Van was having a blast with his necromancy class. Already a month in and they were tackling some hard-hitting subjects. The teacher was very impressed by his skills to manipulate spiritual energy and create pseudo-souls. Because of this, she asked if he was interested in being her helper when it came down to teaching and making sure everyone was on the right page.

Something he was a little hesitant about since he didn’t want to stand out, but when she offered extra credit plus extra supplies, he simply couldn’t refuse. The work was a bit extra, but because of it he was allowed access to books and information on necromancy a few years ahead of class, something he did his best to take advantage of.

More importantly, he was able to get better access to the bone mold supply he desperately wanted. Sneaking a few more samples into his soul realm for Ren to experiment on.

Since Van was already well ahead of some of the students and had a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge already about creating and using skeletons, he was also tasked with making some bone dolls for the students to practice on. This led to a question from one of his fellow students about where he got all his knowledge from.

“Hey Van, where did you learn all this stuff from? I’ve been practicing necromancy for a few years now, but even I can’t handle it as much as you can. What gives?” Cecilia asked a woman who normally sat down next to Van during class. She was a nosy but kind and extroverted girl that was always talking about something every time Van sat down next to her for class.

Next to her was Javis, Merody’s boyfriend, who also happened to be taking this class and also seemed to be interested in how Van was going to reply. He was a short cute looking boy, making Van wonder how old he actually was and how Merody and Javis first met.

Van gave it some thought, then shrugged, unsure of how to answer such a question. “I learned it from one of the nearby necromancy guilds during my youth. It didn’t hurt either that my mage instructor at the time was also very interested in teaching me golemancy, which can be used in tandem with necromancy to create stronger undead.” not mentioning the fact that thanks to his extremely powerful soul realm, he was more easily able to create pseudo souls since the larger the soul realm the more spiritual energy you produced. And thanks to one of his past lives leaving a very interesting book on golemancy and necromancy that he could use to improve his skills with.

“Really? I don’t see how Golemancy and Necromancy can be used at the same time.” Cecilia said.

“Why not? They use it to create those bonewalkers, so it should be possible right?” Van rebutted.

“Yeah, but that's different, that’s a lot of work. You should only put that kind of effort in a death knight or something.” Cecilia responded.

A death knight was a particularly powerful undead creation of a necromancer. It basically made it so that a necromancer didn’t have to put all the work on animating dozens of undead individually. Instead, the death knight would animate the corpses on the necromancer’s behalf and would lead the newly undead as an extension of itself. The downside to this was there was a limit to how much a death knight could control at any one time, which depended on how powerful it was, and in part based on how much effort and work the necromancer put into its creation. There was also the problem that if the death knight is destroyed, all the undead under its control would either collapse or revert back to the original owner, which could suddenly strain the necromancer and weaken him or her.

“I get what you're trying to say, but think of it this way. Both golemancy and necromancy requires the use of mana cores and pseudo souls. So in a way, necromancy is just golemancy but using corpses instead of wood or stone.” Van explained.

“When you think of it like that, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to control a larger amount of undead. Because in the end, it's all about the mind. Sure some necromancers can summon hundreds, or thousands of skeletons, and control them all too. But others can barely maintain one or two. That’s because some people try to use a skeleton as if it was an extension of their own body, trying to micromanage every little move their summon makes. But when you realize you can just program a set of parameters and then just send them on their way, it becomes a whole lot less stressful on the mind.” Hoping his explanation helped somewhat.

“Huh… I never thought about it like that…” Javis said, giving Van some credit and thinking about it deeply.

Cecilia frowned. “Surely it can’t just work like that. You would still have to set those parameters for each and every summon you create. That is one of the downsides of golemancy, unlike necromancy, the corpses can remember fragments of their past lives to make use of. And even when we can’t, such as when we use the bone mold, we can impart a few memories of our own experiences into the skeleton, allowing it to use some of our skills. Such as swordsmanship or magic. Which can only be done because it too was technically organic once.”

“That’s a good point, here’s a trick that I use to help with that.” Van said, then went onto another helpful tangent. “When I first started, I also ran into the same problem of having to set up the same parameters for every summon.” thinking about his original shadow wolves. “So in the end, I started to make what I call, core pseudo souls, where I program a set of parameters that I like or think will work out, and then just duplicate it by feeding enough mana and spiritual energy. From there, whenever I want to make an upgrade to my next batch of summons, I instead just make the changes to the original pseudo souls, and then just copy paste them.” Now thinking of his more powerful shadow wolf summons. “Though sometimes that also means it costs a bit more mana to create them.”

Cecilia blinked. “Is that even possible!?” She exclaimed.

Javis sighed. “Just another thing only a genius can do…”

Van looked surprised. “Is it really that hard?”

“You would have to have years of studying and practicing with spiritual energy to do something like that! What kind of person has that much spiritual energy just to play around with!?” Cecilia said, trying not to yell.

“You must have a whole horde of skeletons just waiting to be summoned…” Javis commented.

“Actually… I don’t have any…”Van said embarrassed.

Cecilia and Javis blinked.

“Why not?” Javis asked.

Van blushed a little. “I don’t like… Messing with corpses…”

The two friends just stared at Van for a good long while until…

“You gotta be shitting me…” Cecilia couldn’t help but say. “The number one student in class, and teacher's pet, plus a freaking genius… Is scared of a few corpses…” She hung her head in defeat. “What’s the point in anything anymore…”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad… Right?” Javis said, trying to comfort Cecilia and looking at Van expectantly.

“Oh no, I’m good. Now that I know about this bone mold stuff, I can start creating more skeletons in the future.” Van said happily.

Cecilia and Javis just looked at him pitifully.

“Jeez Van… You’ve really been sheltered out there in the west. Out here in the east, it would be weird if someone wasn’t used to a few corpses.” Javis commented.

“I’m no stranger to corpses.” Van said defensively. “I’ve killed things, even people, I just don’t like messing around with their bodies is all.”

Cecilia and Javis perked up. “You’ve killed people?” Their eyes now looked at him expectantly, wondering what kind of story he was hiding behind such words.

Van realized that perhaps he said too much. “Oh uh…” He wondered how he was going to get out of this one. “Oh! Look at the time, I have to head to runecraft!” He exclaimed. And he did, in fact, he was running late. “I got to go, talk to you guys later.” And then quickly fled out the door.

“Hey! You can’t just leave us hanging like that! Come back here!” Cecilia shouted after him.

“Leave it Cecilia, we're running late too.” Javis said, worriedly looking at the clock.

“Tsk!” Cecilia grabbed her stuff and booked it out of the class alongside Javis who quickly followed after.

Van felt some relief that he didn’t have to tell his life story about almost dying or anything like that. He quickly made his way to his next class as fast as he could go. Normally he would worry about being a male all alone with no one to stop a bunch of girls trying to ride him for all he was worth. But thankfully since the school year started, everyone in the halls were just as busy trying to get to their classes as he was to his. Hardly anyone even looked his way, too busy trying to rush to their next destination while having a deathgrip on what sometimes amounted to a small mountain of books in their hands.

Upon reaching his destination, he quickly sat down next to Kira who was already there and took prepping for the lesson that was going to begin soon.

“Hey Van, you're almost late, what happened?” Kira asked.

“Just talking to a few friends, I lost track of time. What’s today’s lesson?” He asked, taking a book out of his soul realm and looking for the right page.

“The similarities between spellcraft and runecraft. Or something like that.” Kira said, also opening her book up to the appropriate page.

“Oh, that’s going to be interesting…” Van commented, looking forward to the lesson. “I’ve always noticed how creating a good spell was similar in some way to how we draw runes.”

“Really?” Kira asked. “I’ve no idea what spellcraft and runecraft have to do with each other. I mean… You can’t really use runecraft to create spells. You can only use it to give spell-like effects to an object you inscribe to, or create one time use spells like with spell paper.”

“Or like with your scarf where you can create multiple spells and different types depending on how you arrange it.” Van pointed out.

“That’s different, with runecraft there are clear and tangible boundaries and rules. With spellcraft it’s whatever the user wishes it to be. That’s why sorcerer's are so popular, why think of a way to create a spell, when you can just poof your spell into existence!” She sighed. “How I wish I could just poof magic into thin air…”

Van chuckled. “It’s a lot harder than you think it is…”

“Sh! Teacher’s coming!” A student said from behind them.

Immediately the two went silent. The runecraft teacher was notoriously known as being very demanding. Anyone that talks out of line in her class was just begging to get a demerit. There is even a question on whether or not she even fucks, with how spitefull she seems to be. Everyone dreaded her appearance…

But instead, who did appear but Devi, the half vampire girl who was somehow incharge of the foundry hall.

“Hello everyone! My name is Devi!” She said cheerfully. “I’ll be your new substitute teacher! Isn’t that exciting!”

Murmurs of confusion spilled over as the students looked at each other for answers, wondering what happened to their evil teacher.

“Unfortunately miss pine is going to be indisposed due to an incident. It seemed she had a bit of an accident and won’t be available for the foreseeable future…” Devi continued as if no one was talking. “Now, I know it might look weird for someone like me to be taking over for miss pine, but I am the most certified person for the job… Technically speaking…”

“Honestly, I think it makes some sense… As the head artificer of the foundry hall, or at least one of them… I do have some knowledge that I can present that could be genuinely helpful for everyone here who is hoping to for some job as a professional runecarver or who want to use this class as a springboard for artificery later on in their life. But just because you all think that I'm a funny and bubbly girl, doesn’t mean I’ll let you walk all over me!” She laughed.

No one laughed.

Devi gave a cough. “A-anyway… Umm… I think we’ll just do self-study for today while I organize Miss Pine's notes and figure out what she was planning to do for the year. From there we can go over a few of her old lessons as a refresher and then try some fun experiments for the whole class.”

The class began murmuring again, this time a bit louder, already a few thinking they just missed the bullet and scored with an easy teacher.

“Umm…” Devi looked a little lost as the students began to talk amongst themselves. “I’m going to need a few assistants for the time being. Maybe just two. Anyone want to volunteer?”

Devi was ignored. The class was already not taking her seriously.

She was beginning to think this was a huge mistake and her expression was about to be crestfallen when she noticed someone familiar in the crowd of students, making her smile return. “Van! Please come down! You are my assistant number one!”

Now it was Van’s turn for his face wanting to fall. But he hid it well and began to walk down the steps to join his new teacher.

“And why don’t we have your friend join in! The more the merrier!” Devi said happily.

Kira paled but also walked down the steps to join Van.

Devi clapped her hand loud enough to draw the attention of the majority of the class. “Alright students. Van and uh…”

Kira whispered her name.

“Kira! Will be my assistant for my stay as your teacher. They’ll help me keep an eye on everyone as well as helping with any in class projects that we might be having. If you have any questions or anything while I’m not around, don’t hesitate to ask them, they’ll get back to me and through them I’ll get back to you. Any questions?”

Devi waited but there was no reply.

“Wonderful!” Devi said cheerfully. “Oh~ I just know we are going to have so much fun together! Everyone, please take good care of me!”

The students just stared at her, wondering what her game was and questioning if she really was as air headed as she looked.

Suffice to say, Van and Kira’s work was cut out for them. They both hoped that this sudden change of events wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“It can’t be that bad…” Van thought. “Afterall, she is the head of the foundry hall. That means she’s the best of the best when it comes to aritficery, which is something I want to get into later on. What better person to learn from than her?”

Van would soon learn how true his thoughts were soon after… turned out, Devi was an amazing teacher.