firepower.

Next summon absolutely has to be a magic DPS.

The moment one gap was filled, another shortage appeared. It never ended. For a second I wondered if evolving Hive into High Crow would have spared me this headache, but I didn’t regret it.

Hive had Hive’s own role. Still, the lack of firepower right now was hard to ignore.

While Growl held Nightshade’s aggro, I methodically erased the zombie goblins. Slow or not, the more of them there were, the more of a pain they became for me. Even if it felt insufficient, if I didn’t keep wiping them out this way we would truly run out of answers.

I targeted the largest body mass and burst it, crushing the skull that served as its core. Unlike when I had hit the head first, there was a bit of satisfying feedback this time, and the thing collapsed in one go.

So the goblin skull really did function as a nucleus, a magic stone of sorts. The appearance and foundation were a little different, but this was unmistakably black magic—necromancy that commanded the undead.

In this world, black magic and necromancy were not forbidden arts. Skills themselves were byproducts of the System; denying something the System recognized was the same as defying the will of the gods, which made no sense.

The problem was the person who swung a kitchen knife as a weapon instead of a cooking tool.

There was no absolute cultural taboo against black magic. On the contrary, people researched it openly, analyzing the mechanisms that converted sacrifices, rituals, and life force into mana for overwhelming offensive power, looking for ways to crush enemies with it.

In that light, these things were far too malformed. I stepped back for a moment and watched the zombie goblins while my thoughts raced.

“Magic… is it magic…?”

Every effect had a cause. Magic and skills were no exception.

To my eyes this wasn’t black magic that crafted vessels from sacrifices; it was something closer to summoning. I had barely used my own powers yet, so maybe I had no right to claim I understood, but I trusted my gut.

This was definitely summoning.

Just as I paid mana to call Hive and the others, this thing paid sacrifices to call zombies.

Which raised the question: what exactly was it using as the sacrifice?

The goblins? They were already dead. Their deaths had been what brought this thing into existence in the first place. So how could it keep summoning without a proper ritual or fresh offerings? Because it had been born that way? That alone wasn’t enough of an explanation.

Without any cost, as if it were simply the natural order of things, the flower kept producing zombies.

It wasn’t even consuming that black aura that felt like Magi or death energy. The aura was something the bone flower itself exhaled. Just as plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, this thing belched out black energy.

It was gradually making the surroundings darker and heavier, as if preparing an environment more comfortable for itself.

The only reason we weren’t completely swallowed by darkness yet was the fire I had started earlier; it had spread through the forest and was acting like a lantern.

To counter this I needed to go deeper, to the root.

“Bones.”

Yes—the bones. The zombie bones that crumbled to dust and the broken bones still lying over there both came from the same source. So why the difference?

No substance? No. Both existed as physical matter in reality. Then was it the difference between something summoned as a sacrifice and something that wasn’t?

Just going by feel, it was similar to my Book of Summoning. As long as I, the master, didn’t die, my summons could die and return as many times as they wanted.

But the resurrection of my summons worked because they were separate entities, not mere attachments.

I stored only the software resources of the soul and shared the server that was “me.” Conceptually it was closer to creating a new avatar or character from scratch.

That was why familiars like Hive and Growl started with everything reset, limited to the base stats of their original species. Because they shared a soul with me, they could grow through the status window the same way I did.

In other words, it was only natural that they could eventually surpass me. The difference in origin had to be clearly distinguished.

Separate yet one. One yet many.

No matter how differently they grew, everything ultimately returned to me—that was the identity of the summoning I used.

So a summoning this unbalanced had to be considered malformed. Ignoring every process and summoning freely? Then a summoner should be able to steamroll heroes and demon kings alike with pure numbers.

Since that was impossible, I had chosen the method of raising each individual into a proper limb of mine, one by one.

So how was this thing summoning? How was it controlling the zombies like its own limbs? How was it swinging bones around so freely?

Questions chained into more questions. Honestly I didn’t even understand what I was saying anymore. I was just blurting out whatever came to mind and picking the option that looked promising—a kind of mental mind map.

Then one thought suddenly surfaced.

“It split the souls?”

No. If it had simply split one soul into many, the thing itself would feel the zombies’ pain.

This was the opposite. Souls that had already been fragmented were forcibly stitched together under the concept of a “ritual.” It was peeling them off one by one. Tear, then reattach. It was using the tattered souls that no longer even knew if they were still kin as substitute sacrifices by ripping them apart itself.

A chill ran down my spine. The goblins were still being offered as sacrifices right now. Just as I twisted and compressed the link between myself and Hive and Growl, these had been bound into a single place and turned into that existence.

That thing was an altar. An altar of infinite power that tore itself apart to perform the ritual, then stitched the remaining scraps back together. An altar of sacrifice that had nowhere left to go but depletion.

“…Aha.”

In other words, it wasn’t that the thing paid no price. The price had been paid long ago. It was simply being rewoven and reused the moment it was paid. How? That black aura was preventing the souls from leaving this place.

It wasn’t merely environmental. It used, used, and used again, then dumped the nearly broken remnants as zombies so they would take the cost in its place.

This wasn’t even discarding the hunting dog after the hunt. This was pure exploitation. Labor that continued until the souls rotted and fell apart. Things that should have been exhausted long ago were being forcibly held in place for some reason.

“Fuck, is this thing insane?”

Swallowing the paid price and using it again? What kind of bullshit was that? It wasn’t a god; how could something like that even be possible? Souls weren’t graphics cards you swapped out for mining when they still had life left, then tossed the second they broke.

This was a bug. An unreasonable, fatal bug. I felt like common sense had walked out and slapped me hard across the back of the head. Why was something like this allowed to happen with zero sanctions? That god bastard didn’t even crack down on this? Unbelievable. Ha!

“No, wait, hang on.”

Don’t tell me… it sent me here to clean this up? Just drop me in and let me thrash around to survive? Fuck, if that’s really the case I’m going to be seriously pissed.

What happens if I just leave it alone? Does the god bastard suddenly snatch the System away because I’m not doing my job? That would go way past petty.

No—it knew from the start I wouldn’t be able to ignore this, which is why it dragged me into it. If you’re going to give me a job, at least hand me something for it. This is how you handle things?

“Haa.”

All I wanted was peace, and thanks to that I now had a new purpose in life.

“You son of a bitch…”

In a way it was directly tied to my happiness, so it didn’t even contradict my existing goal. Even if only for a moment, I would definitely summon that god bastard and put a fist through its smug face.

Any skill, if trained to the extreme, could touch the will of the stars.

That was a fact I had uncovered while researching during Project Exile. The most famous examples were the American Swordmaster’s Sword Saint and the Chinese Grand General’s Spear Saint.

The exact method wasn’t detailed, but both of those Star Skills had been acquired later in life rather than innate—that much was certain.

Because the two of them had personally admitted it, hope that anyone could reach that height through effort had once spread across the entire world. Historical records said so many people flocked to the unexplored fronts that the lines actually stabilized for a while.

If my skill could reach the will of the stars… maybe I could at least get a look at that so-called god’s face?

I snorted.

“Delusions this bad are basically a disease.”

I scratched my head hard. Hanging around kids all the time must have lowered my mental age. I thought the part of me that chased romance and ideals had withered away long ago, yet here I was getting all fired up again just because my head was hot.

But this world was terrifying precisely because even delusions like that could become reality. Maybe this, too, was what the god wanted. The one who threw me into this world in the first place would have predicted it if it had any brains at all.

Don’t overthink it. Hadn’t I already declared it? Kill them. Kill them all, smash them, trample them. Burn the scenario and everything else. Keep going until the bastard who sent me here grinds its teeth in regret.

“Growl.”

“Grr!!”

Growl, who had just raked Nightshade with a massive claw swipe and returned to my side, kicked away the sticky zombie goblins that kept clinging to him with an annoyed flick of his hind leg.

Besides the small cuts, a large wound sat on his body. I pressed my hand to the spot where blood was streaming and poured mana in until mild dizziness hit me.

Watching Growl’s body knit itself back together at high speed, I looked up at the sky. Even the black aura couldn’t completely hide it; the heavens were filling with black dots. One, two… too many to count, clustering together.

I’d been wondering why they were so late. Looking at that, though, I couldn’t even get angry. Was it sulking because I’d briefly thought I’d evolved it wrong?

“I only asked you to bring some oil, so why the hell did you show up with this whole parade?”

“Cawwwww!!!”

Whoooooosh!!!

As if answering me, the sound of countless crow wings beating filled the air like a sudden gale. Yeah. It was definitely throwing a tantrum. No other reason to bring this many crows. It was openly showing off that it wasn’t inferior.

“Hive.”

Flap!!

I stretched my hand toward the sky and Hive flew down to perch on my arm, resting its wings. Its body wasn’t unscathed either. Whether it had fought other crows for territory or something, the wounds all over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it were no joke.

I was proud of the hard work, a little exasperated, and also sorry—I had no mana left to give it. I’d already poured everything I could into Growl. Hive seemed to know; it clicked its beak in open dissatisfaction.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the best.”

“Caw.”

Strictly speaking, the gap between it and Growl was only a few hours. Just because it had evolved first didn’t mean I could keep putting it on the back burner; Hive hadn’t been able to show its full strength either. It had always supported from the rear and never really gone all-out in a proper fight.

“This time let’s clean house with both of you.”

Snap!

I flicked my fingers. The mana lingering in Growl’s body began seeping little by little into Hive. But as if rejecting it, Hive took off skyward, lifted its chin, and headed toward the flock of crows.

“Brat’s got an attitude.”

Which only made me like it more. Growl had already brought me a burning branch; I roughly ruffled his head, took the branch, and jerked my chin toward Nightshade.

“Time to finish this.”

That instant, a massive rain of oil pots fell from the sky and burst everywhere.

I’d spent way too long on something that wasn’t even a boss. I projected mana and the small flames on the trees roared up. Putting everything I had into it, I hurled the branch straight at Nightshade.

There was no sound. Only a flash of light bright enough to erase every shadow around us.

Crackle-crackle-crackle!!! Thud! Thud!!

The thing thrashed wildly, trying to shake off the fire clinging to its body. But the flames only grew larger instead of dying.

“Cawww!”

““Caw! Cawww!!””

Hundreds of crows were spinning in perfect unison. The wind they created alone fanned the flames into an inferno. Dying embers flared back to life; the growing fire burned bone and incinerated flesh.

“Geeeaaah…”

“Guuuh…”

Zombies burst out too late, throwing their bodies onto the fire to smother it, but they were nowhere near enough to suppress the blaze that had already grown. They burned to ash before they could even stick, becoming fertilizer. The heat rising to swallow the sky was hot enough to make my face sting even from a distance.

Hiss…

Of course their efforts weren’t completely meaningless. By devouring the oil that was the source of the flames as they died, the zombies actually managed to put out a fair amount of the fire around Nightshade. When the flames died down, the creature that emerged looked like the burnt wick of a match.

All those zombies were gone without a trace. No more obstacles.

“Bite it.”

“Grr!”

Wrapped in red smoke, Growl shot forward.