Chapter 220
From the very first Summonology class, the shockwave was immense.
Everyone was talking about Simon and the quadrupedal skeleton.
“...H-Hector.”
Meanwhile, Hector was in the worst mood. The faction students had to walk on eggshells from day one, watching his stormy expression.
“Don’t worry about it. That’s the only subject he’s halfway decent at, Summonology.”
“Exactly, exactly, let’s just go eat.”
Hector slowly stood up.
“Enough. Don’t say anything.”
“Okay!”
Normally, he was fairly gentle, not the type to hold grudges, and looked after his own people well. But whenever Simon was involved, things always went sideways.
The faction members led Hector away from the area.
“Simon!”
Simon was also about to get up for lunch when several female students, who had been eyeing Hector warily, suddenly swarmed in as if they'd been waiting for the moment.
“How did you do that earlier?”
“I want to get good at Skeleton Dash too!”
“Can you help me practice this weekend?”
The girls crowded around him, firing off questions nonstop, but Simon answered them one by one without the slightest hint of annoyance.
“Ah, really? That’s too bad...”
Tap!
At that moment, someone shoved the shoulders of the two questioning girls aside to push through. The girls turned around sharply, eyes narrowed.
“What kind of crazy bitc—!”
And the moment they locked eyes with the expressionless girl with flowing sky-blue hair, the color drained from their faces.
As the two stammered in panic, the previously emotionless Maelyn suddenly flashed a light smile and apologized.
“Oops~ I tripped while rushing over. Really sorry.”
As soon as Maelyn apologized, the two girls began sweating bullets and looked even more flustered.
“No, no! We’re the ones who should apologize!”
“We didn’t realize it was you...! W-we swear!”
Maelyn smiled brightly and approached Simon. As she came closer, the other girls instinctively backed away.
“Hey.”
Maelyn opened her mouth.
“Aren’t you coming to eat? Kami and the commoner are waiting behind us.”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
The two quickly slipped out through the crowd. As they walked briskly, Maelyn suddenly glanced sideways at Simon.
“You know that didn’t look good, right?”
“What didn’t?”
Simon asked back, and she let out a long sigh.
“Being surrounded by girls like that, acting all lovestruck. Why the hell are you wasting your personal time helping them practice? In Keyzen, time is gold. There’s a limit to how nice a person should be.”
At Maelyn’s suddenly cold words, Simon blinked.
“I was on my way to turn them down.”
“H-huh?”
“I already have plans this weekend. And I told them it’s better to go to the teaching assistants, who are way more skilled and better at teaching than a fellow student like me.”
“O-oh, really.”
Maelyn, feeling strangely embarrassed, turned her head forward again, her face reddening.
‘Ughhh, why’d I go off like that?!’
Simon always came off as endlessly kind and considerate, the type who’d suffer losses just to avoid hurting others.
But the truth was a bit different. He had a clear line between public and private matters.
While he often moved based on personal interest, Simon almost never stepped into something that held no benefit to him, like some pushover.
Looking at it that way... did this guy even have any real interest in romance or dating? He seemed like the type to just brush it off, saying he was busy, and reject people outright.
‘...Wait, why the hell am I even thinking about this?’
While Maelyn sighed internally, she spotted Dick and Kamibarez waving at them from in front of the cafeteria.
“You were amazing today, Simon!”
“Seriously! Every time you face off with Hector, something huge happens!”
Dick came rushing up, fist raised, looking thrilled.
“You reenacted the first semester’s Summonology class just to break Hector’s mental game, right?”
Simon bumped his fist with Dick’s and smiled bitterly.
“I really didn’t mean to. I was just trying so hard to win, and it ended up like this. I hope Hector doesn’t take it the wrong way.”
The four of them chatted and entered the cafeteria. They’d ended up taking two classes back-to-back, so lunch was a little late.
After sitting at an empty table, Dick glanced at the menu.
“I’ll have the chicken cutlet.”
“Same here.”
The guys chose quickly.
Meanwhile, Maelyn, who had elegantly put on an apron to avoid staining her uniform, looked baffled.
“I know it’s not my place to interfere, but seriously, try something new. Your tastes haven’t changed at all since the first semester.”
“Heh, playing it safe is the best choice! Rash culinary adventures ruin your whole day!”
Dick smirked as he said it.
“If you’re gonna judge, let’s see what you pick.”
“Hmph.”
Maelyn studied the menu with an unusually serious expression.
“Then I’ll have the soybean side dish with...”
Ueeeeegh!
Suddenly, a retching sound rang out.
Maelyn narrowed her eyes and glared at Dick, who frantically waved his hands, insisting it wasn’t him. She turned back to the menu.
“Soybean side dish...”
Gueeehhegh!
Cough! Hrrrk! Ueeeegh!
“Oh, seriously! Who the hell is doing that?!”
Maelyn shot up, her face bright red.
Several students who had been eating were now bent over on the floor, vomiting. Their expressions were twisted in pain. A few others nearby were covering their mouths and rushing to the bathroom.
“What’s going on?”
“Looks like they’re from Class D.”
Simon and his teammates, along with the other students, looked around in confusion.
Kamibarez, who had been quietly reading the menu, carefully closed it and set it down on the table. Then, with an awkward smile, she made a suggestion.
“Sh-should we go to a different restaurant?”
The other three silently agreed and closed their menus as well.
But the situation wasn’t any better at the other restaurants. Quite a few students were running to the bathroom, clutching their stomachs, or throwing up onto the floor.
Maelyn grumbled that she’d lost her appetite. In the end, the four of them settled for some sandwiches from the cafeteria and headed off to their next class.
The last class of the day was Professor Belya’s Toxicology class.
In the lecture hall of the Toxicology Building. Each student took their seat in a room where one magical cauldron was assigned per person.
‘I still can’t really picture Professor Belya teaching a class. I am curious what kind of lesson she’ll give, though.’
Simon waited with a mix of tension and concern, when Belya entered the classroom with her assistants. The students all wore looks of horror.
‘……Ahem.’
‘There’s nowhere decent to look.’
Belya had entered the lecture hall not in the formal attire she wore at the opening ceremony, but in that same ragged, wild outfit.
She strode confidently up to the podium and flopped into the chair. With a flick of her finger, the assistants began scrambling to take attendance.
‘Uh, those people……’
Simon recognized the assistants’ faces. Dick seemed to notice too and commented.
“They’re the same assistants from Professor Lang’s team.”
In truth, the headquarters and elders of Keyzen didn’t think highly of them. While Lang was assassinated and the saintess clung to Francesca, the assistants who had lived and worked most closely with her failed to notice any signs of abnormality.
Of course, this incident had fooled all of Keyzen, and it wasn’t right to place the blame solely on them. Still, with the change in the Toxicology professor, Lang’s assistant team was on track to become entirely unemployed.
Just as they were gloomily packing their belongings to leave Roke Island, surprising news came.
—I have to put together a new assistant team? Ugh, too much work! Just keep the old one!
An unexpected development occurred.
The eccentric Belya had arrived at Keyzen with nothing but the clothes on her back to take up the post of Toxicology professor. She chose to keep Lang’s assistants as they were.
The assistants, who were about to be cast out with the label of incompetence for failing to protect their professor, were suddenly given a chance to restore their honor.
Naturally, they were now so loyal to Belya they’d probably give up their gallbladders for her if she asked.
One of the female assistants, having finished the roll call, approached Belya and reported in a low voice.
“Professor, all of Class A is present.”
“Mm.”
Belya let out a long yawn, then pushed herself up from her seat. She strode to the front of the podium.
The students in the front row subtly avoided her gaze. The ragged outfit with its rather high level of exposure was still a bit much for the seventeen-year-olds to deal with.
“Hmm.”
She opened the textbook.
There was still content left from the first semester. Keyzen’s policy was to finish the first semester’s material before starting the new textbook for the second term. The students had all opened their textbooks to the appropriate section and were waiting.
Flap, flap.
“Why the hell do they make us teach crap like this? I seriously don’t get it.”
After flipping through a few pages, she closed the textbook with a flick. Then she turned to the students and smiled, baring her jagged, triangular shark teeth.
“They say a first class should start with a provocative question to make it cool, right? Fine. What is poison?”
She strode over to the blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote a large character.
Of course, none of the students could read it. It wasn’t in the continental common tongue, but a hieroglyph from the Marlat tribe of the plains.
“The history of humanity—”
She set down the chalk and slammed her fist into the blackboard with a thud!
“—is also the history of poison.”
Cracks ran through the board, and fragments fell with a clatter, but Belya didn’t pay it any mind.
“If you look at human deaths as a whole, not that many people actually die from fighting each other. Poison is disease, and disease spreads. I don’t need to explain cases like the Blood Plague, which supposedly killed a third of the continent’s population, right? The point is, more people die from illness than those who live out their full lifespans.”
The students had dazed expressions, and Belya grinned.
“Ah~ just look at those dumb expressions. Did I go too broad for you all? Then let’s talk about something you brats like: war. In war, it’s the grunts who die from blades and weapons. Legendary heroes or rulers—people who actually influence the world—don’t usually die by the sword. A general only gets cut down when there’s a massive power imbalance between the two sides.”
She wrote another character next to the one already on the board.
“That’s why war is fucking inefficient. How many poor grunts have to die just to kill one or two leaders in the way? Throughout history, it was poison and disease that removed the ‘true’ movers and shakers of the world. Poison is fucking easy and convenient. Just make them eat it, smell it, or breathe it in—boom, they’re poisoned. If you don’t use it, you’re an idiot. Am I wrong?”
She opened her palm and held it up.
“Necromancers, who pride themselves on being practical, wouldn’t pass up a tool this good, right? Strong, complex poisons can’t even be purified by priests. Or even if they do, the organs are already mush by then. That’s the standard we need to aim for.”
She tossed the chalk and stepped forward again.
“Whew! Damn, what a long-winded intro, huh you little punks? The vice-chancellor insisted I include this crap. Now let’s get straight into this lady’s toxicology practicum!”
As the assistants began moving busily, Simon swallowed hard.
Just what kind of class was this going to be?
Superb.
When are we getting more free chapters?
Thanks for the new chapters