Saintess Summons Skeletons

The wishing orb in Sofia’s hand became a dark blue greathelm. It alongside its lingering effects had disappeared upon entering the sanctuary.

Oh how I missed you.

Sofia put on the helmet. It was like lifting a heavy veil that had weighed on her thoughts; the world became clearer and so did her mind. The full image of the spell schematic she had observed earlier and the magic script Henry had written on the ground appeared perfectly clear in her imagination. She dismissed her curiosity for those, the incoming battle came first. Having regained the crown’s strength and mana regeneration bonuses, she felt a lot better about the close quarter confrontation about to come.

As the swarm closing in of giant hand-ants closed in, pushed back slightly by Henry’s first sound blast, Sofia, who for once could not rely on Pareth or Bookie, decided to try something new.

She quickly took her demon form and summoned the skull choir. Five of her own skulls appeared, the blood-dripping Bloodlight Echoes she so rarely used to do how fast they ate up her mana. As Sofia’s skeletons, they benefited from her aura and thus rapidly grew a bone armor similar to hers.

[Spine of the Black Sun], greatsword form!

Heavy blades of bones appeared in the five ‘skulls’ hands.

Still forced to be in the circle array formation, Sofia aligned the skulls in an arc following the raised platform, herself standing in the center, with Henry behind her. A hand-ant twice her size lunged at her, she stabbed with her greatsword, and the five skulls did the same.

Her sword failed to even pierce the skin of the disturbing monster, and the skulls’ performed even worse against the other ants, but six overlapping solar bursts exploded simultaneously. Compared to using her aura to debone a few insects at a time, the bursts of sunlight hit everything and healed both herself and the skulls.

It did not kill the ants but they were blown away by another one of Henry’s musical attacks, sending their burning bodies tumbling back and crashing into more of the hand insects.

“Can you still see?” Sofia asked, herself slightly blinded by the brightness of her explosions.

“Clear as day! Keep goin’!”

Sofia attacked again.

Although there was a huge swarm of enemies, they could only come from the two corridors leading to the platform on the left and right, greatly simplifying the defensive battle.

The ants died relatively effortlessly in just a few sword swings, so their number was hardly an issue. Then came other insects, like the giant beetles.

“It’s chargin’ can ya hold it back?!”

“Only one at a time!” Sofia answered, relentlessly swinging her greatsword, batting the ants away.

“Good enough, do that!”

The hand beetle coming from the left charged through the swarm of ants, trampling them into mush without a care, making the walls shake more than they already did.

Is this thing heavier than Pareth?!

Controlling the choir to stay in their place and continue attacking, Sofia dashed to the left side of the platform to meet the incoming monster. Its imposing figure approached fast, with two clawed fingers like giant horns at the forefront.

Tough one.

Sofia braced herself, freezing the creature’s bones with all her might as soon as it entered her close aura.

The monster’s momentum was such that its bones cracked and shattered before they could stop the rest of its body, and the monster inched closer and closer to Sofia as she took control of more and more of its skeleton.

She was about to lose to the monster’s hundreds of tons when Henry’s silent concerto finally concluded. The same attack that had torn apart the basilisk before. The beetle twisted and broke, crushed into the shape of two giant W, while the swarm behind it was torn to shreds.

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“The other side!” Henry called out right away.

Sofia began to turn, but she felt the beetle’s bones still moving behind her, fixing themselves.

It’s not dead! “Brace for an explosion!” she warned Henry.

She stabbed her greatsword into one of the immobilised monster’s bleeding open wounds, as the solar burst triggered inside of the creature, she quickly charged an explosive bolt, not a big one, but with enough mana to still rock such a big creature from the inside. The slight issue was the skulls proceeding to all do the same.

The bolts were released. The beetle exploded in a rain of bloody flesh and the platform was engulfed by five more sky-blue bursts of flames.

Sofia turned around, Henry stood unharmed in a protective soundwave bubble that fully stopped the shockwave and flame burst, already preparing another silent attack. About a third of the door’s hands had disappeared.

She jumped to the other side of the platform, where another beetle approached, followed by a giant butterfly and mantis amidst the sea of ants.

The beetle charge happened again on this side. It was accompanied by magic bolts shooting out from the fingertips of the butterfly’s wings, and the Mantis circling around at high speed.

Sofia used her aura to stop the beetle and [Heat Death] to cancel all of the butterfly’s spell. She absorbed so much mana from the dozens of ants dying around her that she almost felt like she had an infinite supply, and no matter how many hundreds of missiles the butterfly shot a second, none ever made it halfway toward her.

The mantis on the side managed to crush one of the bloodlight skulls in one hit, but it never managed to approach Sofia, constantly being harassed by Crowie who was small and agile enough to avoid its finger strikes.

Henry unleashed his large-scale attack again destroying the beetle and butterfly on the spot alongside a number of ants.

Only the mantis survived, outside of the attack’s blast cone, only to instantly die to Sofia [Regret]ing on top of its back and twisting its bones into spirals.

An endless torrent of finger worms followed the ants from both sides, each repeatedly casting a singular shot of the butterfly’s fingertip magic missile every time they crawled forward. This time there were so many that Sofia could not dispel everything, especially since many were not aimed at her, but the finger worms were weak to fire and rapidly burned to a crisp after tanking a solar burst or two.

Only a third of the hands around the door remained when Sofia suddenly stopped attacking, despite countless finger worms and a few butterflies continuing to flood in from both sides.

“What ya’ doin’?!” Henry asked, shocked to see her stop suddenly and take the magic missiles to the face when he was still busy shielding himself against them.

“We win,” she said. Sofia clapped her hands twice for theatrics, and toggled back on one of the parts of her aura she held back until now.

The mountain of charred corpses piled up halfway to the ceiling suddenly began to squirm. Charred hand-insect skeletons rose from the cinders and ash, enough of them to instantly push back the monster tides on both sides. It was a real army of skeletal thralls slaughtering the monsters fast enough to clear both sides and venture deeper into the maze to continue on their crusade while Henry sat dumbfounded next to Sofia.

“Ya know… I figured ya were some kinda necromancer but this is a lot. Can ya really control so many at once?”

“As long as they’re within my aura the number isn’t an issue.”

“Well blow me down! Couldn’t ya do that earlier? Would have spared me a sweat here.”

“They’re very vulnerable during the ‘summoning’ time. With so much chaos in a small area it was better to wait for the corpses to pile up. Even now almost half of them died during the first few seconds. They should easily hold up until the door opens now.”

“... Let’s get off our bottoms then, surely a few wishing orbs to be found in this pile o’ burned shit, better get diggin’!”

After some quick digging, they found two wishing orbs, one in each of the beetle’s bodies, and decided to keep one each, although they agreed that Henry would get the next one ‘for free’ as he’d given one to Sofia for the battle. They just got done with their negotiations when the door finally had no hands holding it back, and slowly started to sink into the ground, revealing a somber corridor without an end in sight.

Henry suddenly thrust his hand in front of Sofia, “Wait. This is a breakpoint. We’ll sink into a deeper layer past this door. Might get separated again.”

“I somewhat guessed but is there a way you can tell?”

“Yes. Sound’s not echoing. Can’t ya tell?”

“Oh… Now that you mention it, it does sound a bit like we’re speaking while facing a wall despite my magic senses perceiving the corridor just fine…”

“Tis’ like that. Hold my hand, hold yar bird too.”

“Will that actually keep us together?”

“Never tried, as ya might imagine, but that the best idea I got.”

“Alright…”

Holding onto each other, the three skeletons jumped through the open door.

The environmental transition was instantaneous, from the previous maze they arrived directly in the center of a gargantuan throne room. It was the biggest one Sofia had ever seen, with the hand motif repeated everywhere, and several rows of pillars of hands holding each other on both sides. At the very end stood a tall throne shaped like an open hand, and on it sat a crown-wearing corpse.