Chapter IV.LVII (4.57) - The Necromancer's Revenge

  “What have you done to everyone backstage,” Kizu asked, taking a fighting stance and quickly analyzing the battleground. Krimpit was on the floor, Raygen’s skin wrapped around him like a snug cocoon. The only other person in the vicinity was Akira, who stood behind Kizu. The stage and auditorium were otherwise empty, the audience having fled while Professor Krimpit fought with Necro.

  At the moment, Krimpit was still struggling. He cast spells and pierced through Raygen’s skin with shards of stone, but the undead skin didn’t even flinch from the damage. Kizu needed to free Krimpit before the professor suffocated. The fastest way to free him was to put down Necro. Then extinguish whatever sliver of soul remained in the corpse.

  “They’re preoccupied with zombies,” Necro said. “Despite the nonsense your professor ignorantly was spouting, I planned this attack thoroughly. I studied every club member’s weakness and planned accordingly. A perk of wearing your classmate’s skin.”

  “Why? Just to get to me and Akira?” Kizu was buying precious seconds before Necro attacked. The necromancer liked hearing his own voice and was easy to prod. He always seemed to believe time was on his side. Probably a result of spending all his time with undead. Meanwhile, Kizu subtly began casting.

  “Emperor Sasaki,” Necro snarled. “That trash emperor promised to attend.”

  Akira chuckled from beside Kizu. “Sasaki? You think you could have assassinated him? I doubt that.”

  “I didn’t come here alone,” Necro snapped at the prince. “I have friends. Powerful friends. With enough firepower to end kingdoms.”

  Kizu’s eyes widened at the hint. He needed to act quickly. Kizu raised his hands and released his magic. The first spells to drop were the illusion concealing his attack and the divination spell overlaying it to keep it from detection. Then the spatial stretch snapped.

  Necro jolted forward across the stage, pulled by the sudden spatial rift and closing the distance rapidly.

  Kizu flicked his wrist, his ring creating a gorgeous blade of ice for Necro’s face to acquaint itself with.

  Necro’s undead body contorted and twisted midair, the blade slicing through his shoulder rather than his head. Kizu released the blade on impact and let Necro soar beyond him and crash into the stage’s back curtain. Not quite the hard impact Kizu had hoped for, but at least Necro now had a sword piercing through his upper torso.

  With Necro out of the way, Kizu now dashed over to Krimpit’s limp body. An eyeball on Raygen’s slab of flesh rolled in its socket before settling on Kizu.

  A new sword in hand, Kizu scanned the skin, seeking out a place to start slicing through without hurting Professor Krimpit underneath.

  A gust of wind blasted into Kizu and sent him flying off to the side. Midair, he watched in disbelief as a cage made of sharpened bones snapped out of Raygen’s body, barely missing Kizu. He tumbled into the seats of the auditorium.

  Kizu scrambled back to his feet and saw Akira staring Necro down, his iconic sardonic grin in place. He sliced at Necro with blades of air.

  Necro in return responded by extending his internal skeleton and grafting bone armor to his skin that grew into a cocoon around him. The air still battered and nicked at the hard armor, but the necromancer remained safely contained within. He was now stationary, but well protected. The necromancer raged, insulting the prince all while firing out blasts of green energy and spikes of bones. But Akira’s demeanor never so much as shifted. It looked like he considered this all some sort of fun game. The prince truly was as mad as his uncle. But, for once, Kizu didn’t mind.

  Kizu jumped back to the stage, once again standing beside Krimpit who remained wrapped up in Raygen's skin. He considered jumping with the undead to force it off of Krimpit. But he didn’t know exactly how thick the skin was and that risked removing a layer of Krimpit’s flesh with it.

  Jumping also might not even work. Necro’s body was covered in tattoos, some of which obviously acted as wards against spatial jumping spells from external forces. Except…this was Raygen’s body, not Necro’s.

  How did Necro control the undead without a supply of blood to rely on? Kizu’s mind quickly went back to his conversation with Aoi in her lab. She had mentioned both fusing undead and placing one in command as means of control. If Necro fused with Raygen’s skin it meant the same wards likely applied to her flesh. That would mean her soul bleeding into his own thoughts. And Kizu doubted the necromancer would willingly subject himself to an altered state of mind. And if they remained separate with him acting as her commander….

  Kizu pulled out a freezing potion from his ring and hurled it at the fleshy undead Raygen had become. It smashed into the skin and shattered, encasing the undead in a growing spread of hard ice. The undead flopped around, rolling with Krimpit inside, but it was too late to escape its fate. In seconds, it was sealed within a block of ice.

  Next Kizu stepped forward to stand over the undead and stretched space once again. Longer and further than ever before. He didn’t bother concealing it this time, it required every shred of his focus to pull this off.

  Necro took note of Kizu preparing a spell and reached a hand into his own mouth and withdrew a decrepit arm like a sword swallower unsheathing a blade from his gullet. The arm twitched in his grip and Necro hurled it at Kizu.

  Kizu was about to attempt to construct a barrier of force while juggling his current spell, but a current of air scooped the arm up and sent it twirling into the air above. Akira was actually helping Kizu to not die. No time to process the fact. Kizu finally gathered enough taunt space in his arms and he flipped his arms around to point down at the frozen undead.

  “Shove the debris out of the way!” Kizu shouted at Akria, hoping desperately he wasn’t about to accidentally kill his professor.

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  Then he released the space and it snapped. The block of ice peeled off the stage, taking wooden boards with it as it flew skyward. Meanwhile the ceiling collapsed downwards. Somehow, Akira actually managed to knock the ceiling debris off course with wind. The collapsing roof grazed the ice-cased undead and professor, but didn’t shatter the ice like Kizu had feared. It soared through the gap in the ceiling and disappeared from sight.

  “What are you—” Then Necro’s eyes widened. “You didn’t just…I can’t feel it!”

  Kizu grinned. His gamble had paid off. Aoi had mentioned that unless the undead fused with the others in its command, it risked losing control of them. And since as far as Kizu could tell, Necro had remained extremely close to Raygen’s corpse these last two months, it meant she never left his vicinity. Until now.

  “You still have to catch them.” Necro sneered. “They’ll be nothing more than smears on the stage otherwise.”

  Kizu was already working on a solution. He crafted barrier after barrier, layering them the space beneath the hole in the ceiling. They were thin, easily shattered. But he rapidly crafted nearly a hundred.

  Necro attempted to approach. A wall of wind smacked him back.

  “You necromancers aren’t really much of a threat on your own,” Akira noted. “You rely too much on minions.”

  Necro snarled. Then he outstretched his body, reaching his hands out to form a T with his body. And then fell to pieces.

  First his fingers disjointed and squirmed like fat worms as they dispersed. Then his hand, only nubs remaining of his fingers, began skittering forward. Then his arms. The bones inside his flesh liquidized and the arms slithered like snakes.

  Piece by piece, Necro completely disassembled himself in seconds. Until only the head remained, a single eye in its socket.

  A thumb burrowed into the stage boards and leg launched itself at Kizu. A scattering of teeth rapidly shot at him from Necro’s gaping mouth.

  With his magical concentration completely taken by the layers of barriers, Kizu resorted to non-spell related means of stopping his attacker.

  He slammed a potion vial into the stage between himself and Necro. A massive boulder erupted, dividing them. It unfortunately blocked Kizu’s view of his enemy, but he deemed it worth it to put something between them.

  Akira could be heard, muttering an incantation. It sent a shiver of fear through Kizu, but he rationally recognized that Akira was hexing the pieces of Necro, not backstabbing Kizu. For the moment, they were united allies.

  Kizu stared up through the hole and concentrated. It had been nearly half a minute since he launched Krimpit and Raygen’s skin skyward. They’d be returning any second now.

  The other option he could have taken earlier was jumping himself, Raygen, Krimpit, and Akira all to the academy’s beacon. But Krimpit very likely also had spatial magic protections so it would mean leaving him behind. And Kizu also needed a better link to return to the auditorium. He couldn’t justify leaving Ione and the others to whatever nefarious plot Necro had launched backstage. While this gambled lives, it also left the option open to save more lives of his friends.

  Professor Krimpit fell from the sky.

  The moment Kizu spotted the professor, a searing cold pain erupted from his human leg. He fell to a knee and glanced down and spotted a gray finger burrowing through the sole of his foot. It had torn through the stage’s floor to get to him. Black blood and grit coated the underside of the fingernail. Kizu lit that foot aflame with an elemental spell to kill the worming finger.

  Then his eyes widened. He instantly snuffed out the fire spell and tried to revert his attention back to his layers of barriers.

  SMASH!

  The first barrier shattered on Krimpit’s impact. Followed by the next. Shards of ice sprayed out with each consecutive barrier broken.

  Another finger tore through the flesh of his calf. And another. The pain made Kizu’s eyes blur, but he kept his concentration focused as Krimpit smashed through each of the barriers.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Kizu threw up his hands and created one final barrier, this one far thicker. He threw a hand down and shifted its position. It tilted to a slope leading down to the floor.

  When the battered ice, undead skin monstrosity, and Krimpit slammed into this barrier, it didn’t break, rather it changed their trajectory, taking the brunt of the fall as they rolled. The last bit of ice broke off when they thumped into the stage’s back curtain.

  Rather than wrapping itself around Professor Krimpit’s body, the skin hung off him loosely. It still moved, skin undulating. So not dead…or redead. But not fighting any longer. Of course that would all change if Necro managed to recorrupt the undead and place it under his command.

  Kizu jumped to Krimpit’s side. The professor was in bad condition, one of his arms contorted and out of its socket and half of his face red from iceburn and bruising. And yet, his chest still rose, taking in wheezing breaths. Alive.

  Grabbing him, Kizu jumped over to the exit, attempting to get the professor out of harm’s way. Sadly, the professor did, in fact, have some security measure in place to keep him from being transported.

  Kizu glanced out the double doors that led into a hallway. Despite the entire fight lasting barely a couple minutes, the hallway looked long abandoned. The audience had fled after Krimpit’s barrier shielded them from Necro’s attack. Not a single mage stayed to fight alongside them. Kizu frowned, suddenly remembering Taroe and Wakino exiting at the start of his scene. Two of the most powerful mages in the academy, drawn out of the audience by something. Another threat? Kizu needed information.

  He jumped back to the stage to stand in front of Krimpit’s limp body. Kizu wasn’t about to leave Necro in existence. Not when his friends backstage remained silent.

  “What else is attacking?” Kizu demanded.

  The head of the necromancer, now missing teeth and skin sullen onto its scalp like held by old glue, opened its mouth.

  “Did you think I did nothing these last few months?” Necro asked, his voice now hoarse.

  Even while he spoke, Kizu had to blast away bits of the necromancer’s intestines as they dribbled from the ruined ceiling. Somehow, Necro had spread his body’s pieces throughout the entirety of the stage. After frying the bits to a crisp, Kizu enhanced his strength to quickly heave Krimpit’s unconscious body near Akira and then boxed the three of them in with spatial barriers. This would give them a moment of respite.

  “I assumed you’d be struggling to survive after we poured a sea’s worth of boiling water on your head,” Kizu said to Necro. Information was important. Retrieve as much as possible while thinking up a plan to eliminate the necromancer.

  “Ha!” Necro barked a laugh. “Never. I’ll kill you for ruining my plans. Make no mistake, Kaga Kizu. And I’ll rain fire down on your precious little academy.”

  “Rain…fire.…” Kizu processed the wording.

  “Yes. Don’t you know? Maybe you didn’t pay enough attention in that professor’s classes, but this island has a history. One of strategic importance."

  “You’re going to invade Hon,” Kizu realized. Everything clicked into place in his mind. “You failed with your artificial Calamity.”

  “So I imported one,” Necro’s skull snarled. “Shinzou Island will be the first to fall in the conquest of Dragons.”

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