Saintess Summons Skeletons

“So how do we find the seed from here?” Sofia asked, “We search for a place with a lot of big ants?”

“Pretty much,” Sonia answered, “it shouldn’t be too far up now that we’ve reached the trunk proper, the challenge will be to go there undetected. I don’t think what we’ve been doing until now is gonna cut it.”

After deliberation, they sent Pestle as the sole scout, as her invisibility was much stronger than anything anyone else had. Following her, they jumped up from branch to branch, avoiding any encounters for a long time. There were almost no workers roaming around these heights, only the bigger ants that Sofia had yet to see.

That relative peace did not last long.

Pestle came back, but instead of the usual signal to follow, she landed on Sofia’s head, panting.

“Ack… Pesle… Almost is die. Big ant is very danger! Is three above, no can go.”

“Three big ones?” Sonia asked, “Did you try wrapping around the trunk?”

“Pesle try. Ant is wait. Touch mana far far. All our path is belong to them.”

“We can’t really fly out to skip that section either. We’d be too visible now that the darkness has faded,” Sofia said, “It will be slow but we can probably have the Nymphs carry us up through the trunk until we’re past the ants.”

“I’d rather not stay in the spirit plane for that long,” Sonia rebutted instantly, “the blueprint degradation can accumulate pretty quickly here, what we did earlier is probably the longest I’d be comfortable with.”

“Too bad the real ants attack mine on sight or we might have been able to hide inside of them to get past… Think we can maybe lure them away with my flying skeletons? Letting them fly around the tree and see what happens?”

“Worth a try.”

Sofia and Bookie put the plan to execution. A hundred and fifty birds spread around in all directions, surrounding the trunk from afar and flying up.

The group did not get to see the big ants, but the hundreds of curved mana beams that shot out from branches further up the tree and struck down all the skeletons from the air were clear as day. Not a single bird made it past the first salvo.

Sonia shook her head, with a bitter smile, “And this is why we’re not flying out… Accepting the damage we’ll take from the long spirit plane travel might be the only solution… It shouldn’t be permanent unless we really spend too long there but if a key skill deteriorates…”

“Hmm… I think I have a plan,” Sofia announced.

“And that would be?”

“I’ll be the lure. You guys climb up when they’re distracted dealing with me. Simple. I’ll get back to you with my teleportation skill, since it’s the only one that works properly around here. Plus I’m fairly certain the ants won’t be able to trace it back to my landing point no matter their level.”

“... Even when we get past those three, Pestle will still have to scout the following area first before we can safely go,” Sonia said, “You’re saying you’ll survive the pursuit of three level 400 plus ants for long enough to let her scout then let us climb?”

“I survived a sleeping lord’s attacks and a close brush with the Leviathan, what’s a few ants?”

“I don’t really have a better suggestion so I won’t stop you if you’re confident. Are you sure that’s fine? Can you find us after that?”

“I’ll make a statuette of my armor for Pareth to hold and I can just teleport to it, no issues there. What does everyone think?”

“It’s probably fine?” Bookie said, uncertain.

“Pesle think is Klepra idea. Is very Sofia.”

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Pareth silently nodded along to Pestle’s opinion.

“Always a pleasure to see your unconditional trust in me, you guys,” Sofia quipped in pretend offense, “Get ready then, we might have to do that multiple times so now’s not the time to hesitate. I’ll go as soon as I’m ready. Bookie, get the high priest to work, I need all the buffs.”

Sofia stood at the tip of the branch, fully armored, a suffering crystal in her mouth.

She fully activated [Runeforged Overlord], switched her title to [Olympian] to boost her stats, and bit into the crystal. The pain it inflicted was like a joke at this point. Sofia felt her mind clear up with the processing boost. She deployed her wings, and jumped.

Between everything, from her wings to her helmet’s [Ultimate enhanced flight enhancer], Sofia’s capacity for erratic flight was second only to an actual fairy, the enemy might be strong, but she was fairly confident in her capabilities. Still, being targeted by multiple monsters above level 400, she couldn’t help but feel the pressure mount. She flew up and away from the branch, trying to locate the ants as she escaped.

They were not hard to find, twelve-legged fungus-covered behemoths with a shell full of holes on their back. The holes lit up lit as many miniature suns as the ants noticed Sofia.

Here it comes.

Sofia couldn’t even begin to guess the number of beams of blue light shooting her way, they erupted from the ants’ back and curved through the air in her direction. No fancy tricks, no predicting her flight trajectory, just pure overwhelming firepower. Using [Heat Death] to cancel them was not even a possibility, Sofia would run out of mana before she could even blink. She could only do one thing, pick a direction and fly, as fast as possible.

She shot forward with a bang, her wings blurring into a curtain of golden light as she poured every bit of her speed and agility into a chaotic spiral. The first beams hissed passed her, close enough that their searing heat darkened the outer layer of her armor. More followed. In an instant, her path was cut off. She twisted mid-flight, flipping upside down as a beam headed for her back shot past her between her legs, and turned to the left, flying along the side of the leyline, making it easier to see all the attacks coming at her. The beams she avoided curved back to pursue her again as more and more were fired in rapid succession. Like flying snakes, they twisted and coiled behind her, dangerously picking up speed whenever she dared to straighten her path.

An opening!

A large section of the leyline trunk was free from branches and ants, unguarded. That did not stop the other ants from continuing to shoot her from a distance, but it was an opportunity.

Sofia flew toward the leyline, swerving narrowly through a rapidly closing net of mana beams, and when she almost reached the trunk again, she turned straight up. The beams curved, but their homing capabilities were not as dramatic as Sofia’s sharp 90 degrees turns. One after the other, they collided with the leyline in a series of blinding azure explosions that rocked the gigantic trunk and chased away the underworld sea’s darkness. The area was immense, the calm sea at the bottom of a gigantic cavern with no bounds anywhere in sight, and a ceiling still lords only knew how many kilometers above, covered by billions of sleeping oversized mosquitoes.

Sofia had no time to curse at the dizzying sight. Behind her, more and more beams crashed into the trunk as they followed her, the mana of the explosions sending her flying up even faster, faster than she could even properly manage.

Struggling to control her trajectory, it was only a matter of time before the beams caught up to her. A first nearly crashed into her, and was [Heat Death]ed away for a few million mana. Then came another one, and another. And Sofia couldn’t keep up. A beam clipped her left leg, the limb disappeared so fast she couldn’t even feel any pain, and the beam continued forward on its merry way.

I need to hold longer!

Finally managing to fix her trajectory, Sofia gained a few seconds of breathing room as most of the beams hadn’t yet caught up with her sudden burst of speed. She avoided a few, continuously flying up, but staying so close to the trunk was a bad idea. It did not take long before she found herself face to face with one of the leyline’s guardians, the glowing holes on its back ready to fire.

Twelve beams of concentrated mana almost slammed into Sofia’s face.

She [Regret]edher way out, but in the unstable environment of the forbidden layer, such a skill was a gamble, she had no control over where she would appear next.

The demon skill took ‘face to face’ to another level, as Sofia reappeared only centimeter away from the gigantic ant’s closed mouth, in between its disgusting fungus-covered mandibles.

The mandibles snapped shut. Getting caught here was not an option, it was do or die, Sofia used her Quantic transposition to switch with the light of herself as far as she could. She would worry about joining the others later, first came survival, not even checking where it would take her, she locked onto the furthest point and disappeared.

She had expected to end up somewhere in the darkness of the underworld sea, perhaps hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.

Instead she was standing in a shallow pool of shimmering water, face to face with an enormous semi-humanoid monster of wood and yellow fungus holding a leyline-wood scepter topped with the skull of a behemoth ant.

Fuck.