Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 860 - In death’s grasp

In an underground chamber under the half-built temple of death in Ser’Extra, Sofia watched Leverle operate a strange machine. It looked more or less like two mechanical spiders, their legs facing each other, working on the silk gold Sofia had brought, poking and prodding at it, infusing it with mana, pulling out and twisting strands, and slowly creating a long and thin sheet.

When the ‘spider legs’ stopped, the silk gold and the few supplemental materials Leverle had added had turned into basically a thick curtain of silky gold.

“So this is going to be my skin?”

“Mostly. Skin is made of multiple layers. This is the central part. Any enchanting you want to do needs to be carved there. Ideally on the underside.”

Sofia nodded, “What about the external layer, then? That’s what I’m most curious about.”

“I have researched this a bit this last day. You have a choice there. I may copy your original skin, it will feel as it should, but that outer layer would be quite weak and easily tear in battle. The other choice is to use more of this gold. It would not have any durability issues, but visually, you can guess.”

“In terms of blueprint cost and sense of touch they are the same?” Sofia asked.

“It is so.”

“Nice. That is an easy decision. Just use the gold. I can alter the visual aspect with my other skills.”

Leverle’s mask rotated to the side, his blank white face looking down at Sofia. “That certainly makes for a simple decision. Now if you would, sit straight up, and hold this.”

Sofia, who was only wearing unenchanted clothes and none of her usual items, sat on the comfortable-looking seat Leverle had prepared for her in the center of the room, and grabbed the strange spherical bauble he had just handed her.

“Perfect…” Leverle moved about, circling the chair, and adjusting the position of Sofia’s left shoulder with his cold black hands. “Hold the paralysis orb firmly and press on the trigger.”

Paralysis?

Seeing Sofia hesitate briefly, Leverle explained. “You will still be able to talk, this is required for your sanity.”

“You sure know how to reassure your patients,” Sofia commented, her thumb pressing on a slight indent in the hard purple orb. A cold curse immediately spread through the purple metal, crawling up Sofia’s arm and quickly paralysing most of her body, stopping just before entering her head.

“How do you feel?” Leverle asked, his voice flat.

“It’s quite suffocating. Working well aside from that, I cannot even feel my mana…”

“Good. I will proceed with test stabbing,” Leverle announced, before poking a hole in Sofia’s leg with a finger. “Pain?”

“You could have warned a bit earlier… But I did not feel anything.”

“That is good news. Now I will proceed with killing you as we discussed beforehand.”

“Go ahead.”

Faster than Sofia could understand, a black hand had ripped her mana heart out of her chest, and her vision abruptly faded to black.

“Did it work?” she asked as life returned to her three seconds later.

Leverle stood at her side, immobile like a statue. “Success. I have memorized the blueprint recording. We may proceed. I suggest closing your eyes for the following part.”

“I’m fine,” Sofia answered. She couldn’t help but be curious to see how Leverle was going to ‘pull’ blueprint space from her legs to rebuild her arm. He had explained the procedure in technical terms before getting started but Sofia could barely follow his explanations.

What followed was hard for Sofia to describe, as she could not currently move her head to look down, but the gist of it was that Leverle continuously stabbed strange stakes and needles into her legs, before stuffing his fingers inside.

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Actually I’m glad I can’t quite see, I think.

After about half an hour of this strange process, Leverle moved to her shoulder. His fingers pinched thin air, shaping and pulling it around like working clay with extreme caution and precision. This part was slow and grueling, and about an hour later, Lervele stopped and took a step back. “That is one spell rebuilt.”

“One?!”

“Yes. I have run out of material. It is time to source more. This should only last another thirty to forty hours, approximately.”

“Lords…”

Leverle’s mask slightly shook, and without more banter, he continued his work, crouching back down to work on her legs.

Seeing that Sofia looked bored and curious, his mask looked up at her while his hands kept working, stabbing her legs with more and more metal stakes.

“Do you require a simplified explanation of the blueprint harvesting?” he asked.

“That… Yeah that would be nice.”

Leverle’s mask tilted back down. “The light-capturing needles are pinning down your blood and mana flow, pinching arteries. This is to keep your mana currents stable. The Ruvinum stakes on the other hand are creating exclusion zones where I cannot influence your blueprint. These serve to specifically target the empty zones to pull around.”

“Did you have those light-capturing needles made especially for me?”

“Negative. Those were originally created to work on shades. I once found their morphology most intriguing. It just so happens that they work perfectly on you.”

“And Ruvinum? I have never heard of that one.”

“Space-stabilizing alloy. Most used as counter-teleportation. Vaults were often lined with this, before spatial items became widely available.”

“And that holds the blueprint in place… I see… how do you get it back up to my shoulder, though?”

“Mana threads,” Leverle answered without elaborating. Perhaps feeling that he had satiated Sofia’s curiosity, he fully focused back on his work.

Left alone with her thoughts and the room’s heavy silence only interrupted by the fleshy sounds of her legs getting relentlessly stabbed, Sofia closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

That did not work out well, even without feeling the pain directly, it was impossible to sleep while having one’s blueprint, mana body and soul, constantly getting toyed with and moved around. The following twenty or so hours felt like they lasted an entire week.

Finally Leverle’s hands stopped. He grabbed Sofia’s head, turning it to the left.

Sofia reflexively opened her eyes, watching with awe her restored bloodlight, its complex network of nerves and mana currents, shining weakly at her side. It was still far from being a complete arm, but it was already much closer. This was how her arm normally was after being cut off. Perfectly capable of using all of her spells without the slightest issue.

Leverle turned her head back to a neutral position, grabbing a clean cloth from a nearby table with his long arms and gently wiping Sofia’s face.

“Save your tears. Much is still to be done.”

“Thank you…”

Leverle’s mask shook slightly. “Next are your bones, tendons, and muscles. All the nerves of light are in place but they still need to be connected. Another five hours for this, and about as much for the skin. The procedure is going well. Try to relax.”

Sofia wanted to nod but she couldn’t move her head like that, so with a weak ‘hmm’, she closed her eyes again, and let Leverle work in peace. She lost herself in her thoughts, time passing by slowly.

Some time later, her thoughts were interrupted by Bookie’s voice.

“So she can get infinite gold by cutting her arm?” he asked Leverle, a hint of worry in his voice.

“No. If so, people would be mass-producing Mithrium as we speak,” Leverle answered.

“Then what happens?”

“This procedure involved extracting her mana heart earlier. Her body has grown it back, so do you know where the one I extracted is?”

“Oh! Oh! I know! It turned back into mana!”

“That is correct,” Leverle confirmed, “A mana heart is an unstable existence. If it is extracted without receiving the shock from its owner’s true death, it cannot persist, and crumbles. Grafted materials become similar.”

Sofia was already aware of these details, or she would have turned her arm into a rare materials infinite money glitch faster she could blink, even if she already had her bones and the Odalite blood for that. She kept her eyes closed, listening to Leverle and Bookie idly chatting while her arm was being rebuilt, bone by bone, muscle by muscle.

Eventually Leverle tapped her shoulder, “Time to wake up.”

“I wish I could have been sleeping,” Sofia yawned as she opened her eyes. She couldn’t see them but she knew Pareth and Bookie were also in the room. “Is it done?”

“Almost,” Leverle announced, “the skin is almost ready for the final fitting and the nerve connections. I cannot adjust them well through the paralysis.”

“Understood. I can’t let go of the orb, though.”

“I know. The feeling of your arm is going to return at once. Be mindful of your mana,” Leverle explained, his cold fingers grabbing the orb in Sofia’s hand, and slowly pulling it away from her grasp.