Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia followed a trail of skeleton rats to the exit of the strange labyrinth of pool rooms, locating it required to go through a winding path up and down several levels multiple times, before swimming down a dark hole in the ground at the end, the bottom of which was obscured by some kind of darkness magic.

Well, that was easy. Didn’t even get to know what the curse in the water does. Sofia thought as she swam down the hole.

[Eternal Lights - Times survived: 27]

No way, someone didn’t make it?!

Pareth? Is it you? Is this why I can’t see your vision?

Sofia kept swimming down, following the link to the few of her skeleton who were already out of the water. Or So she thought, as she felt gravity turning around, down was up and up was down, and before she knew it, her head was out of the water.

A few skeleton birds and rat floated nearby, on an endless calm ocean under a red sky.

That brings back bad memories…

“I think I liked the cursed water better than the salty ocean…” Sofia complained as she looked around, “the question is, what do we do now?”

Wings still no working… I don’t see anything anywhere besides water…

Pestle climbed on top of Sofia’s head and also looked around from that vantage point.

“No leg…” she announced as she sat back down on Sofia’s helmet, holding her horns.

“Maybe Er’Gakk isn’t done preparing the next ‘sport’ yet.”

“Sofia!” Bookie called out.

“Found something?”

“I’m tired of swimming, I’m going back.”

“Sure, rest well, be prepared to summon the fishes soon, we might need them.”

Bookie nodded and disappeared.

A long minute passed, and Sofia could only guess that the event had not started yet, when she felt something change. Her wings worked again, and so did the other sealed skills, aside from Pareth missing, everything was back to normal.

Oh, nice.

Taking a few steps up, she walked up to the surface of the ocean.

“Better… I’m guessing this means the party has started. Is some kind of sea monster going to attack?” she wondered, scanning the water with her mana senses.

“Ack! Sofia!” Pestle cried out, pulling on her horns, “Sky!”

Sofia looked up.

“Oh… We’re really stretching the definition of sports here, aren’t we?”

A dark mass blotted out a significant portion of the red sky right above Sofia. It did not look like it was moving, but it gradually grew larger.

“This one is a bit more serious that the falling sky from before… How big is this thing? Can’t even call it a meteor, at this size it’s like another planet altogether, is the intended solution to just fly away? Is it even possible to run away?”

Just in case that was it, Sofia started to fly in a random direction as fast as she could, only leaving out the last tier of runeforged overlord for now.

I could try to swim back down… Not sure that would do much… A piercing bolt? I don’t have that much time… And this looks juuuuuust a bit too large to pierce through… An explosive one is like throwing a pebble at a mountain…

Stopping for an instant, she summoned a bone platform on the water for the graveyard nymphs to appear on, and had a look into the spirit plane. The ‘thing’ incoming was even scarier in the spiritual plane, like a huge white ball of screaming ghosts.

“Neat…” she commented as she unsummoned the nymphs and started flying again, “Well, the runes would probably save me but I’m not sure that won’t disqualify me. I’m at a loss here… There’s maybe thirty seconds left… There’s no sun… I could give a few seconds of immortality to one of Bookie’s skeletons but then what? Is that enough to stop a whole planet? Sound unlikely…”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Sofia went through her entire skillset several times but she failed to find a way to survive that did not imply using her unlife runes. She had to admit that the collision of two planets was a bit too much for her to handle at the moment. No matter how fast she flew, the thing overhead barely seemed to move, which meant she would never be able to escape in time, so she stopped.

“Pestle, any ideas?”

“We very die, Pesle think. No idea.”

“Yeah sounds about right… This might just be a forced end to the event.”

Just to be sure she had gone through all of her options, Sofia tried teleporting to Zangdar, of course that did not work. And in a similar fashion, the painted halls were accessible for her skeletons but not for herself. There was no escaping to the margin allowed.

The Rejection trick… Too weak.

Make the sandworm skeletons immortal for a few seconds and hope they can burrow deep enough in that time to soften the blow? No, I can’t see that working either…

Well… I’m not going to go down without a fight.

I don’t believe it will work… But it’s worth a shot.

Sofia summoned a large empty sphere of bone from the painted halls and sat inside with Pestle. Inside she summoned more bones.

Quickly thicken the walls, just enough that the graveyard can use it as ground… There we go.

That done, she moved her mana heart to the middle of her belly, and created an opening in her armor.

“Pestle, give me a hand, cut my skin right there, from here to here, not deeply.”

“Cut!”

With a single claw, pestle drew a straight line in Sofia’s skin, some bloodight spewing from inside.

Great, still above 99% health. Was a good call to dispel and recast the runes to heal my fingers back in the pools.

Before the skin could heal and stick back together, Sofia gently shoved her fingers in the wound, and caught her mana heart which was right behind the skin. She pulled it so it was halfway out of her belly.

Setup complete.

Controlling the bone sphere, Sofia created an opening at the top to look outside, the incoming dark planet was getting dangerously close, bruning brightly as it entered the atmosphere.

Perfect.

Now the Nymphs.

The skeletal Nymphs appeared inside of the sphere next to Sofia and Pestle; moss and mushrooms starting to grow around them in the sphere as Sofia was too busy to care about the details.

[Sixth Melody]

Eighty percent of Sofia’s mana disappeared as a cold melody spread on the surface of the ocean.

The air started to scream as the planet drew closer. The temperature quickly rose. The ocean started to bubble and boil, steam rising in thick clouds, the bone sphere splintering under strain, barely held together by Sofia’s aura.

“Pestle. When I give the signal, destroy my mana heart and immediately return to the halls. Alright? You need to destroy it in one hit.”

“Leg heart? Pesle ready!”

“Great. Just wait for it. We have to time this right.”

The planet came closer and closer.

A shockwave slammed Sofia and Pestle flat against the bottom of the sphere water erupting into towering geysers all around them. Sofia closed the sphere back as it was sent flying.

“PESTLE NOW!”

Sofia held Pestle close to her mana heart.

To be sure to follow Sofia’s instruction, Pestle couldn’t just bite into the mana heart, her mouth was too small. Instead, she unleashed a straight punch directly into the center of the mana heart, shattering it to pieces. Sofia’s body shattered with her heart, but she focused on keeping her mana in order, [Heat Death] preventing her from losing it.

As she was reduced to a sliver of health, the sixth melody propagated the soul damage in a gigantic area, the range of the skill multiplicated 20 times over by [Pillar of Creation].

Hopefully that’s enough.

The graveyard nymphs died from the soul attack but Sofia immediately used her remaining mana to get one of them right back out before the skill event deactivated itself. The respawned nymph grabbed the remnants of Sofia’s mana heart amidst the chaos, and Pestle disappeared into the painted halls.

With a fraction of health left, Sofia was pulled into the spiritual plane as the two planets collided.

The screaming ghostly mass of the dark planet was no more, at least not on the surface, completely wiped out by the sixth melody. Unable to move, Sofia and the nymph holding her could only wait as even the spiritual plane shook from the collision. No longer having a physical ground to exist in, the graveyard nymph was sucking up all of Sofia’s mana in a continuous fight against the spell collapsing.

But even that was in vain. Soon the mana ran out, and the leftover bits of Sofia’s mana heart were forcefully pulled back into the physical plane, reappearing inside of a sea of superheated plasma.

Sofia was about to die, and she could feel, right then, that the unlife runes were not going to help. Like many other things, they were disabled. Right before the plasma consumed her mana hear as she phased back into the physical, she dispelled all of her unlife runes.

10% health per second. That’s how much her aura healed her with [Radiance] doubling the heal.

Without mana and powerless to do anything else, she watched as the plasma devoured her mana heart again and again as the healing endlessly fought back against it. Plasma was something she was very resistant to to begin with, thanks to her insistence on throwing compacted chunks of it as her main means of attack for years, and with the absurd healing potency of her third specialisation, somehow, she just about managed to reach an equilibrium here, in this mess of energy at the collision point of two planets.

[Eternal Lights - Times survived: 28]