Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Is it that bad?” Sonia asked, surprised at Sofia’s reaction to whatever was beyond the door.

Sofia turned around, her eyes still closed, “Worse than bad, they’re everywhere, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, so many eyes that there are even tall piles of them on the ground…”

Sonia pulled a strange face hearing that, and quickly made her mind, “let’s seal this up and leave. It’ll be a disaster if those get out and start turning the entire zone into a gigantic pile of evil eyes.”

Sofia wanted to say something, but since there was no guarantee of finding anything good even if they somehow managed to push through the sea of eyes beyond the door, she had to reluctantly agree. “Could you at least try sending one of your exploding arrows in there, just to see if they are as immortal as you say?”

“They won’t be nearly as strong without the corresponding skill, the explosives in the arrow head are pretty basic,” Sonia answered, “But I have to admit I’m a bit curious too. Can you reinforce the door with your bones? Wouldn’t want to blow it up.”

“Sure thing.”

Like this, Sofia ended up slightly opening the door again soon after, and an explosive arrow was shot through the narrow gap, before the door slammed shut. The explosion shook the ruins, but as Sonia had said, without the skill it could barely even compare to a ten thousand mana bolt.

Sofia was the one who opened the door again to check afterwards, as she had the philosopher’s stone to prevent paralysis. She only glanced for half a second before closing the door one last time, shaking her head. “Not the slightest change in there, it’s like nothing happened.”

“Told you, my information is almost always perfectly accurate.”

After this, Sofia was silent, as the others turned around to leave, Pareth was the first one to notice, shaking his skull as he could already imagine the thoughts crossing Sofia’s mind at the moment. If he could speak, “No, you are notmaking an armor of eyes, Sofia,” is what he would say, but instead he could only look at her disapprovingly.

The others also noticed, and to no skeleton’s surprise, instead of following them toward the exit, Sofia bent over to pick up the bone boulder where she had imprisoned the previous evil eyes cluster.

Sonia, who was already about to leave finally caught on, turning around. “What… What are you picking that up for?”

“Sofia is doing Sofia thing,” Pestle explained, her tiny hand tapping on Sonia’s calves like an old man tapping a junior’s shoulders.

Sonia had a rather bad feeling seeing Sofia strip away the outer layers of bone surrounding the eyes, and was at a complete loss for words seeing her place the much smaller bone ball atop her scepter.

“Paralysis staff,” Sofia happily announced without elaborating.

“You’re crazy,” Sonia mumbled, turning back to leave, “You are not bringing this back to the surface,” she added from the other room.

“Of course not, I’m not that crazy.”

“Pesle is very doubt,” the fairy added from below, looking up at Sofia with a hand under her chin.

“Shut up,” Sofia retorted with a chuckle, using her aura to pull Pestle up on her shoulder.

The group left the ruin after Sofia sealed the door to the corridor with a thick bone slab.

Afterward, the group jumped from island to island, not immediately finding much of interest. The local fauna seemed quite wary of the unknown group, and so far, only a few odd big-eyed insects attacked the group. They were splattered with a slap each, too weak to even leave a dent in Crowie’s unprotected bones. Still, their constant attacks were annoying, so Sofia ended up summoning the tall mimic, its large chest-shaped mouth was surprisingly efficient at gobbling up the flying bugs, and it was perfectly capable of jumping from island to island to follow the group.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“The ruins look like they’re in a generally better shape further from the edge of the zone,” Sonia observed after they all landed on top of a particularly narrow island.

“Better chance to find lost epoch ruins near the center, then? Any information on what we’re looking for beyond lost epoch ruins?”

“Should be an underground laboratory a bit like the one where we found the coins. But there’s a good chance it was built directly under a larger structure. Could even be under that castle,” Sonia answered, pointing toward what looked like a relatively intact large castle in the distance.

“Is that from the lost epoch?” Sofia asked, zooming in on the castle tens of kilometers away, not finding anything familiar about it.

“Hard to tell from that far, but there’s a good chance. Humans from the lost epoch were very much into castles. A lot more than anyone currently.”

“Let’s get moving then.”

There was no clear island path going straight to the castle, with a lot of sea and underwater ruins in the way. Overall the group decided that staying on land was safer, as the water seemed to house a much greater number of unknown creatures than the relatively calm islands. The path on their right was also going under a lot of the kite-like monsters hanging from the ceiling, so to be safe, they took the long way around through a chain of islands on their left.

After crossing several islands, Crowie stopped the group with a caw, jumping out from under Sofia’s arm to point at a rough green spot in the grass.

Pushing away some dirt with her boots, Sofia was surprised to see she was actually standing on a big chunk of rough mithril.

“Oh, nice find. I was just thinking we’d been really unlucky with the ores. Didn’t expect to find a mithril vein in the grass,” Sonia commented, crouching down to observe the big chunk of mithril.

“Sure that’s a vein?”

“Considering the shape I can’t see it being anything else,” Sonia said, “but only one way to make sure. She pulled a tiny folding shovel out of her backpack and carved out the dirt, revealing more and more mithril, growing wider as she dug. “Looks like a boulder, even. At this rate it might take all day to dig out.”

“That’s going to be hard to bring up,” Sofia said, considering how large it looked like the thing was. There was already a good amount exposed and yet when she tried pushing and pulling on it a bit it did not move in the slightest.

“Pareth should be strong enough to carry it, right?” Sonia asked, “But it will be a liability to carry this around. We remember the location and deal with it on the way out?”

“Sounds good to me. This thing is not gonna budge.”

“True that. Let’s go, the castle isn’t so far away now.”

The group continued on their way, Sofia in the rear, with her demon form allowing her to look behind her, she constantly monitored their back, a bad feeling persisting in her gut.

We haven’t found a single trace of the thing that killed Bookie…

The very next jump, as everyone landed on a seemingly deserted but rather wide island with a lot of bushes and only a few trees, a row of large bushes suddenly sprung up, growling at the group.

A plant… Bear?

The creature was hard to describe, not really resembling anything Sofia knew, but it certainly had the allure and large fangs of a predator. A vine-like tail slashing the air behind it like a whip, the carriage-sized monster growled like a hungry dog about to attack, but made no move, slowly circling around the group, its emerald eyes warily scanning each and every one of them.

Both sides were on the defensive, Pareth took slow steps to stay in front of the monster, in a tense face-off, while Sonia had already readied an arrow.

Is it not going to attack?

“Don’t look back,” Sofia warned, her aura pulling on the bones at the top of her staff. The monster instinctively looked at the source of the sound, and immediately turned back with a frightened yelp, jumping off to another island with its tail between its legs, almost crashing into a rock wall as it haphazardly landed, and scurried out of view.

Sofia quickly refilled the small gap she had formed in front of the evil eyes, “Well… That’s not good.”

“Yeah…” Sonia agreed, “To react like this… The evil eyes must have already spread through the zone.”

“I would have expected there to be fewer monsters around if they did, though,” Sofia said, looking around at the lively environment. They were actively avoiding each other so there had been no battles between the group and the monsters so far, but this certainly did not look like an environment plagued by immortal eyes with the capacity for exponential reproduction.

“I suppose if all the wild monsters reacted like this one, I could see the evil eyes not spreading that much,” Sonia muttered, “That thing looked quite strong.”

Judging from how fast it fled, its speed and strength are clearly higher than ours, we might have suffered a bit if we fought that.

This short confrontation resolved without bloodshed, the group continued, but now everyone was looking twice every time they landed on an island with large bush clusters.

About half an hour later, with no major events in between aside from Sofia picking up a handful of unknown pink fruits from a small tree, they all landed on the largest island yet, where the castle was situated. It was just in time, too, as the sea’s glow was starting to visibly dim, slowly plunging the area in darkness.