Saintess Summons Skeletons

“You’re crazy… Just read this last one and we should move to something else… It’s honestly tiring to follow so many conversations at once, they’re going crazy in there… Here goes.”

‘[TheJailed] : Is my daughter fine? Please say that she is… I lost all contact due to… Yeah… Sorry that you got caught up in it, but you were also the one who killed her when you messed with her scribe, so… Please just tell her to stay safe…”

Your daughter… No way… This is curse? It was the quest that killed her? Sir scribe… You have some serious explaining to do if curse is saying the truth. Is it a fatal flaw in the system? I’ll bring it up to whoever’s in charge of the next trial. The system would have me kill Zerei without even telling me? That’s not the kind of quest I want to receive.

Not at all.

“Zerei is fine… My, uh… Uncle? He helped her. Last I saw her she was wanting to open a school. I’ll tell her about your message next time I see her, but you better give Cinthia some good compensation for making it happen.”

Cinthia was only slightly shocked by Sofia’s answer to the message and her barely disguised attempt at coercion against a God. But her expression changed when she received a new donation.

“V- V- Vakaria? Are you secretly the demon king?”

“Not that I know of, no. I don’t even know what the demon king is supposed to do really.”

“I just received a donation larger than what I earned in total these last three years…”

“So much?”

Cinthia nodded so fast her face became blurry.

“Nice,” Sofia congratulated her. “I appreciate elder curse’s sincerity. I’ll make sure to tell Zerei how much of an attentionate father you are. Though she already knows. I might even try to give a hint to my Uncle, if you see what I mean. But I can’t guarantee anything on that front. A pleasure doing business with you.”

Cinthia raised her voice a bit, “Uuuh… Is it really fine for me to get all this? You’re not getting anything out of that exchange, are you? Negotiating with the Recessed for me…”

“Eh, it's not like you can share your class coins, right? Just bring me to Saria, it’ll be payment enough, I assure you. In fact I’ll be the one in your debt.”

“If you say so… Boss is here almost all year-round though, it’s not very hard to meet her…”

“The message I have for her is just that urgent. I would appreciate it if you could lead me to her sooner than later, in fact. I have been scouting the city but it’s been rather unfruitful until I found you.”

“We can go when you want then. I have a general idea of where she is.”

“Great, just give me a second to check what my skeletons found while we were talking… Actually, Pareth, just go check on that one bird, would you?”

Pareth appeared on the roof, startling Cinthia, who silently took a step back. He gave a curt bow to both ladies and jumped off from the roof.

“This one is a bit more intimidating than the birds…” Cinthia commented as she observed Pareth falling through the air and crashing down on the streets far below.

“He’s the best one. In fact, he’s my first specialization.”

“Oh… Is that why your armor is bones too?”

“No, that was from even before. My class is just weird, don’t think too much about it, if I try to explain it all we’ll still be here tomorrow.

“If you say so…”

“I think Pareth is where he needs to be, give me a second.”

Sofia switched to Pareth’s point of view. The bird had indeed found ‘someone’ it was clearly one of the inner disciples. But he was semi transparent and like frozen in time, a completely unmoving mid-air his corpse actually cut in two separate parts.

“Looks like one of the other disciples died, I think. They’re all see through.”

Cinthia tilted her head. “Let me guess, black haired dwarf with a big sword?”

“That’s him alright.”

“Yeah, unsurprising. That’s Danael. His class’s entire thing is getting stronger by dying in different ways. It’s definitely weird, but who am I to judge…”

“His class involves dying?”

“A lot, yeah. He has a passive skill that brings him back to life after a while.”

“Doesn’t that make him immortal?”

“I can’t share much, but no.”

“Understandable. I have an active skill that does something similar so I am a bit curious, but I will not pry more.”

“That’s appreciated, are we waiting for your skeleton to come back?”

“Pareth? No need, he’s already here.”

“Uh?” Cinthia looked around, even checking the street below, but she found no trace of the big glowing skeleton.

“Where are you looking?” Sofia called her from behind. Pareth was right there, standing next to her.

Cinthia blinked a few times. “My head… Let’s just go find Boss…”

 

Cinthia did her best to ignore the Recessed going wild in her messages to explain how they were going to find Saria; she had brought Sofia to a rather hidden hole in the dome that apparently led outside.

“It’s like this because the monsters reappear some time after they died in Joah’s worlds. That’s how boss trains, she lures the monsters she can to the boss room and fights them all at once with the actual boss. Then she goes back to the start and does it all again, luring more monsters in each time to make it more difficult. So all we really need to do is find where the boss room is, which will be in an area relatively devoid of monsters, since she grabs them all.”

“I get that but how can you tell it’s not somewhere in the city?”

“She’s too noisy and flashy, if she was inside the dome you wouldn’t need me to find her. Even if she might find you first, actually. But really that only leaves this path through the sea, the city’s underground, and the part buried inside the cliff where you said you came from. I think you would have heard if she was somewhere in the cliff, and I was looking for the entrance to the underground all this time, it’s hard to find, so it wouldn’t be her first choice either. Since I didn’t see her at all, it can only be the sea route.”

“How big are Joah’s worlds? This city is already impressive, I didn’t think it would extend into the sea too.”

“Pretty damn big, thanks to all the machinery he’s strapped to. Zephir invested a lot in the research to make sure we could all benefit the most from these safe training grounds.”

“He seems to care about his disciples a lot.”

Cinthia shrugged in response. “It’s not all selfless generosity. It benefits his class to help us. But he is pretty caring, I’ll give him that, we all owe our leader a lot. Can you breathe underwater, Vakaria?”

Sofia nodded.

“That’ll make things easier, let’s go then.”

“Wait. You’re sure she’s out there?”

“Almost certain, yes.”

“Then I’ll go alone, I think, If you don’t mind, thank you for your help.”

“Uh? Do I stink or something? You don’t like red skin?” Cinthia asked, trying to laugh it off but clearly somewhat baffled by the sudden change.

“No, it’s just. I have personal matters to settle with her. I would rather do that in private, but you can ask her later, or me. You don’t have to worry, it is not like I can do anything bad inside here, right? And Zephir let me in just for this.”

“That’s… Weird. But if you want, then. Your choice. I still have the underground entrance to look for so I’ll be going back to doing that I suppose. Was nice meeting you Vakaria, thank you for the unexpected windfall. It really helped a lot.”

“You helped me, I helped you, we’re even. See you outside, then.” Sofia winked as her skeletons grabbed her through the heavy steel door.

“Did she just?... Awh, let’s get back to my quest… Yes, yes, I’m still reading the chat, thank you for your donation, Hatred. I don’t know what GL is, no. Thank you for the 100 tokens, Death, always appreciated. Thanks…”

 

Sofia phased through another heavy door, arriving directly into the dark, cold and salty water of the deep ocean.

Hmm, I can still fly, even if it’s a bit slow, it’s not so bad. The salt is a bit irritating but I can handle that. Bookie?

Sofia summoned a skeleton that Zerei had given her. It was once she had never tried.

[Solar Saltwater Spinefish]

The skeletal fish in question was larger than Sofia and had two long horn-like spikes, on either side of its body. They were in fact his first and last vertebra that had become like that somehow. A strange species of fish that Zerei had captured for the express purpose of giving Sofia aquatic mobility.

It would have been a shame not to use you. Sofia thought as she grabbed the fish’s bones, now go!

The fish swam much faster than Sofia could fly underwater. It was fast, but the visibility underwater wasn’t the best. So Sofia closed her eyes and focused on her mana senses. The ocean was weirdly empty of life, but it did not take long for her to locate another facility built on the seafloor. Going around, she found another big circular door, and once again, she phased through with [Graveyard of the righteous].

In the space behind the door was another door again. But not only that, Sofia noticed footprints. It was just a bit of sand left over on the ground, but it was clearly the tracks of the combinations’ soles. Just like what Sofia was wearing right now.

Found your tracks, sister. This has to be you, right? I'm not dreaming inside the dream, right? After all these years…

If this is a dream, please let me sleep some more…