Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 144 - Two Birds With One Stone

Samria looked at the eerily silent Foster, and quickly clapped his hands together to cut through that silence, "Anyway, what can I do for you? You said you came to talk to me about something?" he asked with a smile on his face, and Foster slowly nodded.

"Yeah... I've got some questions about necromancy. I told you last time, but I honestly don't know that much about it," he said, but before the man in front of him could reply, Foster held his hand toward the man next to him, "Ah, sorry. This is my friend, Lynol. Lynol, this is Samria, the necromancer I told you about."

"It's a pleasure." Lynol said in his cold, emotionless tone, something that seemed to make Samria a little uncomfortable. For someone that dealt with death all day, he was a far too cheerful person, anyway, "...likewise. But well, how can I help you, exactly?"

"I just kind of wanted to ask what you can even do with necromancy." Foster explained, and the man in front of him became silent for a few moments. If his finger weren't twitching ever so slightly the whole time, Samria's generally pale complexion made it seem as if he had died the moment he heard what he was just told. It took him a few moments to respond, "Could you be more specific?"

"Right, yeah. Sorry." Foster replied quickly, "Alright, so... for the most part, the spells I got from leveling up were always directly death-related, you know? Like, I could make something rot, for example. Or I can steal life from someone and give it to someone else. But now, as I said earlier, I got a spell about disease, so I kinda... got confused? I mean, the spell seems useful and all, but it just seemed a bit different to the other spells I have?" He said, trying to explain it as well he could. Generally, he still had a tough time really grasping magic in general. 

Samria slightly tilted his head, as if he was confused about something, "I don't understand?"

"Oh, sorry..." Foster let out surprised, "I mean, I want to know the range of spells that necromancy involves, sort of?"

Samria sighed, taking a seat on a chair covered in crumpled sheets of paper and clothes that had clearly been there for a while already, "I got that part, I just don't understand how 'disease' is so outlandishly different to rotting and life-force that you can't understand the correlation. One is the cause, one is the consequence, and one makes it possible in the first place."

This time, it was Foster's turn to be confused, "You mean death?"

"What else? We're talking about necromancy here!" Samria let out with scoffed laughter, "It's the same as when you look at other magic. A pyromancer's flames can be used either as an all-devouring weapon, or a soothing tool to keep you warm during your travels. That is because that's the nature of fire itself," he explained, turning his head to look at the flickering candle on one of his desks. Of course, considering the state of this room, the existence of the candle in itself was a considerable fire-hazard. But Samria ignored that, and quickly moved on, "And death is much more versatile than that. Disease and death are directly linked. One is the cause for the other. Obviously, a serious disease may kill you, but the rotting corpses of men or animals will lead to more disease. And of course, only that which is dead can rot, so it becomes part of our domain, as well. And, as life and death cannot possibly exist without the other, we necromancers have, albeit limited, control over life too. Or rather, you could say that we control life by manipulating the death surrounding it. Like controlling the flow of a river by shaping the ground."

Foster listened to the explanation, and thought back onto the river surrounding the tree in the region that he had first arrived at. Thiodrus said that the water turned to acid. Since Foster wasn't affected by it, that was clearly necromancy as well, meaning that acid and poisons were part of necromancy as well. Octer's new martial skill, 'Bone Armor', was based around necromancy as well. While it wasn't magic, that was still true, 'So 'bones' themselves were part of necromancy too, then?', while in thought, Foster looked at the skeleton still standing perfectly still in the corner of the room, as if it was pretending not to be sentient.

"Then what about 'undead'? Stuff like zombies, ghosts, skeletons, that kinda thing. Obviously I get that it belongs to necromancy, but to what extent?" Foster asked, and Samria seemed to take a moment to try and think of an answer, "Well... any, I guess? There's theoretically no limit to what a necromancer can turn into an undead, really. Just practically. Souls are also part of the domain of necromancy. We can either control existing souls, or create a sort of... mock soul. Of course, these 'mock souls' aren't that much like the real thing. They can't pass on to the afterlife, and if they're not connected to a body or actively supported by the creator's mana, they will fall apart immediately. He has one of those, by the way." He explained, pointing at the skeleton, which finally started to move, slightly waving at Foster and Lynol. The latter of the two was slightly startled at the skeleton's movement, taking a step back while moving his hand toward the grip of his sword. Of course, Foster stopped him from actually shattering the skeleton's body into little pieces, "Don't worry about it. He's cool."

"Thanks. You're alright as well." The skeleton quickly replied, patting some dust off of his shoulder as he took a few steps forward, walking over toward one of the nearby shelves, pulling out a small booklet before handing it to Samria, "There are a lot of different types of Undead. We call those like him 'Raised Dead'. Then there are different Ghost types, but those need actual souls. And then there are 'possessed' or 'animated' objects. Armor to guard some underground tomb, pens to write what you dictate, or golems to do brunt-work."

"Golems? I thought golemancy is a discipline of earth magic." Lynol asked surprised, and Samria quickly smiled at the swordsman, "Yes, but those are different types of golems. Geomancers can manipulate masses of earth or rock to do very specific tasks that they bestow on them through their magic. Like... 'carry this heavy stuff down this road'. If you want to change what tasks they can do, or fine-tune how they do it, it takes a lot of work. But golems created through necromancy are capable of a lot more. You can teach them. They remember, and adapt, to an extent at least. Just that they take a lot more effort to create than a geomancer's golems. The more massive the body you want to place a soul into, the more skill and magic you need."

"Then why not just use a skeleton? Why would you even make a golem?" Foster asked with a raised brow, and Samria lightly smiled. He stood up, and grabbed the arm of the skeleton standing next to him as close to its shoulder as possible, lifting it up as far as he could. Samria, despite having a quite small build, was able to lift him up rather easily, "They're literally just bones, they don't weigh that much. That, and the natural connection to death that bones have, make them easy to create, but they're weak. They can't carry much, and unless a lot of extra magic is used, they're not really strong at all. And more importantly, the bones need to come from somewhere. But you can make a golem out of basically any material you want."

Foster looked at the skeleton, watching as he started carrying books from desks to the shelves, practically trying to clean up after Samria. And that was when an idea popped into Foster's mind. He hadn't come here to figure out how to actually cast new spells. He only wanted to learn more about necromancy, since he wasn't able to put the pieces together based only on Thiodrus' books.. But now that he was already here, he found a way to kill two birds with one stone.