Saintess Summons Skeletons

By pooling together the random stuff in Sofia and Alith’s storage rings, Ihuarah managed to find substitutes for the ingredients he needed, and proceeded to explain the plan. First of all, they used the compass to triangulate the exact position of the armor piece. Then Sofia, put on some immortality runes both for safety and to mask her presence. Ihuarah proceeded to make some thin wire out of the sand, having Sofia store it and explaining how it works while insisting that it would not hold its shape for long once out of storage. He also gave her some paste he made out of crushed resin that he carved out of the pyramid’s bricks, mixed with sugar and other stuff.

Finally, Ihuarah gave her temporary invisibility and used his magic to make a small air pocket in the sand under the pyramid, from which he then silently sliced a way inside.

Sofia’s role was now only to execute Ihuarah’s master plan.

And now I’m alone. Supposedly the armor piece is sixty meters ahead.

This was one of the lower levels of the inverted pyramid under the regular one, Sofia entered directly inside of an unlit corridor.

I only need to be careful not to move too fast, not make sound, not trigger traps.

Sofia advanced through the dark corridor, which was not very different from the ones of the higher floors she had been trapped in the previous time.

More maze, uh? At least I’m used to that now. Such a pointless waste of bricks.

Advancing carefully, Sofia was especially wary of spatial shenanigans like the ones the dwarf had set up on the higher floors, but she didn’t find any. Her improved mana perception told her something about this place, which was that there wasn’t much mana at all.

As Sofia explored the level, she discovered a few rooms. The use for some of them was unclear, others were simply filled with holes in the wall in which zombies rested, eyes closed, their arms crossed in front of their chests.

Were these heroes necromancers? Who wraps zombies up in bandages, seriously? Were they too squeamish to look at their rotting entrails or something? If you’re going to make zombies you should be ready to accept that they stink!

The zombies did not react to Sofia’s passage whatsoever, but she could feel their mana, they were clearly undead. Is the discretion approach working, or are they simply not attacking because of the passive effect of [Runeforged Overlord]? I almost want to poke one just to check, but that may not be so smart…

The further Sofia explored, the more asleep zombies she found lining the walls. Was that part of the ritual or something? I must be getting closer. I’d really like to have the compass right now… Dumb item, why did it have to be soulbound?

I need to hurry, Ihuarah’s cloaking charm won’t last forever…

Sofia had time to make an escape plan, she mapped out a good part of the floor, and discovered alternative paths she could take to lead back to her exit point. After pushing further into the level, she found a set of two closed doors, physically sealed by some kind of yellow wax.

They’re in there I guess. Mana’s completely blocked by the bricks and that weird wax. This is exactly like Ihuarah predicted, something’s keeping them in.

It’s not like mana can’t get in though. The domination effect could affect us from the outside so there’s obviously a way for mana to get out that doesn’t let the mutated Apostles through. I just need to find it.

The sealed room was undoubtedly some kind of central chamber of the pyramid, Sofia walked all the way around it, not finding any glaring defect which she could take advantage of. It was best if she found the way mana already had to communicate with the outside, but since her stealth was running out, she had to go for the slightly riskier plan instead.

Sofia found a good place to start her plan in the corridor along the central room, on the opposite side of the doors. I’ll go from the back of the room, higher chance that the armor is there. Ihuarah said it’s probably on an altar of some kind, that’s how Apostle rituals usually go.

Out of her storage ring came a brace, some kind of hand drill that Ihuarah had her craft with bones and bless with [Bone dominus]. She also took out the weird resin sludge he had made.

First slather the wall with the resin paste. Use the brace to drill a little hole.

Sofia followed the instructions the shadow had given her. They had expected to have to drill through at least three layers of resin brick with that bone tool, which was why Sofia had to make it extra long and unwieldy, surprisingly, she only had to carve through one brick and she was through.

Shit, did that wall not actually connect to the ritual room?

Despite her worries, Sofia kept her hands moving, taking the hand drill out of the pencil-sized hole. She quickly threaded the strange class cable Ihuarah had made from the pendant’s sand inside the hole, and sealed the sides with the resin plaster she had already put on the wall.

She had been sweating during the whole process, creating a hole meant creating one more way for the Apostles to detect her and attack her through. Now she was safe, the glass cable supposedly only letting light and a minimal amount of mana come through, and she was in complete darkness at the moment.

Now I’m supposed to look into the bigger end of the cable on my side, let’s see.

I can actually see inside!

Inside the room, from Sofia’s viewpoint, she could see a large room with ritual circles painted in red on the floor and walls. She could see the other side of the wax-sealed doors from there, the rituals extended over them as well. The two mutated Apostles were there, she could only see dangling hooves on opposite walls to the left and right.

Kind of goat-like hooves, black fur. And I can’t really see above that. I wanted to know what they look like… But I can’t move the cable more, it might poke out of the wall and that could be bad. Though if they didn’t notice the drilling, silent as it was, I doubt they’d notice the cable.

Well, not the time to take risks…

Sofia found what she came here for, or at least she thought she did, there were three closed stone boxes on an elevated platform right under where she had pierced her hole.

Three boxes? I only expected a piece of armor on a stand or something… Can I manage that?

The plan was ‘simple’, supposedly, if she could solely thread a super fine bone filament through the hole with [Bone dominus] and touch the items with it, she would be able to store them into her ring as if she was touching them herself.

And since it’s using the mana already in the room and not mine, this shouldn’t alert them until the moment I store the items as long as I go slow enough. Then I can cut the cable and re-seal the room completely with the resin plaster thing.

But can I really store these three big boxes all at once? Compound items are fine to store but it’s harder when things are far away. Simultaneously storing two things is still fine but three? Why does storing things have to be so hard when taking them out is so effortless…

Since she had no time to hesitate with only a few minutes left on the cloaking charm, which was possibly the only reason the two Apostles inside hadn’t noticed her yet, she had to go fast. There was always the possibility to leave, refresh the charm and come back in, but she didn’t want to have to go through this place more than she needed to.

Slowly, a bone thread as fine as a hair slithered through the hole in the tiny interstice between the brick and the glass cable. When it entered the room, she made it split into three and follow the wall, then the ground, until it reached the boxes. This was extremely hard to do as her mana senses were blocked from observing the other side of the wall. She could only rely on sight, and trust that the bone threads were doing what she hoped from the input she gave them through the side she held.

It’s touching, right? I think the threads are touching the boxes. Alright, now or never.

Sofia sent her mana through the bone threads to store the stone boxes.

She only managed to store two, the Apostles noticed, through the glass cable she could see their hooves move on the walls. They screamed. Their yells had nothing sapient to them, they were the pure, mad howls of bloodthirsty beasts. With a clean cut of her mithril dagger, Sofia severed the glass and bone threads, and hastily plugged the hole with the resin paste.

Then she ran.

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