Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia stood atop a tower of bones.

Was the plan, but I have to admit, it looked better in my head. Sofia thought as she watched her newest architectural masterpiece from below.

The tower in question was a tall, rickety, scaffolding-style watchtower, built directly on top of the hole, made by stacking empty cubic bone frames which were originally meant to build temporary houses like Nicet’s deployable base, and finished with a bone gazebo at the top. The structural integrity was dubious at best so angled bone spikes planted into the ground and stuck to the four corners helped it stay upright. It looked properly ridiculous but would allow Sofia to safely stand a good fifty meters above the fissure in the ground.

The extended dominus range made building this really easy. I knew this was the best choice… But, huh. How do I get up there?

I should make a ladder.

A fifty meters long bone ladder and some climbing later, Sofia really stood at the top of the tower. Using bone dominus she made a round hole in the floor of the gazebo, giving her a direct line of sight on the dark hole beneath.

The drop was like, what? Fifty to a hundred meters?

I shouldn’t be in the fireball radius. Going to be blind again, though.

Wait, I should still have the Sun temple’s darkening goggles somewhere in the storage, right? Yeah! Woah I had completely forgotten about those. Should help. They might not hold well against the heat though so I’ll have to bring them out at the last second. Can I call them directly over my eyes?

After some testing, it turned out that putting the goggles on directly out of the storage was possible with the storage eye, but it required some very precise targeting or they would end up just appearing behind or in front of her head instead of on it.

I’ll have to practice that later.

Alright. Time to get serious.

Too bad there’s no ambient mana or I could have pushed it more. Oh well.

As a last step of preparation, Sofia removed the roof of her bone gazebo, and she stood above the hole she made, staring down at the entrance of the giant crab’s den.

Armor ready, Scepter ready. We’re good to go.

Blue sparks started to gather around Sofia’s scepter.

Slowly the bolt formed in Sofia’s hand. After twenty seconds and a hundred thousand mana down the drain, the bright blue weapon of plasma flickered wildly in her grasp like a thunderbolt ready to strike, but this was only the beginning.

She kept feeding it.

Forty seconds in. Two hundred thousand mana. The bolt calmed down. The plasma collapsed together into a fine, almost glossy spear of power and heat. The bone tower started to blacken and crumble from the intense heat, forcing Sofia to focus part of her attention to continually adding more bone to reinforce it while she was channeling the bolt.

Twenty more seconds passed, and the bolt reached the 300 000 mana mark, the strongest bolt she had ever crafted until now. The heat was so intense that her bone armor, even with the bone dominus blessing, continually crumbled to ash and reformed. As for her hand holding the scepter, Sofia couldn’t see it anymore because the light was entirely too bright.

Funnily enough, her right hand was the part of her body which suffered the least from the hellish heat, fully protected by the Dragon-scale arm.

Sofia cautiously monitored her health. So far, despite the intense discomfort from the heat, she was still not hurt in the slightest.

She kept pushing more mana into the bolt.

The heat was starting to become debilitating. Sofia had never felt so hot, not even during her trip around the sun, her stamina was starting to take a heavy blow, but health was still intact.

As the energy of the bolt kept pulsating in her hand, it was becoming harder and harder to hold on, not because of the heat, but because of the wild volatile energy contained within. It wanted out, and managing to hold onto it was becoming a matter of arm strength and pure willpower.

350 000.

The tower shook, the ground rumbled. Sofia couldn’t see anything anymore, she switched to Pareth’s vision, who was safely standing two thousand meters away; ready to teleport in at any point if something happened.

370 000.

Sofia’s stamina was melting. She couldn’t even feel her arm anymore. A long, spindly gray leg emerged out of the fissure.

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The ‘crab’ was there, just beneath the surface, It seemed uncertain about what to do. To come out and attack? To fall back and flee? In the face of this mysterious new sun in the sky, even the monster was at a loss.

390 000.

The crab never came out, scared of the unknown, it had decided to flee underground.

Too late.

400 000.

Sofia couldn’t hold on for any longer even if she had wanted to. She deployed her wings, and, without a sound, the bolt left her hand and disappeared into the abyss below.

The light around Sofia died down for a second as the bolt left her, allowing her to see again. Then, a spectacular geyser of light erupted from the hole, and an instant later, a sea of hellish blue flames.

The explosion enveloped Sofia’s body for a short instant, and the wild mana expelled carried her wings up. The eerily silent gigantic explosion propelled Sofia thousands of meters above the surface.

She watched from above as the fireball quickly expanded and collapsed on itself. It had lasted for far less time than it had the previous time, and there had been no shockwave at all.

With the last bits of mana she had, Sofia activated the slow fall ring, that and the thinly scattered mana from the explosion allowed her to fall at a fast but steady rate.

The ground below had been torn open, a new crater spanning hundreds of meters revealed the entrance of many tunnels going even deeper. The moon rocks were charred, some still glowing hot, molten in places, steaming, and there was dust and rock debris flying everywhere.

There was no trace of the crab monster anywhere.

Finally a few system notifications came in.

‘You have defeated [Veik Harvester - Lv. 263 - Imprint ruined]’

‘You have defeated [Veik Harvester - Lv. 252 - Imprint ruined]’

‘You have defeated [Veik Harvester - Lv. 273 - Imprint ruined]’

Three? Nice.

Ruined is still good for Pareth, is it not?

In fact, it was more than a few.

‘You have defeated [Veik Crawler - Lv. 242 - Imprint ruined]’

‘You have defeated [Veik Crawler - Lv. 206 - Imprint ruined]’

‘You have defeated [Veik Crawler - Lv. 238 - Imprint ruined]’

‘You have defeated [Veik Crawler - Lv. 249 - Imprint ruined]’

Uh…

The last notification of the lot was perhaps the most surprising.

‘You have defeated [Veik Hive Cleaner - Lv. 221 - Imprint ruined]’

Hive…

HIVE?!

Sofia did not even need to use Pareth’s vision to see the ground shake. Even from so far up above, she could see it.

The many tunnels Sofia’s bolt had exposed to the outside had been empty just a second ago. They were no longer empty. To say they were swarming with life was un understatement. A flood of gray creatures of all shapes and sizes emerged from the moon’s entrails. Sofia couldn’t hear their screeches, but it did not take a genius to understand what was happening.

Sofia had figuratively stepped on an ant’s nest. And the local ‘ants’ were very angry.

Ahah.

I’m in danger.

Health : 85 845 / 85 980

Stamina : 526 / 21 047

Mana : 2601 / 417 100

How do I survive this?

I got no mana back from [Heat Death]. These things can’t use magic.

Demon form? If I can’t outrun them in my five minutes of transformation I’m dead.

The ground below Sofia was quickly getting overrun by the creatures, tens of thousands of them. Pareth had to teleport to her and go straight into the storage to avoid getting swallowed by the swarm. The worst part was that considering her current trajectory, Sofia was going to fall straight into the larger of the tunnels which continued straight down farther than she could see, and from which the largest creatures were coming out of.

Her only saving grace was that the creatures hadn’t spotted her, yet.

What… What can I do… I…

Fast, fast, I need to think faster!

Many ideas flashed through Sofia’s head and in the end, she decided on her best bet.

[Title changed to ‘Master thief’]

[Title change function is locked for the next 24 hours]

As she fell straight down, Sofia stayed perfectly still. As she fell dangerously close to the ground, some of the creatures finally noticed her in the sky, and the message was quickly spreading, among the swarm, which all turned to look in her direction.

After three seconds, she disappeared.

[Master Thief]: You stole all kinds of things from all kinds of people, even when it really should not have been possible.

Effect: You are much harder to detect through magic and senses other than sight. Become invisible when you stand still for more than three seconds.

Scared to make even the slightest movement, Sofia, invisible and unable to control her ‘flight’ fell straight into the tunnel, while more and more gray creatures crawled up the sides of it.

Sofia almost teared up.

I just wanted to try a big bolt…

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