Chapter 8: Demonstration

Lila stood in front of him with the confidence of someone who had already decided the next hour of his life.

Ethan looked at her. Then he turned his head to look behind him just to be sure it wasn’t him she was talking to...

It was...

"Ready for what, exactly?"

"I want you to show me how your ability works." She said it like it was the most reasonable request in the world. "You tested it last night, and you’ve clearly been thinking about efficiency, energy costs and all that. I’m a little curious you see. Most people talk about necromancy like it’s some kind of horror story. I’d rather see what it actually looks like instead of listening to rumors."

Ethan considered several responses. Most of them involved the phrase "I work better alone."

He shook his head internally. Too cliche.

He though of another one... it sounded a bit too dismissive, and Lila didn’t look like the type to back down.

None of the other responses he thought of felt like they would succeed against someone who lived in the same dorm and had already proven resistant to subtle distancing.

"You’re very direct," he said.

"I know." Lila started walking, clearly expecting him to follow.

"East grounds....It’s less busy. Coming?"

He followed, mostly because he didn’t have much of a choice. Arguing with an A Rank flame user in the middle of a hallway felt like the kind of scene that attracted unnecessary attention.

Also, she lived with him so permanent escape was already a failure...

As they left the main building, Ethan spoke in a flat tone.

"I told myself that I’ll stay away from popular people... So far the academy has ignored this rule with impressive commitment."

Lila glanced over her shoulder, her golden eyes widening with amusement. "Are you calling me popular?"

"I’m stating a fact. You’re Rank A, you talk to people, and you set things on fire. That’s three different kinds of attention. I was hoping to work on my ’taboo’ skill in peace."

"And now you have an audience. Tragic." She said that without sounding sympathetic. "You’ll survive. Besides, I’m a good audience. I won’t scream or report you for existing. Plus, I don’t judge."

"That’s not supposed to be your way of reassuring me is it?."

She laughed and kept moving, and Ethan quickened his pace to keep up.

The east grounds were mostly empty. It was a wide stretch of packed dirt, with only two distant pairs of students sparring on the far side. The late afternoon light made the place look almost peaceful but Ethan doubted it would stay that way once a corpse started moving.

Lila dropped her bag near a low wall and turned to face him, her arms loosely over her chest. "Alright. Show me."

Ethan scanned the area and realized that there were no convenient dead birds this time.

He kept looking and after a short search he found a suitable candidate near the edge of the ground.

It was a dead rat, small and intact, for the most part.

Not ideal. But it would have to do...

He crouched, placed two fingers against it, and Death Energy flowed through the connection.

```

[Ding!]

[Raise Undead (Basic) activated]

[Corpse Quality: Poor]

[Energy Cost: 7]

[Result: Basic Undead (Rodent)]

[Control Capacity: 1/ 8]

[Death Energy: 43/50]

```

He noticed that the cost had dropped by one point from the previous night. It was a minor improvement but still inefficient.

The rat twitched, then stood on stiff legs. Its movements were jerky, but slightly cleaner than the bird had been.

Lila leaned forward, hands on her knees, as she watched with curiosity rather than the disgust he had expected.

"Okay," she said slowly. "That’s... actually creepy, but in a low budget way"

Ethan place a hand on its head and rubbed it slowly. "That’s the gist of it."

"So what’s actually happening? You’re just, what feeding energy into it and it stands up?"

"More or less." Ethan stood and took a step back. "The system calls it Raise Undead—"

"Wait wait wait. You have a system?" Lila asked in confusion.

"Yeah. I do... It’s a glowing green screen that appears whenever i’m about to use my ability."

A short pause, then he asked. "You don’t have one?"

Lila shook her head. "I was told I had Flame Affinity. Started manifesting after." She placed her hand on her chin. "Huh. I guess everyone has a different type of awakening."

"Anyway," she said, pushing the thought aside. "What were we talking about?"

Ethan looked at her for a moment then he continued. "Cost depends on corpse quality and all that. This one was poor, so it took seven points. Last night’s bird took eight. Progress if you think about it."

"And now you control it?"

He issued a simple command. The rat skittered forward in a straight line, stopped, then turned when Ethan ordered. It still looked like a puppet operated by someone learning the controls, but the response time was a bit better than before.

Lila’s eyebrows rose. "You’re running mobility drills on a dead rat."

"Basic commands" Ethan corrected. "Walk. Stop. Turn. Anything more complex still fails. The system informed me that higher skill levels and better corpses will improve the results. Currently, this is what Rank F looks like."

She circled the undead rat at a safe distance, her eyes tracking every stiff movement. "I still don’t know why most people act like necromancy is some world ending nightmare. This just looks like a very committed science project."

"That’s because it is." He dismissed the undead. The body collapsed, and the system logged another small gain in EXP and a note about improved energy control. "The reputation is based on what the ability can become, not what it is at Level 1. Right now it’s inefficient, limited, and slightly embarrassing. My goal is to make it less of those things."

Lila straightened and summoned a small flame above her palm, more out of habit. "So you’re treating it like a project you still need to research on to make it better."

"Exactly. Freaking out or trying to look impressive wastes energy I don’t have."

She grinned. "You’re weirdly practical about something everyone else treats like a curse."

"Would you prefer I start monologuing about the beauty of death and the inevitability of my rise?"

"Please don’t. That’s way too cringe, even for you."

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Even for me?" He asked in an offended tone and Lila just winked at him.

They stayed on the grounds longer than Ethan had originally planned. He found a second small corpse, another bird, slightly fresher and raised it while Lila watched. He walked her through the process out loud: the feel of Death Energy leaving his pool, the thin connection that formed, the way commands had to stay simple or the whole thing locked up.

She asked questions. Like how far the control range extended, whether the undead could sense anything, or what would happen if he ran out of energy mid command. He answered what he could and admitted what he still didn’t know.

At one point she sat on the low wall, swinging one leg, while he dismissed the second undead.

"You’re really not bothered by the stigma at all, are you?" she asked.

"I’m bothered by inefficiency," Ethan replied. "The stigma is just background noise. It doesn’t change the numbers."

In his old world, he knew that no matter what anyone did, no matter how good a person was at something, they would still be subject to criticism.

His case wasn’t any different...

Lila laughed. "Most people with restricted classes either hide or try to prove they’re harmless. You’re just... being you."

"Hiding wouldn’t lower the energy cost. Proving I’m harmless would the take time I could spend practicing. This is a better way to use the effort."

She studied him for a moment, something like respect flickering across her face. "You’re going to be really annoying when you get strong, aren’t you?"

"I prefer the term ’difficult to ignore.’"

The sun had dropped lower by the time they stopped. Ethan’s Death Energy sat at twenty-nine by now. He had raised and dismissed three small undead in total under her observation. The average cost had dropped again. Not by much, but by enough to notice.

Lila hopped off the wall and grabbed her bag. "Same time tomorrow? Or are you going to quote your popular-girl rule at me again?"

Ethan gave her a long, flat look.

"You’re making this rule very difficult to follow."

Lila grinnned, a very victorious smile spreading across his face. "Then maybe the rule needs revising. See you back at the dorm, Ethan."

Saying that, she turned and left.

Ethan stood alone on the east grounds for a moment longer, reviewing the numbers in his system. The work was slow, the results were modest. And somehow he had acquired a Rank A observer who asked direct questions, found dead rats only mildly creepy, and refused to be avoided.

He started walking back toward the dormitories, running a hand through his hair as he heaved a sigh realizing she was never going to give him a chance to follow his rule.

This was going to be rougher than he thought...