They woke up at seven in the morning, got prepared, and ate breakfast. At eight, they meditated for ten minutes. At nine, they jogged around a small field outside the castle, then were forced to meditate. At ten, they showered, then meditated. Every single waking hour included ten minutes of meditation, in which I’d try to acutely describe the feeling of their natural mana flow.

The idea was for them to feel this flow at any time they please. Once they could do that, I’d move on to the next stage of training. They lived normally, and sometimes I’d have drills, or fake enemy attacks from the undead knights with random props from around the castle. Their job was to retreat and try to sense their mana flow at the same time.

After two weeks of spiking their breakfast, lunch, and dinner with magic powder, and putting them through a bunch of random scenarios and meditation, it was impossible to ignore their innate mana flow.

The next two weeks were much of the same craziness, but instead of trying to feel their mana flow, they focused on converting normal mana into compact mana while experiencing different scenarios.

Of course, during this month of my more-annoying-than-difficult training, Tina didn’t let up. She, in fact, became an adept three weeks after she became an apprentice.

Now that my amazing students were able to feel their mana flow and perform mana conversion on the get-go, it was time to finally incorporate spells into the mix. Although, a few of them already rushed ahead and did it behind closed doors, but I didn’t mind.

I started off with simple lifestyle spells like Dawnlight or Clean. Those who used compact mana for the first time were extremely impressed with it, but every single one of them still used the same inefficient casting method.

One night, I read through some more reports on the invasion. Another village was massacred a few days ago, and Royal Archwizard Kaelyn sounded apologetic in the report. The fact that the queen pulled some strings for me probably made the archwizard warier of me, and now she sought to be on my good side instead.

I dimmed the Dawnlight floating over me a little and slouched back into my comfy and posh chair. I stretched, yawned, and decided to hit the sack. This bed is needlessly huge… My thoughts ran on Tina; I was so tempted to have her sleep in the castle with me. I figured having an entire castle to myself would ensure I was kept up at night by Tina, but that report on the invasion was what kept me awake.

Whatever, it’s not like I need sleep anyway. I stood up and switched vessels to the man, whom I decided to name Andre, just in case anyone asked. By his build, he probably did some sort of physical work for a living. I was amazed at the size of, everything, and yes, that too, you pervert. My forearms felt huge, especially after being a girl all my life. My hands were quite calloused, but my flexibility took a huge hit.

I switched back to lich form, and it felt so good. It was like finally coming home and relaxing after a hard day’s work. My grimoire hanged off my waist, and the Scepter of the Lich God was in my hand. This, felt natural.

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I decided to make use of this lich form and teleported towards the first village that was attacked, Swenrai. I’d be able to return before morning once I rode Dreadhoof through the skies to the second razed village.

All the houses were black, burned, and crumbling. The number of decomposing corpses around the place wasn’t many, perhaps a couple dozen. Hmm… Most of the corpses had weapons near them. That means they fought back, right? Everyone else is missing. There was nothing in the report about refugees, so the demons probably took prisoners. A few Dawnlights gave me some illumination and I searched for any signs of flammable substances, but there was nothing like that. It won’t be hard to use spells, would it?

I searched the outskirts of the village and the surrounding forests and roads, but there were no tracks or any signs of travel to the place. They had flying mounts like Dreadhoof then? Or maybe, portals? If it’s either of those, then it’s safe to assume the enemy has expert wizards on their side. There’s absolutely no way the humans can survive them if they invaded seriously. I pondered why the attacks were so sparse. And if they got experts, then they definitely have more adepts than the human countries. Is my training sufficient?

It bothered me, because I planned to call it a day after I taught the students to simplify their casting method. After that, to become apprentices or adepts, they need only practice spells. Even if I gave Queen Ayana fifty adepts, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference if the enemy had experts.

What if I do mass enchanting? I thought. It was much quicker than training people and provided the quickest boost to a large number of knights and warriors. I don’t really want to mess with things like that, though. What if Reuland starts attacking other human countries after they beat demons? My grimoire was a godsend, but it couldn’t give me political advice.

Before I could sink into my thoughts, a strange sound was heard, like the rusting of bushes. I immediately cast Mana Shield to protect myself against the incoming water attack. It reminded me of Fire Lance that Tina used, but I knew it was much more powerful. The water hit my shield and failed to pierce it, then it fell apart and made a puddle of water on the ground. A bolt of lightning then zoomed towards me and struck both me and the ground.

I cast Sopor, to try and put the demon to sleep, but it cast Dispel and undid my spell. I sighed. Alright then. I resorted to a big boy in my grimoire called Aether Imprisonment, a master spell. Upon cast, the demon froze. The spell was a modular type of imprisonment, which meant the user could inhibit any combination of the target’s movement, consciousness, or mana. I inhibited all three, then cast Telekinesis, an expert spell which allowed me to move a single target with my mind.

I brought it to me. With the stupendous 300,000 MP cost that Aether Imprisonment required, I was sure that there was no escape from it, but I still kept my Mana Shield activated.

I opened a portal to my room in the castle, cast Binding of Bones around him so it’d look like Aether Imprisonment wasn’t the spell responsible for keeping the demon on a leash. I doubted the humans even knew of the master spell anyway, but I took no chances.

In the morning, I put on a little play as I had breakfast with my students. I possessed my female vessel and had my lich vessel open the front doors with two undead knights dragging the demon behind them.

Ah, I love necromancy.

My lich vessel approached me and loudly declared that the demon was caught sneaking about in the village that got attacked. I then dismissed the lich vessel and it disappeared into thin air.

My students were scared out of their minds after being in the presence of a Death List monster. Their aghast gazes all fell on me.