Reborn with a Necromancer System - Chapter 81

Chapter 81: Flight and Mock Battle

Kai stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at Finn’s pale, lifeless form as it stood on the forest floor.

“Alright, Finn,” Kai muttered. “You wanted to fly, right? I don’t have a skyship, but let’s make that dream a little more real.”

He knelt beside the undead and pressed his palm flat against Finn’s ribcage. A faint shimmer of blue-black mana surged from his fingers and spread like frost across bone and sinew. The surface of the corpse vibrated slightly as Kai’s magic settled.

“I can’t believe I’d been creating such rudimentary sigils before this. I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself.”

Pulling out a piece of treated parchment and a thin piece of refined bone-chalk, he attached the parchment to Finn’s ribcage. Kai began to sketch the Sigil of Levitation into the air.

Each stroke glowed for a moment before fading, imprinting the arcane lines onto the air itself. The sigil itself was complex and took great precision to get it perfect, but Kai practiced these sigils for days with ink without projecting any of his mana onto the sigils.

This one had a five-point rotational array bound within a shifting spiral, and required tight modulation of wind and kinetic magics.

The moment the final line was completed, the sigil flared to life, embedding into the parchment on Finn’s chest with a sound like a soft chime. The parchment turned to dust, and the sigil then appeared on his ribcage. The corpse jerked slightly, rising higher, until it hovered a full meter above the ground, weightless and perfectly balanced.

‘Beautiful. I should try and scrap the other sigils or redraw them. I wonder how that works.’

Kai took a step back, observing.

If Finn could smile, he probably would at this point.

Finn’s limbs moved with far greater fluidity now, adapting to the altered center of gravity. He gave a few slow, graceful loops in the air, as if testing the sensation, the motions eerily elegant for a once-human corpse.

“Flight, not floatation,” Kai noted. “No resistance to air, no drag. Even in full armour, he’ll be faster than most mages on foot.”

With the levitation sigil complete, Kai moved on to the second: Shared Senses.

He pulled out a small crystal vial of preserved soul ichor. He’d practiced making this between classes after feeling the tug of Orlin’s memories one night.

By condensing life essence before it transforms into mana, a drop of soul ichor would drop from Kai’s index finger every hour or so. If this worked, he’d be able to link his senses with his undead.

‘This would help so much with espionage, battle tactics, and surveillance.’

It was the substance needed to form a bond that wouldn’t interfere with his necromantic control. Summoners could use their words, a magical contract, or even their blood, but necromacers weren’t creating a link to the living.

Once Finn descended back to the ground, Kai drew a thin circle around Finn’s skull using the ichor, and with the same bone-chalk, began drawing the sensory sigil over the top of the levitation array. This one was more delicate, filled with glyphs representing sight, sound, spatial awareness, and pain suppression, he had to avoid overwhelming his own mind with undead stimuli.

And connecting to the pain and anguish of an undead creature sounded like torture.

“This will either be amazing or… make me throw up, I guess,” Kai muttered, fingers moving with meticulous care.

The sigil linked in four arcs: one on Finn’s decayed stomach, one behind his skull, one at Kai’s temple, and one in the air between them to join them. Each connected point glowed a pale green, then faded into nothingness. A sudden rush of nausea hit Kai as the connection snapped into place, then quickly cleared, as his own sigils filtered and prioritised data.

Kai blinked.

He was seeing the clearing twice, once from his own eyes, and again from Finn’s elevated perspective. The sense of depth was jarring at first, but exhilarating.

Kai heard a soft rustle. Instantly, he turned, or rather, Finn turned, eyes fixating on a squirrel dashing along a distant branch.

‘Incredible,’ Kai thought, reaching up to rub the corner of his eye. He saw the motion from Finn’s angle too. Every movement of Finn’s new floating form was fluid, responsive, and graceful in the air.

He gave a brief command through thought.

‘Rise.’

Finn ascended quickly, spiraling upward between the branches with perfect control. The shared senses showed a breathtaking view of the forest canopy, sunlight streaming like divine fire through the leaves.

Kai dismissed the connection momentarily, cutting the visual stream and catching his breath. He chuckled, wiping sweat from his brow.

“You’re going to be useful,” he muttered. “And maybe one day, I’ll give you a voice to tell me what flying feels like.”

Finn descended, landing softly beside him with a silent nod.

Kai touched his temple, reinforcing the sigil’s limiter. Sight, sound, pain. Toggleable. Adjustable. Expandable.

“Alright,” he said, standing. “Let’s go put that new ability to work. I have a few aerial formations in mind.”

The forest remained silent, but now, the wind carried a faint hum of necromantic power, and the occasional gleam of light as a corpse took to the skies.

—

Once Kai finished with testing Finn’s capabilities, he looked at his summoned undead.

He separated the undead into two teams, with Rhea commanding both sides.

Joran, Ralts, Voltis, Zephyr, and the two liches were on one team.

Merri, Joe, Kael, and Finn were on the other.

“Begin,” Kai commanded.

The battle erupted in an instant.

Joran rushed forward, aiming a crushing punch at Joe, who deflected the blow with his sword before countering with a vicious slash. Kael darted between the two, striking at Joran’s legs before vanishing in a flash of lightning.

Merri took advantage of the chaos, slipping into the darkness before emerging behind Ralts. The lich twisted midair, raising a spectral hand, but Merri struck first. A shadow-dagger plunged into the swirling void of Ralts’ ribcage, sending her careening back.

Rhea issued silent orders for defensive formations, forcing her team to defend. The two liches started using barriers more, and Joran took it upon himself to block and deflect oncoming attacks.

Ralts raised a hand, and the ground beneath Joe and Joran turned into a twisting mass of arcane chains, slowing their movements. The twin wolves, Voltis and Zephyr, leaped into action, encircling their enemies with crackling arcs of wind and lightning, forcing them to move into predesignated kill zones.

Kael darted in again, his attacks like flashes of lightning, whittling down his opponents through relentless speed.

Kai watched, analyzing their movements, issuing minor corrections.

“Joran, don’t overcommit to one target.”

He listened and immediately shifted gears, swapping between opponents to disable the magics being cast. Kai winced as he landed his first attack on Ralts’ side, knocking her flying through the battlefield. As he’d hoped, Joran’s anti-magic didn’t disable or destroy his necromancy.

“Kael, time your strikes with Ralts’ debuffs.”

“Voltis and Zephyr, corral, don’t strike head-on.”

His commands were followed instantly, the battle shifting in response.

Joe, ever the wildcard, broke through Ralts’ chains with brute force and charged toward her, only for Joran to put himself between them, blocking the attack before striking with pinpoint precision. He staggered, but remained standing, fueled by his sheer determination.

The battle raged on for several more minutes before Kai finally raised a hand, signaling its end. His undead immediately halted, returning to their idle states.

He took a deep breath, surveying the battlefield. Minimal damage, all repairable with a minor expenditure of life essence.

But one thought lingered in his mind.

‘If my companions are this strong, do I even need to do anything?’

The idea was dangerous, a temptation toward complacency. He crushed it immediately. Divine magic was still his greatest threat, capable of wiping out his forces with ease. He needed countermeasures.

Turning away from his undead, he began working on his next experiment: a divine-resistant barrier.

He mixed his barrier magic with shadow magic at different percentages until he created something that even Joran couldn’t dispel in one hit.

He had no way to test it against divine magic yet, but he would be ready.

The academy was full of powerful enemies. And Kai had no intention of being caught unprepared. Especially since the gods themselves were his enemy.

‘Why couldn’t it just be an army, or a king, or even some weird mage? It had to be the beings that govern the natural laws of the world?’

Kai sighed.

He drew his undead back into his shadow space and turned back towards the academy.

He found himself wondering about how Willam’s study free day went and wished he could talk to him about necromancy.

“I’m sure he’d love it. At least the application of it and the structure of the magic itself.”

Kai smiled to himself. In his old world, he never really found anyone he could call a friend. Vepice may have been, but they were always so quiet that Kai never knew what they were thinking.