“Well class, who wants to show me what they can do?” There was a moment of pregnant silence as the students looked at each, none of them particularly eager to go first. We had moved from our spot on the seventh floor to the twentieth where the zombies were seated behind cubicle walls. They were ready to be sacrificed for the greater good.

“Me, ME, ME. I want to go first. I’ve got something really cool to use as a finishing move.” Haruto jabbered on in an excited tone, bouncing up and down with arm up, comically smaller than the rest of his class mates.

“Well then pick a zombie and go ahead.”

Haruto rushed forward, claws growing out from his knuckles like a character from a popular big budget movie franchise.

While he rushed directly into battle I critiqued his methods to the other students “Close range fighting is an option with bone magic, though usually it’s preferable to wait till you’ve got bone armour to protect you from retaliation before-”

My critique was cut off as Haruto hit the approaching zombie with both fists, landing eight stabs into the zombie’s torso, Haruto’s short stature preventing him from hitting the zombie easily in the head. He broke off the attack ducking back from the zombie’s wild swings, his bone claws remaining inside the zombie. He had used [Bone Break] so subtly that I hadn’t even seen it in action, allowing him to disconnect the claws from his knuckles practically instantaneously.

“FINISHING MOVE.” Haruto shouted. “Bone BURST.” The zombie exploded into chunks of blood, bone and viscera as the foreign bones within shattered with great force.

Haruto wasn’t quite out of the blast range, getting splattered with some bloody viscera.

“I am impressed by the novelty of your attack, you might want to practice using the long range version first. Or at the very least wait until you have some bone armor, before making bones burst near you.”

“Yeah.” Haruto muttered, looking somewhat shell shocked.

“This is where knowledge of other basic magics comes in handy.” I used [Splash] (low tier water magic), dousing him with water to rinse off the blood, bone and viscera which quickly pooled in a grisly puddle around his feet. I followed that up with [Shimmer] (low tier Fire magic) to dry Haruto off so he was fit for class again.

He muttered “thanks” as he walked back to the group, his eyes glazed.

I could find out what he was thinking with a little invasive mind magic but there were more important things to do than check on the mental wellbeing of a single student. If they broke, they broke, I could always just use their bodies for other projects.

Normally I wouldn’t waste mana on cleaning a minion but with Cucumber by my side, I didn’t need to worry about mana costs. Cucumber provided a steady flow of mana, that boosted my mana regeneration significantly, so that I could spam low level spells of any magical affinity all day without issue.

“I’d judge that a seven out of ten, interesting technique with explosive results but a little too risky for my liking and a bit too messy. Ideally you want to keep the mess at a minimum, clean critical strikes are the best. Now who wants to go next.”

There was a long moment of silence before a volunteer presented themselves, with the students looking awkwardly at each other.

“I will do it.” said the nerdy looking guy wearing green robes and hat.

“Have at it. What was your name again?” I probably should have asked earlier, but honestly I wanted to wait until they proved themselves worthy of being remembered first. Still this one had impressed me a little with his willingness to step forward while others hesitated.

“Reo.” He didn’t provide his last name, how very interesting.

Reo walked forward, more sombre and restrained than Haruto had been. A zombie shambled forward to meet his advance. Reo threw a small piece of bone at his zombie opponent, (it looked like a chicken bone left over from lunch). It struck the zombie’s torso and before it could bounce off, Reo poured his entire mana pool into the bone. The bone rapidly expanded outwards from the size of the finger to the size of a coffin, enclosing the poor zombie.

The bone coffin, grew sharp bone outgrowths inwards in great numbers, impaling the zombie from a hundred different directions, skewering it into useless meat.

An impromptu iron maiden, made of bone, encasing the zombie, which destroyed it’s heart, brain and body. Very interesting.

Reo slumped forward, resting his palms on his knees, as he gasped for breath.

"While I admire your ingenuity in creating a novel offensive spell, at your level, it's a bit too advanced for regular use. I'd suggest a single spike while less flashy, will still kill the enemy, while allowing you to have mana enough for follow up attacks"

"I've got class options, what should I pick?" Haruto asked, interrupting me before I could point out more flaws in Reo’s method of zombie execution.

“Depends on what you’d want to advance, I’d suggest Mage for the extra wisdom and intelligence but it’s up to you.”

Reo had returned. “I levelled up, I got free points to spend, should I min max or go for a general build?” Reo asked.

“I’m going for maximum damage, all intelligence, with a little wisdom.” Haruto responded.

“Glass cannons for the win.” Reo replied, slapping his hand against Haruto’s. A high five? Lex provided a prompt. Humans in this world were weird.

Still it was good that they were getting along at least, even if they were ten years apart in age, they seemed to share a similar enthusiasm for zombie killing and levelling up. They both seemed to treat this like a game, with low stakes and rapid power gain potential. I’d let the Devourer disabuse them of that notion later, their enthusiasm was useful for the moment.

“Reo, I’ll give you an eight of ten for that one, it was inventive, effective and very decisive, with little mess, even if I had to detract points for it's high mana cost, leaving you vulnerable to counter attacks from other enemies.”

There was a large chunk of bone in the middle of the floor which would allow the others more material to work with, if they hadn’t brought their own along, or just needed more bone for their efforts.

Pant suit woman asked a decent question. “Why are you having us kill zombies anyway, aren’t they part of your army? Why would you let us destroy them?”

“Honestly they’ve outlived their usefulness, they’re good cannon fodder but my opponent would merely eat them up like snacks and it’s better for you to use them to level up than try advancing them further at this point. Mages are more use than foot soldiers anyway. You’re next.” I said.

She sighed and advanced forward with her bone hammer clenched tightly in hand.

What followed was an indictment against melee combat.

She flailed at the zombie with her bone hammer, who used his forearm to block the first couple of strikes. She poured her mana into strengthening the hammer as she whacked at the zombie, until her bone hammer was dense enough to crack straight through the zombie’s arm and onto it’s skull shattering it and smashing right into it's squishy brain.

“I’ll give that one a six out of ten, took far too long, and you left yourself wide open to anyone else that might have wanted to kill you. You’re next” I said pointing the chain mail guy, who was armed with a bone spear, the same length as him.

“Charge…” he screamed as he advanced upon a zombie, his spear out.

He crashed right into the zombie, piercing it’s chest with his spear, the momentum carrying them into the midst of zombie territory with the chain mail guy on top of the zombie.

I sighed. “You’ve pinned your enemy but you haven’t destroyed it, that technique might work to kill a single normal enemy but a zombie requires you to destroy it’s brain or damage it’s body enough that it becomes irrelevant, you’ve done neither.”

“I can still kill it.” He pulled out the bone spear from out of the zombie’s chest and drove it into the skull, with one quick jab.

“Technically a pass, you destroyed the zombie, but very sloppy work, you overshot your mark, failed to kill your enemy with your first strike and got yourself surrounded by hostiles. If this was an actual combat scenario you would have been torn to pieces by now. If you wish to continue upon the martial path, I suggest you equip a sword along with your spear so you can pin the enemy then decapitate them.”

What followed after was a mixed bag of results, with some of the mages failing to kill their zombie, other’s using their melee weapons to bash their zombie’s head in or decapitate/dismember them. Very few of them used [Bone Spear] as it should be used, I guess that would take more time.

“Well that was something, I think we’ll work on further developing your abilities with manipulating bone. We’re going to try a try a low level communal casting technique.”

“How do we do that?” Reo asked.

“It’s simple you simply assign a caster and have the rest of the group bequeath a portion of their mana and mana regeneration to the caster.”

“Who will be the caster?” Pant suit woman asked.

I shrugged. “Decide between yourselves, it doesn’t matter too much but I’d suggest someone who’s demonstrated skill wielding bone magic as an influx of foreign mana can be a tad intense for the uninitiated to handle.”

That kicked off an intense argument/debate/ popularity contest that ended after several minutes with Reo as the winner. He had the highest score of the group after all, with the most impressive use of bone magic.

“Now that you’ve assigned your caster, everyone except Reo repeat after me. I bequeath a tithe of my mana and mana regeneration of ten percent to Reo, to act as my agent on my behalf.”

“I bequeath a tithe of my mana and mana regeneration of ten percent to Reo, to act as my agent on my behalf” The class repeated back after I wrote it on a wall using hoarfrost as chalk, after a few failed attempts to repeat it left me too frustrated and impatient to watch or wait any more. They needed more intelligence if they couldn’t even remember a sentence without help.

“Now that we’ve got that sorted, how are you feeling Reo?”

“Kind of weird and tingly as if I’ve had too much to drink and also too many energy drinks and I just got...” He trailed off, eyes going a little glazed.

“Yes that’s to be expected, you’ve got a case of the mana overflow, you’re holding at least three times the usual amount of mana within you and you’re overloaded right now. Time to pour it into a spell.”

“What spell?”

“Pick a bone, any bone.” There were bones scattered about everywhere as a result of the destroyed zombies and the various ranged bone attacks. “Then pour your magic into it like you did with the chicken bone but instead of wrapping it around a single target, work on building it up and outwards so that it forms a wall with small gaps for archers and pikemen. Like this.”

With a wave of my hand, a single bone becomes dozens, lined up in a wall six feet tall and thirty feet long. My bone wall had numerous gaps, to allow for pikemen to counter cavalry charges and for archers to shoot through. The bone wall separated the remaining zombies from the mages. It couldn’t be scaled, as it wasn’t dense enough to hold a human’s weight.

“Yes, yes I feel the power.” With that Reo reached out with his magic and broke off a bone from my wall and bringing it closer to him to stop a few feet away from him. Then he poured nearly half his mana pool into strengthening and shaping it, creating a small wall of interlocking bones the length of a human arm. Then he kept pouring in more mana as the mana regeneration from the rest of the group took effect, allowing his mana pool to quickly refill. He poured all the excess mana into the bone wall, causing it to grow lengthwise and also increase in complexity, developing bone thorns around each long bone and strengthening to become denser and tougher.

He started flagging as the mana overload took it’s toll on his body, he collapsed to one knee panting. “How do I stop this? It’s too much.”

“To end it, just say RELEASE.”

“RELEASE.” Reo shouted before collapsing face first on the carpeted floor.

Haruto rushed to his side and looked to me. “Is he going to be okay?”

"Yes he’ll be fine in a few minutes or hours. He just channeled more energy than he was used to, he’ll be better than ever once he recovers. His mana pool will improve as will his mana regeneration rate.”

“Great. Can I go next?”

“Yes but this time I want you all to group in teams of three, one of you serving as the caster, while the other two serve as batteries. Work on developing some bone armour and when it starts feeling to much, release and assign a new caster. After the hour is done, I expect you to have all been a caster at least once and have practiced creating a cuirass.” Noticing an abundance of blank expressions. I tapped at my own chest armour. “It’s armor to protect your chest. One of the three vital spots is the heart, the others of course being the brain and spine.”

They got to work, playing about with bone armor, it only took ten minutes for Reo to recover and join Harutos team of Pant suit woman and Chain Mail Guy.