Chapter 732 - GRAND FINALE: Sofia Vs Earth - Part 5

I should be close enough.

Sofia sent a Nymph to check the surface before coming up. The skeleton died as soon as it even partially left the spiritual plane.

Crap. And now they know my position.

The remaining Nymphs quickly dragged Sofia further toward the coast, several ground-breaker missiles hitting their previous position in a matter of seconds.

Screw this, go further, let’s resurface under the closest ship.

Moments later, the Nymphs pulled Sofia up to the sea floor, under one of the many huge ships near the coast. The waters were dark, but not enough for Sofia to be unable to see.

Even here?!

Four-legged machines, looking like large round spider bubbles, equipped with four directional lights, were actively scouring the sea floor.

Returning to the spirit plane, Sofia let the Nymphs pull her further up, since it was unlikely these small machines would have the firepower to harm her in the spirit plane, even if they would without a doubt spot the Nymphs. And spot them they did. Their legs folded and turned into spinning fans, and the bubble-like machines basically threw themselves at the Nymphs before falling apart. From the blurry shapes of the spirit plane, it was hard to tell exactly what they were trying to accomplish. Sofia only understood when she returned to the physical plane in the lowest level of the ship. The steel under her feet was freezing cold.

Freezing bombs? Were they hoping to keep me trapped in ice?

Doesn’t feel like there’s anyone aboard the ship. All just electricity powered machines. Just my mana senses are enough to disrupt things.

I never knew it was so easy to feel electricity with mana senses… Maybe it’s because there’s no mana around? The source isn’t too far.

Running through a few rooms she couldn’t even begin to understand the purpose of, Sofia found the source of the Ship’s power. This, too, she couldn’t understand, but the energy seemed to come from a large contraption powered by a strange-looking barrel in the center. The Identify gave nothing.

Sofia used her eye to store the weird barrel, and every light inside the ship died down for a second, before starting again, powered from a new energy source on the opposite side.

Though Sofia wanted to spend more time trying to understand how exactly what she was fighting against worked, she immediately sensed the incoming danger coming from her right. Because the interior of the ship was so messy with huge cables everywhere, finding empty space to teleport to wasn’t easy, and the outside wasn’t any better, with all the water turned to ice. She decided to block with her armguard, protecting her head and mana heart.

There was a bang, and an arm-sized metallic projectile pierced a hole through the thick steel hull of the ship before crashing into Sofia’s arm. The damage was minimal, only breaking her arm and shoulder.

It’s the mountain-eaters. She thought, fixing her arm as she felt more similar hits coming from all directions. She jumped up, punching her way through the room’s ceiling, as the room she was just in was pierced from all sides and utterly destroyed. This had been an anticipated move, it seemed, as the room above was also hit.

Three metallic projectiles tore through Sofia’s body as she contorted herself to avoid as many as possible. She was now missing her left leg and arm, and had a wide gaping hole right in the middle of her belly, but at least she had avoided any fatal damage, and it seemed the mountain-eater attacks were over, for the moment. Since it was on a thick layer of ice, the ship was not sinking despite its insides being reduced a burning pile of scrap metal, giving Sofia some time to repair herself. She quickly regrew the missing part of her spine, and grabbed a spare replacement bone body’s leg and arm to reattach.

The spare parts were messily attached, but as long as her bloodlight was correctly spread inside, it would be good enough.

She could already hear the sound of missiles about to come crashing down on the ship.

Bookie, as soon as I’m close enough to liquid water, summon the fishes in there, have them take down the other ships. Two per ship should be enough, all they have to do is eat through the hull and crash through the weird energy barrels on both sides.

Sofia jumped as far as she could into the flaming remains of the ship, and punched through the hull, making her way out just under sea level. The water outside was frozen, but her punch had destroyed it enough for her to be able to jump out of the ship and into the air at the last second before a rain missiles fell onto the ship.

But to Sofia’s surprise, as she was in the air jumping away and looking back at the ship and the coastline behind it, the missiles did not quite explode right away, they seemed to instead release a shimmering fog all around the ship. There was a spark, and Sofia felt herself get pulled back in.

Bad!

She could just about teleport far away enough to get herself into the non-frozen sea water farther from the coast. As she disappeared, the air around the ship exploded.

Vacuum missiles?! Sofia guessed as she bolted the nearest incoming freezing bubble machine coming from the bottom of the sea before they could get too close. Their design is easily recognizable at least. Felt just like getting grabbed by Pareth’s gravity well.

Following Sofia’s earlier order, Bookie summoned the Red flailer skeletons, the five hundred fishes immediately scattering through the waters in groups of two.

The birds are fucking useless with no mana to fly on, but the fishes are perfect!

With no time to waste, Sofia also got Bookie to summon a single Guardian Kidjikkik, and resurfaced. She wanted to keep all the attention on herself until the fishes could take down the ships, since they were the most dangerous part of the army with their mountain-eater cannons.

She felt the danger coming from above again, but this time, she had protection. The guardian Kidjikkik was latched onto her back, his long body covering her like a cape, his shield held up high above Sofia’s head like an umbrella. The flash of light came, and the Kidjikkik’s shield instantly glew up white from the absorbed heat, but the sun blessing was in effect, preventing all damage.

Sofia had no time to rejoice about this small victory, however, as a swarm of flying black things hovered all around her, like trapping her in a giant sphere. Ah shit. The flyers were all mounted with the same weapon the woman who had shot at Sofia’s face in the city had, sniper rifles.

Because of the Kidjikkik, summoning the Asterite chest for protection wasn’t an option, so Sofia opted for thick walls of Lumian bones instead, forming a cube around her that she held up with her aura. The flyers fired at the cube. Sofia quickly giving it the permanent frame blessing before summoning the graveyard Nymphs again. Leaving the cube behind with a spare bone body inside as a lure, Sofia dove back down into the spirit plane sea. 

Not a damn second to breathe!

Despite the mess of the situation, because Sofia spent so little time attacking, her mana was still doing well at just over three million left, and her health was still at a comfortable 70%, the only issue was her stamina, which was in a quick decline. The skeleton fishes, at least, were starting to take down the closest ships, which would make things easier. The mountain-eater projectiles weren’t that fast, compared to the light attacks anyway, so if the closest cannons were taken care of, Sofia felt she could easily avoid them like the first time.

Leaving before I deal with either all the mountain-eaters or all the missile launchers is dangerous, I can’t quite avoid both at once when I cross the sea. I don’t know how far the missiles can fly but I have to assume it’s not that easy to get out of their range… So I just need to survive long enough for the fishes to take down the ships.

On the sea floor, Sofia returned to the physical plane to bolt away a few bubble machines.

Pestle.

The tiny fairy appeared in Sofia’s hand, looking around to assess the situation. Her aura that was usually very hard to see was now very clear to Sofia’s eyes, the entirety of the mana that kept Pestle ‘alive’ floating in tight currents around her bones and mana heart.

There’s no mana but you should still be able to fly for a bit with your reserves right? Go up and destroy as many black flyers as you can, you can go all out, I will resummon you later.

“Very destroy!” Pestle enthusiastically answered, her voice deformed by the water, before she shot up through the cold water.

Unlike Sofia, the fishes and Pestle were hard to target, it seemed, and while Sofia hid under the sea floor in the spirit plane, the skeletons did a number on the mechanical human army.

I can’t stay here too long, I’m starting to feel weird already.

I used to be able to stay in the spirit plane without issue for a lot longer. I thought it would get better with levels but it looks like it’s actually getting worse. It wasn’t that bad in the Veik hive.

Ah… Pestle’s mana ran out. It’s probably time to head out.

Having taken a bit more distance while she was hiding, Sofia resurfaced again, much further from the shore.

That’s at least seventy ships down. There are flyers left but not nearly as many. As, they spotted me again already… Another wave of missiles incoming. I should be able to survive that. Time to get the fuck out.

Stepping onto thin air, Sofia jumped away.

At the apex of her jumps, she felt slow enough that [Dodge-Me] reverted to the order state for a moment, allowing her to step on the air again. That was how she usually jumped up to get a better view. Makes my trajectory predictable but this is so much fast than dragging myself around with my aura or swimming.

The remaining mountain-eater cannons shot at her with uncanny precision, perfectly anticipating where she would be when the projectiles reached her despite the long distance, but since it was like this, small reposition mid-jump buy having her aura yank her bones around was all Sofia needed to avoid the non-explosive metallic rounds. That constant dodging game slowed her down enough that the first wave of missiles reached her before she could get too far, but Sofia had anticipated the blow. She teleported forward at the last second, summoning as large a bone wall as she could behind her. The shockwave from the explosion pushed the bone wall away like a sail in the wind, launching Sofia forward fast enough that she completely out of danger.

See you later, I got places to go! 

Sofia left the armada behind, soaring through the air to the north-east along the southern european coast.