I used the remaining minute or two left to me to bone up, covering myself in the most magically enhanced bone armour possible so that only my eyes were visible. It wouldn't be of great use against an insane Devourer but every little advantage was important in a battle to the death.

I sent through a telepathic communication to the nearby Liches via the Lich network advising them to run as far away as possible from the threat. The strongest liches were tasked with protecting my second self during my battle by whatever means they deemed necessary.

Arnie passed on the message to the student mages that they should scatter, to make themselves less obvious targets. They scattered, leaving the immediate area empty except for Cucumber and I, we’re the strongest and the least likely to be effected by the Devourer’s standard MO of energy draining everyone and everything within range.

Despite my orders the student mages ended up grouping up a few miles away with the Liches they were familiar with from their earlier lessons. The various mages living and undead grouped up by their mutual affinities. I didn’t really have the time or energy to spend on redirecting them or rebuking them for their gross insubordination.

I flew upwards using basic air magic to lift me up, followed closely by Cucumber who levitated effortlessly. As we left the buildings beneath us, Cucumber morphed from his draconoid form to his true form as an oversized bone dragon. He swallowed me whole, encasing me within his own durable armour.

It wasn’t my original plan but Cucumber could protect my body while I oversaw the battle in soul form for when the moment was right to attack the Devourer in his most vulnerable spot, his soul.

I hovered above the area as a tethered intangible soul watching as I got the first proper look at the Devourer. He was ashen faced, with bone armour over his body marked by blood and ash.

He radiated an aura of absolute death, the air shimmered as he drained the area around him with a high level [Energy Drain], taking in the mana from Cucumber, the world and from the souls of the disincarnated.

His [Energy Drain] was insufficient to pull in my soul but it was enough to exert a certain pressure, making my observation uncomfortable and a little dangerous. If I lost focus, I could be sucked into his aura of effect and devoured.

I glanced down as Cucumber engaged the Devourer in a physical and magical battle, peppering him with a barrage of [Bone spears]. It had little effect as the Devourer's [Energy Drain] stole the power of momentum from bone spears along with the mana contained within them before they struck his rapidly cast [Mana Shield].

This could be a long dragged out battle or a short battle. When Liches fought, their battles lasted for seconds or centuries, depending on their relative power and the strength of their armies. Cucumber couldn't use his most potent weapon against the Devourer, as pumping out an army of lesser troops would just provide the Devourer with tasty snacks.

“HE MUST DIE.” The Devourer shouted, launching an empower [Fireblast] at Cucumber. Cucumber dove to avoid the blast and fired bone spears upwards to counter the secondary [Fire Blast].

The bones exploded half way to the Devourer. Neither were making much progress in injuring each other. In a battle of mana, the first to blink would suffer.

That was when the various groups finished their group projects and unleashed them on the distracted Devourer who was fixated on taking down Cucumber and eating me, mind, body and soul.

The fire mages had pooled their power into their teacher, a Skeletal Lich, who used their collective mana to create a phoenix, a powerful creature of living flame, capable of reforming from a single spark. A meter tall creature with flaming wings giving it a wingspan of several meters. It moved quickly and left a trail of ephemeral fiery brightness in it’s wake. It was beautiful and deadly, a dangerous opponent for any undead to deal with.

The water mages summoned a Water Elemental known for it’s versatility of attacks and general slipperiness in battle. A crude looking thing in the shape of an oversized man, measuring 3 meters in height with a blobby distorted appearance, looking more like a watery marshmallow man than anything fierce.

The earth mages summoned an Earth Golem, which could grow by absorbing nearby earth, known for extreme toughness and might. It was large, being 5 meters tall and weighing tonnes, it’s form large and blocky in the shape of an overweight human. It had slow lumbering steps.

The air mages created/summoned a Wind Sprite, a creature of thought and air, capable of incredible stealth and high damage given time. It flickered in and out of sight, being visible for a fraction of a second when it paused, with the appearance of a small pixie like creature, a humanoid that measured only thirty centimetres in height, with sparkly wings. It had great momentum but weak stamina, capable of covering great distances in seconds but needing to pause for a second to recharge.

The bone mages created a second Dracolich, this one is a pale imitation of Cucumber but it might serve as a useful distraction. A bone dragon gifted with the combined knowledge of multiple necromancers and liches and fueled by the combined power of several sacrificed bone dragons.

The blood mages created a blood golem, a dangerous creature that grows from every drop of blood spilled, gaining mass and momentum with every kill. It was only about a meter in height and was anemic in it’s appearance, a stick figure of blood, it would be laughable if it wasn’t capable of incalculable cruelty.

The life mages were relegated to a support function, using their physical enhancement spells to beef up the power of the skeletons and skeleton mages produced by the second dracolich. Not a very useful or well thought out of strategy as anything too weak will simply be devoured by the abomination to feed his insatiable craving for power.

The soul mages work together to create a banshee, a single minded creature of the soul that has basically no defence and is dedicated to soul attacks. It is what this world would label a glass cannon. A wraith like creature, female in appearance, garbed in a tattered robe, with sharp eyes and nails.

The lightning mages summon a living thunderbolt in the form of a rolling twisting ball of electricity…

The wind sprite and phoenix combined their might to land a devastating fiery attack upon the Devourer, which hit his mana shield and bled through to roast his flesh.

The Devourer lashed out with a [Hydro blast] to counter the combined [Wind Blast] & [Fire Blast], while his flesh reformed stronger than before.

His counter attack was blocked by a wave of mud shot by the Earth Golem which had joined with the Water Golem to become an enhanced Earth Golem Chimera, capable of blasting mud and rocks. Half it’s body was made up of droopy looking mud and the left side was made up of a mixture of dirt and stone. It looked like a child’s first attempt at a clay man but it’s [Mud Wave] countered the [Hydro blast] nicely.

The lightning spirit tried to strike while the Devourer was distracted with the other elementals but failed to do much lasting damage with it’s [Thunder Strike]. The energy of the thunder strike was instead absorbed by the Devourer. It tried to join with the Mud Golem but fizzled out in the attempt. They can’t all be winners.

The second Draco Lich came along to offer back up, flying behind Cucumber and Cucumber followed the Devourer’s example and ate him instead, gaining more bones and a smaller subsidiary mana heart.

The banshee lashed out with a [Soul Screech] and I took advantage of the distraction to dive into the enemy’s soul.

It was a mess, he was a mess.

I read what little remained of his memories. The memories around his resurrection as a lich were strong but after he started draining life from others, he became increasingly incoherent and insane. Delusions of grandeur, a fracturing sense of self as the souls he devoured and consumed, bled into him and over him. All that was left was the desire to devour and to kill/consume/defeat me.

This would ultimately come down to a battle of souls. He was powerful and unpredictable. While consuming souls in their entirety greatly increases the amount of mana that can be absorbed from a soul and in general, it comes with great costs, the haphazard and single minded consumption leads to a loss of self and insanity.

Soul battles are strange affairs, intimate and deadly, like knife fights. One poor move can lead to death.

As a battle in the abstract, time is incredibly subjective and obscure, the form of battle shifts and changes moment to moment with the opponent’s wills. It’s like fighting in quicksand, while high off mushrooms. Everything is trippy and wanting to pull you under into oblivion.

The first glimpse of his soul self/avatar was that of a golden man on horse leading an army of insubstantial ghosts behind him. They were pale vague impressions of the people he slaughtered on his way towards me, the tastiest meal of all.

My soul self was simply myself, that of my original body, given astral weight, armed with a bone staff.

He charged towards me with his army of shadowy soul victims and I summoned my army of souls to fight his horde. My soul army had been carefully harvested and bribed with reincarnation and or power and sent in to fight on my behalf. A mixture of powerful civilian souls and former Lich souls (currently absent bodies). Through the Lich network, even more of the Liches added their weight by sending Soul Fragments to fight on their behalf.

My army was about a tenth the size of his but each of mine were worth at least ten of his, so we were relatively evenly matched for the moment.

Our respective armies charged at each other, he led his army forward into battle, leading from the front, acting as the tip of the spear of his army's charge, while I stayed at the back of my army as they readied themselves to fight a defensive battle.

The clash of souls was brutal, as our armies tore into each other, he in particular tore a bloody path through my troops, , devouring the souls/soul fragments of those in his path with his army following in his wake.

My army fought to hold the line as the sky darkened and brightened randomly as the ground turned from sand to stone to mud. While my troops lacked in number, they made up for in individual power, they made use of their superior individual power to destroy and devour the shadowy soldiers, overpowering them easily, holding their ground and slowly encircling the weaker enemy troops.

Still the Devourer charged ahead of his flailing, falling army unimpeded by the souls in front of him trying to block his path.

In fact he picked up speed, feeding off my troops to gain power. He was a black pit of hunger, his delusions had it as ‘cleansing’ the wicked and fallen but he was cursing my troops to total oblivion.

We clashed, golden, flaming sword to bone staff.

His strikes were erratic and dangerous, every impact resounding, sending shockwaves through my soul self as he hammered at me with his sword.

He was wild, possessed by madness and hunger, every blow dangerous, he had scored some shallow hits, bleeding me of strength and weakening my soul with even a glancing blow.

He hadn’t even noticed that his army of ghosts had fallen, too preoccupied with attacking me to care about his army of pawns.

He was alone, while my army was still strong, weakened somewhat by our losses but still standing. They hovered around us, feeding me with their soul strength as they could not come close. His aura would not allow weaker souls to exist within his area of effect.

Still I was getting stronger, fed by the souls of my Liches, who in turn had gained strength from the millions they had harvested. His strikes grew weaker as I grew stronger and I started countering his strikes, going on the offensive. He started crumbling almost immediately. He wasn't really suited for a defense, his whole being centered around consumption as offense.

Reports from Liches on the outside had it that his body had been destroyed by Cucumber and co.

His soul had taken a hit as he had to channel mana from his soul into reforming a body to fight and kill on the outside on the material plane. This made him momentarily much weaker than normal and I made the most of the moment to take advantage to go for a final blow to finish him once and for all.

I drove my skull staff, which I had reshaped into a sword and thrust it into his heart, which caused him to scream out in rage, which I promptly ignored. I followed up by pulling out my improvised sword from his chest and swung it at his neck which he no longer had the power to stop. His head fell off and his soul space started to crumble around us, just a little around the edges.

His soul self started fading from existence and I reached out with my soul self, along with my army and we tore his soul space to pieces, devouring it’s strength to feed our own.

The surviving soul fragments would return to their Liches making them stronger, while the fallen foot soldiers would be reconstituted from their soul tablet back ups.

I had lost little of any real importance and gained much in combat experience for my soldiers.

I had taken several semi serious wounds to my soul during the soul battle but they’d heal well enough given time. I’d have to be a bit more careful (paranoid) about potential threats from other necromancers in the meantime but I had substantial practice dealing with rogue proteges so I wasn’t too worried.

Being a true necromancer is not about the power of an individual, it’s about the power of the many, channeled by a powerful few.

He had lost the battle because he had risen too fast and too recklessly. Devourers are powerful individual opponents because they grow more powerful over time consuming everything in their path. Their single mindedness gives them impressive strength but they often go completely insane, with delusions of invincibility and that makes them poor fighters.

Devourers come in many shapes, typified by an insatiable hunger for something. Typically they’re an undead of one sort, feeding off the living, whether that’s a ghoul on flesh, a vampire on blood or a rogue lich with souls. They just keep killing and eating until they are destroyed body and soul.

It had been a short intense battle but I was content that it was over and I could move onto more important matters like my ascension.