Saintess Summons Skeletons

Once again in the air above Ser’Extra, Sofia almost forgot what she was initially going for as she just watched the people coming and going below. It felt surreal how fast the city had expanded. Aside from her palace, the city center was almost entirely built, and many of the previously rudimentary bone-homes now had their own style and flourish. With the main materials being bones and black primus wood, the city was naturally built around the colors black and white, with golden accents here and there.

“I can’t believe the outer city has already fully reached the coastline. The port isn’t even halfway done but there are already fishing boats… How are we even feeding this many people?”

Feeling very grateful that she barely needed to look at the logistics at all anymore, Sofia flew north trying to locate Pesle street. It turned out this was the street where Pestle had first opened her food stand, hence the name.

“Dormitory eight, should be around that end of the street… Ugh, so muddy, I really need to expand the main platform to the outer city.”

The contrast was stark between the clean streets of the inner city covered in a thin layer of perfectly white snow, and the outer city’s covered in goopy brown mud.

“What I get for building it over a swamp.”

Sofia let herself slowly fall down to ground level, landing on thin air a good step above the mud, to the curiosity and respectful nods of the people around.

Crowie took the role of greeting them back with a caw, as Sofia quickly walked from building to building, trying to find the dormitory, which only took a few seconds.

It was mostly empty, very few people occupying the multiple bunk beds stacked next to one another, though a few men ate their lunch sitting on the ground. They all fell silent when they noticed who entered.

So awkward…

“I am looking for Beatrice. She sleeps here,” she decided to say, unsure of what tone to adopt with these wary citizens.

The men looked at each other, their gazes eventually landing on the biggest of the bunch, who gulped in reaction.

“She– She works at the laundry. This way…” the large man meekly answered, pointing toward the direction Sofia initially came from.

Sofia nodded, flicking a gold coin in the man’s direction and stepping right back out.

Seems my information was a bit outdated… Laundry…

The laundry wasn’t too hard to find, it was an outdoor station where a man was constantly summoning water from a waterstone, while four women scrubbed identical muddy work clothes in the weak stream.

Sofia frowned a bit seeing the state of these five people, none of them even noticed her arrival, being all too busy with their work. She looked at the two younger looking women of the group, “Hey. Is Beatrice here?”

Everyone finally looked up at her, and the man at the waterstone answered right away, worry etched all over his face.

“Why… Why do you ask?” he questioned with poorly concealed hostility.

“I need to talk to her, why else? Don’t worry, if something bad was going to happen she would already be a skeleton.”

Seeing the man hesitate, the youngest looking woman of the group actually interjected, looking at Sofia with pleading eyes, “Bea is sick! She fell ill last week and is still bedridden at the hospital on Healing street! Please– Please help her!”

Sofia did not know how to react, seeing the woman, probably not even an adult yet, begging her on her knees in the mud like she was some kind of miracle saint. She sighed. “Please stand up, alright? Nobody needs to be doing this…”

Embarrassed by the sudden action of the young woman, Sofia quickly summoned four bone spikes and a bone plate out of her storage, instantly building a roof over the laundry station and quickly flying up while everybody was distracted.

What kind of image do I even have to these people?

Feeling a bit strange, Sofia flew out toward ‘Healing Street’, which she remembered from the map she had used to locate Pesle Street. It was not very far, along the border of the inner city, just outside of the bone platform’s boundaries. She had to ask around for the Hospital’s location, eventually making it inside of a rather large three floors building full of sick and injured people.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Sofia was at a complete loss entering this building. This was her city with more than five hundred people above level 300, did they not have the funds to hire one level 80+ priest with a few basic healing spells and [Alleviate Sickness] to run this place?

In fact if she was to trust her mana senses, there were currently a total of two people standing and moving around in the entire building with more than fifty people in sick beds. There wasn’t even any staff on the first floor. She climbed the stairs to the second floor, in a corner of which the two healing personnels of this hospital, a young woman and an old bearded man, were manually stitching up a long wound on a man’s arm, who desperately bit on a bedsheet to contain his screams.

No, no no no… This is supposed to be a great and prosperous city… We can’t be living like this! Even at the orphanage we had a healer! What is this?!

A deep frown on her face, Sofia froze the two doctors and the injured man with her aura, stepping up to them.

“Seriously… How is the situation here so bad…”

Shaking her head, she pushed away the hands of the old doctor, and grabbed a small perfume flask out of her storage. With a pssht, she sprayed the man’s wound once, a thin mist of clear liquid touching his skin, and the wound closed back up almost instantly with a disturbing wet sound. All the other scratches on the man’s body disappeared, and even the large scars visible here and there on his skin visibly shrunk. The bloody stitches in his arm popped out of the skin by themselves, falling on the bed.

The philosopher’s stone water really works well.

Finally she unfroze the trio, leaving them no time to say anything, “Is there no actual healer here?” she directly asked the old man.

“City Lord! We are humbled by your–”

“Forget that, just answer my questions,” Sofia interrupted him.

“I, this… My lord, I am a healer. But there are too many injuries, I lack the magic to treat them all,” the old man justified himself.

As far as Sofia could tell, the old man currently had no mana at all.

“Your level?”

“Level twelve, my lord…” the old man answered with a slight bow.

No wonder… I also need to get the slime farm project running fast…

Sofia handed the perfume bottle to the old man, “Use this for now. One spray should be more than enough to cure most wounds and illnesses, but try to preserve it for life-threatening conditions, for now.”

The old doctor’s hand shook, fingers tightly wrapped around the glass flask, “This bottle… We cannot repay you…”

Sofia rolled her eyes, “Repay what? Aren’t you employed by the city?”

She clearly remembered in Ihuarah’s debrief that all guard stations, schools, hospitals, and city cleaners were currently managed and employed by the city itself, which was actually most of the spendings, alongside the constant import of food and construction materials.

“Ye- Yes. Yes we are…”

“Then don’t worry. You will receive more of this in the future. And more employees, most likely. I don’t think two people for a three floor building is appropriate… Now, I came here to find a young lady named Beatrice. Where is she?”

Tuning out the doctor’s profuse thanks for the miracle healing potion she had just donated to the hospital she owned, Sofia let him lead her to a bed on the third floor, where a young woman in rags was sleeping with huge red rashes all over her skin and profusely sweating despite the ambient cold. There was a fireplace burning on each floor of the hospital but it was truly not enough to keep the place warm, especially with how little time the two doctors had to tend to the fires.

Sofia did not bother to ask what Beatrice had, simply staring at the old doctor, who quickly understood, and hesitantly sprayed Beatrice’s face with the Philosopher’s purified water.

Just like the man before, the woman’s condition visibly improved in an instant, under the awed gaze of the two doctors.

“You two should probably get back to work,” Sofia told the doctors with a smirk, while two ghostly Nymphs popped out of the walls, grabbing her and the still sleeping Beatrice, and pulling them through the walls and up to the flat roof.

Out of the spirit plane, Sofia grabbed the sleeping princess, activated a ring, and disappeared.

Sofia looked around, Zangdar was more or less exactly like she had left it, aside from a new set of planters growing weird blue mushrooms next to the cheese mushrooms she had grown before with the help of the plant mage hero skeleton.

Carrying the princess over her shoulder, Sofia walked up to Rem.

“I guess Zangdar has two sleeping princesses now.”

The Dryad was sleeping peacefully as ever, her wood looking vibrant and full of vitality.

Alith must have fed her right before she left for the trial… I need to hurry with the things here and go watch!

Letting Rem sleep, Sofia brought Beatrice to the highest room in the castle, which had previously been destroyed by the battle with the half machine-phageid hero. It had been renovated after a while, but was still empty as everyone already had their own rooms in the lower floors. There was no particular reason to bring the Skyreach princess here, aside from having a calm place to speak, but the idea of kidnapping a princess and placing her in the tallest tower of a castle was quite funny to Sofia, it was a very common trope, after all.

“I doubt any holy knight would come to rescue this one, though. We’re a bit past that.”

Sofia made a bone bed to place the princess on, and started decorating the empty room thinking it was as good an occasion as any to empty her storage a bit until the sleeper woke up.

“I could probably ask Speed for a few paintings… Right, don’t I still have that Apostle of Lies statue somewhere? I could sculpt a few Apostles…”