Saintess Summons Skeletons

The air inside the vault felt strange. There was barely any volatile mana, and despite being in the physical plane still, Sofia felt like she had just stepped into another world entirely. Her link with Pareth was mute, the starmap refused to even appear. She doubted that she could leave this place if she was trapped here, had she not just gained special freedom, that is, although she would not put it beyond Anna’s capability to have prepared for that and left similarly secure ‘vaults’ in the same location of the other planes.

But such idle thoughts were unneeded anyway, as she doubted the system could possibly have such plans for her. Sofia had just taken a few steps past the door when an illusory image of Anna appeared and started talking, looking past Sofia.

Pre-recorded message?

Sofia immediately recognised the voice, it was the same as the automatic announcement messages in the third trial’s space shuttles leading to and from Cerberus beta.

“Hello, you who enter my vault! I’m leaving this in advance just in case…

But know that the things here are all precious to me, so treat them well.

Also if you’re here it means Datti let you in, but even so, you’ve gotta follow the rules!

You only take one item, no more! And absolutely no spellcasting inside the vault!!!

Some stuff in there is very dangerous, so don’t say nobody warned you! Take all the time you need.

Have fun!”

Hmm so that’s how her bone structure is. It was hard to tell from the one picture. I can make a proper statue now.

The rules are just like Nex said. So she set up the vault specifically for people to come take things from it.

This… Bothers me a little.

Sofia stood in place, not even looking at the riches around her, feeling like there was an issue here that she just hadn’t fully pieced together yet.

Ah!

Ooooh… So… She left that message in advance just in case…

Just in case she was no longer there, is what she certainly means.

Which is a little worrying, considering an admin is needed to open the vault at all.

Considering she scattered herself after Jin and Nex were already both gone, if she left that message after Nex got erased, who was she thinking was going to open the vault? Is there a secret fourth admin? Certainly doesn’t look that way, considering it apparently hadn’t been opened at all until now.

But the other option is that she left the message before Nex got erased.

My understanding was that she left out of grief from losing both of her closest friends, but this would mean that she anticipated being gone even before Nex entered the Deep and thinking nothing would happen to him so he could be the one to open the vault?

Am I overthinking this?

Sofia decided to put the matter to rest for now, and focus on the countless riches surrounding her.

The vault seemed rather small, all things considered, with a ceiling at only three meters high. From where she was, Sofia could see two sections. The entrance room she was in was a short corridor, with shelves on both sides, stacked with multiple layers deep piles of ingots upon ingots of gold, precious metals and alloys. The top shelves were reserved for stones.

“Fourty five, forty six… That’s a lot of old stones… And at the very top there’s… Ascended stones? A full six of them. Looking pretty intact, so it must have been very clean kills. So much for grandma assuring me that killing an ascended without obliterating their mana heart was almost impossible. Ah wait, no… There are two small ones in the back. Fairies? So eight.”

So much for needing to increase the amount of mana producers through the system.

Sofia gulped at the implications of how ruthless and powerful Anna must have been to collect all of those, but she quickly moved on to the next room. There might have been enough mithrium ingots in the first room to make a full armor set out of, but she could only take one item so lingering in that section was pointless.

The second section of the vault was a slightly larger square room, with piles of haphazardly stacked up items on both sides of the central alley. Notably, there were quite a lot of dragon parts, including an entire color gradient spread of scales along the left wall. Sofia quickly glanced at the items, there were entire boxes full of magical jewelry, crates of glowing potions, racks of heavily enchanted weapons… But nothing really caught Sofia’s eyes.

“Nex said no magic in the deeper vault but Anna said no spellcasting at all. Better listen to her. Since I can’t [Identify] anything, am I supposed to manually read the enchantments if I want to know what something does? I guess I’m still allowed to touch stuff even if I don’t end up taking it. I could probably guess the enchantments from that…”

Sofia walked past all the items, and moved on to the closed door facing the vault’s entrance. There were no instructions, no handle, just a small slot in the middle. It was the perfect size and shape to accommodate the widest part of [The third Key]’s blade.

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Sofia chuckled, looking back at the room she was about to leave. There were many weapons. No daggers, no knives, no swords.

Of course.

She inserted the blade into the hole. There was no need to turn it, as soon as the tip of the dagger touched the end of the hole, the door flickered out of existence.

Sofia stepped into the last section of the vault, the door reappeared behind her.

Cold strips of white light illuminated the room from above. This one was larger and very orderly, every single item was in its own individual locked display case, accompanied by handwritten exhibit labels.

So I’m not completely in the dark for what to pick. Nice. Let’s see… Twenty three displays. Finding something good should be pretty easy.

Walking up to the nearest display case, a tall one containing a mithril mannequin wearing a fiery-red sundress with floral patterns, Sofia read the label.

[The Sundress]:

Finally achieved one Sun cannot see through!

Jin said it was over-engineered, I say it’s vital technology!

Moon ordered twenty

I went a bit overboard with this one though, it feels too hot to wear

Maybe using Jamorga’s fur was pushing it

I guess I’ll find a cute fire mage to gift it to someday eh eh eh…

It was only the first item and Sofia was already left speechless.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE SUN CANNOT SEE THROUGH?!

And who’s Jamorga?

Well either way I’m not taking that…

“...”

Surely Sun cannot see through my new robe. Right?

Sofia quickly moved on to the next item, a varnished wooden cube with sharp edges, the perfect size to fit into someone’s hand.

[Mysterious wooden cube]:

My datation spell pins the wood at roughly fifteen million years old.

Honestly I thought the spell had fucked up at first, but no, everything looks right, so what we have here is a really really old cube.

I know it’s a weird thing to say considering who I am but I understand nothing of the magic inside. I could probably decode it if I spent a few months on it but I just never found the motivation. It’s sure to be powerful, I just don’t know what for, so it’ll stay safely contained here, for now.

“You don’t know what it’s for so you just lock it up? That is one way to do it… Fifteen million years is a crazy number. Have people really been on Veliadren that long?”

How many cataclysms is that?

Sofia had enough Processing that she instinctively knew the answer to that, but the number was scary and depressing. So she once again quickly moved on.

[Thirsting chalice]:

A divine item from another time. The god is long gone, and so is their essence, but the item survived somehow. It needs to be filled with strong blood and then activated with an essence. For me it transforms the blood into super pure liquid mana, but the Dragons are starting to frown when they see me because I keep pestering them for more.

Moon seems to find that pretty funny.

Maybe I’ll tone down the liquid mana experiments for a bit…

“Holy bones! I can summon strong blood and have plenty of essences. It’s like this was made for me!”

Sofia quickly lost herself in her own thoughts, trying to guess what kind of liquid each of her essences could possibly produce. But then she remembered that among her essences, she had three from the Lords, and one speck from Looming.

“My curiosity might really be the end of me if I leave this vault with that chalice in hand…”

Making a mental note that this was the best contender yet, Sofia moved on. The next display case, it turned out, was just empty. At first glance Sofia had thought there might be some invisible object inside, but no. The label did not even have a name either, just a question mark.

[?]:

I don’t know if I found it or if it found me. Honestly that thing fucking creeps me out.

Sending it to the eye didn’t work.

Better lock it up here.

I’m becoming like Nexxy at this rate, collecting this junk…

At least the other one isn’t on my back as well.

“Huh. That sounds a bit familiar.”

Sofia turned around, staring at the Abereth silently hovering near the door.

“Too big to fit in the case. You’re ‘the other one’, aren’t you?”

The Abereth obviously did not answer.

Sofia helplessly shook her head. “Looks like I’m going to have to be really fucking careful about the keyword combinations I pick in the future…” she muttered under her breath. One Abereth was already more than enough.

In the next case, there was a rather large asterite bucket hanging held by mithrium chains in the middle of a complex cubic frame carved in dragon scales.

[The omega super kiln 3.0]:

I couldn’t melt it.

The new kiln even got through the mithrium asterite no problem and it still couldn’t melt that creepy mask.

Well, it was worth a shot.

What do I do with this thing now?

Sofia glanced at the empty case to her left. Creepy mask? Is that what that was?

Yeah, somehow I don’t think trying to melt the Abereth would work either…

“Next up is… Three gold bars and a book.”

[Chiral gold]:

Somehow I managed to do it!

Inverse gold that is completely mana immune and repulsive!

Sadly it’s still just gold in terms of everything else, but still, finally a perfect lightweight insulation layer! This is gonna be so much better than mithril! Woooo I can’t wait to use this!

It’s pretty damn hard to make but I’ll leave the recipe here just in case.

The ‘recipe’ is an entire book?

Well, it’s interesting, I can see how useful that would be in enchanting tiny objects like rings. But I think I’ll pass.

The following display case was a bone-made object shrouded in a thick fog of mana, which had immediately caught Sofia’s attention.

A magic wand?