I reclined on my new throne, deep within the newly claimed Tokyo skytree tower.

Taking over the tower was easy, all it took was a horde of undead minions, targeting the limited security with a straight punch to the stomach, then they were down and out. Liches promptly made use of that to capture them within bone cages and transport them outside to be released, so they could return to their own dwellings in peace.

I was quite proud of my new throne and new home, I had taken over the top floor of the tower as a ruler should be able to look out his window and see his people go about their days. I was done with living in a crypt hiding from the daylight, a new world, one where I didn’t have to worry about the Gods interfering.

My throne had been shaped with loving attention to detail and from the hero’s bones, or my bones, though I guess the difference is semantics at this point. The hand rests were skulls, the size of my fists and the arm, the arm rests, made of duplicated humerus bones and the 'legs' 'back' and seat of the throne were slightly reshaped femur bones.

The seat was made softer with a layer of flesh in a mimicry of a 'normal' throne. It was child’s play to replace my own missing bones, how much more me could a throne be, then a throne made of my own bones. The bones were tied together by sinews, so as to maintain it's glorious shape.

As I reclined, I made use of my current down time to digest the memories and knowledge of those that died from the Soul Virus. There were millions to go through but I’d get through them all eventually, I wasn’t too concerned, just perusing them was enough to start the process of Lex disassembling them for their component parts. My soul Library and the library network had grown quite large, thanks to the efforts of my undead minions and the many Lex’s. I was quite pleased at the acquisition of souls and knowledge.

While my mind and soul was preoccupied with digestion, Cucumber guarded my body from potential threats. Cucumber stood next to throne, serving as my right hand ‘man’ and body guard.

He was hard at work, testing out his new summons, pitting them against each other in ‘mortal’ combat. Whenever one of them was too broken and could no longer fight, he’d repair their bones or simply reshape them to try and make them more deadlier. Every battle, increased his proficiency with shaping their bones and minds to his whims.

The sounds of bones crunching and smashing made for a pleasing backdrop for my ruminations.

Arnie walked into the room looking very much like a powerful Elder Lich, bone staff in one hand which radiated dark power and a full body bone armour protecting his body.

“They have arrived sir.”

Honestly I had kind of forgotten about Arnie, it had been quite hectic as of late with the conquest of China, the retreat from the Devourer and dealing with Cucumber. I had no idea how he survived in Japan without my support, he had just shown up not that long ago with one of the waves of reinforcemnts. I should ask him about it at some point when there’s more time, it’d probably be an interesting tale.

“Thank you for your service.”

Arnie gave me a nod of acknowledgement before walking out. I had a lot of work still to do. It was time to start the Mage Academy and see whether I could find some good prospects.

I used the lift to go down to the foyer, which filled me with a strange sense of wonder. I knew the mechanics of it from the memories of an engineer and had a second hand sense of complacency about it from the thousands upon thousands of office workers who used them every day. Yet I still found them fascinating regardless, the use of weights and counterweights and electricity to move people up and down at impressive speeds. If I wasn’t a feared and powerful Supreme Lich with far too much to do before the big climatic battle, I’d spend the day just going up and down it just for the sake of doing so.

Still there’s no rest for the wicked and I am as wicked as they come.

In less than a minute, I had reached the ground floor and was ready to meet my new initiates.

There was a line out the door of thousands of people wanting and waiting to be assessed for their magical abilities.

I escaped the bounds of flesh to view the crowd through soul sight, the view was laughable. It reminded me a little of home, but a lot dumber. There were people with staffs and swords and shields which was nostalgic, but everything rang false.

By the looks of it, most of the swords were comically oversized or made of very substandard metal if they were made of metal at all, most seemed to be made of some kind of plastic. The mage types were even worse somehow, wearing ridiculous ‘wizard hats’ and sporting false beards in a lot of cases. What does a large conical hat have to do with magic?

Most actual mages wore leather helms to protect their heads from stray arrow fire among other things, or at least the mid level mages did. High levels mages eschewed head gear altogether relying on high level spells to protect them from most things. No real mage would wear something so ridiculous on their head.

The majority of the crowd were males, which was a little disappointing, women tend to make better mages but I’d make do with what I could get.

After all this recruitment call was a first for this world and I had been devastating to the local populations, so those with better options wouldn't risk their lives on my good will. It was no wonder I’d get the proverbial bottom of the barrel of normal society, wanting to sign up for ‘super powers’. Still I’d welcome the so called chunnis, otakus, basement dwellers, edge lords and actual children to my side.

Despite their poor social standing, they’d still prove useful for my future endeavours. Some of their outfits did amuse me though, there were people wearing multi colored wigs, in ridiculous colored outfits and some in orange jump suits based around some manga where a ninja wore ORANGE. No idea how that was supposed to make sense but these humans made no sense, I don’t know why they’d think people with magical powers would use magic sword guns or think school girl outfits made for practical fighting gear.

Regardless of their eccentricities, they would make excellent test subjects, decoys and batteries. Some of them even could be magical prodigies worthy of the effort of long term training..

I recognized several familiar faces grouped up together, the first batch of students I trained on the boat ride here, they were in the midst of a heated argument.

“This is stupid, we can’t just go back to him, we were lucky he let us go in the first place and now you want us to go and risk our lives and souls by being his students. Are you insane?” Number Four asked hysterically, her voice rising in pitch with every word.

“Easy for you to say, you got your mother back.” Number One said bitterly.

“She’s not my mother, she’s … wrong.” Number Four said somewhat unconvincingly.

“We don’t have a choice, if we want to get revenge, we need to get stronger and be close enough to strike. This does both, we’ve already had this argument and you agreed to come. It’s too late to back out now.” Number Two explained forcefully.

“That’s...” Four said

I cut her off, by surrounding their feet in bone, having already grown bored of the sound of her voice.

“Welcome back former students, you don’t need to wait to be assessed. You can come right in and start.” The others in the crowd were looking around for me, but I wasn’t there, I was simply using mind magic to project my voice inside their heads.

“Wait what? Why do they get to skip?” Some hunched over human male with glasses asked.

I responded by forcibly adjusting his spine to be upright, second hand knowledge roughly diagnosed his condition as scoliosis, then I readjusted his eyes so that he didn’t need glasses, curing his myopia with blood magic.

He didn’t seem particularly grateful at first, judging by the crying and cursing, but it served it’s purpose, all other conversations died away.

When his friend pulled him to his feet, my generosity became apparent to others. He was no longer hunched over and the glasses that fell during the violent spasming seizure were not picked up.

“I can see clearly now. What was that?”

“It’s just a taste of my power, I can cure diseases and disabilities with ease and in time, so could you. Now I ask for you to line up and be assessed so that we can determine your magical talents and start your education. Single line please.”

As for my former students, they were air lifted above the others, their feet encased in a prison of bone and sinew and brought deeper into the tower so they could get started immediately.

“My thanks to all of those who’ve come out today to enrol into this one of a kind academy, I expect that more will soon follow your example today. You are the trailblazers. Welcome to the Herbert Academy of Magic inaugural day. Let us get started." I said standing just outside the building's door, armed with a bone staff, accompanied by a Dracolich bodyguard. I surveyed my new students with a smile and ushered them forwards to a bright and magical future.