Time for a new experiment.
The Death Knights rounded up 30 of the Mage Prisoners and moved them onto an ocean liner that we had recently conquered and claimed. Apparently 30 pupils was considered a standard class size for this world and I wanted to make it as familiar and comfortable for them as possible to foster a productive learning environment. All of them were in a semi conscious state due to [Life Drain] being used on them to prevent inconvenient attempts to free themselves while in transit.
The Death Knights moved them into a staff meeting room within the Cruise ship, onto various chairs around the table. I had them leave the room so as to give my students the chance to recover from the negative effects of Life Drain and to prevent them from being too intimidated to function.
I gave them a few minutes to recover, while I picked up and examined the various writing utensils. I knew of them from the memories I harvested but it was still different to hold them in my hand and use them myself. I picked up a permanent marker and looked around for paper or a white board or something to write on.
I sighed and snapped off a piece of my bone staff to create my own white board out of bone. I guess when the crew was being killed and harvested, they hadn’t stocked the staff room with supplies, how inconsiderate of them. There was a projector and a laptop within reach presumably for powerpoint presentations but I wasn't optimistic about my computer skills. I'd try it out later, maybe the next group.
Finally some of them were showing signs of life.
“Welcome class, I’ll have to ask your patience, I haven’t had to teach a class for a very long time. I may be a little rusty, bear with me please.”
“You murderer. You killed my mother!” Some female in her early 20’s with almond shaped eyes, a pleasantly symmetrical face and a shapely figure said to me, looking amusingly infuriated. I guess she still hadn’t wandered out of Denial yet {"Luthor damn you, that’s not funny"}. Her clothes were looking somewhat ragged from being manhandled by the Death Knights.
“Yes, yes, I don’t care.”
“You Monster.”
Which triggered a wave of complaints from the other Mages, who had awoken from their stupor, all of them talking at the same time getting louder and louder, their voices blurring together into one tedious and too loud cacophony of sound.
“Ugh, every time, some people simply don’t have any manners.”
I waved my hand in the direction of the loudest human noise maker, a man in his early 30’s, who had his fists clenched and wreathed with a weak aura of flame but his shouts were completely cut off as the bones of his neck exploded outwards. The expanded bone cut through his trachea, esophegus and so forth, cutting off his airway among other vital things like his carotid vein, causing him to crumple onto the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Stop it!”
“You monster.”
“Demon.”
Some were looking around for an exit while the others shouted, demonstrating actual wisdom, rather than the bleating of beasts cornered by a predator.
With a wave of my hand, I retracted the bones, that had been cutting off the noisy man’s airway and blood flow and repaired all the damage, with a mix of bone and blood magic. “Now some ground rules. I am your teacher and I demand your respect. You can hate me if you wish, hell you can even try and kill me for all I care, just remember I can kill you with a wave of my hands, so I suggest you listen to what I say if you want to survive.”
Honestly I didn’t even need to wave my hands to kill them, a simple [Energy Drain] would turn them to dust, along with the wooden chairs they were sitting on. They didn’t need to know that, it was far more convenient for them to have an obvious visual cue for them to fear, rather than dreading the knowledge that I could kill them with a thought.
One of them raised his hand, it’s a school boy, at best guess, 13 or 14, wearing a white shirt, blue tie and ugly greyish colored trousers.
“Yes? You. Over there. I guess I should number you.”
“Um yes, we have names already, um Teacher.”
“I know, I just don’t care to remember them, so I’m going to number you as Number one, because you are now my favorite student at the moment. What’s your question?”
“Why are you doing this?” One asked.
“You’d have to be more specific. Why am I leading this class? Why am I on this world? Why am I rampaging across your world leading armies of dead to slaughter your kin?”
The other students were looking at me or Number One, with a panoply of expressions, hatred, confusion, loathing, or soul crushing sadness.
“Any of it.”
“That’s decidedly vague and unhelpful but to answer in general terms, it’s because I am on the path to Godhood and sacrifice is necessary in order to bring the dead back to life and create a world that does not know death.”
“So why are we here?”
“That’s an intriguing question and has deep philosophical ramifications.” He stared at me blankly. “Oh you mean, why are you in this class instead of serving as another one of my Skeleton Mages. I accidentally created this monster that’s the equivalent of a magical black hole, so I need to train you guys how to use your magic so I can create the correct elemental mana sources in order to counteract his progress and other stuff you don’t need to know about.”
“What’s to stop us killing you, once we learn how to use our magics better?” Exploded Neck guy asked, rubbing his neck gingerly. A man in his early 20’s, decently muscled, with a warrior’s build and with a warrior’s direct mindset.
“That is an interesting question Number two.”
Number one laughed and number two glared at him.
I’m sure there was something I was missing there and Luthor jumped in to explain about cultural idioms and childish humor. What weird people. Here I was trying to gift them the knowledge of how to bend reality to their whims and they were engaged in potty humor.
“My name is Wang Yong.”
“Don’t care 2. You’re welcome to try killing me, it should be an amusing test of your skills, but I wouldn’t recommend it. After all you’re on a boat surrounded by my undead and unlike in movies, my army just doesn’t disappear the moment I’m dead. They just won’t have a unifying leader and there will be a power vacuum and there will probably even more murder and mayhem until some sort of order is restored.”
“What did you mean when you said a world that does not know death?” A lanky looking teenager, maybe 17 or 18, human ages in this world are hard to determine. He looked like a delinquent or a thug with his shaved head and his style of clothing and general appearance. According to memories gained, the tattoos over his skin and neck indicated an affiliation to one of the Triads.
“Oh yes number three, my ultimate goal is to gain enough power that I can gather all the souls of all the dead and grant them bodies of one sort or another. In actuality I’m merely safekeeping their souls, rather than simply killing them like a devourer.”
The young woman that first spoke asked “Does that mean you can bring back my mother?”
At the same time a girl, in a school girls outfit, white shirt, red sweater, black pants, asked “What’s a devourer?”
“Okay, we’re getting off topic here. Yes I can bring back your mother and a Devourer is a creature that consumes something from a target, their soul, blood, bone or even energy itself. The one I’m talking about is very dangerous as everything it eats, feeds it more power, until eventually it’ll drain the very planet of it’s essence.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Please bring her back I’ll do anything.”
“Ugh, fine, number 4 it’ll show you the true depths of magic, maybe then we can actually get started on training you up to be useful. Give me your hand.”
“Ah why?” Number 4 asked.
“Just a moment ago, you said you’d do anything to bring her back and you won’t even give me your hand. Guess your mother will just stay dead.”
“No please, um, I just wanted to know what you wanted to do with it.”
“I just need a drop of your blood and a memory, so I know who to resurrect.”
She gingerly held out her hand and said “Do it already.” I sliced the finger with a sharp fingernail. “Ow.”
With a thought I directed the blood onto the floor, using the DNA to create a generic womanly shape, with roughly the proportions of number 4. “This is what is known as a humonculus, a blank human vessel without a soul or a self.”
Number 4 had gone red and about ¼ of the class, mostly males had also become oddly discolored. “Stop it.” Number 4 screeches. “Why are you torturing me?”
I looked around for a moment before I understood. “Ah yes, I forgot you people have some sort of cultural thing about nudity.”
“You have a naked copy of me, in front of EVERYONE!” Number 4 said, rising to her feet in fury.
“Well don’t you want your mother to enjoy a second youth, young and vibrant. Such an unfilial daughter, very disappointed.”
There was a mix of awkward laughter and general confusion.
I skimmed 4’s mind to find a memory of her mother, a woman in her late 30’s, I sent through a message to my nearby minions through [Soul Communion] to tell them to look for her soul book or soul fragments and pass them onto me once found.
Luthor just laughed, saying that it wasn’t in my Soul Library. He enjoyed being unhelpful.
I ignored the oversized children as I waited for the minions to find the right soul. In the meantime, I grew a layer of bone armor over the humonculus just to shut up 4.
Ah, I didn’t miss this part of teaching, all the endless whining. I hadn’t even given them homework yet. Oh well, just have to cram the knowledge into their stupid brains regardless of how much they protested. At worst, I’d just turn them into Skeleton Sorcerors and try again with a different group. No great loss.
I plugged in her mother’s soul into the homunculus. Her reaction was kind of amusing.
“What’s happening, there were monsters before, where are we? What's happening? What happened to my hands?" She said in a rush of words, before finally noticing that her hands were different. She touched her face in apparent wonder. "Why is my face so smooth? Daughter, I’m so glad you survived. Where are we?”
She hugged her daughter, who tried to comfort her and explain but I tuned out as it wasn't that interesting.
Luckily one of the Liches nearby had her soul book otherwise it would have been a lot more effort to ‘plug and play’. It would have taken a lot more effort to unravel her essence from one of the spirits or waited for one of the other Liches to return.
“What about my brother?”
“My father?”
“Sister”
“Grandmother.”
“ENOUGH! I am not a jukebox, I do not take requests. If you’re well behaved I may embody your harvested loved ones into a vessel of one sort or another. As for you, I’ll make corrections to your form later, I suggest you find something to eat soon, so that your vessel will not collapse in on itself.”
“What. No. Am I going to die?” The recently resurrected Mother asked. She didn’t merit any further attention at the moment, though she could be an interesting test case for further experimentation. She had served her purpose anyway, providing a carrot for good students and Number Two demonstrated the power of my stick.
“Shut up Luthor.”
They were all looking at me with blank faces, open mouthed and confused. They looked so stupid.
{“You look Stupid.”} Luthor commented.
{“I’ll unravel you if you don’t behave.”}
{“Then who will do your work for you and help you digest all these memories.}
{“Just keep the stupidity to yourself or I’ll start ripping out bits of you to find the bit that makes you think annoying me is a good idea.”}
“Just follow the man in the bone armor, they’ll direct you to the food.” One of the Death Knights entered the room
“I can’t leave my daughter with you, you did all of this.” Interesting assertion, perhaps her resurrection had granted her greater insight into the heirarchy. On the other hand, I didn't care about her opinion.
“It wasn’t a suggestion, go now or I’ll make you explode in front of your daughter.”
“Now back to the lessons. As you just saw, with sufficient skill in blood and bone magic, you can recreate the body from a single drop of blood if necessary, it’s not usually advisable since it’s just a lump of meat in human form without a soul so you have to be really good at mind magic in order to create a decent soulless servant or skilled with a variation of soul magic.
Number one raised his hand again. “Yes number one, what is it?”
“Why am I here, I don’t have any magic.”
I used [Soul Communion] to send an image of his face through the Lich network to find out what demonstration warranted his capture. I got a response back within a few seconds.
“According to my report, you were either using time magic, body magic or mind magic, it’s uncertain which one it was.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“You were moving at unnatural speeds so either you were using time magic to subconsciously alter the flow of time, you were using body magic similarly to increase your body’s speed or mind magic to alter your own perceptions of time to increase reaction speed. Now, no more interruptions or I’ll spike the lot of you like Number Two.” I said pointing at number two to remind them that I didn’t take interruptions kindly.
“Ah yes sorry.”
“Now I’ll explain the various forms of magic and sources of power.”
I took out the permanent marker and started writing on the bone board.
“There’s the 5 elemental magics, earth, fire, wind, water and lightning and before any of you ask wood is not the fifth element, regardless of what your color wheels state."
Number one covered his mouth with both hands. What a weird child and yet still he’s my favorite student so far.
“They fall under the creation, manipulation and negation territories, but more about that later. There’s also the belief that Nature is the unifying force that allows a master to use all the elemental magics as well as controlling plants. I consider it druidic magic and of little interest as it tends to require belief or offerings to various nature gods to function.”
“Then there’s the 5 magics loosely combined under the umbrella term of necromancy, soul, blood, bone, mind and body magic. There’s the source magics, with the purest being mana, followed by poison, life and death magic. Then there’s the rare types such as spatial and time magic. I focused most of my efforts into necromancy, with a little bit of effort thrown towards basic understanding of elemental magic. There’s also one unifying type of magic, which in your parlance is enchanting or rune crafting that can exhibit or mimic the effects of the other forms of magic.”
On the board I wrote out
Elemental
Earth
Fire
Wind
Water
Lightning
Nature - plant
Necromancy
Soul
Blood
Bone
Mind
Body
Rare types
Gravity
Time
“Now to separate you all into your various magical affinities, unfortunately I don’t know where the magic stones are on this world, or even if they exist, so I’ll have to do this somewhat backwards.”
Hmmm I am out of practice, next time lesson plans, paper, writing utensils and handouts, though I guess there’s no grimoires to be found here. I’ll need to create some if I am to grow a Mage Guild.
"I’ll pick you out one by one to test you, take this opportunity to get out your frustrations by hitting me with everything you got."
One by one they attacked me, some more eagerly than others, some of them I had to provoke into attacking as they were too scared of retribution or something to immediately comply with the attack order.
Determining their affinities required exceptional observational skills and a bit of [Telepathy], none of them did any real damage to me as I was covered by a Mana Shield and bone armor.
After each of them were done with their attacks, I took a sample of their blood to use for experimentation in creating affinity stones.
Afterwards I collated the results, how many of them had primary affinities along the 12 traditional schools of magic and wrote them out.
Elemental
Earth x 3
Fire x 4
Wind x 4
Water x 4
Lightning x 2
Necromancy
Soul x 0
Blood x 3
Bone x 3
Mind x 3
Body x 4
No rare types.
Number One, school boy, displayed Mind magic.
Number Two, noisy man, displayed Body magic with a secondary lesser affinity for fire magic.
Number three, gang member, blood magic affinity.
Number four, whiny woman with newly resurrected mother has water magic.
Number five, school girl, lightning magic.
After establishing who had what affinity and using them to establish a base line, I lead the class in a group meditation exercise using Telepathy and ensured they all were using the correct form.
Afterwards I gathered one student who had one of the 9 affinities present and taught them one or two spells using [Telepathy] to upload the information straight to their brain. It was unfortunate that a living mind, couldn't absorb as much information without imploding as an undead one or I could bypass this outdated, tedious and time consuming process entirely.
Afterwards I set the class homework.
Number One was tasked to lead his study group of three in learning how to use [Telepathy] and [Accelerated Thoughts].
Number Two was tasked with teaching his 3 comrades how to use [Limit Release] to fight.
Number Three was tasked in bleeding his 2 colleagues with the same messy affinity as him, to develop their use of the low level blood spell [Clot] and [Bleed].
Number Four was sent off to the pool to practice [Call Water] and [Frost bolt] with the other 3 water Mages.
Number Five was sent with an elderly gentleman to practice [Static Shock], I wonder if they’ll survive, lightning mages have a bad habit of being struck by lightning.
As for the aspiring Earth mages I sent them to find a potted plant or something to practice [Earth Mastery] on the soil.
Fire Mages were sent to the tanning deck to absorb the heat from the sun and direct it outwards, through [Fireball].
Air Mages were sent outside to practice [Wind Blade] a near invisible attack utilizing wind, it had low lethality but it was quick and could serve as a counter to arrows and even blades.