Saintess Summons Skeletons

The exploration of the cursed gallery full of statues was slow and tedious. The rat had indicated that this road of sculptures was several hundred meters long, and Pareth could only purify it one small sphere at a time. [Purification] was an expensive skill, so he had to pace himself or he would run out of mana before they made it to the other side. While they waited, the curse slowly regained territory, continuously shrinking Sofia’s safe zone. And of course, that also meant the path behind them was blocked by the curse too. This would be a terrible time to be under attack, but not a single shade showed up in the cursed zone.

There wasn't enough space to walk between the lifesize statues. Pareth had to destroy some to cut open a path so Sofia could comfortably walk behind. Her vision in the complete darkness kept improving. By now she could see more details about the statues. Notably, she now understood that there were about thirty or so different ones. They were used over and over to fill the whole place. She had noticed that when she passed a group of three identical dwarves in the exact same position next to each other. That meant most of these weren’t cursed people, but real stone statues, which was disturbing but reassuring. There was no way so many people would have discovered this place anyway. And how would they have escaped the Shades? As for why there were thousands of these sculptures blocking the path in this cursed tunnel? She had no idea. She collected one of each design in her ring, because she could.

Suddenly Sofia’s mana senses opened up, and her perception broadened. We’re finally near the exit! She had been on the lookout for the curse’s source the entire time, but she found nothing. And now it looked like the next part of the dungeon wasn’t cursed. It still took a few minutes, but they got there, one cast of [Purification] at a time.

The floor transitioned from the raw stone of the dark caves to clean flat stone slabs. That’s new, but it’s still dark. Although her new vision allowed her to see up to a few meters away as if there was low light now, it was still limited to just that. How is the progress?

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ :

Second step : Become able to see in the dark (69.556%/100%)

Almost there.

She tried to understand the layout of this new place with her mana senses. The only thing that was clear to her was that it was very wide and open. She could fly her if needed. Her footsteps echoed as she advanced, judging from the reverberation, this place was indeed large enough to host a cathedral. Is it about time I see the cathedral part of the dungeon’s name? I’m guessing this is the place of a Recessed named Shadows. If not then what else can explain the darkness?

Sofia couldn’t help but look around despite her limited vision, she hoped to maybe spot a hint of light in the darkness. And she found it, but the light wasn’t real, it was a slew of system notifications.

[You have been affected by : insanity. But your skills negated the status]

[You have been affected by : insanity. But your skills negated the status]

They stopped as fast as they had started. How? Because I looked in that direction? She kept looking around, and indeed the messages always came when she looked in a particular direction.

Some kind of on-sight insanity? I can’t even see the damn thing so how does that work?!

But I have a pretty good guess as to what this is. A cathedral, negative things, constant insanity. This is the Apostle of a Recessed if I’ve ever not seen one!

Maybe we can have a peaceful conversation? I’m half an Apostle too, after all.

In any case, Sofia’s decision was to go explore the other side first. She wasn’t about to walk up to a potentially hostile Demon with a sight radius too restricted to allow her to fully see Pareth when he stood near her.

She followed the wall on her left, keeping a hand on it as she explored. For an instant, something flashed in the corner of her vision. What was that? I could swear I saw something. She took a step back and moved her head around, trying to spot the ephemeral light again.

She was bent over at a weird angle when she managed to see it again. A soft white light in the darkness which looked to be quite far and at least a few meters up from the ground. Sofia had the urge to fly straight to the light like a moth to a flame, but she held back. Letting Pareth take the lead, as usual, they approached the far light. It led them to what seemed to be a ruined city. The architecture was unusual, and every small cubic stone brick house had an interior staircase leading to a roof terrace. Sofia could vaguely sense the interior of the houses as they were very open with large doors and windows. Not much had survived the ravages of time save for stone furniture and architecture. It was hard to say what kind of species must have lived here, but they were humanoid and of a fairly regular size. Perhaps they were human.

Sofia could no longer see the light, but she knew its approximate location. Following that trail led her to a three stories high tower-like square house. She let Pareth enter and switched to his vision. It was fully dark until he climbed the stairs to the second floor. A weak white glow could be seen coming from above, barely lighting the space. Pareth made his way to the third floor, the house was stone but it still shook under the weight of his steps. The cause for the glow was right there.

An avian. Or rather, the semi-transparent, glowing ghost of an avian. Sofia had seen Alith in her ghost for enough time, there was no doubt, this was an inhabitant of the spiritual plane. Since she could see him, it meant he had a stable connection to the physical plane, it meant he had plenty of mana.

Did avians even speak the common language?

The avian race used to be a rather prolific ancient group of humanoids, predating even the elves themselves; they were widely credited as the founders of ritualistic magic. They were also thought to be extinct. Although Sofia had no real idea of how and why they would be, she knew this much because it was common knowledge taught in the books about rituals. They had much more pronounced animalistic traits than the beastmen from the Heroes worlds.

This Avian ghost in particular, at the moment ‘sleeping’ on a very real stone table, looked like, well, a humanoid bird. He had talons for feet, feathery wings under his arms, and sharp-clawed hands. He also had a short stubby beak, which was all that could be seen of his face from under his helmet. He was wearing armor that looked quite good but didn’t seem to protect much besides his head and chest. He has the essentials covered but I guess that didn’t save him. Also, I pictured avians with wings sprouting from their back like me, not these weird arm wings. There’s no way they can fly wi-. Sofia looked at her own wings. There’s way…

He’s pretending to sleep?

I have my runes anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?

She climbed up the building too, entering the last floor where the ghost was resting.

“Are you going to pretend to be asleep for long? I couldn’t have seen you from the window if you had been like that from the beginning.”

The Avian moved. A sinister laughter escaped his beak as he floated upright, “Eimel, dal saark dan! Sialel vakran Zerei hran!” he exclaimed, raising his winged arms.

The environment around Sofia changed. Teleportation. Sofia couldn’t give much more reaction than a raise of her eyebrows. Woah. That’s the Avian language? Doesn’t even sound like proper words.I guess that meant ‘You fell right into my trap’ or something along those lines. It was still dark and the Avian ghost was there too, but this was no longer inside the ruined buildings. Pareth teleported to her side, and then she was back at the building.

“Decidedly, the spatial anchor bracelet is turning out to be a great investment,” she remarked to herself, nodding approvingly as she admired her ugly pink orichalcum bracelet. She had had thoughts of getting rid of it after her run-in with the new magisterium. But after all, one was never safe from wild teleportation, as today had shown.

In Sofia’s perception, Pareth was somewhere deep below the avian city. She switched to his vision. Though Pareth couldn’t see in the darkness, it turned out he didn’t need to.

He could see the squadron of Avian ghosts running toward him. That was the only explanation he needed. [Sanctified Grounds] activated.

It was his time to shine.

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