Saintess Summons Skeletons

As Sofia stabbed Henry from behind, Crowie froze.

Henry spun around, his scimitar cutting through the air toward Sofia’s neck. She stopped his bones too, the blade freezing mid air. Then he crumbled, Henry fell into a puddle of black ash, and so did his weapons, then ‘Crowie’, then the hand the group had been drifting on.

Sofia was left alone stepping on the air just above the rumbling dark water.

The mana here is good enough to fly…

Wary about going up, Sofia deployed her wings, flying back and hiding behind one of the mana pillars of hands that pierced the strange sea. She cancelled her bolt, and contained her mana to hide her presence.

Moments later, a creature emerged from the water where the drifting hand had been. Sofia only caught a glimpse of it, a strange, monolithic fish with a ring of long fingers trailing around its body like a skirt.

It returned to the depth, having lost its prey.

Sofia still did not move, just in case the creature decided to double check.

Everything else was already suspicious but Henry not even picking his violin to fight… That mimic thing did such a bad job, not to mention how terribly inaccurate its Crowie was. A bit surprising that the raft was also part of it. And that it all died so easily.

So much time wasted hoping to get more information out of it…

I’m not even sure… What was their plan? They had me unconscious, so why bother with the trickery? And what was that thing to begin with?

Maybe it wasn’t even an actual entity and just another part of the ‘dream’?

Hmm… Crowie is still alive but he’s out of range. Can’t even tell which direction. Well, I’m sure he’ll manage.

I wonder if following the current is really the way out.

The raft with the fake Henry so far had taken many turns between the sea’s pillars, guided solely by the currents, so it was not as simple as following a straight line.

Sofia plucked off the tip of one of her wings, groaning at the pain of the bones regrowing, and tossed it into the water.

She noted the trajectory and fished the bone back out with her aura.

Flying over the water and checking the current every so often, she moved much faster than the hand raft did. In just a few minutes, she saw the end of the strange sea in the distance.

It was a narrow band of slated ground, just one meter large, and a flat wall beyond that with no end in sight.

That is one big wall.

I can’t sense past it.

Sofia first flew along the wall, but in both directions there was nothing, the wall just continued. Then she tried breaking through. She expected to be face to face with a stone wall, instead, beyond the wall was actually just more of the same, another one meter margin, more pillars, more water.

Sofia tossed her bone bit into that water, it floated back toward her.

Hmm, so it leads here either way. Then… Let’s see what is up.

She quickly flew up thousands of meters, until ambient mana started to get too thin. Not wanting to waste mana on [Runelord]’s flight as her regeneration was not as good as usual with her missing items, she pulled herself up by her bones instead. It was quite slow for her standards, but not as slow as walking up with [Dodge me]’s airwalking.

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I don’t even understand how this wall could possibly be structurally–

Getting distracted by architectural questions, Sofia still saw the unexpected giant hand appearing out of the wall like a ghost attempting to grab her. She moved out of the way just in time and struck back with a piercing bolt. The volatile plasma went through the hand as though it wasn’t there, and pierced through the wall behind it.

More such hands appeared. Sofia activated [Runelord]’s flight, used [Regret] to teleport, did all she could, escaping the hands as she flew up. But it soon grew to be too much.

Above, there was no free space to squeeze through, only a blanket of wriggling giant hands falling toward her, below, the same sight. Sofia got engulfed. But she did not suffer or pass out, instead, she was brought back down. The hand that had caught her, which she did not have the strength to free herself from, dumped her on the narrow band of ground near where she had broken the wall. It threw her there, and simply flew back up.

What just… I thought I was dead there for a moment… Considering how tightly it was holding me, that those flying hands have at least the strength of a level 400. Couldn’t move at all… And all my attacks just went through them. The longer I spend here the less I understand.

At a loss, Sofia flew alongside the wall for half an hour. She had believed at the start that it might be some kind of spatial loop making it feel infinite, but she had yet to see the hole she had made in the wall again, forced to accept that it really was just one terribly massive wall.

Even for a dream it feels excessive.

I don’t get it. I even broke through the black stone in one punch, what could this wall possibly stop?

Oh, I get it. Light… Do I need to search for a source of light, maybe?

I just don’t see what else this wall could be for.

Sofia punched another hole through the wall, thinking that since she arrived from one side any goals were likely on the other.

Huh? There’s something in the wall’s stone here… some kind of glass?

It goes from one side to the other, but it’s impossible to see from outside.

The shape of the glass layer reminded Sofia of a convex lens. She stepped away from the wall, and cast a bolt. The wall on her side looked normal, but through the hole she could immediately see, her light had converged into lines and shapes. It drew something on the dark water, but she could only see a bit through the hole

Interesting.

Reshaping her spare bone bit into a vision token, Sofia embedded it high up into the wall on the other side. She punched another small hole nearby, to let her mana through so she could reach the token from the other side, then switched sides again.

Taking some distance so she could effectively illuminate as much of the wall as she could, Sofia channeled an explosive bolt.

The token gave her a view on the other side. The entire wall was full of the hidden glass, letting her light through. At first it was diffuse, blurry lines, and as the bolt grew brighter and brighter, what they drew became clearer.

A spell schematic?!

The pattern was complex, yet elegant, using water as a canvas and the sparse pillars of hands as support to draw its three-dimensional sections.

Sofia felt her consciousness shake.

Wait!

She had activated the condition to delve deeper into the dream, it took her somewhere else, in complete darkness, her bolt nowhere to be seen as if she had never been channeling it.

Shit! I’m not sure I remember it all… Without my helmet…

Hmmm?! Crowie!

Crowie, can you hear me?

He must be at the very edge of my range. I barely feel him.

Sofia had not yet taken a single step when she felt a hand grab her jaw from behind.

“Shhh– It’s me,”Henry whispered from behind. Somehow he had completely evaded her senses, and even now she could barely feel the bones grabbing her face. He slowly let go.

“Keep yar magic in check. Don’t make too much noise, and no bright lights either,” he added “monsters here, too strong. Was ‘bout time ya showed up, yar bird’s waiting at the exit already. Follow me.”

I feel a lot of bones around…

“What about my horns?” Sofia whispered back.

“Dim enough, it’s fine, the fuckers are asleep, look, one’s just up ahead.” Henry answered, walking in front of Sofia and pointing up at the ceiling.

What in the lords’ names…

Unlike the giant fish from before, which was still partly fish, above Sofia and Henry, suspended on the ceiling, was a hand butterfly. About five meters tall, it had two seven-fingered hands for wings, a long thumb for a body and two little fingers with too many phalanges for antennae.

Beyond it, on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor, she could see the disturbing silhouettes of countless more immobile ‘insects’.

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