Chapter 731 - GRAND FINALE: Sofia Vs Earth - Part 4

Even inside of Sofia’s makeshift bunker, the explosion was blinding and deafening. Sofia’s bones shattered from the shockwave, though that was the kind of damage which would quickly heal. The issue was the temperature.

Inside of her Asterite chest Sofia was getting cooked alive, and there was nothing she could really do about it. Since the bone she had filled the chest with was getting burned to a crisp faster than her aura could heal it, she switched the blessing of permanent frame to her own bones, and waited for the heat to die down, her health plummeting by the second.

In the end, only her bones survived, even her arm hiding inside of the dragon scale armguard turned to ash.

I think it should be about done now?

Hmm… Even if I get rid of the blessing I still can’t move with my health under 15%... I have to use a rune.

Fishing the admin dagger from the pile of ash in the bottom of the chest with a bone tendril, Sofia stabbed her mana heart.

There we go. Undo the blessing. Perfect.

This heat… My explosions almost feel like a joke in comparison. Getting roasted isn’t too bad though, I’m so used to it by now… Alright…

Sofia stored the chest away.

Lords… It’s like the hole I made crashing into the moon. I can barely see through all that dust… Probably a good time to try to escape their tracking. Bookie, get me the sandworm.

Sofia sat inside of a bone cabin, latched inside of the sandworm’s ribs, with the other skeletons sitting next to her.

“And that’s it so far, now we’re following the map, I think. The explosion was a bit disorienting. I have my rune back up already, so if anything this last attack only helped us.”

“Is it possible they think they killed you?” Bookie asked.

“Not a chance, Jin has to know, otherwise the even would have ended, right?”

“Oh… Do you think they will try the giant boom again?”

“Probably not right away,” Sofia guessed, “But maybe if they manage to weaken us enough they could try again to finish me off. I’m more worried about the light attacks. If they can do them faster than they did earlier, it could become a real– Stop!”

The sandworm immediately stopped digging through the sand.

“Danger?” Pestle asked, looking up from Sofia’s lap.

“Something crossed through my mana senses above ground,” Sofia whispered, “I thought we were deep enough but they might have managed to still track us somehow.”

“Maybe it’s an animal?” Bookie asked, copying Sofia’s hushed voice.

“I’m not sure. Like everything else here it had no mana so I really only got a blurry shape, but it was like a… Square bird flying in a straight line right above the sand. Quite fast, too.”

“Is baby plane?” Pestle asked.

“I doubt that how planes work, but in a sense, maybe… It was about two meters across, I’d say. Ah, it’s coming back… Stay quiet… Gone again. They definitely know we’re around here I think, they just don’t know where exactly.”

“Maybe we need to dig deeper?” Bookie asked.

“That would slow the worm down too much. Let’s go again, I’ll just stop us whenever I feel that thing coming nearby.”

Sofia steered the sandworm toward the north, avoiding the strange things on the surface however she could. At first she would always stop right away when she spotted one, but as the number of these sand watchers increased, she started to correct the sandworm’s trajectory to avoid their path instead, only stopping when one came too close.

A long while later, the sandworm started to slow down considerably.

It looks like we’re almost out of the desert. “Get back inside everyone we’re stopping here.”

Leaving the sandworm behind and telling it to go east as a diversion, Sofia got the graveyard Nymphs to bring her almost to the surface.

Surroundings clear, let’s get out.

Let’s see…

Hmm, still kind of the desert, but these small mountains are what stopped us. I see.

Jumping to the top of the highest nearby vantage point, Sofia looked around.

Some villages in this direction, all look abandoned, and back in the desert… Zooming in on a moving point with her left eye, Sofia could finally see what had been tracking her. It was some kind of mostly flat black thing.

Too narrow for someone to fit inside. Too bad I can’t Identify it from so far away. It’s following the sandworm…

I might not have long until they realize I escaped, let’s move.

If I trust the map, the coast shouldn’t be too far north, maybe a fifteen minute run?

Sofia managed to run in a straight line for about three minutes before her danger sense warned her of an incoming attack. She urgently stopped herself by having her aura pull back on her bones.

A flash of light burned a hole in the ground, right in front of her.

Already?!

How?!

Sofia looked around but there was literally no one. No humans, no planes, no weird flat flying thing, not even any animals. Ah whatever. Let’s keep moving! I’m halfway there!

I wanted to stay discreet but since they already found me…

Sofia channeled an explosive bolt as she ran. She expected more light attacks to come from above but to her surprise minutes passed without any more after the first shot. Finally, after crossing some mountains, she saw the coastline in the distance.

Oh shit.

She almost wanted to turn around, seeing what was waiting for her. The coastline was dark with the troops of the human army. Though there were very few actual human to be seen anywhere, but war vehicles and machines that Sofia couldn’t even begin to understand were lined up along the coast, covering hundreds of kilometers. She couldn’t even begin to count the number of machines on the land, let alone the number of ships of all kinds lined up behind them.

In a way, this was also encouraging, for there to be such a trap ready, this had to be the correct direction.

The army’s assault did not give Sofia much time to think. Planes departed from ships in waves, thousands of flat black flyers took to the skies, launching from containers on the ground, and so many missiles of all shapes and sizes were fired in unison that they hid the army behind a thick curtain of flames and smoke.

I need a star.

The channeling of the saintomancer’s star would take a few seconds, in the meantime, Sofia needed to somehow survive the multiple alerts her new danger senses rung in her mind.

Her instant teleportation dodged the first flash of light from above. That left plenty of alerts for slower projectiles. Huge ship-mounted cannons had fired something at her, though she couldn’t quite tell what, but they were going to reach her fast.

Sofia jumped back, taking cover behind the small mountain she was on to finish her cast, the distance she still had from the army was to her advantage. Just as she was ready to summon the star, the first projectiles hit the mountain behind her.

They were truly just physical projectiles, it seems, provoking no explosion, but carving large holes into the mountain from sheer kinetic force. There were so many, and so spread out, that the mountain Sofia was hiding behind was almost entirely gone after that first volley. And that was just the beginning, as the swarm of missiles had still yet to reach her, and more kept being fired.

Now or never. Sofia jumped as high up in the air as she could.

[Saintomancer’s Star]

Dumping a million mana into one single star, she turned it into its death variant instantly.

The rot started spreading, as far as the eye could see, covering the villages and the desert, the mountains and the trees, the missiles and the planes, nothing escaped from the layer of black rot. Without mana to absorb and sustain it, the rot could only dig into the surface of whatever it touched before having to eat itself, but the star kept applying more, letting it slowly eat through everything. It was a good move, but too slow to prevent the missiles from coming down.

Not dealing with that.

Sofia threw her explosive bolt toward the largest group of ships she could see, and let the graveyard Nymphs drag her underground just as the first missiles started to land.

Faster! Faster! Go down faster!

The rain of explosives carved out the ground as Sofia escaped through it. In her spirit form she was quite vulnerable, although the missiles themselves probably wouldn’t be able to hurt her at all, she had a sneaking suspicion that the light flashes could.

Underground, Sofia advanced toward the army. It did not take long for different missiles to start raining upon the ground. Instead of exploding on the surface, they somehow sent their explosions downward into the earth.

Sofia was far enough that the explosions couldn’t reach her, but all the concentrated firepower of the human army shook even the spirit plane. After only a few seconds, she also felt her Saintomancer star detonate, meaning it had taken too much damage.

It’s too much, I can’t come back up. Not before reaching them.

A voice relatively similar to Pestle’s came from a monitor.

‘Commander! Can I go yet?! We are wasting too many resources!’

Jin shook his head. “Patience, Lilith. Patience. Keep mapping her capabilities for now. Your ME2 won’t be enough, I assure you. We have to slow her down as much as we can, and we can afford to lose the Mediterranean armada. She will probably resurface soon, around these coordinates I think,” Jin said, a tablet pen tracing a wide oval shape on a map of the Moroccan coast, ”Align the railguns for the second round, and keep the remaining sniper drones ready.”

‘As you wish, Commander.’