Saintess Summons Skeletons

The next morning, Sofia left Mountain Hall and walked north, regrew her wings with [Heal Undead], and flew into the mountains far enough to be out of sight. The mountains were still green and the weather warm near the volcano despite being in the middle of winter. Sitting on a boulder, she called the book. It felt quite natural contrary to an usual system provided skill. She felt like it used her natural vein structure as a mana conduit rather than having it be forced into shape. Somewhat like her demon form skills but not quite like it either.

That has to be why the system gives no description still. Alright, I need to figure this out.

Now blessed, the book could open. Sofia traced her fingers around the polished bones of the cover, and flipped it open. More mist? She narrowed her eyes. She couldn’t even see the pages, it was all mist and glaring sunlight shining straight to her face. Closing her eyes, she looked at the book through her mana feeling senses, the book in itself was quite faint, but it was clearly trying to do something. Many thin tendrils of mana extended from the book to her ring, brushing around it like it wanted to devour it.

Does it want… Skeletons?

There weren’t really any skeletons in the ring beside Pareth’s original body. She had a few spares but they were in her armor’s storage. Can I give it the Paladins? She took out one of the dead paladins, body still hot and bleeding inside a busted armor.

The book moved on its own, jumping out of her grasp, launching itself at the corpse. Absorbing the body in its mist bit by bit. In a few seconds the book jumped back to her hands, shivering. Hmm, yes, corpse eating book, of course. Hey, at least now I can empty my ring.

She was more than happy to dump all the other Paladins, Templars, and their equipment for the book to devour, and it happily did, leaving nothing behind. Am I weird for feeling like I can read the book’s mood from how it shakes? By now the wild sunlight escaping from the book had mostly died down but there still was only mist in there, no tangible page in sight. Plunging her hands in the mist felt like searching through thick water, but there was nothing she could touch in there.

One of her observations was that the number of tendrils extending to her ring decreased by one every time she fed it one of the ‘skeletons’. But there were still two tendrils and only Pareth’s first body in there. There’s still something it wants to eat?

Entranced by her new pet, Sofia took out the contents of her ring one by one, searching for the thing her precious book wanted to consume. The book started going crazy when the chest containing her precious ingots came out. What, it wants gold? The tiny bit of Mithril? Let’s see, I guess, money is just that…

She opened the chest and to say that the book dived in there would be an understatement. It paid no attention to the mundane ingots, instead gulping down the Dragon-forged Midenicite Ingot. That’s what it wanted? I kinda wanted to make a nice item out of that one…

She brought up the old identifying prompt of it.

[Primal Midenicite Ingot] : Forged a hundred times in Dragon fire, this ingot of pure compressed Midenicite is completely impermeable to mana.

Item level : 0. Grade : Flawless.

Why would it need this, that’s no skeleton? But I guess it did eat the armor and weapons too… Well, that’s it, I’m not giving up on Pareth’s skeleton, so what’s next?

What was next was… The book jumped back into her arms, closed itself… And slept?

For ‘a book’ and something ‘without a soul’ it sure feels very alive. Now I wait?

Sofia tried with all her might to apply Alith’s new philosophy of not asking too many questions about nonsensical things.

Waiting for the book to finish it’s digestion nap, she walked with it in hand around the volcanic mountains. Forget ‘a’ volcano, every mountain here is a volcano, that’s crazy. Some places had lava flowing through the valleys, leaving trails of destruction tearing through the verdant vegetation. Sofia even spotted monsters with sparsely scaled red hide she recognized at first glance. They were having a great time lazing in the flowing lava. Salamanders.

They hadn’t seen her yet, Sofia jumped up on a large tree’s branches and observed them from afar. After a while, the book slightly opened by itself, spewing a thin curtain of mist down the tree. “Look who just woke up, slept well?”

As if on cue, the book completely sprang open. It now had five real, tangible yellowed parchment pages showing up from inside the mist, with a few things on them.

On the first page was the drawing of a single soldier holding a bow, and above it the number ‘100’. Is that... The soldier I killed on the gate? It's one of the corpses it consumed. What about the next page?

The second page was filled by the glorious illustration of twenty-five fully armored skeletons holding swords and shields. Above them was a higher number, '5000'. Paladins? Ooooh I very much like where this is going.

Eager to see more, she turned the page. It was quite underwhelming, being a group of the same Paladin skeletons, but only seven of them. The number read '1400'. The other page was full so this is overflow? Considering how the number changed that has to be the mana cost. A Soldier costs 100 and a Paladin 200, nothing too surprising, that's quite cheap.

But this means the next page... A wicked smile showed up on her face. The drawings on it were exactly what she had hoped for after seeing the rest. Templars!

On the fourth page were three heavily armored skeletons holding shining greatswords, touching tips toward the sky. Above was the number ‘30000’. Hold up, a Templar costs fifty times more than a Paladin? Maybe I guessed wrong.

The Soldier is there, every single Paladin, the three Templars too. Then what’s left for the last page has to be the ingot.

Looking at the number on the last page, she sighed. Five hundred thousand? Yeah that has to be the mana cost… What even is this thing?

Dead center at the middle of the page, was a tiny but exquisite drawing, the size of a fingernail. Looking closer, it was a thin, fierce-looking, minuscule, humanoid skeleton with sharp claws, two tiny horns and three pairs of leaf-like skeletal wings sprouting from its back.

“Some kind of miniature ogre?”

Five hundred thousand mana for such a small skeleton is a steep cost, not to mention the ingot sacrificed to make it… I won’t be using this one anytime soon.

By now she had a pretty clear idea of what the book did. Eat stuff, summon them back as skeletons. She was already busy imagining all the possibilities. Not only that, but with the description of the Knowledge blessing mentioning getting ‘one additional skill’, she could bet on the skeletons knowing some skills already even without it. Could a Dragon skeleton breathe fire?! Does a bird skeleton fly?

Using the host skeleton’s abilities was something Pareth couldn’t do at all so that was a large difference.

If my assumptions about this are correct… The Orator really doesn’t joke around when he makes skills. Though that’s also thanks to me getting good keywords in the first place.

Now how do I get the skeletons out of the book, do I send the amount of mana on the page inside of it? She sent 5000 points worth of mana directly to the book, and nothing happened.

The book closed then reopened, showing only the one page with the many paladins, it was stretching toward Sofia’s hand, so much that the page started ripping. Do I need to tear the page? That doesn’t feel right. Does it mean they are single use then? That’s much worse than I hoped.

“Here goes nothing,” she sighed as she lightly pulled on the extended page. To her surprise, the page didn’t tear. She instead pulled out a misty incorporeal copy of the page. As soon as it left the book’s mist, the ghost page sucked in her mana. So it was the mana cost! And the page is still there!

The mist flowing out of the book was sucked in by the page that escaped out of Sofia’s hand before exploding, covering the surroundings in a thick golden fog. When the fog receded, Sofia was surrounded by a squad of kneeling human skeletons in shining golden armor. They all identified as the same thing.

[Solar Paladin - Lv. 130]

Above each skeleton’s head she could see the faint outlines of a status window.

Health : 7500/7500

Stamina : 7500/7500

Mana : 3600/3600

Lifetime : 7792s/7800s

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

She had spent so long reading stories of mighty Paladins fighting in unison under the lead of the high-priests, dreamt so many times of being a powerful necromancer leading armies of undead.

This was the best of both worlds, and she could even reuse the filthy corpses of her enemies. The killing part of her revenge hadn’t been as cathartic as she had hoped, but in a way, this was.

To watch the High-Priests perish under the blows of their own Paladins. Oh the irony.

This is what you get when you go after those I care for.

I will hunt you.

I will crush your hopes.

I will stamp out your Faith.

I will destroy your very God if I have to.

She couldn’t wait.

But for now, she had to keep her priorities straight. She didn’t know what it would take to kill a god, but if one thing was certain, being level 130 was far from enough.

“Rise, my soldiers! It’s time to hunt some oversized fire lizards!”

Sofia felt like this would have been an awesome line before attacking a mad Dragon. Alas all she could afford was a pack of wild salamanders. For now.

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