Saintess Summons Skeletons

The big grayskin had to be at least level 350 if not 400, clearly the only reason Pestle was still alive was that it wanted to retrieve the baby grayskin without harming it.

That big one can’t possibly fit into the corridors without destroying them.

Pareth might be able to survive two hits…

For a second Sofia considered blowing everything up with a bolt, but since the entire point of killing these monsters was really the loot, burning it all down was a bit counterproductive. Whatever the case, she needed to do something fast, before Pestle got caught and all the grayskins’ attention turned toward them instead.

Sonia was already reading her longbow but seemed unsure of what to do exactly.

“Sonia,” Sofia said, “Shoot Pestle with your Mithrium arrows, make them as bright as possible.”

Sonia narrowed her eyes, switching arrows, “That could work.”

Pareth and Dragon Crowie stood in front of the two women in the corridor, ready to intercept any coming grayskins, while they took up aim. A bolt of plasma appeared on Sofia’s Atlatl form scepter, and the Mithrium arrow on Sonia’s bow lit up with swirling red and blue flames.

Sonia took her time to aim, it wasn’t easy to predict Pestle’s movements. After five long seconds, she unleashed the arrow, the trajectory and speed were perfect. In a flash it would reach the fairy and pulverize her and the baby grayskin both.

With the senses of a high level creature, the huge grayskin realized that. Just as it looked like Pestle was about to die, the Grayskin appeared in front of her, an extended arm absorbing the arrow’s impact. The arrow buried itself deep into the monster’s flesh, creating a small bloody crater that erupted in a flower of fire and ice. It howled in pain, but was interrupted by another projectile that followed right after. A long skewering bolt of plasma dug its way into the monster’s throat from the side, almost piercing it from side to side, burning brightly as it charred its gray skin and flesh.

Pestle used that time to fly away to the other side of the wide hall.

The giant grayskin shot Sofia and Sonia a glance full of hatred, before turning back toward Pestle. At the same time, almost all of the regular grayskins that had been chasing Pestle with it turned toward them.

“Pareth hold the front, Crowie use everything you have!” Sofia ordered, preparing another skewer.

Sonia was already aiming for her second shot.

Crowie’s dragon’s breath slowed down the incoming horde of grayskins immensely, and Pareth, two shields in hand, bashed away the ones entering the corridor one after the other.

“Bookie how’s your fog?!” Sofia asked, finishing to charge her second bolt.

“Almost there!”

Another arrow and skewering bolt shot out of the corridor. The big grayskin howled in anticipation. With a closed fist, it punched away the incoming Mithrium arrow, its hand taking minimal damage. But it couldn’t react fast enough to prevent the follow up bolt from embedding itself in its skull like a frontal horn.

At the same time, the other grayskins started to overwhelm Pareth and Crowie, there were already dozens pushing their way into the corridor, roaring and howling in rage.

Bookie’s fog recovered just in time, ripping off a page by himself, he tapped into Sofia’s mana to summon his own small grayskin army.

The real grayskins were no match for the buffed up skeletons, it gave Pareth and Crowie some breathing room to back up near Sofia and recover, while another arrow and bolt hit the giant.

The giant grayskin just couldn’t afford to let up for a second, or Sonia and Sofia’s attacks would kill its baby. It was a shameful battle, admittedly, but nobody here was above such tactics.

After tanking a seventh skewering bolt, starting to look like a lightning porcupine, the big grayskin had enough, it stopped chasing Pestle and rushed at the group, claws and fangs bared.

A weak cry of agony echoed from behind it, and the monster stopped in its tracks, eyes bloodshot. The baby grayskin had become leg.

The creature’s second of shock and disbelief cost it another arrow and bolt digging at its health. Mad with rage, it turned back toward Pestle, its roars of sorrowful rage so loud it shook the entire ruins.

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Pestle disappeared.

With a quick time stop, she entered the monster’s mouth and dug her way up to its brain through all the charred flesh.

The monster flailed wildly, digging at its own skull. Sofia disabled [Runeforged Overlord] to save mana, and projectiles kept raining while Pareth moved into the hall with the grayskin skeletons to finish off the weaker ones.

The giant grayskin’s movements became less and less coherent, until finally, it collapsed in a big cloud of dust and debris in the middle of the now silent great hall. Moments later, Pestle emerged from its abdomen holding up a large shiny blue rock like a trophy, and the skewering bolts all petered out of existence.

“I almost feel bad for it,” Sofia commented with a sigh of relief, fresh out of mana.

“I don’t,” Sonia said with a shrug, “They’d do the same to us if they could. The coordinated ambush from earlier proves that.”

“I know, I know. I just… Never mind. Pestle really saved our asses here. The ambush from earlier might have lasted longer than we could have held if not for her causing such a mess here preventing reinforcement from coming.”

“Yeah, and we took down that thing with minimal danger. Good hunt. That intact core’s probably worth a good half a million gold or so.”

“That thing was probably around level 400, right?” Sofia asked.

“My guess too. Low four hundreds I would guess. We’re lucky that it was a purely physical strength fighter. Anything else might’ve been too much but those are the easiest to deal with for ranged fighters like us.”

“And even like that, it survived many hits.”

“That’s just how it is. Now imagine how long it takes when I try to take down a monster like that alone.”

“You do that?” Sofia asked, surprised.

“Sometimes you got no choice. Those are never a fun time. Had more close calls than I can count, but often you can trick monsters into one another’s territory and take advantage of the chaos.”

“Hmm. What would you have done with these ruins if you were alone?” Sofia asked curiously.

“Probably sent a golem ahead at the started, and fucked off when the first of those things inevitably kills it. Wouldn’t explore such a big ruin alone if it’s not completely empty. Not to mention, closed environments like these aren’t exactly my strong suit.”

A blood-covered fairy ran up to the two women while Pareth and Crowie handled the hall’s final cleanup.

“Pesle very kill! Bring leg!”

“Well done,” Sofia praised, grabbing the Physikstone the size of her own head.

“Good work out there,” Sonia added with a nod.

“Very has fun! Pesle go leg now!”

Disappearing on the spot, Pestle rushed to the giant grayskin’s corpse, determined to have her fill of bolt-grilled grayskin meat.

“Quite the skeleton. You’re gonna take the big one’s too?”

“Of course,” Sofia answered, “Unless you need it for some reason?”

“No, no, too big to even consider harvesting the claws, it’s worthless to me outside of the core.”

“Can’t you use the tendons to make bow strings? That thing is certain to have tough ones.”

“Probably but there’s no chance it could be better than what I already have,” Sonia said with a smirk, fingers gliding along her bow’s thick string. “This beauty’s made with a primitive troll’s heartstring. Nothing short of a Kleptran drone’s tail ligament could beat that!”

“Hah, well, that’s good, because it looks like Pestle wasn’t about to leave any meat on those bones anyway, just look at her go.”

“... Fairies are freaky,” Sonia mumbled with a shiver. In the short time the two had been discussing, two of the creature’s four giant arms were already cleaned up with not a speck of flesh left on the bones.

The group scavenged the grayskin den, stacking up more physikstones inside of Pareth’s bag, that started to sound like a huge sack of marbles every time he moved, and Bookie ditched a page containing ten Kidjikkik workers that Sofia never used to eat the giant grayskin. Coming at the cost of 1 billion mana, and giving Bookie 400% extra strength, Sofia wouldn’t be able to summon it before she crossed another filter or two, but considering the regular grayskin skeletons’ power, it was nice to have.

There was not much of anything else at all to be found in the creatures’ den aside from nauseating piles of excrements everywhere. As for whatever those things usually ate, they did not even leave the bones behind. They had nothing precious so to say, no interesting items, but in the end, Crowie still found something, a little pile of shiny baubles the monsters had pilfered from the ruins. What any of those things were, nobody had any idea, they did not react to mana and were made of metals they didn’t recognize. Sonia’s [Identify]s gave nothing either, as could be expected without a system connection.

In the end, they decided to bring along a few of the more precious looking and tiny ones in Pareth’s bag, and discovered another mithril ‘key’ at the bottom of the pile, looking almost identical to the first one the rats had found.

Hands on her hips, Sonia observed the two keys Sofia held in her hands, “Well, we have two of those now, we really can’t leave before we find what they open, don’t you agree?”

“Heh, it’d be a waste not to fully map out these ruins now that the main threat is gone.”

“Summoning the rats again?”

“Bookie! Unleash the rats!”