Saintess Summons Skeletons

Some kind of slime? Water mage.

Behind Sofia, water quietly seeped out of the walls, gathering into a puddle on the ground.

Pareth was too big to come out in these tunnels, so she had to improvise. It was unlikely that any physical attack would work on the watery blob that was trying to be sneaky and taking human form behind her back. Do I shock it with the low-power bolt? No…

Then she had a devious idea. She directly summoned a good quantity of Silverwater from her storage ring above the still-forming silhouette. Gravity did its work, and the silent cave became noisy with the gargled cries of the water mage losing control of his transformation spell. Some parts of him instantly turned back to flesh, while others stayed as water. The soul-damaging and corrosive Silverwater had found its way into their body.

Sofia turned around, “That’s what you get for trying to be sneak-”

Visibly the mage still had enough force of will to use some spells because a massive ball of water appeared around Sofia’s helmet, forcing its way into it, pushing in, and pressuring it to fill her lungs.

That’s what I get for trying to be witty. Better shut my mouth next time; this is a trial, not a playground…

Well, not that I care. The poor guy is trying to drown someone who doesn’t need to breathe. I’m the one adept at drowning enemies here. No luck for you.

I wonder what would have happened if I had tried to splash him with the summoned blood instead of the poison water.

That was the last spell the mage would ever cast, and it soon crumbled, much like whatever survived from his body. Sofia was now sitting in a puddle of flesh, blood, water, and toxic waste.

It’s good that the smell of blood doesn’t phase me anymore… Also, Silverwater is quite strong, I guess. I should go back to get more when I can.

Or not. That forest was dangerous.

Nobody else came to bother her while she was recuperating underground. She had killed three strong enemy mages, and from what Pareth had seen, there were at least two more who had been attacking her. One was a man Sofia assumed was the shield mage responsible for the previous coordinated attack. The other was another woman in black robes. She had been attacking with pure mana blasts, bypassing Pareth’s armor and responsible for most of the health Sofia had lost.

Five key targets to protect and five strong mages to eliminate? Could it be like that? The objective might be completed when I incapacitate the last two. And then there are the griffin riders. The bastards use Mithril-tipped arrows! They were all stopped by Pareth and the Vampires, but still, dangerous.

Sofia ordered the birds and rats still operational on the surface to find and track the two mages as well as the griffins. Should have done that as soon as I secured the kid.

“Now the question is, put on a false immortality rune. I need to start now if I want it to be done not too long after my mana is full…”

Thinking back to how much damage she took from the mana blasts that could slip right through Pareth’s protection, she decided to have one on, just in case. She only needed to be careful not to step into the next level of the spire with no mana.

My current mana regen is about 48 per second right now with all the boosts. We get five minutes to heal up between each floor. So I can get back about fourteen thousand mana between each floor, not much at all. It’s essential that I leave with as much mana as possible because there’s no guarantee I’ll have that kind of downtime on the next floor. But at least health is not an issue. The passive healing of the blessed marrow construct alone is enough to heal me and Pareth in under five minutes. And I can get back my stamina with the runes if I have time to put them on.

Sofia felt bad sitting there doing nothing while the city she was meant to save was under attack. Every minute counted, but she couldn’t risk going all out right then, only to end up failing the next floor straight away. The demon transformation was the same; she could only use it once, and the recovery time afterward would be her downfall. If not, I could have gotten rid of both mages and the griffin riders all at once…

From her estimate, none of these people were above level 250, even the fire mage, she had one very powerful attack for sure, but the state it had left her in wasn’t what someone of that level would have had to deal with. Orvod back in the first trial had summoned two giant stone weapons and didn’t even stop using his other skills while doing so, it was a whole other level.

My guess is that the mages are all between 180 and 249. I guess the water mage was the weakest with how fast he died. The griffin riders are probably in the low hundreds, and the griffins themselves could be higher, but they haven't come down to attack yet, so maybe not. Sofia wasn’t adept at judging the level of beasts. But they felt no weaker than their riders, at least. If nothing else, they were imposing.

“Alright, rune in place… Let’s go back up.”

Health : 8796 / 8796

Stamina : 3431 / 3662

Mana : 78334 / 94000

Just as she checked her stats, she saw her health drop again.

Health : 6 597 / 6 597

[Key Targets : 4/5] ->[Key Targets : 3/5]

[Invaders remaining : 81053]

I need to hurry…

Phasing from buried tunnel to buried tunnel, Sofia resurfaced inside a house not too far from the burned zone. From the rats’ information, the shield mage was still there with half of the griffin riders. Sofia was stunned that these human mages still had the guts to separate when three of them already died by her hands, but she wasn’t going to complain about it. She was too deep into it to change her plan now anyway. She would keep killing the invaders’ leadership until no one was left to stop her army of skeletons from getting rid of the tens of thousands of soldiers, which she was confident they could do.

From what she had seen, the shield mage’s attacks didn’t look too menacing. She was more worried about the griffin riders. Anyway, her strategy did not involve her directly fighting at all.

Sofia moved from house to house, getting closer to the burned zone where the mage still was. When she saw him through a window, she understood why he was still there. Though she had expected the Vampire skeletons to be dead because she had lost connection with them, they were being held back inside a spherical shield.

They didn’t understand that sunlight was the problem and chose to pin them down instead of trying to kill them.

Well.

Sofia used [Graveyard of the Righteous] again. She was getting really adept at preventing the tombstones from showing up, and the skeletons did not rise if she told them not to, making the skill very hard to notice to anyone not actively scanning the mana movements in the ground. The man was currently flying a few meters above the shield he was maintaining to contain the Vampire Skeletons. There was very little chance he would feel anything despite being quite alert.

Sofia let the graveyard skeletons carry her near the shield underground. Then all she did was to let Pareth out above her.

The mage panicked at the giant skeleton’s sudden appearance and flew up. Pareth jumped up and used the power of his runic tattoo to take a step in the air and jump up again. In a scene very similar to how he had killed one of the specter avian mages, he grabbed the flying mage with both hands. The mage was protected inside an egg-shaped magic shield, but that didn’t prevent Pareth from getting a firm hold on the whole thing.

As they fell down, Pareth bashed the shielded mage into the ground like a monkey trying to open a hard fruit. The shield held, and the mage riposted, sending broken shards of shields crashing against Pareth’s skull like a storm of broken glass.

That did no damage.

The five nearby griffin riders finally reacted, some firing mithril-tipped arrows, some using elemental spells. Pareth’s health didn’t move as he smashed the mage and his shield into the ground repeatedly until it finally broke. It took two more slams to end the screaming shield mage’s life.

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