Saintess Summons Skeletons

Sofia could have maybe broken through the shield and flown away, but she stayed to be able to trace the mana back to its caster. Sure enough, she managed to get a feel for the general direction of the spellcaster, who had to also be inside the shield. She looked in that direction, but all she could see was a swarm of infantrymen in black and red.

Unless it’s for a single target, many of their soldiers will die…

I got what I came for anyway. Better get ready before it goes off, even if I should be safer at the edge of the shield.

Sofia proceeded to do a small jump, during which she did her best to hug her knees and take as little space as possible despite the two layers of armor she was wearing. As she fell back down, she summoned what was left of the orichalcum vein she had found.

It had been more than enough to make her three armor, but they only made one with an extra small chestplate on the side for Alith’s Dopple. So where was the rest? It had been turned into a protective cocoon!

Zerei had baptized it ‘The EGG’ after its shape, and as the name implied, it was a thick and empty human-sized orichalcum-forged eggshell. It boasted a lot of protective enchantments carved from the inside and was essentially a portative bunker. It even had a handle and hooks to allow Pareth to slot it inside his torso by latching it onto his ribs.

Sofia managed to summon it around her on the first try, which was something she failed to do about once every ten attempts. She immediately started to fill it up with mana. The enchantments inside were much hungrier than those in her armor which had to balance upkeep and effectiveness. In turn, they gave much better protection.

While doing that, she looked through Pareth’s eyes. He still attacked the soldiers surrounding him as if nothing strange was happening. Any time now, when the mana around stops expanding…

Now!

Pareth teleported near Sofia. He appeared in the air outside the bell tower, his hand reaching out, destroying the railing, and grabbing the orichalcum egg. He fell, destroying the house below, falling through its three floors until he hit the ground. Deactivating his armor, he shoved Sofia inside and reactivated it. [Sanctified grounds] activated right as Sofia’s vision turned white.

The light was so intense that it shone even through the orichalcum ball. The air was blazing, Sofia was sweating inside the ball, and…

That was it. She wasn’t losing any life, and neither did Pareth. From Pareth’s senses, she got one more clue about the nature of the attack, the sound of violent winds.

Sofia’s life suddenly dropped by a fifth. Right, Pareth was originally near there because the birds had found one of the targets. Unlucky.

[Key Targets : 5/5] ->[Key Targets : 4/5]

As the light died down, Pareth looked around. Nothing was left inside the shield’s radius that wasn’t reduced to dark ashes. The houses, the streets, and even the city walls had blackened and crumbled.

The first thing that came to Sofia’s mind was how Alith could have survived that by doing nothing. Then she refocused on the thing that mattered: the only other person left alive inside the shield’s radius. It was a woman in outrageously skimpy red robes, clinging onto a catalyst orb larger than her head. She had a hard time staying upright and looked spent. She was very easy to spot, alone in the middle of where an army used to stand. The rest of the army was still fine on the other side of the shield though.

Sofie looked at the count, that’s about three thousand kills, not counting the elves. That sure was a devastating spell to be cast by one person. She contemplated the fastest and safest way to finish that person off before she could recover and exit the shield. She stored the egg, and the book of skeletons appeared in her hands.

The four Vampire skeletons formed around Pareth and rushed off.

After the birds, these were her fastest skeletons, and they could hit very hard too. Pareth stood still, hiding Sofia from view within his armor.

The Vampires sped through the ashen land and surrounded the woman. They struck together, only to be blown away by an explosion. It originated from the catalyst she was holding.

Perhaps that could have killed them. The skeletons of the Withered Vampires had very little health, but unluckily for the explosive woman: it was currently sunny.

The Vampires collapsed on her again, one by one this time. She blew them away once, twice. The shield was starting to disappear, but the sturdier the shield, the longer it would take to dispel unless the caster died or accepted to suffer a violent backlash.

The fire mage was getting ready to escape, inching closer to the border, frustrated at the unwavering undead. But something happened as she tried to repel one of the skeletons with a small explosion once more; the spell failed. She spasmed as the mana backlash ravaged her body from the inside.

She ran out of mana?

The Vampires ripped the woman alive piece by piece, clawing and gnawing at her flesh until she stopped struggling. These summons are… I should remember not to use them against real people… Gruesome.

Bring back all the items she had on her.

The Vampires ran back, holding the orb and a few other things as the shield isolating this place from the outside finally broke. The army rushed in, and Sofia spotted a few flying people speeding toward her from far away. The griffin riders were coming too. They had all been waiting in ambush for the shield to fade.

Offensive spells and projectiles rained down on Pareth and the Vampires from above. Sofia took a few hits, magic attacks making their way through Pareth’s armor and between his ribs. The Vampires climbed on Pareth to try to soak some of that before it could reach her.

Health : 4112 / 8796

She watched her health go down every time both her armors were still inadequate to protect her from the conjoined assault of more than ten opponents. Silently she channeled her spell while she chewed on a healing candy.

The hands grabbed her. As she disappeared underground, she stored Pareth inside the armor. The Vampire stayed back as a diversion. Hurriedly, she controlled the graveyard skeletons to pull her as far down as her skill allowed. More than two hundred meters underground, she stumbled upon a cavern.

No, a buried city under the city?

It looks about ready to collapse, but that’s a perfect hiding place.

To call it a buried city was to oversell it. It was a bunch of half-collapsed tunnels with remnants of houses carved directly into the stone and dirt. It was utterly dark, and the air was stale, but that wasn’t an issue for Sofia. She canceled the graveyard when she found a dead end and cast it again from there to recenter the skill’s radius and get through. Like this, she put some distance between her and the pursuers above. A few times, she also went deeper when she found suitable tunnels.

They sure have a lot of stuff buried under that city.

I’m probably safe now?

Scary.

This trial is way scary.

I know this is one of the later floors, but still.

Sofia sat down in the Sun’s generosity ritual she drew on the ground. She watched her health and mana inch back up.

Anyone else at my level caught by all of these guys would die in an instant. If they even survived the fire attack. But there’s something like 400 people who made it out of 1200 people who got here. One out of three. That’s a lot. There must be a safer way to save the city.

I wonder if there’s a way to complete this by siding with the invaders. I assume if you can negotiate a temporary cease-fire, that could technically count? It’s not like the objective says you must save the place and ensure it survives in the long term. Maybe rendition is even a correct if twisted, way to ‘save’ the city from destruction, at the price of its inhabitant’s life or liberty…

But what’s certain is that I’m probably the only idiot who chose to try to destroy the army and lived to tell the tale.

Well. Most people would give up when they can’t escape the attack within the shield, so they would at least survive, but the point stands.

“Now that I think about it… I could have also avoided the attack by going underground with the graveyard. I had no real way of knowing it from the start, but there was enough time to cast it. That’ll become easier when I can prime the staff and halve the channeling time. But it needs so much mana.”

Sofia noticed something very late through her mana senses as she spoke to herself.

Someone had followed her.

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