Saintess Summons Skeletons-Chapter 784 - One off
Sofia was watching Ihuarah working on the final touch for the ritual circle that would allow them to enter Sorrow’s divine domain, when a much too tall fairy wearing bright pink and yellow checkered clothes appeared in an explosion of glitter with a loud pop.
“Haloooo! Oh! I nailed my teleportation coordinates on the first try?! Must be a lucky day,” Love immediately started babbling, “Ah!!! I recognise you!” she shouted as she noticed Ihuarah.
Ihuarah looked at the deity, utterly lost.
“You’re that weirdo who bought an entire shipment of dragon shit from Alkorm!” she accused, pointing a finger at the speechless shade. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
??? Dragon shit?
Suddenly Ihuarah seemed to recognize Love, pointing a finger at her too, “The annoying brat who kept ruining my alchemy bases with spices!”
“You’re the annoying brat! Your potions were disgusting!”
Sofia looked at the two who suddenly started to quarrel about events from thousands of years ago, at a complete loss for words. She had never seen Ihuarah so agitated. Pestle on her shoulder seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.
“I didn’t know you and Love were acquainted,” Sofia told Ihuarah when there was a short silence in the heated argument.
“Love?!” He repeated incredulously, “That hateful creature?!”
“I’ll show you a creature you dumb fuck!” Love shouted back, round-kicking Ihuarah in the chin.
Ihuarah was sent flying between two pillars of the temple and disappeared over the horizon.
“... You didn’t kill him… Right?”
“Hmmph! Of course not. My love kick is a healing spell!” the goddess proudly explained, crossing her arms.
Just to be sure, Sofia discreetly checked on her status’ summon section, confirming that Ihuarah was indeed still alive and well.
“So, humm…” Sofia cleared her throat, “Your temple is the construction site right there, do you want to visit?”
“Not now, my cute Zoth is sleeping, I don’t want to disturb her! I came to deliver you the things!”
“Right, so how does it work? Did you locate a saint set piece like you promised?”
“Eheh! I’ll do you one better, I have brought you two of them!”
“Two?”
“I told you my Zoth is very reliable! She found them before you were even out of the trial!”
The deal was the location of one for the temple’s construction though…
“What is that going to cost me?” Sofia asked.
“Since Zoth is happy I’ll give you one for free!”
Well, compared to the location only that saves me from having to go fetch it. How generous…
“Thank you. We’re also happy to have her here. And the second one?”
“Well… I want you to hold an official city-wide love festival one day a year!”
Sofia stared at the short goddess with narrowed eyes. “Love festival you say? And what exactly would that be?”
Love shrugged, “Well it has to make people appreciate love and make Zoth happy! I don’t mind the details.”
Sofia thought for a second, “If you tell me where Zoth got the two saint items and whether she got any information on the last one, it’s a deal.”
“Deal!”
Love produced the two items out of nowhere, a long but very thin scarf woven from golden threads, and a thin gold chain that Sofia guessed was a necklace.
“So! The scarf was in Water’s divine domain for some reason, I just had to buy it from him! Easy. The necklace was something else! My poor Zoth had to crawl all the way to the bottom of a Clicker den in Verimthar to get it!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Oh. I have never heard of Clickers nor of Verimthar…”
“Well duh! Clickers are level 400 on average! You don’t want to be near those! Verimthar is just the frozen continent on the south pole. Not a suUuper great place. Don’t ask me how the necklace got there because I got no idea!”
“Learning something new every day. I guess I need to prepare something to thank lady Zoth for retrieving this in my stead.”
“Just prepare a good festival, yeah?! And since you seem very attached to Sorrow you should prepare one for her too!”
“I have thought about it, actually,” Sofia admitted, “But since the Recessed get their essence from people having a negative outlook toward their concepts, I’m having a hard time imagining how that would work. Wouldn’t a festival of Sorrows just reduce her strength?”
“Not necessarily!” Love corrected, “You can accept or even be grateful that you feel sorrow for your losses and still dislike the way it makes you feel. Emotions are a complex thing! But no need to fret over the details anyway! I’m sure she would be more happy that you’re celebrating her than however much a single city could make her essence fluctuate even if it only made it weaker! The spirit gods don’t get many festivals you know!”
“That’s… An interesting way to see it. I think you’re right. I’ll see, then. But be it that or your festival, it will have to wait until the city is properly up and running. I cannot organise big events while there are still people sleeping in bone tents on swampy ground…”
“Sure sure, what’s a year or two anyway? Oh, and so, for the last Saint set item…”
“Yes? Did Ar’Zoth locate that one too?!”
“Nope. But she found out two things! First, none of the current saints have it. Second, and that’s both good and bad news, we know what it looks like and what it does. It’s a gold ring that makes it twice as hard for your items to be identified.”
“A gold ring… Oh,I see… So it could be literally anywhere…”
“Spot on! With an [Identify] skill under level 4 it will appear as a regular plain gold ring.”
“That’s even worse than if the ID just failed…”
“Hmmhmm. I doubt it’s been destroyed at least, anyone skilled enough to melt it would recognise that it’s not a regular gold ring. But whether it’s in a ditch somewhere, on some lady’s hand, or in a jeweler’s shopfront, no idea.”
“Well, at least now I know what to look for. Any clue as to what the rumored extremely strong full-set effect is?”
“Nope again,” Love answered, shaking her head. “Their creator is the only one who knew and she died of old age last century. Nobody ever got their hands on the entire thing. But I can tell you from how reputable she was, and how beautiful the magical arrays inside those are, the rumors likely aren’t unfounded,” she explained, handing out the two items to Sofia.
Unsurprisingly already aware about Sofia’s debt and lack of Identify privileges, Love shared the descriptions for her, first for the scarf then for the necklace.
[Saint’s Coveting]: A Saint should not covet what isn’t theirs. And nobody should covet what’s theirs either.
Double the Saint’s spatial awareness. Double it again if one of the Saint’s worn possessions is being stolen.
Part of a seven-piece set.
Spatial awareness? That’s interesting. I need to try it on to see what it really changes.
[Saint’s thirst]: A Saint’s thirst for power is second to the gods only.
Doubles the duration of temporary positive effects from eating and drinking.
Part of a seven-piece set.
Double potion length? Wait, that probably works with the Suffering crystals processing bonus! Nice!
Sofia immediately put the two items around her neck, not feeling much different.
“Sorry, can you Identify them again? I wonder if the set effect changed with the two new pieces. It changed at both two and four pieces previously.”
“Let me check… Oooh interesting. You’re lucky we gods can’t wear this or I might be tempted to snatch it back,” Love said with a worrying smile.
Sofia dubiously looked at the previous set effect from her system logs, wondering how much it could have really changed for Love to say that.
‘Current set effect (4): Recover 1 health per second when sitting or lying down. Energizing.’
At the same time, Love shared the new one.
‘Current set effect (6): Reduce divinity penalties.’
Woah! Because regular saints get actual divine skills like the avatar transformation!
For me it’s even better because I have [Mockery of the divine]! I’ll be able to get more out of my 130 Divinity when I use the divine runes!
Finally collecting these is paying off!!!
“You seem pretty happy with that,” Love noted with a smirk.
“Of course! I’ll even be able to borrow your powers for a bit now. Do you think I can learn the Love Kick?”
Love raised an eyebrow, seriously considering the idea, “If my lovely Zoth is still happy with your city in a year, maybe I’ll teach you,” she said with a raised chin. “Speaking of which, I’ll be going before that creepy guy comes back. Come here, let me touch your head to give you the essence.”
Sofia nodded and kneeled down to be on Love’s level, who was just on the ground today despite having wings as usual.
Without any explanation, Love bent forward, and gave Sofia’s forehead a light kiss, before disappearing in another explosion of glitter.
Sofia was a bit confused, but checking VPPV, Love’s essence was there, transmitted just like that.
I guess that’s Love…
“Can Pesle has kiss too?”
Sofia had almost forgotten the fairy sitting on her shoulder the entire time.
“Sure thing, come here!” Sofia said, ready to grab Pesle’s bones.
“Ack! Pesle decided no kiss! No kiss!” the fairy yelped, flying away from Sofia’s scary hands.
