Chapter 76: At home

Chapter 76: At home

Going to the second floor was quite a bit more dangerous. This time, only Alith would go and finalize the trap. They hoped that her two skills that helped stealth would be enough to not alarm the squid-looking Phageid. The problem being that there were multiple holes in the second floors ceiling from their previous battle that it could hear or see her through.

At least the cutting blue stone part wasnt noisy, the mithril blades slid in there without trouble. There was also a lot less to cut, just enough so that when they baited the squid into a rampage, it would fall without a doubt. Like a ghost, Alith moved through the second floor until she stood right under the monster, and started carving out yet another hole in the floor.

It went much faster this time, since she only had to cut through thirty centimeters of the stuff. And what she cut out would fall in the other hole below, so the mess she made cleaned itself.

Everything was ready, there was now a single thin layer of ice blue crystal flooring separating the monster and the black void. Everyone got to their position: Sofia on the roof right above the creature, Pareth on the edge of the second floors hole, and Alith hiding behind a wall on the ground level.

Alright. Now or never. If this doesnt work

Sofia activated her level 43 [Summon blood].

She could now summon the blood in more complex three dimensional shapes after all her training of the skill. It seemed there were many such skill altering possibilities that the system would never tell you about. She summoned a ring of blood on the floor around the monster.

Its reaction was immediate, like it had done before, it slammed the blood with its tentacles. The floor cracked. It was straight up powdered by the hits in some places, it wasnt long until what had been left crumbled under the weight of the thing and the big crystal sphere it clung onto.

The Phageid fell. It tried to use his undamaged tentacle to spear the third floor's walls, in a bid to stop its fall, the second tentacle wrapping itself tightly around the sphere. Pareth, who stood beneath, used [Gravity well]. The collapsing floor sped up towards the hole beneath, attracted by the skill. The monsters tentacle failed to get a solid hit on the far wall, the momentum of its strike broken by the fall.

It helplessly fell through the second floor, its tentacle retracting as fast as it could to go for another recovery grab.

It was too slow. The monster gave up the sphere, uncoiling his damaged and tip-less tentacle, it was falling through the ten meters hole to the void by the time it was ready to try saving itself a second time. It couldnt miss. The tentacle aimed for the walls of the hole itself, an easy and large target, it could hoist itself from that with its other tentacle afterward, it would be ready soon.

An ear splitting scream resounded through the mansion.

The source of the debilitating skill was so close, the Phageid was stunned for a second. By the time it recovered, it was too late, its tentacles were too short to reach the city again, it tried, only grasping the underside of the place that had been its prison for an eternity. It fell down the dark void, never to be seen again.

The first reaction to this victory was no cry of joy. It was Alith falling to her knees, spewing blood.

For the first time ever, she had managed to use [Maidens shriek] in battle. If Sofia was able to get past the restrictions and cast [Angels bolt] from the ground, there was no reason she couldnt use her skill in human form. With the idea in mind, she had tried her hardest to replicate the skill in the outer city when Sofia had been busy training [Summon blood].

It was possible since she knew the skill quite well. She had used it many times during their journey from the Skyreach dungeon tower to Drakron, just never in battle. At most she had killed a few animals. They had used it a lot to effortlessly catch fish from the river. Since this had been Aliths first exposure to using magic herself, she wouldnt forget the feeling even if she tried to.

It had proven quite a challenge to make it work in human form, and she pretty much destroyed her throat and vocal chords every time, but it worked.

Alith was puking blood. But she was smiling.

[Maidens shriek] : What is more terrifying, the deadly cry of a banshee, or the enraged scream of a young maiden? This is both. Inflicts a status effect to all that hear the sound, excluding yourself.

Possible effects are : [Confusion] [Shock] [Insanity] and [Instant Death]

Class : [Saintomancer]

Level : 103

Health : 5515 / 5515

Stamina : 1452 / 1515

Mana : 26552 / 41000 (-10000) (-5000)

No new skill either? she asked Alith.

Nothing.

Alright. Well. Lets dig up a bigger hole

Sofia and Alith had already been trapped there for a while. They had taken some time off to relax, claiming a part of the empty outer city for themselves.

By now they had a nice sandbox where they could relax and sleep instead of the hard blue crystal ground, so the cursed pendant's peculiarity was useful for once. They also had some Midenicite furniture, and the antiquities Alith had stolen from the desert dungeon added some life in the drab blue house. They had even carved out a cozy fireplace in the wall.

Not that the fireplace was too useful. They did burn blood bricks in there once, made with sand and dried blood from [Summon Blood], but the smell and smoke was really terrible. And it wasn't like they were cold anyway.

Alith didnt need to actually drink or eat so all was good for her. Sofia, on the other hand, had to collect water from the blood. And to eat 'definitely not Aliths left leg for survival once their packed food ran out. Which had been a bit rough to adapt to. At least the butcher and meat provider herself didnt mind. And as they already knew, [Angels bolt] was great at grilling meat. She just had to be very careful to cancel the skill before it completely charred it, or herself.

They also werent too worried about the threat of the Church right now. After all, Cardinal had said the skills mana needed to reach her for the summon to work. Considering the void this place was in, they didnt believe for a second that anything other than the key-ring would allow any mana from the outside world to reach them here.

They had gained some knowledge of the planes with Aliths skills, [Maidens shriek] and [Human form] both mentioned them, and [Planar shift] was about them. Since human form was explicitly to go from the spiritual realm to the physical and back. Considering she couldnt transform, their best guess was that this was another plane, causing the skill to malfunction.

And if there was one place the Church certainly couldnt reach them, it had to be there. They dubbed this supposed plane : The empty plane.

The reason why it was taking them so much time to kill another squid was because they changed their hunting method. Simply speaking, the same dig a hole strategy wouldnt work on a perfectly healthy, three tentacled Phageid Larvae, which could easily grapple its way out of there. It had barely worked before, even with Aliths stun, and that had been the badly damaged and lowest level monster.

So the way they found was simple. Sink the entire mansions. That way the Phageids wouldnt even know what came for them. But that meant they had to carve out a trench around the huge mansions instead of a single hole. At least some of their work was cut out by the fact that the previous gardens were already sort of large trenches around the mansions. So they really only had four meters of depth to dig through instead of ten. It was still slow, excruciatingly so. But it was safe.

Since all the mansions were the same size anyway, their second target was the one housing two of the monsters. More experience.

Of course they had Pareth search through the whole mansion, except the third floor, to be certain they didnt send a potentially important item to the void. But they found nothing in this mansion, and nothing in the one they had cleared before.

Maybe in one of the others?

They had only dug about eighty percent of the way around the mansion when something unexpected happened. The ground cracked under their feet.