Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Yes, sorry… I’ll explain later. It’s nothing,” Sofia reassured Saria.

I’m probably just getting paranoïd, Scripture is getting under my skin; there’s no way he would have spent years running an orphanage pretending to be the unremarkable director Jeffrey… It’s a rather common name too… I just… Yeah…

“So, yer gonna tell me how the end of yer trial went?” Jennifer asked.

“... then it teleported right into the bolt and I died, but since that counted as completing the trial, it sent me back.”

“Yer out of yer mind. Tis’ what it takes to grow that fast I s’pose. Not often that one can claim to have died thrice in the first trial an’ still passed. How’d ya do in the second one? Jus’ curious.”

Sofia pointed at Saria, and with the most deadpan expression, she said, “She ranked first first.” She paused, then continued, “And I ranked first after that.”

“Ya wat’ now?!” Jennifer reeled back on her chair. “Fuckin’... Can’t wait to see ta kind of shit ye both gonn’ pull in the next trial then,” she told them, before slouching back into her chair, “Less not speak ‘bout my own rank… I did well in tha third one at least…”

Saria jumped on the opportunity to ask about the subject, “Right, is there anything you can tell us about it? We already know about the essence wager, but that’s about it.”

Jennifer changed position on her chair again, thinking while bent forward, elbows touching her legs. “I… Hmm. Censor ain’t makin’ it easy. Yer gonna need ta make a lot o’ hard choices, so ye better bring yer brain with ya is one thing. Tha best advice censor will allow me ta give is probably this: know yerself and know what ye want.”

Know yourself and know what you want.

Make a lot of hard choices.

And the trial is called the Tower of Rebirth…

We make choices for our own rebirth? Know what you want for yourself, then?

If that’s it I should be fine. What I want is more mana to summon more skeletons, pretty easy. If it’s more of a life goal thing then the answer is the same. I just want to enjoy life. I need to get stronger to hand it to Scripture but that’s it… And I enjoy the trials…

I can’t help but look forward to my own growth.

There was a short moment of relative calm, accompanied by the muffled sound of the party’s orchestra inside the manor as Sofia and Saria both pondered on the meaning of Jennifer’s words.

“That’s interesting information, thank you,” Saria thanked the blonde warrior.

“It’s nothin’.”

“Not that does help, I think, thank you,” Sofia chimed in, “we should probably go back to the party at some point. But, huh, if I had to ask one last thing; what do we make of this now? Our relationship, I mean.”

Jennifer shrugged, but she seemed a bit uncomfortable with the question, “Ya tell me. I ain’t tha best with that. So… I ain’t gonn’ suddenly become someone I’m not. I can help with training yer physical skills and I know lots ‘bout monsters. None much else…”

“Being nothing more than a distant family member that sometimes share a story and can help if they want doesn’t sound bad,” Saria suggested.

“So just life as usual for all of us, except now we know you exist and we’re acquainted. No obligations, just spontaneous positive interactions. I would like that, honestly. At least it no longer feels like Saria and I don’t have roots anywhere. It’s not actually useful, but it does feel nice to just… Know you’re here,” Sofia continued.

Jennifer laughed a bit, it looked to Sofia that their answers had reassured the woman a lot, with a slight smile, she accepted their ‘offer’, “If that’s all it takes to make ya sisters happy then I’ll gladly exist as just yer distant family member. I don’t spend much time at the academy but ye can come talk whenever I do. I ain’t good fo’ much but I do have plenty o’ ol tales to share if yer interested.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Saria happily accepted.

Sofia looked through her storage. It was in the hero’s cold box I think… Oh, right there!

She brought out something that had been waiting in her storage for what felt like forever. It was a full bottle of dwarven liquor. It had unknowingly made its way to her food stock on the night of happy drinking she had spent with Kuli, Karlson, Karin and Drian in the Red Winds Empire, right before getting her citizenship. “Should we have a toast to the reunion of our distant family?” she suggested while also checking her storage for clean glasses.

“Gladly. I’m happy I finally got to know the family I didn’t know I had,” Jennifer accepted, suppressing her accent to sound more serious.

As the trio shared a drink, Sofia felt watched for a second. She looked behind her, the party was still going on, and there were people vaguely looking in the direction of the terrasse, but no one watching her in particular. She looked at Pareth, asking if he felt or saw anything weird, to which he shook his head in response. This reminded her of how she felt watched during the dungeon excursion and how it had ended. One thing led to another, and the group returned to party afterwards, spending the rest of it munching like three gluttons on the buffet tables and discussing what Sofia could do with the Dryad egg in her storage ring. Jennifer hadn’t lied, she did know a fair bit about even the most exotic of monsters, and what to do with a big egg was included.

The next three weeks came and went in an instant, Sofia held her third public class without any issue, the creature of the Deep showed up again this time, and Sofia had sent Pareth after it when it left, only to see it fade away and disappear in the middle of a corridor.

Sofia held her regular classes as usual, helping all the students progress, notably Shaily was starting to get somewhere with Angel’s bolt, and could already send small shocks up to a few meters away through her hands.

Whether there was going to be a special event for the competition this month was still uncertain, as there had been no communication on the subject, and Sofia was still pondering about the options Jen had given her to deal with the Dryad egg. In the meantime, however, she had spent all of her free time in isolation.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Second step of the Light forging realm :

Your blood becomes light (126 436 / 126 441 drops converted)

Some changes were already there. Now Sofia could feel the few drops of blood left stuck within her veins, being pushed away by the light, but she could also tell that the real change from this step of VPPV was yet to come, just changing the blood was the buildup to the real switch inside of her, the blood-light in her was still inert, for now.

Another heartbeat. Another bout of dull chest pain that now failed to even disturb Sofia’s focus or expression. Another drop of blood gone.

Four more.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, she closed her eyes. Her empty heart continued to beat, and another drop of blood trickled down from the cut on her left hand, caught by a small cup.

Three.

Two.

Sofia’s heart beat one last time, and stopped.

Her body was shaken by a short but intense shock, it felt like being struck by lightning. She had felt it coming, so even that failed to get a sound out of her, but as the pain faded, she slumped on her bed.

“Done.”

Sofia put a hand on her chest.

It’s no longer beating… Can I even be called human anymore?

She held her left hand above her face. From the small cut that had been used to drain the last drops of blood, she could see the flowing light beneath. It looked like a rapid stream of shimmering golden water.

This feels weird. Out of all the steps of VPPV until now, this has to be the most strange.

How does it even work?

Her mithril dagger appeared in Sofia’s right hand. She looked at Pareth who had stopped looking out the window to come to her side when she finished to convert her blood. You’re not going to help me with my testing, right? I know you don’t like harming me.

Well. Let’s see how this goes.

Sofia clenched her teeth, with a clean strike, she amputated her left hand at the wrist, losing a few thousand health points. The pain was lower than she expected, she thought as she watched her hand slowly detach and fall. I almost didn’t feel that.

“Oh wow.”

The lifeless hand fell, it was very clean without any blood. The light was left behind, it kept flowing in the shape of her hand despite the hand being gone, going out of the wrist then back in.

So this is what the veins in a hand look like? That’s a lot. These larger ones are the main lines supplying all the smaller ones. Looks a bit like a bunch of jumbled roots.

The hand of light moved following her wrist, it didn’t feel like anything aside from the cut wrist itself being a bit sore.

Despite not being able to feel her hand anymore, Sofia tried to close it, and was shocked to discover that it worked. The cut hand on the bed was still an inert piece of flesh, but the hand of light on her wrist definitely moved.

I feel like this will make healing a lot easier. Besides that I’m not too sure… She tried to grab the real cut hand with the hand of light. The streams of light curved when they collided with solid matter, curving like a squishy blob to keep flowing as usual.

“Light can’t really touch anything…”

She tried to cut the hand of light with the mithril blade to see if it would curve around it too, which it did. She brought the hand of light to her face.

It’s very bright… And a bit warm. But I still don’t get- Wait…

I can’t cast an Angel bolt without a hand to hold it and direct the mana. But I still have ‘a hand’.

Sparks formed around the ethereal hand and a violent rod of plasma started to form, held in place by the golden streams of light. Sofia canceled the spell and suffered some weak backlash as the mana dispersed through the light and back into her arm, running amok inside her.

She laughed.

Not even looking at the description of the next step of the skill, she spent the next few minutes channeling an unlife rune. She needed to try something else now, and it couldn’t wait. The hand was already starting to heal by itself; equipping the saint's headband to get some more bits of health regeneration, she watched with amazement as her hand slowly regrew around the channels of light while she worked on the rune.

Standing in front of Pareth she asked, “Are you really not going to do it? Alright, fine…”

Sofia summoned the small lich form of Bookie, she grabbed him and put him on the bed, handing him her long mithril dagger. She fell to her knees in front of the bed.

“Come on now, behead me.”