Sofia effortlessly made her way back to the main room with the giant statue of Sorrow, and once again snuck up to the corridor on the far side where chanting voices came from.
The darkness there seemed even darker, but the candle let Sofia cut her way through it, and she carefully entered that last section of the palace. Instead of taking her time exploring every nook and cranny this time, she walked straight ahead toward the voices.
As it turned out, the voices were much further than Sofia had thought, she walked for a few hundred meters unhindered, and the voices got stronger as she went. Nothing but the stone slate ground appeared in her small dome of light, until stone benches appeared on either side. Sofia instinctively took a step back, there were rows of candle zombies sitting on the benches.
But they were in the dark, which was strange. Stepping a bit closer again, she noticed they seemed to be asleep, each holding an extinguished candle.
Feels like the nave of a church? A massive one, though.
Would explain the presence of a choir, I suppose. They would be near the altar?
Well… Getting surrounded by those zombies could be bad, but they’re also not that strong. Let’s just go to the voices as fast as I can, that way if something goes wrong I can [Regret] all the way back here and only have to worry about one side.
Sofia deployed her wings and flew straight for the singing voices deep in the nave.
She got closer and closer until the voices just stopped. Sofia’s light revealed the presence of the massive altar, on which was a life-sized statue of Sorrow standing in the middle, Her face hidden behind Her hands.
Bookie isn’t getting his own choir, huh.Is it bad that I kind of want to take this statue home?
There doesn’t seem to be any movement around anymore since the voices stopped so…
Sofia unloaded a messy pile of bone onto the altar, and quickly used it to cover the statue of Sorrow, delicately fitting the bones over the statue so that it got all the details. She stored the bones back, leaving the statue intact.
There we go, a mold of Sorrow.
Only when she was done Sofia noticed that a glowing scroll had appeared behind the altar.
Oh nice! I hope Bookie is done with his task…
Let’s see…
Sofia focused on her link with Bookie, trying to see if he was moving. Both him and Pareth were perfectly immobile at the moment.
Seems like they’re both done already. Then let’s go.
Sofia picked up the glowing scroll and quickly read through it.
‘Today is a joyous day
The devout procession rises to sing once more
Bound together, cull them all
And let silence flourish
This is your sixth of nine trials of might
Currently available helpers:
Pareth
Everelle
Velanihuarahton
Bookie’
Sofia summoned Bookie without hesitation.
“Sofia!!!” Bookie happily called out as soon as he appeared next to her, throwing himself at her.
Sofia dispelled her armor and caught Bookie in the air, giving him a strong hug, “Come on, it’s not been that long, Bookie,” Sofia jokingly remarqued as she caressed the back of his skull. “How were your trials so far?” she asked as she let him back down. ꭆ𝐚ℕȱＢÈş
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“I winned them all!” Bookie proudly declared with a smug look.
Sofia smiled, her pointy demon teeth showing, “Well done, Bookie! Here, I have some presents for you, want to see?”
“Yes! Yes! I have presents for Sofia too!!!” he excitedly answered, his hands disappearing inside the multiple layers of his clothes.
“Oh! Really? What did you find?” Sofia asked, crouching down to be on eye-level with Bookie.
“Here! Tadaaaaa!”
Bookie held up a fancy book in one hand and a colorful pebble in the other.
Sofia couldn’t believe her eyes, “You found Mithrium?!”
“Hmmhmm!” Bookie happily confirmed with several nods, “Well, it was mostly Crowie, but I helped too!”
“Crowie found it? He has been getting a lot smarter lately, hasn’t he? He’s one of your oldest pages… Let’s prepare a gift for him too when we have time, alright?”
“A gift for Crowie!” Bookie happily approved.
“And with this…” Sofia started as she picked up the Mithrium pebble, “this might be enough to make two rings. Maybe we can make a set for you and Pareth?”
“Huh? But I want you to have it!” Bookie protested.
“Are you ever going to leave me?” Sofia asked in return.
“No!!!” Bookie vehemently dismissed the idea.
“Then you keeping it for me is like me having it,” Sofia told Bookie with a smile. “I’ll keep it safely in my storage for now, we’ll deal with it later. And what about this book?”
“It’s written in vampire language and has spells inside!” Bookie explained.
“Oh! I did hear Astelia mention an old vampire language at some point. Looks a bit like elvish letters, not too surprising knowing how elves were created. We’ll bring that to Asty and get her to decipher it when we’re out of here. Thank you for the presents, Bookie. I like them a lot.”
“Eheh!”
“Well, now I have presents for you too, and after that we need to get started with the fight here. Here, have a nice meal.”
Bookie’s eyes lit up when Sofia brought out the skeletons she had gathered.
“More skeletons! Can I have them all?!”
“Of course. All yours, that should be three new pages,” Sofia explained.
“Oh… I can’t eat that one,” Bookie said, pointing at the Gravelord’s skeleton.
“You can’t?”
“I can but it won’t make a page, the blueprint is too old and all messed up…”
“Oh alright… Too bad, this guy was a bit of a necromancer, could have be- Wait… Bookie, you can see the blueprints?!”
“I can see them after we become level 250!” Bookie proudly explained, “I- I just forgot to tell you… Your blueprint is also all messed up, Sofia…”
“It is?!”
“Hmmhmm. I can’t explain why but it is. Also your fake eye is very visible in there, it’s the least messy part,” he said with a giggle.
“Alright… Well, now is not the time to worry about that. We should choose the pages to get rid of so you can eat, these skeletons are very strong, I’m sure you will like them.”
“They look tasty!”
“I’m sure they do… Let’s get rid of the owl and the dire wolves, how does that sound?”
“Done!” Bookie almost instantly answered, his Book form flying toward the pile of skeletons like a ravenous beast and devouring them in the blink of an eye.
“Let me see,” Sofia said, grabbing the book and searching for the new pages.
Sofia found the page with the illustration of four flying aura mages, they were labeled with a mana cost of 400 000.
“That’s about the price I expected, there’s a Wind, Ice, Lightning and Mana blast Aura mages,” she explained to Bookie, “So we can call them the Wilma mages, for short.”
“Wilma mages!” Bookie repeated with boundless enthusiasm.
“And the other one… Oh, that’s an expensive dwarf.”
The page with the skeleton of the Fortune dwarf Sofia had killed as her fourth trial of the palace cost a whole 5 million mana, as much as the chimera. He was represented on the page with his shovel in hand, one foot on a wooden chest and a shiny coin between his teeth.
Sofia started recounting to Bookie the story of how she got all these new skeletons, and midway through, she stopped as she spotted a candle starting to glow in the distance.
“Ah. I think story time ends here Bookie, are you ready to fight?”
“Always!”
“Then let’s get to it, if I’m correct, we’re going to have to go against large numbers of zombies. Let’s send our own army against them.”
Bookie opened his book form and gave it to Sofia, “Please do it!”
“Alright, let’s go.”
Sofia tore three pages from the book as more and more candles lit up throughout the nave.
Bookie’s fog spread around and 100 Guardian Kidjikkik along with 200 Kidjikkik Soldiers rose one after the other.
Suddenly the entire nave and altar lit up all at once, hundreds of candle zombies rose from the numerous rows of stone benches, more came in lines out from side entrances, more even came from the main entrance Sofia had also entered through. It was like an endless flow of candle zombies, and among them, a much taller one was channeling a huge fireball above his head.
Sofia started channeling a bolt, but Bookie called her out from below. “Wait! Can I do it alone?”
Sofia paused her channeling. “Are you sure?”
“Yes! I want to try!”
“Alright, I’ll be here unless you need help,” Sofia accepted, dispelling her bolt and sitting next to Sorrow’s statue on the altar. “They’re all yours, commander Bookie.”
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