Chapter 408: Aerial superiority

Chapter 408: Aerial superiority

Sofia absorbed the imprint and sat on Tarrens chair before her transformation ended. Her body reverted back to her human form, and she now had to deal with her left eyes issue.

Did it break? Cant see anything It was working fine until my mana hit zero during the fight. Im still at zero Richard said it should automatically enter maintenance mode when Im out of mana, but I should still be able to see in maintenance mode even if its just regular vision. Is the lack of ambient mana an issue?

The cost to fuel the eye was supposed to be 20 mana a second but with [Heat Death]s reductionits just fifteen. Its not too bad but its still not nothing. No cost for maintenance mode, though, so whys it not working?

There was a way to manually activate maintenance mode But it requires mana. Is it possible that I hit zero mana too fast and it didnt have time to automatically activate maintenance? That would explain why it stopped working.

Post transformation weakness is going to stay for half an hour though Its not like when Im still in demon form and can cheat with [Heat death] to kickstart the regen, even if I dispelled the snake Id be stuck with only what I stole from him. Not that I would be able to steal much from the snake since he only has ten mana Might as well let him play around with Bookie while hes out, deserved it.

With only one eye working, Sofia looked through her mana hearts new stats.

[Nascent mana heart of Aphenoreth]: /C tier/

9 months, 31 days, 13 hours

Imprint progress : 741.51/ 1200

Small Catalyser : 0/1

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All stats +45% (C rank base)Health + 10 561Stamina + 10 000Mana + 43 590[Relocate Core]

Already C tier in just two days. That has to be a new speed record, right? Chances are I could be in and out of the trial in just three days if I wanted. Not that Id ever do that.

Ill suck this trials nectar to the last drop.

To summarize the new findings, the imprint progress requirement really isnt linear at all, no point trying to predict it. It does mention the catalyser which is nice even if I already knew.

The all stat bonus went up another 25% as expected. Pretty nice. I wonder if I could push it up to 200%? Thats four ranks above A. Sounds possible. I got plenty of time ahead of me.

Lets update Pareths sheet too while Im at it.

[Nascent mana heart of Knowledge]:

Rank : C Tier

Imprint power until next rank : 785/ 1200

Small Catalyser : 0/1

+8500 Health??? Skill shard (3/10) (Sunless Amalgam Skill)[Relocate Core][Arclight]

Oh. I can actually sense through these now. This is where we entered from, the other side is the room with the ladder to the surface, she told Pareth. Walking up to the door, she lightly touched them, and they slid open by themselves slowly.

Seeing how everything was safe, Pareth returned to the bone storage, and Sofia went on to climb the rusty ladder. She emerged from the same spot she had entered the ladder shaft before, in the middle of the swamp. The first rays of morning sunlight caressed her face as the nightly ice quickly melted all around the wild scenery.

I should put the armor back on.

This is probably the safest time of the day, though. When the Sunless disappear and the regular monsters have yet to really wake up.

Lets not linger. Bookie! All the birds!

The book of skeletons appeared in front of Sofia, presenting four glowing pages to her.

The first page was Crowie, which obviously had to be summoned first if Sofia was going to summon birds, next was the page with fifty other crows, then the page with the fifty-four small birds she had had forever, and last was a new page with a hundred birds she had prepared for this trial with Astelia. These skeletons were straight from the spirit forest, caught by a Vampire mercenary at Sofias request.

These new birds were named the Three eyed spinews, they were slender birds with long wings and tails for their size, as the name pointed out, they had three eyes offering them a superior vision compared to most birds. They liked to spin around as they flew, were quite fast despite their small size, and had the ability to temporarily turn invisible if needed. They made for a perfect aerial scouting squadron. The only downsides were the mana cost being ten times higher than crows per bird, and their relative lack of intelligence in comparison.

Surrounded by 205 undead birds, Sofia didnt bother to distribute tokens, she just gave them instructions and let them fly as soon as the ambient mana had reached a good enough level again with the disappearance of the Sunless.

Considering the IPS tower she had entered the trial through has disappeared when she was about a hundred meters from it, Sofia assumed that the camouflage of all the towers should be about the same, so she ordered the birds to get in a line with two hundred meters separating each of them, and to fly as close to the turbulent mana ceiling as they could.

Its not exactly optimal as the turvins and the spinews will have to slow down to the crows speed, but I can cleanly cover a line of forty kilometers of terrain like this so itll have to do. Hopefully it doesnt take too long to find one of those IPS

Sofia flew with the birds for the entire day, taking breaks when the birds were unsummoned and Bookie had to bring them back out, and they failed to find anything of notice, not even a single Sirhellion cloud. At the very least, she had finally left the swamps, and was flying over a cute flowery meadow when the sun fell down, which was when she realized she had made a critical mistake.

I flew in the direction opposite to the sun all day Im stupid. Made the day shorter for no reason.

Ah, whatever, let's find a safe place to land. Ill turn left and travel as far as I can through the night, then tomorrow I move in the opposite direction. Im sure I can gain at least a few minutes of sunlight by flying toward it, right? How fast does the sun go exactly?

Wait, no Thats not how it works.

How fast does the planet spin?

The days seem to be about as long here as on our planet, which is a curious coincidence. Can the system control the speed of the planet?

As the night fell and the mana in the air started to disappear, Sofia was about to land when she saw a flash of light in the distance. It was weak, and short lived, but she had definitely seen something, and on that planet where the night was the territory of the all-black Sunless, this was very out of the ordinary.

You saw that too, Crowie? Sofia asked her only skeleton out at this time. The small crow perched on her shoulder seemed to agree, intently looking in the direction where Sofia had seen the light.

She used the zoom of her left eye to try to spot something, but she was rapidly losing altitude as the mana was being absorbed by the forming Sunless drones all around the meadow, and she couldnt find the source of the light.

Well, well, well. This day might not entirely be a waste after all. Lets investigate!