Saintess Summons Skeletons

Rather annoyed at having to look up at the machines, Sofia used her aura to hold her feet against the ceiling. She did feel like she was upside down but at least now she could have a proper look at the machines.

Let’s see… There should be two slots…

Oh, here.

Sofia pushed one of the mithril rods into a round hole, it slid inside with a click before popping back out.

Wrong hole?

She pressed the other mithril rod into the hole, this time it clicked and stayed in place.

Alright.

Finding the other hole and placing the last rod in there, the machine was complete, the three rods spun in place in unison, before all sticking out slightly, ready to use.

Easy enough. Now to align them… Toying with the mithril lever, Sofia watched as it made all the rings around the energy orb spin slightly into the direction she pushed the lever. The farther they were from the orb, the slower they spun.

Do I need to align three or all seven? This might be a bit tricky.

To make things harder, the three levers were in a triangular arrangement around the glass pillar, making it hard to reach all three at once for someone without the extensible tentacles of the octopus race.

Sofia had to make long bone catching rods so she could reach all three levers at once. It took her so long to align the rings that Pareth and Sonia came back in to check on her midway through.

After battling with the controls for twenty minutes, she started to get the hang of it and aligned the three outermost rings.

… Nothing?

Do I really have to align all seven at once?!

Shiiiiiiit…

Why did this become a dexterity challenge… And they keep drifting away by themselves like damned repulsing magnets! This is hell!

It took almost an hour for Sofia to finally get all rings perfectly aligned and spinning at the same speed, at which point she could feel her own head spinning.

The machines all around the pillar immediately started to loudly activate one by one, mana and electricity surging, gears spinning, metal clanking, light surged from inside the glass pillar as if the energy orb exploded with a low buzz.

Finally the light died down. With a loud clang, a compartment opened not far from Sofia, a cloud of steam and oil pouring down from it, a bright-hot little thing in the middle of it.

Sofia quickly flew down to catch the item, watching it cool down in her hand.

A coin?

What she had in hand was a tiny round coin, it was made of two of the strange alloy rings previously orbiting around the energy orb, now shrunk down to the size of a thumb and clamped together. In the center of the coin, there was a hole, and at the very center of the hole, a minuscule shining white dot hovered silently, its form wavering but stable.

Sofia looked up at the machine, two rings were gone.

It needs three to activate but only two to make one of those?

I can make two more!

The technicalities of how this strange coin could possibly help an ascended break through the filter to level 550 were still a mystery, but there not being any kind of trap here made the probability of it being true that much higher. Without waiting, Sofia quickly adjusted the remaining rings, which had started drifting off, and minted another ascension coin, then the third one. It left the energy orb dim and only the size of a small nut, hovering shakily in the pillar with a single alloy ring left.

And now we leave this here for someone else to find in a distant future.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Who knows, we might not even be the first ones to use it…

Pareth, do you hear me properly? Can you open?

The dragon scale gates opened one by one.

“Success?” Sonia asked right away.

Sofia opened her helmet’s visor, flashing a bright smile, “Great success.” She held up her right hand, three coins held between her fingers. “Didn’t even know it was possible to compress mana this much, basically all the energy in that orb is in there now.”

“There’s three?!”

“It needs three rings to activate but two rings to make a coin. Seven rings, three coins. Do you mind if we take two?”

Sonia looked conflicted for the better half of a second, before making up her mind, “Previous terms still apply?”

“Sure, if we can’t use them by the time the change of epoch rolls around we’ll give you one.”

“Only one?”

“Plenty of ascended on our side who could use one too,” Sofia argued, “the only reason I’m still agreeing to potentially giving it out despite you also getting one is because we’re getting one more.”

“Hmm…” Sonia walked around in front of the gate, deep in thought.

I find it reassuring to see how much she cares about preventing the cataclysm. Honestly I wouldn’t be against formally joining Eternal Mountain’s group if I had that kind of free time… But sorry, I’m getting that coin, I’m going to use it.

Worst case, Cecless could probably use one. She is already at 549 after all, and deadset on stopping the Looming.

Sonia stopped pacing around, looking at Sofia, “Unlimited free reforging in the Odalite forge and I let you have the two coins, no extra conditions.”

“Well informed, aren’t you?” Sofia said with a light snort, seriously considering the proposition. In a sense making these people stronger should be beneficial for the world as a whole, but at the same time, if they were already aware of the forge, they would undoubtedly come and pay for it, it was just too valuable an upgrade.

“Three free uses and a priority for future forge uses. Plus you cannot tell anyone we also have coins.

“Seven free uses,” Sonia tried.

“We’re going to be selling those for old stones to upgrade top tier items. Five uses.”

“... Deal.”

“And you get whoever is keeping tabs on my city to fuck off.”

“There no– … Alright.”

“Then it’s a deal, here you go,” Sofia said with a smirk, tossing one of the coins to Sonia, who scrambled to catch it.

“H- Hey don’t treat those so lightly!”

“There might be a few trillion points worth of mana in there but they’re not unstable or anything,” Sofia commented, “They feel pretty sturdy.”

“Maybe they are, but maybe they aren’t! I don’t wanna find out the hard way!”

“Relax, to begin with, I think these might not be the only three coins,” Sofia said.

“What?! Oh…” Sonia immediately realized. “You’re right… This place probably wasn’t built upside down, huh…”

“Right? We might be in the mirrored ruins. Assuming that’s how it works. This valley is pretty strange so who knows, but there’s a real possibility, don’t you agree?” Sofia asked.

Sonia nodded, carefully storing her coin in a hidden pocket of her chest armor. “Very real possibility. So potentially three more coins…”

“If that’s the case, I say we leave them here, though,” Sofia suggested, “if we somehow lose those, we can always look for the non-mirrored ruin.”

Sonia immediately shut down the idea, “What if we all level up before that and there’s nobody left to enter the layer and retrieve them? I say we get them right away.”

“Right, that was a thing… Let’s wait until daybreak and we go check that, then. We might have to renegotiate the terms if there are three more, though.”

“We can deal with that when we get there. I’m glad you’re reasonable at least… I know a lot of people who would have said nothing about that. Or even tried to get rid of me to hog all the coins. It’s nice to have trustworthy teammates.”

Sofia shrugged, “I’m not into back-stabbing if you don’t hit me first.”

Sonia laughed. “I’ll be sure never to hit you.”

“You can hit me if I deserve it. That’s how things go. Pareth, close the gates, let’s get out of here.”

The group took a closer look at the coins as they walked back to the entrance of the old ruins. They seemed to react slightly when they were held close to their mana hearts, but beyond that, they were just strange coins. Interestingly, however, when Sofia lightly rubbed her coin against her dagger, it was actually the dagger that was left with scratch marks, showcasing how insanely durable these tiny things really were.

Sonia decided to keep hers on herself, while Sofia stored both hers and Pareth’s into the most secure place they had accessible at the moment: Bookie’s pockets. Even Bookie still didn’t quite understand where physical things like his clothes or weapons went when he stored them inside of his book form, especially since it was nothing like regular storage items. Nevertheless, he could hold about fifty cubic centimeters worth of equipment, that he could choose to wear or not whenever he summoned his skeleton form. It made for good emergency storage.

A few hours later at dawn, the group left the ruin, and after checking their surroundings, fell straight down through the sky of the mirror valley hoping to find the non-mirrored original ruin.