Saintess Summons Skeletons

The shrinking ball of rot shook once. Then twice, then thrice, and finally, it imploded, collapsing on itself. The shrunken rot consumed its remaining matter in the blink of an eye, leaving behind only a small puff of carbon powder.

One down! Sofia was overjoyed. She smiled at Pareth who had landed below her.

Then she ran out of mana and fell like a bag of sand. Right. Forgot about that.

She expected to hit the ground, which wouldn’t hurt her that much anymore, what was a ten meters fall to someone of her level? But Pareth was ready to catch her. In one smooth motion, he helped her land softly on her two feet.

Thanks a lot, she thought, turning her head back to look into Pareth’s flaming eyes of holy light.

I’m sure you must be smiling too.

Sofia was on the bridge walkway leading to the eastern part of the temple. Her rats had confirmed one thing: all areas they could access were parasite free. But they had found a few other things, which she needed to check out by herself. These included two inaccessible rooms in the eastern building where she was heading, and one in the western one.

Once she cleared all the side pyramids, only the main building of the temple would be left. It was by far the largest chunk of the place, and by the look of it, it was currently completely sealed. She had found out that even the vents were fully blocked and locked with strange non-magical protection that she couldn’t quite grasp. Her understanding of it was that there had probably been some kind of emergency lockdown, though it failed to save the elves. They must have locked themselves with a parasite of Ormoncleth already in their midst, just like the Zangdar citizens had been locked away in the Margin with Phageids.

At least now I can walk outside safely.

Sofia hadn't caught sight of the whale again after the first time, but the thought of possibly needing to face-off against it still haunted her. Hopefully it wouldn’t have to come to that.

Making her way to the building, Sofia really questioned what could have possibly compelled the elves to design such a weird temple. She didn’t need any knowledge in architecture to understand that these flimsy thin walkways connecting actual pyramids with no additional support of any kind anywhere was a terrible idea. The missing southern building only reinforced that sentiment.

The eastern building was eerily similar to the northern one, same layout, same empty rooms everywhere. Some were labeled this time: elven inscriptions written over the doors, names such as ‘Dry Storage’ or ‘Secondary Infirmary’. All desperately empty.

The Oracle did say the temple was only running for three days before the attack. Then Sun sent a rescue crew and never heard back from them. I wish they had given me a number of elves to find. How many people in the initial and rescue crews? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

Sofia followed a group of skeleton rats to the first closed and barricaded room. It was in a far corner of the lowest floor. This time her scouting method was to send a rat inside by way of graveyard skeletons. Looks like it’s safe.

Oh shit.

This one isn’t going to work for the book.

There was a single elf on the floor, back against the corner of the room. She had visibly decided to go on her own terms, she had probably used magic. There was nothing left of her skull except for a large and dried black bloodstain on the walls.

To have the resolve to choose to go like this… She must have been more than terrified.

It’s a few thousand years late but… I apologize in the name of the Deep, may you find peace in the afterlife.

I never even believed in an afterlife other than as an undead, but who knows.

What even happens to the soul when… I shouldn’t get sidetracked, back to the quest. The other blocked room should be where one of the modules is.

This room was worse than the one before.

There had been three elves locked together in the small space. Their bodies told of a grim tale. Conflict claiming a life. Cannibalism claiming another one. Suicide claiming the last. As for why they had never tried to leave, the answer was only a few meters outside of the room. It took the form of the shredded, hollow body of an elf, whose parasite had left its host for another one. Traces of battle marked the walls around the corpse.

Like an elven shell. The opposite of a skeleton. Just looking at it…

Sofia had seen her fair share of disturbing scenes by now but the dried and empty husk of an elf smothered across the floor was enough to almost make her puke. And that was without even being able to smell it.

Hell…

The parasite was waiting for them outside of the room, one of them left and got instantly ambushed, he fought back, destroyed the parasite’s previous host, forcing it to leave it like I did. Except he became the new host. The one I destroyed myself in the trap room.

And then what happened inside happened.

I can already tell the only usable skeleton will be the one of the woman who got killed for her meat… Probably not a warrior class I assume. Go on, have your meal, bookie…

Now I need to find the model manual.

The machinery in there was different and more chaotic compared to the one in the ‘Flare protection module’ room. It took Sofia a few seconds of looking around pipes to find the glass case she was looking for. It looked exactly like the one from the other room.

‘Do not open without permission’. Yeah, still the same, and the book… ‘Life Support module models’.

Interesting one, but not what I was looking for. It looks intact I think. The issue is still the low overall power though. I need to activate the main or secondary power supply if I want to use this. Haven’t found any of that though. It’s probably in the main building…

The book of Skeleton was done eating. Sofia quickly searched the bodies and the room for anything useful, without success, then she looked at her book’s new page.

An elf holding a broom, for 1000 mana.

A thousand? That’s five paladins. But it’s one elf with a broom.

Sofia just had to try out her new summon on the spot.

[Solar Sun Nun - Lv. 226]

She really has a broom. Where does the broom come from?

Health : 1300/ 1300

Stamina : 56 500/ 56 500

Mana : 13 000/ 13 000

Lifetime : 16 527s/16 543s

And these definitely are some interesting stats… Too bad stamina is useless to skeletons. I suppose she must have a lot of Speed, Strength, or Agility, and that’s how it ends up like this. Exactly the same case as the vampires, they have a lot of useless stamina but they’re really fast.

Speaking of which, I should check up on the one who got splashed by the Deep blood. It cleaned itself, but who knows what the thing could have done to him.

The Vampire skeleton in question was currently guarding one of the stair access to this floor, like the other three were doing along with a bunch of rats. Just because they hadn’t found more parasites didn’t mean Sofia had stopped being careful in her movements. Since the skeletons still had almost three hours of lifespan, she would use them until the last second.

Checking on it, the Vampire still looked like nothing was going on with it. I’ll have to go back and collect some samples of the liquid. Can wait though, stuff doesn’t really decompose here for some reason. Anyway, western side is next, then.

The one closed room in the western pyramid turned out to be blocked by design this time. It was a storage room for food, containing a dozen crates of dried fish, fruits and nuts.

Woah. No way. This food is older than the system. How crazy is that?!

Can I eat it? Sofia grabbed a wrinkled dried apra out of its shiny paper wrapping.

It’s all bone dry, but they still look good as new beyond that. All individually packed and all. I’m just not too sure it’s safe to consume that.

Hmm. Actually. What if it isn’t? My body literally doesn’t even need food anymore, and I could probably survive most poisons in existence just with the combined regenerative power from the blessed constructs and [Radiance].

I still won’t tempt it now but…

Sofia took half of the crates. I’ll leave some for whoever Sun sends here after I’m done.

Done with her pilfering, she realized she was still holding the dried apra in her hand. Its wrinkly browned skin that looked like a dirty brain wasn’t exactly the most appetizing, but Sofia hadn’t eaten anything in a week, and she was awfully curious.

Just one bite can’t hurt.

It’s so sweet!

And so dryyyyy…

Where did I store this damn water stone?!

Here it is… Good… UH?

Oh. Right. Doesn’t work in the void without air. Yeah. No water in the air to channel into the stone if there’s no air, duh.

Fuck, my throat is so dry… It hurts.

Sofia eyed her status screen.

[Summon Blood]...

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