Saintess Summons Skeletons

Although the desert was becoming a frozen wasteland under their eyes, there was no excessive panic among the group. The unseen ice creature from before was clearly going wild now that there was no more heat to suppress it. For Pareth and Sofia who were immune to cold damage this was not too worrying, as long as the creature did not directly attack them again, there would likely be no danger. Even for Sonia, when she compared this cold to the forced underworld water bath from before, it was still quite bearable.

They all sincerely just hoped that the creature would not attack them. After all, they had been pursuing it before, not the other way around.

Finally Sofia started hearing the wailing Pestle had described before when diving in the sand.

It’s a bit like Alith’s banshee screams.

The loud screams seemed to resonate through the soul directly, shaking the spiritual plane.

Must really be some kind of half ghost…

After taking some distance from the damaged altar and surrounding temple, just in case the frost monster decided to take revenge on the previous source of the heat, the group sat on a tall rock formation and silently observed.

“There’s really nothing we can do,” Sonia mumbled, hugging herself under the cover of her wings, shivering from the cold.

“And the temperature is still dropping…” Sofia observed, looking down at the ‘desert’. It had already turned into a giant sea of ice, partly obscured by clouds of white fog forming all over, carried by the strong winds of the desert which had long shifted from hot to cold.

The fog quickly thickened, and moments later, it started to snow; the creature’s wrath had caused a blizzard.

Looking up, trying to peer through the clouds, Sofia’s lips curled into a smile, “Ah, it’s starting.”

She and Sonia had both come to the same conclusion, if this truly was a prison, no matter whether this frost creature was the prisoner or the guardian, in this state where the phoenix was gone, naturally there would be nothing tying the creature down to this place anymore. If it could already create gigantic ice pillars while suppressed by the heat, how strong would it be now? Surely it would not be stopped by a simple spatial loop.

Like the lid of a giant glass box, the sky had begun to crack and fissure.

The wailing intensified, and a wave of sheer cold seemed to spread through the group’s soul as their surroundings shook. The cracks became larger.

Sonia was starting to have a really hard time with the cold, but neither she nor Sofia did anything that could produce heat, fearing that it might attract the thing’s attention.

The unseen creature attacked the sky a few more times, the cracks spread through the horizon, the spatial fissures visible even through the thick blizzard. With a sound of glass shattering, the sky broke. Sofia immediately felt the spatial ripples, like being teleported despite not moving, the blizzard clouds and snow were blown away, and under everyone’s gaze, the frost creature finally revealed itself.

Flying out of the frozen sand, the creature was like a giant paper kite, an elongated white ribbon-like creature made of geometrical shapes, with a strange triangular head. It created a long trail of sparkling white and gray fog as it flew away. The fake sky broken, the ceiling of the cavern the desert was in was now clearly visible, the monster engulfed itself into a wide hole, its unending body that seemed to be hundreds of kilometers long following after it.

Just like that the wailing stopped, and the temperature stabilized.

Sonia stood up and was about to say something when Sofia abruptly flew off.

She had a thought when she saw the creature, that it was probably related to the third trial’s paper people, and as she had zoomed in on the fog left by the monster, it seemed even more likely. The trail left behind by the monster seemed to have a mind of its own. Sofia approached the white and gray fog, confirming that she had seen correctly.

Sprites.

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The ‘fog’ was actually a densely packed trail of sprites. They were white ice sprites, mostly, falling like snow, but there also existed flickering gray dots here and there. Sofia extended a finger towards one. Before she could touch it, it appeared at the tip of her finger briefly before disappearing, as if it had never been there.

She had not forgotten about the creature’s peculiar ability of timing-out her summons.

Time sprites?

Time magic is disfunctionnal… But time as a natural element indeed still exists.

But so weak, and fleeting…

In the short time she had flown over and reached out, most of the gray dots had vanished into nothingness, while the countless ice sprites were still fluttering around like snow.

Watching the last few time sprites disappear around her, Sofia wondered if Shaily could summon them, and wondered how the paper monster possibly could.

Could this thing be older than Time’s death? Sofia wondered, looking up at the hole the creature had left through. By now Sofia had a pretty solid guess about the two Lords born from Time’s demise.

That would make it older than Aphenoreth and Yvraveteth…

Such a preposterous thought.

Now that all danger was gone, the group actually took some more time to explore the frozen wasteland that used to be a desert. As expected, there was not much of anything to be found, but it at least allowed them to discover several exits both in the ceiling and walls.

Picking the one closest to the direction they needed to follow, the group left the frozen cave behind. Flying through the tunnel for almost an hour, the group suddenly lost the ability to fly, resulting in a quadruple facepalm. Even Pestle with her superior agility and speed ended with her skull embedded in a stone wall.

Everyone quickly recovered, looking around for dangers but finding nothing unusual about the tunnel they were in.

“We must have entered a new area already,” Sonia said with a worried frown, “No flying is pretty annoying, check your spells, items, and keep an eye on your stats. Usually this kind of arbitrary restriction doesn’t come alone.”

Since both physical and magical flight were equally disrupted, it couldn’t be a simple spell block.

Sure enough, Sofia found most of everything she could do pretty restricted. Even the staff in her hand felt like a lifeless piece of wood, and coming back to her when she let it go was seemingly its only remaining function. Actually it would be easier to say that apart from her aura, Bookie, and her helmet, nothing seemed to be working. Even her left eye’s vision was subtly affected, suffering from light jitters and chromatic aberrations.

When she tried invoking an angel bolt she could not even produce a spark, it was as if her mana was being sucked into the void.

“Woah, this is easily one of the worst ones I’ve had to deal with,” Sonia exclaimed in shock, “My specializations are pretty much the only things I have that still work.”

“Just one of?” Sofia asked, “This is bad enough that I am seriously considering turning back no matter what you say.”

“Yeah it’s not like we suddenly started turning to sand or anything, it makes us extremely weak but it’s not an immediate danger by itself. So I’ve definitely seen worse, but…”

“Turning to sand?” Sofia made a weird expression, thinking of the desert they had left behind just a while ago, “there’s no other path going in this direction…”

Sonia sighed. “According to my information, there’s a high probability that the place is around here. We’ve gone about the correct distance in the correct direction… In other circumstances I would turn back a hundred times out of a hundred, to be fully honest. This time, I have to go no matter what.”

Seeing Sofia and the skeletons silent, Sonia continued, “Ultimately I can’t force you to follow me so… I understand if you want to turn back now,” the beastkin said nervously, “The risk of death is just too high without anything to defend ourselves with…”

“That’s not what you paid for,” Sofia stated matter-of-factly.

“Paying is a thing, dying is another…” Sonia mumbled.

Sofia found it almost shocking how Sonia’s previously relatively confident demeanor had crumbled in an instant, but she understood well. Entering an area where the vast majority of her items and spells were useless, where even her unlife runes might not work, left with almost nothing to defend themselves with… It certainly was not an attractive prospect.

“Then let us not die. We proceed with absolute caution,” Sofia decided. She had been a normal human before. Did it ever stop her that she had no magic, could not fly, and could not be resurrected? It never stopped her then, it would not stop her now. Besides, just like Sonia, she still had her specializations, Pareth did too, and even without any spells, Pestle and Bookie’s summons were still a force to be reckoned with; it wasn’t nothing.

“... Thank you.”

“Just doing what I’m paid for, right?”

Pareth gave a thumbs up, soon imitated by Pestle who had climbed up on his shoulder.

“You is pay, we is stay!”