Chapter 456 - Cheating : start (Patreon)

The ghostly sun’s black light darkened the spiritual realm. It looked exactly like the depiction of it in the admins’ house, a large black star with a shiny, crackled surface, and surrounded by lazily swaying dark flames. 

It’s pulling on my soul. If I get any closer it will become hard to turn back. I might be stuck just like I was stuck on Cerberus Beta’s surface. Are you sure about this, Mr Scribe?

Right, can’t answer anymore because you need to manage the spells… 

Sofia returned to the physical realm and made sure that her current velocity was as close to zero as she could, then she turned to a graveyard ghost again, and let the gravity of the Black Sun slowly pull her in.

The attraction was more gentle than she thought it would be, and she managed to land on the Sun’s surface without too much trouble, touching solid matter in the spiritual realm for the first time. Flying through the layer of dark flames covering the surface had been like falling through a layer of sticky water.

Sofia bent down after she landed, and her ghostly hands touched the cold and smooth black spiritual stone the Sun was made of. 

It’s a bit like how Alith described the Black Primus resin, It doesn’t feel like real solid grund, but I can’t quite get through, like it’s pushing me out. I wonder what would happen if I returned to the physical realm now and went down. Would my body sink in and my soul be stuck outside? 

Without any indication on where to find the Altar the Scribe had mentionned, Sofia randomly picked a direction to walk in. Now and again, when she stepped over a crack in the ground, the sticky dark flames escaping out of it weakly latched onto her soul for a few meters.

Three hours later, she was starting to feel a bit sick from staying in the spiritual realm too long, when she finally caught sight of a black spire on the horizon. She ran to the strange edifice. It was a black conical tower, in an architectural style that Sofia couldn’t quite identify, and the tower itself was empty, but stairs led down into the Sun’s black crust.

The long winding stairs took her very deep into the star’s underground, where she finally entered a large room and was kicked out of the spiritual realm, her magic suppressed.

Finally out. At least I’m not as nauseous as I should, good point of not having an actual body, I suppose…

The room’s walls were made of a dark stone speckled with glimmering white dots, the same kind of unbreakable stone that she had discovered behind the walls of the second trial’s labyrinth. There was no exit anywhere in sight, even the stairs Sofia had taken to enter the room were nowhere to be seen. Only a lone speckled-stone altar stood in the middle of the room on an elevated perch.

Alright, I know what to do… But quickly, I’m curious about this stone. I thought it was some fake unbreakable stone invented for the purpose of the second trial…

Sofia ejected the Key from within her bone body and used it to scrape at the speckled-stone walls. Even with the admin’s dagger, leaving a thin scraping mark was the best she could do.

Maybe it’s because the bones don’t have much strength… Still, the only other thing I have this dagger can’t cut through is the scale armguard. Even mithril doesn’t hold. If only I could make Pareth a skeleton out of this stuff… 

She carefully gathered the tiny amount of rock dust she had scraped off of the wall, and tried to identify it.

[ERROR]

[Database could not be reached]

That’s new. Because of the privacy mode, I suppose. But I could still identify things on the Sun temple, despite being out of range of the system in its entirety… Things are not really adding up here.

[Asterite]: Extremely resilient material of unknown origin. Most often found in ruins of the lost epoch.

So I still get it despite the error message. Is it because you already knew?

Although Sofia asked, she did not really expect an answer, and jut got up and walked to the altar. 

Right, Pareth, come out.

Pareth appeared crouching near Sofia in the altar room, the ceiling was not quite high enough for him to stand up. 

I forget that you’re so tall. You should get the quest reward too, no? No reason not to? I’m not too sure how the system side of thing works, but since we share my scribe, it should be alright.

Pareth nodded in response, and bookie appeared near Sofia. “Then I want to be here too!”

Sure.

The top of the altar was shaped like a large bowl, and there was a single piece of Sunless debris inside. Most of the Sunless debris in Sofia’s possession were stored in her eye, so she filled up the bowl in an instant. She had enough saved up to do it multiple times if needed. The Sunless debris started melting on the altar, and the liquid got absorbed into the stone, leaving a single piece behind. And that was it. Whatever this had accomplished, Sofia could not feel it.

But Bookie could, “It’s the Sunless souls! It absorbed them!”

Really? There were Sunless spirit bodies in the debris? I observed myself that their spiritual bodies were scattered and absorbed by… Well, by this black sun. So they can’t possibly be inside the debris… Are you sure of what you say, Bookie?

“Yes! Super sure!”

Then… That must be how the Sunless reproduce. What a weird… Anyway, shouldn’t we have completed the bonus task by now?

As if Mr. Scribe had waited for the discussion to finish first, the system windows appeared right on cue.

[Trial task : Upgrade your mana heart to B tier or above and bring it to the planet’s core (Failed)]

[Additional rewards task :  α (FailedCompleted)]

Alright, fair enough. You got the notifications too, Pareth?

He confirmed with a nod of his three skulls.

[ERROR]

[User cannot fail completed tasks]

[User cannot complete failed tasks]

There we go again.

[ERROR. UNRECOGNIZED TASK STATUS]

[Admin action required]

[Available admins : 0]

[Initiating emergency recovery. Please wait]

Hey! These are just like the ones I got back then for the dual class. That’s nostalgic. Knowing why there are no available admins do make these a lot sadder, though…

More notifications followed, one after the other.

[ERROR]

[Rewards could not be delivered]

[Rewards have been delivered]

[Handler could not be reached]

And finally, one last notification opened, staying in the middle of Sofia’s vision.

[You are now connected to: HANDLER; please redeem your reward: (Any reasonable request)*1]

Are we good? This is it? Any reasonable request?! That’s quite vague. No wonder Mr. Scribe was aiming for this. What would I have asked for otherwise? Probably something related to my current messy situation within the system itself… But there is no point in thinking about it too much.

I want my scribe to be upgraded to tier three.

The answer was instantaneous, before Sofia could even finish thinking her thought.

[HANDLER has approved your request]

[Beginning delivery]

Just as she read these words, Sofia blacked out.

[Congratulations! You will now be sent back to the Trial grounds]

Sofia woke up at the top of a tall spire under a green sky. Bookie immediately noticed and jumped on her, “Sofia!”

Hey Bookie. Did I sleep long this time?

“About ten days.”

Oh. Sorry about that. Is everything fine? It looks like we’re back on Cerberus Beta?

“Yes, we were teleported to this tower and we’ve just been protecting you until you woke up!”

Sofia looked around, using her control over bones to move her head, since most of her neck muscles were gone. The top of the spire did not seem to have stairs leading down, she searched for Pareth’s presence, feeling his position to be about sixty meters below. She gave Bookie a clumsy hug with her bone body and slowly stood up after letting him go.

Did the upgrade work?

A new ‘quest’ appeared for her to read, detailing the next steps to take, which she took for a yes, but did not look at too closely for now. She had to satisfy her curiosity about something else first.

Pareth? Not coming to say hi?

Pareth teleported to her, and his massive body made the platform instantly look crowded.

So? What did you ask for?

A big status screen appeared like it was the answer.

The status sheet I made for you? Did something change?

Name : Pareth

Age : 4

Class : [Holy Eclipse Skeleton]

Level :  249 ♢

Health : 12 721 500 / 12 721 500  (37 146 780 With sanctified grounds and halo)

Stamina : 4 315 200 / 4 315 200  (12 600 384 With sanctified grounds and halo)

Mana : 49 800 / 49 800    (200*level)

Active Skills (6)

[Sanctified grounds]

[Flying shields of light]

[Chains of the four seals]

[Gravity well]

[Purification]

[Greater Heal]

Passive Skills (6)

[Stellar corona]

[Shapeless weapon of light]

[Shapeless armor of light]

[Higher magical damage negation]

[Space magic resilience]

[Displacement skills immunity]

Special skills (6)

[Bone Density Up +200%]

[Silent Bones +200%]

[Teleport to Sofia]

[Negate hits of less than 10% Max Health]

[Quadruple Damage Against Undead]

[Draconic Shapeshifting] Lv.1

Summoner skills (5)

[Blessing of the Deep]

[Soul link]

[Shared senses]

[Bone Dominus : Blessed Construct]

[Runeforged Overlord Aura]

Enchantments (3)

[Generosity of Sun]

[Avian magic : Fighting sense]

[Avian magic : Air steps]

[Blessing of bloating]

[Mark of Aphenoreth]

[Best Skeleton ♡]

Draconic shapeshifting?!

Are you going to turn into a Dragon like Saria?

Pareth shook his skulls, and the specific skill description popped up for Sofia to read.

[Draconic Shapeshifting]: The exclusive signature magic of Dragons that has allowed them to rule over the world for aeons lost.

Allows the user to dramatically alter their physical form at will.

Lv.1 : The user can freely alter their body size up to a factor of 3 without any stat penalty. (Weight is unaffected; some restrictions apply; changes at higher levels)

(Next function unlocks at skill level: 2)

To show off his new magic, Pareth jumped off of the platform. As he plummeted to the ground, his form explosively grew to that of a colossal fifteen meters-tall skeleton. He landed at the bottom of the spire with a loud bang. Sofia ran to the edge of the platform to look down.

I have to say, you made a pretty good choice.

Author's note:

Hi! I'm sure most of you have seen the update yesterday. Thank you for the words of support everyone, it really made me feel better through this awful experience. I've done everything I could to salvage the situation, and now, while the preorders are gone, I managed to fix things to where the book is already out!

(The page is a bit fucked, as amazon is still updating, avoiding this is one of the reasons we normally do preorders.)

Hopefully it can somehow recover from the delay and the lost preorders. I don't think this has the potential to completely kill the series on amazon, but it could definitely hurt it a lot more than it already did. Let's just hope for the best.

(｀• ω •´)b