The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

Yu Ji-hyeok came back about ten minutes after he'd slipped into the shadow.

"It's a trap. There's nothing down there."

That was the first thing he said as he emerged from the shadow, which had rippled with no warning.

"There were undead packed all the way through with poison built into their bodies, and the further in I went, the thicker the toxic air got. On top of that, the layout was a maze, and everything was a dead end. Just like Hyun-woo said — a trap designed to seal us in and dry us out. And what we're looking for… isn't there."

"So what do we do? We can't just leave it like this."

"We burn it. Su-yeong, you can dial something that big in, can't you?"

Han Su-yeong shook her head at Choi Hyun-woo's offhand suggestion.

"That won't work. We don't even know the scale of it down there, and if I bring enough firepower to melt undead, we get caught in it too."

Choi Hyun-woo and Lee Yu-na nodded along, almost reflexively, at her next point.

"Ah."

"I know five or six spells that can wipe out a mass of undead. But the only one that works in a situation like this… also does serious damage to the building. It's not like we're here through proper channels. I can't just start blasting…"

"Don't worry about it."

Lee Ye-eun rested a hand on Han Su-yeong's shoulder as if to put her at ease.

"I'll cover all the damages. This building, the ones around it — all of it."

She nodded and gave Han Su-yeong a quick smile.

"So don't hold back. Let it rip."

"…"

At that, Han Su-yeong nodded, walked up to the pit, and stopped.

She began murmuring under her breath, and even Choi Hyun-woo — the least magically inclined person there — could feel the mana in the air starting to tremble.

"Once Su-yeong fires it down there, let's seal the entrance right after."

Yu Ji-hyeok nodded at Choi Hyun-woo's words.

"And we'll have the golems guard the collapsed entrance. Even he can't have set up this many traps like…"

He flinched mid-sentence, his heart lurching.

Han Su-yeong had just sent her mana down into the pit.

After pouring out mana for what felt like an unreasonably long time, as though she were emptying something buried deep inside her, Han Su-yeong stomped on the floor.

"Everyone, get back!"

The others had stepped back several paces before Han Su-yeong even spoke.

The instant she made her own retreat, cracks spread across the ground around the pit, and it collapsed in seconds, choking the opening shut.

"You two, hold this position and don't let anything crawl back out. And make sure we've got a way out, just in case."

The two golems nodded at Yu Ji-hyeok's command.

Then they lumbered into motion, their massive bodies thudding as they went to carry it out.

While he was pulling out his last potion bottle to prepare another golem, Lee Yu-na — who'd been standing quietly beside him — tilted her head and spoke.

"Ji-hyeok, when did you get hurt here?"

"Huh?"

When she tapped the side of his neck, Yu Ji-hyeok shrugged it off and scratched at the spot with a finger.

"Oh… it's nothing, don't worry."

"Still, if an undead got you, you could be infected. The toxins coming off them are dangerous."

She pulled a potion and a bandage from her pocket.

He'd been about to refuse, but drawing attention here wouldn't do anyone any good, and if it covered the mark, all the better. He quietly tilted his neck toward her.

Lee Yu-na let out a small, pleased smile.

"All right, this might sting a little, but bear with…?"

She paused mid-sentence, halfway through cleaning his wound.

There was only a small scratch left on his neck, but somehow she could tell, instinctively, that wasn't all of it.

She thought about it for a moment, then carefully began to smell him, taking care not to let him notice.

To be more precise, she was sniffing out the residue of mana left around the wound.

"Yu-na?"

"Oh — yeah. All done."

She gave him a bright smile and stuck a bandage onto his neck.

When he reflexively reached for the spot, she slapped the back of his hand and spoke firmly.

"Don't touch it. It was a small cut, but you never know."

Surprised by how firm she was, Yu Ji-hyeok nodded without a word.

Lee Yu-na quietly packed her things back up while turning over the mana residue she'd just picked up.

'Bite marks…'

The wound on his neck had clearly been left by something biting him.

But on top of that wound, someone had coated it with their own mana.

Thoroughly — like they'd licked it over.

And for whatever reason, the wound was already almost completely healed, with no abnormalities she could detect.

"…"

If anything, he felt stronger than when he'd gone in.

What on earth had happened? Even as she wondered, Lee Yu-na shifted a step closer to Yu Ji-hyeok.

'…All right.'

There had to be a reason he was hiding it.

He was the one who'd shared his biggest secret with her, apology and all.

If he wasn't saying anything now, there had to be a good reason for it.

'Besides…'

If push came to shove, she'd just protect him herself.

Having settled it, Lee Yu-na sharpened her focus and threw all her senses outward.

That was when, as they pushed in deeper, matching how far they'd already come—

"…Here."

Yu Ji-hyeok suddenly stopped and murmured.

He used the World Tree's branches and Henir's Shadow to strike at the walls and floor.

An iron door, cleverly hidden, revealed itself, and the moment he saw it, Choi Hyun-woo swung his sword at it without missing a beat.

His blade cut through both the door and the magical formula laid into it.

Almost at the same time, a foul stench billowed out from inside.

"Ugh…"

Even the hunter masks that filtered out most poisons and odors couldn't block this one. Their faces twisted in disgust.

In the middle of it, Choi Hyun-woo pulled a short sword from his belt to go with the one he was already holding, and stepped inside first.

"What the hell."

The space inside was lined with equipment that, at a glance, could've been mistaken for a hospital operating room.

But surgical tables fitted with shackles and locks, formalin jars holding what looked like human body parts, a smell of blood and something raw that no amount of chemicals could mask, photographs of corpses taken from every angle like criminal mugshots, and an altar with ritual implements in one corner whose purpose he didn't even want to guess at…

No operating room had any of this.

"Hm?"

While looking through the tools — scalpels and clamps mixed in with saws, hammers, and chisels that didn't look like they belonged anywhere near a person — Han Su-yeong picked something up.

"…A necklace? No, a locket?"

She carefully opened the blood-smeared locket.

Inside was a photograph of an elderly man.

Noticing that there was something engraved on the inside of the lid, Han Su-yeong read it aloud.

"To my proud comrade, David W. Walcott. In praise of your courage, may the sands of the lands you tread welcome you with warmth…"

When she snapped the locket shut, the name she'd just read — David W. Walcott — struck her as one she'd heard somewhere before.

"Sick bastard."

Beside her, Choi Hyun-woo scanned the room and ground his teeth at the bloodstains soaked into the saws and scalpels.

"They were making undead in here?"

"No."

At the voice that responded, Choi Hyun-woo's reflexes kicked in and he hurled his short sword like a projectile.

But it bounced off with a sharp clang of metal, and whatever had deflected it gave him a threatening rattle in return.

[KAAAARRGGH!!!]

"More precisely, this is where I refine them. They're works of art, after all."

A figure draped in robes that even from a distance looked expensive muttered the words in slurred pronunciation.

It wasn't that the speech was clumsy — it sounded more like every word was packed full of wind.

"…The lich."

Yu Ji-hyeok murmured quietly.

The lich looked at the group gathering around him, each of them drawing their weapons, and rattled the bones of his fleshless body.

"Welcome."

Beside him, along with the three undead they'd already met, dozens more undead with strange forms were gathering — easily several dozen in number.

"You little rats."

"What do you think — should we just bring that kid on as our external advisor?"

Evangelline Loengreen, who'd been on the fence about it until just a moment ago, muttered the words.

She let out a sigh of pure exasperation as she watched the undead come pouring in like they were going to flood the entire street.

"What the hell were they doing if they let this many slip in undetected? If these things got loose, the capital really would've been wrecked."

"No, these undead are unusual."

Laura Hartmann — the holy knight, clad in the armor that had become her trademark — recited a short prayer and spoke.

"There's no undead aura coming off them. It's no wonder they couldn't pick them up. And in a case like this… it looks like they prioritized numbers over the strength of individual units. They must've multiplied like this in a very short time. That's why nobody could detect it ahead of time."

"What? Can that even happen?"

"That's exactly why necromancers have a worldwide kill order on them as public enemies. In theory, a skilled necromancer can make dozens of undead from a single corpse. Even if the individual undead are weak, they're a threat to civilians — and necromancers prefer drawn-out battles in the first place."

She muttered the words and started forming hand seals, shield and longsword in hand.

"In hindsight — taking Richyard, Gamaltera, and Li Weiwei off the table since they're injured — we should've brought Anastasia."

"Everyone's tied up. The three of us barely managed to make the time."

Lee Myung-jun muttered as he raised his trident.

"Think the three of us can handle this?"

The three of them had each brought a few companions, but once they'd grasped how much more serious the situation was than expected, they'd sent every one of them back to the barrier line.

Evangelline Loengreen began chanting a spell, glancing briefly over her shoulder.

Behind them stood Alice Blesbuck and Kath Ryle.

'…I've got a bad feeling about this.'

It wasn't that she doubted their abilities.

If anything, she knew better than anyone that in a situation like this, there were few people more reliable than those two.

But for some reason she couldn't pin down, an uneasiness kept trying to surface from somewhere in the back of her mind.

'Tch — focus. Focus.'

She shoved the stray thoughts aside and started concentrating her mana to carve a path through in one go.

"Still, Eva, I agree with what you were saying. Yu Ji-hyeok… that boy is talented enough that I wonder if it's even worth waiting until graduation. No — there are a number of others like him this year, too. If we could get them through early graduation somehow…"

"Pfft."

"…What's so funny, Evangelline?"

Laura asked at Evangelline's smirk.

Evangelline giggled.

"Oh come on. You're trying to drag that Ahn Do-hun kid into your guild, aren't you?"

"Wh — what?! Hey, what kind of nonsense are you…!"

"He's a student, so it's literally a crime, don't forget that. And then there's the whole thing about how a first nephew is basically like your own son — Ju-hyeok dotes on that kid like crazy. I'm pretty sure he's even been thinking about handing his guild over to him… You really think you can talk that kid around?"

"Wh, what are you — and you should talk! I know perfectly well you've been on the phone with that Ivan kid all the time!"

"Hm? I was just chatting with a student who brought me an interesting topic. He was the runaway top student in my course. And he's sharper than most of those crusty old men, so honestly, I learned a lot from him too. About spell-bows."

Evangelline extended her right hand as she spoke.

"For example — like this."

From her arm outward, a shape resembling a bow took form.

Above them, mana arrows began appearing in countless numbers, as if multiplying out of thin air.

"Bang."

Evangelline playfully crooked her finger, and that was the signal.

The mana arrows that had filled every inch of sky came raining down on the charging undead without mercy, and nearly half the undead that had packed the street were, in that brief instant, simply gone.

"All right. Evangelline and I will hold here."

Lee Myung-jun slammed his trident into the ground and spoke.

"Laura, Alice, and you too, Ryle. The three of you head in as backup first."

"All right."

"Ah, one moment…"

Kath Ryle pulled potion bottles from his coat and hurled them out, scattering them by the bottle.

Massive golems began rising up here and there, and Evangelline let out a small whistle at the sight.

"Pretty impressive."

"All right, then get moving—?!"

Mid-sentence, Lee Myung-jun unleashed a bolt of lightning toward one spot.

That spot was nothing but empty air — until, suddenly, a blood-colored mist gathered there. It seemed to slip the lightning aside as it parted, revealing a woman.

"You've got good instincts, child."

The woman smirked as she muttered the words, baring her fangs.

"Oh my, two pretty things to my taste, all in one place? Those two are mine. And above all…"

The woman — Natalia Milited — locked her gaze on Alice Blesbuck, whose face had gone bone white.

"There's an ungrateful child here, too. One who dared betray her own mother."

"This is a real mess."

Looking down on the scene from a higher vantage point, Belluna muttered in an excited voice.

A horde of undead, Natalia Milited, the strongest humans there were to face them, the half-vampire, and the unsettling homunculus.

Watching it all unfold like she was enjoying a show, Belluna only belatedly noticed the phone in her pocket ringing, and scrambled to answer it.

"Hello? Belluna here~"

She'd answered playfully, and now she let out a giggling laugh.

"Yeah, son. Yeah. Mama's been eating well. I haven't been eating any of the things you told me not to, and I've been brushing my teeth, too. Hm? Yu Ji-hyeok asked you to get in touch with me?"

Belluna's expression turned sullen and she nodded.

"Mm, yeah. All right, son. I'll call him when I feel like — ah! All right, all right! I'll call him as soon as I finish what I'm doing!"

Belluna pulled the phone away from her ear as if she couldn't stand any more nagging, still nodding with the same unhappy face.

"Yeah, I'm working right now. Hm? What kind of work?"

She tilted her head as if thinking, then looked over toward the hand that wasn't holding the phone.

"Hmm, if I had to put it… maybe… package delivery?"

Hanging from her hand was Nam Hyun-hwa.

And Nam Hyun-hwa, dubbed a package on the spot, looked deeply unimpressed.

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