Necromancers, also referred to as Necromancer Mages, Thralls, Spiritualists… Those who bear this title are masters of the art of death. They are able to summon the souls of the deceased and cause them to return to their decayed bodies, transforming them into Undead to be commanded and enslaved by the Necromancer.
Necromancers who study death can be either good or evil, but even the good ones can hardly be called righteous, for any Necromancer associated with death is ultimately an existence that cannot be accepted by conventional morality and ethics.
As for the evil ones, they enslave the dead, desecrate corpses, toy with souls, and control death at will, commanding armies of the Undead to destroy cities and obliterate nations, all for their own desires… Such Necromancers are often the antagonists in fantastical tales, always harboring unspeakable evil purposes.
But regardless of whether they are good or evil, one fact is universally recognized: Necromancers are grandmasters of death. They understand every detail of the human body better than the finest doctors and anatomists, knowledgeable about various diseases and toxins… The most skilled of Necromancers even transcend life and death, becoming Immortal Liches with endless time to delve into magic and seek the truth.
Necromancer…
"After all that, just tell me how in 21st century Tokyo I am supposed to become a Lich?" On the streets of Tokyo, a young man who looked no older than a recent university graduate was sitting on a bench in the park, holding an ancient-looking thick tome with a pitch-black cover and silver metallic decorations. With an impatient glance at the book in his hands, he spoke.
As the young man posed his question, the dark tome in his hand opened on its own. Pages that seemed to be made of parchment flitted rapidly, and soon stopped on one page that held mysterious information written in text incomprehensible to the average person. If an ordinary person were to glimpse the words on the page, they would be captivated by the magically potent mysterious script, but, unable to comprehend the knowledge recorded therein, an ordinary person would become mentally unhinged and unable to gain anything from it.
However, the man was clearly not among the ordinary. Embracing the tome, he naturally could understand the content recorded in these mysterious characters. Furthermore, the book itself was explaining its contents to him.
"To become a Lich, you need a plot of Heavy Spirit Land and to construct a Spirit Gathering Tower to amass sufficient Negative Energy, and you need to forge a Life Coffin Box with Netherworld Ghost Iron, Necromantic Dragon Marrow, Spirit Gathering Crystals… Then imbue a portion of your Soul and Life Force into it, and with the Negative Energy…" A voice only the young man could hear was explaining the content recorded in the text, and as the voice elucidated, the script on the page quickly transformed into new images to demonstrate the creation process of the Life Coffin Box.
The man, however, didn't seem to care at all. With a flick, he turned the page over and asked impatiently, "Never mind that all these materials for forging a Life Coffin Box can't be found on Earth, just finding a plot of Heavy Spirit Land that can gather enough Negative Energy is already a problem. It's the 21st century, where am I supposed to find a place where hundreds of thousands have died and the resentful energy still lingers? We are in Shinjuku, not Empty Seat Town!"
"You can construct a Heavy Spirit Land through sacrifices. As long as you have sacrifices of sufficient quality or quantity, you can bury their bones underground, and with their souls and the power of the sacrifice, contaminate the ley lines to construct a plot of Heavy Spirit Land. Although it cannot compare in quality to naturally formed Heavy Spirit Land, it will provide enough Negative Energy for the Lich transformation ritual."
The black tome was not silenced by the man's impatience, and, indeed, as a tome, it did not even know how to be silent. Instead, it quickly flipped its pages once more, providing him with the methods to construct a Heavy Spirit Land.
Looking at the construction rituals for the Heavy Spirit Land depicted on the pages of the black tome, reminiscent of mass graves, the man felt as if a huge "well" character was emerging on his forehead. Suppressing the desire to roar, he gritted his teeth and forced the words through his clenched jaws, "Then tell me, how many offerings do I need to sacrifice to build a Heavy Spirit Land that can support the transformation ritual for a Lich?"
"If high-quality offerings are used, you would need to sacrifice about 10,000 people. However, if you use ordinary people, you would need approximately 100,000 as offerings. Employing a rather cruel method of sacrifice, if you process the offerings before killing them, you can significantly increase the utilization efficiency of the offerings. A rough estimate suggests you can save 30% of the offerings, needing only about 70,000 people to complete the construction of the Heavy Spirit Land," the tome replied without any ability to read the mood or understand modern law, continuing to give its answer in a methodical manner. On its pages, it displayed calculation formulas and used animated illustrations to demonstrate the method of processing offerings.
Observing the black tome, which evidently did not know how to gauge its speech based on the situation, the young man clearly wanted to either burn it or simply tear it apart. However, it had to be said that the quality of this tome was indeed exceptionally high. As a magic book that recorded various advanced necromancy spells, its pages appeared to be made of parchment paper, but in reality, they were a type of special paper treated with magic. It was not only resilient to damage but also impervious to both water and fire. The man had even tried to cut it with a paper cutter, only to have the blade of the cutter worn down.
After angrily snapping the tome that called itself the "Multiverse Universal Necromancy Spell Compendium" shut and locking the magic lock on its cover, the young man finally took a deep breath. He felt much more at ease, yet at the same time, a sense of despondency washed over him.
The young man's name was Chen Yu, a Chinese student studying abroad in Japan. Back in his middle school days, due to an accident, he had obtained this so-called divine artifact of a necromancy spell book. Driven by curiosity, he had inevitably opened the tome, hoping to gain magical powers from it. Since the book contained a vast amount of knowledge related to the human body, in order to better understand its content, Chen Yu resolutely chose to study medicine. Just like Mr. Lu Xun, he came to Japan to study and was admitted as a doctoral student at the medical faculty of The University of Tokyo.
But Chen Yu's academic journey turned out to be much like that of Mr. Lu Xun—for all his study of medicine, he came to the poignant realization that one cannot become a mage by studying medicine!
It was now the 21st century, and civilization had advanced to the point where society was no longer like the ignorant and wild times of medieval Europe. Not to mention how to use necromancy in modern society, the developed funerary system of the modern world—especially the cremation system widely promoted by the Celestial Empire—made it difficult for him to even find a single corpse, let alone summon skeleton soldiers without the materials.
Chen Yu, who was law-abiding and desired to become a mage, had never contemplated improving his strength through unlawful and disorderly conduct, let alone committing murder. Under such circumstances, becoming a competent Necromancer was exceedingly difficult.
The Age of Dharma Decline was not a time when the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was cut off, but rather a time when the mysterious was no more, and the mystic spells had lost their fertile ground to thrive.