Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Gah! Almost there!” Sofia cried out as the skeleton she was working on fell back to its original state as a pile of golden bones. “What is it that failed this time?” she asked the Engineer skeleton. He was honestly doing more than half of the work while Sofia mostly supplied the materials, ideas and mana.

Climbing on the vertical ladder sticking out of the ground near the ritual site, the Engineer pointed at the twelfth bone-drawn ritual circle held up above the lifeless pile of bones. Since Sofia’s new bones were great mana conductors, she was able to shape them directly into ritual circles now. Currently there were about twenty of these circles stacked one above another, as it was easier to compound them like this than to fit them all inside of one huge ritual circle drawn on the ground.

“So it’s the core engraving part again… Golem necromancy is trickier than I thought… Keep an eye on it and tell me where exactly it fails, I’m launching it again, just give me a second to fix the core…”

I get that stuffing the fake soul inside of a golem core isn’t how you do it but on paper it should work…

A while later, while Sofia was working on inserting yet another new ritual circle inside the stack to hopefully get the fake soul to better fit where it should, something rolled on Sofia’s cleavage before dropping on the floor with a thud.

Sofia looked down, “Oh! A pearl already?! So my current rate is about every thirty days? Quite the upgrade from two a year.”

She stored the pearl and focused her attention back on the ritual circles.

“Damn, it’s been thirty days already… What the hell are you doing Alith…?”

“It’s working! PARETH! IT’S WORKING!”

Pareth appeared near Sofia, his hands full of orange mushrooms and bone gardening tools, he watched as the ‘human’ skeleton Sofia had made herself started to self-assemble around a bone golem core that hundreds of small mana bursts were engraving from the inside out while the artificial soul was getting stuffed inside.

Sofia was full of glee to see her hard work finally pay off until she noticed something wrong. “Wait, shi- Ah… Whatever…” The femur and humerus got mixed up somehow… It’ll still work…

It took about three minutes before the skeleton golem was fully assembled and a ghostly light started to shine within its eye sockets.

“Come here,” Sofia ordered, and the skeleton walked forward with stiff movements just like a golem would. She did not feel much of a connection to the skeleton, but if she did everything right, it should only ever listen to her commands.

“Now do a flip!”

It was clunky, but the skeleton performed a successful backflip.

“Now fly!”

There was no reaction.

“What is two plus two?”

Again, no reaction from the skeleton.

“Everything is working as expected so far…” Sofia said to herself as she walked up to the skeleton and put her hand on its golem core which floated safely behind its ribs.

There were a few reasons why Sofia had gone for a weird golem-skeleton combination, but the main one was simply that they were the perfect minions to take care of Zangdar.

Basic Skeletons with a fake soul had the disadvantage of eventually returning to a useless pile of bone after being away from the necromancer for too long, while golems had the big disadvantage of needing to be either pre-programmed through the core before their activation or controlled directly. With the mashup of the two, the skeleton golem could be given live orders like a regular skeleton, while also benefiting from the large ‘order memory’ stored in the golem core, and without risk of ever disappearing. It would only stop functioning when its mana ran dry, until it received mana again.

Additionally, the skeleton being a skeleton was in itself a big plus in Sofia’s eyes.

“I dub thee, Skelem the first!” She jokingly said while filling up the golem core to the brim. “The core can take about 300 000… Not terrible. Probably enough for the Skelems to function for a few months? The drain seems pretty slow, but maybe it’s because it’s doing nothing.”

Sofia brought a broom out of her storage and passed that to the Skelem, “There’s a lot of midenicite dust around the castle, sweep it all up into one big pile. And take care of the broom, we don’t have a replacement. Report to me when you’re done.”

Without a word, the Skelem took the broom and walked toward the castle.

“Not very lively, but that should get the work done,” Sofia commented while she turned to Pareth, “So, does the sanctified grounds work on it?”

Pareth nodded in response, and deactivated the skill.

“Great. So it definitely still counts as a skeleton by most metrics, despite being completely fake. It’s just not real enough for you or Bookie. Thanks for coming, you can return to your gardening, unless you want to come check in on Remia with me?”

Pareth disappeared inside of Sofia’s storage ring, and came back out without the gardening tools.

“Let’s walk there. I’m thinking I should make a few more bone trees around here…”

Sofia and Pareth discreetly entered Remia’s room. It was still the same guest room in the castle that they had first dropped her in. She had not woken up a single time since they had put her there, but she still seemed as healthy as a wood creature could look, so Sofia did not know whether she should worry or not.

Interestingly, anything wooden in the room, like the flooring and the large exposed beams holding the ceiling were all burgeoning. There were already quite a few red flowers and leaves growing out of the long dead wood, giving the room a strange but peaceful allure.

“Her mana is still flowing smoothly,” Sofia whispered after observing the sleeping dryad from up close. “She looks a bit dry, don’t you think? Should I try to feed her blood like I fed the seed?”

Pareth shrugged, visibly as lost as Sofia.

I should have gotten more information on dryads…

Sofia summoned a few drops of blood in the palm of her hand, and, with Remia having no apparent mouth making any kind of regular feeding difficult, Sofia let the blood drip onto Remia’s ‘head’. The blood was absorbed by the wooden head, and that was it.

What the… Should I give more?

Sofia kept summoning drop after drop until she got a reaction, Remia, for the first time, moved in her sleep. She switched from her previous position of ‘hugging Sofia’, to just lying down on the bed. Sofia kept giving her more blood, watching the Dryad’s body regain a subtle luster until the drops of blood stopped getting absorbed by the wood at all.

“Probably a good sign that it’s time to stop… Her mana circulation seems a bit more healthy, I think. Hard to tell. At least she no longer looks dry.”

Hopefully she wakes up soon.

After making nine more Skelems and sending them to perform various menial tasks around the castle, Sofia sat by herself at the edge of her bone platform, looking at the void.

“Should I just change my title for a bit? It might be dangerous but it would also let the system know I’m still alive… Surely they would be done with their internal cleanup by now? Maybe I’ll wait a bit more… Alith is definitely going to come, and if not there’s no way Saria wouldn’t strongarm her into it.”

Not that this would ever be needed. The only way I could imagine Alith not coming is if no one with high mana accepts to come with her, she wouldn’t want to be stuck here again.

This shouldn’t be an issue, though…

Deciding to change her mind, Sofia turned her attention to other things she had been purposely keeping for later in case she needed some distraction.

First was the crown on top of her head, she had not checked the victory list in ages.

[Saintomancer’s Golden crown of Victory] :

Gain a cumulative strength buff from your every Valiant Victories.

Upon losing against a Valiant Victory target, lose related bonus.

This is only active while you wear the crown.

Lesser Victories:

Siren Queen +2%

Zhǎng Lú +2%

Cardinal, Puppet of Scripture +2%

Twin-Headed Sunless Amalgam +2%

Chimera +2%

Valiant Victories:

Ignatius Everbright +5%

Mutated Evranarheimlein +5%

Image of Orvod Maurya Ovohen +5%

Tarren +5%

Sunless Waves +5%

Glorious Victories:

Incarnation of Victory +15%

Saria Aphenoreth +15%

Kidjikkik Destroyer +15%

Item level : 199.

Grade : Flawless.

Restriction : wearer must be Sofia Aphenoreth. Soulbound. System item.

Wait, the Destroyer is a Glorious victory but the two Sunless armies plus the Nightbringer only count as one Valiant?

Fine… Tarren being a Valiant is about what I expected, and the three lesser are all a bit of a stretch, so I suppose overall it’s fine. I’m shocked I even got anything for the Chimera considering I stayed very safe the entire time. So I got a 31% boost since the last time I checked. Pretty nice!

Next in the waiting list should be the quest for my sub-class.

Scrolling up through her logs, Sofia found the old alert message.

[A new class quest is available]

Focusing on it opened the quest.