Chapter 539 - A bunch of backseaters

What a mess.

Too bad I had to smash him up that much, he would have been a nice skeleton for Bookie.

[Scrambled Mana-Heart]: The Mana-heart of swordsman Rekosi Lengstone. Its sudden removal created this scrambled pattern. Perhaps your first real stone for trading?

An inscription in ancient human can be found engraved on the inside, reading: ‘Heart of Velania’.

Why does it feel like it’s shaped a bit like a sword? Pretty patterns but I’m not sure about the green and purple hue… And again with this heart of Velania thing. All the trials of might enemies are going to have one of those, I guess? I’ll have to be careful not to break them in case they’re needed later.

Sofia stored the swordsman’s mana heart and started to separate all the bones everywhere to store them back as well. 

Good thing that I didn’t summon Cinthia, could have ended badly…

This guy was quite strong. Completely bypassed [Dodge me]’s space warping effect and everything. But there wasn’t much behind his attacks aside from sword strikes. Though I guess he did know exactly where to strike to get my mana heart, even if he never touched it.

Seems like high-level fighting is all about hitting that weak point… That makes the piercing angel bolts a really good weapon for the job. Acromegon really knew what he was doing when he designed that.

While Sofia was busy storing all the bones while puppeteering her own body with her armor, she felt like she was slowly regaining some control over her muscles.

Are they healing even with the runes up?

Looking at her health, it was not moving one bit, but when she opened up her armor and cut through the skin on her belly to check the muscles underneath, they were in fact slowly stitching back up together.

Well damn. The skin fixes itself ever since VPPV’s ‘get sneezed on by a dragon’ step, I can fix the bones myself, and now the muscles also self-repair through the healing restrictions? I still don’t get the health back and healing spells don’t work but it’s almost as if the unlife runes have no more downsides. Almost. 

And well… Actually that’s good. I used to go for a quick death to activate a rune and heal up, but how do I die now?

Do I crush my mana heart?

Is it safe to do that?

Hmm… I feel like it’s bound to happen at some point, isn’t it? The rune better be able to bring me back from that… Actually, how did I die from the mimic’s acid before? I mostly melted away; don’t know what exactly happened with the mana heart though, I was busy with something else.

When Sofia was done with the cleanup, she sat down in the bloody room and asked for Mr. Scribe’s opinion. He informed her that [False Immortality] would restore her mana heart with no issue if it broke, but that this was liable to leave her control over her own mana unstable for a bit. For a situation where the mana heart breaks without a rune on, it would not be immediately fatal as long as it stayed ‘in her body’, but it would absolutely put her, or anyone else, out of commission.

As for the event of someone forcefully separating someone’s mana heart from their body and soul, Sofia had already experienced the result firsthand.

Now, even with her body mostly functional, she still dispelled her runes to heal up before refreshing them, because missing twenty percent of her health was bugging her. She also reverted her Apostle stance to be able to use her demon spells, figuring only now that had she been quick to use [Regret] before, she could have escaped the tomb mimic with minimum effort.

Once she felt everything was dealt with, she started to walk back, exploring the few doors she had missed without finding much of interest or value, and eventually returning to the entrance with the giant statue of Sorrow.

Right, I’d forgotten about the distant singing. Do they have a zombie choir? 

Sofia snuck through the shadows to the back side of the room, where the distant and muted hymns of an unknown language’s choir could be heard. There was a grand hallway there, its entrance unguarded and without a door, except: there was no light there. The last candles were about a meter from the hallway, and standing in front of it, it was complete darkness. No lone candle in the distance, no nothing, just the choir’s chants, slightly less muted than before.

Hmm… It’s not like that will stop me, but I would rather start with places where I can see at least a little bit if I have a choice.

Sofia continued to walk around Sorrow’s statue. She had explored the palace’s left wing first, so now was time to get to the right wing. There she found doors leading to the known setup of the long corridor with a candle at the end, and she rushed through expecting to find something at the end, but instead she found herself in a room full of dust and debris. There were broken crates, torn robes and pieces of candelabra, all messily stacked, and lit by a single candle in a hanging lantern.

This wing was full of many similar rooms, and slowly Sofia started to piece things together, these were living quarters repurposed as a dump. Sofia recognized remnants of a cafeteria, large bathing quarters, dormitories, and such other places, all abandoned, unneeded by the place’s undead inhabitants.

I suppose the palace wasn’t always used as a trial place full of undead. Nothing very exciting here, though…

Sofia kept roaming through the abandoned part of the palace. Many rooms were unlit or totally blocked off by the mess, which slowed Sofia down a lot, but every so often she would find a corridor with a candle at the end, and they always seemed to lead her out of the right wing’s many dead ends.

After hours of fruitless exploration, a corridor with a lit candle led her to a rather large room with a big square hole in the floor.

“Oh. Looks like there was some kind of lift here, judging by the pulleys on the ceiling.”

A bone appeared in Sofia’s hand, and she threw it into the hole, which she could not see the bottom of, as the only light nearby was the lone candle behind her in the corridor.

After dropping the bone, she waited.

“Deep hole…”

It was only after about twenty seconds that she felt like she heard a muffled sound.

“Was that even it? That’s a long long fall. And the hole’s too narrow to really deploy my wings. Climbing back up will be a pain…”

Sofia looked down into the hole, which was still dark.

“Man… What if it’s a hole mimic? I’ll jump in and next thing I know I get trapped inside of a giant stomach.”

After a bit of reflection Sofia decided to jump, but not before she prepared a giant bone sword to ride on as she fell, Mornn style. If Sun’s saintess could use giant swords, then everybody could. And that way if it turned out to really be a hole mimic, she’d at least hurt it a bit as she landed. That was how she ended up sitting on a twenty-meters-tall bone sword hanging from a single pulley over some ancient dark hole. 

“I really need to learn more about what Mimics can and can’t do before I go to any other dungeon…” Sofia said with a sigh before she cut the bone loop connecting the sword to the pulley.

After a long fall, the sword landed quite softly compared to what Sofia had expected, sinking deeply into something soft almost all the way to the hilt. There was no light at all, and no sound either.

Well shit, did I really sink the sword into a mimic?

Sofia jumped off of the sword’s guard, and from the sensation of what she landed on, she deduced it was just loose dirt.

Probing around with bone tendrils revealed that she was in an open space wider than she could map out, as she did not find any walls, just more dirt under her feet. She started pulling a bone rope out of the large sword to be able to find her way back, and picked a random direction to walk in. She had only taken a few steps when a glowing parchment scroll appeared out of nowhere.

Hey! Alright then, finally something happens. Bring it on!

                                    'Here awaits Gravelord Skantar

                                         Many a soul he put to rest

                                 But who buries the gravedigger?

             He presents himself as your third of nine trials of might

                                     Currently available helpers:

                                                        Pareth

                                                        Cinthia’

Images flashed in front of Sofia’s eyes as usual, first was Pareth, looking exactly the same as last time, and second was Cinthia. She was very close to Sofia’s face, breathing heavily and looking like she was so exhausted she was about to pass out, but she was holding a small piece of paper right in front of Sofia’s eyes, with a few words scribbled on it.

[TallBro] : That’s right! Yes! Almost!

[Twistyface] : Nonono, a little bit more to the left!

[Daddy Hatred] : I swear you all are completely blind! The ritual obviously points more to the right so she should rotate twenty degrees!

[Halfsies] : You know nothing about measurements, she’s perfectly aligned – I’m telling you.

[Twistyface] : Agh, you’re too far to the left now!

[TallBro] : Try standing on your tiptoes.

[Daddy Hatred] : YOU FUCKER DOMINATION NOW’S NOT THE TIME FOR YOUR WEIRD SHIT!!!

[TallBro] : You’re the weird shit! It’s not my fault she’s so short! The magic lens appeared almost next to the ceiling last time. Why in Death’s name do you think it’ll be different this time, HUH?!

[|||||] : (；・∀・)

[Daddy Hatred] : Don’t lock your fucking door, Dom, I’m coming! Imma bash your skull in until you’re shorter than her!

[Twistyface] : Perfect! Don’t move!

[Crybaby] : Any second now…

[TheJailed] : … Wish you the best, Sorrow, and good luck Cinthia. I think I’ll go back to watching the classroom for now…

[Crowface] : Same, gotta go make sure my daughter isn’t about to poison herself again. Someone ping me when they get to the library.

Sofia just about had time to understand what she was reading before the vision faded away and returned her to the dark reality where the glowing parchment was all she could see.

‘PICK ME FOR FIFTH!!!’

Woah! That was a bit startling… Where are the other three?

Hopefully they’ll show up again next time…

She looks so exhausted. Did she rush through whatever they are doing just to tell me this now? Such a specific request means she got some insider information from the Recessed. Alright, Cinthia for the fifth fight, noted. Now the question is, do I need Pareth for this ‘Gravelord Skantar’? Probably not, huh. Better to keep Pareth for the end anyway.

Another fight with ‘loneliness’ ahead.

What flavor of choir do I summon this time? It’s been two failures out of two tries so far… 

Hey wait, it’s dirt…

I can summon the graveyard here!