Writer's Note: Well, here comes the next phase of Lance's life: magic. Lance dives into the mysteries of necromancy as the ship sails on. Release is early today as I got work at 9:30am today. Not much time to write as I hit the sack when I get home. Well, I try to release every two to three days. This chapter has two big changes. I'm sure, near the end, the second change will surprise you all. nothing like a little bit of insanity to liven things up. Enjoy.

Chapter 27: Necromancy

"We're still at sea?" Lance asked as only two hours passed since they left the dock.

"What'd you expect?" Mei asked. "There are also dangers within the sea. We have to avoid deeper waters and travel through the protected routes. Captain said it'll take a few weeks to get to the continent by ship. The routes have been unsafe as something has been happening in the oceans. The captain talked about leviathans and water dragons being particularly hostile since....the Day of the Eye and Snake."

"Then I will head to my room," Lance said, taking out the Necromonicon from his storage ring as he went inside the ship and entered his room on the second floor down. The panther curled against the door as he closed it behind him, preventing others from entering the room and disturbing its master.

"Black dragon leather cover and the writing seems to be made with the blood of various creatures and humans. Not my style of decor, but it's unique," Lance said as he sat in the center of the room, his back leaning against the bed as he opened the book on his lap.

"To whomever possess this book: this is a book that allows a practitioner to learn necromancy as they cultivate to immortality. To continue reading this book is to accept the reality that the world is full of death and to see the world through different eyes. The world of the dead is different than the world of the living. Necromancy is the bridge between the two worlds. It is because those that die do not ascend, but descend into Abyssal Realm. It is there that the souls are damned for eternity, live for eternity, or chosen to be reborn into a new life," Lance said as he read the book aloud. "Well that's something new. Never heard of the Abyssal Realm."

"It exists master. I have the hereditary memories of my immortal ancestors from when they were alive and dead," the panther purred. Lance scratched the back of his head as his hereditary memories only had memories of the living. Souls had to come from somewhere.

"To follow the path of necromancy, one must create a sea of souls. Souls will be the foundation of your mana. Those with affinity to water will have the easiest time to make a sea of souls. It should lay in the depths of your Soul Realm. The sea of souls must be deep enough, and your cultivation must be strong enough to shackle the souls. Those who fail to shackle the souls to the depths of the sea will become wraiths, undead beings with a collective mind made of several souls. Your existence will cease to exist, your soul not even able to head into the Abyssal Realm. To attempt this, one must be a practitioner of the Meteor Vessel Stage," Lance stated.

"Wraiths are....vicious creatures master. Their spirit energy is practically infinite. Only through close range, can you kill them. To kill them permanently, you must use soul-targeting attacks. The physical body, they could sacrifice one of their countless souls to regenerate or several dozen to remake the body," the panther said, a shiver running down its spine. "Not many magical beasts have soul-targeting techniques and most humans also decline to learn them."

"Necromancers do not bring back the dead, they rip apart souls and use the foreign spirit energy to imitate life from corpses. Exceptionally powerful necromancers can actually rip one soul of a freshly dead corpse and reanimate it. However, the entity will be neither dead nor living. The might of the necromancer is determined by how many souls they harvest. Whenever a living entity dies, they leave behind bits of their soul as the majority enters the Abyssal Realm. The bit of the soul left behind are their memories. Unless they are granted eternal life in the Abyssal Realm, their memories will never return. Exceptionally powerful souls are excluded from this rule, almost all of them either demons or magical beasts," Lance continued.

"To form the sea of souls, one must close his eyes and immerse his consciousness into his spirit sense. Sense the spirit energy around you. All things are connected. All life is connected. Spirit energy is soul energy. The souls of the dead are around you. Sense them. See the world through your spiritual sense, not your eyes," Lance said and then closed his eyes and followed the instructions.

He was in his Soul Realm. A boundless ocean surrounded a large island, five smaller islands formed around it to form a pentagram circle as they surrounded the large island where the volcano fumed. The volcano erupted, its lava entering the seas. He followed the lava into the depths of his soul, imagining turning them into chains. His spiritual sense emanated from his body, wrapping the ship. He could sense the spiritual energy around him.

He could sense the spirit energy of the sailors. He could see spirit energy seep out the bodies of the practitioners aboard the ship. None of them could sense his spirit energy, but Mei. She seemed to be a cold, dark hole in the center of the ship, sometimes turning into a warm beacon. Then he could sense them. He sensed the soul energies.

The ocean was nothing but a giant graveyard. Survival of the fittest reigned supreme in its waters. Fish ate shrimps and whales ate sharks. Sharks feasted on fish and the fish fed on each other. He could sense their souls. He could sense the residual spirit energy of their souls as they left their corpses. He could sense it all. Slowly, his spiritual sense began to grab them, the soul energies screaming as they were dragged into his body. Dragged into his Soul Realm.

"What's going on?" Mei shivered, the other practitioners scared stiff as they could hear the souls screaming. The screams shook them to their very souls. Some practitioners fainted outright. Other coughed blood and wondered what was going on. None of them were capable of sensing the souls, yet the screams were as if they sounded next to their ears.

"What's going on?" Lingqi asked as she and Mei shared a room together.

"It's the souls. Lance is actually sensing the souls of those long dead, grabbing them with his spiritual sense. I never knew spiritual senses had such applications," Mei whispered, terrified. "Usually, there are souls around us, but he is draining multiple of them. Their screams begin to collect and their numbers become large enough to be heard by others besides Lance. There must be countless souls."

"No! I don't want this!" a woman sobbed. "Somebody make them stop!"

"What's happening? What are those screams?" a man said.

"It's the end. My pap was right. It's the end," another man shivered, holding his daughter and wife in his arms.

All the people who did not faint had gathered onto the deck. They felt safer clustered together. The captain and his sailors tried to maintain order. Children cried and spouses embraced. Eventually, the screams died down. However, no one dared to move until an hour after.

"Lance! Lance, what did you do?" Mei said as she ran to his cabin, frowning as she heard a growl on the other side of the door. The panther pawed at the door, opening it to allow the two females in and nudged it close behind them.

"Mei," Lance said, opening his eyes and staring at them as they entered the room.

"What did you do?" Mei asked.

"I did as the book instructed. For a practitioner to be a mage as well, I must have a sea of souls. The ocean is full of the dead, even their corpses piss and crap a part of it. It wasn't hard to find residual spirit energy of the souls. I merely harvested them into myself," Lance answered. "It is formed. It won't happen again."

"You could be lying!" Mei shouted.

"Once the sea of souls is formed, there is no need to absorb living souls. The sea of souls is the beginning. Its purification is the next step. Turning the residual souls into an ocean of mana. The only evil done is to form the sea of souls. The screams you heard were not really from the souls. The screams you heard will be rips in the Mortal Realm. These rips are because you drained the soul fragments. These fragments were meant to exist until the end of time," Lance said, showing Mei the passage in the book. "They weren't souls. You just thought they were souls. There is no way to grab souls with spiritual energy. I just grabbed the spirit energies of the souls. Even your spirit energy, I drained. You can call it your life force, if you will."

"Not souls, but the life force of the creatures on and around the ship," Mei muttered.

"Yeah. I also made a breakthrough in my cultivation with all that life force," Lance grinned.

"You entered the Middle Meteor Vessel Stage!" Mei gasped, sensing the increase in cultivation.

"It is the power of souls. You know of this. You did it once before," Lance waved. "Leave me be. I must research my new magic in order for us to survive in the southern continent."

*Grrr*

Mei and Lingqi stared back to see the panther bare its fangs at them. Clearly, it was ordered to make them leave. Mei stared silently at Lance and then at the book.

"Maybe it was a mistake. You could have learned other magic. It didn't have to be necromancy. It's not evil, but it is scary and ancient power," she muttered. She knew what Lance absorbed weren't true souls. The real souls were in the Abyssal Realm, but its power was ancient and mighty. This would be the only time Lance would drain living souls, Lance reassuring her it was only this once.

"You gained considerable power, master," the panther said.

"Yes. It's only a pity only my sister was at the Meteor Vessel Stage. Most of the dead were at the Energy Stimulation Stage, the first and weakest cultivation level," Lance sighed. "It might have been premature to use it here, instead of a tomb or cemetery."

He let the panther rest as he returned his attention to the Necromonicon. It described the way for someone without the water affinity to form a sea of souls. That process was even more mysterious and extremely painful. He would have to deliberately drink enough blood after drinking a certain concoction to gain affinity to water. Then, the process was the same as what he had just done.

As he changed the pages, he found the pages that interested him. Magic was different than cultivation. For necromancy, there were several branches of necromancy for one to learn. One branch allowed a necromancer to materialize spirits and use them to hurt others with bacteria poison. Another branch of necromancy allowed him to turn his mana into bones. He could create bone fields, bone spears, and other objects with the shape of a bone.

One of the more basic forms of necromancy was summoning. Through mana, he could summon a bone minion from the Abyssal Realm. As he got stronger, he could summon more bone minions. There was more, but he was not strong enough to learn them.

"Imagine the mana materialize in front of me. Imagine a cage of bones appearing," Lance muttered as he stared at the candle wick on the shelf beside his bed. He closed his eyes, imagining a bone cage trap the candle wick. He opened his eyes and his sea of souls stirred. Suddenly, a bursting sound appeared and four bones appeared, around the candle wick. They represented the four main columns, smaller bars of bone appearing to create the image of a cage around the candle wick.

""How bizarre. It doesn't seem to be affiliated with the elements," Lance muttered, tapping the bones. They indeed felt like bones. After a while, the bones disappeared but four holes remained from where the four original bones appeared. He opened the drawer and looked at the bottom, seeing no hole or crack there.

"The spell was called Bone Cage. It is a spell primarily used to entrap the enemy. It is unbreakable and lasts for as long as the mana is supplied beyond the mana required to form it. Indeed, it is not affiliated with the elements," Lance noted. "The power to harness the spiritual energy of the soul, it is profound indeed."

"So that is necromancy?" the panther asked.

"I'm not sure. I need to research it more," Lance said reaching to turn the page. Suddenly the blood on the book surged with spirit energy. The blood rose into the air and burned his palms. Lance screamed as the pain seemed to grow and affect his Soul Realm. As a mysterious brand appeared on both palms, something began to stir within his Soul Realm.

Shocked, Lance was forcibly withdrawn into his Soul Realm. His body appeared to be in the midst of cultivating through meditation. As Lance gazed around in his Soul Realm, his spiritual body began to descend for once. He could do nothing as his body moved hovered above the volcano. A cool sensation filled his body as he descended into the lava and floated before a jade marble which seemed to be the heart of his Soul Realm.

"My neidan," Lance muttered. "Since when did it descend into the volcano?"

Lance frowned as his body then proceeded out the volcano, wrapped in a jade energy as he descended into the ocean. As he got deeper, his eyes widened. In the depths of the ocean was his sea of souls. It was there that he saw shapes of white energy shackled by chains made of lava.

"One looks like a panther and that one looks like Mei. Most of these souls are aquatic creatures. There's even a leviathan and water dragon!" Lance gasped as he saw the true form of the residual soul energies. It seemed that draining even a small portion of life force would augment his power.

"YOU! SNAKE! It's all YOUR fault!" a voice screamed, Lance looking around in shock.

"What is that voice? Who are you?" Lance shouted and held his breath as he saw a form shackled by a chain of lava. What really shocked him was that it was in the form of an eye.

"The Eye of Darkness. I drained even your life force from within Mei's Soul Realm?" Lance frowned.

"The pain brought me back! It brought me back! Other soul energies too! The dragons, leviathans, and I curse you! Curse you!" the Eye screamed. "How dare you take a piece of our souls! How dare you take our soul energies! We will break free and devour you! We will be a wraith! We will!"

"Silence," Lance spat and the lava chains even constricted at his thought, causing the Eye more pain. "You're not a true Fragment of Darkness. The real one is within Mei. You're just a piece of whatever consciousness your soul's spirit energy had left. As soon as I can control the sea of souls, I'll be sure to drain you dry."

"Curse you! Curse you!" the Eye screamed as Lance descended even deeper. Whatever dragged him into his own Soul Realm seemed to be at the base of the lava chains.

Lance dived deeper and deeper, seeing the chains enlarge and grow warmer. Water sizzled around him as he could see the chains converge in the distance. There, at the bottom of it all, was a red and orange striped neidan. The jade energy around him began to disperse, entering the red and orange neidan.

"A neidan. A red and orange striped neidan," Lance muttered and saw a small child with lava shackles around his wrist and ankles. However, he did not seem like a bit of a person's soul, but the entire soul. He was not made of white energy and looked real. What's more, he looked like Guo Yang when he was seven years old.

"Who are you? What are you?" Lance asked as the child looked up at him. Unlike the child form of Guo Yang, this child had flaming red hair and orange slit irises and pupils.

"I am you. I am the you that is tattooed on your back by the Heavens. I am the you that you transform into to become a serpentine dragon. I am the you that was the World Serpent," the child smiled. "I am the second half of your soul. You soul was too powerful to be reincarnated into a human fetus. The Heavens split you, us, into two. I am your power and the reason the neidan and the corpses within are locked away. You should know what I am. I brought you here because you could finally hear me, sense me."

"That's impossible," Lance said.

"It is time we became whole. The mana within this place finally unsealed me. Now, we can be what we were always meant to be. The metamorphosis can be complete. All the pain, all your happiness and sadness; it is time you embraced it," the boy said, the lava shackles disappearing as Lance's hand outstretched to the boy's by a mysterious force.

"What will happen after this? What are you doing?" Lance asked.

"I am giving back the good you kept locked away. Emotions is not a weakness. It's time for us to play in the world again. I am the human you, the human soul you finally accepted. Let's play," the boy said, grabbing Lance's hand.

"Master?" the panther frowned as Lance seemed to meditate in midair. Lance slowly straightened and stood on the ground, opening his eyes.

"Hello panther. It is nice to meet at last," Lance smiled, spirit energy pulsing around his body as Lance rolled his shoulders as a throne made of bones appeared behind him. "We are one again. I am complete. We are going to have so much fun in the southern continent, you and I. Magic and practitioner arts. I will burn brighter than the sun."

"Lance! Lance!" a girl cried, the door bursting open as Mei and Lingqi stormed in. Her eyes widened in shock as they saw Lance sit on the bone throne, his red hair black again but with chains of lava wrapped harmlessly around his arms.

"It is good to see you, Mei. I had another breakthrough. The metamorphosis is complete. My personality could use some work though. I trust you'll help me?" Lance asked, Mei and the others staring back at him in shock. "Oh, don't be afraid. I am just fusing fire and earth to create lava. I awoke the fire affinity. Isn't this great?"

"What happened? He's so different. Some of that rude and narcissistic tone is still there, but he seems more...like a real teenager," Mei gasped. "What happened to you? Are you Guo Yang? The World Serpent? Lance Wang?"

"I am all three. I just accepted myself. It took fifteen years, give or take a few months, to embrace the humanity," Lance grinned. "I'm sorry for everything. I was incomplete. Please don't blame me for what I've done and will happen from now on."

"What did you do?" Mei asked.

"I fused with myself. I am the brother you should have had. I am the brother you always had. I'm finally both and I really miss our parents. I would apologize, but I also feel nothing for them. They were never there for me when they thought I was sickly. The brazier and snakes were my only friends then. You, you were there sometimes. Thank you," Lance said.

"No way! No way!" Mei said, stepping back in fear. "Double soul fusion?"

"You must be really confused right now. Don't worry. I won't hurt you. The previous me would have had some, intimate thoughts with you though," Lance smiled to Lingqi, the latter more terrified of the current Lance Wang. "Dammit. I feel all excited inside, like a caged child finally freed. I think I've lost a bit of my sanity."

"Now you, I know," Mei said. "I don't know whether to record this as progress or a nightmare. Lance Wang with a screw loose in his head. Both childish and scheming. Merciless and playful."

"I really don't understand what under the Heavens is going on," Lingqi muttered, the panther nodding in agreement.