Chapter 495 - Hungy

The reactions to Sofia’s signature skill were underwhelming.

“Well, that’s Sofia alright…” Cinthia was the first to comment.

“Yep, definitely Sof. The skill even requires dying multiple times,” Alith added with a snarky smile.

“It’s not… I’ve only died like… Maybe fifty to a hundred times so far? It really doesn’t happen that often…”

Saria eyed her sister disapprovingly, “Ah, yes, only fifty to a hundred. Lil’ sis, I think necromancy is getting to your head a bit.”

Alith started counting on her fingers, “A hundred, around five years, fifty months… So twice a month on average? And here I was thinking I was the half-ghost of the group.”

“You can be half-ghost, she’s half-skeleton,” Everelle chimed in.

“And you’re full or half-Sunless?” Saria asked, she and Cinthia were the least familiar with Everelle, only first meeting with her a few hours prior.

“Bit of a messy story but physically full, spiritually half? I think I can share that now that my contract is over, but basically I died pretty fast after being summoned. The system caught my soul before it dissipated and gave me a few options. That's how I ended up like this.”

Summoned heroes being treated like shit…

“Who was it that summoned you?” Sofia couldn’t help but ask.

Everelle shrugged it off, “Don’t remember. Not gonna lie, I’m not even sure they were humans. That part of my memory is more than a tad blurry. I clearly remember how I died before being summoned, though.”

“You were also dead before the summoning?!” Alith immediately asked, so far persuaded that she was the only one like this.

“I’m fairly sure I died, yeah? I was more than a bit sick, too. Very rare illness, body eating itself from the inside for no apparent reason, constant excruciating pain. My family had a lot of money so they managed to keep me alive until I almost hit thirty but that was about the limit. One day I felt myself go and next thing I knew, I was here. Well, not here here, but you get me.”

Is it a common theme that people had a shitty end to their life on their previous planet? Or could it be that it’s just random who gets summoned? I wonder now, why are Saints and Heroes even a thing in the first place… And who the hell even summoned the Human admin? Were summonings actually a thing before the system existed? 

“Interesting… I’m tryin’ to understand how summoning works as a side project, lots of it doesn’t make much sense. Oh, and I know of a few other heroes you might want to talk to. I think you’d get along well,” Alith explained.

“That’d be nice! Honestly I’m happy to have found you guys already, a lot of things here feel quite familiar and that’s nice, beginning with Miss Orc’s class. Never thought I’d get to meet a famous streamer in person in my next life,” Everelle said, waving at Cinthia, “they’re still watching, right?”

“I- I’m not famous at all… There’s still fourteen of them watching, yes…”

Being watched by fourteen gods sounds stressful…

Saria turned to Cinthia, “Fourteen! Isn’t that a new record?!”

“Well… There were more when Sofia was telling her story about the Deep…”

“I hope you got plenty of donations,” Sofia said with a nod.

“I got more than I deserved, honestly. A few of them have expressed their interest in maybe giving or selling you an essence, by the way. But there seems to be some conflict because they don’t want to step over Sorrow’s…”

“That’s great news! They don’t have to worry, I’m sure mom doesn’t mind, right? I already have five essences from Sun anyway, doesn’t change that I’m still only Sorrow’s Apostle.”

“Mom?” Everelle repeated, and Ihuarah started to explain the situation in more detail while the main conversation continued.

Cinthia kept answering but it was clear that she was also busy reading her chat, “We will have to travel to their temples and meet the other Apostles, I think, that can probably be done before we go on that trip to Sorrow’s place… Is that still a thing by the way?”

“I don’t see why not. Ihuarah?” Sofia asked, interrupting his exchange with Everelle.

The shade was quick to switch gears, he had clearly been following what was being said from one ear, “Of course. I suspect it will take us a few months at most to locate and explore the temple. It would be best to keep the group relatively small, but technically anyone is free to join.”

Plans were quickly made, the expedition group was going to stay quite small, with only Sofia, Ihuarah, Everelle and Cinthia, and maybe Zerei if she wanted to. Saria decided to take on the mission of locating the two missing rings to Zangdar, mostly because she wanted one for herself. Alith was going to stay at the sect and work on the stat pills, and Astelia was going back to her home in Vasperia.

First, however, Sofia was going to have to quickly travel around the planet to get as many Essences as she could from the Recessed, and to fix the memory of a few people, starting with Zerei and Shaily.

Sun randomly appeared in the middle of the group at some point, grabbing all the attention, “Auntie Sun’s leaving, everyone, feel free to come visit in Herzal anytime, I might even distribute a few quests to those who’ve yet to get one. Buh-bye!” She enthusiastically announced, striking a weird pose before disappearing in a flash of light. 

Erredis showed up shortly after, “It’s quite lively here, how do you like the big Diamond?” she asked Sofia, seeing that the diamond catalyst was already adorning her staff.

“I had no time to try it out yet but it should be great. It makes me really want to get a good combination with ‘Restore ‘ already…” Sofia answered. She had not been able to identify the catalyst herself, but Alith had done it for her and shared the system window.

[Prismatic Diamond Orb] : A spell catalyst crafted from a high-purity Sun-forged artificial diamond. Area spells cast through it will gain 50% area of effect and their effect will linger for a few seconds after deactivation.

Light-focused spells cast with this catalyst as the target will scatter in all directions.

Item level : 500. Grade : Legendary.

“Still haven’t got one?” Erredis asked rhetorically, “You might want to start being careful of not destroying the environment too much now,” the old dragon lady suggested, “that applies to all of you, in fact. There are plenty of hermits out there in the wild, so the angels aren’t even the only ones you risk pissing off if you go crazy.”

“Oh! Lady Erredis, I have a question,” Saria called out.

“No need to be so formal, girl, you’re pretty much family now, what is it? Some question about your specialization that Zephir couldn’t answer?”

“It’s about signature skills, actually. Am I wrong to think that a Dragon’s breath is their signature skill? This thought kind of just occurred to me while we were comparing skills earlier…”

Erredis laughed. “That is actually correct. We do not get to choose, however. Speaking of which, what did you get?”

Just like this the conversation looped back to signature skills, and Erredis reassured Saria that a Dragon-breath-style signature skill for her would have been a poor choice. In her opinion, Saria’s body, even temporarily transformed into a small Dragon, would have been completely unable to withstand something like that until she reached at least level 400. Not to mention that she wouldn’t have enough mana for it.

Another thing they discussed with Erredis was how everyone was seemingly able to leave Zangdar however they wanted. Erredis reassured them that this was just how the margin worked, leaving was usually not an issue for anyone of a high-enough level. Entering was another issue. Entering in a safe way, to be exact. She was relatively certain that except perhaps Richard, nobody would be able to return to Zangdar without one of the rings.

Eventually it was Bookie who brought an end to several hours of lively chatting, saying that he wanted to summon the fairy right now while Erredis was still there to protect everyone. 

After everyone was caught up to speed with the story of the midenicite fairy, Erredis had a good laugh taking out Richard’s discarded skeleton and puppeteering it, mocking the fact that he had left so early that he was going to miss the resurrection of the fairy he’d saved himself.

“I- Is it really fine to do this?” Cinthia asked, watching Erredis play with the lich’s bones.

“Oh it’s fine, he’ll never know. If he didn’t want me to do this he shouldn’t have left his stinky bones here for me to deal with. This guy leaves skeletons everywhere, it’s actually a bit annoying. He also left one in my house and I’m pretty sure there’s still one in my workshop at Zephir’s too.”

Sofia looked at Bookie, Bookie looked at Sofia.

Is there any chance this can work?

“Can I try to eat it?” the small skeleton asked Erredis with stars in his eye-sockets.