Necromancer Academy and the Genius Summoner-Chapter 429: Episode

Against the backdrop of an endless snowfield and a snow-filled sky, the chase between Lethe and Karisa raged on.

’Ugh, damn it! She’s so fast!’ Lethe gritted her teeth from atop Ran. Catching up was proving nearly impossible. Karisa’s movements were incredibly nimble, and the blinding blizzard she generated obstructed Lethe’s vision and slowed her pursuit.

Lethe was now resorting to dropping divine meteors in Karisa’s path, trying to block her escape.

"You were so quick to mock me for being mortal," she yelled into the wind, "and now you’re running with your tail between your legs!"

She tried taunting her, but Karisa paid her no mind.

Lethe bit her finger, anxiety gnawing at her. The radius of the deep freeze was expanding by the second. She absolutely could not let that Dungeon Lord escape to another region.

’If this turns into a battle of attrition, Ran’s stamina will give out first.’

Lethe placed a hand on Ran’s head and closed her eyes. The time for holding back was over. This was the moment to make her move.

’Over Haste.’

A verdant flash erupted, and in an instant, Ran’s flight speed surged. Streaking forward like a bolt of light, the divine beast coiled around Karisa’s tail.

Her tail ensnared, Karisa glanced back just as Lethe, having completed a swift incantation, thrust out her palm.

’Lethe Original - La Escrim’

A divine spear, shaped like a drill, bored squarely into Karisa’s torso. It didn’t stop at piercing her scales; its rotation accelerated, digging deeper and deeper. Karisa shrieked in agony, her maw gaping open. A blast of pure-white frost instantly obscured all vision, and Lethe’s body froze solid. Even Ran was completely encased in ice.

[Hahaha! Serves you right!] Karisa sneered.

Almost immediately, however, fissures spiderwebbed across the ice trapping Lethe.

Lethe burst free, shaking her arms. She placed a hand on Ran, and the ice melted away, freeing the divine beast. But in that brief moment, Karisa, bleeding profusely from her mouth and torso, had already begun to flee once more.

“Ran! We’ve almost got her! Just a little more...!”

But it was Ran’s stamina that gave out first. While external wounds could be healed endlessly, endurance was another matter. Ran, who had always obliterated enemies with a single blast of Divine Breath, had little experience with such a tenacious foe.

“Ran!!”

[Khahahahahaha!]

Karisa fled, sealing her wounds with ice. With every roar, the bitter cold intensified, spreading over the mountain range into warmer regions as the vast sea froze over endlessly.

’There’s no other way!’ Lethe thought, raising her index and middle fingers to the sky. ’Hit or miss...!’

“Lethe!!”

At the sudden call, Lethe’s head whipped around. “Simon?!”

But a beat later, she was baffled. How could he possibly be here? He couldn’t fly.

But he was. Two suns now blazed over the Eskyl Mountains. Simon appeared, radiating a divinity as massive as a star, riding atop something formed from crackling sparks.

’Is that really Simon?’

It was hard to believe her own eyes. Though wreathed in sizzling currents, the vehicle Simon rode was a chariot of pure light. And pulling it was not a horse, but the divine bear, Akallion. Akallion, who couldn’t fly, was somehow floating. That meant the chariot had to be...

’The Objectification of a Divine Beast!’

[You again!] Karisa hissed, her guard raised.

“I’ll show you, Lethe!” Simon grinned, pulling on reins woven from divinity. “The true power of my divine beast studies!”

As if on cue, his body shot forward like lightning. A look of surprise flashed across Simon’s face for a fleeting moment before he became a streak of light, tearing through the air at an impossible speed.

“Aaargh—! Aaaaaargh—!” Simon’s screams echoed across the mountains.

Lethe shouted in alarm, “Hey! What are you doing!”

“It’s too fast! I can’t control the speed— Aaaaaaaargh!”

The divine chariot careened wildly, zipping from one mountain to another across the valley, dashing over the sea before looping back toward Lethe and Karisa. Its speed was truly that of lightning, but it was painfully obvious he had no control over it.

[Hahaha! The Saintess can’t control her power, and this one can’t handle his speed? How pathetic!] Realizing the situation, Karisa let out a loud, mocking laugh. [As I thought, it’s far too much for you mortals to possess—!]

Her gloating was cut short.

A massive sun was descending upon her.

“But landing one good hit,” Simon roared, his eyes blazing from within the chariot, “is possible!!”

The sun enveloping the chariot compressed into a single beam of light. With a deafening peal of thunder, it became a lightning bolt that slammed into Karisa’s abdomen.

[Keuk!]

Karisa was dragged at the speed of light and smashed into the ground below. Sweat trickled down Lethe’s forehead as she watched.

’A perfect hit!’

After delivering that single, desperate blow, the Objectification state dissolved. The white-and-black chariot split in two, reverting to a pair of kittens. Akallion, too, shrank back to his small form. Simon, clutching the three divine beasts, plummeted through the air, shouting, “Now, Lethe!”

It was the perfect opportunity. Given the right conditions, Lethe’s firepower was the most devastating among all the Saintesses.

“I know!” she cried, a fierce grin on her face as she swung her arms down. The sky split open, and a meteor larger than any she had ever summoned descended, blazing with a brilliant light.

“Le-Lethe?” Simon stammered, his expression dumbfounded. “I think you brought out something a little too big...!”

“DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!”

With Lethe’s enraged scream, the meteor fell.

[Krrgh!]

Pinned to the ground by the lightning strike, Karisa looked up. It was as if an entire planet was falling from the sky. The sight of her escape routes vanishing as the heavens were blotted out was utterly terrifying. She tried to flee, but the shock of the impact, combined with the lingering sparks that still crackled across her body, held her fast. She couldn’t move an inch.

[Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaah!]

The breath she fired with her last ounce of strength only managed to freeze a minuscule fraction of the approaching meteor.

[I... I am...!]

As the meteor drew near, everything was bleached white.

[Being destroyed...!]

Her body dissolved into particles of light and scattered into nothingness.

A deep, world-shaking rumble followed the impact.

Simon, still thousands of meters in the air, was blasted back by the shockwave. The aftermath of the divine magic even formed a mushroom cloud.

Just then, a hand shot out from behind and seized the scruff of his neck.

“Got you!”

“Lethe!”

She laughed cheerfully. Ran had mustered its last reserves of strength to catch him as he was thrown by the explosion.

“Heave-ho!” Lethe hauled Simon aboard with the strength of her arms alone.

Safely on Ran’s back, Simon panted, his expression dazed. Lethe chuckled and patted his exhausted shoulder.

“Not bad.”

“Just the basics,” Simon managed, a weary smile on his face. In his arms, two kittens and a small bear were sleeping soundly.

---

The Objectification of the divine kittens had puzzled even Lethe, a specialist in the field. In truth, the two had already grown enough to achieve it. The key, however, was ‘Fusion Awakening’. Though their completely different white and black coats were misleading, they were twins, born at the same time, each with half of their shared divine power. The trigger for their awakening, therefore, was for both to consume the same divinity simultaneously, inducing the ‘simultaneous manifestation of their divided powers’.

Simon and the kittens hadn’t grasped this until now because he had been feeding them divinity individually. The catalyst had been the children in Eskyl’s divine beast studies class, who had fed the two kittens a single bundle of divinity. A single Objectification required the power of both.

’...So that’s what the fortune-telling grandma in Kula meant by a ‘cart,’’ Simon thought with a wry smile. A chariot and a cart were very different, but he could see how she might have interpreted it that way.

Thus, the Dungeon Lord Karisa was utterly annihilated by Lethe’s merciless assault, and the dungeon at the mountain’s peak vanished. Just in case, Simon went down to the ground and collected a few of Karisa’s bone fragments. The bitter cold ceased, and the blue sky so many had longed for finally returned. Kula regained its warmth, and the sea’s ice slowly melted. The monsters that had abandoned their habitats to attack human villages also retreated.

“I’ll report to Efnel, then.”

“Will that be okay?”

“Yes.”

In principle, the central government of Efnel was forbidden from interfering in the Kinver region, but the Karisa incident had damaged other areas, creating grounds for intervention. As a Saintess, Lethe contacted Efnel and reported the situation. On her command, Efnel immediately dispatched Paladins, and the food they brought in their subspaces allowed the residents to stave off their hunger. The people of Mizenasi, who had neglected the dungeon and harbored Karisa, were arrested by the holy knights, as were those who had sided with Karisa at the end.

The fate of Eskyl’s ordinary residents, however, was more ambiguous. They hadn’t known about the Dungeon Lord or the dungeon’s true nature, firmly believing the cold was a snow woman’s curse. Still, a crime was a crime. Ultimately, Efnel and the region’s high lord agreed to exile the people of Mizenasi from the Holy Federation.

“Well, it’s for the best,” Lethe remarked. Although the atmosphere had eased, she judged it better for them to start a new life elsewhere, as they might face discrimination if they remained in Kula.

“As a Saintess, I’ll take responsibility and help them settle in the Neutral Zone.”

“Okay, I’m counting on you.”

The lord of Kula, while leading the recovery efforts alongside Simon and Lethe, still wore a somewhat dazed expression. Simon asked if the old fairy tale of Eskyl was true.

“Not all of it, but most of it is,” the lord said, closing his eyes. “My father was one of those adventurers.”

“Ah...”

“My father started it all with the dream of everyone living well together, but when too many merchants and capitalists flooded into Kula, everything fell apart. He would always look at the snowy mountains and hang his head in shame.” The young lord clenched his fist. “My father said it was all our fault, that it couldn’t be helped. I used to get so angry at his weakness, but he spent his last moments apologizing to the people of Eskyl.”

Simon listened, saying nothing.

“I hated my father for that, and I responded to Eskyl’s request for priests with a zero-tolerance policy.” He looked up at the ceiling. “But who is there to blame? It was our original sin.”

Time passed. The unnaturally frozen sea thawed, and ships resumed their routes. Kula gradually returned to its former vitality. Simon helped with the town’s restoration, and he found that dealing with the aftermath was more exhausting than infiltrating Eskyl and fighting the ice dragon Karisa.

One day, as Simon was helping repair Kula’s fence, a voice called out.

“There you are, my dear nephew.” Israphel, disguised as a merchant, had arrived in Kula with a radiant smile. In her hand, something shiny glinted.