Saintess Summons Skeletons

The nobles were very noisy as they started to disperse and leave, the story of this unusual last audience would no doubt be spread far and wide through the Empire in a matter of days.

After most of the nobles left, coming down from his dais, he walked up to Sofia, he was back to the more casual tone he had in private. “Saintess, Hero, you may discuss further details with Karin. Welcome to our Red Winds Empire. You will like it here, I am sure.”

He acts like I already accepted. And he included Pareth in the lot. I suppose he will want to grant him citizenship too? I wonder how he might react to the book.

Ah, I should negotiate something for Alith too, in case she wants it.

“I hope so, as well.”

“Worry not, we are, in the end, a militaristic Empire. The law is lenient toward the strong. I will let you get back to Karin, if I may offer some unsolicited advice, ask about the barony of Sivius. Have fun, Saintess.” He raised a hand as if to say goodbye and strolled out of the throne room by a side door, leaving Sofia and her skeletons alone in the chamber.

Well, the knights are still here.

Sofia clapped her hands twice and the Paladin skeletons blew up in a cloud of mist. Of all the things I expected to happen when I came back here.

This wasn’t one of them.

He asked some annoying questions but he still went easy on me. What helped more I wonder? My relations with the Vampires? Vouching from the drinking group? My power?

I can’t tell. This guy is too good at controlling his face and body language. He’s dangerous. I can see why he is the emperor and not someone else.

Let’s get back to Karin then.

She was surprised at how fast the throne room had gone from crowded under the dusk sunlight to empty and almost dark. As if the emperor had timed his exit with the sun’s.

Actually, I’m pretty sure he did. No way this was a coincidence, she thought as she observed her reflection on the polished stone floor. Karin was waiting for her near the door.

“Hey hey, looks like it went rather well, didn’t it?” the goatkin woman hailed with a smile.

“It was alright. The nobles in the audience were meeker than I imagined they would be.”

“Pah, no wonder they were, you strolled in there with a small army of level 180 fighters! Do you have any idea how much of a tall order that would be for them to deal with?”

“Well, yeah, that was the point of the show. Do we get to the formalities right now?”

Karin turned around and started walking away with a light step, hands behind her back, “Might as well, let’s get this over with and get a good meal. What do you want to eat? It’s on me.”

“Honestly I’ll eat almost anything, please choose whatever you want, you should know the place better than me.”

“Sure thing!” Karin led Sofia through the vertiginous corridors of Drakron’s imperial palace. “We’re going to my office right now, you can find me there most days of the week if you ever need me. Once you’re a citizen I can give out nice loans, if you need that. Or share a bottle or two,” she joked, shooting a wink at Sofia while looking back.

“I am not too talented with the bottle, as you have seen. But I’ll keep that in mind,” Sofia answered, winking back. The woman’s enthusiasm was contagious.

“Ah, but you don’t need to worry, if you’re out of action, your knight in shining armor will come to save you.”

Karin’s office wasn’t anything special, a nice square room with a desk in the middle and walls covered in scrolls and books of all shapes and sizes. The single window in the back was open and gave a clear view of the moonlit palace garden.

Looking around, Sofia couldn’t help but ask, “What’s with all the gold coins on the floor?”

“My pet likes to play with shiny things.”

“Your pet?”

“He’s called Mirron, playing outside most likely, you might get to see him if you’re lucky. Now, let’s sit down, this shouldn’t take too long.”

Karin quickly went through the laws of the Empire and what it meant to be a registered citizen. She was clear and concise in her explanations. In short, the laws were mostly just common sense. Innocuous things such as ‘don’t randomly kill people for their skeleton or money’. Two areas, in particular, caught Sofia’s attention: Dungeon Taxes, and War Contributions.

War contributions were straightforward gold bounties on important and or powerful people from Skyreach and the Church, there were also some on wanted criminals that were handled through the same system. There was a whole War-House building to manage this. Karin explained that Sofia could go there and get credit for her Templars and Paladin kills whenever she wanted, even the old ones.

Dungeon taxes were something else entirely. Handled by the adventurers guild, it meant you were expected to give the Empire ten percent of whatever you brought out of dungeons on its territory. Which you could pay directly with what you looted, or the equivalent in gold.

On the flip side, the more you paid through this tax, the more advantages you would get with the guild and other public establishments. Practical things such as skipping lines, price reductions, free repairs for your equipment, access to the guild’s information network, free lessons, or mentoring from high-level officials. But also more questionable advantages like getting a place named after you, earning the right to have a statue of yourself made and displayed in a public place, as well as some other less-than-savory things.

The important part of this was the guild’s information network. Sofia knew from Kuli that they had people all the way out to the other side of Skyreach. They had a lot of information about a lot of things and people. It would be much faster to get the location of unexplored dungeons from them than searching for them blindly.

She had good hopes that with full access to the Empire’s knowledge as well as the Vampire’s, she could both learn more about the corruption in Sovuln and find Chino.

If the girl had survived the attack of the orphanage, Sofia needed to make sure she was safe and healthy. And if not… She would rather not keep bearing false hope.

This was almost the whole reason Sofia accepted the entire deal.

Not only that but she was certain that she would need a wide variety of different and very specific locations to train her venerable physique passive skill. That would make the search much more bearable.

There weren’t more restrictions than that, so Sofia just signed the documents, gave a fingerprint, and got her identity card a few minutes later. Despite not having accepted any kind of employment of anything, her card still said ‘Baroness Sofia’. Karin explained that it was purely to have things be more convenient for Sofia, there was no need to oversee any land or anything with this title which was the lowest of the nobility. It would only open more doors and give her some social standing.

Karin also took the opportunity to finally give Sofia the twenty thousand gold the adventurer guild owed her. A butler came afterward to deliver a black suitcase. It contained a dusty skeleton. Karin gave some commentary.

“It looks like they got this from the palace’s prison. I can think of two or three guys that could have been. The people we sentence to death are left to starve down there if not killed on the spot. How do you summon them? Some kind of ritual or something?”

“Want to watch? It’s very simple. Come out to eat, Bookie.”

Karin watched flabbergasted as the book appeared out of nowhere and jumped inside the suitcase, eating the skeleton whole.

“That… The book you used in… IT WAS A HERO THIS WHOLE TIME? You have a Hero book? A BOOK?!” Karin yelled, pointing at the book now closed and ‘resting’ inside the open suitcase.

“You’re only [Identify]ing it now? It’s a book Hero yes, has a blessing and all, like Pareth.”

“Wait so you’re not the necromancer, it’s the book who…”

“Of course I’m not, I’m a Saintess, remember? But also somewhat of a Necromancer. A Saintess Necromancer. A Saintomancer, if you will,” Sofia remarked with a smile.

“You do know none of what you just said made sense, right?”

“Don’t sweat the details, Karin, nothing about any of my skills make sense. You get used to it.”

“If you say so… Good thing you’re with us now. Your skeletons are nasty fighters. Well, the big one at least.”

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