Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 866 - Dragon guarding treasure

“Alright. Five years. I’m going to make the most out of the months of mana debt I still owe, and then, we’re going to level up at an unprecedented pace. I wonder, who was the youngest ascended? Probably Tartaros, I guess? Anyway, let’s aim for that… But first… Let’s finish this damned palace!”

Sofia spent the next four days working on the palace without pause, only ever stopping to gather some bulk items from the city’s warehouses like two entire barrels of fist-sized lightstones. Her aura carved the texture of the floor and walls, sculpting creative skeleton-themed decors on the ceilings with little to no effort, pulling out hinges for the doors directly out of the walls. By the end of the fourth day, almost the entire interior was done and ready to be furnished, except for the indoors garden and the throne room that Sofia wanted to put extra effort in.

Her home-making frenzy came to a sudden stop when Crowie came flying at his top speed, crashing into her back while she sculpted some gargoyles on the exterior walls.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?!”

As she gently petted Crowie’s skull, Sofia understood why he had come so suddenly, namely, a certain [Raid Boss] in full invoked armor jumping from roof to roof, making her way toward the palace.

“Saria!”

“That’s me! I have returned, sister!” Saria announced, landing next to Sofia after one last jump, her armor disappearing, its mana absorbed back into her dragon mask. “Nice arm.”

“You already know the details?” Sofia asked.

“More or less, Cin’s chat was quite lively when you came back. Heard the doc fixed it for you, right?”

“Wasn’t cheap, but he did. My arm is back and gold, as you can see. But enough about me! Do you have it?! Where’s Cinthia?”

“Tssk tssk. Of course I have it. Who do you take me for? EVERY. SINGLE. BONE. Down to the tiniest phalanx and ear bones I didn’t even know existed! And Cin’s just gone directly home to see her family, she’ll probably be back here in a week or so, if I had to guess.”

“I see… I’ll have to thank her properly… From what Ihuarah told me you had to go pretty deep into Sovuln?”

Saria scratched her head. “Yeah… I thought I wouldn’t mind going back there, but it was honestly pretty nerve-wracking. The spatial anomalies and the ebb are one thing, but the fucking level 400 monsters roaming around have been a serious pain to manage. Thankfully we had divination magic to locate the bones, but fuck, it wasn’t easy to locate the tomb even like that.”

“At least she was buried properly?”

“Yes. Silvio was a bastard but he at least had the decency to give her a proper stone coffin. And thank fuck for that, because the wooden one? Yup, all ebbed, the corpses inside too. Damn things spread through the roots of grass and trees all the way down to the buried coffins. It did cover the stone coffins too, but didn’t get inside. We basically had to upturn the entire cemetery to find the correct one.”

“... Are you sure you’ve got the correct one?” Sofia asked, suddenly feeling a bit nervous.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Actually I brought all the other ones we dug up. Thought you might find something interesting in there, though they probably mostly have basic ass classes.”

“Hey, I could use some of those actually. Look at this huge place, gotta find some staff to make it a bit more lively.”

Saria laughed. “And you wanna do that with skeletons? Never change, sis. So, where’s my room?”

“I figured you would be fine sharing your space with me so you have a bedroom on the floor under mine sharing the same common rooms, but this tower on the left’s empty if you would rather get your own space,” Sofia answered, pointing at the tower.

“Oh, I don’t mind either way. Does mom have a space prepared too?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Same thing. The entire central space above the throne room from the fourth to the sixth floor is designed to be our family home, basically. Pareth, Bookie and Pestle get a tower each, while Ihuarah, Alith and Rem are on the third floor. First and second floors are for employees, guests, and other random rooms.”

“Interesting. Basement?” Saria asked.

“No plans yet.”

Saria nodded, “Aight. Well, I’ll visit later. If you’re good to go then follow me, we gotta set up the ritual place for mom.”

“Wait, right now? What about the Liches?”

“For later,” Saria answered, “The nights in Sovuln were pretty boring so the chat got pretty in-depth about the whole Lich thing. Honestly I think I could probably do it on myself and manage. Not that I’m interested. For mom though we want the best of the best so we have to set things up in advance. It’ll probably take a while to prepare.”

“How long?”

“Since we have you, the basic building can be done in a few days, but letting mana accumulate and concentrate will probably take a few months from what I understand. At least between your city and the forest nearby we don’t have to care about running out of ambient mana.”

“A few months? I hoped…”

“Yeah I know,” Saria said, tapping Sofia’s shoulder, “Believe me I’m even more impatient than you are. Fuck, you got to see her and I didn’t! Best I got was a few messages through Cinthia. But! If we do this well, we can get her to level 300 right away, which is pretty fucking insane, if you ask me.”

“And if we don’t do this well?”

Saria shrugged, “Worst case, if we royally fuck up, the seed should break before any soul damage is done. If you trust Suffering’s explanation on the subject, that is.”

“Hopefully it never gets to that,” Sofia answered, recoiling at the idea of having to go hunt for another Leyline seed.

After chatting a bit longer, the two sisters set out to look for a proper spot, to the south-east of Ser’Extra. They settled on a bit of swamp close enough to both the city and the forest to suck in their mana, without risking being too close. Then, following Saria’s instructions, Sofia started to build a complex structure out of her own bones. The first step was to create a tall empty tower, then, with the skeleton laid down on a flat mithril slate at the bottom, burying it under hundreds of stacked mana-concentrating ritual circles filling up the entire tower. After that, it was only a matter of carving a few more ritual circles directly on the exterior walls of the tower, and assigning someone to guard.

Dragon Crowie sat contentedly at the top of the tower, his skeletal tail wrapped around it, as he monitored the surroundings.

“That’s a strange setup,” Sofia commented, standing near the base of the tower she just constructed. “Won’t the concentrated mana just spread around the mithril slate like a pancake and escape through the sides?”

“It’s more about slowly tempering the bones with the flow than a direct accumulation from what I understand,” Saria briefly explained, “There’s more to it, but that’s the other liches’ job. We just have to protect this until the bones are ready.”

“... I wonder if this could be useful for Pareth somehow…”

“Maybe?” Saria guessed, “Getting the bones used to the flow like this is mostly to allow a better soul-bone connection to the phylactery or something like that. Gotta admit the explanations I got weren’t super clear on the specific details, just on the process itself. Still, it should make the skeleton in itself a bit tougher, I think.”

“We’ll see, I guess… It was weird to see mom like that…”

“You don’t say/ I never once thought I’d end up digging out her remains, let alone help her become an undead, but here we are.”

Sofia sat down, back against the tower. “Can’t say the same. After all, my plan at the beginning was doing this exact thing to you, so… Funny how fate works sometimes.”

Nodding along, Saria sat next to her, “Now we just need to keep the place safe for a bit. It already feels slow.”

“Long months ahead,” Sofia agreed, “Well, there’s a bit of entertainment incoming, Alith and Astelia’s trial should start soon.”

“Ah, right, I wonder if your imprint is gonna be there.”

Sofia was silent for a moment. “I-... I don’t think it will, right? Seems a bit unfair… I mean, no offense to Cin and your other teammates, but… Even you and the other strong imprints like Sen and Tartaros, the rest of their team was barely worth mentioning. An imprint team with just Kuli and Mornn together would already be a tough challenge in team competitions, so if we add Pareth and me…”

“Heh, only one way to find out. Since an admin is back now, anything could happen. Really curious to see what they’ll do.”

“So am I… Ah, right, want to come with me to hunt another ‘mirror’ after we’re done here?”

“The only one you’re missing is our namesake's, right? Count me in. We can even make this another family outing with one extra member.”

“Heh, I’m not sure this is the best idea. We’ll see about that… Until then… Want to help me enchant my arm while we wait for the trial to start? The plan is…”