Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner

Lunchtime.

After finishing his meal earlier than usual, Simon stopped by the Class L lecture room for a while before his next class started.

‘Not here, huh?’

Among the students of Class L in the lecture room, Simon couldn’t find the person he was looking for. The building where his next class would be held was quite far, so he could be late if he wasted more time.

‘Mm. Should I come back tomorrow?’

As he was wandering in front of the lecture room nervously, someone was walking past him.

It was a pretty female student with a pink ribbon in her hair who was holding a textbook in her arms.

“Hey. Sorry, but excuse me.”

“Hm?”

The female student blinked her eyes and stopped walking.

“There’s a girl named Lorain in Class L, right?”

“Yep yep. That’s right. Lorain is in our class. Why?”

Simon carefully took an envelope out of his pocket.

“I wanted you to hand this to Lorain.”

“……?!”

The female student stopped with her mouth wide open, as if someone pressed pause.

And then,

“Kyaaaaaaaah!”

She suddenly screamed.

‘Why the hell is she screaming?!’

Simon got startled and looked around. Luckily, they didn’t attract much attention as there weren’t many people around.

“Right, I remembered!”

Looking excitedly, she stood up on tiptoe and examined Simon’s face thoroughly.

“You’re the Special Admission No.1 who took an oath as a freshman representative, right?”

“……”

“Right? Right? Kyaaaah! Oh my goodness! You guys are elites after all. Birds of a feather flock together!”

She took the letter like she was snatching it from Simon’s hand.

“Mhm, mhm! I got it! I’ll make sure to deliver this to Lorain if it kills me!”

“……You don’t really have to go that far, you see.”

She let out a naughty smile.

“This is a very obvious question, but I shouldn't tell Lorain who you are, should I?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, really? Can I tell her?”

Her eyes twinkled to the point of making Simon uncomfortable. He suddenly felt a shuddering sense of danger.

“N-Nah. Never mind about that. Just deliver the letter without saying anything else, please!”

“Hohoho! Alright! I thought you’re quite daring, but I guess you’re shy after all?”

She slapped Simon’s forearm and laughed like an elegant lady.

Her reaction was like she was having so much fun with the topic right now.

“……Say you.”

Simon squinted his eyes.

“You’re not misunderstanding in a strange way, right?”

“Yes! Yes! Of course not!”

Why the hell are you winking with that answer?

This messenger had all of a sudden become unreliable, but Simon didn’t have much time left before his class. He could barely make it if he sprinted the whole way.

“……Well then, I’m counting on you with that letter.”

“Leave it to me!”

As soon as Simon turned his back with an anxious mind, the female student ran into the classroom with tremendous speed.

“Kyaaaaaaah! Guys! Guys! Guess what I got from outside?”

Simon sighed while pressing his hand into his forehead.

* * *

After finishing all the class for the day, Simon visited the campus cafe by himself.

‘This is my first time here.’

As he grabbed the doorknob of the cafe and opened it, he heard a rattling bell. There were so many people when he entered, causing his eyes to widen in surprise.

Students, seated at tables big and small, were chit-chatting noisily.

The students seated by the wall were completely engrossed in studying. They were flipping through textbooks with one hand and taking notes with the other hand while drinking coffee with the straw in their mouth.

It was also surprising to see them keep their concentration when people were roaming around like that.

‘……That’s amazing. And they say that this place is more flooded during exam period, huh?’

It was at that moment that Simon, who sat down after searching for an empty seat, looked around.

Clamor.

The surroundings suddenly got noisy.

A female student with her black hair hanging down was coming from the door where Simon had just entered.

“Woah……!”

“Right, right?”

She had a different atmosphere from the other students.

An aloof gait, red eyes that seem to transcend the world, and a cold, expressionless face.

She had an aura that made it hard to talk to her, to the point where it was hard to think she was actually a student like the others.

Lorain Archbold.

The only daughter of Nefthis, the Witch of Death who ruled over half the world for 300 years.

With the appearance of a big name, people started crowding to see her. Lorain let out a small sigh and raised her brows.

“What are you staring at?”

With those words, the students within the tens of meters disappeared cleanly. The students sitting in the distance couldn’t even make eye contact and bowed their heads.

After creating a miracle of turning the surroundings cold in an instant, she started moving.

“……”

And the place where her steps stopped was in front of Simon.

Simon gulped. All of a sudden, an extreme nervousness had rushed over him.

‘Wh-Why does she feel so unfamiliar?’

He thought they became close after eating and shopping together. It was difficult to deal with her in a Kizen school uniform when he hadn’t seen her in a long time.

“I-It’s been a while. Haha……”

“……”

He mustered up the courage to talk to her, But Lorain was still cold and expressionless.

While Simon, who was bewildered, thought about if he did something wrong, Lorain’s eyes slowly curved into half-moons, and the corners of her lips became arcs.

“Hey Simon.”

It was the smile that Simon knew well.

* * *

* * *

The two took the coffee they ordered and went up to the third floor of the cafe.

The owner of the cafe, who seemed very nervous, took the order by themselves, and when Lorain said that she wanted a quiet place, they immediately opened the closed 3rd floor.

Thanks to this, the two could sit in a spacious outdoor window seat. A cool breeze blew, and it felt great.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since Langerstine.”

Lorain, sitting opposite Simon, stroked down her night-sky-like hair. Simon, still nervous, nodded his head with a stiff smile.

“Y-You surprisingly look good with your uniform.”

“Hm?”

She looked down at her school uniform once and then stared at Simon with a sullen face.

“Hey, what are you trying to say? Are you telling me that I look old or something?”

Simon, whose face turned red, immediately waved his hand dismissively.

‘How come she’s interpreting it like that?’

“No, no! It’s not like that……! It’s just that I couldn’t imagine how you would look with the uniform when we met at Langerstine……!”

“Why can’t you imagine? Is it because I look old?”

‘I’m telling you, it’s not that!’

From Simon’s point of view, Lorain’s force that drove the gangs away when they first met was really more than a professional Necromancer.

He only felt a strange sensation because such a girl was now sitting in front of him wearing the same uniform.

‘But why is it so hard to explain this in words?’

Simon sighed inwardly.

“I’m just kidding.”

She drank her coffee with a straw and winked. Realizing that he was being played with, Simon let out a bitter laugh.

“Well, then…”

As she narrowed her eyes, Lorain slowly crossed her legs and said,

“Why did you ask to meet me?”

The atmosphere changed.

This was it. The atmosphere of a hard-to-approach older person.

Simon also instinctively felt that it was about time to get to the point.

After checking once again that no one was around, he opened his mouth with a serious tone.

“……There’s a traitor inside Kizen.”

Simon calmly told her the story of how he got lost in the Forbidden Forest after being chased by the Keepers, and of him seeing a priest laying a cross and praying.

Of course, he removed the part where they escaped with the help of Pier. He said that he was in a crisis, but they survived thanks to Keepers appearing at the right time.

“……”

After hearing the story, Lorain got lost in thought with a serious face.

“Lorain. It may be hard to believe, but I—”

“I believe you.”

She raised her head.

“Other than that, could you describe the appearance of the cross you saw in detail?”

“……Uh, hmm. As far as I remember, a woman was carved on the largest cross in the center. A naked woman surrounded by vines or something?”

“That narrows it down.”

Lorain’s red eyes gleamed.

“That’s Goddess Deva, the only god the priests of Efnel believe in.”

The Divine College ‘Efnel’, under the direct control of the Pope.

As the antithesis of Kizen, which trained Necromancers. This was where Priests were trained.

Within the Holy Federation, it was an institution that had around the same level of recognition and power as Kizen. The ‘Saintess’, who was considered the most powerful, monopolizes all the power, to the extent where they are only selected among the female students of Efnel.

Kizen and Efnel.

Efnel and Kizen.

Which one was stronger? Which students were better?

These questions had long been a topic of discussion among the people of the continent.

“……How dare.”

Crack!

The coffee leaked out as Lorain shattered the glass cup she was holding with her grip.

“How dare a damned priest get into Kizen like this!”

She looked genuinely angry. Simon couldn’t help but be nervous, even though he knew that the murderous spirit flowing from her body wasn’t aimed at him.

“……Simon.”

“Yeah?”

“Who knows about this other than you?”

“Camibarez, who went to the forest with me. It’s just the two of us.”

She nodded her head.

“Thank you for telling me. I’ll report it to my mom right away.”

Simon had a reason for keeping this a secret.

The professors at Kizen were also the suspects in this case. Only Nefthis should know, so that investigations from various directions could be made.

“Let’s go, Simon!”

Lorain got up from her seat.

“Wh-Where to?”

“To the Forbidden Forest. There may be some clues left at the scene where you saw the Priest.”

Simon’s eyes widened.

“……Right now?”

* * *

Clip clop clip clop!

Late in the evening, Simon rode a skeleton horse for the first time in his life.

It’s said that one skeleton horse was the price of one house, but it being so expensive was understandable. Skeleton horses were obviously faster than horses—they didn’t tire—and the ride was comfortable.

“You’re better at this than I thought. Did you take riding lessons?”

Asked Lorain, who was riding a skeleton horse to his side.

“A little bit, back in my hometown.”

In fact, regardless of riding skills, Simon and the skeleton horse got along very well.

Above all, the skeleton horse was keeping up with Simon well. As soon as Simon held out his hand, the skeleton horse gently rubbed his face, acting cute.

“This way, Lorain.”

“Yeah.”

He could navigate easily since it was a road he had been through once. Using the skeleton horse, he jumped over the valley he had crossed with Camibarez and entered the depths of the forest.

“Around this place.”

“Thanks for the guide. Let’s walk in from here.”

The two jumped off the skeleton horses. When Lorain opened the subspace in the air, the skeleton horses ran into it and disappeared.

Simon smacked his lips.

‘I wanted to ride a little bit more.’

He had two items on his bucket list that he wanted to accomplish when he soon made money. The first was a skeleton made of demon bones, and the second was a skeleton horse.

Now, the two of them walked sneakily through the Forbidden Forest. Simon thought he could see the forest road much better than when he first came with Camibarez.

They got to the place where he encountered the Priest without wandering long.

“Is this the place?

“Yeah, I’m certain.”

The two began to search around with serious faces.

‘……The traces are gone.’

He was confident that this was the place where he saw the Priest. However, the altar, the decorations, the cross, and even the battle scars in the ground, where it was turned over during the battle between Pier and Priest, were completely gone.

It was as if nothing had happened.

Simon felt like he was possessed by a ghost.

“How is it going, Lorain?”

“……”

She was kneeling on the ground and running her palms down the grass. Soon, she shook her head.

“Oddly enough, there are no traces at all.”

“……Mmm.”

“But they certainly erased the traces.”

She stood up and folded her arms.

“Simon, judging from your story, they’re quite skilled. The combat power and also that they were able to hide the traces of a wide area. The most shocking thing is that they entered Kizen with a core in their body while serving God. After all, they think that core is the power that denies God.”

“But if you open the core, you can’t use the priest’s Divinity, right?”

Lorain nodded her head.

“I don’t know how it works either, but according to their logic, jet-black is the power of a cursed demon, and divinity is a power that comes from the belief in God. Whatever it is, the two powers do indeed conflict with each other.”

She turned her back.

“The situation is serious. Let’s go back to Kizen. I think I need to go see my mom. Now.”

——