Chapter 398 - Take a hike

Sofia sank into the ground as fast as her ghostly skeletons could carry her, she looked up at the creature which was now just a few meters above her.

This thing’s soul looks gross. It’s not just the body that combined, they actually have souls and they all merged together… Well, not soul, spiritual body is the better word since they don’t seem to produce their own mana.

The creature spasmed, and suddenly the amalgam was a lot closer, steadily pursuing her underground.

Crap. It’s digging?

No, it’s also phasing through the ground!

I can’t go down any faster… No cave or anything in the graveyard’s range which I could escape through… I need to buy time for the rot to drain this thing’s mana. It’s clearly working.

I only need a few skeletons to carry me.

Sofia took control of the graveyard, forcing it to create more and more ghostly skeletons. She sent them all toward the creature chasing after her. It was something that she had noticed about the graveyard skeletons when training with Alith: as half-ghosts, they were perfectly capable of grabbing other ghosts.

It wasn’t often that the graveyard skeletons were used for their original purpose of immobilizing enemies, so it hadn’t been Sofia’s first reflex. Under her control, the skeletons swarmed the spiritual body of the amalgam, and managed to slow it down. The thing counter-attacked, shattering the spiritual bodies of Sofia’s skeletons, but she had plenty of mana to help them reform. While the amalgam was being held back, Sofia stopped going down and started fleeing in another direction, eventually resurfacing on the outside.

The graveyard skeletons held as best they could, but the creature pushed through and also resurfaced to follow Sofia as she hurriedly started walking up in the air. By the time the creature managed to completely free itself from the ghostly skeletons and rush to where Sofia had exited the ground, she was already fifty meters in the air and still walking up as fast as she could without triggering the chaos state of [DODGE - ME], which wasn’t very fast.

The bulbous and rot-covered body of the amalgam squashed itself against the ground.

It’s going to jump!

The amalgam left the ground with a boom, creating a small crater in its wake.

Pareth appeared in between Sofia and the creature, his sword pointing straight down at the amalgam, impaling it before it could reach Sofia. The full length of his sword of Light penetrated the monster, yet it failed to stop its upwards momentum, and Sofia had to jump out of the way, which triggered the Chaos state of [DODGE - ME].

♢ [DODGE - ME] ♢:

Experience gains +10%, Thinking speed +100%, Reading speed +1000%

Chaos form :

Strength, Agility, and Speed +100%

Reaction speed +200%

Maximum running and flying speed +2000%

The speed helped her get out of the monster’s trajectory, but it also meant that she could no longer walk on air, and her wings were still dysfunctional in the manaless environment.

That’s a hefty fall, I could lose some health.

Sofia stored her shield to have both hands free, and started simultaneously channeling explosive Angel Bolts. Spinning around as she fell, she launched both bolts as she was about ten meters from the ground, one at the creature still in the air with Pareth, and one at the ground below her.

She unfolded her wings, the explosion below her was a big cloud of her own mana which she used to give support to her wings and cushion her fall right before Pareth appeared beneath her to catch her.

The other bolt also hit the creature, it was probably too weak to do much, having only had time to accumulate about ten thousand mana, but had the benefit of feeding the rot and accelerating its growth.

Pareth returned right back to Sofia’s bone storage, and with that out of the way, Sofia decided that the best course of action was just to run away as far as she could.

The creature touched ground again and quickly returned to chasing after her. It was slower.

She relied on her mana senses to avoid the numerous Sunless Drones on the way, and ran through the forest as fast as she possibly could. Noticing weird things on the way, but she couldn’t pay them any attention, as the amalgam, realizing it wouldn’t be able to simply catch up with her, had started using spells of its own. It ejected parts of its huge body as magically-charged projectiles, like javelins of black goo leaving gaping holes in everything on their way. Most of them she managed to dodge, but more than once, Pareth had to appear to take the hit, and without the boost from [Sanctified Grounds], he was actually taking serious damage, millions of life points vaporizing every time a black spear touched him.

The chase continued for several minutes, long enough for Sofia to exit the forest, jump over a lake, cross a large empty plain, and end up in another forest, but she could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The creature progressively became smaller and slowed down until it couldn’t keep up anymore, and Sofia slowed down slightly in kind, to be able to keep an eye on it as it succumbed to the rot.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Amalgam - Lv. 289 - Imprint ruined]’

Lords… This was way too close for comfort. If a single one of these black spears touched me…

And it seems the rot destroys imprints too… Just my luck.

Well. It’s all yours, Pareth. Sofia told him in her thoughts as she handed him his mana heart while they walked back to the place the creature had died. Just wait for the rot to dissipate. I don’t know if the hearts can be damaged by it and I don’t want to find out.

They patiently waited for the rot to run out of mana as it consumed what was left of the creature, and by the time it disappeared, all that was left were a few pieces of [Small Debris], some badly damaged by the rot, some mostly intact. Pareth absorbed the Imprint, and Sofia updated the sheet for his mana heart.

[Nascent mana heart of Knowledge]:

Rank : probably still E tier ?

Imprint power until next rank : 135/??

Effects (on use) :

All stats ??% (E rank base)

+8500 Health

??? Skill shard (1/10) (Sunless Amalgam Skill)

“I guess we have to hunt at least nine more of those now… And we can’t know what the skill is until I get a shard myself. For a boon of knowledge it sure leaves you in the dark.”

Sofia and Pareth collected the debris from the Sunless and were patiently waiting for the passive healing of [Bone dominus]’s constructs to heal his bones. Each spear Pareth took for Sofia had shaved off about two million health points, leaving him with six out of his thirteen millions total left.

The good thing is this means the spears wouldn’t damage him in the [Sanctified Grounds] zone. Hunting more of those things might not be so hard, as long as I can be safely far above the clouds when Pareth engages and just support with rot and bolts.

An unexpected system alert shook Sofia out of her thoughts.

Huh? This is the sound that I set up for skill level-ups, right? Something leveled-up just now?

Sofia had done some decluttering of her system by reducing the alerts that could show up mid-combat to a minimum. Usually skills would level-up during fights but she ignored them to read the entire log at the end of battle, but now she had set them up so that they wouldn’t show up at all by default, and a simple ding sound would inform her that a skill had progressed.

As she went to check on the skill that just leveled up, another ding.

Really?

Opening up her alerts, the level up notifications greatly heightened her mood.

‘[Radiance] reached level 100’

‘[Bone dominus] reached level 3’

Finally! It’s been so long! It was level 2 since the damn fight against Victory!

[Bone dominus] : The Saintomancer can control, fuse and reshape all inert bones in a 30 (10 * skill level) meters radius; the Saintomancer can reshape all bones they touch and connected bones with a 3 (3 * skill level) meters radius. (This will make them unable to be used as new Skeletons except as constructs)

The Saintomancer can create and control up to 3 (Skill level) blessed marrow bone constructs. The constructs are considered Skeletons, and must be manually controlled.

For each nearby blessed marrow bone construct, the Saintomancer and all nearby Skeletons receive the following effects :

• Regenerate 0.5% maximum health every second.
• Bones are 10% sturdier.

The range is good but the addi-

Her thoughts were interrupted by her mana senses locking onto a nearby Sunless Drone approaching her and Pareth. A piercing angel’s bolt reached the Drone before it could reach them. And surprisingly, she had heard another ding while the bolt had been charging up.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 208 - Imprint intact]’

Kindly fuck off, please

Sofia sent Pareth to get the Drone’s imprint while she devoured the new message with her eyes.

So this is why it was taking so long to level up…

[A new soft-evolution choice was unlocked for the skill : Bone Dominus]

Available Soft-Evolutions for [Bone dominus] Lv.3 (Levels will be conserved):

• [Bone Dominus Imperium] : Effective range for bone control and the constructs' blessings reach is tripled. Bone reshaping and manipulation becomes slightly easier.
• [Bone Dominus Potentium] : Force equal to the Saintomancer’s current Strength can now be applied to controlled bones regardless of environment or gravity but will consume additional stamina.
• [Bone Dominus Praesidium] : Construct blessings can now be applied to the same target multiple times, and the bone sturdiness bonus changes to 20% for the target it is applied to, and 15% to nearby Skeletons and Saintomancer.

For soft evolutions, these go pretty hard.

Author note:

Hey! So... Bad news, I got sick. Looks to be the flu, though I'm not sure yet. The bad timing is pretty unfortunate, but I really really cannot take a break with the Amazon release just around the corner, so I will be pushing through. 

Just to warn that chapter posts for the coming week or so might come late on some days... Or not at all if the fever worsens so much that I can't write. So far it's still mild, but yeah...

Still, thank you for being here, I'm really excited for the book to finally release and for more people to discover the story, so I'm still in a good mood despite the sickness. Hope you all are doing better than me, x)

Happy Reading ^^