Saintess Summons Skeletons

The following afternoon was a nice relaxing time between Sofia and Alith, Ihuarah rejoined them at one point to give his farewells as he departed for his mission. Whatever the pendant that was promised as his reward was, it was clear he was focused on giving his all to retrieve it. Sofia also asked around about old master Calm Breeze’s dojo, which nobody knew about until she dropped by Rahkam’s place again, who simply drew it as another landmark on her map, far east on the southern continent.

As the scheduled time for Sofia to meet with the Oracle approached, Alith decided to depart too. She confidently declared that she would bring back the bonus reward for the fastest completion, and that Sofia should be careful and could give up if she needed to. Worst case, she would be stuck in the city for a while, but surely they could get the quest revoked, or bypass the penalty. If it came to this, they would find a way.

 

“I’m pretty sure he said it’s around here…”

Sofia was currently facing a brick wall in a narrow alley of the city’s second to lowest level. A few meters behind was the busy night street of Herzal, where elves were out drinking alcohol and eating street-food. This was the place the Oracle had told her to go, supposedly the wall in front of her had a hidden mechanism of some kind to open a passageway to the city’s lowest level. Except she couldn’t find it.

Ah, whatever, this is getting annoying. Sofia summoned the [Graveyard of the righteous] to get her through. At this point, the skill was barely ever useful in combat, but she would never think of getting rid of it. Slowly but surely, the skeletal hands arose, gently grabbed her ankles and pulled her down into the ground.

Oh, it was the wrong alley after all, I was one too far to the left.

It’s the Oracle’s fault for giving such a vague explanation.

Sofia walked out of the wall, directly into the passageway that led to the lower level.

Dusty. They must not come here often.

The absence of light was no issue, Sofia walked through the long corridor of orange bricks, trying not to pay attention to the doors on the side and the strange humming noise coming from behind them. Her destination was at the very end of this strange secret underground, a golden door, engraved with Sun’s rune.

This should be the dead center of the lowest level, definitely not an insignificant placement.

As she approached, the door opened by itself by sinking into the ground.

Sun and the Oracle were already there.

Sun was the first to talk, “See, I told you she was coming.”

The circular room Sofia had just entered was covered in strange magical arrays. They looked nothing like regular ritual circles and more like messy agglomerates of parallel and perpendicular lines, but it was carrying immense amounts of mana. The whole point of it was clearly to fuel the golden platform at the center.

“I’m here. Please explain what I need to know. If it’s not satisfying, I'm not going.”

“Such an attitude, my dear. I am the Sun, not a god of trickery. I gave you this quest because you are uniquely suited to it.”

“How so?”

Sun walked closer, never dropping her signature smile, she stopped right in front of Sofia. Her voice was soft, “It has to do with your blessing,” she started before bending over, coming even closer to Sofia’s face. The pressure coming from her was intense, much harder to deal with than even an Angel’s presence, Sofia was frozen solid. Sun parted Sofia’s hair, cupping her ear with a hand, she brought her face even closer and whispered, “young miss A- Phe- No- Reth.”

“Nice glove,” Sun added as she pulled away, the fingers of her hand trailing over Sofia’s, “I wonder where you got that.”

Sofia’s thoughts at that instant were about as clear as a sentence written without any vowels. Sun was dangerous in more ways than one, she felt, which was oddly fitting.

After another wide smile and a quick wink, Sun disappeared.

“Sorry about that,” the Oracle apologized, “She can be a handful.”

“... She’s not your daughter, you don’t have to apologize…”

“Herm, well, yeah. Let me explain more about the quest, she gave me some details before you arrived, and some things I already knew. Do you know about electricity?”

“You mean that?” Sofia started channeling a small bolt, “I’m pretty familiar with it.”

“I see, well. Did you know that this can be used to fuel its own separate kind of magic items too?”

“What?!”

“Indeed. The issue is, mana messes with that very strongly, using it here is a futile endeavor. Sun really is curiosity incarnate, she has lived for longer than you can imagine, constantly looking further and further away, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and what is known. Thus, She had this temple built near Her celestial form, in a place completely devoid of mana, in hopes to study this alternative energy source, one that, unlike mana, she can produce herself.”

“Wait… Gods cannot produce mana?”

“No. Gods can only receive ours. Through the collective feelings of us sapient beings, the mana leaked through our emotions, their essence forms and replenishes, this is the source of their power.”

I’m holding onto a decent chunk of scripture’s power, then.

“If we were to disappear, what would happen?”

“They disappear too.”

“Then… By finding another energy source, isn’t Sun trying to find a way to get rid of us?”

“No, I told you, She wants to explore more, discover more. She cannot afford to lose any part of that.”

“Yet she would give me five of her essences?”

“This…” The Oracle walked around the golden platform. “I believe She sees it as an investment. If you can reclaim the temple, not only would She be able to proceed with Her experiments, She can get you indebted to Her. Right now you aren’t worth much, but should you keep growing, the better your image of Her, the more power she will gain back from you, to no disservice to you either. The ones suffering from this would only be the other Gods.”

Does this mean there is a competition among Gods to snatch the worship of high-level people? And they invest early… The Lords have Essences too. I wonder how that plays into this.

“Should you really be telling me all this, then? Sir Oracle.”

“You heard Her. She has no time for trickery. And from my observations, I believe the best way to rope you in is to be as honest as possible about the benefits and inconvenience of the situation.”

Not wrong.

The Oracled continues, crossing his arms, “You strike me as the kind of individual who cares about the results more than the process, Sofia. Am I wrong?”

“You’re not. I suppose you had plenty of time to learn how to analyze people’s personality. How old are you anyway…”

“Very old, compared to you, but what does that matter? No matter how old or how strong, there are things I cannot do, and today you are tasked with one of them. Shall I explain your mission in more detail?”

“No doubt that I’m going to take it? I really should have kept [Poker Face]... Explain away.”

“First of all, Sun cannot go to the orbital temple Herself. A few thousand years ago, she launched this temple away from our planet for the reasons I explained earlier. This city was built on the relay meant to communicate with it. Three days after the temple reached its stable orbit around the sun, She lost all contact. More elves were sent but none came back. It took Her a while to create tools to investigate what happened, simple magic was for some reason insufficient. Before I was appointed, She had already given up on recovering it, She has never stated why. And now it seems, She believes you may be able to fix it.”

Because of the Deep? The quest she issued clearly mentions monsters.

The Sun temple is held by creatures of the Deep? Is that a possibility? Unless she meant something else. The blessing also protects against status effects… But that’s nothing special. No, if only I can do it, then…

[Blessing of the Deep] (2/4) : The Saintomancer was granted a name.

They may see the inhabitants of the Deep.

The Saintomancer and their summons are immune to the [Mind control], [Hypnosis], [Confusion], [Insanity], [Domination], [Soul Parasite] and [Instant Death] status effects.

(Next function unlocks at 3/4)

‘They may see the inhabitants of the Deep.’ It has to be about this. Now I’m curious too.

“How do I know that teleporting there is safe? And won’t my own mana regeneration mess with the things out there if it was built expressly to be far from mana?”

“I will go with you to confirm that, if it is unsafe, I have ways to get us out, although we might be stranded in space for a few months. If it is safe, I will leave, because my mana would interfere with the orbital-support system of the temple. Although I can control it somewhat, Sun’s estimations are that my simple presence would sink the temple into the sun in around twenty minutes. That is what She told me a few moments before you entered. As for your mana, it should be fine for a while, I believe this is where the three month deadline comes from.”

You mean you produce as much mana in twenty minutes as I do in three months. That’s a level 499 for you...