Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Can we ask you some questions?”

Out of all the things I expected I didn’t think about helping someone kill themself. I don’t really get why he can’t do it, or what’s beyond the door.

*Consciousness suppressed. Twelve words.*

“I see. I’ll ask groups of four questions then, please answer by yes or no, or in one word per question.”

There was no answer. I guess he is saving the word count. She discussed what to ask with Alith, who thought Sofia’s questions were good enough.

Sofia cleared her throat, “Alright, here are the first questions: Is there a way here for us to return to the normal world? Can we get it without killing you? Is it behind this door? Will we be able to understand it without you?”

*Yes. No. Inside. Ring.*

He could be lying… But let’s hope he isn’t… We don’t have much of a choice anyway. If there’s really another ring in there, we’re out. Then the next topic…

“What is the danger behind this door? Is it more dangerous than the Phageid larvae outside? What is the thing we should be the most wary about? What is its weak point if it has one?”

He is the danger? Sofia couldn’t help but recall the experiments in the last room. I have a feeling I understand what’s going on… Only four words left… Why’d he waste so much at the beginning if he was so limited… It’s probably best to finish with an open ended question.

“Anything else we should absolutely know? And if not… Any last words?”

*Grateful. Storage password. Iriadell.*

Iriadell? Would that be the elf wife, or the one daughter? Alright…

Discussing their next steps, the group decided to explore the whole castle in detail before going in there to kill whatever the hero had become. Yet this plan failed before it could even start.

The thing the supposed hero had said earlier was ‘Sorry, you cannot leave’. That had made Sofia panic a bit but the thing’s next answers had calmed her. It assured them there was a way to leave this city. So why had he said that? It turned out it was because they couldn’t leave the room.

The small room was completely enveloped in the same kind of mana shield that was outside. Alith tried to hit every wall with her weapons only to watch the mithril rebound out of the wall after only leaving a tiny dent. The floor and ceiling were the same, they couldn’t even get back into the weird automatic lift. The only way left was the door leading to some unknown danger that was apparently this place’s previous owner.

Wouldn’t you be almost invincible if you could walk around with a shield like that around you? Wouldn’t even have to worry about getting summoned by the Church or anyone else. Well I guess it isn’t that easy, after all the shield outside required many of those power core things.

“Hey Alith, do you think I can get an award for being the person who gets locked up the most often? Behold, we’re now in a prison inside a prison. At this rate should I tie my hands behind my back too, so I can add another layer?”

“You’re joking but that could be a requirement for one of those specialized skills, right?”

“I already got mine.”

“Who said you can’t get more? I know I’ll be pushing hard to get one next trial, you should do the same.”

“Ah, whatever. Do we get in there? I probably still can’t use [Angel’s bolt] since it’ll be a closed space. Pareth’s still a chicken. I need to be past the mana barrier before I can use [Graveyard of the righteous]…”

“We don’t have much choice. Do we open the door and rush in or try to scout before?”

“I cast [Graveyard of the righteous], it will take eight seconds, right before it goes off you open the door and use [Lady Double] and send the fake running inside. That’ll draw the attention of whatever enemy is in there. We see what we can do after that. Oh and don’t use the shriek if you don’t need to, it's likely I won’t be able to heal you.”

“Aight… You could also charge up a bolt and throw it in after I open the door.”

“What if it doesn’t go through the barrier? I'll die in the explosion. And if it goes off inside it could destroy the ring we need to get back. Also there’s still the Phageids outside, can’t be sure what will happen when we kill the guy. If the barrier goes down we’ll need to get away real fast, better not to attract their attention with a big boom if we can avoid it,” she explained.

Alith answered with a nod. She stood near the door, ready to open it when it was time.

“Ah, but before that… We need to wait a bit for my mana to go back up, I had the spine summoned for a while, it’s quite a drain…”

Following their plan, they opened the door and engaged in the battle. Following the body double, they rushed into the wide circular room beyond the door. It was quite spacious, covered in a dome, they were at the very top of the castle. Sofia felt the door and mana shield closing behind her, the hero had warned them, they were trapped in there.

In the middle was a big brass contraption, with a lot of moving parts. It was half fused with squishy looking Midenicite chunks, or rather, Phageid body parts. An half monster, half machine abomination. Soon it would be getting surrounded by half-skeletons and gravestones surging from underground,

There was about eight meters between the door and the machine in the center. Sofia’s first move as Pareth lined the shields of light in front of her was to give it a hit with the whip mode spine. The target was so big it was impossible to miss, but the pointy tip of the whip bounced off of yet another invisible mana shield. It was also holding off the emerging hands of the underground skeletons.

The Phageid machine had dozens of tentacles and tubes plunging straight into the ground, and hundreds more linked to contraptions on the walls and ceiling.

The shield can’t be protecting all these tubes.

That was also what Alith thought, rushing for the nearest wall mounted machine. She couldn’t easily reach the hanging tubes and tentacles that were several meters high.

This had all happened in about a second. One of the wall machines emitted a clicking sound, a valve opened, releasing a wave of mana charged steam. Alith’s double had been the target, likely since it had been the first thing to enter the room. It was still running toward the big machine when the flow of air hit it. It almost instantly melted into a charred goo of burning flesh, then turned back to a thin mist of mana.

Bad.

The clone had no defenses but it still had a thousand health, to be gone so fast… Sofia needed to avoid those steam attacks. She wasn't sure she could even survive one. The only problem was that they could come from anywhere. As almost every part of the circular room’s wall was covered in weird half brass half Phageid machinery. There were a lot hanging down at various heights from the dome's ceiling as well.

She could feel the presence of a Hero somewhere, but she couldn’t tell where exactly.

Alith had reached one of the wall machines. She climbed on it with agile steps and upon reaching the top, sliced off the three half-Phageid half-machine cables that had linked it to the thing in the middle. One erupted with white fluid, Phageid blood, one with mana and one with the same overheated steam that had destroyed the clone.

The searing steam washed over Alith, failing to overcome her heat immunity, it then hit the wall behind, melting down the surface of the wall’s blue bricks into a half liquid sludge that ran down the wall. The flow of things escaping from the cables was quickly cut off, redistributed to all the other cables, seeing as they swelled a bit more.

Meanwhile, Sofia tried to find the power cores for the shield. If it was anything like the shield outside the castle, it would have them. Taking them down was their best shot at deactivating the shield. Her eyes followed the flow of mana coming to and fro the invisible shield. Perhaps it was because it was a smaller shield, but it was way harder than it had been outside. She couldn’t find the links. By now she was pretty sure the hero was inside that machine, and the shield was why she couldn’t locate him as she usually could.

Sofia heard a clicking sound from her right. She reflexively turned, launching an attack with her bone whip. She totally missed the machine on the wall that had made the sound, but the whip hit one of the cables attached to another machine from above, creating a bright explosion of searing light that expanded then collapsed on itself in an otherworldly chiming sound. It looked like the instantaneous birth and death of a small star.

The cables inside the explosion broke. But not the ones linking to the machine that had made the sound. A small vent opened, and a furious wave of mana charged steam erupted in Sofia’s direction. With her analytical thinking boost from [Way of the fool], she had all the time she needed to understand what was going to happen.

Can’t dodge. It would hit her in less time than it would take her to move a single step. Fuck.

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