Saintess Summons Skeletons

With twice the swords came twice the number of blue trails of light to avoid. It was hard to find a place to stand, but Sofia’s demon body was very flexible and able to contort in weird ways to avoid all the trails.

The orb floor from the second trial was way worse in terms of shit to avoid. I just hope Pareth and the snake can survive this.

Sofia’s senses came back, and the two Sunless warriors flashed around, their sword cutting through the trails of light at breakneck speed once again.

Pareth?!

Sofia could feel her skeletons all still alive, but they were currently nothing but piles of bones spread around on the ground of the different platforms of the arena, just like Richard when he ‘Skeleported’ somewhere else leaving his previous skeleton behind.

The attacks of the two warriors all went by, mostly striking at nothing, none of their sword strikes were that close to the ground, and only the largest of Pareth’s bones and the Snake’s skull still took hits because they were too big.

As soon as the attacks stopped, the skeletons’ bones quickly pulled themselves together. They had been mostly safe from the attack, but they were also busy reconstructing now, unable to really take advantage of the moment of weakness of the Sunless warriors.

With no time to lose, Sofia charged at the closest of the two warriors while taking the third key dagger out of her bone armor.

She stabbed the dagger in the middle of the X shaped white mark on the warrior’s face, the key pierced through without any resistance, and Sofia then pulled it upward, slicing the monster’s head in half and cutting through the white hat ribbon on the way.

One down!

In her moment of joy, Sofia didn’t feel the sword of the second sunless warrior approaching from her back. But Pareth was back up, with a cast of [Gravity well], he attracted the warrior closer to him, making Sofia barely out of his sword’s reach. Sofia was attracted by the spell too, but much less, as she was extremely heavy in comparison to the Sunless swordsman.

Sofia turned around, only to see the warrior’s sword glow fiercer than it ever had before. The Sunless swordsman swung at her, clearly out of range. The sword’s path through the air drew an arc of shining light, which shot straight at Sofia. All she had time to do before impact was to raise her shield. The arc of light somehow went right through the shield, the armor, and then herself, damaging all three and losing some power on each step along the way.

The damage was not huge by any means, it barely tickled her, but it still went through, slightly scorching Sofia’s insides. She could tell it would have been much worse if not for the shield taking the brunt of the hit.

Health : 529 958 / 530 668

Stamina : 241 610 / 530 668

Mana : 0 / 358 560

The warrior kept swinging his sword at nothing, and more arcs of light were flying in Sofia’s direction.

Crap.

The snake finally made it to the scene, and it’s assault along with Bookie’s arrows and Pareth’s sword forced him to fall back, but he kept swinging his sword, and more and more arcs of light flew in all directions.

Sofia couldn’t do anything but focus on avoiding them all. Now that she knew they were coming, she could avoid the lights as long as she kept her attention on how the warrior moved his sword, but that took a hundred percent of her mental and physical capabilities. She jumped and rolled around in erratic movements to avoid all the attacks while the warrior fought the skeletons.

Close-call after close-call, Sofia avoided all the strands of light, her stamina slowly but surely falling closer and closer to zero.

After a long minute of this circus, finally, the skeletons made a breakthrough in the fight. A tail swipe of the snake blew off most of the warrior’s upper body, and Pareth’s huge skeletal hands grabbed the Sunless warrior’s white glove, crushing it in his grasp, throwing it on the floor and stomping on it with his goat like hooves, creating a huge crater in the floating platform they were on.

‘You have incapacitated [Tarren - Lv. 249]’

Sofia couldn’t even muster the strength to rejoice at the message, she collapsed on the ground, breathing laboriously under her armor, her stamina had long gone under zero.

A real nightmare for my health points…

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Tarren, huh. Strong guy.

Incapacitated, though? That’s new…

Slowly, the round arena started reappearing around Sofia and her skeletons. Pareth came to her side while she recuperated on the floor.

Sofia got up after catching her breath, the demon form would expire in a few minutes, leaving her at her weakest, so she wanted to make sure to be safe by then.

With Pareth, she walked up to Bookie, who was looking at the spot where Pareth had crushed the warrior’s white glove. There was nothing left. No Sunless debris and no imprint.

“I guess he’s not actually dead. Hence the incapacitated message…”

Is the dungeon over? Please say that it is…

Behind Sofia, one of the arena’s double doors slowly slid open.

FUCK! NOT NOW!

Bookie threw her scepter back to Sofia, and Pareth’s armor and weapon came back to life. They were all ready to fight whatever was about to come. It turned out that the thing slowly walking toward them was the Sunless warrior again.

Don’t tell me we have to fight him again…

The warrior slowly entered the arena. He looked perfectly fine, just like the first time, and stopped in exactly the same spot, giving Sofia cold sweat.

The Sunless swordsman spoke.

“Well fought, trial takers. You may claim your rewards in the room I came from. The dungeon will disappear at sunrise and send you back to the physical realm. Rest up. It was a pleasure to spar against you. May we meet again in another context, I would like a revenge match,” Tarren said in a suave manly voice, the white X on his face expanding and shrinking as he spoke. He bowed like he had before the fight, and disappeared in a mist of mana.

“Wait!”

“... He’s gone…”

[You have conquered the dungeon : Northside Marshland test center - Nightmare difficulty. Congratulations!]

Sofia laughed to herself.

“Sure. just wait for me, I’ll give you another spar, Tarren the Sunless warrior.”

She turned around and called out to her skeletons, “Let’s get these rewards before I fall to the ground again when my transformation ends. You all fought very well.”

I was hit by the light once. Not quite a clean win, but I’ll take it.

I really need a break after this… I think I’ll be looking around for the bonus objective for a while. I have a full year so… I should take some breaks from the constant fighting. It’s getting tiring.

The door Tarren had come from had stayed open this time, making it easy to leave the arena. On the other side of the long dark corridor was a single large circular room. It was mostly empty. There was a stone thing in the middle, looking like a closed tomb, and a single chair propped against a wall.

Was he just waiting there the whole time I was in the dungeon?

Tarren. An intelligent Sunless…

I had a suspicion that the Sunless were like System-created golems for the trial, but this kind of goes against that.

This guy had a soul, so he cannot be a golem. He most likely was ‘born’ a living being.

So what are the Sunless, exactly?

I should pay more attention to their spiritual body when I’m back on the surface. Might discover a thing or two…

Anyway, the rewards!

Sofia walked up to the stone thing, it looked very much like the tombs she had pilfered Pareth’s first ever body from, just a large stone rectangle with a stone plate on top. She pushed the plate off, revealing the insides.

It’s really a repurposed tomb, isn’t it? I’m not making things up…

No bones inside, though.

Inside the stone box were two big chunks of white ‘Sunless debris’, along with a smaller, glowing one, nothing else.

[Large Debris]: The core of a Sunless creature. Contains a stable and powerful imprint.

Imprint details - Power: 300; Health + 10 000, Stamina + 10 000, Mana + 10 000

“Oh wow. That’s a big-big damn imprint. Is the other one the same?”

[Large Debris]: The core of a Sunless creature. Contains a stable and powerful imprint.

Imprint details - Power: 300; Skill shard (1/1) [Arclight]

Arclight? Uh huh. I think I know exactly what that skill is. So we can get a skill from the boss by clearing a trial dungeon. And powerful imprints in general.

That’s a lot better than randomly hunting monsters on the surface.

Arguably a bit more dangerous too…

What about the glowing rock? That has to be that Heart Catalyserthing, right? Yeah.

[Small Slashing Heart Catalyser]: A heart catalyser crafted by a master mage. Allows one to upgrade their Mana Heart from rank C to B once sufficient imprint power has been collected. Gives the Mana Heart the added attribute : +5% Slashing damage resistance.

This is needed to upgrade from C to B tier?

So dungeons are actually a required component of the trial, aren’t they? Unless someone can make these by themselves.

Will I need stronger ones for every rank beyond that? I hope not… If so, would the trial even have enough dungeons for both me and Pareth? This must be single use, right?

I can already feel the headache… Wait, no, that’s just the transformation starting to wear off…

“You should take the skill, Pareth, I’ll take the stats.”

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