Chapter 710
As soon as Simon issued the order through thought, the Chaos Dullahan let out a thunderous roar and charged at Maelyn.
Maelyn, unwilling to back down, stretched out her arm. One of the five magic circles she had prepared burst into flames.
<Dark Prominence>
A wide-range darkness flame spell. Black magma erupted as if overflowing from the center of the circle, yet the Chaos Dullahan did not slow its pace.
Srrrng!
Dullahan's sword drew a graceful arc, and the magma split apart like sheets of paper.
Maelyn’s eyes widened.
“Wha, what the hell? You can even cut something like that with a sword?”
Though this wasn’t his original body, and though his memories and experiences were somewhat worn, Manus was still undeniably a former Swordmaster.
Even when Maelyn unleashed a high-tier darkness ice barrier spell, Manus once again sliced through it with ease. Shattered ice fragments poured down from the sky like frost.
“What the, what kind of Dullahan is that? That’s insane!”
“Amazing!”
Dick exclaimed, and Kamibarez clapped her hands.
The distance between Maelyn and the Dullahan closed in an instant, but instead of feeling danger, Maelyn was smiling in triumph.
‘Got you.’
She raised her index finger.
Though she made it appear as if she had prepared only five magic circles, the truth was different. The illusion peeled away from the ground, and a vivid darkness magic circle revealed itself.
<Maelyn Remade – Dark Glacier>
A powerful spell that sealed the surrounding dozens of meters in ice.
Her plan was to halt the Chaos Dullahan’s movements, then strike with the remaining three grand spells to finish the battle. But—
“Huh?”
The magic circle failed to activate.
The Chaos Dullahan simply walked past it.
“Wha, why isn’t it working all of a sudden! This thing!”
Panicked, Maelyn hurriedly tried to activate the other three circles, but they too failed to respond, as if broken.
Fssshhh!
And not only that. The painstakingly crafted high-level circles began unraveling, deconstructing in reverse order.
‘Damn!’
Left with no choice, she directly wove darkness and tried to deploy a Dark Flare circle in front of her, but even that collapsed mid-formation, the darkness and mana being sucked into the Dullahan.
Fwoooom—!
Before Maelyn, the Swordmaster’s blade traced a terrifying trajectory downward. The shield she had hastily tried to raise was also shattered. Despairing, Maelyn squeezed her eyes shut, raising both arms pitifully above her head.
[Stop, Manus.]
At Simon’s command, the blade froze in place with a sharp clink!
The skull on the Dullahan’s torso glared at Simon in dissatisfaction, but Simon used Absolute Order and pressed firmly.
[She’s my friend, stop.]
In the end, the Dullahan raised its free hand and tapped Maelyn on the crown of her head with the edge of its palm.
“Hrgk!”
The terrified Maelyn let out a strange sound.
“Ah! Ugh! Stop it!”
With every tap from the Dullahan, she lowered further, clutching her head, until she collapsed to the ground. Dick held his stomach, laughing hysterically, while Kamibarez approached in worry.
Checking the barrier gauge, Dick burst into raucous laughter and declared the match over.
“Th, the winner is, of course! Puhahahahahaha! Simon Follentia! Hahahahaha!”
Simon quickly approached, retrieved Manus’s head, and the Dullahan stopped functioning.
“Why you...!”
Maelyn’s face flushed bright red, her body trembling as she glared at Simon. Her anger made her breathe heavily, and tears faintly welled at the corners of her eyes.
Fearing for his life, Simon hurriedly spoke.
“Are, are you okay, Maelyn?”
“Youuuu!”
She shouted.
“You bastard! That kind of concern just makes it worse! You should have finished me off with the sword instead!”
For Maelyn, who hated losing, Simon’s mercy was poison.
Dick rolled across the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
“Ah! Ugh! Hahaha! Help me, I’m dying! This is killing me! Hahahaha!”
“Shut up!”
* * *
They took a short break.
Though Maelyn had calmed somewhat, she was still fuming.
“Ah, I laughed enough today to last a year.”
Dick, having found a new way to tease Maelyn, looked utterly satisfied.
As they walked through the park, Dick invented a game where he cried ‘Hrgk!’ and dove to the ground every time a leaf fell. Each time, Maelyn’s neck flushed red as she beat him senseless.
“Hey! More importantly, what the hell happened?”
As soon as they sat on a bench, Maelyn furrowed her brows and glared at Simon.
“When the Dullahan got close, I couldn’t use black magic at all.”
“You didn’t know?”
Dick, whose cheek still bore a handprint, butted in with an explanation.
“The Dullahan’s body has a ‘Darkness Engine’ that sucks up nearby mana like crazy! That’s why it’s called a mage killer when it gets close.”
“Want me to kill you before that? You think I don’t know such basic common sense?”
At Maelyn’s glare, Dick shut his mouth immediately.
“I knew about the Dullahan’s nature, of course, and prepared countermeasures. I wove additional formulas into the circles to strengthen their cohesion, but they still unraveled. I even deployed the circles outside of its mana absorption range, yet they were still sucked in.”
She clutched her throat.
“It even felt hard to breathe, like I was in a world where magic didn’t exist.”
Everyone’s gaze turned to Simon.
“Oh! Now that I think of it.”
This time, Kamibarez spoke up.
“I saw something strange like grains of millet attached to the Dullahan’s body!”
“You saw right, Kami. That’s the secret.”
Simon had recently managed to imitate part of the power of the Saint of Harvest.
Of course, since he wasn’t truly a Saint, the practical application was limited, but the version Simon reproduced with Chaos was highly effective.
He had applied this technique to the Dullahan. On top of its natural mana absorption from the Darkness Engine, it also carried the harvesting authority of the Saint, producing an astounding effect.
It created an expanded zone where magic could not be used at all, a sealed-magic region.
In other words, Simon’s opponents would be forced to face a former Swordmaster inside a zone where black magic was unusable.
Simon left out the part about the Saint of Harvest, but even so, everyone who heard his explanation looked shocked.
“Amazing, Simon!”
“Damn, this new technique is nuts!”
Dick jumped to his feet.
“This is a sniping technique specifically for Senior Aizel, right?”
“......It’ll definitely work.”
Maelyn said in a serious voice.
“And I don’t say that just because I was the one defeated. If you can get that Dullahan close to Senior Aizel, victory is yours, Simon.”
Simon’s victory.
For cold-headed Maelyn to assert it so firmly was no small thing.
No matter how fast Aizel’s magic was, it couldn’t slip through the sealed-magic domain of Simon’s Chaos Dullahan.
“......But now that I think about it, it pisses me off.”
Maelyn muttered.
“From the start, because of matchups, in a full position rule fight, I had no chance of winning!”
“Th, this was just an experiment. Winning and losing wasn’t important.”
“It is to me!”
While Simon tried to calm her, Dick folded his arms with a serious face.
“Now the real problem is, how do we actually complete such a heavy summoning in a real fight and stick it onto Senior Aizel?”
The reason it had worked this time was because the sparring was under “full position rules”.
But in an actual duel evaluation, preparing powerful black magic in advance was forbidden. He would have to buy time himself.
“Simon! How long does it take to prepare the Chaos Dullahan?”
At Kamibarez’s question, Simon scratched his head with a wry smile.
“If I lower the specs as much as possible, about an hour......”
Everyone’s face turned pale. Maelyn burst out angrily.
“Then what’s the point of having such a strong summon! You’ll be defeated before you can even bring it out!”
Simon agreed with her.
From now on, he would have to work on cutting down the preparation time as much as possible.
“Ah, but still, isn’t it amazing?”
Dick shrugged and added.
“You’re holding a sure-win card. Against the almighty Senior Aizel, if you can just summon it, you win without question.”
“No, that’s true, but! I’m saying it’s basically impossible to even bring it out in the first place!”
Maelyn said, glaring at Simon.
“You said an hour, right? If you want to use it in the duel evaluation, you really have to cut it down to at least thirty minutes.”
The preparation time halved.
If he did that, the Chaos Dullahan might only manage a few swings of its sword before disappearing, but if that was enough to win, then it had to be done.
“I’ll try to shorten it as much as possible.”
“Of course you will!”
Still, the student council, having witnessed Simon’s new weapon firsthand, was in high spirits. While various discussions were flying back and forth.
“Hmm, one way or another, there really isn’t much time left.”
Dick, deep in thought, turned to Simon.
“Simon, then make your first goal the upcoming duel evaluation. No matter what, you use the Chaos Dullahan there to defeat your opponent! How about it?”
“That sounds good.”
Indeed, it had to be tested at that level for it to be viable in the battle against Aizel.
If he couldn’t even summon the Chaos Dullahan against classmates, there was no way he could use it against the top third-year.
“If it fails, then you give up on the Chaos Dullahan plan without regret!”
“Perfect.”
Simon clapped his hands together and stood up.
“I’ll give it a try. No, I’ll definitely succeed.”
Maelyn frowned with worry.
“Are you really going to do this? Don’t forget, this is Keyzen, and in the upper squad there isn’t a single opponent who’s easy to deal with......”
“Who’s your duel evaluation opponent, Simon?”
Simon scratched his temple.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t checked the bracket yet.”
“I’ve got it!”
True to his role as the intel guy, Dick grinned and pulled the match list out of his pocket.
“Let’s see, upper squad, Simon Follentia, Simon Follentia.”
As he scrolled down the list, the corners of Dick’s mouth curled up.
“Well, well?”
* * *
At the same time.
In the newspaper club’s recording studio.
The room was outfitted with fixed memorial crystal orbs and other recording devices. Two boys flipped through the script, running final checks.
“You ask this part, I’ll ask that part, okay?”
“Okay.”
One had green hair, the other red.
They were Tae, the current head of the newspaper club, and Zilverburg, the vice-head. Infamous second-year troublemakers of Keyzen.
Knock knock—
A knock sounded outside the studio. Tae said,
“They’re here. Open the door.”
The first-years of the newspaper club hurried to open it. A girl with an expressionless face stepped inside.
“Senior! Welcome!”
Every first-year bowed deeply. The girl tilted her chin with haughty acknowledgment and moved forward.
Even second-years Tae and Zilverburg waved at her.
“Thanks for coming, future representative of Toxicology!”
“Ugh, seriously.”
She waved her hand dismissively, but the title clearly didn’t displease her. She brushed back her hair.
“An interview right before finals? Grabbing busy people like me, what is this nonsense?”
Tae and Zilverburg quickly rubbed their palms together.
“Just thirty minutes, only thirty!”
“We’re both from Class H, cut us some slack. The interview won’t take more than half an hour.”
“You newspaper guys, really.”
She pretended to be reluctant, but in truth, being featured in the Keyzen school paper was an important step to becoming a name.
Scouts from various kingdoms read it, not to mention alumni active in the field and even students of the other three necromancer schools, so its influence couldn’t be ignored.
With her recent flashy career, aiming for the Top 10, media coverage was important. For a necromancer, after skill came wealth and fame.
“Here, have a seat, classmate. I even warmed it for you.”
“Hmph, ridiculous.”
She accepted the treatment as natural, sat down, smoothed the wrinkles on her uniform skirt, and fixed her hair before nodding.
Vice-head Zilverburg clapped his hands.
“Begin recording!”
Head Tae lifted the amplification orb.
“Greetings everyone! This is Keyzen’s Monthly Newspaper! Today we have a special guest! Recently, a huge event took place, right? At the ‘World Toxicology Contest’, hosted by Pentamonium and held at Keyzen, the champion was none other than the representative of Toxicology—Student Jessica Kananor!”
As the recording started, her expression bloomed like a flower.
“Hello, I’m Jessica Kananor, second year.”
“With so many crazy monsters in our 329th batch, the name might still feel unfamiliar, but she has held top ranks since first year! Her current ranking is an impressive 35th! Especially remarkable was her victory at the World Toxicology Contest, where she won with a unique poison combination!”
“Oh my~ I just got lucky! The truth is, when I created that poison......”
For a while, the topic lingered on the World Toxicology Contest.
But Zilverburg, dissatisfied, shook his head and signaled to the head.
—Too ordinary. Switch to something juicier.
Catching the signal, Tae smiled darkly.
“Speaking of which, the final duel evaluation of the semester is coming soon!”
Jessica’s expression darkened slightly.
Tae caught it immediately, licking his lips like a predator spotting prey.
“Jessica, do you know who your opponent is for the final duel evaluation?”
“W, well, I don’t check the bracket until the day of, so......”
“Haha! Then let me tell you! It’s none other than the famous Student Council President, Simon Follentia!”
Tae lifted the memorial crystal with excitement.
“A tough draw for the last duel of the semester! But everyone, did you know? Shockingly! Absolutely shockingly, Jessica once faced President Simon in a duel evaluation during her first year! Were you aware of this?”
Jessica cursed at him with her eyes.
Don’t you dare, you bastard.
I swear, don’t.
“We have a memorial crystal record prepared with great difficulty! The quality’s bad since it’s not the original, but let’s watch it together!”
Perfectly in sync, Zilverburg activated the crystal on the table.
With static, an old image appeared.
—Student Simon Follentia of Class A, Student Jessica Kananor of Class H, please proceed to the arena.
I told you not to!
Jessica tried to stop them, but the footage had already begun.
The two of them, in their first year, were walking toward the arena.
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