Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia woke up Alith with a pat on her shoulder. Her reaction was the complete opposite to Sofia’s. She panicked ‘looking’ around, moving, touching around, covering her own face.

Is she in pain?

It was impossible to decipher her expression with just the mana flow. Not sure what to do, Sofia pinned her down in a hug. Alith resisted for a bit before she understood what was happening. Damn she’s way stronger than me.

At times like this it was quite practical to be much taller than her, Sofia kept Alith in her embrace until she completely calmed down. Alright, her heart rate went down. Time to get serious… How do I…

Communication between two blind and deaf persons was a bit of a problem. Sofia had tried talking from the start but seeing as Alith gave no reaction she was visibly in the same predicament.

Sofia grabbed Alith’s hand and brought it to her mouth, Alith didn’t react. She kissed the back of the hand. Then she shoved her own hand’s back against Alith’s face. Surely she got the message.

With a warm sensation on her hand, Sofia regained her lost senses and the few HP she was missing.

The furniture in the room had fallen to the floor, but that was it, Alith had a bit of blood running from the ears, and Sofia guessed she was the same. She helped Alith up and led her to a window.

Holy shit. It’s all gone.

There was nothing left of the previous ‘locked city’, only the castle was left, floating on a small round island amidst the dark void. The shield had protected them. Okay but why does it protect against explosions but not sound…

The explosion had been pretty intense, and it left nothing behind. I guess it all fell… So the castle is what was holding everything? It won’t fall now that the guy is dead, right? And what about the mana bubble? It’s fine, right? Either way, she did what she had to do, guiding Alith’s hand out the window and casting [Heal Undead].

“Oh thank the gods I can see again,” Alith said, relieved, waving her hands in front of her eyes.

“You can get healed from getting halved so it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise.”

“Guess so, still, brought up bad memories… The power cores exploded then? We didn’t even get any xp from the squids…”

“Well, we couldn’t know they would explode like that, we should be happy that we didn’t die. Wasn’t in the description that the cores could also work as explosives. At least the castle should be safe now. And if we can find a way to recharge the ring, this can be our permanent home. Didn’t you say you wanted a castle?”

“...” Alith looked at the void outside, “That’s not quite what I had in mind… And the old things I brought from the desert dungeon all blew up out there…”

“A castle in an empty plane’s better than no castle. At least we should be pretty safe here. What now? I have the hero’s storage ring. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Really? Hmm… Can I have the sand pendant instead? I really like to nap in there…”

“You really want this over a ring that’s larger and without sand? You did all the work in this fight.”

“Yep, what do I care for storage space anyway? I don’t mind a backpack. It’s pretty much one of the only things sir Dopple here allows me to wear,” she complained, squinting, looking down at her chest.

“You can go back to wearing inferior protection if you so desire, master. I have no doubt I can find an owner that appreciates me for what I am,” it complained, offended.

The talking cloth was promptly ignored by the duo.

“Fine then, take the pendant, I won’t miss the sand,” handing the cursed sun shaped thing to Alith, Sofia identified the hero’s ring.

[Rubedo’s Tail Biter] : A masterfully crafted storage ring, born of the collaboration of two great human mages and a Dragon. The wearer’s mana regeneration is 5% faster.

Practically unbreakable.

Item level : 100. Grade : Legendary.

Observing it closely, the iridescent red gem the ring was made of was finely sculpted to resemble some kind of limbless dragon biting its own tail. On the inside were engraved three sets of initials.

‘Z.L. ; T.L.D.R ; A.D.’

And I thought we might find treasure inside. The treasure was the ring. A DRAGON?!

Also this telder guy, that’s the Arch-lich Tyrene was talking about, right? How huge must this thing be inside? How much money is it worth? … I’d be an absolute idiot to sell that, right? I really need to find a way to prevent people from identifying it. This is a bright sparkling ‘rob me’ sign.

She shared her findings with Alith, who was equally mind-blown. After thinking for a few seconds she decided to double down on her previous choice, “Well, all the more reasons for you to keep it. Five percent mana regeneration boost is huge for you with how much your spells cost. Mine aren’t all that bad, only [Lady Double] is a big drain. But to be fair… If something inside catches my eye, I'll get first pick. If you’re fine with that.”

“Of course! Well then…” Sofia then uttered the password, “Iriadell.”

She felt her mana bind with the ring. It was deeper than that, even. She felt like her soul was bound to the ring. Nobody else could open it now, she was sure of it. Not without killing her and using the password.

I get why I couldn’t open Orvod’s tooth now.

She let her mind peer into the ring’s inside space. It was big. Real big. The size of her ‘prison room’ at the Church big. And that was nothing to scoff at. How many thousands of books can I fit in there?

She hadn’t gotten much time to read ever since her summoning, yet that was still the first thing she thought about. It was interesting how the space inside of the pendant was a sphere but inside the ring it was a flattened cube. Really like a large room, Sofia estimated it to be fifteen meters large and wide, and about five meters high. There were surprisingly very few things inside. Sofia took all the contents of the ring out one by one.

There was a painting of an elven woman with three children, two small ornate Midenicite boxes, two large wooden chests, two sets of men’s clothing, and a weird two meters tall rectangle thing with a door.

They opened the largest thing first, since it took a third of the room.

[Hero’s foodlocker] : Designed to work inside of a storage item, this food locker has two compartments you can use to keep your food from degrading, hot or cold, for centuries.

Item level : 0. Grade : Precious.

There was a single piece of food inside, in the cold compartment. A red berry cake with a cream heart drawn on it, and a single spoonful missing from it.

“...”

Sofia stored the large thing and the clothes and the painting back in the ring. It’s better not to think about it too much… Especially considering what we’re going to be doing to him…

“The large chests next?” Alith asked. Sofia shrugged.

The first large chest contained a set of four power cores, each well secured in their own compartments, and a strange rectangular brass contraption. Alith slowly closed the chest, “Put that back in there… Actually maybe we should throw it into the void…” She shivered as she peeked at the outside world again, at the black void that used to be occupied by a huge city.

The next chest held something much more mundane yet exciting. Money. They took everything out to count one by one. Ten pouches of a hundred gold coins, with one only halfway filled. Fifty-three gold ingots, which judging by the similar weight to the pouches, were worth one-hundred coins each. Three smaller pink ingots. Orichalcum. And a single fingernail sized green ingot wrapped in a red cloth. And that’s mithril, is every ingot worth a hundred gold?

Sofia thought about it for a while, considering how much mithril had been used to coat Alith’s weapons and sheathes… Alith’s weapons had to be worth at least five-thousand gold if her theory was right. No way?! That has to be wrong… We paid six-hundred…

There was also a Midenicite ingot. But why?

[Primal Midenicite Ingot] : Forged a hundred times in Dragon fire, this ingot of pure compressed Midenicite is completely impermeable to mana.

Item level : 0. Grade : Flawless.

Sofia gulped. That has to be worth more than everything else in there. It seemed this hero had a close relation with a Dragon. At such a low level? And why bother doing this if they weren’t going to use it? Either way we’re absolutely rich now… If we make it out. Still no ring.

There were only two small boxes left. Surely there would be another key-ring in there. There had to be.