Chapter Two: Νεκρα

The next morning, I woke up in my immortal jellyfish body. Needless to say, this is why I prefer to sleep without clothes. Regardless I got out of bed took on my human form again and put on my purple dress from yesterday. It seems today I gained enough mana to change the shape of one magical item or five non-magical items. I decide to change my crown into a ring to make it less conspicuous though once I have enough mana, I’ll gain the ability to give the crown a shapeshifting feature so I can change its shape without mana. It seems the little plants in the cracks in the sidewalk outside Martha’s house are growing full of mana as well. Looks like I’ll be able to increase the speed at which this world begins to produce magic and magical people as well… I didn’t realize it before, but this house is pretty big.

As I was wandering the halls, I found the dining room where I saw Martha eating with a boy who looked to be a bit older than her. It seems this is her older brother. “who’s your friend?” he asks her “Cory… she’s a foreigner so she can say and do some weird things from time to time but don’t mind it.” Seems I’ve been introduced without having to say anything. “Morning”

“Morning.”

“Morning” and like that the introductions are over… or so I thought. “this is my brother, Jeffrey but everyone just calls him Jeffy.”

“I’d prefer you call me Jeffrey”

“Jeffy it is.” He gave a dissatisfied looking smile and moved on with his life leaving after finishing the last bite of his breakfast sandwich. “Don’t mind, him he just doesn’t like how once mom came to school and called him by her pet name for him and now no one takes him seriously.”

“am I meant to take him seriously?”

“nobody else does”

“I guess I won’t either then” I sat down to have breakfast with Martha and noticed something ‘the concentration is very light but there is mana in this food’ it seems my staying the night has caused this food to gain such properties. On our way out I met with her mother for the second time I wasn’t paying much attention the first time I saw her but now that I get another look har her… “huge” I whisper to myself. This is a woman so wide if a half-orc offered her his jacket it’d barely cover one of her shoulders. “hmm?” she might have heard me. “this is your friend you invited to stay with us isn’t it?” she began staring at me as if she was angry with my comment but alas. “it looks like she’s wasting away, I’ll have to make an extra-large lunch for her.” She wants me to be fat too. The joke’s on her I can eat my body weight and manage to lose weight. I gave her a smug smile and replied. “bring it on.” Her eyes seemed to light up with a competitive flare. She clapped her hands and ordered a servant to give me as much food as she usually eats for lunch. I ended up going to school with Martha and a comically oversized lunch on my back. As we walked she began talking to me as if what I told her was a dream. “have you figured out how to write in English yet?”

“Yeah, I ate my own brain three times yesterday.”

“what?”

“when an immortal jellyfish is injured it eats the injured part and regenerates it, since my body is magic, I can also eat parts that aren’t working the way I want them until they do. Like if I wanted to be double-jointed, I just need to eat where I want to be double-jointed with that in mind… though as I’m an invertebrate my bones are an illusion anyway.” I twist my arm the wrong way on purpose to show her and set it back to normal immediately after. She seems like she’s just starting to realize I wasn’t joking; the conversation did happen, and I am probably who I said I am. “Is the air a little thin here?”

“I’m surprised you noticed. The air is not thin here, the air got heavy back at your home, and it’s likely because I spent the night.”

“what do you mean?”

“Usually it’s bad manners in the world I learned magic to let your mana flow out all willy nilly but since this world has none I need to build up the magic of this world in order to strengthen myself faster.”

“will that not have negative effects on nature?”

“oh, most certainly. But it will also make me leave faster. If that is I don’t find who I’m looking for… plus this ring leaks mana even without me doing it myself” I said pointing to my former crown. As we were walking to school we walked over a bridge a bit of a ways away from my impact crater where we found a second impact crater. I took a bit of a leap but I landed beside it to see who could have followed me here. I got my hopes up a bit thinking he sought me out. It was almost disappointing when I found my loyal retainer and chief magical from the last world here. She was a bit charred it looks like her clothes didn’t quite survive entry into the atmosphere either but thanks to her wings it’s not like I have to see anything I’d rather not see. I quickly use one of the minor spells my current mana supply permits for and manifested for her, the clothes I usually saw her wearing in our former world together. Her appearance now is that of a young adult woman about my height in a blazer miniskirt, stockings, collared shirt, and extravagant bow tie. There are a couple of pins here and there over her chest but as her wings are still covering her it’s difficult to tell. Her short silver hair almost makes her look like a boy but her clothes show otherwise. One of her wings is white and feathered like you’d see on a depiction of an angel while the other is black and membranous like you’d see on a depiction of a demon. The eye on the side of the angel wing is black with a gold Iris while the eye on the other side is white with a red iris. She stands and dusts herself off. Before seeing me, realizing her clothes are new and bowing down.

“My lord, at your request I took my time and studied magics until I could find a spell that let me regenerate similarly to how you regenerate and left my studies for whatever other loyal retainers would learn the spell and travel to the ends of time to serve you.” As she spoke the thin layer of earth between her impact crater and mine gave way and water began spilling onto her head. By the time she finished her devout little speech, the water had already reached her chin.

“It seems I didn’t have enough mana to manifest your shoes. So for that, I apologize.”

“no, I apologize for having so many accessories that manifesting all my clothes in such a dry magicless world would prove too difficult even for you after gathering six months’ worth of mana”

“six months? It’s barely been a day.”

“perhaps time moves faster here?”

“indeed” as we were speaking, she was slowly inching her way towards me trying to maintain her bow while keeping her head above water. She also turned red like she just realized something. “you don’t have to keep bowing I know you can’t breathe water like I can”

“right. Thank you for your consideration, and sorry for my ignorance. Of course, you would be able to fully restore my clothes given six months to fill this world with magic.” Lucky for me a good deal of her piercings had survived the crash because for some reason the spell to manifest clothing makes those little jewellery things first and they cost the most mana to make. Regardless I didn’t give all my mana to restore her clothes. I’d lose my humanoid form if I’d gone that far. Also, my crown isn’t a set part of my wardrobe, but I made it anyway because I like the way it looks. As she stepped out of the crater and began dripping river water all over the grass Martha caught up to me and saw her for the first time. “oh yeah, Martha this is Νεκρα, Νεκρα Martha” [pronounced Nekra figured out how to change the words to Greek]

“Hello, my official title is Νεκρα the Necromancer of knowledge”

“she uses necromancy to learn lost magics from long-dead scholars, she held the office of chief mage in my previous world, and it seems she’d like to continue to do so in this world.” She gave a little chuckle and scratched her head like a child when you praise them but Martha seemed a bit too terrified to respond. “oh yeah. The humans in this world might not be too comfortable with your form, mind disguising yourself to look like them.”

“Right, right.” She began thoroughly inspecting Martha, from her eye colour to her fingernails, to her back and everything. Martha seemed uncomfortable to be touched moved and seen from all angles like this so soon after meeting her but soon after Necra was able to figure out how she wanted to look. And cast herself her disguise spell with the remainder of her mana. Her wings retracted into her back her hair changed from a sparkling silver to a pure white. Her fingernails which are usually sharp and thick took a more plastic appearance though they still looked relatively the same. And her eyes changed so both looked white with red irises. “there. How’s that?”

“Good enough.” Martha was still at a loss for words as to what happened. “what shall you have me do master” she said bowing once more onto the ground before me. “I am going to go to school and learn more about this world. You go out secure a source of income for us and find a place where we can be self-sufficient until I build up enough mana for us to use either a locator spell or leave.”

“with all due respect even in our previous world, it took a great deal of time to gather together enough magic to cross dimensions how much magic do you hope to put into this world?”

“enough that we can permanently link the two and come and go as we please”

“as always you are thinking ahead to if he was here once he might return later.” With that, she disappeared, and I was left standing with a dumbfounded Martha. So I took her hand and lead her to the school. “honestly and after you were so worried about being late when we first met”

“eh~?”

Νεκρα’s POV

Today I received my first job from my master in 6 months and I will do it to the very best of my ability. *laughs in Greek* “to think a girl named after death would work so diligently for a girl named after immortality” I laugh to myself over the Irony. As I tend to do. “I can’t wait till the day she dies and reveals to me all of her secrets.” As I walked, I cast a spell to rematerialize my disintegrated shoes from when I entered into this world’s atmosphere. My heels are back. I spent most of the day looking for job applications and the rest of the day in a library trying to decipher how to read this world’s language.

Luckily for me this world’s language shares a few letters with the language I’m familiar with, unluckily for me a good deal of letters either don’t share the same sounds or the sounds have to be made by combining letters. This is troublesome… though at least there’s only one version of a set word so it’s fairly simple but a bit trying to get used to when you're accustomed to a word changing form depending on the meaning. This language requires far more words to make the same point in Greek. I knew as much in the spoken language but it’s just so much easier to write in Greek I never bothered learning to write in the common tongue with the Greek letters.

“This is such a pain…”

“Need a hand?” Jeffy asked as he saw me, though I didn’t know his name yet I’d soon find out. “You seem to be struggling what are you working on?”

“I’m having trouble learning how to write, I’ve been functionally illiterate for too long and now I can’t apply for work” I lied.

“Oh, that’s a bit troubling. Do you already know the alphabet?”

“I’ve got a list of the letters but I’m not sure on the order or pronunciations of the letters”

“ok let me help you with that.” We spent the rest of my time in the library with him teaching me how to spell and the rules of written grammar like how many semicolons are too many semicolons… and that in this world’s language a semicolon is different than in Greek. Regardless I ended up taking an application at the library and he helped me fill it out.

“Alright it looks good but you forgot to put in your phone number”

“I don’t have one”

“…oh… I guess I could just trust you to come in tomorrow starting at noon when I get out of class and in for work. Just work with us temporarily until you can afford a phone.”

“OK I won’t let you down!” and just like that, I got my first Job… I’m still applying for the other places though. also by the end of the day, I had a chart transliteration of the common language of this world to Greek so I don't forget the pronunciations. though I did have to remember a couple of letters by memory.