Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner

Chapter 220

The ripples from the first Summoning class were huge.

Everyone was talking about Simon and the quadrupedal skeleton.

"…H-Hector."

On the other hand, Hector was in his worst mood yet. The students in his faction were walking on eggshells from day one.

"Don't worry about it. The only thing he's even half-decent at is Summoning."

"Yeah, yeah, let's go grab some food."

Hector slowly pushed himself up from his seat.

"It's fine. Just don't say a word."

"Alright!"

Normally, he was pretty gentle, held no grudges, and took good care of his people. But whenever Simon was involved, he would go ballistic.

Hector's faction left, taking Hector with them.

"Simon!"

As Simon got up to eat, several girls who had been watching Hector then crowded around Simon as if they had been waiting for the disturbance to leave.

"How did you do that?"

"I wanna be good at Skeleton Dash, too!"

"Can you help me practice this weekend?"

The girls swarmed around him, bombarding him with questions, but he answered each one without a hint of annoyance.

"Ah, really? That's too bad…"

Push!

Just then, someone shoved past the girls who had just asked Simon questions. They both turned around and glared.

"What kind of crazy bas—?!"

Their faces went pale as they came face-to-face with an expressionless girl with light blue hair.

As the two girls panicked and exchanged a worried glance, Meilyn's face changed from the blank mask, and she apologized with a smile.

"I'm sorry~ I kind of tripped on my way! Really sorry."

Meilyn's apology only made the two girls panic more. They were sweating profusely.

"No, no! We're sorry-er!"

"We didn't realize it was you…! R-Really!"

Meilyn smirked and walked over to Simon. The other nearby girls flinched as she got closer.josei

"Hey, Meilyn."

"Aren't you going to eat? Cami and the commoner are waiting in the back."

"Yeah. Let's go."

The two quickly made their way through the crowd. As they walked away, Meilyn looked back at Simon.

"You know it's not a pleasant sight to look at, right?"

"What isn't?"

She sighed heavily at Simon's response.

"Getting all merry just because you're surrounded by girls~ Why do you have to volunteer to watch them practice and waste your own time? Time is gold in Kizen. There's a limit to being a good person."

Simon blinked at Meilyn's suddenly cold words.

"I already said no to them."

"H-Huh?"

"I'm already booked for the weekend, you see. And I explained that it'd be better to ask the assistant teachers, who're much better and are more used to teaching than me."

"…I-Is that so?"

Meilyn fought off a wave of embarrassment and started walking faster.

'Ugh, I shouldn't have had an outburst there!'

Simon seemed so nice, so caring, and so considerate that he seemed like a pushover.

But the truth was a little different. He kept his private and public life very separate.

She had seen him follow his own interests, but she'd rarely seen him step out of his boundaries when he had nothing to gain from it. So he certainly was no pushover.

In that sense, she wondered if he was interested in any kind of romance or relationship. He seemed like a guy who'd just say he was too busy to think about that stuff.

'…But why am I even thinking about this?'

As Meilyn sighed heavily to herself, she saw Rick and Camibrez chatting outside the restaurant, waving at them.

"You were so amazing today, Simon!"

"Whew! Every time you're put against Hector, it's the talk of the school!"

Rick walked up, raising a fist with a smile.

"You purposely recreated that scene from the first ever Summoning class to break Hector's mind, didn't you?"

Simon laughed bitterly, bumping fists with Rick.

"No, I didn't mean to. I was just trying my best to win. I hope Hector doesn't mind, though."

The four of them walked into a restaurant while making small talk. Their lunch had been a little delayed, having taken two classes in a row.

Rick sat down at an empty table, glanced at the menu, and said,

"I'll have the chicken cutlet."

"Me too."

The boys quickly decided on their orders.

Meilyn, dressed elegantly with a napkin on her lap to prevent her from staining her uniform, looked puzzled.

"I know it's none of my business, but try something new! How come your tastes haven't changed from the first semester?"

"Hehe, safety comes first! A foolish risk can ruin your day!"

Said Rick with a chuckle.

"Well, let's see what Ms. I-Know-Better-Than-You over here is going to have, then."

"Hmph."

Meilyn looked at the menu with a very serious expression.

"Then, I'll have the soy sauce glazed beans alongside—"

"Guweeeeeeeeeeegh!"

The sound of someone retching filled the entire restaurant.

Meilyn glared at Rick, who waved his hands to say that it wasn't him. She looked at the menu again.

"Soy sauce glazed bea—"

"Gueeeeeeeeeeeeegh!"

"Kehegh! Gwough! Gweeeeeeeh!"

"Agh, seriously! Who are these bastards?!"

Meilyn blushed and stood up from her seat.

There she saw students lying on the floor, vomiting. Their faces were full of agony, and several other students were running to the restroom with their mouths covered.

"What's wrong with them?"

"Looks like they're all from Class D."

The other students, as well as Simon and his group, were looking around in confusion.

Camibarez, who had been quietly reading the menu, carefully closed it and set it down on the table. Then, with a forced smile, she suggested,

"Sh-Shall we go someplace else?"

The other three silently agreed and closed their menus.

* * *

* * *

But the other restaurants were just as bad. Streams of students were running to the restrooms or throwing up on the floor.

Meilyn complained that her appetite was now all gone.

In the end, the four of them headed to the cafeteria, made do with sandwiches, and headed to their next class.

Their last class of the day was Professor Belya's Poisonous Alchemy class.

It took place in a lecture hall in the Poisonous Alchemy Academy building. The students sat down at desks, each with their own cauldrons already set up for them.

'I can't imagine Professor Belya giving a class. I wonder what she'll teach us.'

As Simon waited, half filled with nervousness and half with concern, Belya and her assistant teachers entered the room. The students all looked stunned.

'…A-Ahem.'

'…I don't know where to put my eyes.'

Belya walked into the classroom, not in the suit she wore to the opening ceremony, but in her ragged, wild clothes.

She strode up to the stage, dropped into the chair, and snapped her fingers. Then, the assistant teachers began to call attendance.

'Huh, those people are…'

Simon recognized the faces of the assistant teachers. Rick also noticed it, as he commented,

"Looks like nothing changed from Professor Lang's assistant teachers."

In truth, they weren't favored by Kizen HQ or the Elders. After all, they couldn't notice that a Saintess had supplanted Francesca and assassinated Lang.

Of course, the whole of Kizen had been deceived, and they couldn't be blamed for the whole thing. Also, replacing all of the Poisonous Alchemy staff meant leaving Lang's entire faculty, his entire legacy, unemployed.

But still, tradition was tradition. They would be replaced by whomever the next professor brought in.

While the assistant teachers packed their stuff and prepared to leave Roke Island, news struck them by surprise.

"I need to organize my own assistant teachers? Ah, that's so tiring! Just keep the old ones!"

An unexpected event happened.

A freak named Belya had come to Kizen as the new Professor of Poisonous Alchemy just by herself. She decided to keep Lang's assistant teachers.

The assistants were about to be kicked out and forever labeled as incompetent for not being able to protect the professor they served. But when the new professor took them in, they had a chance to regain their honor.

Naturally, the assistants carried a strong sense of loyalty to Belya, even prepared to sell their kidneys for her.

The assistant teacher calling attendance finished and walked to Belya to report,

"Professor, the entirety of Class A is present."

"Right."

With a lazy yawn, Belya pushed herself up from her chair and strode to the front of the class.

The students in the front of the room furtively avoided eye contact. The somewhat revealing, ragged outfit was still quite embarrassing for the 17-year-old students.

"Hmm."

She flipped through the textbook.

She still had half a semester's worth of textbook left. Kizen had instructed her to finish last semester's content and then use a new textbook for the second semester. The students were also waiting, their textbooks open to what they had learned.

Flip, flip.

"Why the hell are they telling me to teach things like this? No matter how much I think about it, I don't get it."

After flipping through a few pages, she slammed the textbook shut, turned to her students, and smiled, flashing her shark-like jagged teeth.

"I heard that it's cool to start the first class with a simple question? Alright. What is poison?"

She strode to the board, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote a single, large word.

Of course, none of the students recognized the word. Because it wasn't from the continental language but the hieroglyphics of the Marerats from the Grasslands.

"The history of mankind is…"

She put down her chalk and slammed her fist on the board.

"…also the history of poison."

The board cracked and shards flew out, but she didn't care.

"When you look at all the deaths of humans, only a few were actually caused by war. Poison is a disease, and diseases are contagious. I don't need to tell you about the plague that killed almost a third of the continent, right? The bottom line is that more people die of disease than of any other cause."

Seeing the students' blank faces, she smirked.

"Hah~ Look at these bastards. Did I speak too broadly? Let me tell you about your favorite war stories, then. In war, it's actually the common soldiers who get stabbed to death. It's rarely the great heroes, the powerful generals, the world leaders, who get stabbed to death. Because the captain being in the path of a blade is only possible when there's an extreme difference in power in a fight."

She wrote another word next to the one on the board.

"That's why war is so damn inefficient. How many common soldiers must die just to kill one or two powerful people who are in the way? Historically, poison and disease get rid of the 'real' people who run the world. Poison is so easy and convenient. You can poison people just by letting them eat, smell, or breathe it. Anyone who doesn't use poison is an idiot, don't you think?"

She held out her palm.

"There's no way that necromancers wouldn't study such a fine tool after calling themselves pragmatic, right? Powerful, complex poisons can't be undone by the priests' cleansing, or at least the organs will have already failed by the time they're done healing them. We must aim for that level."

She tossed the chalk aside and stepped forward again.

"Whew! That was a long introduction, bastards! Your Vice-President forced me to do this… Jeez. Now, let's get right down to my Poisonous Alchemy class!"

Simon tensed up as he watched the assistant teachers bustling about.

What kind of lesson was she going to give?

——