Chapter 566 - The blossom priestess

“W- What are these?” Velania asked, turning the tablet in her hands, observing all sides.

“I used to be a system employee,” Everelle answered, “this is one of the tools we had access to. Good chance I could still have access because my contract was cut short before the account expiration… Bingo!”

Meanwhile the words on the tablet in Sofia and Velania’s hands changed after a few seconds.

[Unauthorized user detected.]

[Please leave this item where you found it. An agent will be dispatched for retrieval.]

[Error]

[Couldn’t reach main:HANDLER]

[Trying again in 30s]

“Oh shit,” Everelle said after fiddling with her tablet for a bit, “Agh, I should have known that much neutronium would be too expensive… Sofia… My words will be a bit more expensive than I thought… You need to hold for another… fifteen to twenty rounds?”

“Fifteen to twenty…” Sofia started calculating but Velania was faster.

“You have plans for things worth several billion points?”she asked in disbelief, her eyes wide open.

“Well, we are trying to kill you here. To be fair, I’m the first surprised to see that my world’s technology is valued so highly. I have to thank the censor for being so lax lately, I could never look these things up when I was still an official employee…”

“I- I don’t think you will last until there…” Velania said, sounding conflicted about potentially winning.

“I still have a few things up my sleeves… But I’m not that confident either,” Sofia admitted to Everelle, “I’ll try, but if we get to four cursemarks, maybe you should take over immediately with weaker things.”

“I believe in you” Everelle said with a thumbs up before taking some distance and sitting in the sand again, eyes fixated on her Operator terminal.

The timer was about to hit one minute again, so Velania panickedly slapped her hand against the orb, “Withering wave!”

The orb started glowing purple.

‘Withering wave; 69 420’

I have a bad feeling about this one.

Sofia’s intuition was proven right, as she immediately felt the internal pull on her soul from [Heat Death], warning her that this was going to inflict her actual damage. Taking a split second decision, Sofia dispelled the attack as it left the orb.

“Heh?!” Velania reacted as her word failed to manifest. “You had a dispel ability all this time?!”

“I never really needed to use it so far,” Sofia answered. Meanwhile, Everelle was having a giggling fit from the side for no apparent reason. Sofia decided to ignore it, “My turn now; the sand is still around so… Solar Sandworm Skeleton!”  

‘Solar Sandworm Skeleton; 100 000’

Several skeletal sandworms appeared underground in the sand, causing the battle room to shake.

Velania was the only one with blood and a heartbeat, she would be the sandworms’ instinctive target.

A total of eight gigantic sandworms emerged from the sand, flying into the air, some fired energy beams at Velania while others charged in her direction.

Velania raised a hand and the sandworms were all reduced to bone dust, falling and mixing with the red sand.

Sofia’s extended hand caught some of the finely pulverized bone powder as it fell, “I don’t know what I expected…”

“I’m not the best fighter but…,” Velania started, fumbling and failing to finish her sentence, “I’ll give you a free round too!” she finally decided. “Artificial sky!”

‘Artificial sky; 200 000’

The drab white walls and the ceiling up above disappeared to show instead an illusion of a clear blue sky.

“Thank you but you don’t have to, I’ll admit I’m a bit at a loss as to what to summon aside from Skeletons from now on, this is quickly getting to amounts of mana I’m not too used to dealing with yet…”

“W- Well… I have to keep trying to win anyway, so I hope you will forgive me…”

“Do what you must. I’m ready,” Sofia confidently reassured Velania, although she wasn’t all that confident that she could actually survive long enough for Everelle to step in. At least she reassured herself with the fact that they had managed to avoid getting any cursemark yet. “Then next, 300 000… How about… Emperor Pearled Snake.”

‘Emperor Pearled Snake; 389 856’

Oh crap, because it’s not the skeleton version it costs a lot more. Still god but that could have been a cursemark if it was just a bit more off…

A single giant Snake appeared in the room, about thirty meters away from the group and the orb, it looked around, seemingly lost, its head stopping in the direction of Velania, before it turned around and darted away, slithering on the red sand as fast as it could, soon getting blocked by the border of the room several hundred meters away.

Understandable…

“A- am I that scary?” Velania asked, sounding like she was on the border of tears.

“I think your mana scared it more than anything else,” Sofia said. “Animals have a way of respecting the strong.”

Velania frowned a bit, pouting ,”I suppose it’s correct to be scared. Sorrowful Meteor.” 

‘Sorrowful Meteor; 612 455’

Ah shit. Is that Vakarian’s attack?!

“Everelle, don’t move,” Sofia called out, using [Summon self] to teleport next to her.

A dozen huge flaming meteorites appeared high in the fake sky.

“I was curious about how you defended against this,” Velania commented from her side, unbothered by the incoming attacks.

Sofia didn’t really have time to answer, and just crouched down then summoned the Asterite chest upside down and already opened above Everelle and herself, creating a last second protection.

The meteorites crashed down, and Everelle morphed her Sunless body to stick to the chest and prevent it from being blown away from them. “GOOD THINKING!” she told Sofia through the attack, screaming yet still being barely audible over the explosive sound of the meteorites striking the red sand battlefield one after the other.

The meteorites stopped, and the Asterite chest was pulled away before Sofia could retrieve it.

There was no more red sand, only a large crater of blue glass with the orb on its small pedestal at the very bottom.

“I’ll be keeping this until the end of the game,” Velanie said with a wink, making the Asterite chest fly far up in the sky with her telekinesis. 

“This makes it the second time this thing gets stolen this week,” Sofia answered with a suppressed laugh. “Fair, no rule against that. And with that we’ve reached the million. I’m starting to run out of things to summon…” With a jump, Sofia landed down near the orb at the bottom of the crater. “How about… Elemental Skeleton Destroyer.”

‘Elemental Skeleton Destroyer; 1 000 000’

Which one is it gonna be?

Wondering what exactly she had just summoned, Sofia [Regret]ed back to Everelle’s side. The undead summon would be reluctant to target her due to [Runeforged Overlord], but Everelle had no such protection, so by doing this Sofia ensured that Velania would be targeted.

Mana left the orb in droves, collapsing into five points all around the gigantic battle room.

Not one destroyer, the orb had summoned all five. Five titanic skeletal Kidjikkik destroyers, one made of yellowed bones, one made of pure white light, one of rampaging blue electricity, one of swirling red blood and one of gray ghostly flames. They roared as they appeared upright in the room kike five pillars holding the heavens.

I feel no link to them. Definitely not the real ones. Sofia barely had the time to think before the Destroyers attacked Velania with full strength.

The bone destroyer crashed down for a physical attack while the other four unleashed a deafening flurry of elemental attacks from all directions. 

Velania stood still in the middle of it all, although impressive, these attacks were still, after all, only worth a combined total of five million mana, less than a percent of what she herself had at her disposal.

Velania raised a hand. For the first time since the beginning of the game, she felt the need to really defend herself.

Everything around Velania stopped. The destroyers, their magic, the sound, the shaking, the heat, it all froze as if held in place by her frail scarred hand.

Her mana! It’s covering everything!

Velania closed her hand. Starting from her closed fist, a strange wave of mana expanded, it looked wrong in a way that Sofia couldn’t quite describe.

Everything that had been covered in Velania’s mana instantly turned into countless white flower petals. Nothing was left of the destroyers or their spells but flower petals raining on the battlefield.

This game is unwinnable…

Everelle simply nodded at the sight, her arms crossed. “I’m really going to have to bring out the big guns… I’m going to need you to protect me from my next summon…” she told Sofia.