Saintess Summons Skeletons

Despite being a space mage, Nicet could only teleport himself through long distances, which meant the group had to use Red Carpet’s teleportation network. Since they needed to avoid Skyreach, they teleported to Drakron instead, where Sofia put up an information request at the adventurers’ guild with a 5000 gold reward for any intel about Saria’s whereabouts.

The group then used the city’s teleportation network to jump to Derol, the southern coastal city from which they had once departed for the first trial. From there, they flew west, following the coasts of Skyreach from as far as they could. To be exact, Sofia was flying while carrying a large basket made of bone in which Alith and Nicet sat. They both had ways to ‘fly’, Nicet with some kind of levitation and Alith with her ghost form, but they were painfully slow compared to Sofia’s wings. Both lifting that kind of load and flying with it weren’t really an issue anymore with her stats, even less so with the crown giving a 34% strength bonus.

Nicet observed the coastline over the edge of his seat in the basket, “We should start seeing the corrupted territory soon, the Ebb doesn’t spread to the ocean but the Spatial anomalies might, so it’s best if you stay far away.”

“Do I go further away?” Sofia answered from above.

“No, but don’t come any closer to the coast, I’ll tell you when to stop. If what you told me is accurate, I’ll try to find the shortest way.”

“Understood.”

 

Sofia stopped at Nicet’s signal, they were somewhere along the south-west of Sovuln's coastline. Nicet jumped out of the basket and started floating. “Come out too, we need to fly slowly now.”

“Aye”

Alith’s transformation was only partial, which allowed her to fly and be slightly resistant to physical attacks while still able to interact with the physical world. She could choose where to stop the change of her body from the physical to the spiritual plane now, this was the main trait of her new race.

Sofia stored the basket and reduced the size of her wings as much as she could while still being able to fly. Size mattered when it came to avoiding spatial anomalies.

“Follow me. I can clearly see the warping in space ahead, but for you two it’s going to be harder. Alith, since you can see in the spiritual plane, you should be able to recognize clouds of discolored space. Our Undead employee says it’s subtle but discernible. For you Sofia, since you said you have a good mana vision, you need to focus on the ambient mana currents and look for any sudden changes in its direction. Depending on the angle you might even be able to see warped colors with the naked eye, but that’s rarer, mostly because the spatial anomalies tend to be higher in the sky. With the sky as a backdrop, it’s hard to see the changes.”

“Alright, we follow you.”

“Try not to stray from the path I take.”

Nicet advanced slowly toward the distant coast. With a hand sign, he signaled to the two behind him to stop. “We have our first, this one is the most common vortex type, it’s right ahead of me, see if you can notice it.”

Really? I can’t see anything at all…

Alith seemed to have better results, “Oh, I can kinda see it, it’s spinning.”

“Yes, this vortex type is the most common and one of the most dangerous space anomalies, so it’s better to get used to them now. Are you having trouble finding it?” Nicet asked Sofia since she was still looking.

“Yeah, I cannot see it. Mana seems normal all around as far as I can tell.”

“I’ll show you where exactly it is, it’s easier to find once you know what to look for.”

Nicet produced a slab of raw meat from his storage ring and chucked it forward. At first it flew like it should, until it was suddenly twisted on itself and burst in a mist of minced flesh and blood.

“Oh. I see it now, it really is like a slow spiral. Hard to detect.”

“And this is why you need a space mage. But still, I would feel better if you knew how to spot and avoid these. Just in case we get separated. Also as a rule of thumb, the farther from the ground you are, the more space anomalies there are. The high-altitude sky above Sovuln is best considered a dead zone. Only flying islands and the space directly below them are somewhat safe.”

“What if you fly above a flying island?” Also safe?

“You can see the islands as an extension of the ground, the anomalies appear above like they would above the regular surface. Likewise, climbing mountains is alright, anywhere is fine as long as the ground is nearby. Though there are still spatial anomalies near the ground, even if in low numbers.”

 

Nicet guided them until they reached the sand beach, accompanied by the message welcoming them to the ‘Certain death’ dungeon. On the way he had introduced them to two more spatial anomaly types, the walls and the portals. Walls did exactly what the name implied, and portals were a one-way trip to a random place in Sovuln, but they were both easy to spot.

Alith grabbed a handful of sand, “The Ebb doesn’t like sand?”

“There is no vegetation here so it won’t spread. But you have seen how it is further in.”

“Yeah it’s pretty bad, all the plants are pink… It’s kinda nauseating.”

Sofia was of the same mind, the pale pink of the Ebb hurt to look at. In her memories, the green fields and forests had a much better allure. “For all its faults, Sovuln used to be a beautiful place, I’m sure you would have loved the forests there Alith.”

“Well, we just need to get rid of the pink stuff and regrow some vegetation, we’ve got more than enough time.”

“That’s the plan,” Nicet confirmed, already walking forward.

Dopple rarely spoke unprompted, but he was awake now for some reason, “Disgusting stuff, there’s nothing good about this. It makes my fabric curl. I say you should burn it all.”

For once I agree. “Speaking of which, I have a few things to try. Is it safe to attack the Ebb, Nicet?”

“As long as you stay away from it and your attack isn’t water-based you should be fine. Some of the larger things can attack like the trees but they can never reach us if we fly up a bit, the area above us is safe right now.”

So it’s best to try now. Do I start with the bolt or the rot?

Sofia started channeling an Angel’s bolt, it wouldn’t be a huge one, just enough to tickle the Ebb and see how it reacted, she aimed at a tree surrounded by tall grass, all covered in the pink Ebb.

Nicet was impressed by the flashy attack even when he knew it was coming. The bolt hit the tree resulting in the usual explosion of blue flames. The Ebb shrieked. In a strange spectacle, the grass all around the explosion was uprooted and started fleeing the flames while producing high pitched cries. After a few meters, they quickly re-planted themselves among the rest of the grass, creating a barrier of a few meters of bare dirt between them and the flames. Whatever the flames had directly touched became a molten pink-ish goo that burned until nothing but ash was left behind.

So it works… But not really. I can’t believe the grass rearranged itself to stop the spread of the flames. Clearly this acts as an organized whole. I also got no kill notification. “Do we get no experience from killing them?”

“Only the very big ones with a core give experience. Kind of like golems. They’re called ‘Ebb colonies’, you’ll know when you see one.”

I see… The rot might not be as good as I hoped then. It will probably work for everything I can directly illuminate, but they will certainly spread and stop the contagion like they just did.

“I’m going to try something else. Oh actually, it might be dangerous so it’s best if you both can hide behind a wall.”

“Me too?” Alith asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, I’m going to make a thick bone shelter for both of you to hide in, actually, this stuff is really dangerous. Just looking at it could get you in trouble.” It seemed that [Heal Undead] only spread the rot to what the ray of light directly touched, but since you can see it, and it’s light… I don’t know how safe it is for other people to look at it even from afar.

“I have many questions, but you are the client so…”

Alith and Nicet hid in the temporary shelter while Sofia invoked a large ray of light over the Ebb, covering the area in black rot.

“You can come out now.”

The Erredian rot devoured the Ebb much faster than the fire. Under the thin film of veiny black rot, the frenzied grass shrieked and flailed around without much success. The rot was growing and spreading fast along the grassland.

Alith seemed impressed while Nicet was at a complete loss for words. It only took a few seconds for an area large like a village square to be completely free of Ebb while the rot spread around, but the grass and trees in a large zone uprooted themselves and ran away. The rot hit the zone of bare dirt like a wall, and finished to consume itself soon after in its endless all devouring frenzy.

“It’s gonna be a while if I want to clear the entire kingdom, but that works much better than fire, what do you think?”

Nicet tried to regain his composure, he brushed the sweat off of his forehead, “I’m not even going to ask how you did that. Let’s maybe just avoid using it again while I’m around, please, I would still like to come back alive.”