Saintess Summons Skeletons

From her storage item, Lola brought out a shovel, and started quickly digging in the snow, then in the dirt, until she had made a small hole just deep enough to fit a foot inside. Sofia didn’t expect Lola to drop down on all fours in the snow and stick her head inside the hole, but she did. She quickly looked left and right, she stopped for a few seconds when she looked in Sofia’s general direction, then again when she looked in the direction of the cabin, then she pulled herself out. Jumping up, she quickly patted all the snow on her away while getting closer to the fire sprite.

“Found it, this way,” she told them, pointing at the exact direction where Sofia had seen the light.

Oh, I get it. She had that passive.

Sofia summoned the graveyard skeletons and let them bring her in the spirit plane and under the snow. Underground in the immense whiteness of the spiritual plane, she could see countless roots, quite a few animal dens, the vague shape of deep caves, and most importantly, a small but very strikingly different from its surrounding thing in the distance. A cubic form, the foundations of ‘The Cabin’.

Really? That has to be at least three or four underground levels under that thing. No wonder she found it so fast. Quite clever, I wouldn’t even have thought of the thing possibly having a basement. She even had the shovel ready to use with her [Spirit Realm Vision].That’s five points for Lola and one for everyone else.

Going back up above ground, but still in the Spirit realm, Sofia tried to locate the cabin through the trees. The trees are mostly transparent, but they overlap so much, can’t see anything from that far away.

The graveyard let Sofia go, the students were already a few hundred meters away. I shouldn’t fall behind like this. Using Pareth’s position with them as her reference point, Sofia caught up with the group.

I don’t really feel any big mana clumps nearby, no monsters here I guess. Everyone looks mostly ready to fight. Topaz has two black steel axes, and Opal some kind of small orichalcum wand. Interesting weapons.

There should be another envelope at the cabin.

The ambiance among the girls was tense, they hiked forward in a tight formation, paying a lot of attention to their surroundings. Instead of using a lot of light, they had opted to rely solely on the dim glow of the fire sprite; the darkness made them harder to spot for a potential roaming monster but it also created unsettling dark shadows between the trees. Night in the forest was silent, the sound of boots in the snow only accompanied by the whispers of the cold wind. The deeper they went, the taller the trees around them were, and soon the faint moonlight that had accompanied them before was only a memory.

After seven long hours of nerve-wracking exploration, alternating between Shaily’s fire sprite and a fire spell from Opal as sources of light and heat, they finally saw the eerie blue light coming from the cabin streaming through the trees.

The form of the cabin slowly revealed itself. It was a rather large manor-like building lost in the middle of dense trees taller than it was, made of weathered dark wood. The windows were broken and the wooden walls were in large parts rotten and full of holes. The light came from a corner room on the second floor, it shone through the broken walls and the missing tiles of the roof.

Lola broke the silence, “It doesn’t look very welcoming…” she complained.

“It’s a dungeon, isn’t it?” En added, trying to see where exactly the light came from.

Topaz turned to Sofia who was walking behind them, “We found your cabin, what now?”

Sofia shrugged. “No idea, the letter didn’t say much more. All I can say for sure is that it’s been getting colder since we got here. Lola is shaking even with the fire sprite.”

En summoned her flying totem. “I will try to see what the light comes from.” Shooting upwards, En got a look through the window from a few meters away before landing back in the snow. “It’s just a shiny rock, there’s another envelope there too.”

“This is where we need to go then, let’s quickly find the entrance,” Shaily decided.

It wasn’t long before they found the decrepit doors of the manor and entered.

[You have entered the dungeon : Old manor of Lakeburg - Lv. 50+]

“Good flair, En, I’ll give you a bonus token for that.” I don’t have many to give out but this is nice.

Topaz asked whether anyone had ever heard of Lakeburg, and no one did, especially not Sofia. If this group uses this dungeon, that must mean every group has largely different things going on, unless the academy can manufacture fake dungeons with real system prompts.

The interior of the manor was as dilapidated as the exterior, the old fashioned furniture was dusty and in an advanced state of disrepair. Anything not made of wood or steel seemed to not have survived whatever happened to the place. The interior was still cold but at the very least, it protected them from the wind somewhat.

I feel something unusual from this place. Weird.

Expanding her mana senses as much as she could and probing the place, Sofia understood the source of the prickly sensation. Shades!

Considering the environment, likely winter shades. Lucky! That will make the job easier; but I’ll have to keep an eye open, still. There are more monsters below but I’m not too sure what those are. Where is the boss monster though? There isn’t any mana signature standing out from the rest…

“It’s getting colder and darker, and I’m starting to be a bit tired. I suggest we get the envelope fast and prepare a place to sleep,” Shaily said as everyone was looking around. Opal had stayed near the door and enthusiastically nodded at the suggestion.

“Should En go grab it from outside through the window or do we explore the dungeon? It might take a while to safely explore all the way to that corner of the second floor,” Topaz asked, “Either way, I agree about the place to sleep, we should see if one of the rooms nears the entrance is in decent shape, quickly fix the holes in the walls and barricade the doors.”

“I can go get it,” En confirmed, her tails swaying behind her back.

“I’ll go with you,” Topaz added, “we shouldn’t split too much. Opal, Shaily and Lola can work on our luxury bedroom in the meantime.”

Stay here, Pareth, I’ll follow them just in case.

Pareth nodded and Sofia smiled at him before following En and Topaz outside who were already rushing to the other side of the mansion, lit up by a small shiny totem on En’s back.

As Sofia stepped out of the manor, she instantly felt something wrong. She could still see Pareth through the half-broken doors, yet her soul link told her he was farther away in another direction, which would be in the middle of a bunch of thick bushes.

Now that is very wrong. Very, very wrong. Smells like confusing spatial shenanigans, yet I felt nothing when I got there. Need to investigate. This would have to wait, as the students’ safety was the immediate priority.

En repeated her previous trick and jumped through the window, she was only in there for two seconds, jumping back down holding a glowing rock on a string and another sealed envelope.

[Pendulum of the frozen lake] : This ancient pendulum is enchanted with basic seeking magic, the lowest form of divination, which will only ever point to the one thing it was meant to find.

Item level : 0. Grade : Ancient.

Well, at least Shaily knows [Identify] so they will know what this is for too. I feel like I already know what the envelope will say.

“For you, teacher.”

Sofia grabbed the letter, opened it, quickly glanced at it and stored it. “Thank you, En, you can keep the rock. You look like you’re freezing, let’s go back.”

This whole event must have been planned for a long time. I wonder if they can really get there in one week. At least that should be good training for the level 100 trial.

En had re-entered the manor but Topaz was still outside, frowning. “I could swear there was one more window on this wall before.”

“You count windows?”

“I just have a good memory, teach.”

“Well, let’s say there really was one more window. What is your conclusion?”

“Either there is some illusion magic involved, or the mansion changed while we were on the other side.”

“Or you remembered wrong. But maybe you’re right. It is a dungeon after all, that would not be the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a dungeon.”

Topaz agreed, “Father taught us a lot about dungeons. This isn’t even close to the weirdest things he has found. According to him there are dungeons hidden under poisonous springs, inside volcanoes and even shrouded in everlasting clouds moving through the sky.”

“I may have gone to a few of those myself. But get inside already, your nose is redder than a ripe apra.”

Topaz nodded and entered the manor.

Sofia was the next to stay outside with a worried expression.

Pareth being in another different direction compared to when I left is already something… The window disappearing is another one.

But weren’t the trees before like… A whole meter further apart from the walls?!

Inside, the others had started fixing the first room on the left of the entrance hall. It was a ‘small’ waiting room, furnished with a table missing three of its four legs, paintings discolored beyond recognition, and three mold-covered sofas. They were all busy hammering broken planks retrieved from the entrance hall’s floor to the holes in the walls.

Sofia mindlessly watched them work for a good thirty seconds before she could say anything. “Where did you get a hammer and a box of nails?”

Opal pointed at Lola.

Shaily turned her head to watch, and the hammer she swung at a nail hit just slightly off center.

Ouch!

The frail-looking Exidian girl fell to the ground, holding her left hand. She was trying her best to hold in her scream of pain as the tears rolled down her face.

Surely the academy won’t mind if I repair a few bones… Arguably it was my fault…