The following morning, I led my first group of students to a rather unassuming stretch of land an hour further north of the encampment. Brown, dried-out grass decorated the rolling landscape which was only broken up by a sparse few copses of trees. The ground hadn’t defrosted yet, as the patches of frost in the shade could attest to. Just an ordinary stretch of late winter steppe.

  “So, why are we dragged out here to the middle of nowhere?” Ayyur, a human enby, complained, presumably because of the chilly, early spring weather of the steppe and the hike over here. Fluminix, meanwhile, found herself a boulder to lie down on and enjoy herself a nap in the warmth of the sun.

  “Because this,” I said with a grin, before I spread my arms wide and swirled around to indicate at the surroundings, “is what an ancient battlefield looks like.”

  All hundred and eight students shared confused and disbelieving looks, before Dragana, a human girl, said what was on all of their minds. “What do you mean? It just looks like any ordinary steppe to me.”

  I chuckled softly. “Well, you aren’t wrong. However, right here,” I tapped my foot on the muddy ground for emphasis, “underneath these rolling hills lie the remains of thousands of soldiers. From one of the steppe nations’ attempt to conquer Ponticum, if I’m not mistaken.”

  I did a quick headcount, to make sure we didn’t lose anyone along the way, before I clapped my hands together. “Alright, before we start digging out long forgotten warriors, I’d first like to go over some core terminology for undead, and characteristics of them.

  “Undead can be divided into two categories,” I explained as I formed a large vertical line behind me with a projection spell. “The first is the unintelligent undead, or the spirit-based undead. The other is the intelligent undead, or the soul-based undead.”

  The words wrote themselves into the air on both sides of the line, before I formed a horizontal line beneath them and two vertical lines in the middle of the horizontal line on both sides of the original vertical line. “Each category contains two types of undead. The first of the unintelligent undead is a necromancer’s bread and butter: the humble skeleton.

  “While skeletons are the staple of necromancers, they need time to prepare. As I told those in my necromancy class, the methods for this vary and the quality of the skeletons is dependent on the necromancer’s preparation skills. Anyway, skeletons are completely fleshless constructs inhabited by a spirit, this spirit will naturally use its own magic to reinforce the bones. Still, while they may be highly mobile, agile and have the general dexterity of a flesh and blood humanoid, they are weak against any and all physical attacks, including those formed with magic, especially if using the light element.

  “As an added bonus, the bones aren’t endlessly reusable, and they will eventually become unable to be reanimated,” I concluded the first part of the explanation, to the rapt attention of not just my students but also the adventurers that accompanied us out here.

  “The second type of unintelligent undead goes by many names, depending on one’s cultural influences,” I said, before frowning in concentration. “Let’s see… We have zombie, ghoul, draugr, jiāngshī, fext, mummy, orek, ro-lang, upiór, vetala, vrykolakas, wendigo, asweng and nachzehrer, and several others that I haven’t mentioned yet.

  “They all boil down to the same thing, though: an unintelligent undead that still has any flesh left attached to its bones. While the skeleton is the bread and butter of a necromancer, these are actually the most common type of undead. Why? Well, they don’t need any preparation and are thus easy to reanimate. Unfortunately, spirits don’t seem to handle flesh nearly as well as bones, thus leaving them sluggish and clumsy depending on how much flesh is still attached. In exchange, they gain more resilience for the amount of flesh they still have. Though, it does leave them vulnerable to fire in addition to light elemental magic.”

  I paused in my explanation so that everyone had a moment to take everything in and to not completely overwhelm them. Whilst I was explaining, I made sure to add neat little bullet points beneath each type with summarised notes on them. Once I was certain everyone was ready for me to continue, I did so.

  “Now then,” I started. “The two types of intelligent undead are the revenant and the lich, like yours truly. What sets the intelligent undead apart from the unintelligent undead is that the intelligent undead retain their consciousness and soul from before they became undead. The major difference between a revenant and a lich is that the former is completely incapable of magic, whereas the latter tends to be a mage of some kind. Most often a necromancer, again, like yours truly.

  “Like all undead, revenants and liches are vulnerable to light elemental magic. However, unlike zombies, the retention of their flesh doesn’t give them a greater vulnerability to fire than any other humanoid might have. And the liches, depending on their skills prior to becoming a lich, may gain divine mastery over spells they are most proficient in.”

  I saw some hands being raised, so I continued to pre-empt some of the questions. “And, no, whether or not they still have any flesh does not make them something different. Revenants are revenants because they can’t use magic, whereas any and all intelligent undead that are capable of using magic is a lich.”

  As expected, some of the hands lowered.

  “You said that all undead are vulnerable to light elemental magic, right?” Nabatu said, after I gave the human boy his turn. “Then, how come you’re capable of casting light elemental magic, like the projection right behind you?”

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  “I wonder,” I said with a teasing grin, before I almost immediately turned serious again. “But in all seriousness, it’s because I’ve adapted all of my light elemental spells to account for my vulnerability. Also, I tend to keep a passive ward active to protect me against, among others, light elemental spells. Not unlike the ward against lightning spells stitched into almost all clothes.”

  Lightning was, after all, near instantaneous, thus something people widely saw a dire need to protect themselves against. If I wasn’t mistaken, the ward was actually the most developed spell and enchantment out there, even more than the wards against the ‘dark arts’.

  I found it rather curious that a ward against a ‘non-evil’ spell was actually more studied than wards against ‘evil’ spells. The irony.

  “Surely, you can’t keep that up all the time, right?” Hootavio, an owlkin boy, asked. “I mean, it’s not like liches have an impenetrable defence.”

  I simply chuckled and sidestepped it as best I could. “Well, they aren’t me, now, are they?”

  “Do you regret it?” Ezra asked, after I pointed at the goatkin boy. “Becoming a lich, I mean.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, before I felt like answering. It wasn’t exactly an easy question to answer, after all.

  “No,” I simply settled on. “Though, it’s not as if I don’t regret some of my actions after I became a lich.

  “Why are skeletons favoured so much by necromancers, if they are so weak against physical attacks?” Amira, a human girl, asked, bringing us, thankfully, back on topic.

  “There isn’t really one general rule to that,” I started off slowly and thoughtfully, before continuing in my normal, steady tone. “One of the primary reasons, I would say, is pride. Pure and simple. Skeletons are the pinnacle of a necromancer’s skill, knowledge and dedication, and we, admittedly, tend to be people that are desperate to be acknowledged.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, it just makes us strive for the excellence set by the best in the field. Which, if it weren’t obvious by now, is me.

  “Well, me and the Vesperan Empire, that is. Skeletons were more of an ‘abundance of corpses and having a specific sector dedicated to preparing them’, but that’s a whole other matter.

  “The other reasons are more practical. Despite taking more prep time, they’re as fast as, if not faster than, living humanoids. This negates their innate vulnerability. Also, they’re slowed much less than either zombies or living humanoids when wearing armour, especially if said armour is enchanted to the fullest. So, they actually have plenty of boons.

  “Though, I must say, that armoured zombies make for some excellent juggernauts. Slow, but some seriously tough nuts to crack.”

  It was… probably for the best that there weren’t any aspiring necromancers in this group, as I didn’t actually voice a positive opinion on them… Oh well.

  “Now, if there aren’t any more questions on the subject of the various undead?” I asked, as I looked around to see if there weren’t any big question marks on the students’ faces. “Then I suggest that we move on to the reason why I actually brought all of you out here today.

  “As we’re standing on top of an ancient battlefield, this should be a necromancer’s playground, right?” I asked rhetorically, before continuing upon getting agreeing nods. “Then, does anyone have an idea for how a necromancer might go about reanimating them?”

  “Uh, you just cast the reanimation spell?” Mateo, a human boy, answered with astonishment.

  “Alright, let’s give that a go,” I said with a nod, before I formed the spell formation for the spell on the ground and fed my mana into it so the students could actually see that I had activated it.

  Absolutely nothing happened. No reanimated remains suddenly crawled out of the ground.

  “So, it would seem that we overlooked something,” I probed.

  “Well, you said they are buried, right?” Alexi, a human enby, asked, pausing only to wait for my affirmation. “That means the remains first need to be located.”

  “Indeed,” I said whilst nodding, but being interrupted before I could continue.

  “Yes, but even if you were to locate the remains, how do you know which parts belong to a single corpse?” Agnès, a female human, challenged. “It’s not they conveniently remain intact and with all the parts close to each other.”

  I clapped my hands to interrupt what would have surely become an excellent discussion. “Well, lucky for you, I happen to know the solution to both problems. As much as I would love to discuss the finer points of practical spell crafting, we can’t just stand around here all day.

  “So...” I started, before I formed a monster of a spell formation in the air behind me with my usual projection spell. While the spell was necromantic at its core, as the central rune was darkness elemental and it held all the usual components for a reanimation spell, it also held four separate spell formations inside of it.

  Firstly, there was an earth elemental evocation spell to cause a tremor in the ground. Not a very strong one, so no-one would even notice it.

  Secondly, there was an earth elemental divination spell to pick up on any reflections created by the tremor spell. This one was carefully calibrated to only pick up the reflections caused by bones and other indicators of buried remains.

  Thirdly, there was another divination spell. Just like the previous one, it was earth elemental in nature. Only, this one tried to match the reflections of the bones to others, to try and form a complete set of remains, and ‘tag’ them.

  Lastly, an earth elemental transmutation spell that would lift the tagged remains out of the ground.

  “This is the modernised version of the spell I invented to reanimate remains that are buried, back when I was still but a living, breathing human,” I continued, as I point at the spell displayed behind me. “No matter the depth they’re buried at.

  “Naturally, this isn’t something your average necromancer can pull off, so the reality is that ancient battlefields are completely unusable for most necromancers. Not to mention the utter waste of mana this spell is for anyone wanting to quickly reanimate themselves an undead army.

  “Not that I’ll actually be using this spell today,” I said as I dismissed the projection again. “I merely showed it, so you’d understand that mastery of necromancy requires more than knowing how to reanimate corpses. It is why we, as your teachers, always keep encouraging to expand your knowledge and not let your preconceptions cloud your judgement.

  “Now then, I want all of you to form groups of four and we can get started on the main event. You will all get the chance to defeat some undead.”

  With a theatrical snap of my fingers, twenty-seven spell formations formed across the hollow, and moments later, an equal number of human-like zombies with only a few patches of half-decayed, mummified flesh rose from them.

  “Each group will face a single undead. Don’t worry about destroying them, there are plenty more of them buried here,” I said, before I tagged on one more thing as it were a mere afterthought. “Oh, and make sure to pace yourselves, as we’ll be here all day.”

  With that, they started to group up and approached the undead, most of them hesitantly so. Not that the undead would attack them without my will to do so. Nor would they be attacking them to kill, but merely to restrict them from being able to fight.

  I wasn’t that cruel.