Saintess Summons Skeletons

‘Doors module models’.

Well, that’s it for the western building then. Only the center left.

Before finally entering the main temple, Sofia still had two things to do, first she had to check the broken walkway to the missing south building. At first her theory had been that it might have been destroyed by the parasites, but upon closer inspection, it did not look like that was the case. The break on the walkway was a straight line where it seemed to have been molten.

Can’t imagine the parasite doing that. This material is pretty resistant to heat so to melt it like this…

My guess is that an elf did this, but why? Maybe they wanted to escape by separating themselves from the main temple. Wouldn’t that send them straight into the sun, though? Or it could have been a way to get rid of some parasites. If they knew some infected people were in the south wing, I could see that.

The last option is that other Deep creatures are inside the temple and have strong thermal attacks. That could be an issue. Still, I don’t think so. So far the parasite never attacked the structure of the temple directly, even when that could have let it catch me. It seems they’re unwilling to destroy it for some reason. Maybe it’s just self-preservation?

Sofia was about to leave the broken walkway when the skeleton with her broom tapped on Sofia’s shoulder and pointed at a random point in the void above.

What’s it this time, showing me the planet like Aphenoreth?

She looked in the direction the skeleton was pointing at, not seeing anything at first, but the skeleton’s finger was actually moving rather fast, it was already pointing somewhere else. Following the direction, she managed to see something move, it was quite far away, but not that much, maybe a few hundred kilometers. The reflections of the sun actually made it easily visible once you knew where to look.

She wasn’t going to think about it more than she needed to. Next she went to retrieve the power core engine from her safe room. It had to be turned off first to avoid damaging it, because of something about spatial instability. She set it up near a wall of the lowest floor of the main temple, and entered from there with the graveyard skeletons. To be safe she had a single rune on, and the other skeletons were waiting outside at the moment.

It feels natural to start from the bottom. It’s also the smallest floor.

The entire lowest floor was a single large room. At first glance, no corpse, no monster from the Deep, only a giant incomprehensible machine of cables, gears, tubes and other mechanical contraptions.

It’s not working. Is that the main power supply maybe? It’d do me good to turn that on if so. I wonder why it’s off in the first place. Well, I need to make sure the place is safe first. Go on, move the rats over.

The graveyard skeletons were quick to grab the rats from one side and release them around Sofia, still inside of the mana isolation zone. When they were all there, she gave the deployment order. The rats ran everywhere and quickly found air vents to go up to the higher floors. There were probably regular stairs somewhere but with all the doors of the Temple being closed, they didn’t find them.

The floor above this one seems to have more room. No elves sightings so far. The rats all disappeared before reaching the next floor. End of lifespan, well, good enough for now, no parasites nearby.

Sofia brought out the book of skeletons and summoned the Engineer elf.

Since your class is to mess with mechanical stuff, surely you would have been one of the people in charge of this thing, right? So fix it. Or turn it on if it is not broken.

The elf left the isolation zone and approached the giant machine, to Sofia’s surprise, the elf nun with her broom also followed. In a strange cooperation, the engineer seemed to give orders to the nun, pointing at stuff in multiple parts of the room.

They can work together like the high-priest and the templars. Nice. I hope Sun won’t mind if I steal a few more elves.

After two long hours of tinkering with the beast of a machine, the elven engineer pulled down a big lever, and the entire temple shook. The machine started moving, the gears spun around, its tubes filled with blue light.

Lightning? This looks exactly like the bolts.

Not too far from her, a screen turned on, showing the same lines she had read in the teleporter room, it was still the exact same.

Then the line ‘Main Power Supply’ changed from offline to online.

Would you look at that! Good work, skeleton. Other lines started updating, one by one, the modules turning on one by one, going from low, to medium, to high power for some. All except for one, ‘Defense system’, which stubbornly stayed off.

“Finally, air!”

The room had rapidly suddenly changed from empty and silent to full of fresh air and extremely noisy. The machine was too loud for Sofia to hear her own voice, yet she was happy to finally hear anything at all.

‘Station Power Supply Control Panel

Power Supply Status :

Main Power Supply ONLINE

Secondary Power Supply OFFLINE

Emergency Power Supply OFFLINE

Current module status :

Trajectory correctors HIGH-POWER

Temperature regulation MED-POWER

Doors MED-POWER

Life support HIGH-POWER

Defense system OFFLINE

Transmission platform MED-POWER

Flare protection HIGH-POWER’

“Finally some real progress! Sound! Air! Smell! Ah, this feels so much better already!”

“The air is still weirdly stale, it’s the lack of mana doing that… The Oracle did say that mana messes with the machinery here. Haven’t really seen it so far. But maybe I should be careful not to use too much magic in this room I guess.”

Shit, actually, quick.

Sofia ran up to the screen and pressed the minus button next to the doors line twice.

‘Doors OFFLINE’

Much better. Don’t want the parasites to escape and start roaming outside. It’s reassuring to know no matter how many there are, they're all confined here.

I can redirect the power I took from the doors, let’s see. Defense system?

Sofia pressed the button but that module didn’t want to turn on. Broken? Ah, it’s probably the one from the southern wing. Too bad, no defense system then. I guess I’ll push everything else except the doors to High-power then.

Looking over the entire screen again, something attracted Sofia’s attention.

“Weird, the emergency power supply turned off by itself?”

Not that I need more anyway.

The 100 rats were summoned again, Sofia’s plan was to create another three dimensional map. She sent three of the rats to start with, as that was the limit of what she could follow previously, but now the task of tracking their movement and sculpting the maquette was exceptionally easy. She understood after wondering what had changed that it was due to the Processing Pills she had eaten. It helped with concentrating on all tasks, not just understanding books. She sent more rats one by one, finding that her new limit was about fifteen of them at once, greatly increasing the speed at which she mapped out the temple.

The rats did not report anything special from the second floor, but one of them self-dispelled on the third floor.

That’s our first parasite. Avoid that area, continue exploring.

There was something else of interest in the third floor, a rather large area completely walled off with no vents that the rats couldn’t enter. Not paying it any mind for now, Sofia kept mapping the third then fourth floor. The fourth floor had the same closed area at the same place. No parasites were found anywhere this time.

I wonder what that middle area is to go through multiple levels.

The fifth floor, again, had the same closed-off central area, and the rats found another supposed Parasite. The sixth floor was uneventful, and the seventh, largest floor had two small closed rooms as well as one potential Parasite.

After the map was finished, these rats all self-dispelled, they couldn’t come back down and risk leading the Deep parasites to Sofia.

Only three of them. Maybe a few more in the closed room, but perhaps only these three and the quest is done. The layout is a bit confusing but I can deal with it now that I have a map. I should probably separate the floors though, this sculpture is hard to look at as is.

This should be easy enough, I know how to deal with them now. And I have enough shade dust for them all.

As long as it’s the same kind of monster…

I wonder what Ormoncleth thinks about me hunting its minions. I have Aphenoreth’s approval but still.

Ready to go on a hunt, Sofia stepped out of the mana isolation field.

HELP!

PLEASE!

HELP!

Like a scream broadcasted directly into her mind, Sofia couldn’t escape the mind-wrenching cries for help from a crackling, distorted, elvish-speaking voice. The painful headache made her stumble, she took a step back into the isolation field, and the screams ceased.

“What the fuck was that?!”

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