Laughter drifted in through the window, carried on the wind.
The classroom where the regular admission students had gathered bustled as if on the eve of a festival.
Sitting in groups of threes and fives, they subtly boasted of their families' renown or chattered animatedly about the facilities in their newly assigned dormitories.
Like fledglings who had just mastered magic, their conversations surged with unwavering optimism and confidence about the future.
The sunlight seemed to settle especially warmly upon the windows of that classroom alone.
By contrast, the classroom at the end of this hallway lay draped in heavy shadows.
A class of special admissions students.
It was different in nature from the lively commotion or tension of an ordinary academy.
Eyes that were wary of one another, yet probing.
The presence of those who were each lacking in something, or overflowing too much and thus losing their equilibrium, filled the classroom.
Yustia quietly took a seat in the corner of the very back row.
When the classroom door opened, a strange sense of alienation rushed in.
"So this is where the half-baked ones gather?"
At that voice from the podium, the murmuring cut off abruptly.
The person standing at the front was a professor who looked more like a street thug.
His shirt had two buttons undone, with a jacket draped haphazardly over his shoulders.
Between his disheveled hair, his eyes shone languidly yet sharply.
Leaning against the chalkboard, he flapped the attendance sheet and swept his gaze over the students.
"Greetings, you leftovers. I'm Raven, your assigned professor and the warden of this hopeless asylum."
He smirked and tapped the chalkboard.
"Special admissions? Sounds nice. But to be blunt, you're just a collection of kids too defective for the regular course, aren't you? Right?"
Dissatisfied looks flared throughout the classroom, but Raven paid them no mind and flipped a page.
"Let's see... quite the distinguished roster. A spirit summoner who'd be a shoo-in for top rank based on mana levels alone, and the Fourth Prince from the Kingdom of Gordin?"
His gaze came to rest on the silver-haired boy sitting by the window.
The boy was resting his chin on his hand, staring blankly out the window.
"Your Highness, be careful not to get kidnapped. Security isn't exactly tight in the special admissions class."
Raven chuckled and lowered his gaze again.
Then he frowned and pulled the attendance sheet closer.
"What the hell is this? There's a kid who has to wear a summon on his body? Who is it? Evan?"
A scrawny arm rose limply from about the middle of the classroom.
"...That's me."
It was a boy with pale skin and sunken eyes.
One leg of his pants, visible beneath the desk, hung loose and empty.
He didn't even have a prosthetic.
A leg amputated below the knee.
"Oof... I see."
Raven let out a brief exclamation and, without any words of comfort, immediately turned the page.
He bobbed his head as if intrigued and scanned down the attendance sheet.
Then, suddenly, his hand stopped dead.
"Hmm?"
Raven slowly raised his head.
His gaze swept across the classroom and fixed on Yustia.
"A human summon?"
Every eye in the classroom shifted to Yustia at once.
Raven checked the attendance sheet again, as if he couldn't believe it.
"And from Rosenhart, no less?"
He let out a hollow laugh and rubbed his jaw.
"Kid. What kind of bullshit is a human summon? Is it like Evan over there, wearing a summon on a human body? Or... do you have some hobby of keeping a real person on a leash?"
Yustia tensed slightly, but soon straightened her shoulders and answered clearly.
"No. It is truly a human summon. A human summoned from another dimension via a highest-grade summoning circle. Not something fused or controlled, but a being who exists as a summon in their own right."
Raven stared at Yustia with a look that said he didn't understand at all.
He narrowed his eyes and looked her up and down as if observing a bizarre creature, then soon snorted and shrugged.
"Right... I see. Do your best. If you're from Rosenhart, I suppose you study well."
He asked no more and turned his body.
At Raven's gesture, something squirmed and crawled out onto the chalkboard.
It was a human hand, nothing remaining but a pale, rotting wrist.
A grotesque sight, with pieces of chalk clutched between each fingertip.
As Raven spoke, it scurried across the board and began drawing the lecture roadmap.
Screech, crack, screeeech—
The sound of fingernails scratching the chalkboard and chalk crumbling mingled into a hair-raising cacophony.
Gasps rang out throughout the classroom.
A clear-eyed, gentle-looking male student in the front row cautiously raised his hand.
"Excuse me, Professor."
"What?"
"Is that your summon?"
Raven pointed with his chin at the hand racing madly across the board.
"Ah, this thing? That's right. It's a corpse summon that crawled out of the Void. Cute, isn't it?"
"It only has a hand wandering around... Is it a low-grade summon that you keep for taking notes?"
Raven giggled at the student's innocent question.
"No. This is just one part. The main body is somewhere else."
He added nonchalantly,
"If I brought the whole thing out, the stench of the rotting corpse would be too much. I only cut off the hand so you wouldn't get sick."
"...Ah."
The student's face turned deathly pale.
Along with a heavy silence, terrible imagination spread throughout the classroom.
The imagination that the owner of that hand, or the body to which it had been attached, was rotting away somewhere in the darkness.
Raven seemed to enjoy the students' shocked expressions, grinning as he rapped the chalkboard.
"Now, enough chatter. Let me explain why you've been gathered here, and what you need to do to survive going forward. Just so you know, I'm not the kindly type."
Screeeech—
The severed hand crawling across the chalkboard came to a halt.
The moment it drew the final stroke, faint smoke seemed to rise from the severed wrist.
In the terrible silence, Raven covered his mouth as if stifling a yawn.
"In the mornings, you'll gather by class for basic summoning and theory lessons. Afternoons? That's up to you. Attend whatever classes you want, self-study, or just sit there blankly."
He dusted off his chalk-covered hands.
"But if you're so stupid that you can't even understand this and end up wandering around lost because you can't find the classroom, then write your withdrawal papers and leave right now. Paper is precious, so don't tear it up—hand it back in."
The sound of students swallowing dryly could be heard.
A schedule closer to neglect than freedom.
Someone raised their hand high.
It was the boy with one missing leg, Evan.
"Excuse me, Professor."
"What now."
"Then when can we practice battles?"
Evan's voice was dry.
His eyes were sunken, yet gleamed with a bizarre obsession.
Raven stared into those eyes for a moment, then let out a snorting laugh.
"What, is beating up summons your hobby? You sure have a nasty hobby for someone who doesn't look the part."
"...I'm just asking."
"You can practice with a friend you get along with. But if you ask with a look that says you're out to kill, I doubt anyone will agree."
Raven gestured toward the classroom with his chin.
"Official battles are every Friday. You can challenge the professors for each element. Win, and you get a badge. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth... you know, the usual ones."
He drew a few rough circles on the chalkboard.
"And if you collect all the element badges, you qualify for the Grand Battle at the end of the semester. Win there, and you can even steal the top-rank title, plus there's a scholarship. You all know this, right? It's the very reason you came to Eternoa to pull that shit."
Raven placed an X over one of the circles on the chalkboard.
"For your information, I'm in charge of the Void element. If you want, I'll take you on anytime, not just Fridays, so feel free to come. My lab door is always open."
He grinned.
Several students trembled at the chill hidden behind that smile.
A battle with a professor who commanded a corpse summon?
It was clearly not a place one could visit lightly.
"And if you have any difficulties with academy life or your studies... well, apply for counseling. I'll listen. Can't guarantee I'll solve anything, though."
Raven slapped the attendance book shut and leaned on the lectern.
"This should be enough, no? If there are no questions, dismissed."
Without waiting for an answer, he left the classroom.
Only the hand crawling on the chalkboard remained, wagging its fingers as if bidding farewell.
Tap, tap.
Heavy silence settled over the classroom, where only the sound of fingers tapping the board remained.
Slam.
The moment the classroom door closed, murmuring burst forth as if everyone had been waiting.
Suppressed complaints and disbelief poured out like floodwaters.
"What's with that guy? Is he really a professor?"
"Isn't he just a thug? The way he looks and talks, he's exactly like a street punk."
The gentle-looking male student who had sat in the front row was still glancing furtively at the hand crawling across the chalkboard, his face pale.
"That hand... is it really a corpse? I think I smell something."
"Ugh, so annoying. Is he looking down on us because we're special admissions? Calling us half-baked."
"Telling us to drop out? If he's going to act like this, he shouldn't have accepted us in the first place."
Someone banged their fist on a desk.
"So he takes our money and tells us to get lost? This is unbelievable."
The students gathered in groups, pouring out complaints or clicking their tongues.
In an air thick with anger and anxiety, Yustia remained silent.
Her gaze was fixed on the grotesque roadmap drawn on the chalkboard.
'Basic Summoning... Independent Study... Official Battle... Grand Battle...'
She had no time to spare for complaints.
Finding a way to survive in this chaotic situation, and the fastest path to climb upward, was the priority.
She took a short breath, gathered her things, and stood.
Screech.