Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 100

She modified her module and tried again. She believed there was a possibility that the enhancement of Pareth’s mana regeneration would not only work outside of the circle, but it would also last as long as the skeleton survived. Meaning she wouldn’t have to pay the gold again.

The only uncertainty in this was that this enhancement ritual in particular was originally related to a god, and worked with a symbol instead of the usual modules and runes.

Still, it’s worth a try.

After a lot of shuffling runes around, it seemed like it worked.

The last rays of twilight shone in the ruins as the sun slowly disappeared under the horizon as Pareth’s bones assembled. Sofia hurried to throw a hundred gold in the ritual circle.

“It worked!”

Sofia already felt like her month of reading wasn’t wasted.

Pareth’s mana regeneration was 20% higher, and supposedly 200% higher under the sun.

Now was still the question of whether she would need to pay again every twenty-four hours.

Hopefully not.

Either way, Pareth’s active skills were all very mana hungry, so this was a good thing to have even if she needed to pay for it each time. And it would be even stronger if it could have a double effect when standing in the regular ritual circle for this.

Strong from her previous success, she wanted to apply the same principle to add basic durability augmentation ritual circles on Pareth’s bones. It was a very lightweight and mana efficient enchantment that essentially every good artisan would add on magic items they made. So it hadn’t been hard to find the template module for it.

It was meant to improve an object’s durability against physical damage and erosion. Bones are technically objects.

This could make Pareth a good bit sturdier. Sofia had two options, either do like she had done for the speed type module earlier, which meant the effect would be underwhelming but it would affect Pareth’s whole body. Or she could carve it bone by bone, hopefully getting the full effect on each bone, and have a separate module for each in the ritual circle.

I’ll do one per bone I guess, but I don’t have that much space left in the circle, and not that much free mana left to distribute… I can do seven if I place them right.

So I need to choose seven bones to become more sturdy.

The skull is an obvious choice, but after that? Arms and legs are three bones each. Feels like obvious choices. Yeah let’s go for the arms.

Now that Sofia knew how to do that kind of thing the proper way, she managed to get it right the first time.

“And there we have it! Ritually enhanced skeleton!”

Alright, time for some testing.

She flew out of the Mansion, to go back to an open spot where she could use [Heal undead], and gave her mithril knife to Pareth.

“Chop your left femur in half.”

Pareth didn’t question the order and proceeded to hit his left leg with the mithril knife. These were human bones, Sofia had done some testing already. Mithril knives went through human bones like arrows go through soap bubbles.

But this wasn’t an ordinary human femur anymore, it was Pareth’s leg. It took three hits of the mithril blade to cut the leg bone in half.

Sofia healed him up, “Now do the same with your left humerus.”

Three. Four. Five hits. The arm was sliced in two.

From three to five. That’s not bad.

She was also relieved to see that the ritual circle for the durability enhancement was now counted as a part of Pareth, so when bones regrew from [Heal undead], they still had it.

Now with [Sanctified grounds].

While under the physical stat boost from [Sanctified grounds] the number of hits required to break went up to nine for the unenchanted femur, and eleven for the enchanted humerus.

So the value of the enchantment is fixed, not boosted by his skills… That won’t stay too useful in the long run, but that’s quite good for now. I need to carve these into the other skeletons now. And prepare a larger circle for the ogre.

Before doing this, she noted Pareth’s current stats inside and outside of [Sanctified grounds].

Name : Pareth Level : 120

Health : 15100 / 15100

Stamina : 13050 / 13050

Mana : 12000 / 12000

That’s pretty good already without the buff.

Name : Pareth Level : 120

Health : 44092 / 44092

Stamina : 38106 / 38106

Mana : 12000 / 12000

And with it… That’s insane. Not only the previous version of [Sanctified grounds], so [Consecrated grounds], was doubled when I got the specialization, but so was the [Halo] skill that got renamed to [Stellar Corona] and had its effect go from a 10% boost to holy related skills to a 20% boost to all holy and light related skills.

[Sanctified grounds] is just a completely insane skill.

[Sanctified grounds] : Grants all allies in a 100m (skill level) radius and himself a 40% increase in all physical stats. Bonus quadrupled for Skeletons.

Requires a 5 seconds channeling to deploy. Costs 10 mana per second to maintain.

How… Just how high will it get with the Ogre skeleton?!

Sofia had a hard time containing her excitement. Pareth was about to become a true monster.

Going back to hide in the ruins of the cliffside mansion, Sofia prepared the ogre skeleton. And the ritual circle.

Scaling up the circle by this much and not screwing up a line was quite the tiring ordeal. It was morning by the time she was done.

She looked at Pareth who had been standing guard all this time.

“You ready? This is gonna be quite something.”

She had tried talking to Pareth a few times through the night, but he never answered in any way. This time he did. It’s not like he could talk, and he still wasn’t very expressive in his movements, but he gave Sofia a deep bow, his chest parallel to the ground.

Sofia wanted to say something but the words didn’t come out right, they died in her throat, she could only stutter a few jumbled syllables.

What was going on in her mind was the same jumbled mess. He had already bowed like this when she summoned him back after the machine battle in Zangdar, but this was the first time he actually answered her when she just talked to him without giving any kind of order.

It took her a few seconds to calm down.

Let’s do this!!!

Sofia stood before the extra large modified ‘raise skeleton’ ritual circle and the Ogre bones sitting on it.

Let’s not forget the 100 gold. There we go.

[Summon blood]!

[ERROR]

[User cannot summon the same hero twice, please choose one]

[Pareth (Holy Human Eclipse Skeleton) / Pareth (Holy Stone Ogre Eclipse Skeleton)]

[You summoned the Hero : Pareth (Holy Stone Ogre Eclipse Skeleton) - lv. 120]

Sofia’s eyes were transfixed on Pareth’s status page as his previous host fell to the ground, returning to the pile of bones it always was, and his new skeleton rose.

Ten thousand.

Twenty.

Thirty.

The numbers kept going up.

The ritual sucked so much of the ambient mana, the air was becoming stale, mana came in droves from the outside, sinking into the bones. This wasn’t how rituals were supposed to get their mana at all, not even this one, yet that’s what it did.

Finally, Pareth’s eyes lit up. The huge bones of the Stone Ogre didn’t disappoint, Pareth towered over Sofia, filling up the room.

Name : Pareth Level : 120

Health : 65200 / 65200

Stamina : 32533 / 32533

Mana : 12000 / 12000

I’m shaking.

I just can’t believe this shit.

That’s almost as much as I had in demon form!

What have I created?!

“Do it.”

Kneeling in front of Sofia in the same fashion that he had done before Eleonore in the forest, Pareth activated his [Stellar Corona]. A perfectly round halo of bright light lighting up above his skull.

Then, five seconds later, the ground shone, sanctified.

Looking at the mind boggling numbers, Sofia laughed.

She laughed so hard she cried.

This was it.

This is the true power of the [Saintomancer].

No mere Larvae or Magisterium could stand in her way now. As long as Pareth was here.

That was how much difference a specialization made.

That was her real reward for fighting and killing Orvod during the trial.

She looked back at her own stats, also boosted by [Sanctified grounds].

Name : Sofia Aphenoreth Level : 120

Health : 8288 / 8288

Stamina : 2368 / 2368