Saintess Summons Skeletons

“This… Might not be impossible. Truth be told, I will depend on many things. The main hurdle is knowing how much essence He has access to. An avatar getting killed is not completely unheard of. All it takes is a few Dragons deciding to clean things up, like maybe two or three of them.”

Oh, that’s fine then, only two or three Dragons…

That meant little to Alith, “What if you had to compare your power to a Dragon?”

“Hmm, at my peak with the support of my entire Empire… I could have held one off for five, no, ten seconds maybe.”

Good to know…

“So you’re saying there’s actually no chance, right?”

“No, there is a chance. All you have to do is to become stronger than a Dragon, if I understand correctly, this would have us all here become just as powerful. Then our shared efforts would be more than enough.”

“Oh, right, I forgot one detail. We have a bit less than a hundred years left to accomplish this.”

“I take it back, my apologies, this is impossible.”

“Great, thanks, very encouraging.”

“Lady Sofia, do not take it so seriously. My words are merely the ramblings of an old man. The world has changed in my absence, who knows what has happened. My knowledge might very well be more than obsolete. That being the case, would you happen to have a map?”

Sofia took out a slab of bone engraved with the map of everything she knew off, she had made it to keep track of her travels, it had most of the human continent relatively mapped out with a vague outline of the surrounding places like the beastman continent.

Ihuarah was fascinated by this map. “It seems things have changed a lot. So you mean to tell me all humans now live exclusively in the Avian peninsula? The Dwarves took over the goblin archipelago and new races of human-adjacent beastmen colonized the entirety of the lowlands.”

“Where was the Empire you keep mentioning? Were you actually the leader? The way you speak about it…”

“Oh, no, yes? I was the Grand Animist, a position second only to the Empress. She managed the Empire’s territory and civilians while I managed the spiritual and military aspects. And where, hmm not that far but also hard to reach. Assuming nothing has changed… See the sea west of the human peninsula? It is a dangerous place. Beyond there is a desert, a much larger desert than the one the elves occupy north of here, and also much more lively. Further beyond to the west is a deep jungle, my empire lay there. In ruins. Perhaps my mummified body still lives there, decrepit in a lost underground tomb.”

Sofia was a bit impressed at how important the man she had just summoned used to be. He knew a lot about things she never knew about. The entire human continent used to be Avian territory? Is the terrible menace that forced the Avians underground two thousand years ago… Humans?! No way, right? Would she hide something like that? Also I think even Valeure mentioned she wasn’t sure what was beyond the west sea, and Ihuarah used to have a thriving Empire out there. “Do you want to go back to your Empire?”

“No. Not much must remain. Perhaps later, my tomb might yet hold some treasure, but we shan’t go there now. Forget it. You need to focus on growing stronger first, such is the will of the Goddess. We cannot cross the sea anyway.”

“Why not? Sofia can fly, you as well, and I’m a ghost.”

“The issue is not simply ‘crossing the sea’. The issue is the Leviathan.”

“The Leviathan?”

“The largest known sea creature of this world. There it resides. And I do mean the largest, it’s hard to even comprehend how big it is. Crossing into its territory is suicide. Even flying above it, well over the limit of the sky, is like painting a big target unto yourself. You will die in the void of space with no one to bury you. Even Dragons seek the long way around. Its territory is rather vast.”

So even Dragons fear that thing. And I’ve never even heard about it? While it’s so close to Sovuln?!

“What ‘bout teleportation?”

“Those who have tried are no longer among the living.”

“Oh. Well, maybe later then… Oh, by the way, I have something that might interest you. You can have it if you want.”

The shadow gently grabbed the cursed sand pendant out of Alith’s hand. He brought it near to his face, observing it closely, his expression as hard to read as usual.

“Interesting. This is an object with quite a few interesting currents to it. How does it work?”

“Send some mana to it and when you see the inside, think about putting something in or taking something out.”

“Inside?… No!”

What is he so shocked for, now?

“Compressed space magic? In an object? How is that possible?! Can I really have something so precious?”

“It’s pretty common. A bit expensive but we have larger ones too.”

“This… this much space is already plenty, we used to go through a lot for much less.”

“Oh?” They still had some kind of storage magic then?

“You do not want to know. Especially for Ladies, the process of engraving spatial magic into the body was rather disgraceful... And may I know the reason this is filled with sand?”

“It’s cursed. Just fills with sand all the time. You’re gonna want to empty it often or it’ll start to leak. Woke up a few times covered in sand, not the most comfortable.”

“Cursed? That does explain the unusual magic currents. I have never seen something quite like this. I will gladly have it, the fine sand is suited for a large number of spells and sometimes hard to procure, this will be invaluable. I thank you for your generosity.”

 

The group kept talking about many things, but the two main subjects had been to put Ihuarah up to speed with the new world and the system, as well as Alith giving them the itinerary she had planned while Sofia had been busy filling her scepter with mana.

“If I understand this well, my former peak should have been around level 400, maybe a bit below that. I am quite severely weakened at the moment.”

“You got that far without the system?”

“There are a great many ways to get stronger using mana, Alith. The system, however, has made them obsolete, I imagine. Why take risks and waste time when we have this option now?”

“True… What do you think about my plan then? Since you know about Apostles and relative level power.”

“It is dangerous but far from impossible, if your information is accurate. An ancient dwarven masterpiece might very well be worth that kind of risk. To fail at becoming Domination’s Apostle… Fighting them will get us nowhere, but their minds must be long gone. The main danger would be their aura of domination.”

“We’re immune to that.”

“Immune to God’s influence?”

“Long story… We’ll explain on the way, Sofia has a whole lot to say about that. But anyway, you’re saying that it’ll work, right?”

“We must be careful, but likely, yes.”

Time to get back to the pyramid…

Alith’s plan for their next trip was rather straightforward, since Valeure and TLDR wouldn’t be there for a while, they would go north and try to clear the desert’s golem dungeon. Next they would head for the pyramid and try to snatch the pieces of Gadur’s armor they had given up on the previous time. That done, they would keep going to the northwest in search of the Elven Capital to meet with the diviner Mornn had told them about, which might lead to more clues about Saria. Some of the herbs Alith needed would normally be sold there. Finally they would go even further north, to a place that, according to Red Carpet’s alchemists, was where the rarer herbs she missed for the medium stat candies grew.

Thus the trio departed north, but before they could even reach the red desert, the group reached ‘the green’ again, that stretch of land amidst the mountains that was completely overgrown by rampant vegetation. Ihuarah stopped them when they explained what this was.

“A high-level elf would have died there? Ahahah, no, this is so very wrong. Someone has been spreading such misinformation? This is nothing of the sort. This is the work of a single plant trying to grow, the Unstoppable Dimmerion.”

“Unstoppable Dimmerion? Do we have to worry about it?”

“No. It is a danger, and an incredible annoyance to deal with, but once the flower blooms, nourished by this insufferable amalgam of plants all absorbing and feeding it energy, it will catapult away a single seed. Then this hell of greenery will wither here to grow again somewhere else.”

“Should I kill it?” Sofia suggested.

Ihuarah turned to Sofia without a word.

“What is it?”

“Lady Sofia… The ‘unstoppable’ part of the name is not a mere decorative word, it is a warning to young people such as yourself. If it was that easy…”

“Ever heard of the Erredian Rot?”