Saintess Summons Skeletons

The ring of Zar absorbed all the mana in the room, completely preventing the out-of-control mana of Rakham’s spell from collapsing back into him. The old elf was likely strong enough not to die from something so simple, but Sofia wouldn’t let him suffer if she could help it, especially since she could guess what had gone wrong.

Maybe I could have warned him about the Dragon… “Is everything alright?”

Rakham didn’t answer straight away, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself first.

“I am alright, thanks to you. This could have been painful, I was careless, I failed to expect such a violent response.”

“Sorry, we knew there might be a Dragon involved, but never told you.”

“Well, you have handled the consequences so that is no issue. In fact, had you told me things would have likely ended the same way. There is nothing I can do against such a threat. Nevertheless, I found some interesting things,” Rakham said with a smile.

“Is Saria alright? Do you know where she is?!”

“Ahahah, calm down, lady. Your sister should be alright. Let me lay out everything I found out. Be aware though, divination is an unreliable practice. Everything I tell you should be true, but details are hard to grasp, and no one can know the future, one can only make educated guesses.”

Alith and Sofia nodded through the elf’s explanations.

“With this reminder out of the way, here is the full extent of what I have seen. The traces of Saria, past the name and other details I had managed to find about her childhood before you showed up, starts at the southern beaches of Sovuln.”

“Not Sovuln itself?” Sofia asked.

“No, the environment in Sovuln makes it very hard to see through, but because her tracks start there, it can be said that she had never left it from her birth until that point.”

Alith also had something to ask, “Can you give precise dates?”

“No, I can somewhat give an order to things, a chronology but no time, if that makes sense.”

“Understood. Sovuln should be the starting point, yes.”

“That much was obvious. From there, the tracks lead straight south, past the ocean to the southern continent. There, the tracks are much harder to tell apart, which should be the work of the Dragon. That being said, Saria has spent a lot of time there. It seems she sometimes explores through the continent, but most of her time is spent in the same mountain chain. In terms of scale, it is about the same as the one separating the human peninsula and the red desert. Simply put, the Dragon’s lair should be in these mountains somewhere, and she stays there. I cannot give a more exact location, you saw what happened when I tried to find that out.”

“So the backlash was the Dragon preventing you from finding its position?”

“Precisely. But there shouldn’t be many Dragons in these mountains, if you see what I mean.”

“So if we go there and find the Dragon…” Alith thought out loud.

“Is she a prisoner to the Dragon?”

“Let me tell you more first. The tracks expand out to the two first trial towers, as one could expect. She should be at level 249 right now. Her class has something to do with dungeons, although I cannot say more about that. It should definitely be some kind of secret magic class, something which is not unheard of. We have someone here in Herzal whose class is [Speedrunner], it is a unique class centered about doing everything as fast as possible. In my opinion, your sister’s class is something similar, not in concept but in uniqueness within the system.”

If she got a class out of the children protection rule of the system then it being a unique class isn’t surprising. Magic though? All I found were spears. Hmm.

“Now, concerning your worries that she might be a prisoner, I highly doubt so. As I said, though not much, she does seem to sometimes venture out. And the aura of feelings in the mana was not one typical of a prisoner. Her life seems to be led by determination and sorrow, not the despair and emptiness that long term prisoners would have. Let alone the fact that her explosive growth indicates that she is being trained one way or another.”

“Sorrow…”

“Yes. Though it is a bit of a stretch of my abilities, I would confidently say that she most likely believes you dead. Assuming you aren’t seeking her for some kind of revenge that is,” the elf continued with narrowed eyes.

“Of course not!”

“As I thought. Well. That’s about it. The Dragon, I believe, should be rather young, judging by how much I managed to glimpse at before it stopped me. Perhaps it saw in your sister a great potential as a retainer.”

“So she might be a servant of some kind?” Kind of like a Saintess then, but for a Dragon instead of a God and without a related class…

“Perhaps, I cannot say anything with certainty, at the very least I believe she does not resent her current condition. But whether she is a servant, a guard, an adoptive child or simply a source of entertainment to the Dragon, I would not know.”

Entertainment? Would Saria accept that? I suppose if she can use it to further her goals she might not mind. But either way, this is another confirmation that she is still alive.

Wait for me.

“Can I go find her? Teleport there somehow?”

“The best way to find your sister now might simply be to go there yourself, yes. Do be aware though, that the Dragon now knows someone was spying on it, which could make any approaches dangerous. And the southern continent in general shouldn’t be approached by anyone under level 300 or with a similarly powerful escort, the southern wildlife is unforgiving.”

“If there’s Dragons there I could see that,” Alith chimed in.

“That is a funny thought but Dragons are no wildlife. There is one living on the human peninsula too. Though he rarely comes out.”

“Alkorm?”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of him. This one indeed. Do you have a world map I can draw on?”

Sofia summoned her bone map and a bone pen, “There you go.”

“Is the thin line your own itinerary? You have been all over the place for someone so young.”

“It is what it is. I will be moving more in the future.”

“A respectable perspective. I value my life in the city, but though I rarely leave, one could say I travel the most,” Rahkam said with a wink, “now let’s see. See that narrow mountain north of the spirit forest? You even have it correctly marked outside of every neighboring nation’s borders. That is Alkorm’s peak.” He circled the mountain on the map as he explained. After which, he took the pen to the bottom of the bone slate and started scratching the border of the southern continent. In the middle of it, he drew a mountain chain and circled it. “This is where you want to search. Counting the valleys around it’s about the size of the human peninsula. The southern continent as a whole is quite large. I do not even know of its boundaries.”

“Can you not use your divination to find out?” Alith asked.

“Not if I stay in Herzal, my range is wide but limited. And many a natural obstacles blocks the path. The western sea, Sovuln, the spirit forest, as many dead zones I cannot go through.”

Wait… “If you cannot see into Sovuln at all, how did you find out about our name?”

“Secrets of the trade, young girl. Ahahah.”

The conversation did not last for long after that, Sofia was lost in thoughts, imagining a thousand scenarios of what might have happened to Saria exactly and how she might be now. What might her goals be, why was she trying so hard to become strong, how would she react when she found out that her younger sister is alive?

In the end, Sofia returned to her room for the day, she was too out of it to do anything else.

 

The next day, Sofia and Alith spent the entire morning wandering around the elven city searching for a smith willing and able to handle the mithril chainmail fast. Just finding a weaponsmith in the tightly packed pyramidal city was a challenge in and of itself, especially since the guards and the Oracle were the only ones allowed to fly in Herzal.

Eventually they did find a level 260 weaponsmith who accepted to work on a tight deadline for a fee of 10% of the mithril. The heavy chainmail was molten and reforged into two new kama for Alith, this time with fully mithril handles and blades, as well as a longer dagger and a shield for Sofia. With [Heat Death] for magical attacks and a Mithril Kite shield for physical attacks, Sofia really felt that it would be hard for someone not faster than her to get to touch her at all.

When Sofia had explained to the smith what happened to her hand while she cast her bolts and whether he had any idea of what kind of armor could offset that, he had asked to test the toughness of her current armor.

Past the moment of fascination at the design of the bone armor, he gave Sofia’s hand a few hits of his mithril hammer after leaving it in his furnace until it was glowing hot.

“Well shit. Can’t help you with that miss. What you want isn’t a good smith, it’s rare materials. Maybe I could do something for you if you brought a kilogram of Mithrium or a Dragon scale.”

A Dragon scale? A Dragon scale. Well, now I know the location of two Dragons, so…

“I’ll think about it, thanks for the advice.”

The smith had already shown a strong reaction when two young humans had strolled into his shop with several kilograms of mithril, but now the incredulous looks on his and his apprentices' faces were truly priceless.