Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia flew over the island’s volcano to reach the village on the other side. It was built on another sandy beach, huts made of tropical wood logs and palm leaves on elevated stilts.

As for why Sofia could not feel anyone’s presence there, It was not that the village was uninhabited.

Huh, they look a bit like goblins. All dead… Too bad Bookie can’t feed on trial skeletons. It’ll be hard to understand what happened here.

Sofia crouched to check on one of the dead people, she could tell they were dead for sure, but there were no wounds or anything else, as if the entire village had just passed in an instant for no reason.

Some kind of gas poisoning, maybe? The air smells fine…

With her mana senses, Sofia quickly scanned every hut. Since the ‘immortal god’ supposed to be hunting her was nowhere to be seen yet, and this place was strange, she felt confident there might be useful information to be found there. The goblin-like civilization was not particularly advanced, it seemed, with little going on in their village beyon the tools for daily necessities and fishing. But Sofia did find something that stood out.

“A bunch of strange enshrined idols… I’d wager it’s the god of the abyss if all five idols didn’t have completely different looks. They do all look disturbing though… I guess it wouldn’t be a waste to observe them a bit, just in case…”

“They do look weird like the true form gods,” Bookie said, “This one reminds me of Victory!”

“You’re not completely wrong,” Sofia admitted, looking at the idol Bookie pointed at, which looked like a scrawny stick-figure man, covered in barnacles, and with a cone-shaped shellfish for a head. “This other one looks like a dragon whale, I guess? And this one is just a twin-headed bird.”

“And the other ones… Is this a tentacle crab?” Bookie asked.

“It does look a bit like that yeah. And the last one is more like… A humanoid bloated rotting fish? It looks like an undead.”

“Hmm… I’ll think about how to best deal with each of them if they show up, let’s get moving, there’s probably more to this island, and I saw another one in the distance as well when I flew here.”

That was actually it for that island, the rest of the zones she couldn’t reach with her mana senses before being nothing but a dense jungle and more sandy beaches. She quickly flew over to the other nearby island, making it there in about a minute of flying, and discovering another dead village there, with similar enshrined idols. They were not quite the same, being rather crude handsculpted wooden idols, but it was recognizable enough.

One of the shrines was empty. “The idol of the bloated fish is missing. It could mean nothing but… Hmm. Let’s assume this is not random. If this thing shows up, we can try using the templars, but that would require us to stay on land… And I don’t see any other island on the horizon.”

Sofia took a few seconds to think, before starting to give orders.

“Pestle, quickly check every corner of this island, just in case we missed something. Pareth, Bookie, check the village, try to see if you find the missing idol somewhere, maybe on one of the dead villager. Be quick.”

“Understood!” Bookie said, running off to check on the nearest corpse, while Pareth decided to check inside of the huts.

Now to quickly assemble some floats.

Sofia had plenty of pre-made construction bits in her bone storage, in part for the city she was planning to build, and also to be able to quickly assemble things. Taking out large square bone slabs and a bunch a empty cylinders, she quickly reshaped the end of each cylinder to close them up, and stuck them to the underside of the slabs. Creating a dozen of large bone rafts in record time.

Should be enough.

Guys, found anything?

Pareth returned first with a teleportation, shaking his skull, the search had not been fruitful. Pestle came back a few seconds later.

“No something,” she announced, deflated.

“Good to know. Bookie?” Sofia called out.

“I found something!” Bookie shouted as he came back running from the other side of the village, holding a small pendant. “Look, Sofia!”

“A red rock on a string… I guess one of the villagers was wearing it? I don’t feel any magic from it.”

“The oldest-looking one had it tied to his wrist,” Bookie explained, “It looked important so I brought it back!”

Mr Scribe, opinion? Sofia asked, shooting an [Identify] at the rough-looking pendant.

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[The system itself is actually providing a description, unlike with everything else until now] Mr Scribe noted, briefly taking over Sofia’s mana to communicate. She had identified other things like the dead people and the idols, but the Scribe just had no idea what to say about them even with the analysis magic.

Oh damn, it really is important then!

[Akkak’s bloody pendant of storms]: Supposedly blessed by the Akkak, the divine bird of winds, this pendant is rumored to have the power to repel storms.

Huh. There isn’t any magic at all in this thing though. Spirit realm maybe?

Sofia summoned the Nymphs to bring her over to the other side, looking at the pendant in the white fog of the spiritual plane.

Nothing…

Sofia returned to the physical plane, observing the pendant from up close.

I don’t see any engraved enchantment either… It says bloody pendant, maybe…

Sofia summoned some blood in the palm of her hand and soaked the red pendant in it. There was no reaction.

Go figure.

“Sofia!” Bookie interrupted.

“Yes?”

“Maybe it needs the weird people’s blood?”

“Good call. Let’s try.”

After some trial and error, the group found that the pendant was actually activated by the blood of the villager who had originally held it, and his blood only. When drenched in it, it glowed softly for about a minute. After this discovery, Sofia shredded the entirety of this villager’s body using his own spine as a blender, storing as much of his blood as possible in small bone vials.

That should be enough blood to use it around thirty times? Sofia guessed, looking at the vials in her storage, as the wind started to pick up. A storm was brewing on the horizon.

A total coincidence, I’m sure. She sarcastically thought, observing the dark clouds gathering over the sea, bringing with them a subtle but unpleasant smell.

“Like a disgusting rotting fish… I think that’s our cue. Back to the bone storage everyone, we’re going,” Sofia ordered.

In a second all the skeletons were gone. Sofia deployed her wings, looked at the incoming storm, and flew in the opposite direction.

There were no additional instructions this time, just the initial event prompt. The goals seems to be holding out as long as possible so… Catch me if you can, ‘god’.

Of course there had been the possibility of flying out from the start instead of searching the islands, but Sofia had not been too fond of the idea. In the odd chance she was unlucky and flew in the god’s direction, she could have lost her oportunity for a gold star pin, and she could not take such risks lightly.

Sofia flew as fast as she could on a budget, using the second tier of [Runeforged Overlord] for a 30% speed boost, which she could now keep up indefinitely as long as she was in sunlight. Despite that, the storm slowly grew closer. It was truly like the storm was chasing her, no matter how fast or high she flew, when she looked back, the clouds were larger and closer every time, the putrid smell of rotting fish stronger in her nostrils.

The low rumbling of thunder came, and behind her, Sofia saw lightning strike the sea.

The lightning bolts were like mighty pillars of plasma, cutting holes into the sea, illuminating the horizon like one of Sofia’s million mana angel bolts, these were nothing like regular lightning.

Holy… Getting hit by this is an instant death.

There was no land on the horizon, and the storm clouds seemed to extend infinitely up in the sky, as if to prevent anyone from flying over them. Sofia kept flying in a straight line, every second she could extend her time for counted. But soon enough, the storm caught up with her, its foul, nauseating stench becoming almost unbearable, forcing Sofia to stop breathing, and the pillars of lightning started striking dangerously near.

Time to see if this thing is the real deal.

Sofia grabbed the pendant and a blood vial from her storage, smashing the thin vial directly onto the red stone. The pendant shone brighter than before, and like emitting a shockwave, it dug a hole in the storm clouds. Like a clearing in the middle of a forest, the pendant carved a round piece of blue sky into the storm as it passed Sofia and engulfed the rest of the sky.

All around the hole, pillars of lightning struck the sea one after the other, like a mad god furious that it could no longer reach its prey.

The real show starts now.

Sofia adjusted her altitude as she carefully looked around, she flew as far up as the ambient mana would allow her wings to go. Under her, the sea started to boil.

Out of nowhere, a giant tentacle shot out from the boiling sea.

It was a disgusting amalgamation of rotten fish and sea creatures, mashed together in a tentacle-like appendage that pierced through the water, aimed straight for Sofia. She was ready, her reaction time barely good enough, she flew back, the tentacle thick like a giant tree piercing the sky as it missed her by an arm’s length.

It was followed by nine more, attacking one by one as Sofia avoided them, flying back in a zigzag pattern. Thankfully the hole in the storm followed her, or rather, it followed the pendant, allowing her to remain safe from the lightning for the time being.

The ten tentacles slowly sunk back into the sea.

Sofia shot one with a piercing bolt for good measure, failing to even pierce halfway through.

There was a strange moment of calm, before the assault started again. The tentacles no longer shot one by one, they attacked together, at varied angles, sinking back and striking again, trying to cut Sofia’s path of retreat.

But Sofia was more than experience with tentacles. For her as she was now, this was not even as bad as Victory’s eye-covered tentacles during the second trial. She not only avoided them flawlessly, but she even baited them into piercing into each other, leaving them in a rough shape without ever attacking herself.

Eventually two tentacles collided so hard that one of them completely crumbled, tons of rotting fish and sea creatures falling back into the sea.

The god below howled, his deep guttural cry resonating through the waves.

Sofia looked down with a smirk.

“You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that if you want my bones, ‘god’.”