Supreme Magus novel Chapter 116

- "I’m starting to suspect that higher necromancy requires a living subject. To properly turn Raghul, I would have needed to fill his whole body with dark magic, not only his core. And of course, add my mark.

Probably the reason why Kalla can’t master necromancy isn’t because it can’t use light outside of first magic, but because has no knowledge of the cores."

"Makes sense." Solus concurred. –

With Kalla’s guidance, Lith managed to raise his first skeleton after a few tries, destroying some of them in the process. When he felt sure to have grasped the basics, he even managed to raise Rodimas’ ghoul.

Before following Kalla to receive her final gift, Lith went back to put the two badly burned mercenaries out of their misery.

- "A part of me would love to experiment on them with higher necromancy, but honestly, I had more than enough for today. Also, if I manage to turn them into sentient undeads, I would feel responsible for their lives.

I would be either forced to kill them, and that would be a waste, or let them roam free, and that would be plain madness. I’m done playing with powers I don’t fully understand. Guess now I have one more thing to research in the library." –

After walking for a bit, Lith started to feel a headache growing, his desire to go back to the academy and rest was almost unbearable.

"Where are we going?"

"To my cave." Kalla explained. "Since I’m leaving, feel free to pick whatever you like from my trophies’ pile. That will be my thank you for saving Nok’s life."

"Teaching me necromancy is a great gift already. I don’t need more. By the way, where are you going?"

"I don’t know either. I have reached a bottleneck. All my instincts tell me that either I overcome it or my talent will rot. Now that all my cubs are big enough to be self-sufficient, I can finally set off to explore my limits."

"Have you tried talking to the Lord of the forest, first? Maybe the Scorpicore could help you." Lith didn’t dare offer his help directly. He had no idea how men would react to him teaching true magic, let alone magical beasts or monsters. _{freewebnσvel.cѳm}

Yet if the academy was to be in any danger, he would much prefer for someone like Kalla to be present.

"I already did. Scarlett tried to explain to me many times about things like ’cores’ and ’world energy’, but they are only empty words to me. So, it advised me to travel outside the forest and search for enlightment."

After a while, they reached a small hill. It was about ten meters (33’) high, covered by tall green grass, with tilted saplings growing on its sides, fighting with the nearest forest trees for the sunlight.

Lith could see many small animals, squirrels and birds alike, moving around in the vicinity, without care for their arrival. Like a mouse on the back of a lion, they weren’t afraid of predators, the presence of the powerful Byk was their lifeline.

The cave was deep, and had an entrance big enough to let two creatures the size of Kalla to move freely in and out, probably to allow her to move with her cubs.

The so-called trophies’ pile turned out to be just trash. Weapons, tools, clothes, were amassed together in a random order. Most of them were damaged or broken, making them useless.

"I took those things from humans and creatures that invaded my territory, trying to kill me or my spawn during the years." She explained.

After a little search, Lith could see there wasn’t anything interesting in the bunch.

"What about rings or amulets? Didn’t they have any?"

"Those I took for myself, silly one. They will be especially useful once I’ll be away from here." Lith sighed with annoyance, thinking how he could have already been resting back home, instead of junk hunting.

"But there are some I couldn’t figure out their use nor throw them away. I feel they are too dangerous to be left in clumsy hands. Feel free to take them, if you wish."

Kalla touched the left side of the cave, revealing a small secret chamber, holding a pile of small wooden boxes, all identical to the one Rodimas had given Lith.