Hekate felt her new shroud trigger in response to her new mnemonic. Spell. She thought. This isn't a mnemonic. It's a spell. The difference was apparent to her, though she suspected any outside viewer could hardly tell the difference. Her Necromancy spell operated very differently compared to Soul. It was somehow simultaneously both more and less restricting.

Necromancy converted Ki into a different form of energy. That was pretty common. After all, every variety of fire, light, or force shroud converted Ki into the relevant form of energy, whether it be kinetic, thermal, or even magnetic. That was nothing new. But Necromancy differed in that the energy it produced was something that Hekate was almost certain did not naturally exist. It created Mana.

Mana was a strange energy that she could only compare to Ki. Like Ki, it seemed to take influence from the world. But Ki was a natural part of the world. It blended into everything. Mana seemed to warp and change whatever it touched, taking elements and then bending the world around it.

It was a subtle difference, as Ki and Mana both seemed to produce similar results, but the difference made her a bit uncomfortable. Still, it was her shroud, and she was going to use it. Which led back around to her new spell. Hekate wasn't sure if it was because Necromancy evolved from Soul, the fact that Soul had remained as a splinter, that the two domains had some fundamental similarities or a combination of all three, but she was able to convert her Soul mnemonic for a spectral Knight into a spell for Necromancy.

Despite that, the end result couldn't be more different. Once again, Hekate felt weirdly uncomfortable about the Mana she formed into the appropriate shape. It seemed almost alive, shifting the pattern she formed in subtle ways, even adding whole portions she never intended. The final product hardly resembled her original design in any way but the vaguest outline.

The spell triggered, and a ring of glowing green fire took shape in front of her. Symbols that resembled some form of language, but her senses indicated were some natural fluctuation in the Mana, began to ring the edge. Once the circle was fully complete, the fire surged into the middle, and Hekate felt a ripping, pulling sensation from her spell.

The flames peeled back, revealing a sucking abyss that swallowed all light. Absolute terror tore at Hekate's mind for an instant before a shape emerged, pulled through by her spell, and the portal to somewhere else snapped shut. The flames guttered out, and all that remained was Hekate's new Death Knight.

This was the real difference between a magic shroud and every other type. All shroud, be they object, modifier, or creature, tapped into their world of the Pillar and the Starry Sea. Everything they made, everything they drew on, was from here. Not so with Necromancy. Hekate didn't think Mana was from the Starry Sea's universe in the first place. As a result, she could use it to tap into somewhere else. Some place that existed beyond the Starry Sea. The same sort of other places that Outworlders came from.

And this was where the limits came in. Other shrouds just flavored the Ki of the Starry Sea, giving the shrouded control over it. That was why shrouded could use that Ki to affect the world in an endless multitude of ways. Necromancy didn't even make Ki at all. Hekate felt that many of the basic normalities every shroud shared were lost to her new domain. Things like generic manifestation and physical enhancement weren't something she could do.

Mana seemed to beg for specific forms. The general uses for shrouds involved just letting the domain-infused Ki pour out. If you wanted a manifestation, you poured Ki into the world around you. If you wanted physical enhancement, you poured that Ki into yourself. It didn't need any further shaping.

Not so with Mana. Hekate felt that any attempt to use it outside of a rigidly constructed spell would fail. It might even hurt her. In that way, her new shroud was more limited than any other in existence. On the other hand, Necromancy could tap into things others shrouded couldn't even dream of.

Speaking of which, her Death Knight. Hekate looked him over. He was a hulking brute, eleven feet tall and decked out in spiked, flagrantly decorative pitch-black plate mail. Burning emerald flames glared at her through the slits in his full helmet with a suitably elaborate plume of decaying black feathers.

The Death Knight was a prime example of her new domain's strengths and weaknesses. Hekate couldn't make armor like this for her specters. She could shape souls into having armor, but creating metal was beyond Soul's domain. Here, Necromancy let her pull a fully armed and armored warrior from another reality and bind it to her service.

The downside being, she got what she got. Soul used Ki, and Hekate could custom design a Knight to take on any shape or appearance she chose, and she could make any variety of any creature however she saw fit. Soul allowed that kind of freedom. With Necromancy, whatever Summon Death Knight pulled through was what she got. No customization, no control over its form or knowledge.

But, Necromancy was definitely what she needed right now. Since her shroud evolved, Hekate could feel that her reserves had essentially doubled. Despite that, if she had been relying on Soul, she could have never made enough specters to handle the number of monsters Caeden told her were coming their way.

Luckily, summoning was relatively cheap. Since Hekate wasn't creating a construct from scratch but instead pulling it from shroud knows where, it cost a lot less. Hekate could create an army orders of magnitude larger than she could have ever managed previously. Which, again, was incredibly lucky. Because she would need a massive army in about four minutes.

"Ok, the little test worked." She muttered to herself. "Time to go big or go home." Clapping her hands together, Hekate once more tried to pull a mnemonic up from Soul and convert it into a spell. Once again, her new necromantic Mana latched onto the idea eagerly, with the same borderline sentient glee she had noted from her first attempt.

The process took a few long moments, as this mnemonic involved much more than the last. Finally, the conversion appeared to be complete, and Hekate felt her new power settle into place.

"Ok," She shook out her arms, loosening up. It did nothing to make the spellcasting any easier, but it helped her relax a little. "Here goes."

"Summon Undead Army."

Just as before, a circle of green fire formed with Mana symbols ringing its length. However, whereas the last circle had been only five feet in diameter, this one was over a hundred. In fact, it was several hundred feet across. Hekate felt Mana flow from her in a tide, much like it did whenever she used Spectral Army before. The difference in the drain was notable. Spectral Army took nearly everything she had; summon Undead Army took just over a quarter of her new limit, which made it a little over half the price of Spectral Army.

Another yawning abyss opened, and her shroud pulled a hundred new summons through. She now had a full complement of Undead Soldiers and two more Death Knights in her service. She could feel the bindings in place that held them to her will as their summoner.

The new Death Knights were armored in the same fashion as the first, though the weapons were different. Hekate found she had no control over the specific armaments of what she summoned. What she pulled was what she got. She couldn't help but wonder if a more specific summoning was possible to pull exactly what she wanted, but that would have to wait for later.

Her first Death Knight wielded a massive two-handed battle axe while another had a spear of similar length, and the last one carried a sword and shield. Each towered over her with their undead, unnatural bulk. The Undead Soldiers were more lightly armored with open-faced helmets and chainmail, with only a breastplate, shin, and arm guards instead of full plate.

Open helmets let her see her new soldiers in the flesh for the first time. It was a suitably gross and horrible sight. The easiest ones to look at were the soldiers that were just skeletons held together by magic. Empty sockets stared back at her blankly. Just as many of her force were still in the process of decaying away, strings of rancid flesh clinging to magically reanimated bones and sinew.

Every soldier had the same weapons, unlike the Death Knights. They carried what looked like impractically long spears over twenty feet in length with short swords at their hips and shields on their back. Hekate couldn't help but notice that all of her summons were extremely clean. None of the animated corpses were infested with bugs or insects that normally came with dead flesh, and their armor and weapons were rigorously cleaned and maintained.

Last of the group was the scant ten Undead Archers that were her only long-range support for this battle. They wore light leather armor created from some kind of black hide. Hekate wasn't sure if the armor was dyed or if the creature it came from had naturally black skin. Each carried a longbow as tall as the archer who wielded it. It seemed she had received markmen instead of archers trained to fire in a volley like what would accompany most armies.

Hekate wasn't exactly a tactical genius, so she wasn't sure whether that would be a positive or a negative against a monster hoard, but it was what she had, so she'd just go with it. Mentally, she pulled on her connection to the three Death Knights, calling them over to her.

"Ok, do you guys understand me?" She asked, looking between the three. They all nodded. "Well, that's a relief. I was pretty sure it would work like that, but I did just pull all of you from another fucking dimension, so that was kinda a crap shoot, you know?"

The axe-wielder nodded, and she felt a sense of commiseration from him through the summoning bond. The other two rolled their flaming eyes. She could almost hear them. …Ametuer.

"Oh, so you fuckers want to be sassy with me, now, do you?" She glared, crossing her arms. "I can send you two back and call up some nicer knights if that's what you want."

Their flaming eyes expanded, and they both rapidly waved black, spiked gauntlets back and forth, projecting extreme apologies. Internally, Hekate grinned. She had just confirmed something she felt through the bond but wasn't sure about. The undead liked being here. They enjoyed existing in her world. Only the Death Knights had fully formed consciousnesses, but all of them wanted to be here.

That was another difference between these undead and her specters. The specters might have construct bodies, but the minds that went with them were fully formed and completely intact. Hekate still didn't fully understand how that worked, but she created the equivalent of a human consciousness for her specters. The undead had a hierarchy with intelligence, memory, and personality growing at every step.

Fortunately, she wasn't making the undead equivalent of a brain-dead cabbage. Her Undead Soldiers weren't stunning conversationalists, but they knew how to fight. They had a limited range of emotions and a short memory that lasted only a few days at most, but they were fully capable. The Death Knights were at the same level as a normal human.

"Ok, since you two are done giving your summoner sass, let me get you up to speed and confirm a few things. First, I summoned you all because there is a several hundred strong group of monsters that will be here in a few minutes. I need you to kill them. Pretty simple. Now, what I need to confirm is whether or not you can communicate with and direct the troops." She laid it out.

Axe and spear tucked their weapons into the crook of their elbows and looked contemplative while sword just crossed his arms. They seemed to confer for a moment, using some undead telepathy that Hekate could feel with her shroud since it was based on necromantic Mana. She felt she could tap into it if she saw it some more, but it was foreign to her right now.

After a moment, the three nodded to each other, and axe turned to her, giving a thumbs up and then an ok hand sign. Apparently, he had been designated the leader. Or at least the one who got to deal with her.

"Awesome. You guys handle that; I'm going to see about summoning you some better help." She waved before turning back toward the cave. Before she could, axe made several gestures to get her attention.

"What?"

He spread his legs and held his hands in front of himself while grasping the air, then started walking in a weird fashion. Hekate thought it looked kinda…lewd.

"Look, I don't know what you all think is happening here-oh!" The image connected. "You want horses!"

He snapped his gauntleted fingers before pointing at her.

"Alright, I'll see what I can do. I actually might have a template to work off of." That only seemed to confuse them, so she waved them off to get ready for the fight. She had undead steeds to make.

{}

Hekate watched proudly from atop the sandstone formation as her army tore through the monsters with ease and efficiency. It had been a little rough at the start, she would admit. Her summons had no knowledge of the monsters of this world, and Hekate hadn't had the time or knowledge base to give them a comprehensive rundown of what kind of monsters they might come up against.

However, that rough period ended quickly as her Death Knights worked to suss out effective strategies that the undead could employ. Here she saw the benefits of their mental communication, as combat tactics were relayed across the field instantly.

After that point, it was just a slaughter. Undead didn't feel pain, and they never got tired. Their minds were just a little bit off from a human's. It made them perfect for repeating the same tactics over and over again in an endless loop as more waves of monsters flooded in. Hekate was depleting the local monster population on a level Caeden couldn't even dream.

The more she thought about it, it was an interesting juxtaposition. Caeden's strongest asset was probably his ability to deal massive bursts of damage. It was his most notable feature. Sure, he had high defense and could take a beating, and his thorn trick gave him a lot of stamina on the offense side, but his instant damage was massive.

Hekate ended up on the opposite end of the spectrum. Undead were amazing for a long, drawn-out engagement. She couldn't lay on the pain like Caeden could, but she could last much, much longer. That's not to say she couldn't hit hard. Hekate watched as a Death Knight carved a path of devastation through the monsters with fire-coated swings of his battleaxe from the back of the Nightmare she had just summoned. But they didn't hit near as hard as Caeden could.

That was fine by her. Hekate didn't mind if everyone had a niche, so long as she actually had something to contribute besides support. Her specters had been too flimsy and too costly, and they just weren't effective without using infused weapons. She could get more undead for far cheaper, and they came pre-equipped. The weapons they used weren't infused by Starry Sea standards, but the otherworldly, pitch-black metal cut monsters just as well.

Her specter's customizability meant they weren't completely useless. She could create a specter specifically suited for a situation in a way the summons just couldn't compare to. But for a simple, all-out battle like what her team seemed to encounter so often, the undead won at every turn.

"Oh, I am going to kick some ass when I get back to school!" She grinned evilly. No one could say she was the weakest on the team anymore. She had a fucking magic shroud, and she was going to show it!

{}

Another failure. It was unsure what had occurred. It had to leave the target's vicinity for an extended period and had failed to leave an observation drone. An oversight on its part. It had not predicted any significant developments from the injured target and the unimportant lackey.

Now, that unimportant lackey was slaughtering waves of monsters using an army of beings that it had never seen before. In fact, these beings were not even in the Creator's database. They were neither shroud constructs nor monsters, and they operated based on a foreign energy source.

Truly, an unexpected development. It would have to fall back to the original plan. At this point, direct confrontation was inevitable.