Saintess Summons Skeletons

It was Sofia’s first time transforming since getting her new fused passive skill.

Oooh, this feels good.

It’s a bit of a waste of levels since Pareth could have handled the twig monsters by himself, but well.

I like this too.

As soon as Sofia’s Apostle form was complete, she flew to Astelia’s rescue. Using her Dragon scale arm, she punched one of the wooden monsters from behind. The monster was stuck in place by Astelia’s specialization, reducing its speed to zero, punching into it felt like hitting an unbreakable wall. With nowhere to dissipate, the entirety of the punch’s strength could only spread through the wooden monster, which cracked all over. Sofia hit it again, and the creature fell apart. It exploded, peppering Sofia and Astelia with blade-sharp wood shards. It couldn’t pierce Sofia’s defenses and Astelia diverted the ones aimed at her away with a wave of her hand.

No kill message, it’s not dead.

The monster Sofia had punched was the one least affected by the rot. The other one looked already weaker, and was almost entirely rot-covered.

“The rot is interfering, I’m losing hold!” Astelia warned her as she backed away.

“The other one isn’t dead!” Sofia answered as she threw herself to the rotting monster that just freed itself from Astelia’s control.

The wooden monster was extremely fast, so despite Sofia acting early thanks to Astelia’s warning, it still had time to attack her several times as she flew towards it. The long arms of the wooden creature seemingly had an infinite reach, and Sofia did her best to evade it, but she still got hit once. She managed to minimize the damage, only losing her left arm. And finally arrived face-to-face with the monster. She grappled with it. The loss of an arm was annoying but not enough to stop her. She still had two wings and a tail more than the wooden monster. The creature was fast, but it was not equally as strong. Sofia was stronger, and the monster couldn’t move at all, stuck in her deadly embrace.

If destroying them doesn’t work, then letting the rot do its job will!

While Sofia restrained that one creature, Astelia was trying to prevent the other one from reforming. Its scattered debris were pulling themselves together like magnets and reassembling. Astelia first tried to stop them with her specialization, but there were too many pieces and were too scattered, and seemed to have a will of their own; she couldn’t control them all for any extended length of time. Instead she used one of her flying mithril blades to cut herself, slashing both of her legs off at the knee, spraying her own blood everywhere.

Crying out in pain, the small vampire used her specialization once more, as her blood was catching fire mid-air, she controlled the individual drops of flaming blood to strike the many shards of the wood monster. Most of the shards were hit and caught on fire, while Astelia’s legs snapped back to where they belonged by themselves with a disgusting wet sound.

The Vampire’s curse?! She has a curse of fire! You can use it like that?!

This isn’t normal fire either, it’s much hotter and filled with the mana from her blood!

Its individual parts either covered in rot or on fire, the monster that had been reduced to shred finally died, its shard weakly falling to the ground, no longer trying to bring themselves together.

‘Your party has defeated [Juvenile Dryad - lv. 249]’

I don’t suppose Bookie is interested in those wooden shards…

Astelia turned to Sofia, “Need help?”

“No, this thing can barely move, I’m holding on tight, just give it a bit for the rot to sip on all the mana and it’ll start eating the wood. I don’t think it’ll stand back up from it.”

“Alright. What now, though?” Astelia asked, “Do you think the tree has any more surprises for us?”

“Maybe? Probably not or it would be doing it now is my guess,” Sofia answered, still holding onto the second Dryad, after a few seconds of total silence, she continued, “The question is, do we finish it off, now that it isn’t putting up a fight anymore?”

Astelia looked at the tree from the bottom to the top, before looking back at Sofia. “That is a very good question. It’s not really doing anything. If we’re being fair, it was only defending itself. Finishing it won’t give us any experience and won’t help with our skills.”

As they spoke, the rot consumed all of the second Dryad’s mana and eventually its wooden body crumbled in Sofia’s arm.

‘Your party has defeated [Juvenile Dryad - lv. 249]’

“I guess we’re about done, then. Almost makes me feel bad for killing the wood things. Still, I sense a source of mana under the tree, we should probably check that out,” she told Astelia while checking up on Pareth’s situation.

“Can you take us there with your half-skeletons?”

“I can, the death of the first Dryad restored a bit of my mana, we have to be quick though, I can only sustain the graveyard for like twenty seconds. Also when my transformation runs out in four minutes or so I’ll be weakened, you remember how that works?”

“Yeah, it has been a while since you showed me but your skills are so ridiculous they’re hard to forget, Sofia. I’ll still be there and we have Pareth too so it’s fine, there shouldn’t be anything dangerous left around here unless the mana source under the tree is another monster.”

“Let’s find out.”

Using the graveyard skeletons to phase through the floor, Sofia and Astelia discovered an underground vault under the tree, tightly wrapped around by thousands of roots. It was much harder for the graveyard skeletons to phase through living matter but they still made it in time, leaving Sofia and Astelia inside of a small square room with orichalcum walls right under the base of the giant tree’s trunk.

This cubic vault was almost empty except for a pair of black gem earrings just floating in the middle, surrounded by the smallest amount of pink and green mithrium to hold the gems and make the hook.

If you have this tiny an amount of mithrium, that’s probably the best you can do, that’s likely one or two grams at most.

“Cursed,” Astelia observed.

“Yeah, cursed mana is leaking and getting absorbed by the tree. It is really a lot of mana to fit into something so small. My mana senses are almost overwhelmed just standing this close to them. Let’s see what our scribes have to say… Actually, can you do it? I don’t have the spare mana for an advanced [Identify] if we want to leave using the graveyard again.”

“Sure, give me a second.”

[Sweet Little Lies]: Divine item forged with the essence of Lies. Wearing these earrings allows one to see past any trickery and illusion, at a cost. The wearer needs to stay true to themselves. Not following your true desires and lying to yourself is a Sin, should you fall prey to it, you will be lost into sweet dreams, temporarily ensnared by the earrings’ curse. A fair trade.

Item level : 450. Grade : Forgotten.

This answers who the veiled Recessed is. Quite fitting.

“That sure is something,” Sofia commented as she read the description, “Do you want them?”

“Do you not?” Astelia asked back.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, but more that it’s a bit redundant, [Blessing of the Deep] protects against [Mind control], [Hypnosis] and [Confusion], and I think I can work on regaining the interesting effects of [Pristine essence] against perception alterations even if I forgot it since last time, seeing how the mana pathways still exist, just dried up and a bit atrophied.”

“You want to re-learn a passive skill from the leftover mana pathways? That’s not going to be a fun time.”

“Just part of it, well, it’s a side-project, not a priority at all. Still, these would be kind of wasted on me, I would probably just be tempted to try to get the divine essence out,” Sofia admitted.

And honestly I already have way too much jewelry and shit to wear all the time, I don’t need more. If anything I should think about getting rid of some before I start looking like Ihuarah.

“That is really a waste… I would take them, but the curse part is a bit…”

“It’s not too bad? It even says it’s temporary so if you mess up it shouldn’t be a huge deal. Your scribe seems to think it’s fine, at least.”

“I’m taking them, then. I guess that might end up killing the tree in the end, since we’re stealing its nourishment. But well… We can’t leave this here to rot.”

Astelia had several gold rings and jewels already attached to her long vampire ears, she removed the pair of amethyst gems on her earlobes and grabbed the pair of cursed earrings to replace them.

“Looks cute,” Sofia complimented her.

Astelia blushed slightly. “Thanks. You should take the Orichalcum, no reason to leave it here, these walls are thin and the room is small but that’s still a lot of good metal.”

“Got it.”

I need to be fast before the transformation ends.

Using her Dragon scale claws, Sofia ripped off the walls, ground and ceiling orichalcum sheets lining the room and stored them all within her storage ring, leaving the small vault stripped of all its value and completely empty. The stone bricks behind were cracked and let some of the tree’s roots through.

“That should be all, my transformation still has about a minute left, let’s go see what the students think about it.”

“They’re all good?”

Sofia nodded, “All safe with the skeletons, it’s too bad that we couldn’t have them watch the fight.”

“They saw us fight plenty against the trees already. Imagine if one of the Dryads attacked them and Pareth let even a bit of the blast through.”

“Yeah that would have been bad… Let’s get going.”