Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sonia stood with Pareth and Sofia in front of a sealed gate, at the periphery of the entrance cavern.

“So, first we enter the root forest. As far as I could tell, no aggressive monsters here, you only need to be careful not to antagonize the ones living there peacefully. That’s only the beginning. When we leave the roots behind, we enter the unknown. The place we need to find is an underground research facility of the lost epoch, which should have sunk into the forbidden layer somewhere north-east from here. Could be ten kilometers, could be two hundred, we can only look around and follow traces.”

“Traces?” Sofia repeated.

“Yes. Monsters tend to pick up and move things around, so the closer we get, the more debris and items from the lost epoch we will find.

Recognising those is my job, you two are basically here to give me a fighting chance when something attacks. Usually I would be forced to flee and hide often, making exploration horribly slow, but with more of us, we can actually fight back.”

“As long as we don’t encounter anything too bad, right?”

“Well, if we do, it’s up to us all to survive somehow. I managed to escape from a Kleptran drone once by diving into the cracks of a leyline and hiding there for a week.”

“Right, Kleptran drones… Are there ascended monsters down there?” Sofia asked.

Sonia was silent for a moment. “There are,” she finally admitted, “Not many, but there are. All different flavours of fucked, since they can survive in that environment that even regular ascended cannot really enter. Meeting one isn’t always a death sentence, but… Well you’ve felt up close what the Leviathan is like,” she said with a shiver.

“Flavours of fucked doesn’t even begin to describe the thing I saw under the water in the trial,” Sofia said in agreement.

“So, yeah, just don’t recklessly approach anything, always err on the safe side, trust your instincts, question everything. If you’ve got no more questions, let’s get going.”

“I have a thousand questions still, but we’ve got quite a distance to cover. I guess we can chat on the way.”

“As long as the surroundings are calm,” Sonia said with a nod. She placed a hand on the round gate in front, “This sealing gate here is what is widely used to keep the things in the Forbidden layer in there. The Kleptran royals are the ones maintaining the seals all over the world, so they are pretty tough. Anything under level 450 won’t make a dent. Just place your hand on the center, right here, and think ‘I wish to pass’ in the common language. You’ll be teleported to the other side.”

“And to leave?”

“Same thing,” Sonia answered, “Except that you’ll be teleported to the nearest Kleptran hive for inspection before being sent back to the surface.”

“Oh. I suppose that is one way to make sure nothing bad gets out.”

“Well, stuff still gets out, but most Kleptras live on the layer right above the forbidden layer now, so they handle the cleanup. The seal gates are mostly for known points of entry or places with civilians like right here. Anyway, it’s almost opening time, so let’s get in.” Sonia placed her hand on the door, disappearing instantly.

Pareth stepped up to go first, just like Sonia he disappeared.

It’s really clean for a teleportation. I could barely feel anything.

Left alone in the room, with Bookie and the others having all returned to the book, Sofia strapped her staff to her backpack, grabbed the Abereth, and placed her free hand on the door.

I wish to pass.

She could feel her soul getting forcibly grabbed and pulled through, and reappeared on the other side, inside of what looked like an empty ball of tangled roots. The concentration of mana in the air was instantly suffocating. Pareth was down on one knee, using his shield as a crutch, while Sonia looked mostly fine aside from a marked frown on her face.

“I can never get used to it. It gets a bit more bearable after the first few minutes, but the concentration will go up for every meter we go down,” Sonia said, “You seem to be handling it relatively well,” she told Sofia.

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“You too. I am used to training in a high mana environment so it’s uncomfortable but this much is still liveable.”

Sonia nodded and got closer to Pareth, putting a hand on his shoulder, “I actually passed out right away on my first time, so you’re also doing fine in comparison. Hold on until the dizziness lessens. We still have a bit of time before the roots open.”

“So… How do we know the north-east? I did not bring a compass.”

“A compass would be useless here anyway, I know the orientation of the gate, so we head north-east from here, and then we eyeball it. No other way. You can’t even draw a map, really, just try to memorize landmarks to help find our way back. Best we can do.”

“What if I leave bone pillars behind to mark the way?”

“And give the first half-intelligent creature stumbling upon them a way to track us down? Bad idea.”

“I did not consider that…” Sofia admitted.

“Me neither. I learned from experience,” Sonia said with a bitter expression.

Better not to ask for details on that I think.

Suddenly, the roots under Sofia’s feet started shifting.

“It’s opening, prepare for the drop,” Sonia warned.

The drop?

Sofia watched as the tangle of roots burst open, Pareth and Sonia falling down abruptly. She herself had instantly switched to stepping on air with [Dodge-me] by instinct so she watched the other two fall down into a mass of brown leaves.

She had tried to catch them with her aura but found it severely limited, and they were both already outside of her range by the time she reached out to their bones.

I have about two meters of effective range, huh. It’s like it got downgraded back to the old bone dominus.

Sonia landed gracefully into the leaves while Pareth had dropped down like a rock, Sofia followed with light steps down, observing the surroundings. Both above and below, all she could really see were thick roots and vegetation everywhere. At the extremities, the roots had tendrils with small green leaves that visibly drained mana, giving the impressions of a mess of trees growing in all directions. A wealth of vines, moss and mushrooms grew in between the roots, feeding on the dead leaves that littered the ground everywhere.

I understand why they named it the root forest. No creatures in sight. My mana senses are completely saturated, as expected, and the system connection is out.

While Sofia observed the surroundings and Sonia summarily enchanted the arrows in her three quivers with a spell, Pareth suddenly activated his armor and weapon.

Something wrong?!

Sonia also immediately noticed. “Under the leaves!”

Sofia only saw a flash of red light, and Pareth lost a leg. The armor and bones instantly shattered, while the attacker remained hidden in the pile of brown leaves.

That would have killed me.

Rather than casting spells at a hiding opponent, Sofia quickly summoned Pestle, whose invisible form dove into the leaves right away. Pareth’s shield absorbed the creature’s second strike, while Pestle forced it out of hiding. A fat red worm covered in spikes and silky thread-like needles emerged from the leaves, an invisible fairy pulling it up from a multi-faceted eye.

A mithril arrow pierced the worm the instant it was visible, sending it flying back and pinning it against a root, before a volley of piercing bolts crashed down into it. Only a mess of red flesh and blue blood remained, before the scepter’s two [Thunderbolt]s activated, sending two consecutive rays of electricity flying off from the scepter’s tip, charring what remained of the human-sized worm to a crisp.

Sofia couldn’t really feel her connection to Pestle in such a high mana environment, but she felt the fairy land on her shoulder. From the noise, she was probably munching on the worm’s eyeball. Landing next to Pareth, she let her aura fix his leg.

“So much for the root forest having no aggressive monsters,” Sofia commented, looking at Sonia grabbing her arrow from the remains of the worm.

“Well. That’s a good example of what we’re up against. Luckily that was a weak one. Since it was waiting in ambush here, I bet that it noticed and followed me here from the outskirts after my last scouting,” Sonia explained.

“For a ‘weak one’ it still hit hard; it takes a serious blow to hurt Pareth at this point.”

“Just the usual here. And this one didn’t even spew poison or explode after death, so it’s really one of the more tame monsters we’re going to see.”

“More is come!” Pestle warned, temporarily cancelling her invisibility to point at a hole between two roots where a smaller brown worm was wriggling through, barely visible under the leaves.

Pareth threw his sword at the worm before the two women had a chance to attack. The brown worm died with a disgusting squeal.

It wasn’t one hunter, it was a full welcoming committee, Sofia understood, preparing another volley of piercing bolts.

A dozen more worms rushed in all at once from several holes, they were no longer trying to be sneaky.

Sonia readied her bow, “We clean this up and move out!”