The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

A lich doesn't die just because a sword pierces its skull.

At its core, magic begins with sacrifice — surrendering something and offering it as the price. The greater the value of what's given up, the greater the power the magic holds in return.

Before anything else, becoming a lich required giving up one's life as a human, along with what remained of one's lifespan.

Because what had to be surrendered amounted to nearly everything, what a lich gained in return went far beyond ordinary imagination — and included a vitality that came close to true immortality.

That "vitality close to immortality" was the very reason Gracius had chosen to become a lich.

But near-immortal wasn't the same as truly immortal. In other words, there were ways to kill a lich — limited though they were.

Holy power potent enough to purify centuries. Crushing the orb that served as the lich's source. Or, failing those, pouring in mana strong enough to sever immortal vitality and shatter him apart.

Nam Hyeon-hwa had chosen the last method.

Vast mana surged along the blade.

"Th— this can't be..."

His eyes — eyes that shouldn't have been there at all — seemed to roll in their sockets. The blue light in them trembled as he stared up at Nam Hyeon-hwa.

"Even... even from above...! How could I — I, Gracius — fail to sense an ambush coming...!"

Nam Hyeon-hwa heard his mumbling and snorted with contempt. Then she tightened her grip on the hilt with both hands and spoke.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Her voice rang out, unusually clear. Mana circulated through the blade with the roar of an overheating engine, and Gracius thrashed in panic, screaming.

"Gaaaaaah!"

"Pathetic. Just take your end quietly like a — ngh?!"

In that moment, something neither Gracius nor Nam Hyeon-hwa had expected happened.

A massive shockwave burst from the crystal sitting right beside Gracius.

Neither of them realized it, but the mana of "Han Su-yeong from another world" had touched Nam Hyeon-hwa's mana and resonated with it.

The shockwave threw Nam Hyeon-hwa back. A look of grim frustration crossed her face. Gracius scrambled away from her and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Damn it, you idiots! What the hell are you doing?!"

At his cry, three undead charged in.

It didn't take much for Nam Hyeon-hwa to see that all three had been made from her old companions' corpses. Her eyes burned with a quiet fire.

"Killing you wouldn't even be enough...!"

Blue flames gathered in her hands as she charged back, breathing fury. She struck the Dullahan's wrist mid-swing and deftly snatched the sword from its hand in the same motion.

"Ansen's swordsmanship was never this crude. His sword art was uncanny and swift — he was the most unpredictable and most troublesome of all of us."

She turned aside an incoming fist with hardly any effort, and her next swing broke through the armor with embarrassing ease.

The moment she saw blue flame catch on the undead's remains, she jerked her head back. A mana bullet streaked past the spot where her head had been only a moment earlier.

Spotting the red-haired wight, she ground her teeth and swept her arm through the air with what looked like a wild, scrambling motion.

What seemed like an idle gesture unfurled into a dense net of sword energy. The wight hastily cast a protective spell, but it couldn't ward off the second death bearing down on it.

"Kusano. The two of us fought plenty, he and I. But in the end we became true friends — friends who shared joys and sorrows together. He even promised that if anything happened to me, he'd take in my two children and raise them himself."

Burnt ash drifted through the air like flower petals.

Through them, Nam Hyeon-hwa caught sight of a jiangshi rushing at her, and her breath caught for a moment.

The iron plate riveted over its face. The seams where its body, cleft in two, had been sewn back together.

Seeing it, Nam Hyeon-hwa couldn't hold back any longer and ground her teeth.

She caught the jiangshi's fist, and a streak of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. It wasn't from internal injury. She simply couldn't contain the rage seething inside her.

"David. He was the most reliable and noble man among us."

A single sweep of her sword severed the jiangshi's arm — harder than steel — clean off.

She paid no mind to the jiangshi's threatening shriek and kept her gaze fixed on Gracius alone.

"Yes. I always knew I'd die one day. With age and strength fading, I'd pass the glory on to the new generation... and live out my days in peace until then. Just as the generation before us did, I'd resolved to make my exit the same way."

She murmured it quietly.

The jiangshi hurled itself at her again, and she fixed it with a ghastly glare. The rage and roar of someone wounded to the soul.

"And yet..."

She swung her sword without rest and pressed forward without pause. With every step she took, more of the jiangshi was carved away, until at last, save for its face and torso, not a single part of it remained whole.

Even reduced to that state, it tried to scream and lunge again. In that ruined shape, there wasn't a trace of the man he had once been.

"What..."

She split the jiangshi's head — iron plate and all — clean in two, and her cry came out half-animal.

"What the hell did you do to my friends, you worm?!"

"Ngh — stop her! Now! Kill that bitch! Bring me her heart! Go!"

In that brief moment, Gracius had recovered enough to bellow at the top of his lungs. Even in his panic, he'd dragged the crystal up beside him.

Grrrrrrk....

Kieyaaaaak!!!

Letting out screams of every kind, the undead wheeled around and started charging at Nam Hyeon-hwa.

The horde that had been pressing in only one direction finally met a counterwind, and thanks to it, Choi Hyun-woo and the others could catch their breath.

Even so, Choi Hyun-woo didn't loosen his grip on his sword.

His eyes stayed fixed on Nam Hyeon-hwa as she wielded her blade and her magic like a woman possessed. Those weren't the eyes of a man looking at the young swordswoman named "Hyun-ah" he had once loved.

"This actual moron...! Hey, get a grip!"

Even Jin Ye-seul had to call out a warning — Choi Hyun-woo was throwing himself into the fight without any regard for his own body.

But ironically, Choi Hyun-woo's life-throwing charges were putting real psychological pressure on Gracius. The long years he'd lived weren't for show; he'd already recognized that Nam Hyeon-hwa's and Choi Hyun-woo's sword styles shared the same root.

Nam Hyeon-hwa and Choi Hyun-woo. Two swordsmen of the same lineage, baring their fangs at him from both sides.

Normally he wouldn't have given it a second thought. He'd have stayed calm, dragged the fight into a war of attrition, ground them down, and crushed them. But the wound Nam Hyeon-hwa had dealt him hurt too much for that kind of patience.

In all his long life, the number of times he'd known pain like this — moments when he'd genuinely been pushed to the brink of death — could be counted on one hand. The pain made him impatient, and pushed him toward a choice he wouldn't normally make.

"Kill her...!"

Leaving only those words behind, Gracius slowly lifted himself into the air. No matter how powerful a warrior was, once you opened the distance, they couldn't do a thing.

"Ggh..."

The pain from his pierced and crushed skull was unbearable. He pressed one hand against his eye — of all places, the side that the loathsome traitor Belluna had wounded only days before.

Enduring pain so fierce it made him want to howl, he was just resolving to mount Nam Hyeon-hwa and Choi Hyun-woo as trophies and then hunt down and kill Belluna too —

"You look really stupid groaning like that."

A voice came out of nowhere, and Gracius whipped his head around in shock. Above him, Belluna hovered, bobbing gently as she looked down at him.

"B— Belluna!"

"Hi there."

She gave him a casual wave and tilted her head.

"What are you so startled about? If I wanted to kill you, you'd have been dead long ago."

She'd answered him in a flat, bored voice, lounging in midair as if sprawled face-down on a comfortable bed. With both hands propping up her chin and her feet kicking lazily one after the other, she watched him.

Gracius managed to steady himself. It was true — if she'd wanted him dead, he'd have been dead long ago. On top of that, she'd entered into a pact with Landshi.

Finally pulling those facts back to mind, he silently ground his teeth and thought, Damn woman, scaring people like that...!

As if she could read his thoughts, she gave a small snort.

"You don't look so hot."

"Mm... it's nothing. More importantly, what brings you here?"

She giggled at his guarded question.

"Do I need your permission to wander? I'm the wind. I go wherever I please — and stay there as long as I please."

She let out a lazy yawn and stretched herself out comfortably in the empty air.

"I just came because it looked like there'd be something fun to watch. No deeper meaning than that."

"...Just to be sure — you haven't forgotten the pact with Landshi and the rest of us, have you?"

"Are you really going to keep pestering a spirit? You want me to forget the pact and just crack your skull open right now?"

Belluna raised her hand slightly and frowned. Gracius waved his hand quickly, as if to say she'd misunderstood. Then he conjured a barrier against the arrows shooting up at him from below and muttered:

"No. I'll pass for now. Later — maybe."

"Oh? Our little bag of bones has grown up."

Belluna smirked and threw a sidelong glance at the crystal floating beside him.

"You think holding that means you can beat me?"

"...If that's how you took it, I apologize."

"Hmph."

Belluna snorted to herself.

"Watch yourself, got it?"

Then she made a show of sniffing the air, scrunched up her face, and waved her hand wildly.

"Ugh, that stench. You've been pawing at corpses again and didn't bathe, did you? I keep telling you to wash that rag too, and you never bloody listen! Get out of my face!"

The continued mockery and humiliation made Gracius tremble slightly. He wanted nothing more than to wring her slender neck right then and there. Somehow, though, he kept his anger in check. He couldn't break the pact over a moment's emotion, and antagonizing Belluna in this situation would be the worst possible move.

"Are you deaf? I told you to move it! With you next to me, the stink's starting to rub off on me!"

At her snappish chiding, Gracius silently moved aside. But Belluna wasn't satisfied — she waved him further off with a few more impatient flicks of her hand.

"Further! More! I can still smell something foul!"

"......"

When he moved a bit more, Belluna finally nodded in satisfaction.

Watching her, Gracius decided that the first thing he'd do once he mastered the crystal was hunt Belluna down and kill her. Just then a good idea came to him, and he smirked.

That's right... come to think of it, that bitch loses her mind any time her dead husband comes up.

He'd heard her husband had died in some incident tied to the Seven Calamities. Given how unhinged she'd been for a long while afterward, the two of them must have been very close.

How the man had managed to play husband to a lunatic like her was beyond him, but what mattered was that he was already dead. And Gracius — he was a necromancer, one who could bend the dead to his will.

I'll hear your grief-stricken wailing if it's the last thing I do.

What if he raised a ghoul from her husband's corpse and shoved it in front of her dying eyes? No — better yet, what if he made her husband personally plunge a blade through her —

"Ah, looks like time's up at last."

"What?"

At Belluna's sudden words, Gracius looked over at her. Belluna gave a quick sniff and waved at him slowly. Just like she was saying goodbye.

"Hm... bye-bye, bones. You were dumb and didn't know your place, but you were fun to watch."

"Belluna. What the hell are you playing at?"

"Huh? You still don't get it, even now?"

Belluna giggled.

"You're dead, idiot."

"What the hell are you talking ab—!"

He didn't get to finish. Something erupted up through the ground, shattering it apart, and lunged at him in a blink.

There was no time to react. By the time he'd registered it, it was already right in front of him.

A massive body.

Black, glossy scales.

Sleek, threatening horns and wings.

Deep black pupils split vertically.

A gaping maw.

Razor-sharp teeth — and within them, a torrent of mana like a gathering storm.

It was a dragon.

The roar — one that scattered mana itself — struck Gracius full on, and the strength drained from his body at terrifying speed.

And clinging to each of the dragon's horns was a woman — one red, one black. The girl with the red hair flying loose thrust out her finger, pointed at Gracius, and shouted:

"Ji-hyeok!"

The dragon responded to her call instantly.

"Bite!"

The dragon's jaws snapped shut at her command.

CRUNCH!

The sound of something being savagely chewed apart rang out.

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