Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 877 - The unlikely savior

Sofia found herself in a strange moment of serenity in the center of her explosion. [Singularity Edict] had protected her, while the Phoenix was fully immune to all types of fire-adjacent damage, so they were just fine, latching onto the Alphageid’s flesh until the bright flash died down.

The eye Sofia had stabbed looked like a black scrambled egg, and the surrounding midenicite flesh was seared black on about a dozen meters, but that was the full extent of the damage. It seemed there was still a long way to go until she reached the true power of Acromegon’s original bolts.

The Alphageid’s tentacles were mostly busy with the Kleptra below which left Sofia mostly safe as long as she stayed close enough to the trunk to avoid being in the line of sight of the black eyes.

At the same time, the countless Phageid dropping from the sky were starting to fall past her and try to land. There were a lot of lesser Phageid and Phageid Larvae in there, which Sofia recognised, but there were also many types that she had never seen before, some more imposing than others.

From the city to the forest to the sea, they were going to land absolutely everywhere.

Are we distracting the Alphageid or is it distracting us?

Many people started to rise from the streets, either flying or jumping on the roofs. The number of people capable of going against the Alphageid may not have been high, but Ser’Extra was by no means a weak city. A defense force had been quickly organized, and Sofia could see groups flying out toward the other nearby villages of the empire.

What a mess.

Of course this time Sofia spent looking around was not wasted, she had dumped all of her remaining mana into the Skewering archangel bolts that stayed stuck in targets, and slammed them in nearby eyes.

Almoooost…

She was trying to charge up her avatar form but her attacks dealt so little effective damage to the massive Alphageid that the charge was very slow for the mana spent. A last skewering bolt with her regenerating mana pushed it over the edge.

[Avatar of Zeus]!

The transformation was quieter than usual. Under the red sky, no storm gathered to welcome the avatar, but Sofia couldn’t care less.

A stray tentacle shot up to get rid of the minor annoyance Sofia was proving to be. It was wiser this time, slamming several times to make sure the pesky thing was dead.

As she died, all Sofia thought was that compared to the Dark Epoch Robot’s punches, these tentacles weren’t so scary.

Three seconds later, the Avatar of Zeus reappeared, and perfectly on cue, the Phoenix who had been playing dead, reformed with her.

I can buy a tiny bit more time.

It was time to fully utilize the avatar form’s 50% lightning damage buff.

Sofia’s mana was full, having just been topped up by the avatar transformation, and in an instant it plummeted back down to zero.

“Amazëok, Calamity of Plasma!”

The destroyer of raging plasma emerged from thin air above Sofia’s head, it was huge yet seemed tiny in comparison with the gargantuan Alphageid. Gliding up its side, the destroyer’s mere contact left a burned mark along the Alphageid’s body. Unlike Sofia herself, who had been demoted to a single tentacle which had just come back to finish her off again, Amazëok instantly drew in several more.

Below, Er’Vord roared, his voice fully inhuman. “WHO Do yoU THInk YOU’re FIghTING?!”

Sofia could not admire the spectacle, as she perished again, the Phoenix had tried to carry her out of the way of a tentacle strike only to end up reduced to ashes by an eye’s blast of black energy.

The rest of the fight was messy at best. Sofia used what meager mana she managed to regenerate to try to fuel her escape and survive a bit longer, but the one tentacle going after her now understood she kept reviving and refused to let her off. After going through four of her six false immortality runes, she decided it was time to retreat. Just flying away was impossible because of the eyes, so she opted to use Quantic transposition.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Huh?

She reappeared next to Saria, who was busy holding off all the phageid landing near the ritual tower by herself.

“Good work out there, sis!” Saria praised as her halberd split some strange bear-like humanoid Phageid in two.

“I could barely even do anything,” Sofia answered, pumping all the mana she was regenerating straight into an array of piercing bolts that skewered Phageid Larvae one after the other.

The Phoenix was rather pissed at having to flee, and now that it no longer had to carry Sofia, it began to rampage around the ritual tower, burning all the weaker Phageid to a crisp, joined by Pareth who was fully operational again and opted to hold off the bigger ones for Sofia to bolt.

While she protected her mother’s remains, Sofia kept a close eye on the mission timer and on the massacre unfolding above her city.

Seconds seemed to pass extra slowly as the battle unfolded. The destroyer still coiled around the Alphageid like a long snake of plasma, looking slower but keeping on the assault, while Er’Vord was single-handedly contending against most of the tentacles. It was hard to tell what he was even doing, as his massive insectoid form seemed to be constantly flashing in and out of existence, but both him and the tentacles seemed locked in a state of constant destruction and regeneration as they battered each other.

Then, there was Carpet One, who protected the entire city with a flat mana barrier, like a second sky, on top of which the many people who had risen to defend the city were battling endless waves of Phageid like she was.

The timer slowly ticked down second by second, the longest minute everyone present had ever lived, save for Sofia herself who had Curse to thank for that.

And a whole three seconds before the end of the timer, everyone heard a feminine voice.

“It looks like I’m not too late! Kokokoko, attack!”

A lone figure appeared in the sky with a deafening bang.

It was Eltiel, holding what looked like a disturbing rotting black fish with a rabid wolf’s face. She threw the fish at the Alphageid like a spear.

The Alphageid’s eyes fired countless black beams aimed at the fish.

The fish opened its mouth. Its wolf-like jaws widened incomprehensibly like two giant wings spanning a distance of tens of kilometers, rapidly growing past the Alphageid, blackening the sky.

All of the Alphageid’s attacks disappeared as if drawn in by the strange creature’s gullet.

The jaws snapped shut, and shrunk back. The Alphageid was bitten clean off. The remaining tentacles that were too low to enter the mouth fell like rain onto Carpet One’s shield, while a cascade of white blood poured down from the torn upper section of the Alphageid that still extended from the rift.

Said upper section quickly shot back up into the rift before it closed. Whatever remained of the creature had fled.

“Retkralt.”

Dark tendrils like an infinite spiderweb clogged the sky, loose strings snatching up and enveloping every last phageid around in the blink of an eye.

In an instant, the chaotic battlefield had quietened down.

Eltiel made a pulling motion, and all of the Phageids wrapped up in black silk cocoons flew up into the sky.

The strange fish’s jaws opened up once again, and there were no more Phageid to be seen anywhere nearby.

“Figure the rest out yourselves!” Eltiel’s voice announced, her body already gone from everyone’s sight. Sofia had barely seen her turn toward the next nearest Alphageid to the north-east before she disappeared.

[Quest complete; congratulations! Your reward will be delivered later.]

[Following emergency procedure, a follow up mass quest has been issued]

[EMERGENCY DEFENSE : Widespread effort]

[Instructions : Help rescue the inhabitants of nearby settlements.]

[Recommended role: Manage your own territory first.]

[Rewards : more contribution points]

About half of the people who had been defending the city instants prior rushed out to provide aid to other villages that were too far to have been within the range of Eltiel’s intervention. The others moved on to helping the injured and destroying dead Phageid remains as well as the massive tentacles of the Alphageid that remained on top of Carpet One’s shield above the city.

Sofia felt it was a bit surreal to see all of these people working together so efficiently, leaving Saria behind, she returned to the city center to find Romuald the high priest of Death.

Together, they tracked down the remains of people who had died during the attack, and using the resurrection power of Philosopher’s stone, Sofia endeavored to bring back to life every single one of them. Originally she had not wanted to let this property of the stone be known to the wider public, but she was not about to let so many people die who had put their life on the line to defend her home. Whoever’s body was too mangled for the stone to bring back, Romuald’s more costly resurrection spell brought back instead, and out of the sixty-eight casualties, only three were too far gone to be brought back to life.

While everyone still actively worked to get rid of the gigantic pile of Phageid tentacles and insectoid remains that covered the barrier above the city, the sky regained its azure color some fifteen minutes after the beginning of the invasion.

[EXITING EMERGENCY STATE]

[PHAGEID INVASION TEMPORARILY REPELLED]

[THANK YOU FOR DEFENDING VELIADREN]