Saintess Summons Skeletons

The giant spiked boar looked back, turning its massive body, it faced the Black Primus Sofia was hiding under. Its snout came down, it was sniffing the ground, slowly combing the area. Sofia was just about ready to forget the warning about space magic and return to Zangdar with her ring. But she noticed something, now that the monster’s face was but a few meters away. It was blind. Both his eyes were decrepit black holes full of rot, for a second she wondered if it might be undead, but she was convinced that it was alive. It was too massive to die of something like a bit of necrosis.

The scars near the monster's empty eye-sockets had long healed, but the eyes were lost. This wasn’t recent. With that, Sofia noticed something else through her mana sense. The monster’s snout was attracting ambient mana. This giant boar used his mana senses to navigate the forest. The weird part was how randomly he searched around, Sofia would have expected to be found much faster if the monster knew she was around.

Its humid snout came so close to the hole Sofia hid in that she could have touched the monster’s tusks. But despite that, she wasn’t detected.

Can he not smell me because the rune cuts off my mana emissions? That’s actually crazy.

But then why did it turn around? Did he smell Pareth? The rat?

Sofia feared the worst when the monster’s tusks prodded the bush Pareth was in, but the monster kept moving, it was still searching.

The big snout stopped moving near a tree’s trunk. It was a normal-looking tree as far as Sofia could tell at first glance. A few meters tall, green leaves, brown bark. But then she focused on her mana senses a lot more to try to understand why the boar stopped there. She almost yelped when she saw the thick streams of mana coursing through the tree get sucked into the monster’s snout.

This ‘normal-looking tree’ had a lot of mana. It had much more mana than she had. If Sofia had to guess, that was at least a few hundred thousand points worth.

And then everything changed. The tree uprooted itself in a single move and ran in the opposite direction. It was very fast, much faster than Sofia could run with her current body, scurrying away, swerving around the other trees. Sofia had the perfect angle to see the monster tree flee. The titan boar wasn’t about to let its meal get away. It stomped a hoof on the ground, the tremor was so strong Sofia hit her head against the root above her from the shock.

Large spikes like the ones on the boar’s back erupted from the soil in a line. The one closest to his hoof was small, the next was taller, and the one that hit the fleeing tree in the distance was at least thirty meters tall and several meters thick at its base. The tree was impaled atop the large spike, bleeding a thick, vibrant red resin. It wriggled more and more, screeching, losing its bark and leaves, until all that was left was a bloody mass of screaming and flailing root-like wooden tentacles.

The spikes all disappeared and the boar charged. Impaling the wriggling mass mid-air before it fell to the ground. The fake tree stopped moving, its corpse hardening, and it started looking like it was made of solid wood again. Did it die? If it wasn’t dead, the sickening crunch coming from the boar’s mouth as it chewed on it after launching it back up to free it from its tusk and catching it in his maw surely finished the job. The monster then continued its course through the forest, as if nothing happened. Every step took it further from Sofia until it completely disappeared into the fog.

Holy skeleton…

First the walls and now the trees?!

This didn’t look like a Phageid though. And it had red blood, Phageids have white blood, as far as I know. So I suppose it’s an actual tree monster? What’s up with trees being monsters? Please stop. I used to like trees…

I’ll wait a bit before moving out.

Sofia walked for an hour through the forest without any major incident, now she couldn’t help but check every tree. There weren’t so many fake ones, but they were there, hidden among the real. She did her best to stay as far away from them as she could. Beyond that, there were some smaller monsters, but most of them fled at the sight of Pareth.

The more worrisome part was the incessant rustling of the canopy far above. When she entered the forest it still felt natural. Now it was more like the leaves were a sea some huge invisible creatures swam in. She could hear them moving.

Whenever the sounds in the canopy got too close, she would hide and stop moving. She had no clue if it actually helped, perhaps the ‘high-level spirit creatures’ Xeros described in the report wouldn’t actually jump out and attack if she kept on moving. But she didn’t want to find out the hard way if they did.

At one point, the skeleton crow on Sofia’s head was the one to warn her of something on her right. She only saw it from afar, through the fog, a huge thing that looked like a tower of black sludge. It silently slid out of her vision, fading in the distance.

If that thing stopped moving and you weren't looking up… It could be easily mistaken for a Black Primus…

Sofia now had the unbearable impulse to check every Black Primus tree to make sure it wasn’t a disguised giant black thing posing as one.

She was still moving forward when the crow pecked at her head again. Sofia didn’t even try to understand and hid wherever she could. But the crow kept pecking at her head. What? The crow only had time to jump off of her head and look at her then in another direction before disappearing in a small puff of smoke.

Oh. Time’s out. I’ll ju- Shit. Summoning the book is space magic, isn’t it? Is that right? No more scouts.

But the bad news was short-lived, as she looked in the final direction the crow had pointed out to her, she saw what had made it act up. A Silversneer.

It’s bigger than I imagined… It’s ugly but actually, it’s reassuring to know what’s what for once. At least it’s not disguised as a damn tree. Now I follow this guy until it takes me to the pond.

The big amphibian monster’s shiny white hide made it very easy to spot and follow from afar. The thing wandered through the forest in search of food.

Sofia watched as the Silversneer spotted and chased some kind of small brown creature, it was very impressive how fast it could run on its short legs. It made an easy meal out of whatever it was he had just found.

She never had a chance to see clearly what the small animals the Silversneer was hunting were, but it was the same species of round brown thing. They hid in holes under the tree roots. It was likely that the hole Sofia had used to hide from the boar had been dug by those creatures. Seeing how the Silversneer devoured them made Sofia almost want to try them too. But now wasn’t the time for hunting and cooking. She did her best to follow the beast without being seen. Considering she also still wanted to avoid attracting the spirits in the canopy, it was an arduous task to keep up with the Silversneer.

Sofia persevered until the light fell. The dark forest’s only sources of light were now the sparse glowing plants growing here and there, attracting many insects. Sofia kept walking in the dark, it was already decent training for her passive skill, its progress percentage slowly climbing up. She focused all her attention on her mana senses, trying hard to keep track of the Silversneer while Pareth made sure they were out of danger. The monster now moved in a single direction unlike earlier.

A second Silversneer appeared out of a bush and joined the first one on its path, then a third, then a fourth. It became a lot easier to keep track of them, but a lot harder to stay hidden from them. Yet, Sofia pulled through, and she finally caught sight of the Silverwater pond. It shone a silvery blue hue on its surroundings, and the borders were covered in Silversneers of all sizes, most of them half immersed in the pond with only their head and front legs peeking out. That’s a lot… Like at least two hundred. How in the lords’ names do I get in there to the bottom of this without getting torn to shreds? It’s not one Pareth that I need right now, more like ten.

Though I guess Pareth could maybe take care of them all, given enough time. That’s if he doesn’t catch the attention of the spirits above…

Above… Hey, this isn’t space magic, right?

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