Chapter 505 S - The inconveniences of being a cannonball

[You have re-entered the dungeon : Abyss of the damned]

Shaily followed the magisterium into the dungeon.

Name : Sofia (Shaily Ormoncleth)

Age : 19

Class : [Saintomancer] ♢

Level : 48

Health : 240 / 240

Stamina : 238 / 240

Mana : 28344 / 28500

Active Skills (5 / 5)

[Holy Skeleton] - Level 30, Summon Lv. 21

[Heal Undead] - Level 1

[Dispel mist] - Level 8

[Maiden bolt] - Level 4

[Lead the dead] - Level 12

Passive Skills (1 / 5)

♢ [Hand of Ordinance] ♢

Classless Skills (6 / 6)

[Sprint] - Level 6

[Shenanigans II] - Level 4

[Acrobatics] - Level 5

[Jittery] - Level 12

[Decisive] - Level 19

[Evasion] - Level 5

Summoned heroes (1 / 4)

• Lv.21 Pareth (Holy Human Skeleton)

This is as good as it gets… It would have been nice to get the classless up higher but this is the deadline… The trial gave me fifteen months but I basically only had a month to get away from the church. So fucked. I’m guessing Sofia escaped around the same time, unless she had a way to slow her leveling. Anyway… The Oracle should be out of the picture for now.

I only have one shot at this.

For hours, the descent down the dungeon happened as usual, the first levels were already clear of undead, so they had to go deeper, where the Magisterium was starting to struggle against the larger packs of zombies.

Shaily eventually leveled up to 49, and, just as they finished the fourteenth level of the dungeon, the man decided to stop to take his breath and drink.

Shaily walked up to the spiral staircase going down into the abyss that gave the dungeon its name, she looked down at the seemingly bottomless pit.

Without a word, she summoned four shadow sprites and a light sprite while the magisterium was busy drinking. The shadow sprites hid right within the folds of Shaily’s clothes, while the light sprite quickly made its way to the floor right below the one they were on. 

“Any idea what’s down there?” she asked; a question that she had wanted to ask for a while but had kept for this moment.

The man grumbled, “A terrible monster lies at the bottom. Sealed hundreds of years ago by the holy powers of our church’s first Oracle.”

“That long? Have you ever seen it?”

The man stayed silent.

“Come on? Can’t you humor me a little? You’re not the one who’s going to die soon.”

After a tired sigh, the man finally said more, walking up to Shaily, “You’d better not stay this close to the edge.” 

Shaily nodded, taking a step back putting the tall man between herself and the bottomless pit.

The magisterium looked down at the dark abyss as he explained, “I cannot tell you more for the bottom of this dungeon is a forbidden area that even the high priests have never set foot into. But by virtue of the system claiming this abyss as a dungeon, there is no doubt that the records are true. Some hideous creature is down there, continually creating an endless stream of undead, and we have long since taken to the task of regularly culling them down so that they may never flood out into the outside world.”

“Is it really strong enough that even the Oracle cannot kill it?” Shaily asked next, the light sprite shooting out into the abyss from the lower level as she said so.

The magisterium’s attention was captured by the sudden appearance of the light sprite, while Shaily replaced herself to be perfectly behind him. The shadow sprites jumped from Shaily’s clothes to the Magisterium’s armor, rendering it weaker and more brittle, and Shaily jumped to be aligned with the man’s chest and reduce friction with the ground. 

The man noticed that something was going on behind him, but too late. 

[Maiden bolt]

The loud, 40 meters per second impact was more than enough to send both the magisterium and Shaily flying off the edge. His chest compressed by his armor caving in, the man could not even scream.

As they were flung through the air, Shaily instantly used [Summon Self] to get to a safe distance away from the man, just a few meters above him.

The light sprite rushed to the bottom of the pit, showing that it was an incredibly deep fall.

That has to be enough.

Shaily repositioned her body in the air to face the way she wanted, facilitated by the [Acrobatics] classless skill, and used [Maiden bolt] again, catapulting herself toward the other side of the abyss, and colliding with the wall. She slid down the narrowing abyss until she landed on the spiraling staircase that linked the levels of the dungeon, on a much deeper level than where she had started.

Instantly she used [Lead the dead] to make sure that no high level Zombie was going to come close, while she looked toward the bottom of the abyss. She could feel the light sprite still going down, but its light was obscured, and she could not see it.

Come back. 

Meanwhile, the shadow sprites were supposed to be still attached to the magisterium, but instead of falling to the bottom, they were stationary about a hundred meters deeper than where Shaily was. A distance already too far for her to be able to see through the darkness of the abyss.

As evidenced by this fact and the lack of a kill message, the magisterium was alive.

This is going to hurt…

Shaily raised her left hand, and sparks of blue electricity started gathering in her palm.

As her mana reserves were melting, absorbed by the spell in seconds, a javelin of blue plasma formed in Shaily’s hand, illuminating the abyss.

The intense light pierced the darkness. Knowing exactly where to look thanks to her shadow Sprites, Shaily located the magisterium, hanging by a single hand onto his sword which he had planted into the side of the bottomless pit.

The magisterium turned to look at the light, and the light rushed in his direction, like the gates of heaven opening for the devout paladin, the light became brighter until it became his entire world.

‘You have murdered [Armand Anzan Ovohen - Magisterium lv. 163]’

‘You gained a level!’ * 13

[Congratulations, your Saintomancer class reached level 50, +1 Active Skill Slot!]

[New Active Skills are available!]

[New Passive Skills are available!]

The headless corpse of the magisterium fell into the depths of the abyss. 

Thirteen levels just like that. And he never attacked so I didn’t even have to use the mist. 

Thanks everyone, now go back, I need to regenerate some mana.

I almost got my guaranteed pass to level 100!

After the Sprites unsummoned themselves, just as Shaily opened her status page to quickly check the new keywords, the stairs she was standing on collapsed under her feet.

Her senses in overdrive, she tried everything she could to save the situation, but there was nothing she could do to quickly stop the fall. With the whole section of stairs collapsing, and the walls of the abyss being strangely smooth, there wasn’t a single thing she could grab onto. [Summon self] was still on cooldown, and, because of the sudden collapse, she was messily tumbling down, with no control on her momentum at all.

Trying her best to time it right as she spun in the air, Shaily used 1000 of her remaining 3000 and some mana left to [Maiden bolt] herself into the walls of the abyss once more. From there, she used the Zombie-slaying dagger by slamming it into the wall, doing the exact same thing the magisterium did before her.

The fall brutally came to a stop, while Shaily held onto the dagger like the lifeline it was.

I didn’t even notice that the stairs were crumbling… Crap… I think I tore a muscle… My shoulder hurts.

Shaily resummoned the light sprite. “Quickly heal me up, I don’t think I can hold on for long.”

The spire started healing Shaily’s shoulder, which was a bit slow but definitely helped steady her grip on the dagger, after that, the Sprite also healed her burned left arm before it unsummoned itself again without her even asking.

Thank you…

What now?

I’m at least a few hundred meters down, am I not?

Going back up should be easy once I get enough mana for a few consecutive maiden bolt casts… But that will be a while. I need at least four of five casts and then the mana for [Summon Self] to redirect myself toward the stairs. I can wait, we’re supposed to still be in the dungeon for ho-

Shaily’s thoughts were interrupted by a strange noise, which she interpreted as rocks cracking.

I screwed up.

Weakened by the recent high-speed impact of a [Maiden bolt], the section of wall Shaily was holding onto with the dagger cracked into two separate chunks before collapsing.

Shaily urgently summoned the light sprite back, and that was the end of what she recalled.

She then woke up, perhaps only moments later, battered and bruised, inside of a sea of bones, while the light sprite was hard at work trying to keep her alive, spending her last bits of mana on all the healing it could muster.