Saintess Summons Skeletons-Chapter 820 - The sands of time

“So we traded like that, and that’s all there is to it. Honestly I would have liked to trade for the corpse of one of the giant ants but it really did not look like it wanted us around any longer,” Sofia finished her story as the group flew close to the underground sea’s charred ceiling toward a hole they had located from the leyline before the ambient darkness had fully returned.

“I see… You ran out of schematics to trade anyway so who knows what it would have asked for next. Overall you were quite lucky, it’s rare enough to find people here, let alone ones willing to communicate or trade.”

“Heh, it did try to kill me twice before that.”

“The way you described it, it sounded more like it was trying to chase a roach out of its home.”

“Well…”

“Just so you know, in terms of uh… friendliness? That’s easily in the upper five percent of encounters down here, and I’m speaking only about sentient ones,” Sonia idly commented as she stared at the ceiling trying to make sure they didn’t miss the exit.

“What’s the typical friendliness level?”

“The way my old team explained it to me back then was ‘Consider yourself lucky if they aren’t trying to eat you’.”

“This philosophy that Pesle is understand,” Pestle quipped from the top of Sofia’s helmet, “Monster lucky if Pesle is not trying to leg.”

“Looks like our group is not part of the five percent,” Sofia said with a giggle.

“Definitely not,” Sonia agreed, though it was hard to tell if that was sarcasm or not.

We did kill a number of the worker ants after all, and I would have absolutely fought back with all I have against that wood giant when it tried to kill me had it been weaker…

“I think we’re here,” Sonia said from the front, picking up some speed.

“Yeah I can see the opening,” Sofia confirmed, following up behind, “Should we expect another cube mimic up that hole?”

“Doubt it, but we’ll know soon enough, most likely we’ll be entering a whole new zone.”

“Full of unknown dangers.”

“Exactly!”

The group flew up, Pareth taking the lead as the group’s tank. The temperature started steadily climbing as they flew through the windy vertical shaft of rough orange stone.

“It’s like we’re flying up into a furnace,” Sofia commented, even with her helmet’s [Ultimate enhanced heat resistance], the temperature was slowly becoming uncomfortable. The skeletons could not care less about the heat, but Sonia was also feeling the change.

“From cold to hot. It’s still fine for me so far, I have a heat-resistance ring. You good?”

“Doing fine. I think we’re almost out.”

“Oh! Light! The darkness was starting to get old.”

Sofia also saw the first rays of light shining down from above, they all picked up speed, flying up for a few more seconds. The group made it out to what looked like a perfectly normal desert with strong hot winds under a bright blue sky. They came out of the side of a small rocky outcrop, overlooking endless sand dunes, and not a single other thing anywhere on the horizon.

“Curious,” Sofia said, looking up, “illusion?”

“Flying up there’s the only way to know. Not what we’re trying to do, though.”

“Shouldn’t the ruins be somewhere around here? The desert looks pretty vast.”

Sonia looked around, “Hopefully not, no chance we’ll find it if it’s buried somewhere in there. At least we are mostly going in the correct direction still, we only need to look for traces.”

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“Then we keep going north-east. This desert feels a bit too calm for the forbidden layer. I’m guessing big sand worms. Now the only question is, do we walk or fly?”

“Not often that I say that, but flying might be safer, ultimately we can’t know before trying.”

Tapping bookie latched on her side, Sofia reached for a golden page, and summoned her own sandworms. The five big skeletons appeared mid-air, and plunged into the desert, burying themselves into the sand with scary efficiency. Sofia’s command was simple, Scout ahead.

Spreading around in a fan formation, the five sandworms advanced, staying near the surface and leaving behind obvious trails of disturbed sand.

Just a few seconds later, in quick succession, the sandworms all died. There was no sound, no signs of fighting, no disturbance in the sand, just the quiet withdrawal of their connection to Sofia.

Sonia was unaware that anything had even happened, so she was surprised when Sofia tapped the book at her waist again. “Bookie? Can you explain what happened?

Bookie summoned himself next to the group, scratched his skull for a second, before answering in an uncertain tone, “I… I think their lifetime ran out?” he said, confused.

“The five hours of lifetime? Ran out in a bit under twenty seconds?”

“Ah shit,” Sonia cursed, “Time magic? That’s fucking nasty.”

Sofia looked at Sonia with an eyebrow raised under her helmet, “Time magic isn’t a thing, you know?”

“Sure. That’s never stopped anyone from getting creative around that limitation, though. Let’s see…” Sonia started digging into her backpack, pulling out a small frozen fruit.

She engraved a cold enchantment on the fruit’s skin for preservation? How have I never seen anyone do that…

Sonia scratched the fruit’s skin with a nail, breaking the enchantment, and it started thawing immediately under the desert’s intense heat. Without ceremony, Sonia threw the tiny blue fruit down. It landed, buried halfway into the sand.

“If it starts to fucking rot we’ll know not to touch the sand.”

Everyone expectantly watched the fruit, but it did not seem to rot, even under the intense heat, it just sat there in the sand for half a minute, before spontaneously catching on fire and burning slowly.

“Well… I did not see any time magic at play here at least,” Sofia noted.

“Only means that it came from something else,” Sonia said, jumping down and deploying her wings before touching the sand, “let’s go, staying here isn’t getting us anywhere.”

The others all nodded and followed. They flew a good hundred meters up above the sand, not finding an end to the blue sky, and still not seeing anything aside from sand on the horizon. Not even a trace of a plant or a dead monster, only sand, and a few barren rocky hills like the one they had emerged from.

Aside from the weird incident with the sandworms earlier, there was nothing wrong so far, which Sofia could tell was making Sonia nervous.

“Too calm… Way too calm,” the beastwoman mumbled, restlessly scanning the sand below.

They flew in a straight line for half an hour, not finding anything at all. Not a sign of life, not a hint of a ruin or an exit, just utter boredom and a lifetime supply of yellow sand. It was so monotone that when a new color finally entered their field of view, everyone noticed instantly. They all rushed to see what the tiny patch of black on the sand was. It was near another one of the barren rocky outcrops with no special features. The group slowed down and flew closer to the dark spot, it was just close enough to the rocks to be shielded from the wind.

Sofia used her enhanced vision to look at it from closer up first.

“Ash?” she muttered.

“Ash?!” Sonia repeated, “Oh fuck…”

Sofia zoomed out. She observed the ashen spot and the rocky outcrop with a hole on its side. She had to stop herself from having the exact same reaction.

That’s… How did we end up back here?

Flying in a straight line, they had returned to their starting point. Worse, even, Pareth being immune to teleportation, it could not be simple space magic. In the very simplest case, it was an infinite box situation like the one Scripture had Cardinal trap her in with her students once.

“Now THIS is going to be a pain…” Sofia said.

“I suggest we leave and continue through the underworld sea,” Sonia said right away, “if it’s a strong monster maintaining this loop, the only way through is to kill it, not worth the risk if we can just go around.”

“Honestly, I agree. The hole’s still there, so…”

The group unanimously left the desert and flew back down the hole. The temperature dropped, the underworld sea’s darkness creeped back up before they could even reach it, and then, the darkness took a dark blue tint.

Everyone stopped moving, but that did not change a thing. The blue tint became brighter, and brighter. The temperature rose in a flash. A bright blue sky with no clouds. A yellow sand desert.

Sofia glanced at Sonia, but found no reassurance in the beast woman’s expression.

Trapped, again. Never a good feeling…

She immediately checked her quantic transposition skill. The chart of possible locations was an almost perfect disk around her, mostly flat at the top and bottom. Her light was nowhere except for this desert, nowhere she could reach.

Although the mood was heavy, one person was happily flying around, wings fluttering around the group.

“Not worry,” Pestle declared proudly, a hand on her ribs, “all Fae One is escaping expert! Especially Ravager One!”