Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia was flying over the lazy volcanoes in the jungle north of Skyreach.

This one looks about right, I think?

It was a very small active volcano and currently its lava flows were unimpressive semi solid black sludge trails running down its sides. Oh, right, the poison gas ring, that was a thing that volcanoes do. I’m rather lucky I didn’t have any trouble with that last time. The book did say it could be very dangerous.

Well well. Time to summon the High-Priest.

Sofia landed near the middle of the lava trail’s length, it was still flowing, if quite slowly. Mostly black crust, doesn’t look that hot even… But the burning plants nearby tell another story.

The book appeared in her hand like it had always been there and opened by itself, the pages flipping to reveal the one Sofia wanted. This was a neat trick she had been practicing during her flight. The book actually somewhat listened to orders much like any other skeleton, but it was quite limited in the actions it could take. She could also use [Heal undead] if it got damaged, which was entirely useless as it repaired itself when re-summoned.

More than half of her mana disappeared into the page she ripped off of the book. The usual mist spread out and converged until it had become the unimpressive white robed high-priest’s skeleton. No weapon. I guess the Magisterium has it if there’s one. Well, whatever.

“Do you have a sustained and precise healing spell? Answer with a thumb up or down.”

Of course he does. As expected of a high priest.

“Alright, when the lava starts burning me, you heal my legs. Only the legs. If you’re about to run out of mana, signal for Pareth to take me out of there before.”

Should all be recognizable orders with how I broke them up.

“Next, after I cut myself, you must heal the bleeding. Nothing else from that injury. Only focus on the cut veins and arteries. Can you do that?”

Thumbs up again.

“Alright, we’re all set then.”

Sofia sat on a rock near the lava flow, she could just dangle her legs on the side and they would touch the atrociously hot stream of molten stone. Her mithril dagger appeared in her hand.

“Hmm. That’s the hard part now. I think as long as I don’t go too deep and focus on slicing horizontally that should do it. Better if I can go between two vertebrae but I can’t really aim for that. Hard enough to cut my own back…”

Lifting her robe, she put the tip of the dagger against her spine. The wings are getting in the way. “Somewhere under the waist should be fine, right?”

She was no stranger to self-inflicted pain by now, and she didn’t think twice about it when casting [Angel’s bolt] but somehow when holding a blade against her skin, there was still a bit of a mental block.

She had one hand on the blade, to aim it and to act as a stopper to make sure it wouldn’t go too deep, and a hand around the handle. Pareth was holding her by the shoulder so she wouldn’t fall.

Do what must be done. Come on now…

The blade sliced through her spine like it was thin air. She had no need to check if it worked, the difference in feeling was instantaneous. She groaned from the pain as the high-priest skeleton moved closer to follow the order to stop the bleeding.

Sofia stored the dagger and wiped the sweat off her forehead.

“I really didn’t like doing that… Well, it works perfectly though. No more leg pain, or any feeling really. That’s why studying anatomy is useful. Ah, I should remove the boots first.”

Now barefoot and paralyzed from the waist down, sitting on a rock on the side of a weak lava flow, she had Pareth help her to get her feet in the lava.

It was harder than expected, and Pareth had to use his weapon to break the surface crust before she could dip her toes in there. The reaction was swift, her feet were melting and almost the entirety of her legs caught on fire, only stopped by the robe’s anti-fire function.

Sofia looked at the high-priest skeleton, “Alright, do your job.” And so he did, channeling a sustained healing-spell to her legs.

“Perfect!”

Her legs were like infinitely molting snakes, new skin appearing as the previous burned or melted away. I hope he can sustain that for a long while.

“And now to eat.”

She had been fascinated by the spectacle of her feet painlessly disappearing and regrowing for a few seconds but she was already getting hungry. The priest’s healing spell, like most others, used a lot of her own energy to reconstruct her body. As such, if she wanted to survive the intense sustained healing for more than a few minutes, she absolutely had to eat a lot to replenish her body’s reserves. The high priest held for almost half an hour before his mana reserves were faltering. Pareth pulled her out. After continuing to heal her legs until there was no more lava sticking to them, the priest also healed her spine. Finally giving her control of her lower body again.

Sofia had never eaten that much in her life. It was oddly satisfying to be able to stuff her face so much and be able to keep going, she was usually not a big eater for someone her size. Her stockpiles were severely hurt. I still have enough for at least twenty more times though… I really bought a lot of food in Hooasow. The cakes in particular were incredible! I can’t believe you can make food that sweet! Ah. But I only had two of them… Aaaaaah…

Besides the shortage of cake, the results from this half hour were very encouraging.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ :

First step : Become more resilient to explosions (11.002%/50%)

‘[Sanctity] reached level 52’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 53’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 54’

‘[Sanctity] reached level 55’

“That’s almost as much as what exploding sixteen times gave me. Looks like sustained damage is the way to go… I should have realized that when I was holding the bolts’ casts before. I just never checked. Dumb oversight.”

I like this way of training much better though. Dying with the rune is… unsettling.

What is my body anymore? There’s nothing left of who I was a few months ago. Not a single hair. All exploded, and burned, and regrown, from the rune and the healing spells… Weird.

But I’m still myself so I guess it’s fine.

In that half hour of pigging out and burning alive, her mana had gone back up to full. By now she had a pretty accurate idea of how much her mana regeneration was.

It was of about thirty-one points per second, plus about three more from the storage ring’s 5% boost and the Saint set’s two piece bonus effect. It would only take her about forty minutes to go from completely empty back to full.

The thing is it doesn’t ever climb back up during battle because of all the sustained costs. Even the armor which is pretty mana efficient uses some to just be there and some more every time it needs to repair.

Could be different with the right setup if I fight inside of the sun rune ritual.

“But the mist skeletons can’t regenerate mana at all… Disappear already,” she ordered, giving a head sign to the skeleton standing on the side. His bones became mist and he disappeared.

But it wasn’t like the book could absorb that mist, it had to build it back up by itself, and the high priest was very mist-expensive. Sofia believed the ‘mist cost’ to be proportional to both the size and power of the summoned skeleton. The maximum amount of mist the book had also seemed to have increased a bit after her huge level boost, but it was hard to tell. After all there was no clear way to tell what quantity of mist was held inside the book aside from watching at what rate it flowed out of the edges.

She could only wait until the priest was good to go again. She occupied the downtime by giving Pareth orders on how he should fight alongside each type of summon from the book.

When it was time, she summoned the high-priest again and started another lava bath feeding frenzy.

Midway through the day she had to change rock because the wind had turned, blowing the smoke of her burned legs right in her face, and that was pretty much the only interruption. There were some low level monsters in the jungle, mostly monkeys and birds, but none dared come close to Pareth.

This circus went on for a long while, she had to stop with the skill at around 40% completion because she was starting to run low on food, and the diminishing returns were starting to make progression too slow.

I’ll finish it off by holding my spell version of angel bolts as long as possible. Should work well, I won’t explode myself again if I don’t need to. But I guess I’ll still use the rune for healing. It’s way cheaper.

My back is sore and I can’t stand the sight of any more food for today…

This new training method was a bit slower and required more concentration, but she still pushed through until the first step was finally complete. Nothing of note happened, the skill’s description was updated and that was it.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ :

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

Second step : Become able to see in the dark (0/100%)

Third step : Breathe anywhere

Fourth step : ???

Current step training method : Explore dangerous environments while in low light or total darkness.

‘[Sanctity] reached level 56’

…

‘[Sanctity] reached level 73’

Probably still won’t save me from an [Angel’s bolt] blowing up right in my face but for everything else it should help a lot.

The second step will be a very different thing to train. But the third step is quite enticing. Too bad the order isn’t reversed, I think the ocean’s depths would make for a good training place for the second step. If I could breathe there.

That will also make it much more comfortable for me when flying at high altitudes.

Can’t wait!

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