Chapter 4: CH4: Necromancy

Tomes wrapped in old leather protected by scripts to protect the old tome from the elements on top of the enchantments already placed upon it littered Harry’s personal desk. Screens of shimmering blue light hovered in front of him. They played records of necromantic practices on repeat while Harry took notes. Papers littered his desk held together by bent paperclips with notes written in his master’s or Jester’s handwriting. Harry read over them while watching videos of the events they captured to glean even more information. Failed talismans made of bones filled his rubbish bin from several failed attempts; some still sparked with magic. He had failed to blend native enchantments with scripts, but he hadn’t given up.

 

“Harry, are you busy?”

 

“No, master,” Harry grumbled, turned off his videos, and closed the books before levitating them back to his shelf. Like any child Harry’s age, his greatest concern was not getting into trouble.

 

His Master opened the door as the last book fit into place. Harry had found he could lift things with his will after reaching for an out-of-reach delete round. Since then, he had been practicing off and on to see how far he could push his telekinesis. While his Master had the skill and Harry would receive it; eventually, Harry wanted to practice his own version of it. As for his current studies, he was trying to make a skill all his own. While he would gain all of his Master's skills, Harry wanted something that was his.

 

“Were you reading books from this shelf?” Master asked, and Harry felt his back sweat.

 

His Master walked up and pulled free a tome made of human skin, one of the few Harry didn’t want to touch. It felt off, to say the least, but his Master grasped it without fear. His Master flipped through it like Harry would a comic before sitting it on Harry’s desk.

 

“This is where I keep my collection of dark tomes. Everyone needs a hobby. Harry mine is collecting. I’ve found a little bit of everything in this world. This book was a rare find and was guarded by a demon.” His master eye smiled. “If these books were dangerous to you, Harry, they would be in the basement library, not in your room next to your comic bookshelf,”  Master said.

 

“They have a lot of warnings in them, and the people in the videos do horrible things to each other. I don’t like it.”

 

“Necromancy as a hobby, huh, well, it isn’t the cleanest hobby, and you’ll have to take lots of showers,” Master said.

 

“No, I want to make it my primary focus.”

 

“Impressive, you’ve been training for two weeks, and already you want to specialize, or are you only specializing until you reach the foundry realm? Of course, you should focus on gaining experience with my skills, but that’s what the Tokyo Ghoul world is for. Is this really what you want to do?” Master asked.

 

“Yes, after I read the first tome, I was sure; it might be dark, but it's what I want,” Harry said.

 

“With how you’ve been tearing through my comic collection, I thought you might want to be a hero like a life paladin. Wood and Day qi are all you need for it, but if you want to try necromancy, that’s wood and night qi. You could dual class as a dark paladin, but a single focus would be best if you want to gain anything useful before it's time to go to your first world. And here I thought you would try to become a telekinetic god, like Akira or the Phoenix. Necromancy is hard; there are shadow lords to deal with and many dark gods who like to swing their rotten di, I mean ego, around. Necromancy will also give you a terrible reputation with people who claim to be on the light side. Are you sure this is what you want?” Master asked again.

 

Harry pulled one of the few talismans he managed to get right from beneath his shirt. He could feel a deathly charge from it and knew it could channel his magic. It was a step in the right direction, but so many steps were involved in animating a corpse that it wasn’t funny. There was a reason why necromancers made pacts with shadow lords and dark gods. The spells needed to animate a corpse were too complex for normal magic casters to use. A wand wizard could animate a corpse with a series of charms, but that wasn’t true necromancy. True necromancers gained power from every undead they raised, controlled their movements with verbal or mental orders, and could combine the attributes of the undead. Using spells from pacts without pacts would incur a copy write lawsuit in the devil courts, which would be horrible. So, Harry was trying to turn necromancy into a skill with all the fundamental spells already included that would streamline everything. Unfortunately, the enchantments and scripts weren’t listening to each other.

 

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The shadow man laid his pack down and pulled out several tomes Harry had never seen before. Several page markers stuck out with URLs to videos he could watch on the subjects his Master presented him. Harry found subjects ranging from animation, puppetry, diagnostics, divination, transfiguration, enchanting, and much more.

 

“You will be hunted by those who believe you are evil no matter what good deeds you do. Do you remember spiderman’s lesson?” Master asked.

 

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Harry said.

 

“No, not at all. I’m more powerful than you can imagine, but I choose to have few responsibilities. If you choose to be responsible, you need the power to perform your duties. To be a hero, you need the power to save people. Power comes in many forms. Matt would say money is the ultimate power in this world, but he’s never won a spar against me, even with a whole realm advantage. Duke would say having people subordinate to you is the ultimate power. I’ve cut through his lackeys like a scythe through wheat on more than one occasion out of annoyance. Jester would say strength was all that mattered, and he should have been correct at a realm and a half above me.” Harry’s Master's eyes smiled. “Jester has a very specialized build built for combat; my debuff skills ruin it, and he’s too specialized to adapt. Harry, are you sure this is what you want?” His Master asked for the third time.

 

 Harry nodded; he was sure.

 

“That’s good enough for me. Necromantic qi is weak against fire and day qi. Undead are weakest during the noonday sun. Any spell that calls upon light or fire will damage your undead even if you have them covered in enchantments to resist it. So, accept that every opponent will attack you during the day and plan accordingly. Always assume you’re at a disadvantage, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the occasional easy win. I’ll build you a shed to work in like a little magus.” His Master suddenly grew serious. “You should know I’m going to take pictures of you working and brag to my friends about my cute apprentice,” Master said before leaving.

 

Harry sucked in a breath and let it out. Sometimes his Master could be too much to deal with. After he tucked his talisman back into his shirt, he raised his hand to summon the books to his desk and looked them over. There were piles of bones left over from his kills that he could use, and he had gotten better at cutting with his qi.

 

When he studied too long, and his mind threatened to blank out, he returned to the cupboard. Harry saw himself trapped there with only the spiders to keep him company. Then he read spiderman, and everything started to click. After Harry found the books on necromancy next to his comic books, the books on demon summoning and celestial bargaining, and to the left of the warrior arts books, the apprentice felt like he saw the puzzle. Finally, he even had the support of his Master to become a hero.

 

Tokyo Ghoul was a world populated by cannibals called ghouls who ate people daily. He couldn’t think of a better place to start his career as a hero. When he couldn’t focus, he saw himself in the cupboard and wished someone would have saved him. So, Harry cracked open more books, took detailed notes, and tore into the problem of scripts and enchantments. He saw the puzzle in his mind’s eyes and struggled to unravel it with the notes of 4 incredible beings.

 

…

 

Harry checked his boneyard to see it had been rooted through. Finally, a fat bear track clued him in on what did it, and he wasn’t going to stand for it. It was 30cm wide and 29.2 long; he took a picture of it, and the system produced a life-size model of the beast. It was a brown shaggy fur ball standing nearly 7ft tall with adorable round ears. After seeing the desolation of his neat and orderly bone pile, Harry was ready to kill it. He was fuming mad and felt the pain radiating from using his skills.

 

The bones shook as he concentrated on them with telekinesis. Then, after a few heartbeats, they floated off the ground and returned to their previous orderly stack. Harry hadn’t felt truly angry until he realized he was missing the bones he was looking for. How was he going to start his experiments without them?

 

He decided to go hunting and looked for his bow. It took him a week of work and lots of videos, but he finally made a bow using some questionable techniques. Harry looked around for a bit before turning on the system GPS to search for the signature he left on the bow. It was moving a couple miles away near a massive patch of Blood Berries. Finally, Harry stumbled upon the hook he hung his bow from to see his bow’s chewed-up remains. Somewhere in his angry mind, he realized the bear must have eaten the script on the bow. That meant Harry could track it for a while.

 

He made a dangerous decision when he stared at the remains of his bow and then looked over at the bone pile. The night was when necromancy was strongest, so he would use his craft to kill the bear that ate his bow.

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