The first Necromancer, the Apostle of Baal.

Such are the records, as the Grand King, the first under the absolute Lord Lucifer, commands absolute power over all the Demons and all that resides in the Seven Hells. Manipulating the dead is a trifle to one such as him.

And this power has been granted to his Apostle to wreak havoc with.

The stories of the Apostle have been recorded in tomes of incredible length, his feats of infamy written in surprising detail considering it is a story from several thousand years ago.

And copies of these tomes have been stored in the deepest restricted archives under the Royal Palace, a place rife with absolute security that only a very few select people may enter and read from.

And Kal is one such individual.

The Twelve are inherently trusted as the Goddess herself vouches for them. Thus they have all been given access to all the important facilities they could ever need. And in the case of Mages like Kal, that obviously includes archives. Even the most forbidden ones including cursed tomes and dark history.

Thus, he had been spending the last week fully immersed in whatever mention of Demons and Necromancy he could find. Even if it was just a passing mention that a Demon employed any type of Undead, he dug into it. He was doing his utmost to understand the essence of Necromancy and how those that borrow power from Demons go about using it.

And by extension, how his sister differs from them and how that could be applied to Necromancy as a whole.

Yes, he was trying to find a way to change the practice itself.

And the results were… mixed.

“So this is possible. With Kuna’s help… and probably also Emmy and Altair… it should be possible to make Kuna’s Necromancy something that everyone can use. But it still doesn’t approach the root problem: The fact that Demons can do it. It would shift the problem from prejudice to it being difficult to judge who is a good and bad undead… which would just lead to more prejudice and potentially segregation anyway…

Dammit.

DAMN IT.” He slammed the desk in frustration. He had spent his entire week laser focused on it and only arrived at conclusions which he had already theorized about. It was frustrating for him, a person always lauded for his ability to solve problems.

Nothing he found could help him, it only intensified his knowledge of just how much people in this World hated and feared Undead. It taught him the Origin thereof, but that didn’t help him at all. He didn’t see any way to get rid of the Demons. And there was no recorded way to do so. Methods to kill them, yes. But nothing to get rid of them properly.

Of course, he had an idea for a ‘workaround’, but that was a lot of effort and extremely radical.

After all, it would involve destroying every single Undead, Necromancer and Book containing their knowledge at the same time and then spreading their own.

Rounding up the lot of them would be a colossal task, probably more difficult than defeating the direct threat to this World. And even the idea of burning all that knowledge hurt his heart, no matter how dark it is.

The fact that this method could be likened to revisionism didn’t help his thoughts about it.

No matter how much he thought about it or bounced his theories off Kuna and his teacher, he came up short.

It frustrated him immensely.

And yet, no matter what he did, he could not shake the feeling he was overlooking something incredibly obvious, something that should have been the first thought in his head.

And yet, he knew it could never be that simple. An issue where you have to weigh prejudice and survival instincts can never be that simple as to be solved by a first thought.

He decided to call it there for the day and return to the others, to once again begin bouncing ideas against them and see what sticks.

And it resulted in the following conversation:

“…Bro, you’re an idiot.”

“…”

“What are you even focusing on? Solving prejudice? Killing Demons? Understanding Necromancy? You idiot always get distracted, no matter how much you think you may be focused. You’re hyper-curious. Just stop. Here’s the thing you missed: You don’t have to do all of those things at once. For now, go with the first thing. Making my Necromancy available for everyone. We can go from there.”

“…Ah. Right. You’re right.” He sighed to himself, as always being reminded by his sister to slow down once he begins working too fast. A dynamic that had held up for many years now, and one that would last the ages.

“Just go gather the others you need for this. Then we can get started.” Kuna turned back to her books, writing down and scribing on a scroll to create a scroll for Kid to use during training. The Skeletons she had raised so far, the number now risen to half a dozen, had all been going about their business, some cleaning, some cooking and other chores, and Kid stood next to her desk, continuing the conversation.

“…Master. Are you sure? We are fine with things as they are.” Her thoughts, and the thoughts of the other five that she had gathered, were voiced. Her voice was filled with concern for the girl she called her Master and Friend.

“Yes. Kid, we went over this. Making sure you get to live a second life has always been a priority. I don’t even care if I can only participate in battle with basic spells. This is what I want to do. If you are willing to fight with us to get Ray back, that’s great, but I will not force any of you to jump into battle and lose your lives.”

“…Yes, we went over this, so you also know what we decided.”

“I do. And I am grateful for it. But please, prioritize living. I will do my best to revive you if any of you do happen to die, but I can’t ensure it’ll be perfect. Please.”

“…I understand.”

By this point Kal had already disappeared, wandered off to gather Emmy and Altair to begin discussing how to spread a form of Necromancy more akin to Spirit Manipulation, with no need to borrow power from any being.

It would be hard, simply due to the extreme task of manipulating life and death with only the power of mortals, but Kuna had already shown it to be possible. And with the four of them working together, it should be more than possible.

All the other problems, things with no clear solution can be left for later, just as Kuna had said.

For now, they had to take the first step.

***

The first Necromancer, the Wise King Solomon.

Such go the theories, as the Wise King was the first to fully categorize and subdue the 72 Major Demons that rule the seven hells under the Lord Lucifer and in his stead. Borrowing the power of the first among them, the Grand King Baal, would come easy.

And this power has been used by the Wise King to better the world.

Such stories of the Wise Kind have not been recorded, but they are theorized to exist. Such theories are scarcely mentioned in a few eclectic books on ancient Myths, reasonable considering it has little actual evidence.

Those few books that do exist that mention this can rather easily be found in either a large public library or on the internet. No trouble to find if you have somewhat of an idea of where to look.

And Ray did.

In fact, he found so many divergent theories on the internet that he quickly decided to switch over to the library, where he found a lot less density of random theories with no reasonable aspects to it at all. Those that made their way into the printed and published books at least had some substance to them.

Thus, he had been spending the beginning of the week glued to his monitor, tearing his hair out at the lack of cited sources while looking for the slightest hint of Necromancy and Demons. Then, as he moved on to the library, it settled down a little, but it was still difficult to find anything he could consider as actual advice. Even as a beginner in Magic, he knew that most everything he found was definitely written by people that didn’t even know Magic actually existed.

And so he certainly had difficulty to find anything resembling usable tactics against Necromancy as a whole.

He was just looking for literally anything at all.

The results were terrible.

“Ugh… So this is just way too obscure to find in a normal library after all. And I sure as hell won’t try the internet again. It might have something usable, but the density is…” He could only mutter to himself as not a single shred of usable knowledge came from an entire week of research.

The only things he found were tropes that spread through pop-culture, which he largely already knew, or the very rare speck of correct information. The trouble being that he only knew the information held up because he had already confirmed it himself. And most of what he found just looped right back around to citing those things, which he already knew.

It was exceedingly frustrating to always return back to square one, as if playing a never-ending game of snakes and ladders where there are only snakes on every tile. Without arriving at the end in a single go, he would always return to the start.

It only served to cement how hidden the Magic on Earth was. That not even a single hint could be found. Not even the tiniest shred that somebody might have missed. And yet, there was a Necromancer letting zombies roam around in the Material World and nobody was saying anything.

This is of course another alley he had tried, but with no success.

Not even a tweet, no social media post at all. No pictures, no videos, nothing.

He had a few ideas on how to gather more information, but they would backfire spectacularly, that he already knew.

He could begin studying one of the zombies by catching it. Then doing all manner of experiments just to figure out anything at all about their anatomy and makeup. The problem here lay that the Necromancer definitely had a connection to them and would be able to monitor Ray’s presence with that.

Then he could also be the person to spread stuff on social media, but that would no doubt get him targeted by whatever entity is responsible for keeping it secret in the first place. Considering how thorough of a job they were doing, he did not quite feel like risking their anger.

And then, of course, he could stoop to the level of his enemy. That is, summon a Demon and ask them. As little information as he found about Necromancy, Demons were weirdly enough much more widely discussed and written about. And less censored, apparently. Including supposed methods of invoking them. Of course, he had no way of knowing how true those were, but if he infused Mana into the written ritual, he could surely figure out something at least.

Naturally, that was not an option in the slightest. He would never try and borrow power like that.

The only reason he had to summon a Demon was to kill it.

In the end, he couldn’t arrive at a clear answer. All ideas he had were unreasonable or not something he would allow himself to do. Nothing even remotely sensible, nothing where his instincts told him that that was it, no eureka moment.

It vexed him to no end.

He instead just returned home to try and calm his nerves, knowing that he would not get any further without somebody to exchange ideas with and with his mood so strained.

As he lay in bed, however, he just could not get himself to sleep. It was the first time in his life that he had encountered a roadblock like that, and it would not allow him to rest or dismiss it.

It reminded of one day, the day where he met Kuna, and by extension, Kal. Some of the, to-date, most unique people he had met, even among the twelve eccentric friends of his.

The day where he could not sleep for whatever reason, stuck to his window admiring the silent moon and thinking how close it seemed to a silver colour. How brightly it shone, despite not having its own shine.

A day where, completely inexplicably, the instincts he always trusted the most led him to the local cemetery. The cemetery where he wandered around, never shaking off the feeling his heart held. It squeezed tight and sped up. His instincts were trying to tell him about something important.

The place where he found a girl, the same age as him, kneeling in front of a gravestone, talking to the breeze. The girl that then went on to brush against the air with her hand, as if petting a hurt animal. Her voice was gentle, talking of promises of kindness. Carried by the soft wind, they rang true even for Ray who wasn’t the target.

The day where he carried himself towards the girl to ask her what she was doing. The girl who scolded him for scaring the poor soul. The wind that grew cold and shivering. The conversation that was had, where the girl created a conversation for two people that would otherwise never have met.

The conversation shone brightly in the night, the silver-plated moon overlooking it. They laughed, they cried and they found peace in front of that grave stone. In the cemetery, finally, the living and the dead would be closest to each other, brought together by a person that was both.

And he found himself looking up at that very same, silver-plated moon far up in the air, untouchable, yet seemingly close enough to guide him. His heart squeezed tightly as he looked around, the cemetery seemingly stuck in time as if it hadn’t changed ever since that decade ago.

He found his feet touching stone, the very stone where he had met her and her best friend.

But his heart, his instincts weren’t guiding him to this. Almost as if influenced by fate, the moonlight dimmed with the arrival of clouds, the rays peeking through only illuminating a single hill, in front of where he stood.

A hill where he found the hint he had been looking for, the soil looked as if dug up, scattered in various places. Grass was already growing back over those places, but he could tell the shape in which it was dug up.

His senses heightened and the world lit up brightly, in a light-blue hue as small sparkles began floating around in his vision and transparent waves of a darker blue swam across.

And in the middle of it all, the middle of that circle, he could see the deep darkness that was left. As if staring into an abyss, the blackness of it was all-consuming at its depths, but the edges were steadily being attacked by the bright lights that swarmed around the cemetery, lights that he had only rarely seen floating around in other places.

But it was still visible.

It was still traceable.

Just like the trail, the thread that connected it to some unknown place.

All else could now be left for later as he had found what he was looking for. No, what his intuition was guiding him to.

Everything else had no clear solution, except the chase of that Necromancer.

He only had to follow that first step.