Chapter 159 - Ogre Pareth V2 (Patreon)

Zerei’s work on carving the runes on Pareth and adapting the new ritual was spectacular. The new ritual was much simpler and included both new aura skills, the Sun’s ritual, and even the seven durability enhancement enchantments that Sofia had put in there the last time. So it was a perfect upgrade with no downsides besides the slight hit on Pareth’s mana regeneration.

“That’s it, yes. The ritual is as full as can be, any more, and it will be much too unstable.”

“It’s already a lot.”

The ritual circle was carved on a giant bone slate, so Sofia could store that to reuse later. Her skeletons brought the bones to the center of the enormous ritual circle. This was a genuinely huge ritual circle; the deep grooves would require much more blood to activate than usual. Probably almost as much as she could summon in total.

[Summon blood] : Summons liquid human blood anywhere in an 85 meters (1*Skill Level) radius from the Saintomancer (Must be free space). The quantity of blood summoned this way is : (1*Skill Level*Mana Spent) Milliliters.

I have 89000 mana, so that's… Seven and a half thousand liters? That sounds like a considerable amount, but I know from experience that it’s surprisingly not that big in terms of volume. Should still do the job, though, but I have to be fast and precise about it… Actually, I should elevate the borders of the bone slate to prevent spillage. No reason not to.

It took almost all her mana to fill up the whole thing. Zerei, even having been told about the skill, was still surprised that Sofia had a permanent creation skill, especially for something as complex as blood. She watched from the side, fascinated.

‘[Summon blood] reached level 86’

‘[Summon blood] reached level 87’

Sofia dismissed the usual error message and agreed to summon this ‘new hero’. Pareth’s current skeleton fell to the ground as he left that shell behind, and the Alpha’s bones rose messily to find their place.

It does look a lot less impressive without the aesthetic parts of the ritual.

She didn’t want to ruin the surprise this time, so she didn’t watch the health points climb. Instead, she savored the satisfaction of watching the skeleton reassemble itself.

She had good hopes that it would be ridiculous.

The Alpha's skeleton was much heavier than the one she had used before. It was an entirely different order of magnitude. And she now knew how abusable Pareth’s [Blessing of Bloating] was. She remembered ogre Pareth version 1’s stats; on the day of the summoning, it had been 65 000 health, turning to 190 000 in [Sanctified grounds]. The levels since then had inflated that number a bit but not much; most of it came from the blessing, and his weight hadn’t changed. Well, until he returned to his old human skeleton and became frail again.

How much of a battle titan will you become?

The bones finished assembling, the horned skull finally finding its way atop the spiked spine.

Name : Pareth Level : 199 ♢

Health : 407 460 / 407 460

Stamina : 154 133 / 154 133

Mana : 19900 / 19900

Sofia stared silently at the numbers.

The insanity of those numbers. That’s more than twice as much health as I had in my demon form. That is more than Zeirei has!

WITHOUT THE BUFF!!!

Go on. Do it.

Lords almighty…

She couldn’t contain a nervous chuckle. Zerei looked up at the humongous Pareth and the halo above his skull, “It’s almost more impressive than when it was alive.”

Pareth kneeled toward Sofia as he activated his armor and sword.

“Correction, it’s much more impressive, yes.” She looked at Sofia, who still hadn’t said a single thing, “Is everything alright, yes?”

Sofia didn’t answer. She just shared Pareth’s status. Zerei was struck dumb by the numbers.

Name : Pareth Level : 199 ♢

Health : 1 189 783 / 1 189 783

Stamina : 450 068 / 450 068

Mana : 19820 / 19900

She recovered fast, as expected of someone her level. Her wooden hat fell as she shouted, “GODLY! FUCKING! SHIT! By the feather of the King-Magi in his sacred tomb! What have we created?”

Standing in Pareth’s shadow, looking up at his radiant halo whose light superseded the sun’s, Sofia answered.

“An eclipse.”

“You will break the trial.”

“That much?”

“You have no idea what a million health represents, do you?”

“Well… I still need to make sure everything else is ready. Just a lot of health isn’t going to do everything. I have a few ideas if you’re willing to listen…”

Zerei was gradually losing her mind as Sofia explained her plans. Her past passion as a craftsman was waking up as she contemplated the ludicrous ideas Sofia had. “Let’s do it. Yes. Yes! Let’s do it! We’ll break the trial! History will be made! The impossible made possible!”

“I am not too sure I follow, but sure, I guess that means you approve of my ideas.”

They’re good, right? I’ve had a while to ponder over these, so…

“You have no idea what you’re getting into. The second trial is special… I can’t say more, but yeah. You will understand when you get there. Ahahah. Yes yes yes!”

“Speaking of special, what about specialization? Did you get one? Can we have more than one?”

“I have one, yes, a passive one. Unlike my other class skills, it stayed even after the demonic transformation. But it’s a secret. Maybe I’ll show you one day, yes. And you can have up to one per category of Active, Passive, and Classless.”

“Classless too? They’re also trial rewards?”

“They all are; rewards for incredible feats. I got mine for going through my first trial with every single dwarf surviving the goblin invasion,” Zerei boasted. But Sofia had never seen a real goblin, so it lacked the punch it should have had.

“That does sound impressive.”

“You don’t sound so impressed, no. What was yours for?”

“Killed a level 299 mage.”

“You WHAT?! No, you know, let’s not talk about it. Whatever. From now on, I’m no longer friendly Zerei you just rescued from the world’s darkest pimple. I’m now your official second trial coach. I can’t tell you any more details about it, but I’ll ensure you get that second specialization, if not more.”

Sofia didn’t mind; she was going to train either way. To have Zerei actively helping could only make it go faster. No matter what, she is skilled. I saw what happened to that Alpha Ogre; she wasn’t hit once.

“Where do we start?”

“Lay out the skills you still need to level up, their current level, and the skills that are stuck.”

Sofia didn’t mind sharing some more information about her skills. The ones still need leveling where : [Spine of the Black Sun] at Level 122; [Heal Undead] at Level 64; [Summon Blood] at Level 87; [Graveyard of the righteous] at Level 108, and [Sanctity] at Level 77.

Of course, there was also the Venerable Physique of Primeval Void, which she mentioned without showing a description, but explaining that it was a skill with unusual training methods.

Zerei took notes and gradually formed a plan.

“We have a lot to do. You said your teammate is coming in a few days, yes?”

“She will be here in five days if everything goes well. She’s at my level. I haven’t seen her in some months.”

“Alright, then, first off, how much vertical space do you need for [Heal Undead] to work?”

“About ten meters.”

“Let’s get out of the city. I’ll need you to show me.”

Sofia used her heal continuously while Zerei walked around her in the grass, observing her closely. “You can stop. I have all the data I need. To make it short, no need to train this skill. You can easily learn it wild and maybe even remove the height restriction, or at least change it to a depth restriction.”

“Depth?”

“Cast it against a wall. Then, you won’t need a ten-meter height, but a ten-meter horizontal distance in any direction.”

“That… Could work.”

“It will, yes. And you can better regulate the healing output with it wild. It will be useless to heal Pareth now, that would cost too much, but you can heal the temporary ones like this.”

“Got it. I don’t have a good skill to replace it with for now, so I won’t get rid of it now. And what do I train then? I was thinking of the VPPV first since it has multiple stages.”

Zerei nodded, but she suggested something else, “We can do that when your teammate is here, right now, I want you to use all your mana on [Summon blood].”

“Why summon blood?”

“It’s the fastest to dump your mana into. And we’re going to be on the move. We’ll use these five days to fill up your book. You should already put the ogres in there. And next, we go for your plan with rats; I think it’s a great idea.”

Five days later, Sofia was shocked at her progress in such a short time. The number of pages in the skeleton book had almost doubled, [Summon blood] had reached level 108, and [Sanctity] had capped out at level 100. She was also learning to fly much better than she used to, simply by virtue of mimicking Zerei’s fluid aerial maneuvers.

Sofia looked at the Zangdar ring locator. The needle was moving fast, pointing toward the large boulevard they came from, and it stopped. She was waiting at a roadside open terrace with Zerei sipping on a cold glass of apra juice under her wide wooden hat.

Three familiar figures came out of a side street, walking beside each other.

[Hero - Lv.199♢]

[Hero - Lv.199]

[Supporter - Lv.99]