Saintess Summons Skeletons

Using the graveyard nymphs to slip through almost a hundred meters of snow and ice, Sofia, Pestle and Crowie made it to the top of ‘big hole’.

Without the immortality from Bookie’s hero blessing, Crowie started to freeze over like an ice sculpture catching all the moisture in the air, and cawed in regret as he unsummoned himself.

I’ll call you back when we’re out.

[You have entered the dungeon : Eggless Hatchery - Lv. 400+]

I do like that it says 400+ instead of ‘Certain Death’. That being said, level 400 is a bit too much of a gap.

I know I can punch up one filter, like with the big greyskin. But even that was a tough fight. I’ve been overperforming in trials and getting doubled stats from them all this while but the gap between filters is still just getting wider and wider.

Realistically 400+ is likely just the boss monster, so as long as I can avoid that one, we should be good.

Currently the Sofia was flying near the top of a deep cone-shaped hole, hundreds of meters deep, with several big tunnel entrances at various depths. The bottom looked like a random pile of snow, although Sofia could feel a few bones buried inside.

Well… I don’t even have to avoid it exactly…

Here’s the plan, Pestle. I summon the ice spiders, they should survive the climate like you, so they go down and scout the place while we return to the surface to be safe.

If the spiders attract the attention of something bad and it happens to go straight for us, you’re the distraction. Try to get it away while I escape. Otherwise, we loot the place for good leg together.

Pestle flashed a smile before her invoked body disappeared, leaving only the original midenicite skeleton. Smiling back, Sofia summoned the five giant ice spiders that she was glad to have kept all this time, and sent them down while going back up.

Sofia and Pestle sat on the snow while she monitored the movements of the spiders.

“Very boredom,” Pestle expressed after waiting in silence for about ten seconds, before letting herself fall face first in the snow.

“I agree. I would rather go in there myself, but safety first. We both know what happened last time we got a bit too adventurous.”

“Pesle sorry…”

“I’m not mad at you so there’s no reason to be. We just need that not to happen again, this kind of danger isn’t something I want to put you guys through.”

“Klepra Sofia…”

“Uh huh? Take this!”

A tightly packed chunk of snow was thrown at the downed fairy, and a very unfair snowball fight ensued. The snow felt a bit strange, popping and glittering like specialty candy, but that only made it better. The duel ended with Pestle getting too distracted by eating the snow to continue fighting.

Looks like this is my win.

And the spiders are… Not finding much, it seems. I suppose that’s good news.

‘You have defeated [Zombie Rovva - lv. 339]’

Never mind.

Zombies then. It might not be too bad then.

“Any idea what a Rovva is?”

“Ovva? Not know. Can leg?”

“They’re zombies so probably not the tastiest.”

“Zombie is can leg! Maybe.”

“Ah, one of the spiders died.”

“Is Pesle need go?”

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“Not yet, it didn’t look like it got killed in one hit, fled for a bit, but not fast enough, it looks like.”

The four remaining spiders continued to explore, and from their movements, Sofia managed to more or less map out the points of interest in the dungeon. By the time they had explored everything, only two of the five had survived, having killed a handful of additionnal Rovva zombies on the way. The only real unknown now was the boss monster, which Sofia did not think any of the three dead Spiders had run into.

“We’ll just let the nymphs carry us to the places with stuff to check out and ignore the areas where the spiders died,” Sofia explained, “The monsters are pretty deep underground so the spirit plane is quite blurry but since they are zombies they should be pretty visible in there as long as we get close enough, so be on the lookout for that.”

“Pesle is look.”

“Good, let’s go. Stay close to me.”

Ghostly skeletal hands reached out of the snow to grab both of them, carrying them deep underground. The dungeon was mostly empty tunnels, so there were very few points of interest to check out. The closest one being the very bottom of the first hole.

Her aura being mostly physical, Sofia still had to step out of the spirit plane to grab her loot. Bone tendrils pierced into the pile of snow and debris at the bottom of the pit, and any piece of bone they touched was sent directly to an empty section of the painted halls, to be sorted later.

Gnawed bits and pieces… Bookie won’t be able to do much with that. There are a few intact tusks or horns, though, they might be good stuff.

Having collected everything, Sofia disappeared right back into the ground.

The next target was just a bit deeper, and a few hundred meters to the side.

From here on out we don’t know what we’re facing so be ready to fight.

With only her face barely sticking out of the wall and being partially back into the physical world, Sofia observed the first place the spiders had given her the back and forth signal for something to check out.

It was a large creature encased in a block of ice.

Magical ice? It’s actually absorbing ambient mana. I don’t think it’s the monster in there that’s taking it in, poor thing is well dead.

The monster trapped in ice was a strange hairy thing big like four horses that looked like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a cat, a rat or a bat, and decided to be all three. It looked bloodthirsty but Sofia still found it a bit cute.

The skeleton is intact but how do I get it out without making a lot of noise?

Sofia tried to send a graveyard nymph to fish the creature out of the ice block, but the ghostly skeleton froze over as soon as it entered the magical ice, completely trapped as well.

The next attempt was drilling a hole with the admin dagger, holding it with a bone tendril and using that hole to access the bones directly. It seemed to work, at first, but when Sofa’s mana got to the creature’s bones, she realised that she still could not take them. The frozen monster was such a coherent whole that even dead, the bones couldn’t be teleported out.

So the only way to get those is to melt that damn ice?

A bolt would do the trick but here and now?

What Sofia ended up doing was shaving the bottom of the ice block away from the cavern floor with her dagger-wielding bone tendril. It took a few long minutes, but was relatively silent, and when the ice and the floor were no longer as strongly connected, she stored the entire thing in her ring.

One Xat acquired. Or whatever it’s named.

Next is quite a bit deeper…

The next place Sofia checked was the spot where the first zombie died. It was the middle of a random tunnel, the creature had walked into a net of spider silk, and got entangled enough that the spider skeleton easily ripped its head off and ate its core out of its chest.

So that’s a Rovva.

Aside from being dead, the creature barely looked like it had ever been undead at all, its body well-preserved thanks to the region’s extreme cold. As for its appearance, it was a short-tailed fleshy ‘snake’ with wrinkly white skin, topped with a head resembling that of a wolf, just without the fur, and four human-like arms sprouting from the nape of said head. It looked like it could probably both slither and stand upright on its tail, and was about six meters long.

Everything feels tame compared to the Kleptras but it’s still really ugly. Wait, are those fingers growing out of its vertebrae? Nature sure is fucking weird…

I wonder what its bones look like.

The dead creature joined the ice block in the storage, and Sofia departed yet again.

The next and second to last place to check turned out to be the actual hatchery part of the dungeon’s name, although it was indeed eggless. The Rovva eggs, shaped like a bunch of interlocking fingers, were all already hatched or destroyed. Sofia only found one in decent condition, but both her mana senses and aura told her it was empty. She still grabbed it for the novelty of it.

As she was ready to depart, Pestle tapped on her shoulder to warn her, at the same time that she herself noticed movement with her aura. The thick stone walls were not exactly conducive to mana, greatly restricting her effective range.

Rovva? That’s a lot… At least fifty.

I really don’t want to alert the boss monster.

Then came the deepest point of interest the spiders had marked.

Sofia almost had a heart attack as she spied into the last room. It was a relatively small space, where a tiny dead creature was lying sprawled on a magic-emitting pink crystal. She could honestly understand how the spider could have thought there was nothing wrong there, as the creature itself was entirely devoid of mana or any other sign of life, but Sofia’s eyes could see anyone’s level now.

A glowing ‘442’ wavered above the dead monster and the crystal.