Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 263: Lost souls

There was a survivor?

That wasnt in the contract. Did an elf survive here alone for three thousand fucking years?

Are we doing a Zerei volume 2? Ive had enough of this crap once! What is it with people surviving in shitty places every time? Seriously, every single damn time! The dread apostle, the dominion apostles, Zerei Thats a lot of demons actually.

Urgh. Fine. Ill go save whoever again. Its only been lucrative ventures so far

Sofia took a single step out of the isolation field.

HELP!

Holy- CAN YOU STOP FUCKING SCREAMING?!

Help!

No way that worked.

I understood the first three times

Help!

What Oh, maybe they only understand elvish. Even if they got that I wanted them to stop screaming. I can understand it fine, speaking though

Trying her best to remember the sections about pronunciation that she had skimmed through when studying the book on elvish, Sofia tried her best to say something intelligible in elvish.

Can you hear?

I hear!

Why only try to talk now?

I, emergency supply!

You- Actually, Im not even gonna ask. Who are you, how can I help?

Power! Dont really know Stuck.

Extremely helpful.

Come! Emergency supply!

Alright Anything useful you can tell me?

Danger!

Sun better pay me extra for this one

The elvish voice stopped after that, leaving Sofia alone with the sound of the rumbling machine all around her. But even that felt wrong, there was something else going on. A symphony of fast clicks.

Crap. The swarm.

Sofia hurriedly dispelled her rats, and called upon the graveyard skeletons to take her and the Engineer to the outside.

Narrowly avoided that one. I can actually hear them now! Theyre much less scary like that.

Sofias plan now included tried to rescue whoever the person that called her was, though it would be the last thing on her list. The quest took priority, her own life before that of others. So, since her last known position to the parasites was the bottom floor, she would next start from the top. Supposedly there was already a parasite up there, it would be her first target.

And I still cant fly. Why does mana have to conflict with these electric power supply things? Pretty annoying. I even saw it flicker when I used the graveyard to get out.

Such a weird notion. How does mana conflict with electricity? I use mana to make electricity all the time and its very stable.

The image of a giant ball of blue fire came back to haunt Sofias memory for a second.

Maybe not so stable alright. Did I just understand the secret of the Angels bolts destructive power? Wouldnt that make all lightning mages very strong?

Are there lightning mages actually? I think Nicet mentioned something about them

Im getting sidetracked again. Happens often recently. Lets just walk to the top floor.

Sofia was in one of the 7th floors closed rooms. She had entered through the ceiling, finding nothing but a bunch of gold in there. This was clearly some kind of vault. Now, why would the elves need so much gold in an isolated temple orbiting around the sun? She didnt know. But she knew that now it was her gold. There were coins and ingots, she didnt bother counting them, and cleaned the place completely. If Sun has any complaint, she can give me a better briefing next time. One that includes details like the mention of parasites from the Deep or the presence of survivors to rescue.

She left through the ceiling again, walked on the roof to the other closed room and phased directly inside again.

And another dead elf, cant tell what happened to this one, dehydration maybe? Theyre all dry like blocks of sand anyway. Welcome to the book, well check your skills later.

Back up on the roof, she went over to the spot the parasite had been spotted by the rats, which was actually right under where she killed the previous parasite. Her rot had eaten through an uneven layer of one to two centimeters of the strange material that made the pyramid, nowhere near enough to pierce through the ceiling to the floor under. Every external wall, floor and ceiling in the temple was at least half a meter thick.

As her page with the one rat was no longer part of the book, Sofia summoned the next best thing, the skeleton dog. She had the graveyard skeletons drop it directly on the last known position of the seventh floors parasite.

Hes just moving, no parasite then, search for it, Im following from above.

While the dog ran around the floor, searching, Sofia used the last of the books fog to summon the group of twenty-five paladins. First the dog would spot the parasite, then the paladins would drop down on it through the ceiling and pile up onto it to prevent it from moving.

I call this move, the Dog-Pile.

Then Pareth would go down also, throw a shade dust ball at the thing and activate his halo. Sofia would stay safe above and just activate her rot for a second or two and repeat that until the thing was dead.

The only bad part was that this would spread a lot of rot inside of the temple, but now she had a good idea of the layout and the size of the module machines. She knew that as long as she kept the rot to the corridors, she wouldnt hit anything important, especially with all doors still closed.

In a matter of seconds, the dog found the parasite. Or rather, the parasite found the dog, the paladins werent even fully formed. Sofia had the dog run away until the paladins were ready and in place, and when the dog led the parasite to the spot where they were waiting, they phased through the ceiling as planned.

Everything else went according to plan, twenty mere seconds later, another parasite was gone. And Sofia never had to come close to it. One of the paladins had been smashed to bits, but besides that, she was astonished that her plan had worked so well. That never happened. It was worth it to spend so much time understanding how they worked with the first one.

Lets quickly get rid of the rest!

The other two parasites fell to the same fate, too slow to even release their swarms as the army of paladins threw themselves on them. The parasites still within their Elven shells always tried to defend themselves with physical attacks first, and that was their downfall. They could kill a paladin or two at the start, but it was rapidly over after that.

Thats it for the main temple But the quest is not complete. So there's more inside of the last closed section spanning three floors Or it counts the whale and Im dead.

Who knew Id hope to find more parasites Im guessing the elf who called me is stuck in there too. Might as well go while the paladins still have a lot of lifespan, but I need to dispel the rune and regenerate some man first, Im running low.

Now, should I start from the top or from the bottom?

Sofia was on the sixth floor, about to drop the dog into the closed-off section of the floor below. If there were more parasites, she wasnt about to change a winning tactic.

Ormoncleth probably just dropped one parasite and it reproduced. Only one monster causes so much chaos. I didnt find any fighters among the elves except the one who became the first parasite I killed. There werent very many of them to begin with. Im starting to believe the rescue crew the Oracle spoke of never even reached the temple in the first place.

Or maybe theyre all in there. Your time to shine again, good dog!

Wagging its skeletal tail, the dog let itself be grabbed by the graveyard skeletons. Sofia let it run around on the highest floor for a few minutes, nothing came of it, so she went down too.

Looks safe. Another module, lets see Trajectory correctors!

So this is the thing thats been keeping me alive all this time. Thank the Lords theres no parasite in here. Im guessing in one of the other two levels I'll find the Temperature regulation module too.

Without further ado, the dog was sent down once again, there were maybe stairs somewhere nearby, but Sofia couldnt be bothered to look for them.

The dog died before hitting the ground. Sofia felt its page forcefully ripped from the book.

NO!

AGAIN?!

FUCK!

WHATEVER DID THIS, YOURE DEAD!