Saintess Summons Skeletons

The next day, Pareth, Sofia, Sonia and Elsep were teleported to a Kleptran hive for inspection before being allowed to leave the forbidden layer.

Sonia had warned them that they would all end up in different spaces, so Sofia wasn’t surprised that she arrived alone. Because it was an issue for Pareth to speak, she had taken the remains of the dark epoch robot along with her.

That’s a Kleptran hive?

The room she had been teleported to was quite vast, shaped more or less like an egg, and made entirely of black triangles of stone with a polished luster. There was no apparent entry or exit, and aside from the place Sofia stood on, where a few of the triangles were neatly arranged into a clean circle with jagged edges, the stone triangles formed a chaotic soup of points and edges.

The air was cold, and dead silent, in a situation like this, it was hard not to feel some apprehension, but being out of the forbidden layer already, Sofia could easily escape with a transposition if she wanted.

After waiting for a long five minutes, Sofia felt Pareth getting shifted far away, and the chaotic sea of stone triangles started to vibrate, producing a low hum. Up above, they formed a large circle that opened up on a dark tunnel. An invisible thing flew into the room with a loud buzz, and the opening closed back up behind it. Sofia could only barely see the spatial distortion the thing caused with her left eye. What surprised her was how small it was. In her mind the Kleptras were all as big as a castle, but the thing that just entered was four or five meters tall at most.

Sofia did her best to stay still as the thing descended. Triangles arranged themselves into a wider platform for the Kleptra to land, right in front of her.

A rough but distinctively feminine voice came from the invisible creature.

“How was your trip?”

“I-

Uh… It could have gone better?” Sofia replied, surprised by the question.

The Kleptra made a strange noise like a dying cricket that Sofia decided to interpret as laughter. It moved around, space sifting subtly around Sofia as the massive thing moved. The dead robot behind Sofia got lifted up like a weightless toy, and turned on itself as if being inspected by the thing.

“An Artificer node,” the invisible Kleptra commented, “cannot be brought out like this. Follow me.”

The Kleptra seemed to turn around, dragging the limp robot remains behind her. The stone triangles formed a new pathway as she moved, carving a new opening into the room’s side.

“How uncharacteristically silent,” the kleptra said as Sofia followed her into the new tunnel.

“It’s… I–”

“How do you like my hive?” the kleptra asked next, continuing to walk slowly as the triangles endlessly moved around to make the new tunnel longer.

Seeing how casual the Kleptra seemed to be, Sofia relaxed just a little. “It is… Quite different from what I imagined.”

“Not what would come to mind after interacting with that idiot Gakk, and sleepy Zoth, is that it?” the Kleptra mocked, “You will find that not unlike you piles of flesh, us drooling abominations are quite diverse.”

Sofia didn’t know what to answer. From what she understood, the Kleptra were all connected, so saying anything now was the same as saying it in front of them all, which was more than a little terrifying.

Seeing Sofia’s silence, the Kleptra continued, “So much stress will only reduce your already short lifespan, this Ax’Ziha is not a savage, you can speak your mind.”

“Ax is… Are you royalty?”

“What else could the word Princess mean?” Ziha answered, “Not that this distinction matters in the least for a weak one like I. My older sister Peha is the only one deserving of reverence…”

Ziha suddenly stopped in her tracks, letting out a strange growl, and shouting out of nowhere, “SHUT THE FUCK UP GAKK! I’LL RIP YOUR WINGS OFF!” Her invisibility flickered and shut off as she shouted at the void, revealing a big insect with the same general anatomy as Er’Gakk and Ar’Zoth yet very different, as if it was made from a different set of insect parts altogether. Her wings and chitin shimmered in a dark purple that somehow gave her a refined air.

“A-erm. Where was I… Ah whatever, we’re almost there. Where did you find that dead Artificer?” Ziha asked without looking back, her voice and temperament returning to normal as she started walking again.

“In a dark epoch ruin. It was not dead, I killed it,” Sofia answered, deciding to brag a little. At the same time, if the Kleptra had a way to detect lies, which she probably did considering the circumstances, she would know that this was the truth.

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“And it only erased an arm. Very lucky,” the Kleptra commented, not showing the slightest hint of surprise or doubt.

“I suppose so… If I may ask, is there a way to reverse it?”

“No reverse. I could graft a new limb but it would not suit your tastes,” Ziha answered as the triangles ahead formed a new round gate, opening up to the corner of a gigantic indoors space wide enough that the black stone triangles in the distance formed an ocean-like horizon.

Near the gate where they were, the triangles were all neatly arranged to form smooth ground and walls, on which incomprehensible machines were lined up forming a long line along the wall.

Ziha’s strange insectoid claws picked up the robot and threw it inside of one such machine. She turned around to look at Sofia directly as her mana formed thick threads that controlled the machine behind her.

“Artificers have recovery functions that can eventually reanimate them if not destroyed properly. This one is already in a bad state but we must be thorough,” Ziha explained as beams of mana cut down the robot corpse in the machine.

“I see… Are the other things I brought back all fine?” Sofia asked, watching the ascended robot getting cut to pieces.

“The ant golem is clearly an autochtone’s doing, I see no tracking spell, you can keep it. The seed is just a seed. I’ll buy if you want to sell. Twenty five stones.”

Twenty five?! It looks like this is going to eat up most of our share of the loot…

“It is not for sale, sorry,” Sofia apologized, hoping that the terrifying insect would not take rejection badly.

Ziha’s strange insectoid face might be hard to read, but its general lack of movement seemed to indicate that she did not care in the slightest.

“Keep it, then. Everything else you brought back is of little interest.”

“You know about the seeds and these gems?” Sofia asked, fetching a few orichalcum fruit seeds and the orange bubble gemstones from her backpack.

“These tiny fruits only grow above Orichalcum veins. I would rather just eat the vein directly,” Ziha explained naturally, “and Zehollon bubbles are rare but only good for healing enchantments. Pointless. I’m almost done here, anything else?”

“So fast? Uh… Was there any issue with the others?”

“None. The fake fae is strange, but harmless. Nothing else really stood out. Hmmm, the deed is done. Do you want to keep the scraps?”

“I guess so?”

“Noted. Here.”

The Kleptra moved to the machine that had been slicing up the dead robot, opened a trapdoor on the side, and started pulling out glowing hot ingots one by one.

“These are the different alloys that could be extracted,” the insect said, piling up the small ingots in front of Sofia at a speed she could barely follow. Another trapdoor opened, and the Kleptra pulled out a large crate full of charred and damaged scrap. Lastly, she grabbed the only three things that remained in the main compartment of the machine, three relatively intact parts that hadn’t been damaged or dismantled, handing them over to Sofia along with three pieces of paper.

“This is…”

“Analysis results,” Ziha answered, “See you next time.”

Before Sofia could react or answer, her surroundings warped to the cave under the Ur Ur Tree.

“Oh, the thing got dismantled? That’ll save us some time,” Sonia commented. She was sitting on a rock, Pareth and Elsep next to her.

“It did… I got handed these papers along with it, give me a second…”

‘Salvage 1/3

Artificer node rib chassis

The artificial ribs surrounding the artificer’s core, meant to resist and contain its turbulent energy.

State: lightly damaged

Blueprint assimilation possible

Expected effect: Charisma increase

Torso-limited magical damage immunity

Torso-limited high physical damage resistance

Mana overdose shielding (up to ~10T)

Occupies around 65% torso blueprint space.

Requires S+ rank mana heart

–

Salvage 2/3

Artificer node elemental converter

A head weapon module for damage conversion.

State:

very lightly damaged

Blueprint assimilation possible

Expected effects: Dynamically convert outgoing elemental attacks to target’s element of least resistance.

Occupies around 40% head blueprint space.

Requires 300% or higher baseline thinking speed and direct enemy visual data to function.

–

‘Salvage 3/3

Higher node hyperion aligner

A standard higher node module for traversal.

State: perfect

Blueprint assimilation possible

Effect: Allows phasing through physical matter at will.

Physical damage immunity.

Occupies around 20% total blueprint space.

Requires level 400+