Saintess Summons Skeletons - Chapter 406: What is a nightmare?
The warrior’s body extended from both sides and glued itself back together in an instant. He charged at Pareth while his sword was still on the ground, but failed to hit him, as he had to raise his sword to deflect an arrow of light coming from Bookie. His momentum lost, he teleported again.
Sofia followed his teleportation trail, and let go of her piercing bolt, which struck the Sunless warrior as soon as his form reappeared within the arena.
The hole left through his chest instantly closed back up, filled-in with the black substance making up its body.
The templars unleashed a wave of ranged attacks of light at the warrior, which he deflected with swift sword strikes. Pareth was charging at him, but suddenly, the entire arena turned pitch black.
WHAT?!
Sofia panicked, she couldn’t see or feel anything but her own body, not even the ground under her feet.
One by one, lines of blue light appeared everywhere around her. Her first reflex was to avoid them, contorting her body however she could.
Suddenly her senses came back, and what she saw next was the blurry form of the Sunless warrior flashing through the entire arena at a speed impossible to follow, his sword following the trails of light.
The three templars were annihilated, Pareth was struck a consequent number of times, too large to avoid the spell, but only one strike actually did any damage, cutting through a dozen of his ribs, while bookie and Sofia narrowly avoided all the attacks.
What the fuck was that!?
The Sunless warrior landed back at the spot he had been before the room had turned black. His posture was weak, he looked tired. Before Sofia could do anything except start to channel another bolt, her skeletons took the chance to attack. Three arrows of light coming from Bookie planted themselves firmly into the warrior’s head with a chain of wet sounds before Pareth struck down at the warrior with an overhead swing of a gigantic hammer of light.
Sofia expected the warrior to avoid the relatively ‘slow’ hammer, and only now understood that the warrior’s attack had somehow left him unable to move. The hammer hit him cleanly from above, splattering his black figure on the ground like a crushed insect.
No kill notification.
Noticing this, Sofia also felt a sudden mana movement under Pareth’s hammer. At a glance, it felt a lot like the wind-up to the twin-headed amalgam’s black shockwave attack.
Teleport back! Bookie, shield yourself!
The skeletons flawlessly followed her orders, and before she knew it, the puddle of black goo Pareth had left behind on the ground exploded like one of her bolts.
The heat and the light washed over Sofia, but behind both Pareth and her own shield, she was completely unharmed. The explosion’s origin had been somewhat far, about thirty meters away, enough that it wasn’t too dangerous. Sofia had gone through much worse, but the explosion itself wasn’t what she now worried about, as she felt like the dungeon itself was changing. In fact, she could see it disappear.
When the light of the explosion died down, the arena was no more, all that was left of the dungeon were sparse cubes of ‘dungeon ground’ floating around in the black void. The sunless warrior was back up on one of them, his blue energy sword forming anew in his hands.
Sofia’s first reflex was to shower the warrior in rot-spreading holy light once again, and it worked flawlessly this time, completely covering him up in a thin layer in pulsating black rot, which did not change his appearance much.
The sunless warrior charged. He was faster than before, almost instantly coming head to head with Pareth. Sofia activated the second level of [Runeforged Overlord] to help Pareth keep up with the increased speed. The cost of more than 1000 mana points per second was quite heavy, but this fight had to end fast one way or another. If Sofia took a single direct hit from the warrior’s sword, it would be all over, she couldn’t make this a battle of attrition.
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The sword fight raged on between Pareth and the nimble black warrior while Sofia and Bookie threw weak piercing bolts and light arrows at him whenever they could, not aiming to really damage him but more to force him away from them when he was getting a bit too close. Pareth had the advantage in brute physical force and in sword technique, along with his massive size, but the Sunless warrior managed to keep up thanks to his overwhelming speed and his seemingly complete disregard of physical injuries.
It’s fine. He cannot have infinite health, and his mana is slowly going down. We’re going to get there…
As the warrior avoided an angel bolt by jumping to another platform, Pareth managed to get through his defenses, and cut the swordsman into two halves with a diagonal strike once again. Sofia fully expected the warrior to glue itself back together like the first time, but to her surprise, this time, it was different. The lower-left side with the white glove regrew another half, and so did the upper-right side with the head.
There were now two sunless warriors. The white parts of his body weren’t cloned, so the one white the glove had no x shaped white mark on its face and no hat ribbon, while the other one had no glove.
A blue energy sword appeared in the gloveless warrior’s right hand.
Just a nightmare…
Sofia watched her mana, right about to fall under 270 000, she took a risky decision.
Bookie’s book form appeared before her, already opened and ready. She ripped out a page, and the book’s fog spread around the floating platforms until the book of skeletons was completely empty. Sofia’s mana rapidly decreased, so fast that it was a bit painful. Like suddenly being drained of her lifeforce.
Slowly, the giant snake skeleton took form on the battlefield.
[Solar Emperor pearled Snake]
Health: 1 434 240/ 1 434 240
Stamina : 5 736 960/ 5 736 960
Mana: 10 / 10
Lifetime: 17 927s/17 928s
Not waiting to admire her newest skeleton, Sofia quickly discarded the last bits of mana in her body by summoning some sticky balls out of her storage ring which she threw to the ground, and created an opening in her armor for her heart to go through. Her left eye suddenly went blind, but she ignored it, as she was not going to need it right away anyway.
Her blackened heart jumped out of her chest, currents of bloodlight coursing through it unimpeded, and Sofia quickly stuffed it in her mouth, not losing any health in the process.
Both of the Sunless warriors teleported to Sofia the second she started transforming; as her body was changing, she was defenseless, just like the warrior had been after his big flashy attack earlier.
I’m not as brainless as you!
The sticky balls Sofia had thrown to the ground exploded. They were the latest batch of Alith’s exploding candy. Sofia knew perfectly well how resistant she was to explosions, with her armor on, the candy wouldn’t even harm her.
For two unarmored blobs of magical black goo, however, the result would be different, their squishy bodies were blown apart by the burst of flames. Their scattered parts almost instantly gathered back together, as if their time flew in reverse, but their opportunity was gone Sofia had transformed.
Spinning around, her tail lashed out at one warrior’s torso while she used her scepter to club the other one’s head. After taking the hits, they teleported away, barely avoiding a tail swipe from the snake skeleton, which harmlessly passed through Sofia on account of [DODGE ME]’s spatial distortion, as despite her fast spin, she had been standing in one spot and thus stayed in the order state. She had been counting on this to make her safer, and it was also a safeguard against falling into the black void in case the candy’s explosion was strong enough to blow the ground platform to bits, which it had damaged a lot, enough for her to currently be standing on air, but not actually destroyed. It was also quickly reforming.
Sofia felt her body become lighter, strengthened by Bookie’s high-priest magic, she dashed forward; running on the giant snake’s back, she joined the battle once again. The snake was fighting off one of the warriors while Pareth held the other one back. Sofia threw her scepter at Bookie while she jumped on top of the snake’s skull, and when she saw an opening, jumped down to punch at the right-handed warrior.
Her dragon-scale arm was blocked by the blue energy sword of the warrior, and she jumped back as the snake lunged at the warrior again with bared fangs.
The Sunless warriors kept teleporting around, but Sofia in her demon form had a good enough reaction time that she could always get out of the way of wherever they chose to teleport to, and let her skeletons defend her.
She focused her attacks on the same warrior, the one with the white x on his face and the hat ribbon. Trading enough blows, she managed to land a few punches, while always having the snake and Bookie cover her retreat. True to its alive counterpart, the snake was a magicless but restless beast; its tough bones barely chipping from the repeated sword strikes of the Sunless warrior.
It seemed the flow battle was starting to favor her and her skeletons, when the warriors both teleported away, and Sofia’s senses all disappeared again.
This again. Pareth, try to minimize your body size.
They’ll be weak afterwards. Try to attack the white parts, they are more protective of them for some reason.
