Chapter 56
The first period ended, and the next class began.
Today, Class A had four short, two-period classes scheduled, and the second was Spiritology.
“With spirit! Let’s charge in with full spirit today toooooo!”
The man shouting at the top of his lungs from the center of the classroom was named Umbra Warframe.
What made him peculiar was that his body was fainter than others, and his legs had completely vanished, leaving him floating in midair like a ghost.
He had become like this after getting obsessed with phantasmic transformation magic and frequently traveling between the real world and the spirit realm.
And on his face, he wore a lifelike wolf mask.
So lifelike, in fact, that among the students, there were rumors that it was actually his real face, or that Umbra was a werewolf half-blood.
The Spiritology class taught by Umbra dealt with soul entities known as Spirits. Everyone had expected it to be a delicate and quiet class, but they were completely wrong.
“You lack grit! Your spirit is rotten! Why are you all already deciding that it’s impossible? Now! Raise your arms!”
Umbra was a hot-blooded professor. Despite his wispy ghost-like body, he was full of power and energy.
Simon had been trying to sense a Spirit, only to be jolted out of concentration again and again by Umbra’s bomb-like voice.
Once, a student asked:
“Professor! No matter what I do, I can’t sense the Spirit. What should I do?”
Umbra answered:
“Feel it! Don’t think it’s impossible, just feel it! Just feel it no matter what! You’re not trying hard enough! Put all your strength and heart into it! Pour out your energy!”
...Not exactly the most helpful advice.
But Umbra’s words weren’t completely wrong, either—sensing a Spirit wasn’t something that could be solved with strength, knowledge, or technique.
The spirit-sensitivity needed to connect with souls differed from person to person, and whether one could feel a Spirit with only a small amount of sensitivity came down to individual constitution.
And even Simon, who had never fallen behind in anything talent-related,
‘...Why can’t I feel it?’
Was hopeless when it came to Spiritology.
Simon sat around a round table with other students, spinning a spiritualist tool known as a Ouija Board.
“It’s my turn to chant the spell, right?”
Jaime Victoria said, her voice listless. Even the class A honorary class president, brilliant in every subject, had yet to feel a Spirit.
The foundation of Spiritology is the Spirit. If you can’t sense that, no part of the class means anything.
So Umbra divided the class into two teams.
The first was the training team, who followed the lessons and learned how to handle Spirits.
The second was the preparation team. Since they couldn’t yet sense Spirits, they spent the entire class repeatedly performing activities to try to sense them.
That meant spinning the Ouija Board nonstop, performing strange rituals with occult tools to call spirits while dancing bizarrely, or climbing into a coffin to meditate like a corpse (and of course, anyone caught sleeping or dozing would be punished). These strange behaviors repeated endlessly.
“No grit!”
Sometimes, Umbra would leave the training team to run drills and personally come check on the preparation team.
“Put more spirit into it!”
While five students held the planchette and spun the Ouija Board, Umbra grabbed the handle with his massive hand.
“Hold the handle with more strength! Like this! Like this! Spin it with all your heart!”
“Yes, sir!”
He was so strong that he overpowered the strength of five students with one hand.
“Your voice is too soft!”
“Yes, sir!!”
Jaime Victoria tightly shut her eyes and began chanting the summoning spell in a loud voice.
Satisfied, Umbra nodded and turned his gaze elsewhere.
“You there! What do you think you’re doing?”
This time, his attention turned to Kamibarez Ursula, who was sweating profusely and flailing in a ritual dance.
Startled, she replied,
“S-Sorry, Professor!”
“Lift your legs higher! Higher! That’s it! A soul-summoning ritual isn’t child’s play! Make your movements bigger!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
With her knees flying up and her dance wildly exaggerated, small tears welled at the corners of her eyes. Her entire body was drenched in sweat.
Honestly, it was not a dance any girl would want to perform.
It wasn’t even like “Swooshy-swoosh swoosh-swoosh”, but more like violently shaking her head, swaying her shoulders, and waving her arms like cobras in and out. No one had any idea how that was supposed to summon spirits.
Students had already nicknamed it the chicken-feed dance and the squid courtship dance.
‘P-Poor Kami……’
Simon looked on with pity.
“Assistants! Time to rotate!”
“Yes, sir!”
The assistants approached Simon and the group still spinning the Ouija Board.
“Leave all objects as they are and stand up. You’ll be moving to perform the ritual dance.”
It was finally their turn.
Simon sighed deeply and moved to the spot where Kamibarez had just been dancing, the back of the lecture hall, where sheets had been laid out.
There was even a kind of formation to it: students had to stand facing each other with a bit of distance. And directly in front of Simon stood none other than Jaime Victoria.
“I’ll trust that everyone has memorized the dance by now. Let’s begin.”
The assistants began playing strange instruments adorned with skulls.
Bee-dee-dee-dee~ An eerie flute sound rang out.
‘Just empty your mind.’
Honestly, this wasn’t a dance anyone in their right mind could perform. Simon emptied his mind and began moving his body as he had been taught.
His leg shot forward, then shot up so high his knee nearly touched his chest. His limbs flailed like waves, his torso leaned forward, and his whole body twisted like a mollusk.
Students who had been sneaking glances at Umbra’s reaction let out small chuckles when they saw Simon’s intense dancing.
‘Why the hell... is he dancing so seriously?’
‘He’s good at anything physical, huh?’
Simon, with no thoughts in his head, moved with perfect unity of body and mind.
He had essentially reached the state of oneness.
Even Umbra watched with satisfaction and let out a hearty laugh.
“Very good! Excellent! Even if you can’t sense a Spirit, that kind of persistence and effort is exactly what you need!”
Umbra thought to himself that he should take Simon to the upcoming weekend event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Goliath’s death and make him work part-time as a Soul Dancer. His dancing really was astonishingly good.
‘…I think he’s praising me, but I don’t feel happy at all.’
Simon, still dancing hard, cautiously opened his eyes.
Class rep Jaime Victoria was flailing around, doing the chicken-feed dance in awkward movements. The moment their eyes met, her face flushed red with embarrassment.
“P-Please, don’t look this way…”
At her plea, Simon quickly turned his head.
It’s not like the students had no complaints about being made to do this kind of thing. But no one dared to protest to Umbra, so they just timidly vented their frustration to the assistants.
Each time, the assistants would say something along the lines of,
‘If you don’t like it, go join the training team, then.’
Truthfully, the preparation team students had no real argument either, since they were only here due to lacking the necessary skills.
What was more surprising was that, during every class, one or two students would actually raise their hands saying they had really sensed a Spirit, right after dancing the chicken-feed dance or spinning the Ouija Board.
“Congratulations. You’ll move to the training team.”
Those who finally escaped this embarrassing hell and joined the training team cheered like they had conquered the world.
At this point, there were even rumors among the students that it wasn’t that the occult rituals were effective, but that the desire to escape public humiliation made them grit their teeth so hard they ended up sensing a Spirit.
And so, the grueling Spiritology class finally ended.
“Ughhh…”
Having completed the full course of the preparation team, Simon staggered down the hallway, his limbs flailing like a jellyfish.
“Hey, are you seriously okay?”
Maelyn asked in shock. Simon raised his limp arm to gesture that he was fine.
“What did your training team learn?”
“Obviously attack magic.”
Dick, walking on Simon’s left, answered while propping his head up with one arm. Hard to believe, but Dick had managed to sense a Spirit during the very first class.
“Because of the upcoming duel evaluations, all the professors are skipping theory and going straight to teaching practical combat magic. I bet the other classes are the same.”
“Hmm, what’s the next class again?”
Dick grinned and answered.
“Haematology.”
The very class that had been repeatedly postponed due to Sillage’s schedule and personal matters.
Today was Class A’s first time taking it.
* * *
The Haematology class took place in a building called the Magic Bullet Firing Range.
The professor was none other than the famous Sillage Visabar, the same middle-aged professor who had taken Simon to Keyzen aboard the Underworld Whale.
His complexion was still as pale as a terminal patient battling illness, and his cheeks were sunken. Now, white hair outnumbered black, and his hands were yellowed.
Simon thought he looked even worse than the first time they’d met.
Cough, cough.
“Haematology is a branch of black magic that uses blood as a medium.”
Simon and six other students stood on the firing line. 200 meters ahead of them were targets.
“To the public, it’s often mistaken as a field trying to replicate the secret techniques of vampires or blood wolves, but hm! that’s not true. Since the caster’s blood is the most compatible material with Darkness, this field boasts a long history.”
While the students on the firing line prepared to shoot, the rest sat and listened to Sillage’s explanation.
“Darkness, and the caster’s blood, are compatible in every sense. Necromancers can artificially mix blood and Darkness to create various magical reactions.”
Sillage spread his hands. In one hand was a droplet of pure Darkness, in the other, blood trickled down.
When the blood droplet and Darkness met in the air, they reacted violently and scattered explosively in all directions at incredible speed.
The students gasped in awe.
Cough cough!
“Setting aside the fact that I’m the Haematology professor, I can confidently say that for a necromancer not to use blood is a waste of potential. While it does consume the caster’s stamina, Haematology can become the fastest and strongest weapon for a necromancer.”
Following the assistants’ instructions, the students on the firing line clenched their left hands into fists and extended only their right index fingers, aiming at the targets.
Each of them had a device like an IV attached to their arms. When the assistants activated the devices and projected a magic circle in front of each student’s finger, the circles turned red with blood.
This was the basic technique of Haematology: Bloodshot. The IV-like device was essentially the Haematology version of a magic circle calibrator.
Hmph. “Since it’s Class A’s first session, the schedule is significantly delayed. So today, we’ll first identify what attribute your blood holds, how this blood can assist you, and finally move on to practical use of Bloodshot.”
Even if they were behind, how many things were they going to cram into one class?
Simon thought as he looked at the targets, just 200 meters away. Not only was there a single target, but ten had been set up behind it in a row.
Sillage turned his head, hands clasped behind his back.
“Then, we begin practical training.”
Superb.