Professor Abbacus has come to the Nocturnal University, a gigantic floating college hidden within a cloud, to teach technomancy and investigate a series of mysterious explosions.

With two students, a vampire boy named Malcolm and a tree-girl named Kim, Professor Abbacus learns that there are literally thousands of spirits bound within the machines that keep the school aloft, all in terrible agony and screaming for release. Each time one manages to escape a massive detonation ensues.
They must all be replaced by more cooperative entities, a task only Professor Abbacus and his technomancers can perform.

Meanwhile, Malcolm and Kim discover a mysterious cult of necromancers operating in the tunnels beneath the campus, practising human sacrifices. Could they be responsible for the trapped spirits?

Professor Abbacus, Malcolm and Kim must stop these evil mages before they succeed in their diabolical plan – to send the entire Nocturnal University tumbling from the sky and crashing into a population centre below.

Also related to this series:
Nocturnal Academy
Nocturnal Academy 2 - Teacher's Pet
Nocturnal Academy 3 - Immaterial Girl
Nocturnal Academy 4 - The Supernatural Circus
Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine
Nocturnal Academy 6 - The Da Vinci Codex
Nocturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought
Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House
Nocturnal Academy 9 - Mirror Mirror