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“Now, tell me about that Grand Mage, elf”, The necromancer was sitting leisurely on a wooden chair inside Tern Yigh Qermen’s mountain lair’s lowest floor.

There have been a lot of guests visiting him lately. He wasn’t sure he liked it, a solitary lifestyle was something he enjoyed a lot. Though he didn’t hate having guests at his home either.

Though when it came to the necromancer, Tern would prefer not to have this guest visit him. Ever.

There were several reasons for it:

First, he had a dislike of those who tarnished the sanctity of life. As an elf, it was a part of his nature and this mindset had stayed with him for hundreds of thousands of years of his life.

Second, he had a personal vendetta against all necromancers. His wife, his children, many of his friends and a lot of other people who he didn’t know have been killed in order to satisfy their twisted views back in the day.

Third, this particular necromancer was a monster beyond whatever Tern could stop or hinder. Behind the seemingly frail and delicate appearance there hid a being that could only be described as “god-like”. Tern wasn’t fond of having Gods and the like visit him during breakfast. Or any other time, but breakfast was especially bad. And this guest just had to come during breakfast. Truly the worst.

Fourth and the final, the necromancer was forcing Tern do her bidding with his wife’s life on the line. She offered him a deal where he would work for her and, in exchange, his wife would be brought back to life, her mind, body and soul fully intact.

The last one was probably the main reason he allowed the necromancer to act so freely in his own home.

He was an old man and his wife’s death was so long ago that those times weren’t even recorded in the history books of most countries of the world, but even after all this time, his foolish heart refused to let go.

The necromancer took another sip of tea while tapping her finger on the table. “I’m waiting”, her behavior seemed to say.

Necromancers aren’t known to be the most patient bunch, ironically despite being the ones who had the longest average lifespan among all intelligent beings out there, and making a ticking bomb wait wasn’t something Tern thought was reasonable.

“Um, if the person I’m thinking of right now is the person you want to find out about, then her name is Lachersia Luster”

The necromancer nodded her head, “Go on”

“Yes, she is the youngest Grand Mage that I know of, apart from a few heroes of old, meaning that she is the youngest Grand Mage born on Ulte during the last seven hundred thousand years. What would you like to know about her in particular?”

“Tell me all you know about her”

“I see. Apart from being the youngest Grand Mage, she, I suspect, is at least in top 6 when it comes to personal power in the world, including the mages in seclusion and the old fossils hidden in their tombs from aeons ago. Her exact level of power is something I can only guess at

That makes her also one of the most knowledgeable people in the world, despite her age being mere 400 years. Her talent is the most ridiculous thing I have seen in my life. She is also somehow capable of effortlessly using divine powers.

She doesn’t specialize in any branch of magic knowledge in particular, I have seen some of her research projects and they all utilize knowledge from every field fluently and many of the solutions she had proposed were brilliant. Though I would say that most of Lachersia’s works heavily involve Alchemy.

She doesn’t seem aware of just how different she is from every other mage. Through several conversations I have had with her, I understood that she understands magic and the way the world works and exists on an intuitive level, her perspective is not something a human would be capable of having and not having their brain literally melt”

“So you’re saying that there’s some kind of Divine intervention behind her abnormality?”

“I suspect it is so”

“Tell me more of your assumption”

“As you may know, our world has been plagued by the Demon Wave for many millions of years. All intelligent races have faced the danger of extinction many times and many species have already been forgotten. The gods are benevolent to our side of the eternal conflict, but they do not have the desire to end the conflict for us, otherwise, it would be a trivial task for them to end all Demon Waves once and for all.

Instead of doing this, they give us a chance of survival each time, by sending individuals bestowed with powers beyond their own comprehension or imagination, most of the time unwilling to get involved in the conflict, and it falls upon us to convince those individuals to fight for us and it also falls upon us to let those individuals uncover enough of their potential to barely end the Demon Wave. It’s an interesting fact that there has never been a hero that was able to easily finish a Demon Wave. Every last one of those who ended a Demon Wave either died while doing it, or did it and almost died.

I have seen many heroes and I know of their true potential. Each of them, including the one currently following Lachersia, could turn this whole planet to dust. Some of them were intelligent enough to uncover their full power, though none were able to do it in the end. If they uncovered even a half, no, a quarter of that power, they could easily end a Demon Wave, but every time, the hero barely does it and it’s been like this for millions of years.

It’s as if the Gods know how much those individuals are worth and what they can do and they give them the bare minimum to survive and win”

“And how does it relate to Lachersia?”

“They would not suddenly change their minds and decide to create a being that has perfect motivation, skills, resources and power to singlehandedly end a Wave with little effort out of nowhere someday, would they? Then why exactly does Lachersia, somebody exactly like that, even exist and why are there traces of their involvement all over her biography?”

“Hm… There would not be any deity who would suddenly change their mind alone and decided to act on their own. It’s because Gods are not creatures like that. They rarely change and stay the same for long enough to make most believe that they never change in the first place”

“Then the only reasonable explanation is that they haven’t changed their ways at all. Something more terrifying than any Wave to have happened before will come soon. Lachersia may be only a small part of a bigger plan to resist it and leave a way for humanity to survive. Barely, as always”

“Then the change doesn’t come from the Gods, but from the Demon Wave, you say?”

“Indeed. A Wave that would cause something as terrible as a Grand Mage chosen by the Lord Overseer himself to be summoned as a hero”

Somebody as old as Tern would know a thing or two about the bigger game and the players there and knowing all beings of power of his own world was to be expected. But he had never even heard of the necromancer in front of him before as if she came from a different world entirely.

Knowing the physical age of a being was a simple matter for Tern and the necromancer could not really be 24. That meant that her spirit resided within a new body, though the connection between her spirit and her body was too seamless and too natural for it not to be done through reincarnation.

Necromancers could disturb the Cycle of Reincarnation to an extent, but being reborn all of their own power would be impossible. That meant that there was somebody or something pulling strings behind the reincarnation.

The necromancer’s Dark Gods would never go as far as preserving her spirit through a reincarnation. Their influence reached across endless realms and there was no lack of worshipers.

There were few other beings who could and would do something like this to Tern’s knowledge.

But there was a certain legend from long ago about an Archmage known as the Overseer who could control the Cycle of Reincarnation and his hobby of collecting powerful and talented Grand Mages.

The necromancer in front of him was excellent enough to attract the attention of such a being.

It was a wild assumption, but the necromancer didn’t react to it at all, showing two things:

First: his assumption was right;

Second: she expected him to come to this conclusion.

That meant that she had no interest in Tern’s thoughts about the Wave as it was something she could deduce on her own and that he needed to continue talking about everything he knew about Lachersia Luster as the rest didn’t matter to her.

And by everything, the necromancer probably meant exactly everything. It was only right for a personage like her to be so meticulous.

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