Saintess Summons Skeletons

On the outskirts of the city, in an area surrounded by a tall wall of bones, Sofia stood at the base of a large tower with Engi.

“You checked everything right? It’s swarming in there.”

The engineer skeleton nodded, but pointed at a small glowing red light above the tower’s door.

“Right, the air filter ritual’s out of mana again…”

Sofia flew up the side of the tower, opened a hidden trap door, and quickly pumped a hundred thousand mana into the ritual again.

“We really need to buy some proper mana stones for this, my bone orbs are just too bad as batteries. I’m still shocked you managed to re-route all of the city’s sewage in there honestly. We’re going to have to open soon or it might just overflow.”

Now that the lights were all green, Sofia entered the tower through the front door. Inside was an empty floor with plenty of space, and a single, very wide central pillar with several bone sticks sticking out of the sides. Above each bone stick was a pair of numbers, going from 0-5 to 25-30, and a light, currently all red.

“All good then. Let’s give it a whirl.”

Flipping a bone switch on the maintenance floor above with her aura, Sofia listened to the tower’s mechanism start whirring softly, followed by a series of wet squelches. All the red lights above the bone sticks turned green.

Sofia walked over to the closest protruding stick, and pushed it all the way into the central pillar, making the light above turn red.

‘You have defeated [Composter Slime - lv. 3]’

The stick slowly popped back out, and with another wet sound, the light turned green again.

“Working perfectly well so far.”

Proceeding with the tests, Sofia used her aura to use all the leveling stations at once, killing a dozen slimes every time the lights turned green. After ten rounds, she stopped. “Should be enough for now, right?”

Engi nodded, so Sofia had the graveyard Nymphs pull them both underground. Below the tower, aside from the sewage line connecting to the slime farm above, there was also an entire secondary system to get rid of the dead slime bodies.

Simple tilted mesh screens caught the slime cores, dumping them into a large storage bin, while the sticky liquid remains of the slimes were gobbled up further down the pipes by much a single, much larger sponge slime. The sponge slime’s natural secretions were then collected again through a similar setup. The solid parts, slime rubber, fell into a secondary bin, while all that remained beyond that was pure clean water, ready to be pumped into the city’s fountains and water taps.

Sofia opened a hole in the final pipe that led out of the treatment room, collecting some of the trickle of water into a bone cup.

“Looks… Clean. No weird smell…” she noted, before downing the entire cup, “No strange taste either. It’s just like waterstone water, tasteless, bland, boring. That works. I’ll let you get back to that other thing you were working on, thanks for the good work.”

The engineer skeleton gave Sofia a quick formal salute before leaving through the service hatch.

And now I just built the entrance corridor and let Ihuarah’s guys at the city hall advertise it.

I’m still not sure this is the best way but…

So far the rules they had decided on for the experience farm were not too numerous, the use of the place itself was free, but there would still be a city employee and a guard Skelem at the entrance. To qualify to enter, one had to justify living in the city, and not being a temporary visitor, although the checks for this would not be too strict. They must also show a clear murder history, be under level thirty, and be at least fifteen years old.

The age rule was the most debated part, where Sofia struggled between wanting to give kids power to protect themselves, but was scared of the accidents that might occur as a result of essentially giving kids weapons, and did not want to push them into having to choose a class early either. So fifteen was where she eventually drew the line, although in some cases younger children might still get entry, like those with a sanctioned mentor, which only included Zerei thus far.

Sofia had barely finished building the bone corridor connecting the slime farm tower to the wall of her restricted zone, and a small group of people were already waiting outside.

Did Engi warn Ihuarah by himself?

The group included mostly people Sofia more or less recognised, but all were city employees, ranging from doctors to street cleaners to her own three newly hired palace maids, one of which used to be Beatrice’s co-worker at the laundry station.

I took my time making the corridor nice but that wasn’t even half an hour. Ihuarah’s efficiency is scary.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Since there was no one managing the place yet, Sofia led everyone inside and explained how everything worked. Soon the entire group started soaring through their early levels while Sofia watched on with a smile.

She took a few notes over the hour she spent observing them before leaving to go fetch Engi again.

-Add a public restroom to the corridor.

-Need cleaning enchantments on the killing sticks.

-The slime level sorter sometimes gets backed up with one level range when every station is being used simultaneously, need to speed up the reset mechanism

-Killing room has too much echo

She intended to quickly fix everything and get the level farm up and running for good this very day. The next time the Phageid attacked, people would at least be able to fight back if a lesser Phageid infiltrated the streets.

Lying on her bed, Sofia browsed through her quantic transposition lightmap.

Already two thirds of the way there.

It’s only been boring space rocks ever since that dark epoch shielder… It’s just way too hard to gauge the size of objects, the lightless trails all look the same. Maybe I should search more along the edges.

The actual zone full of potentially interesting things to check out was the surrounding solar system, but VPPV’s training forced her to reach into the empty zone beyond every time.

Hmmm…

After spending a long time browsing, Sofia actually found something new

This lightless trail looks a bit strange. The thing making it must be super slow. Quite rare.

Guess I have today’s target.

Pareth!

Pareth seemed to have decided that these random space exploration fits were dangerous, so now Sofia warned him before she went.

He teleported to her in the second, and disappeared into the halls.

As for Bookie, she would usually warn him to brace for the split, but he was currently not out, comfortable with being just a book at Sofia’s waist during long boring days in the city.

“Let’s see what we’re dealing with this time!”

Sofia vanished from the surface of Veliadren.

What in… What the fuck is that?

The thing Sofia had transposed to this time was something she could not make sense of right away. It looked like a tens of meters tall, and incomprehensibly long soap bubble, transparent and shimmering under her light, inside of which floated all sorts of debris.

Rusty metal parts, rocks, and dust?

There is some mana in there… In the bubble itself?

It’s moving… Slowly.

Suddenly, blurry numbers appeared above the bubble thing.

232?! This thing’s actually alive?

Sofia poked the bubble. She didn’t want to hurt whatever that thing was, but despite how fragile it looked it was probably not that weak. The bubble was in fact a rather stretchy and springy transparent film.

Oh! A jellyfish?!

Space jellyfish?!

Pestle summoned herself next to Sofia.

UAHHH! Pesle can leg?!

… I would rather you don’t. Doesn’t even have bones, no reason to harm it. I’ll get you something else later.

Gahk! Pesle happy is kill.

Come on now. It’s literally a garbage-eater, let’s not eat that, really, I cannot imagine it tasting any good.

Sofia is strong argue… Pestle reluctantly conceded, plopping down on Sofia’s shoulder and silently looking at the thing and the stars beyond. Alongside her, Sofia watched the strange thing slowly advance through space, like a dead fish letting itself get carried by some invisible current. Some three minutes after she had poked it, the transparent skin visibly twitched in a long wave that went from one side to the other.

Was that because I touched it? That’s some awful reaction time. This thing’s agility must be in the negative. Then again it probably isn’t usually getting much action.

I’m guessing all the crap inside is what it eats? I suppose there isn’t much else to be found in space so that more or less makes sense?

The pulse came from there so the head should be this way…

Sofia flew along the endless bubble at top speed for almost three hours before she reached the end. It was a waste of time but her curiosity got the best of her. The bubble’s head was just a round hole surrounded by four fully transparent globulous eyes, and four jellyfish-like tendrils that wiggled about ahead of the creature, as if trying to the endless void. The tendrils themselves were so long that Sofia could not see where they ended.

I don’t know what I expected. What a strange creature. I dub thee– the Giesci! The Giant Space Cleaner.

Space needs more animals like this and less Phageid.

Too bad it doesn’t have a skeleton.

Hah. Enough wasted time. Let’s go back home.

Sofia reappeared late in the afternoon, some ten meters above her statue in the central plaza. Immediately she noticed that something was wrong.

There was nobody outside. From what her aura and mana senses told her, everyone was bundled up inside of their homes, in the entire city.

Huh?

What’s going on?

Flying farther up along with Pareth who had just come out because of her confusion, they looked around.

HUH?! WHAT NOW?!

Up north, wading through the swamp, an army of at least ten thousand people was marching toward the city.