The moment Simon issued the telepathic command, the Chaos Dullahan charged at Meirin with a deafening roar.
Not to be outdone, Meirin thrust out her arm. One of the five magic circles she had prepared erupted with fire.
’Dark Prominence’
A wide-area jet-black flame spell. Black lava surged from the magic circle like a flood, but the Chaos Dullahan didn’t slow down.
With a sharp metallic ring, the Dullahan’s sword drew a flawless arc, slicing through the lava as if it were paper.
"What?" Meirin’s eyes went wide. "You can do that with a sword?"
He might not be in his original body, his memories and experiences dulled by time, but Manus was still a former Swordmaster.
Meirin unleashed a high-level jet-black ice spell next, but Manus effortlessly cleaved through it. Shattered ice rained down from the sky like a heavy frost.
"Whoa, what kind of Dullahan is that?" Dick marveled. "That’s insane!"
"Amazing!" Kamibarez clapped her hands.
The Dullahan closed the distance in an instant, but rather than panicking, Meirin flashed a triumphant smile.
’Gotcha.’
She raised her index finger.
Meirin had disguised her setup to look like she had prepared a total of five magic circles, but it was a ruse. The illusion masking the seemingly empty floor peeled away, revealing a vivid jet-black magic circle.
’Meirin Remake - Dark Glacier’
A powerful spell designed to seal everything within dozens of yards in solid ice.
She intended to freeze the Chaos Dullahan in its tracks before ending the battle with her three remaining large-scale spells.
"Huh?"
The magic circle didn’t activate.
The Chaos Dullahan simply strode right past it.
"Wait, why isn’t it working?!"
Panicking, Meirin hastily tried to trigger her remaining three magic circles, but they remained dormant, as if the formulas had shattered.
With a soft hiss, the high-level magic circles she had worked so hard to create began dismantling themselves in the reverse order of their assembly.
’Damn it!’
Left with no choice, she forced out her remaining jet-black to deploy a Dark Flare magic circle, but even that scattered into the air right before completion. Every trace of her jet-black and mana was violently sucked into the Dullahan.
The air rushed past as the Swordmaster’s blade descended toward Meirin in a terrifying arc. Her last-second shield fizzled out. Out of options, Meirin squeezed her eyes shut and threw both arms over her head in a desperate guard.
[Stop, Manus.]
At Simon’s command, the sword stopped dead in its tracks.
Simon could feel the skull resting on the Dullahan’s torso glaring at him in dissatisfaction. Still, he spoke firmly, invoking an absolute command.
[She’s my friend. Stop.]
Left with no choice, the Dullahan raised its free hand and lightly chopped the top of Meirin’s head with the edge of its palm.
A startled yelp burst from the terrified Meirin’s lips.
"Ow! Hey! Stop it!"
With every light chop from the Dullahan, she sank lower, clutching her head until she was crouched on the ground. Dick clutched his stomach, howling with laughter, while Kamibarez hurried over in concern.
Checking the barrier gauge, Dick wiped a tear from his eye and declared the end of the match.
"The winner is, obviously—hahaha! Simon Polentia! Ahahaha!"
Simon rushed over and quickly retrieved Manus’s head, causing the Dullahan to power down.
"You...!"
With a bright red face, Meirin glared at Simon, trembling. She was huffing in frustration, faint tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
Sensing a threat to his life, Simon quickly spoke up.
"A-Are you okay, Meirin?!"
"Argh!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "You jerk! That kind of pity pisses me off even more! You should’ve just finished me off with the sword!"
To someone as fiercely competitive as Meirin, Simon’s mercy was pure poison.
Dick was practically rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically.
"Oh my god! Hahaha! Fuck, I can’t breathe! I’m dying! Hahaha!"
"Shut up!"
---
They took a short break after that.
Meirin had calmed down, though she was still huffing, her anger not entirely spent.
"Man, I think I just laughed enough to last me a year."
Having secured prime material to tease Meirin with, Dick looked like the most satisfied guy in the world.
While walking through the park, Dick invented a game where he would yelp and drop to the ground every time a leaf fell. Each time, Meirin flushed red to the tips of her ears and beat him to a pulp.
"Hey! More importantly, what happened back there?"
As soon as they sat down on a park bench, Meirin narrowed her eyes at Simon.
"I couldn’t use dark magic at all once the Dullahan got close."
"You didn’t know?" Dick, sporting a fresh handprint on his cheek, suddenly chimed in. "Dullahans have a Jet-Black Engine in their bodies that sucks up ambient mana like crazy! Magic gets neutralized when they get close, which is why they’re called Magician Killers."
"Shut your trap before I kill you. You think I don’t know the basics?" Meirin snapped, making Dick immediately clamp his mouth shut. "I was fully aware of a Dullahan’s traits, and naturally, I prepared for them. I added extra formulas to all my magic circles to solidify their cohesion, but they still unraveled. I even deployed them outside the range of the Dullahan’s mana absorption, but they still got sucked in."
She touched her throat.
"It was hard to even breathe. It felt like stepping into a world where magic had completely vanished."
Everyone’s gaze turned to Simon.
"Oh! Now that you mention it," Kamibarez spoke up. "I saw something weird, like stalks of wheat, attached to the Dullahan’s body!"
"Good eye, Kami. That’s the secret."
Simon had recently figured out how to mimic a portion of the Saintess of Harvest’s power.
Since Simon wasn’t a saintess, its practicality in actual combat was limited, but the version he recreated using Chaos was still highly effective.
He had grafted this exact technique onto the Dullahan. By combining the absorbing authority of the Saintess of Harvest with the Dullahan’s innate mana-draining engine, something incredible happened.
It created a massive anti-magic zone where spells were completely sealed.
In other words, Simon’s opponent would be forced into the tremendously unfair position of fighting a former Swordmaster in hand-to-hand combat, completely stripped of their dark magic.
Simon explained the mechanics, carefully omitting any mention of the Saintess of Harvest. Everyone looked astonished.
"That’s amazing, Simon!"
"Whoa, this new technique is seriously insane!" Dick jumped up from his seat. "It’s a targeted countermeasure for your fight against Senior Aizel, right?"
"This will definitely work," Meirin agreed, her tone dead serious. "I’m not just saying that because it beat me. If you can get that Dullahan close to Senior Aizel, you win, Simon."
Simon’s victory.
For the usually level-headed Meirin to declare it so confidently spoke volumes.
No matter how fast Aizel’s casting speed was, he wouldn’t be able to force dark magic through the anti-magic zone projected by Simon’s new Chaos Dullahan.
"But thinking about it still pisses me off," Meirin muttered. "Because of the matchup, it was a fight I was bound to lose from the start under the Full Position Rule!"
"I-It was just an experiment. Winning or losing doesn’t matter."
"It matters to me!"
While Simon tried to soothe Meirin, Dick crossed his arms, his expression turning serious.
"Alright, but the real problem is how you’re going to complete a summon with such heavy formulas in actual combat and get it close to Senior Aizel."
Since this sparring match used the Full Position Rule, deploying the Chaos Dullahan from the start was possible.
However, in an actual Duel Evaluation, preparing powerful dark magic beforehand was strictly against the rules; you had to buy the time to cast it yourself.
"Simon! How long does it take to summon the Chaos Dullahan?"
At Kamibarez’s question, Simon chuckled awkwardly and scratched the side of his head.
"If I reduce its performance to the absolute minimum... about an hour."
Everyone blanched at the thought. Meirin flared up in anger.
"Then what’s the point of having a strong summon?! You’ll get beaten to a pulp before you can even bring it out!"
Simon completely agreed with her.
He planned to start figuring out how to drastically reduce the preparation time immediately.
"Hey, isn’t it still amazing, though?" Dick shrugged. "Against the great Senior Aizel, you have a trump card that guarantees victory—as long as you can manage to bring it out."
"Well, yeah! But I’m saying that bringing it out is practically impossible!" Meirin shot a look at Simon. "You said an hour, right? If you’re going to use it in the Duel Evaluation, you need to cut that down to thirty minutes, minimum."
Cutting the preparation time in half.
If he did that, the Chaos Dullahan would probably fall apart after swinging its sword a few times, but if it meant securing a win, he had to do it.
"I’ll try to reduce it as much as I can."
"You better!"
Still, the group was swept up in an excited atmosphere after seeing Simon’s new weapon firsthand. As they continued chatting...
"Hmm... Either way, we really don’t have much time."
Lost in thought, Dick looked at Simon.
"Simon. Set your first goal as the upcoming Duel Evaluation. You have to somehow beat your opponent using the Chaos Dullahan in this evaluation! How about it?"
"Sounds good."
He definitely needed to reach that level to be able to use it in his match against Aizel.
If he couldn’t even bring out the Chaos Dullahan against a classmate, there was no way he could pull it off against the top student of the third year.
"If you fail, you scrap the Chaos Dullahan strategy without any lingering regrets!"
"Perfect."
Simon clapped his hands together and stood up.
"I’ll give it a try. No, I’ll make it succeed."
Meirin furrowed her brow in concern.
"Are you really going to do it? This is Kizen. There won’t be a single easy opponent in the upper squads..."
"Who is your opponent for this Duel Evaluation, Simon?" Kamibarez asked.
Simon scratched the side of his head.
"I’m not sure. I haven’t checked the bracket yet."
"I’ve got it!"
True to his role as the group’s information broker, Dick smirked and pulled a folded bracket out of his pocket.
"Let’s see here... Simon Polentia in the upper squads. Simon Polentia."
Scanning down the list, the corners of Dick’s mouth curled up.
"Oho?"
---
At the same time.
The Newspaper Club’s filming studio.
Inside a room packed with various filming gear, including a stationary memorial crystal ball, two boys were flipping through a script, running their final checks.
"You ask this one, and I’ll ask this one. Okay?"
"Okay."
One had green hair, the other red.
Tay, the current president of the Newspaper Club, and Silverberg, the vice president. They were notorious second-year troublemakers at Kizen.
A sudden knock echoed from outside the studio. Tay perked up.
"She’s here. Get the door."
The first-year Newspaper Club members scrambled to open it. Soon, an expressionless girl walked in.
"Welcome!" the first-year members chorused, giving crisp, ninety-degree bows. She offered an arrogant nod and stepped inside.
The second-years, Tay and Silverberg, waved her over.
"Thanks for coming, the next-generation representative of Venomology!"
"Oh, please."
She waved her hand dismissively, though she brushed her hair back as if she didn’t mind the title.
"What’s with an interview right before finals? Why are you holding up a busy person?"
Tay and Silverberg quickly rubbed their hands together in a placating gesture.
"Just thirty minutes! Thirty minutes!"
"Cut us some slack, we’re all from Class H. The interview will be over before you know it."
"You Newspaper Club guys, honestly."
She feigned reluctance, but the Kizen school newspaper was an important stepping stone to becoming a named student.
Its influence couldn’t be ignored. It was subscribed to and read by scouts from various kingdoms, active necromancers in the field, and even students from the three great necromancer academies.
For someone aiming to crack the top ten while building a flashy career, media exposure was crucial. For a necromancer, wealth and fame came right after skill.
"Please, take a seat here. We’ve got it all set up for you."
"Hmph, what a load of crap."
She sat down, soaking up the Newspaper Club members’ hospitality as if it were her birthright. Smoothing out the wrinkles in her uniform skirt and fixing her hair, she gave a curt nod.
Vice President Silverberg clapped his hands.
"We’re rolling!"
Newspaper Club President Tay held up an amplification crystal ball, his voice booming.
"Welcome, everyone! This is the Newspaper Club’s Kizen Monthly! Today, we’ve brought in the talk of the town! There was a huge event recently, wasn’t there? We have with us the proud winner of the World Lethal Poison Contest hosted by Pentamonium and held right here at Kizen! Please welcome Jessica Kananor from Venomology!"
The moment the cameras rolled, her expression bloomed into a radiant, camera-ready smile.
"Hello, I’m second-year Jessica Kananor."
"Since there are so many crazy monsters in our three hundred twenty-ninth class, hers might still be an unfamiliar name to some, but she’s a student who has maintained top-tier grades since her first year! Her current rank is an impressive thirty-fifth! I heard you clinched the victory in this World Lethal Poison Contest with a highly unique poison mixture."
"Oh my, I was just lucky! The way I created that poison was..."
The interview flowed smoothly for a while as she recounted her experience at the World Lethal Poison Contest.
Off-camera, Vice President Silverberg shook his head in dissatisfaction and sent a telepathic signal to the president.
[It’s too bland. Move on to a more provocative topic.]
Catching the signal, Tay flashed a sinister smile.
"Come to think of it, the final Duel Evaluation of the first semester is coming up soon!"
A slight shadow fell over Jessica’s expression.
Catching that fleeting look, Tay licked his lips like a beast eyeing its prey.
"Do you know who your opponent is for the final Duel Evaluation, Jessica?"
"W-Well, I’m not sure. I make it a rule not to check the bracket until the day of..."
"Haha! Allow me to tell you! It’s none other than the famous Student Council President, Simon Polentia!"
Tay held up a memorial crystal ball, his face alight with malicious glee.
"It’s the final Duel Evaluation of the semester, and it seems you’ve had some terrible luck with the draw! But everyone, did you know? Surprisingly—very surprisingly—Jessica actually faced Student Council President Simon in a Duel Evaluation back in their first year! Did you know that?"
Jessica cursed at him with her eyes.
’Don’t do it, you son of a bitch.’
’Seriously, don’t.’
"We have some memorial crystal ball footage that was really, really hard to get our hands on! It’s not the original, so the image quality is a bit poor, but shall we take a look together?"
Silverberg, whose teamwork with Tay was breathtakingly perfect, immediately activated the memorial crystal ball on the table.
With a crackling sound, an old scene appeared on the screen.
[Student Simon Polentia of Class A. Student Jessica Kananor of Class H. Please come to the arena.]
’I said don’t!’
Jessica tried to lunge forward to stop them, but the video had already started playing.
The first-year versions of the two students were walking toward the front of the arena.
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