Chapter 6: The Tower

It's been 5 years, I'm 11 now and Delores still hasn't shown up. Of course, I never liked the brat but I'm scared now that she's gone that if I slip up once with my father then I'd be the next to disappear. I've gotten pretty good at casting spells and raising the dead, more proficient at raising the dead though but my father didn't seem disappointed for some reason. I've learned how to raise Skeleton minions, Skeleton Warriors with reinforced bones, Skeleton Mages who can cast magic, Skeleton Golems, and even make things out of bones. Whenever I go out now I summon my bone palanquin and 4 skeletal minions to carry me wherever I need to go if it's too far and I even got praise from my father for creating such a thing! But something is off whenever he's around me, it's this feeling of being prey in front of a predator. I don't know what happened to Delores and I don't want to find out.

When I turned 11 I got to see the inside of the black magic tower for the first time; even the first floor was a tall room and walls were built out of black marble with white pillars in between them, that theme followed with the front desk, the teleporters, even the robes that people were wearing. Speaking of teleporters, after my and my father checked in we took one up to the top floor where advanced classes were taught. Each floor is a different place using space magic to make them much larger on the inside so they can hold more people inside of them. I follow my father to his office and he gives me a pendant before saying "This pendant lets you travel between all floors, go down to the practice floor, its floor -3, practice there and if I go down to find your not there then Ill punish you, same thing if I find you in my laboratory".

I simply nodded and head back to the teleporter and went to floor -3, once I arrived I was greeted with undead fighting each other and the gross smell of death, it was similar to what I imagine a dojo to look like but a lot bigger with people placing bets on whos undead will win. I step off the teleporter and look around, I see Rippers, Vampires, and Spirits, no skeletons though which wasn't surprising, pure necromancers who dealt with bones were rare. That's why the garden of flesh and spirit zones was pillaged and the bone pile was untouched, each of these is what the necromancers call places filled with flesh, spirits, and bones respectively. I head over to a bone pile and create 5 undead which was the max I could handle without it hurting even with my extensive training, my father also forbade me to show my commander technique to others for some reason.

Before I went to a mat to practice a simulated battle somebody stopped me. He was large and looked very stupid as I clearly looked like somebody who doesn't want to be bothered, a trait I inherited from my father actually buts that's beside the point. What's this oaf trying to say? I immediately tuned him out the moment he stood in front of me so I decided to tune him in.

"YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?! HUH?! ILL SHOW YOU TO IGNORE ME!" he yelled and I simply zone him out again before I saw him taking off his glove "you've got to be kidding me" I sigh as he threw it down before saying "a duel to the death, choose your weapon" I sigh and point to one of my undead and he simply laughs, "you think your skeleton is better than me? Bring it on!" I simply roll my eyes and we head to a mat, I knew he was dumb. He's a necromancer too and he's not going to use undead in his stead?

I start wondering if he's from a knight family before I tune him out and my five skeletons gang up on him, he starts shouting about unfairness but I ignore it. I got a new undead with strong bones though. After I walk to a new not bloodstained mat and start the simulation, a mana crystal would produce physical beings of magic and allow us to train strategy using our undead. I set it to medium difficulty and start sparring, it's basically like chess with an AI.

I sit there instructing my skeletons on how to do things, being hard on the armored skeleton because the guy he was from was an asshole. I keep this going until I get bored and un-summon my skeletons, letting them go back to the bone pile before heading to the library floor. I use the teleporter and appear there, I grab a guide on how to navigate and start navigating the maze that was the Black Tower Library. I eventually find what Im looking for, liches. Pure necromancers can common fodder like bone golems and an army of undead but they can also summon generals like a Lich or Death Knight, they could even attain these forms themselves if it wasn't illegal to become undead.

A Lich could summon an army of undead of their very own which is why they are strictly managed by the kingdom and can even cast ice magic, my father has 3 at the very most. Death Knights can summon a platoon of undead but they are elite soldiers called 'Death Soldiers', they are also managed by the kingdom but not as much which is why my father has 5. I looked through the library and found a book on how to build my own lich and Death Knight. As I read I realize rather quickly that this magic was way too advanced for me just yet so I copy it all down in my flesh grimoire instead for later use. The ink I just used was absorbed by the book meaning that I was not ready to create these creatures but would be revealed at a later date, a neat enchantment my father placed on the book in case I tried making a spell past my ability.

Since I can't make a lich or a Death Knight I move on to Skeletal mages which was the earlier form of the lich. The skeletal mage required a mana crystal attuned to a certain element, they could use any magic of that element be it one of the big 4, death, life, or even time magic. There was the problem with the rarity of certain elements and not to mention half of them are illegal and per usual strictly managed so I just decided to go with Ice Magic.

And sure enough, I was in the public lab, not my father's lab, working on creating a skeleton mage with the instructions from the book. I found to my surprise that I was rather fond of this kind of work and I look forward to building more bone constructs in the future. There was this skeleton in the corner no bigger than me in a glass case, its eyes glowed showing that it had a soul in it… I cant help but feel like it was staring at me, its actually the first skeleton I've rather disliked.

'must be a criminal' I thought.