Chapter 208
“Huff! Huff!”
“This way!”
Falling on the northern side of Roke Island, Dick opened his eyes and immediately began gathering the scattered Keyzen students along the shoreline, handling the situation as it unfolded.
Unifying the panicked students—shocked by the impact and sudden appearance of holy monsters—and becoming their mental pillar with nothing but his silver tongue was child’s play for Dick.
“They’re coming from above!”
At someone’s shout, Dick also looked up. A monster of Prima Materia, shaped like a bird, came into view.
“Get down! That one can attack from a distance!”
Everyone hurled themselves toward a nearby hill for cover.
Zap!
The bird monster fired a pillar of light made of holiness from the hole in its chest.
As dirt flew everywhere, Dick and the students crouched and covered themselves. The monster blasted holy energy in all directions before moving on elsewhere.
“Th-they’re really trying to kill us!”
A male student mumbled in panic. The freckled girl next to him responded.
“...Something’s off. Even if this is Keyzen, it’s way too much to fire holy energy with the intent to shatter a student’s Core!”
“Right, this is way too intense for a simulation. This has to be real.”
Watching them spiral into fantasy, Dick let out a long sigh.
The island survival test was ideal. Back then, he got those clueless nobles under his thumb by coaxing them around like roasting marshmallows.
But this time, things were too extreme, and the kids kept slipping out of his control.
“And why are we even heading into the forest? Why not just hide nearby? Someone might sail past in a boat.”
“Alright, alright! Listen up!”
This wouldn’t do. Unable to watch anymore, Dick clapped his hands together sharply.
He’d been hanging out only with sharp minds like Simon, so handling average kids like this was annoying, but right now, he had no choice. These kids could fight better than he could, so he had to keep them safe somehow.
“If you’ve got a brain, think about it for a second! Didn’t your instructors say the integrated second semester would follow a semi-wartime curriculum?”
“...Yeah, they did.”
“But this is still way too much.”
“Okay! Pull yourselves together. Your brains must be in shock and aren’t working right, but if you calm down and think, the test creator’s intent is obvious.”
Dick raised his index finger.
“To confront trauma head-on.”
As he delivered his speech passionately, he kept glancing at the sky from the corner of his eye.
“The Saint’s terror attack wrecked the entire first semester. Tons of injuries, tons of students suffering psychological trauma. They even brought the vacation forward, didn’t they? That means the incident was never properly concluded. And you think Keyzen would just let that slide? By recreating the Saint’s attack, they want us to overcome past fear and surpass our limits, that’s the point of this simulation!”
“B-but you saw it too!”
A frightened male student shouted.
“Those things are firing holy energy like they really want to kill us! A direct hit doesn’t just mean elimination from Keyzen, it’s the end of your necromancer career! How could Keyzen allow something like that...”
“Alright, here’s a question for you.”
Dick cut him off.
“What was the most important assignment over vacation?”
“!”
The students’ mouths dropped open. They exchanged glances and began murmuring.
“...Competitiveness in priest battles!”
“Y-yeah! It was all about defending against holiness! We’re supposed to present what we prepared on the first day of class.”
Dick nodded and joined in.
“That presentation’s a fake-out. The real goal of the vacation assignment—the main objective—was competitiveness in the great priest battle. And that...”
Dick spread his arms wide.
“Is what they’re testing right now in this simulation!”
A calm realization slowly returned to the students’ wide eyes.
They’d been worrying far too much.
If Efnelle’s attack had actually destroyed Keyzen, what would happen to us trapped on this island? Would the Dark Alliance collapse too, and become a vassal of the Holy Federation? If war breaks out, where could we possibly run?
This isn’t reality. It’s just a test, a simulation.
Even just thinking that helped them regain their composure.
“And now...”
Dick casually picked up a nearby pebble and cast an enchantment on it.
“I’ll show you the biggest piece of evidence.”
He turned and hurled the pebble with force.
The black stone flew in a straight line, then suddenly tick! bounced off mid-air as if hitting something invisible.
“Huh?”
All the students jumped up. The impact dispelled the invisibility effect, and an Observer was revealed from what had looked like empty air.
“Gotcha!”
Before they knew it, Dick had thrown a net like a seasoned fisherman.
The Observer, trying to flee, was caught in the net and pulled back. Dick leaped forward, grabbed it, and slammed it into the ground.
“Caught it!”
“Th-that’s really an Observer!”
“It was secretly watching us!”
The students cried out in excitement. Dick picked up a sharp stone and cast another enchantment.
“Or... maybe not.”
“What? But you just said—”
“I’m saying it’s not 100%. What if Efnelle sent it to spy on us? We’ll have to break it apart and dissect it.”
As the other students stood dumbfounded, Dick snickered.
“No harm in being sure. I heard these are super expensive, but being spied on by the enemy means death, right?”
Dick pinned the Observer down with both knees and raised the enchanted stone above his head, at which point a red warning light flashed from the Observer.
-Beep! Do not damage the Observer during the exam.
-Beep! Beep!
As the Observer frantically blared its warning like it was pleading for mercy, Dick grinned slyly.
“Need any more proof?”
All the students quickly shook their heads. Dick stood and brushed dirt from his uniform.
The Observer fled in a hurry, turning invisible again.
“Alright! I know more about this exam than you think. You wanna survive, right? You don’t want to go home in shame before even stepping past the campus gate on the first day, right? How are you gonna face your parents after just saying goodbye to them? Am I wrong?”
As the students nodded with grim expressions, Dick’s lips curled into a smile.
“Then from now on, just trust me.”
Welcome to becoming my chess pieces.
* * *
Exam Command Center.
“Damn kid. His skills are mediocre, but he’s sharp as hell.”
Watching the entire situation unfold on screen, the head supervisor of the exam, Evangelos, burst into laughter.
“He found the Observer and twisted it to his advantage? Hell yeah, a necromancer needs that kind of guts! Flag that kid.”
“Yes, sir!”
Evangelos, who had been observing Dick, rolled his chair back to the center of the control room.
The situation was stable.
Some students were still in a panic, but a few had begun to stand out and were making their way toward the center of Keyzen Island. Their quick thinking pleased him.
Special Admission No. 2, Serne, had formed a royal entourage with feathered bodyguards and was reigning like a queen.
Special Admission No. 3, Shatel, was bulldozing forward like a tank, annihilating every monster in sight.
Special Admission No. 7, Elisa, was using a ghost ship to traverse the air route instead of land.
‘Special admissions are a given, of course. They had a different starting line from the regulars.’
Even among the regular students:
Maelyn was using ice to build a boat and navigate rivers.
Kamibarez was tracking the scent of blood to locate injured or Haematology students, organizing them into a large cooperative group.
Fitzgerald was luring monsters away by using chimeras to distract them with native animals, avoiding combat entirely.
In fact, the general students were progressing even faster than the special admissions.
As the semester progressed, the gap between the special admissions students and the regular students gradually began to shrink.
‘But still.’
Evangelos’s gaze turned toward one of the screens.
‘There’s always one that stands out above the rest.’
Evangelos stared silently at the image of Simon on the screen, then turned his head.
“Prepare the next trial for the five who are arriving first, including Simon Follentia.”
“Yes, sir!”
Evangelos clasped his hands together and smirked slyly.
‘Let’s see how he handles things this time.’
* * *
Simon stood atop a hill, looking down at the situation from above.
The closer one got to Keyzen, the larger and more numerous the wandering monsters became. The terrain wasn’t helping either. Up ahead stretched an open grassland with no trees, grass, or obstacles for cover.
It went without saying that handling enemies of that scale alone was impossible.
‘Time to get ready.’
Now wasn’t the time to conserve his Darkness. Simon pulled an item from his subspace and set it on the ground.
Simon’s secret weapon for this priest battle was—
“It’s been a while.”
—A Mud Golem.
The golem’s core let out a cheerful ting! ting! sound, as if happy to be back.
Simon gently stroked the golem’s core, then dug a pit in the ground nearby and placed the core into it.
‘Now focus.’
The vacation assignment from Keyzen. Countermeasures against priests who fired off holy energy.
Simon had thought about it in various ways.
Of course, it was difficult. As a summoning major who relied on undead, countering priests who blasted holy energy—his natural enemy—was already a challenge. More than anything, honestly—
‘…Why do I even need a countermeasure?’
After the battle with Prema, Simon’s body had developed a certain immunity to holy attacks.
Even Exorcism-type white magic, which was normally fatal to necromancers, barely affected him now.
But he couldn’t exactly stand in front of Jane and say, “Holy energy doesn’t work on me, so I’m fine”. In the end, he researched a new method of countering it, as a summoning major.
‘And this is the answer I came up with.’
Simon stroked the golem’s core and focused his mind.
The golem was a rather unique type of summoned creature.
Although the golem’s core was classified as undead due to its connection to spiritual intent, it was, strictly speaking, closer to a chimera than an undead. Its body wasn’t made of flesh, but of natural materials, making it less vulnerable to holy energy.
Simon stepped back, putting some distance between himself and the golem’s core.
Then he closed his eyes and slowly raised both arms.
<Summon Golem>
Swooooooosh!
The Darkness infused into the golem’s core started going wild. Sand, mud, and rocks in the area began clinging to the core like magnets.
‘Build it in a different form than a standard Mud Golem.’
He didn’t need a combat model, he needed something specialized in speed and evasion. So he abandoned the golem’s usual form.
‘Simple and mobile.’
Around the golem’s core, he shaped a broad, surfboard-like platform. He skipped the arms and legs, installing wheels instead, and built an engine in the rear to rotate them. The power source for the engine, of course, was the Darkness.
Sssssss…
From above, it looked like a streamlined mud board.
Simon hopped lightly onto it.
This was Simon’s board-style Mud Golem, inspired by the wheels of the Holy Train.
“Let’s go!”
Screeeeeeeech!
The Darkness-powered engine roared to life, and the golem’s wheels began to spin.
Soon, the board carrying Simon kicked up sand and shot forward like a bullet.
Superb.
When are we getting more free chapters?
Thanks for the new chapters
Very good story and translation but half the chapter aren't for free and it is wayyyy too expensive will it stat like tjis foreve or will it get free after some time