Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 864 - An opportunity, or a pitfall?

“A big library and an art gallery. They need at least that much space,” Sofia mumbled to herself, satisfied with the idea. For a second she hesitated, then roughly delimited a third, smaller room in that space, near the palace’s entrance. “A shop where I can sell stuff I no longer need and buy rare skeletons. Won’t get much business being inside of the palace but I don’t want yet another building to manage, so that will do… Done with the first floor!”

The engineer skeleton, who had been watching Sofia all along as she worked on the palace, finally stepped up to get her attention.

“... Alright. Tell me. Where did I mess up?”

Engi had been able to do maths and draw simple things from the beginning. He could draw complex graphs and plans from level 250, and ever since level 300, despite still being unable to talk, he could now add some words to his scribbles. Given a bone pen to draw on the ground by Sofia, he quickly and easily redraw the entire floor plan she had spent an hour making, and heavily altered it, drawing arrows labelled ‘traffic flow’ through the corridors that he rearranged into a neater design, and adding a lot of small new rooms. He placed things like central rooms for heating ritual circles to keep the place warm in winter, and space for water pipes and more.

Sofia felt dumb watching Engi iterate on her design, he considered so many more details that never crossed her mind. They were things that weren’t obvious at first glance like how exactly the rooms should be lined up to allow them all to have the most natural light possible, to easily connect to the sewers while leaving space for a basement floor, and a lot more.

It looks like my studies on architecture focused a little too much on the aesthetics and structural issues of it and not enough on logistics… I was still doing fine for the houses but it looks like a whole palace is a bit much for my level.

“I’m glad I have you here to help… This would have been a disaster.”

Engi looked up at Sofia, lightly shaking his skull and getting back to refining the floor plan.

In the end, even with Sofia’s ability to carve out sewer pipes into the foundations in seconds and her huge stockpile of bone slates ready to place down as temporary walls, it took an entire day to lay out a proper blueprint of the first floor. It still lacked real doors, glass windows, texture, or anything practical, but the structural elements were all there. The general shape of the palace’s first floor subtly changed from the outside too, it had that advantage that Sofia could correct such things on a whim.

“In the end I’m really making space for other people to live in again instead of my own home… Well, the upper floors will be for me, at least…”

Engi, who had just been resummoned again, crouched back down, a hand raised demanding the bone pen.

“... Straight back to work?” Sofia asked surprised, she had first wanted to take a break, but since Engi seemed motivated, she handed him the pen with a sigh, “Second floor… The right wing is the same, since we left the library and art gallery without a ceiling, same for the throne room since it’s three floors high… So just the left wing to deal with really. I’m thinking guest rooms, maybe? Since I have a lot of friends without a house here. We can probably fit ten of them in there along with some common space and utilities, right? Oh, and we’ll make the central space a game room, since Pareth and Bookie can never stop playing their card games.”

Nodding along, Engi got straight to drawing, and with more experience, both his and Sofia’s work got much more efficient, dealing with the second floor in just under two hours. Now that she was starting to get really into it, Sofia actually felt motivated to finish the entire thing in one go.

“Third floor!”

Engi nodded expectantly, already drawing the outline of the narrower third floor on the ground.

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“So, this part, we make an inverse T with the throne room,” Sofia started her finger tracing a path along the bottom of the drawing, “I was thinking, we make it an indoor garden for Rem, on two floors. With long stained glass windows that will be visible above the palace doors. Then, on the right wing above the library and art gallery, Alith’s room and alchemy lab. Left wing, a place for Ihuarah… And I guess Everelle too. Makes sense, right? Let’s just make their part like a normal fully self-contained house for now, then we can ask what they want when they’re less busy.”

From the fourth floor and up, what was left of the central space was for Sofia herself, while the four main towers all connected to it were for the other skeletons. Pareth and Bookie had the two closest towers, while Pestle had one on the sides, and the last one was for no one in particular, just free space for the future.

It was night again when everything was mostly done, and all that remained was the highest tower, only accessible from Sofia’s bedroom at the top of the last floor.

Engi looked at Sofia with incomprehension when she filled up the ceiling leading to the tower with another bone slate, smoothing it out until there was no trace of it.

“I can’t have people wandering into the top tower by accident,” Sofia explained, “It’s going to be the Deep shrine, after all.”

Engi was immobile for a second, grabbed the bone pen, walked up to Sofia, and stood on his tiptoes to comfortably scribble on her forehead. Of course it wasn’t actually writing anything, but from the clean strokes, Sofia was clearly able to read the word ‘CRAZY’ being spelled out.

Sofia turned around without a word, though with a light smirk, “You’ll remind me to add a dog house in the garden. For you to sleep in.”

Then, letting the graveyard nymphs grab Engi and herself through the ceiling into the last tower, Sofia flew up to the top, swerving between the support beams, making it to the highest part of the palace and the city altogether.

There she placed a floor with a simple round hole in the middle, as stairs to reach this place weren’t needed anyway. She chucked small lightstones along the round edge of the room, and placed down four square pedestals alongside the north, east, south and west.

“Now the question, or questions. Who goes on which. And do I try to sculpt a representation of Auntie Ormoncleth’s true form or is ‘The silent Queen’ good enough?”

Behind Sofia, Engi’s usually unmoving lower jaw moved up and down slightly.

Sofia abruptly turned around, “Ah! Got you! Now that you’re here, tell me how I should sculpt everyone!”

“This Lord finds himself inexplicably compelled to leave without so much as a word. Your words hold power much beyond any mortal’s capabilities, truly so,” a sarcastic voice answered out of Engi’s mouth.

Sofia nodded along, “As expected of a Lord. Even your insults are factually true. My words can in fact turn off the universe’s lights.”

“An ability one shall be mindful not to abuse. I trust your calcified brain understands the implications of these little stunts,” Orator lectured her.

“Did the great Yvraveteth appear before me to give a sanctimonious scolding?”

“This saintess truly has lost all reason and respect…”

Sofia ignored the Orator’s complaining, switching to another burning question right away, “What will happen to me when I get your essence? Ever since I got the third one I can keenly feel that something is happening. I’m just not sure why. That’s what I really hoped to ask.”

Sofia’s right hand rose to her face, fingers pinched, opening and closing like a sock puppet as Orator answered, “You needed not verbalize your questions, for this one knows. You shall discover the answer sooner rather than later.”

“Alright… Thank you… What did you come for, then, if not to answer this? Surely you didn’t really come for the sculptures?” Sofia asked, fake-laughing behind her other hand covering her mouth. It was pretty clear to her that Orator always came to her with a goal in mind, be it to dispense crucial information or stringing her along his plans, whatever they were.

“One must reluctantly admit that you have performed largely beyond expectations. As such, you shall hereby be offered a new bargain. It is now up to this saintess to accept or reject it. I shall leave you… One hour to deliberate.”

Orator’s presence faded as a system window opened in front of Sofia’s face.

[You have received a revised version of your quest ‘The Orator’s approval’, will you swap to it?]

The details of the ‘revised’ quest opened up alongside it. With the same goal, but new terms, and new rewards.