Saintess Summons Skeletons

The poem was reconstructed by cross-referencing the two versions and filling in the two blanks they had both forgotten with whatever seemed most appropriate. After some debating, they guessed that the first admin was a Dragon who got erased by the Deep based entirely on the word 'gone' and because they couldn't let go of their first theory, the second they thought was a Hero who tried to return to their world and failed, and the third one… They weren’t too sure about it. Saria seemed to think it might be the fourth Lord, but Sofia knew there was something wrong about that. The pieces didn’t quite fit, and as she reread the last line of the poem, ‘They will leave nothing in their wake’, she remembered a line from her previous encounter with the Orator, which further consolidated her suspicion that the third Admin couldn’t be the Annihilator.

The Annihilator’s function is not to annihilate, or this world would have long ceased to exist.

Saria thought ‘leaving nothing in their wake’ might also be a metaphor for the destruction of the system, since the poem was about the admins, which could mean that the system’s integrity depended on their continued ‘sleep’.

The finality of it all was that Sofia had to leave for her second lesson.

…

Perhaps it was thanks to the skeletal crows’ escort, but nobody attacked her this time, and she made it to class before any of her students showed up. The classroom and corridor had been repaired, leaving no trace of the previous day’s events. Only the faraway ‘Look, it’s the hand demon!’ and other such whispers of the half-awake students trudging to their classrooms reassured her that she hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. News spread fast.

“Looks like I’m a bit early.” Might as well get comfortable.

Erian entered the classroom first, a surprised look on his face.

Sofia waved at him from her chair, not bothering to take her legs off from her desk, “Hi, Erian. Surprised to see me?”

“Greetings, teachers…” Erian gave her a polite nod and did so for Pareth as well. He sat at his desk, ramrod straight, and finally answered Sofia’s question, “Slightly surprised, yes. Most teachers don’t come half an hour early. There have also been rumors circulating…”

“About the hand?”

Erian nodded. “So you already knew. I find it disturbing that they would try to slander the name of a new teacher so openly. I know necromancers are often negatively perceived but these rumors are ridiculous…”

“It’s sweet that you would think that, Erian.”

“It’s no-”

“But whatever you heard was probably true,” Sofia continued.

“Huh?”

“I haven’t heard the rumors themselves, but from what I’ve heard on my way to the classroom, it’s probably just true.”

“The- I-... Did you actually suck the bones right out of their hands like honey?” Erian asked, dubious.

“Ah nevermind, that’s a bit exaggerated, I don’t eat bones, no,” Sofia denied. Erian relaxed a little on his chair. “I did steal them, though.”

“You stole… Their bones?” Erian asked with a shiver.

“Want me to show you?” Sofia asked. Despite Erian’s uncomfortable looks, she poked her left hand with the sharp claws of her scaled arm, struggling a bit to get past her tough skin until her entire finger pierced through.

“What do- No, wait! Ah, no, I, uh. I will be fine. Thank you… Does this not hurt?”

Sofia shrugged. “It does hurt still, but I’m used to much worse, you will too, eventually. And this is honestly nothing.” She pulled her finger out of her palm, and waved her injured hand like someone who just touched a hot pan. She stopped to wipe it, and showed her hand to Erian again. “See, already healed. Are you not a Duke’s son, I thought you would be more used to this kind of thing.”

Eiran shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Touchy subject? I guess Nobility is always fucked, Human or Exidian, all the same.

Searching for an escape for her student, Sofia changed the subject to the first thing she thought of, “Alright, give me the name of your skills. Since you’re here early, you get some bonus coaching.”

Turning around, she found the chalkboard, but no chalk, this raised an eyebrow, but she just dumped a bunch of bone to make a bone board of the entire wall under the curious looks of the young Exidian noble.

“So?”

“I have six active and three passives so far, the active are…”

‘Erian - Invoker Lv 57:

Active:

Invoke Swords

Invoke Shields

Invoke Health

Invoke Wings

Invoke Walls

Invoke Traps

Passive:

Bonding Strength

Lesser Magical Resistance

Bound Armor’

“Are you sure you don’t need the levels?” Erian asked from his chair.

“No, skill levels are honestly overvalued. It’s important to keep them to a usable level, but often how you use the skill is a lot more impactful than its level.” So the armor wasn’t actually a summoned object? This class is intriguing. “Why did you not invoke any traps against Pareth?”

“This is my most recent skill, I still struggle to use it well. I was excited about getting another attack skill at first but it’s just weak...”

Sofia gave him a compassionate smile, “Bad skills happen, I’ve had some of those. The worst skills are those which are too situational to be useful when you need them. I’ll reserve judgment about [Invoke Traps] for after I’ve seen it in action, though. Looking at your skills for now, [Invoke Walls] is probably your best tool. Having wings so early is also quite nice, that’s a big advantage against others in your level range. Did you do duels for tokens yet?”

“I have not. I know Shaily and En have, but I would rather train my skills instead of chasing a sword I will never get.”

“You don’t seem convinced by your own words. Alright. New assignment, I want you to go do some duels every day if you have enough free time. At least one or two. It doesn’t have to be for tokens, but you have to fight seriously.”

Erian looked at Sofia, as if expecting her to have been joking. After an uncomfortably long eye contact, he relented, sighing, “Understood, teacher…”

“I wasn’t done. You’re forbidden from using [Invoke Swords].”

“Wha- This is unfair! How do you want me to-”

“Shh. Listen to your teacher. You have wings, Erian. I think you’re not understanding how big of an advantage that is for someone in the first filter. Just for this week, try to get some fights in like this. Try to win with your traps, walls, and aerial superiority.”

Erian was unconvinced but Sofia gave him some space to think about it and, back behind her desk, discreetly cut her leg over a bone basin to try to convert some of her blood to light in the time until someone else showed up.

She managed to convert one drop and smiled away the weird look Erian gave her when she cursed from the pain all of a sudden, claiming she had a cramp.

One drop is still progress…

En was next to enter the classroom and the other three students arrived in quick succession.

As promised, Sofia went over everyone’s skills. Guerand had different skills for his different golems and they all required some prior preparation. Despite the apparent rigidity of these summons, Sofia spent some time thinking about the best way to use them, and the task she gave to Guerand for the next class was to try to make a wall-climbing golem like an arachnid. In her opinion, the biggest flaw of his golems for now was how he defaulted to giving them a dwarven appearance because that was what he knew best. With more variety in form, he would gain variety in function.

Lola’s [Soul Guardian] turned out to be some kind of immortal fake soul which was capable of learning. It was a lot like a ghost Pareth; and while the girl had been demoralized by her last fight against Pareth, Sofia really thought Lola’s class had the most potential out of the five students.

Shaily’s sprites were quite versatile and powerful for her level, where she struggled was not so much in using her skills to win, but in managing her mana and cooldowns. Sofia wasn’t too sure what to do about it yet, she would have to see her fight a few more times to understand it well.

Lastly, En had her totems. It turned out she had to make them entirely by herself, all their effects were enchantments she had put on them with her own hard work. It was impressive but also not something Sofia could help much with. Although she was going to help her with fighting, Sofia’s first task for En was to get her to sign up for Zerei's classes.

This whole skill-analyzing session had taken much longer than expected, and there was no time to do the fighting part of the lesson afterwards. Four of the students left the class but Shaily stayed behind. The fierce aura she had in her exercise against Pareth the previous day was nowhere to be seen, she was meek and demure whenever she wasn’t actively fighting.

“Do you need my help with something?”

“Teacher, I- I wanted to know if you would trade a skeleton for supplementary lessons.”

Sofia spaced out for an instant, this was not what she had expected at all.

“Is it not possible? I thought because Teacher Vakaria is a necromancer…”

“It is possible. What kind of skeleton are you talking about? Is it intact? How did you get it?”

“I have several, from the monsters I train against, I dislike wasting materials so…”

“Oh, sure, show me them, what kind of extra lessons do you want? I’m flattered that you trust me like this when I haven’t really proved my worth or taught you much yet.”

“The lightning you threw yesterday…”

“You want to learn that? Try to have your sprites emulate it maybe? Good eyes. I don’t know how feasible that is but I could try to teach it to you. That’s going to cost you a lot of skeletons, this is one of my best moves.”

Stars gleamed in Shaily’s purple eyes, “For real?! There is a facility in the academy to visualize skill patterns, it’s expensive so I never used it but the higher levels use it all the time! Ah, but right, skeletons! Follow me, I'll show you my stash, I have a lot!”

Shaily was so lively it was like a different person, there had been more excitement in that one sentence than anyone had shown for any of Sofia’s teaching yet. And Sofia was getting excited too.

This girl has a skeleton stash?!