Saintess Summons Skeletons

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - First step of the Shadow gathering realm :

The primeval void was born of the universe’s first shadow.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Shadow gathering realm :

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Starting step : A single hit cannot take away more than 99% of your maximum health.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀First step : Become more resilient to explosions (0/50%)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Second step : See in the dark

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Third step : ???

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀???

Current step training method : Damage body through pressure or heat

Complete all steps and gather divine essence to unlock further realms.

Current divine essence (5) :

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Scripture (1)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Aphenoreth (1)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Dread (1)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Sorrow (1)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Ormoncleth (1)

Couldn’t I get that BEFORE I blew myself up?!

Well, it’s a very loaded skill it seems. If each step gives a different effect, and there’s at least a second ‘realm’, that’s at worst seven different effects.

Just the protection against one-hit kills is worth it I would say. Could have survived even the angel’s true bolt if I had that. Maybe. Also it’s a great synergy with the false immortality rune since it heals me back to full health. I could survive three hits that would kill me in a row with this, then the rune, then this again. That is if I start off at full life.

The protection against explosions looks exactly tailored to my bolting needs. And I wouldn’t say no to seeing in the dark, though getting light isn’t that hard anymore.

It still feels a bit underwhelming for now, but that should get better as I complete the steps. They’re merely an alternate way to say level up it looks like.

The more intriguing part is the divine essence thing. But can kind of get it… Aphenoreth and Ormoncleth must be the reason [Blessing of the Deep] says (2/4), Scripture is because I’m the Saintess, Sorrow is because I’m half an Apostle. But Dread? I got that by killing the demon in the tower I guess?

He was a ‘Son of Dread’, but it’s not like I inherited anything from killing him. Or so I thought… Does that mean I’ll have to kill Saints and Demons to level this up? It doesn’t say how many of those Divine essences I need so perhaps I already have enough. In fact I doubt many people could have that many.

I imagine that Oracles and Gods themselves have divine essence too. Since there’s a little (1) after each essence it stands to reason that I could get more somehow.

Well. One more thing to train.

I wanted to clear the golem dungeon in the desert but I don’t know if that’s the best idea anymore.

Sofia took some more time in the calm of her new home to organize her future plans.

Her revenge against the Church could wait, although that displeased her. She could not go against the Oracle for now, let alone Scripture himself. How does one even go against a god? That being said, she could still try to get rid of the high priests. She was of the mind that she should try that before going for the next filter. But that would depend on whether they were above level 250 or not, which Astelia did not know.

She had also learned a bit more about the current state of Sovuln from the Vampire, and it wasn’t looking too good for her. The corrupted monsters were still swarming every corner of the kingdom. She said Sofia shouldn’t try to get in there before passing the fourth filter and getting to level 250, even with the ability to fly. So Saria would have to wait a bit more.

These were her two aspirations and the verdict was the same for both, she was too weak.

Pareth had stats way above his level, but his skills were stuck due to her level being lower. That was why in fights his [Chains of the four seals] and [Flying shields of light] kept breaking. And some of her own skills were starting to lag behind too.

So she took out a notebook and started writing a checklist of things she could do in the short term to improve or to further her goals.

-Level up to 199 (can wait)

-Train skills (Focus on Venerable physique and finding way to upgrade armor)

-Find a flying mount for Pareth (Roc?)

-Find T.L.D.R and trade the letter for something good (Don't forget to use Vampire card as introduction)

-Kill high-priests

-Learn more about the corruption in Sovuln

-Go fetch the body of ‘Zerilda’ in Thrombber hive (Maybe good loot? Potentially strong skeleton.)

-Verify hypothesis on ‘Sinner’ church members

-Fill up skeleton book

-Collect divine essence ???

-Search for more pieces of the Saint set

-Find an alternative to glass vials for potions

“Hmm. That’s a lot already. And I should always expect to have more bounty hunters coming for me from now on.”

Sofia had flown back to the small crater she made when testing the rune the first time. She sat down and took ten minutes to mark herself again. With that done, she repeated the same experience.

The effect to prevent one-hit kills didn’t even activate because the casting of [Angel’s bolt] had already been gnawing at her health before she could throw it at her feet. Her world turned black and soon she was back to full health amidst a sea of smoke and blue flames once again.

I know there are no villages nearby but I’m still worried someone will hear the explosions. Oh well. Also this is great at digging, this hole is already several meters deep. How’s the skill progress?

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ :

First step : Become more resilient to explosions (0.389%/50%)

Are you serious?! This was the absolute most ‘through pressure or heat’ I could take. In fact I couldn’t even take it. And that’s not half a percent?!

This is going to be long…

Since Sofia had to repeat this process at least a hundred times she wanted to find a way to make it more useful than randomly exploding the ground.

So she flew back to the Thrombber hive.

The process was quite simple : carve the rune, run up to a Thrombber, [Angel’s bolt] in hand with Pareth in tow, blow up. Pareth would shield her from potentially collapsing tunnels, [Graveyard of the righteous]’s skeletons would phase her out of the collapsed zone. Get out of the mine, regenerate mana, repeat.

There was still the question of whether Pareth could handle the tons of collapsing stone, so just in case he couldn’t she would cast the graveyard before going in with the bolt. Like this she could get some experience, clear up the dungeon, and level up her two new skills all at the same time. She also wanted to keep intensively destroying her bone armor and abusing [Angel’s bolt]. That was in hopes she would manage to either upgrade them thanks to [Mana manipulation] as Astelia had explained, or get to know them well enough to be fine with deleting them. Freeing up a skill slot or two could be useful.

Even better, this will help [Sanctity] level up too. I don’t have the luxury of having a huge health pool so I have to pay extra attention to leveling defensive skills.

With the plan laid out, she returned to the mines and got to exploding.

A full day of efforts in the mines amounted to not much.

She had killed a total of sixteen Thrombbers, ten of them lower than her own level, the rest not giving enough experience to get her a single level up from 180. The process of finding a monster, blowing up, and coming back out, took anywhere from ten to twenty minutes. But the most time intensive parts were the mana regeneration afterwards which took about twenty minutes, followed by the carving of the rune. With all that taken into account, she could only do the thing once per hour. And it was getting worse as the mines and tunnels were starting to collapse even in places she didn’t explode in.

She looked at the results of a day of hard work.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ :

First step : Become more resilient to explosions (6.109%/50%)

“This isn’t gonna work… the diminishing returns are already kicking in, at this rate I’d be lucky to reach 10% tomorrow, and it’ll be even worse after that.”

This isn’t an easy skill to train…

At least [Sanctity] went up nicely. Up to 25% damage negation.

‘[Sanctity] reached level 45’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 46’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 47’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 48’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 49’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 50’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 51’

If I maximize both [Sanctity] and the first step of VPPV that’ll be two 50% resistances against explosion. I doubt that’ll add up to 100% though. Most probably it’ll reduce by 50% twice effectively leaving 25% of the damage through for my armor and body to take.

Wait, does my armor benefit from the other skills? Don't believe so… Then it’ll be 25% of whatever remains after going through the armor.

Sofia walked to the entrance of the mines, it was still the same dungeon. “The dwarf diviner has to have died against the boss. Maybe I ought to stop before I anger the thing too… But I should be close to a level up, I could just do one mo-”

Her monologue was cut short by a wave of mana crashing into her, she only noticed it at the last second.

The scenery warped and shifted to a dark crypt lit by a singular light stone. In Sofia’s vision two images went by one after the other. First, the sight of two persons, a tall woman in pink plate armor supporting a middle-aged sweating paladin, they didn’t wear their helmets and held no weapons. Second was Pareth’s back as he appeared before her.

And then her bracelet activated, eight thousand mana points escaped her reserves, and she was back in front of the mines, alone.

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