Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Being easily bribed is not a virtue,” Suhen commented, looking down at Sofia.

“What can I say? Some offers are too good to refuse.”

“Quite the specimen you are. Give me a moment to look up your blueprint in detail.”

Holding Sofia’s arm, Suhen closed her eyes, her mana seeping into Sofia’s body, poking and prodding at her mana circuits. It felt intrusive and uncomfortable, but Sofia’s head was too full of skeletons to focus on that overmuch.

“Hmm. Not as bad as it looked from the outside. I can work with this. I will show you where to tie up old circuits and where to carve new channels to speed things up, but you still need to do it yourself.”

“Of course. Where do I start?”

“First of all, we are looking to fuse [Radiance] into [Call Elemental Sprite] and not the other way around. Start from the point I’m showing you, place your core there. Good. Keeping it in the fused skill’s future centerpoint will make the fusion more stable. It’s also easier to work with. Now you see this wide section of [Radiance] that starts here? It’s the addon circuit for healing received. Close it all.”

Sofia was still a bit reluctant, but she closed her eyes, focused, and followed Suhen’s instructions.

The skill fusion went extremely smoothly. With Suhen’s guidance there were no hesitations, no mistakes, no superfluous cuts, and the process of manually fusing skills that could sometimes take hours or even days, was over in under ten minutes.

“Well done. You can check the skill now. Don’t get too attached, we’re far from done.”

Sofia nodded in response, checking the result.

Originally [Radiance] took one full skill slot while [Call Elemental Sprite] took 0.6. Had Sofia done the fusion herself the resulting skill would have likely taken about 1.4 slots, yet Suhen had her cut down so much of the two original skills that the resulting fusion was only at 0.8.

[Radiant Sprites]: Your bloodlight regularly coagulates into Radiant Sprites that course through your body and can be spent to increase the luminosity and healing power of your skills by +100%. Slight blinding resistance.

Sofia looked up at Suhen, starting to doubt her decision even more.

“It’s interesting… But base [Radiance] was just better, wasn’t it?”

Suhen nodded, “It’s about equivalent, what matters is that we kept the interesting effects while increasing the synergy with your other skills, and reducing the blueprint cost. Now that you have some extra space, open the system’s classless list, and learn [Flow Reader]. Since you have maximum level skills from the start, you should be using them like this.”

“Flow Reader? I think I saw that before… Got it.”

You have acquired the classless : ‘Flow Reader’

[Flow Reader]: 100% (1*Skill Level) increased Processing during the analysis of out-of-body mana circuits.

“Is that not supposed to be a tool for counterspells?” Sofia asked.

“Yes. Decode the magic flying at your face and react accordingly. In theory it is a strong tool, in practice I only know one person able to fight like that. You have [Heat Death] so this is not something you will ever have to worry about. What this skill is for matters very little, it’s the pre-built mana circuits in there that we want to use, the effects are not going to stay. Now we fuse [Flow Reader] into [Essence Resonator].”

Hearing Suhen’s last words, Sofia froze a little.

[Essence Resonator] ♢ :

Aura +10% per possessed divine essence.

Manually altering your mana circuits is around 8% easier per possessed divine essence.

Radiance and the sprites were still fine but that’s a skill I cannot have get ruined!

But two gods’ skeletons are on the line…

Fuck.

Despite her internal turmoil, Sofia followed Suhen’s instructions once more aggressively trimming down the circuits of [Flow Reader] and integrating a few of the more intricate and complex parts into [Essence Resonator].

Sofia had to really hold herself back from spouting out insults as she felt her aura gradually getting weaker. Still, she could hardly see a world where, knowing who she had backing her, and knowing the position Suhen held, she would be willingly sabotaging her. So Sofia continued to follow through with gritted teeth.

Suhen smirked as Sofia connected the last few circuits. “You are looking quite tense. Trust the process, will you? Who do you think I am?”

Not answering, Sofia looked at her new skill.

[Essence Mirror]:

Mana substats +7% per possessed divine essence.

Manually altering your mana circuits is around 7.7% easier per possessed divine essence.

So that’s why my aura got that much weaker… I lost a 93% aura multiplier…

But got 217% Processing and Charisma in return?

I… Uuuugh.

Numerically it’s great but any aura loss is really…

I don’t know how to feel about this…

The total blueprint cost of the skill only went from 1.3 slots to 1.4 so it’s not too bad on that front at least.

“How long are you going to spend staring into the void like a dead fish? Get it moving, we are not done. Now that we have freed some space again, get back into the classless list, and grab [Quintessential] and–”

“Uh?! No, no. Quintessential was already fused into [Essence Resonator], if I take it again the circuits will echo and conflict, won’t they?! That’s a basic rule.”

Suhen shook her head. “It would be, if you were to do it blindly. Compare the area where [Essence Mirror] is, and the empty space we created where [Quintessential] will be. This is why we needed [Flow Reader] in particular.”

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“They… Will mirror each other with the outer layer from [Flow Reader] as a separator?”

For the first time, Suhen nodded approvingly. “So you do get it. Now get to work. Learn [Quintessential] back, and fuse it with [Identify].”

“You– what?!”

“You heard me. [Identify]. We need something to balance the extra weight of the old [Essence Resonator] circuits compared to [Quintessential], and the barebones shell that is [Identify] will do nicely.”

“Then… Can’t I get [Mana manipulation] and fuse the new [Quintessential], into another [Essence Resonator] instead?”

“Ah! You’re getting ahead of yourself. Not only do you lack the blueprint space for that, but that is going a little too far, you will actually suffer from echo circuit destruction if you try this kind of stunt. Follow my lead, we’re almost done.”

Whatever at this point… The out-of body [Identify] Mr.Scribe made will still work anyway…

With the [Identify] circuits seemingly haphazardly tacked onto a new [Quintessential], Sofia didn’t ever dare to look at the effects of the resulting [Essential look] skill. Only feeling somewhat relieved that at least her aura had more or less recovered to pre-Suhen levels.

The relaxed-looking skill fusion sessions turned out to be more stressful than most of Sofia’s battles.

“Please tell me we’re almost done…”

“Well, we are on the last step. Now you simply need to fuse [Essence Mirror], [Essential look], and [Radiant Sprites] together. It should only take us about an hour. A single misstep here could cause violent backlash and scramble some of your blueprint into an irrecoverable shitstain, so stay focused.”

“You sure know how to reassure people.”

“If you have any complaints you can ask Unfairness directly.”

“...”

The following hour was extremely tense. It was the same kind of crazy skill fusion that had created [Dreams Of a Demon which Gods Envy - March of the Envoy], so the stakes could not be higher, but Sofia was not the same as she once was, and with Suhen’s guidance on top of that, the fusion proceeded with surgical precision. When all was said and done, the mana circuits all formed a coherent, continuous whole, that Sofia could tell she could no longer get rid of even if she wanted to.

Perhaps because she had not been the decision maker this time, Sofia felt horrendously nervous. Hesitating with shaking hands before she even mustered the courage to open her status page. Looking down at the classless skills, she found it.

Name : Sofia Aphenoreth

Age :21 ♢

Class : [Saintomancer] ♢

Sub-Class : [False Lord] ♢

Level : 300

Health :15 122 005

Stamina : 7 846 671

Mana : 199 572 495 (+77%)

Divinity: 130

Main Specialization : [Eclipse Skeleton]

Alteration chance : 100%

Secondary Specialization : [Heat Death]

Tertiary Specialization : [Sovereign of Unshackled frames]

Signature Skill (ULTIMATE)

[Awakening of the five calamities]

Mana Heart Abilities (4)

[Infinity Engine] Lv.3

[Relocate Core] ULTIMATE Rank

[Slashing Resistance]

[Explosion Resistance]

Remaining possible skill slots : 2.4 / 47.5

False Lord Skills (3 of 47.5 Slots)

♢ [Singularity edict] ♢ (1S)

♢ [Paradise Toybox] ♢ (1S)

♢ [Extinguish] ♢ (1S)

Active Skills (16.8 of 47.5 Slots)

[Spine of the Black Sun] - Level 349 (1S)

[Summon Odalite Blood] - Level 349 (5.3S)

[Graveyard of the Nymphs] - Level 349 (1.3S)

[False immortality] - Level 5 (3.2S)

[Skull Choir] - Level 349 (0.7 + 0.5S)

[Reign over shadows] (1.1S)

[Saintomancer’s Star] (1.4S)

[Avatar of Zeus] (1.6S)

♢ [Abereth of Greed] ♢ (0.7S)

Passive Skills (9.2 of 47.5 Slots)

[Blessing of the Deep] - (3/4) (0S)

♢ [Vakariazrehafin, Hungering hand of Sorrow] ♢ (2.1S)

♢ [Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Starting step Boundless Space realm (4.3S)

[Runeforged Overlord] ♢ - Level 5 (1S)

[Sixth Melody] (0.9S)

[Forced Genius body] ♢ (0.9S)

Classless Skills (6.2 of 47.5 Slots)

♢ [Dreams Of a Demon which Gods Envy - March of the Envoy] ♢ (2.2S)

[Summon Self] - Level 100 (0.6S)

[Crystallized Suffering] ♢ (1.6S)

♢ [Radiant World Mirror] ♢ (1.8S)

Racial Skills (5 of 47.5 Slots)

♢ [Edgewalker] ♢

♢ [Pillar of Creation] ♢

♢ [Mockery of the Divine] ♢

♢ [Convergent Evolution] ♢

♢ [Quantic transposition] ♢

Special Skills (0.1 of 47.5 Slots)

♢ [The Book of Skeletons] ♢ (0.1S)

Wildcast Skills (1.5 of 47.5 Slots)

[Angel’s bolt] ♢ (1.5S)

Biomagical engineering (3.3 of 47.5 Slots)

[All-in Earring] (2.3S)

[Prototype Relocation Eye] (0.5S)

[Silk gold arm (unenchanted)] (0.5S)

Summoned heroes (4 / 4)

Lv.300 Pareth (Holy Hrimthurs Draugr Eclipse Skeleton)Lv.299 Alith (Alith)Lv.300 Book of Skeletons (Book)Lv.300 Ihuarah (Heartless Shade)[Mark of Aphenoreth]

♢ [Radiant World Mirror] ♢:

A Radiant Mirror Sprite surrounds each of your essence cores, easing the interfacing of divine power with your body.

For each Radiant Mirror Sprite:

Healing power +4%.

Mana Substats +12%.

Manually altering your mana circuits is around 12% easier.

Damage inflicted by elemental attacks +1.2%.

Resistance to Light element damage +1.2%.

Divine penalty resistance +0.36%.

You may call upon the Radiant Mirror Sprites to read and estimate level data.

Sofia glanced up at Suhen, seeing blurry golden numbers appearing above her head.

‘500+’

“So? Do I need to go grab skeletons?” Suhen asked, crossing her arms under her chest.

Again Sofia was silent for a moment.

“... No…” she mumbled.

Suhen’s raucous laughter nearly ruptured her eardrums.