Chapter 115
Starting the very next day, Simon dove into intense Overlord training in preparation for the dueling evaluation.
He practiced Overlord whenever he had a free moment, before and after classes, squeezing in time between breaks.
‘Hmm.’
However, no matter how many times he connected with the Overlord’s thought and swung its blades, something felt off.
He couldn’t tell at all whether he was improving or growing stronger.
Unlike Bone Armor or Mud Golem, where progress was visible in real-time, training with the Overlord felt like slicing water with a blade.
Simon had learned from past experience that in times like this, asking someone for help was a faster solution than struggling alone.
So he moved.
“……What are you doing here, Simon Follentia?”
Aron said, having just arrived at the lab after class.
Simon, who had been sitting in front of Aron’s lab door nibbling on a piece of bread, quickly stood up and bowed.
“Hello, Professor!”
“I asked, what do you think you’re doing?”
“I came to seek your guidance!”
Aron pressed his forehead and gave a bitter smile.
He didn’t expect students to start pulling stunts like this just because Restoration classes had become rare.
“……Guidance? Are you talking about Bone Armor?”
“I completed that during my last mission!”
This lunatic.
Aron was starting to think this young student was a monster.
“If not Bone Armor, then what is it?”
“I wanted to ask you about how to operate my new undead, the Overlord, that I acquired recently!”
Aron had already heard from Jane that Simon had acquired a special undead worth 10,000 gold at Blue Harbor. Normally, he would’ve brushed it off, claiming it was time to clock out.
‘The Overlord, huh.’
Aron, a summoner to the core, couldn’t help but feel a growing curiosity about this new undead. Honestly, if work hadn’t been so hectic, he would’ve gone to the Blue Harbor exhibition himself to check it out.
Catching a glimpse of Aron’s reaction, Simon quickly added,
“The Overlord is a completely new type of Delinquent Undead. It has a total of six tentacles, and I reinforced the weak bones with mithril to form blades.”
“………”
“It’s designed to attack by slashing and stabbing with its tentacles like swords. It really moves like a cephalopod. But it’s hard to operate, so I was hoping your guidance would really help—”
“Alright. Bring it out.”
Watching Aron walk off without a second glance, Simon quietly clenched his fist in triumph.
They arrived at an open training yard next to the building.
With Aron watching him with interest, Simon summoned the Overlord, connected to its thought, and demonstrated several techniques, asking whether this was the correct training method.
“You think randomly flailing around like that is proper training?”
“……Th-then what should I do?”
“Get ready. Take off your jacket.”
Not knowing what was going on, Simon obeyed and took off his uniform as instructed.
He removed his outerwear and shirt, hanging them on a tree. Then Aron pulled a skeleton made of Demon Bones from subspace and disassembled it into multiple bones.
“I’m going to attack you with these bones now.”
“Y-Yes?”
“From now on, the only thing you can use is the Overlord. Try blocking them.”
With that, he began flinging bones using Restoration magic. At some point, Simon’s legs had also been locked to the ground using a modified version of Bone Prison.
“Guh!”
Now he couldn’t even dodge.
Simon hurriedly connected to the Overlord’s thought and sent its blades flying toward the incoming bones.
Chaaeng!
Clang!
The bones were deflected as they struck the blades. But one bone slipped between the swinging blades and smacked Simon right on the forehead with a loud thwack.
It didn’t hurt terribly, but it snapped him to attention.
“Focus. More are coming.”
Swish!
Swish swish!
The bones flew at a steady pace and tempo. Simon lifted two blades at once.
‘Read their speed and pattern.’
Reading the movement of the bones flying from left and right, Simon crossed his arms. The blades followed suit, crossing from both sides and covering the center as well.
‘Send the blades precisely to the point of impact!’
The blades arced gracefully through the air, and the bones that flew in were deflected powerlessly. Since the bones were under Aron’s control, there were no irregular patterns.
It was intentionally designed so that everything could be blocked with the right timing.
“Now, I’ll double the volume of attacks.”
At Aron’s signal, more bones filled the air.
“The speed and pattern remain the same. You know what to do, right?”
Without further explanation, the bones came flying. As Simon began sweating profusely, he took control of two more blades.
A total of four blades.
“Hup!”
The four blades swept across Simon’s front, knocking away the flying bones. Watching them get flung away, a bright smile spread across Simon’s face.
‘The feedback feels amazing!’
It was on a whole different level compared to swinging into empty air. He could feel his control improving.
Crack!
Thud!
But then his concentration slipped. The tempo faltered, and bones began hitting various parts of his body.
“If this were real combat, you’d already be dead. Control them more precisely.”
Swish swish swish swish!
Swish swish!
Simon moved the blades so intensely it felt like his lungs were about to burst.
After completing the tempo training, he moved on to accuracy training—targeting projectiles flying side-to-side in midair—and then to a more difficult round involving intentionally scrambled trajectories that were hard to predict.
“Huff! Huff! Whew!”
Completely spent, Simon collapsed flat on the ground.
The parts of his body hit by bones throbbed, and his mind was frayed from constantly maintaining focus.
Aron silently sat down on a nearby bench and lit a cigar.
“Interesting.”
“……Pardon?”
Thinking he misheard, Simon asked again, but Aron simply puffed out smoke without another word.
“You started this. Maybe you began on your own terms, but finishing it is on mine.”
“What do you mean…?”
“Come again tomorrow.”
Aron tossed his spent cigar in the trash and turned his back.
“We should enjoy this training, no? It’ll be useful for me too, since I get to collect data on Delinquent Undead.”
“P-Professor Aron?”
Aron, usually indifferent to everything in the world, walked away wearing an uncharacteristically sinister smile. Simon shuddered involuntarily.
But the training wasn’t over yet.
After finishing all his classes, Simon’s next destination was the ruins of Feer in the Forbidden Forest.
[That Aron, that Keyzen professor guy, his classes are so obvious! Simply improving your proficiency and reflexes isn’t enough to draw out an undead’s true power!]
Feer said this as he placed a hand on the Overlord’s body after Simon summoned it.
“Wait a second, Feer! Don’t tell me…”
[I’m not trying to legionize it, don’t worry! You’re going to need the Overlord for your fight in Keyzen, right?]
Srrrhhhhrrrk!
After doing something, Feer stepped back, and suddenly the previously still Overlord began to move violently.
Startled, Simon quickly sprang to his feet.
[I forced the Overlord’s thought into overdrive to momentarily amplify its aggression.]
Feer sent out legion-type skeletons. Excited, the Overlord whipped its tentacles, flinging the skeletons’ bodies away.
“......!”
[Watch closely, boy,]
Feer said.
[That’s the Overlord’s natural movement.]
The Overlord’s blades twisted like serpents, constricting the skeletons’ bodies or tapping them with just the blade tips to paralyze them.
Up until now, all Simon had been able to recreate through connecting with the Overlord’s thought were stiff, mechanical attacks like slashing and stabbing.
But witnessing the Overlord’s natural movement made Simon’s mind feel as though it was loosening and softening.
‘It’s flexible. That’s how it uses its joints.’
‘Even slight movements of just the blade tips can be threatening enough.’
‘No need to insist on straight lines, use curves. And if I swing the blades like that, I can use narrow attack ranges more effectively.’
Just as Simon was watching the motion closely, his eyes sparkling, one of the Overlord’s blades suddenly struck toward him.
“Whoa!”
Simon hastily stepped back to dodge it.
Feer laughed heartily and shouted,
[Why are you just standing there watching? Feel the Overlord’s movements firsthand by dodging them yourself!]
“Feer!”
Feer’s lesson was to observe the Overlord’s natural movements as much as possible and memorize them in the body, then connect with its thought and replicate those motions exactly.
A human moving arms and legs and the Overlord moving tentacles were fundamentally different concepts.
Simon realized that the Overlord had directions in which it could move more easily and comfortably. As a result, even his own blade control became smoother and more natural.
After finishing Feer’s lesson, the next day during lunch, Simon visited the Mutant Club room.
“Hey now, what on earth did you do to this guy in just a day?”
Club president Benya was checking the Overlord’s condition with a horrified expression.
“I just did a bit of training…”
“You overworked him to the max! The joint connections on this side are already worn out, and it’s completely dried out!”
She ran with her short skirt fluttering and returned carrying what looked like a bunch of paint cans from the shelf.
Then she dipped a large brush into the cans and began spreading the contents all over the Overlord’s body.
“This one isn’t like your average skeleton that you can just leave lying around. It’s using an extremely unstable body sustained through artificial means, so maintenance isn’t optional, it’s mandatory! You’ve got to take care of him regularly!”
“Ah… Specifically, how should I maintain it?”
“Good question!”
Benya cried, grabbing the Overlord’s torso.
“This squishy material in the torso is called Pludeau. If the Overlord moves its legs often, this part here, just under the joint, dries out. You’ve got to keep applying Pludeau or slime-based substances here to keep it moist. If you keep neglecting it like this, its durability will plummet, and you might end up having to replace the mithril entirely later. Got it?”
“I’ll keep that in mind!”
Benya taught Simon detailed maintenance procedures for the Overlord.
Even the Overlord, who usually hated being touched, didn’t reject Benya’s hands, perhaps it understood this was for its own good.
Simon continued to learn new bits of common sense from his senior in summoning.
“Good work.”
At that moment, Fitzgerald entered the club room. He too summoned a chimera from subspace and began fiddling with it.
“You here to calibrate your chimera too?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh! Hold on a sec. Some good materials just came in from Rochest.”
While Benya went over to the shelf to fetch materials, Simon approached Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald also looked up and said,
“Simon, this dueling evaluation won’t be easy.”
“So you’ve seen him. Oh right, you’re in the same Class M as Malcolm, huh?”
Fitzgerald nodded.
“Be careful, Simon.”
“Huh?”
“Malcolm’s different from the opponents you’ve faced in evaluations so far. If you try fake-out plays like before, you’ll never beat him.”
Simon blinked.
Fitzgerald’s words weren’t ones he could simply ignore. After talking with him a few times, Simon realized that while Fitzgerald was a bit of an oddball, he always spoke with logical reasoning.
“Then how can I win?”
“………”
After a moment of silence, Fitzgerald’s gaze turned to Simon’s Overlord.
Superb.