Saintess Summons Skeletons
Chapter 663: Pawns

Zephir looked at the screen then at his notepad, taking notes on everything Sofia was doing.

“What do you think?” Saria probed, “She has a chance, right?”

“She’s already survived almost as long as you did,” Zephir answered, “But still, first place is a real stretch, especially knowing what’s to come…”

“I’m just glad I chose the other event…” Cinthia commented from behind, “The chat seems pretty split on whether she can get first place or not. They’re taking bets…”

Saria turned around, “Again?”

“Again…” Cinthia confirmed.

“The ones still betting against her aren’t so smart, huh?”

“Death bet against her taking first place this time…” Cinthia pointed out, “That convinced a lot of them to take the same side.”

“Just because it’s the historical ranking doesn’t mean it’s unbeatable,” Saria said with a shrug, “I think she’s got it. Probably… She still has three respawns…”

As the god’s appendage retracted, Sofia focused on fixing the bones of her right arm as much as possible. Her mana was still low, and nothing she had done yet had seemed to arm the rotten abyssal deity, so it was time for a new strategy.

The opportunity for that came by itself, as the tentacle whipped Sofia off of itself, throwing her toward what seemed to be a wall of pointy deep-sea corals. The coral reef opened up as she neared it, like a giant monster’s maw.

That must be part of the god. Sofia thought. It’s too big not to be.

The coral reef opened more and more, jagged coral structures like a thousand rows of sharp teeth ready to crush their prey, as the water currents were engulfed by that opening, sucking Sofia in. She did not fight it.

The coral maw snapped shut as Sofia was between them.

[Summon Self]

Teleporting safely deeper Inside of the creature’s now closed mouth, Sofia took the initiative to dive down its strange throat.

You’re going to learn, I am notoriously hard to swallow.

The creature’s throat was so large, Sofia could easily fly down it, quickly making her way to a gigantic, cavernous stomach. Countless dead marine creatures lay at the bottom, some small some larger than a house, floating in a bubbly purple goo that did not mix at all with the sea water.

I can feel Pestle’s location again from here! She’s quite far down… Let’s try to join–

Nevermind.

The stomach’s walls grew three large wart-like structures in an instant, and Sofia could already tell from the mana within that this was going to be a tough fight coming her way. Pareth appeared next to Sofia, his weight quickly making him sink down.

Do I just use the avatar now? Sofia wondered, looking at here mana slowly crawling back up to almost one million. No, I should trust Pareth here. Precast a star or not? It’s a bet on whether they are undead or not… Let’s try, worst case I just lose some mana.

Big monsters emerged from the stomach warts. The one furthest from Sofia, and with the most mana was like a small translucent glowing jellyfish with tentacles all over. The second one closer to Sofia, was a flat orange worm with thousands of blue legs, each one the size of one of her arms. Lastly from the third wart at the bottom of the stomach near the purple goo, emerged a strange tower-shaped crab with four long pincer claws, facing off against Pareth.

Sofia smiled under her helmet. Not undead. She only needed two more seconds to finish casting her spell.

The monsters were not going to just give her that extra time. The crab tower’s long pincers thrusted at Pareth like deadly swords while the flat worm rushed toward Sofia, its long body undulating in the currents.

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Pareth’s halo and sanctified grounds flared up, illuminating the cavernous stomach of the god. He held a shield in his left hand and a javelin in the right. Teleporting to Sofia, he narrowly avoiding the crab’s attack, bashing his shield against the incoming maws of the worm, and in the same move, throwing his spear at the jellyfish monster further up. His shield broke from the hit, but it and the javelin reformed in his hands before the ribbon worm could even recover from the blow.

The jellyfish was pierced by the javelin, but it gave no sign of caring, and Sofia could tell it was still channeling its spell.

Down below, the crab monster wasted no time to aim at Pareth’s new position with his pincers, ejecting them one by one like giant arrows.

I’ll deal with this. Sofia told Pareth, letting him focus on dealing with the worm which started attacking again, trying to swim around him to get to Sofia. Two of the pincers were aimed directly at Pareth’s core from below while the other two were aimed more to the side, likely to hit his legs or ribs. The asterite chest appeared under Pareth just as the pincers arrived, blocking the two aimed at his core. The pincers hit the bottom of the chest, pushing it up between Pareth’s legs with enough force that it shattered his armor of light, but he was unharmed from this hit. The other two pincers failed to hit enough bones at once for it to go over the 10% threshold under which Pareth negated all damage.

Using the upwards push to his advantage, Pareth stabbed the worm from under, his javelin of light coming out from the other side of the worm’s hard shell.

Finally, at the same time, both Sofia and the Jellyfish’s casts were over.

On her side, Sofia summoned a Saintomancer’s star, while the Jellyfish summoned hundreds of red crystals everywhere in the stomach. The mana inside of which was extremely unstable.

PARETH BACK!

Thankfully, Pareth was close enough to return to Sofia’s storage ring as the crystals exploded.

Sofia boasted some incredible explosion resistance, hence why she choose to take the hit by herself. [Venerable Physique of the Primeval Void] provided 50% explosion damage resistance, and her mana heart’s [Explosion resistance] itself gave another 50%, stacking up to 75% total. Sofia was pretty certain that [Angel’s bolt] gave her some additionnal explosion resistance, and after all of that, [Heat Death] cut all damage in half again. Since the trial’s twin ruleset malus doubled all damage taken, it essentially nullified [Heat Death]’s reduction, which meant Sofia would still take around 25% of the explosion’s damage.

The crystals all exploded at once.

Sofia suffered from the explosion of the nearest crystal, blowing away most of what remained of her body, but leaving her bones almost intact. Her mana heart was safe inside of the armguard, where there was plenty of space as her right arm had been destroyed earlier. All the other explosions were completely negated by [Singularity Edict].

About 15% health left, I won’t be able to move…

Wait wha…

As Sofia analyzed a thousand things in the heat of the battle, watching as the 100 thousand mana Saintomancer’s star she had just summoned was starting to collapse, she saw her life total jump up out of nowhere. The worm seemed unbothered by the red crystal explosions, and it started to attack again, but the star exploded, pushing it back with a violent pulse of holy light. Only then, allowed a moment to think, did Sofia understand what was really happening to her. [Sanctified Grounds]’s physical stats bonus, including health, was quadrupled for Skeletons.

Pareth appeared again now that the explosions were over, a sword in each hand, he swung at the water, launching rays of [Arclight] at the Jellyfish, hitting it at the same time as the pulse of holy light from the star crashed into it.

The Jellyfish writhed, clearly hurt from the attacks, but Sofia couldn’t see it, relying entirely on her mana senses now, she instead kept track of the crab tower’s movements. Its pincers had already regrown, and it was rushing up the side of the stomach, completely unbothered by the pulse of light, and jumped off in Sofia’s direction while Pareth brawled with the worm, preventing it from advancing directly toward Sofia with well-placed javelin thrusts. Since all three of the monsters had been hit, however shortly, by the light of the star, they were all cursed to some extent, and focused their assault on the brightest source of light–Sofia.

Sofia could not move to avoid the crab’s attack dut to [Pillar of creation], but since she had around 15% of her mana left, the annoying racial skill preventing her from moving also multiplied her spellcasting range by that many times.

Though annoying, the racial skill allowed for some interesting interactions. Using [Exalted Exoskeleton], Sofia instantly summoned a bone armor 15 times as thick as usual, enveloping her like true coffin of bone. [Pillar of creation] also halving damage from all sources, when the crab’s extended pincers stabbed Sofia, they failed to even pierce through the entire thickness of the armor.

Pareth took advantage of the fact that the crab had come so close. His claws were extended, meaning it couldn’t defend himself when Pareth teleported himself directly on it, the possible landing points of his teleportation expanding 15 times farther from Sofia than usual.

Sofia switched to Pareth’s vision and used that and her own senses to give him directions. Strike under the third carapace layer from the top!

Pareth’s javelin crashed down on the weak spot between the layers of the crab’s carapace. It pierced through the hard layer, then a soft one, then hit another hard ‘thing’, the creature’s mana heart, destroying it in one blow.

[You have defeated Elite monster ‘Rook of the Abyssal God - Level 300’ five seconds have been added to your survival timer.]