Saintess Summons Skeletons

"Do you sell healing potions?”

“The most basic option we have is Sieva extract potions, going for one gold coin a flask. This should be enough for any adventurer under level a hundred.”

“I’ll take five.” The woman was writing things on a notepad, noting down the order. This place feels like a restaurant. Reminds me of the yearly orphanage outings. Good old days with everyone. Hope they’re all doing alright.

“Anything else?”

“Alright, so, I need a way to fly. Or to float above ground, at the very least. A skill, an item, anything goes. Do you have something like that?”

Woah, these cookies are so tasty!

The attendant had to think about it for a few seconds.

“We do have a few options… But these are expensive items. I cannot disclose their specifics to you if you do not have the means to buy them. What would be your budget?”

5 gold for the potions, 20 for the scroll… I’d like to keep five or six for future expenses. Leaves me with about 100.

“I can invest up to a hundred in this, anything over that won’t be worth it for what I intend to do with it.” That seemed to please the woman who acquiesced and left the room, leaving her notepad behind.

Can I haggle the prices here? She better not try to scam me… But I have no clue what magic items cost… It's already surprising that they let me in at all. Well, you can't judge someone before you know their level. The brand new adventurer clothes might have helped.

Sofia had eaten all the cookies before Silvia came back, carrying two wooden boxes, a large one and a very small one, both branded with the store’s name.

“These would be the two options we have for you.” She first presented the large box, placing it on the table and opening it by pushing some mana into it. Oh! They have mana locks just like the director’s safe. The box opened by itself, revealing a large pair of fur lined boots.

“These are Soguva fur boots. They allow you to walk on thin air for up to twenty steps a day, ideal for crossing gaps too large to jump over or reaching a particularly high ledge. The pair goes for a hundred and twenty coins but these have been in our inventory for a long time so we can offer you a small discount.”

“Can I not step and just stay still in the air?”

“You cannot. For them to stay active you need to keep walking at a steady pace or the effect will end.”

“Hmm. What about the other box?”

She opened the box similarly to the first one, inside was an unassuming green metal ring.

“This is a copper ring of slow fall. As long as you infuse it with mana, you will fall slower. That’s all it does. It can be yours for sixty gold coins.”

“How slow exactly are we talking about? Can I try it?”

“Something like two or three seconds to fall down a meter. It’s considerably slow. Rings like this one are usually bought by experienced high altitude workers like sculptors, to prevent injuries in case of a fall. That is why we have them in the first place.”

“I can’t try it then?”

“We are sorry about this, the owner is currently absent for a few days and we are not allowed to let anyone handle the products without his supervision.”

This prompted an annoyed frown on Sofia’s face.

It’s gotta be the ring I guess, the boots are a bit impractical with the need to keep walking. And they look too large for me. The slow fall ring has fewer practical uses but that should be enough to at least cast [Angel’s Bolt] if I jump high then slow my fall… It’s cheaper too.

“I will still take the ring then… Next, can I get a storage item for forty gold?”

“This…” Silvia seemed conflicted. “Storage items are very expensive, there is one I can offer you for a low price, but I mustn't lie, it has some peculiarities…” she answered in an uncertain tone. She then left the room, taking the boots with her. She carried a small necklace when she came back.

“Here it is. This necklace, well, the pendant, to be precise, is the storage item. The space inside is about as large as this.” she said, while illustrating a small sphere with her hands. “So you can get about five books inside there, or a folded change of clothes. Most people would use it as a safer purse.”

To Sofia this was already more than enough, she only wanted a safe place to store the headband and her money.

“What’s with the peculiarities you mentioned, is it the smaller space?”

“No, this kind of storage space would usually cost you upwards of a thousand gold, this is cheaper for other reasons.” Sofia almost choked on the water she was drinking when she heard the real value of storage items.

Can you stop hedging and tell me what it is already? How can the price drop so much? Is this cursed or something?

“You see, this pendant is quite special in that it is full of sand. In fact the storage space will slowly fill itself with sand at all times. If you want to get something in, usually you’ll have to empty some sand. And any item you take out of it will be covered in the same yellow sand. Nobody has any idea how or why it’s like this but this is what it does…” Sofia could hear the dread in Silvia’s voice.

“If there’s no space left inside for the sand it will start leaking everywhere…” She continued to lament.

“Honestly we’ve only had it for two months but it’s already getting us in trouble. Give us thirty gold coins and it’s all yours. This will offset the cost of repairing our floor that broke from the sand accumulating behind our backs…”

“I’ll take it.” Sofia didn’t think for too long, it had a weird kink to it but it would still do its job well as long as she remembered to empty the sand often. She would only store metal inside anyway, it didn’t matter if the sand got on it.

Silvia looked genuinely shocked that she managed to sell the faulty product.

So it’s really kinda cursed. Cursed by the eternal sands! They will eventually swallow the very world, beware! Or not. But that would make for an interesting book.

Sofia left the shop 114 gold coins lighter. That left her with 17 gold coins and a few silver. All of this money and the gold headband ended up in the tiny sun shaped storage pendant. She had emptied it before and a small pile of dry yellow sand had trickled its way out of the item, it was curious where it came from. Did the pendant create the sand? Or summon it from some desert somewhere?

She stopped at a grilled meat stall to fill her stomach on her way out of the city. The church must think I’m dead now. If not they’d be out there looking for me… I need to be far away when they understand I duped them. It’s pretty obvious that I would seek shelter in the Red Winds but they can’t follow me there. Maybe I could go to Vasperia afterwards?

Sofia left the city as they closed the main gates, she paid the lift fee and arrived at the foot of the mountain a few minutes later. It was expensive, a whole 10 silver coins to skip the 12000 steps that led down from Ensein to sea level.

There was a smaller secondary town at the base of the lift. Sofia bought a horse for 3 gold coins, although she had never ridden one it would be much faster than going on foot. Normal people would be worried about getting robbed or attacked on the way but she was already quite high level, and itching to try out her [Angel’s bolt].

Meanwhile, the skeleton rat had stayed hidden near the city; it would alert her if there were paladin outings in the city. She wanted to have a proper skeleton guarding her which would require her to find a suitable corpse. The old bones from the zombie dungeon she had stored in her [Armor of bones] were too broken and disparate for the ritual to work. She knew from her many failed attempts before she got it to work the first time.

I really need another summon. Having just one is too limiting. A proper necromancer my level should already be raising dozens of undead.

She couldn’t even use the few other rituals she knew from the grimoire. They were at best very impractical to use, and at worst downright suicidal, especially the last one. They didn't even summon anything. She fully expected to never use them at all. Especially the last one.

Sofia spent the night in a small inn, riding in the dark wasn’t a great idea. She woke up early the next morning and left for the Red Winds Empire.

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