Saintess Summons Skeletons-Chapter 774 - Please do not the nuclear button
With Erredis personally leading the hunt, finding and ‘harvesting’ a few lesser mountain elementals was not a difficult task. She and Alith ended up burying themselves in the workshop for a few days after that, and soon everyone involved received a few [Sprite dwelling catalyst]. Erredis and Alith then disappeared behind the workshop doors again.
Are you my grandma or the communal grandma?
A few more days passed during which Sofia struggled to adapt to her new helmet alone in Zangdar, and when she returned to Ser’Extra she was a bit stunned.
At this point Pareth was almost more involved with building the city than she was, he was constantly out and about, buying things, selling things, and leading the construction projects with Engi. Bookie ended up spending most of his free time with Ihuarah drafting up the exact rules and law for the city. Pestle, in these chaotic but peaceful times, had suddenly found herself a passion for cooking and opened a ‘Wandering Leg’ food stall which she carried all over the city, periodically coming back to Sofia to feast on her mana. Astelia and Everelle ended up training together in anticipation of their coming trial, and Zerei had just arrived, planning to move her school over from Vasperia to Ser’Extra.
All of this left Sofia basically alone and with nothing urgent to do.
Weird.
Her first reflex was to get in contact with Speed. By now he already had his own little automated post office built near the city center, and while he was basically never there, he periodically came to leave and collect mail. The answer she got was just a tiny folded paper with a single line. ‘Atrociously busy right now. If you’re free, let's meet in ten days, I’ll show you my paintings.’
Huh.
Ten days.
Sofia dealt with a few more things on her own, but in the end, she was left with seven extra days and nothing she wanted to do, not right away, at least.
With absolutely nothing pressing going on, she returned to Zangdar, sat in the bone tree garden next to the sleeping Rem, and summoned Crowie for company.
Crowie seemed to relish in the current calm. Sofia absent-mindledly caressed his tiny skull as she organized her thoughts and objectives. Since there was nothing urgent, she could finally deal with everything else she had put to the side.
On the divinity side of things… I still need to go around collecting the divine essence and two more dead gods. The Sorrow and Love temples are already under construction, and the Sun and Death ones are slated to come right after. I’m still reserving the central spot for the Deep, but I’m not too sure what I want to do with it…
I still got two False Lord skill locations to explore, and a single skill to get. But that should wait until the city is really up and running.
Then there’s the date with Speed but that’s already coming up. I was starting to wonder if he was trying to avoid me after the last trial but it looks like that’s not it.
In terms of items I think I’m mostly done for now. Pareth can deal with his own gear, he doesn’t need my help to collect shields so everything's fine. Still no new lead on the saint set so I can only wait.
For the people, I’ve managed to finally get Eternam his memory back, embarrassing that it took me this long… And I’ve already negotiated with everyone who came to see me in person. Shaily should be done with the trial soon, but no news on that front so far, though I suppose no news is good news in this case.
No place I’m dying to explore just yet, the whole maze into hidden nightmare realm situation was enough for a while. So… Seven days… Usually I would use that kind of free time to level up my skills but they’re all max level already. Meanwhile Mr.Scribe is still working on polishing the next level up method so I also can’t do that… What I do now?
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At an utter loss, Sofia pulled out a wooden crate from her left eye, which was labelled “Important - Deal with this shit later”.
“Well, there’s that.”
One by one she took every item out of the box, each one something she needed or wanted to deal with one way or another.
First was a flask of Deep blood. She wanted to study it up close, and try to understand what she could do with it. The issue was, knowing how the warped moon people had ended up after drinking it, she couldn’t just try things randomly.
Better wait for Alith to get better at alchemy. This is for her to toy with, realistically…
Second was the Jade slip she got from Alkorm. Was it really just a toy to train her mana control and sensibility? She still hadn’t managed to get through the entire puzzle, despite taking it out often when she had an idle moment.
I’d need an extra hundred years to get through it. That’s what it feels like at least…
Third was a small pile of books. There were a few she had picked out here and there for later study, but also the Hastening and Vampiric rituals books she had gotten from Sorrow’s temple. She still hadn’t gotten the time to really get through them, and while she had technically read the Hastening book cover to cover several times, some of the magical principles described inside were so advanced they made her head spin even now. It would require some extensive studying to truly master them. Not something I can do in seven days… I should really offload the other book to Zerei or Asty though.
Which reminds me I need to go back there and take the next of the temple’s tests, too.
So much to do, but that will also take a lot more than seven days, I bet.
Fourth was a small bundle of letters. Sofia had received hundreds of invitations to visit various places, factions, and people after her little show in the trial, but she had only kept the most interesting ones aside. She had four invitations to Concillia, the undead city, one for herself, one for Pareth, one for Bookie and one for Pestle. She also had a letter from the demon king that contained nothing but a set of coordinates, which she guessed were for the secretive demon city Kuli had told her about. And lastly, she had a sketchy one that invited her entire group to come visit the flying fortress city and urged her to buy a property there.
I can’t go to any of these on my own, really. Some of these might have to wait quite a while.
Fifth was a mostly blank world map Erredis had handed her without a word after finishing the helmet. It had no city label, no names anywhere, just an outline of the major landmasses, and various areas scribbled over with colored pencils.
The legend of the map was short, labeling each of the tree colors with a ‘level of danger’.
Blue was in small patches almost everywhere, the closest ones being the spirit forest and the center of Sovuln, labeled ‘Dangerous flight zone - keep clear’.
Purple was mostly in larger but sparser patches, labeled ‘High level battlefield - you will die’, there were none near the human continent.
Lastly, red came in a variety of sizes, but the number of patches could be counted on two hands, the legends saying: ‘Absolutely not - stay the fuck away’. And the seriousness of this one couldn’t be any clearer, as most of the ocean west of the human continent was a vast red blotch, the leviathan’s territory.
Sofia was not wearing her helmet, but since most of its effects lasted for an entire month, and she was finally able to focus without getting dizzy, she read and memorized the entire map in a glance.
Guess that one is dealt with. I really need to find a way to repay her for all this…
That left only the final and sixth item in the box, which Sofia pulled out like it was made of fragile glass. It was the big parchment scroll she had received from the storm archipelago humans. The present from their leader Ravaging Thunder. She had only quickly glanced at its contents before, too short on time to deal with it.
She unrolled it carefully and framed it in bone, on a bone wall she raised on the spot.
Seven days.
Is that enough time?
Her eyes re-read the two words she had unwillingly repeated a million times in her head ever since she had glanced at the contents of the scroll the first time.
With a gulp, she started deciphering the insanely intricate but elegant spell schematic etched with glowing mana lines under those two words.
Archangel’s bolts.
