Chapter 958 - Where a ring once took Alith, 870 - s ago

More than a month passed with Sofia in seclusion inside of her cube. She first reached level 349, having gained almost 2.5 million mana in total, which was not much, but she once again pushed for EX levels after that, for an extra eight hundred thousand mana. She squeezed every last drop of power that she could out of Mr.Scribe’s complex leveling process. Although the mana gains were minimal, they would still compound toward larger gains later, but most importantly, her aura grew as well. At first it was the advertised +2 aura per level, then it was a single extra point per EX level, down to zero upon reaching level 349EX30, which took her four full days to reach and only rewarded her with a net fourteen mana.

That was a total of 127 aura points, growing her base stat from 552 to 679, which brought her total from 3635to 4471 aura points including the multipliers from [Radiant World Mirror] and [All-in Earring]. Sucha sizable increase of eight meters to her close aura and eighty two meters to her field aura range were well worth the effort to her.

Meanwhile the total mana increase was of 3 290 830, which was much less impressive, but still good to take.

Name : Sofia Aphenoreth

Age :21 ♢

Class : [Saintomancer] ♢

Sub-Class : [False Lord] ♢

Level :

349(EX30)

Health :15 122 005 (-20%)

Stamina : 7 062 004 (-10%)

Mana : 202 863 326

(+77%)

Divinity: 130

I knew it would be like that when I took the ‘all-in’ earrings, but it’s still strange to see my health and stamina just not go up at all.

Divinity hasn’t moved either.

At least it’s still at a point where I can level up relatively quickly thanks to Mr.Scribe so I suppose I have it easier compared to most people. But leveling up really gets harder and less exciting as we go hmm…

It’s all about the skills and filters.

And multipliers.

It does seem more high level skills and items tend to just have huge stat multipliers.

I suppose the upgraded philosopher’s stone giving +1000% Charisma is a special case, but still.

Now I wonder how much extra stat that fruit would have given me really… Well, I’m the only one with the key so surely I can get it eventually. Just have to get permission to go into the vault again.

Dismissing the system windows, Sofia opened her eyes, to see the sorry state of her levelling cube. Although the bone construct could heal itself thanks to the [Blessing of permanent frame], the bone walls were blue and mushy, having absorbed a high quantity of Sofia’s deadly blood over thousands of reconstructions.

“Shocking that this even counts as bone anymore…” Sofia commented, poking a hole into the floor beneath her, coating her finger in dark blue blood.

Does this blood just not coagulate? Interesting property.

More blue blood spilled out of the tiny hole she poked, like a tiny geyser, until the bone floor closed itself back with some struggle.

The truth was that she had lost so much blood during the leveling process that her cube with the cube was entirely submerged already. Thankfully the larger cube’s external walls were more than two meters thick and made of densely-packed bone, unlike the thin walls of the interior cube, so there were no leaks to the outside world.

Thankfully dealing with most of the hazardous blood was not a big undertaking, as Sofia was immune to the stuff, and already had several Vasperian-made blood specific spatial storage flasks that were meant to hold and transfer her occasional production of Odalite blood. There was still some left behind when she left, but it would not be an issue unless someone somehow broke into the leveling cube.

At least I won’t have to bleed myself if I ever need a large quantity of the stuff. I just have to go buy more flasks for the Odalite blood now.

Quickly sorting through the things in her storage to find a good place for the flasks, Sofia noticed the broken stone key she had left there after retrieving it from the blood sea sanctuary.

Stolen novel; please report.

Right! I wonder what the system will have to say about that.

The piece of stone still shimmered with the Deep’s colors, and when Sofia brought it out, it started emitting deep light before she could even identify it. After some fiddling with it, seeing how the light was pointing at the ground, and despite the system being fully unresponsive when she tried to identify the item, she figured out that the light was like a compass, pointing toward something.

She had half a mind to just store the broken key back and leave it for later, but decided to stop pushing things back for later if she could help it, lest her list of things to do keep growing endlessly. It was the middle of the night when she joined Saria to chat for a bit and enlist her help for a quick investigation.

Since the light pointed at the ground, Sofia enlarged her armor enough for Saria to fit inside alongside her, and transposed them both to outer space on the other side of the planet.

“That was the weirdest teleportation ever,” Saria commented, standing face to face with Sofia in her comically scaled-up armor.

“Because it is technically not teleportation. I think. Well anyway… The key…”

“Well, it’s pointing up, but where is up?”

Since Sofia couldn’t open her armor to look outside without losing the air that allowed them to easily talk, she just directly engraved the enchantment for her vision tokens onto the armor’s bone helmet with her aura.

“Ah, it’s still pointing at Veliadren,” Sofia shared.

“Nice. So it’s either underground or on that side. Think you can take us there?”

“I can probably get us relatively close to the exact direction the light is pointing toward… But it’s going to take a bit before I can transpose again.”

“More time to chat, I guess. You did miss a lot during your leveling. I’ve not moved much myself, but I kept track of things. Cinthia visited a few days ago, too. Anyone you want an update on, sis?”

“Well I don’t need any updates on Pareth and Bookie. I know Pestle has been helping you and Eve with the dungeon a lot while I was busy. And I imagine Ihuarah is having fun running things, same as ever. Humm… Oh right, what are the news from Eleonore’s side?”

“The oracle kid? Hmm… Not much different from when you started leveling I think? I did hear that her parents moved to a huge mansion in the theocracy, but she’s still around on most days, seems like. Went through our dungeon by herself a few times, actually. Last I heard the thing with Hope was at a standstill where she’s stable but no progress on a definitive cure, that was like two weeks ago though. And that’s about all I know.”

“How is she feeling about it all, though?”

“Uh… Well I really only saw her going through the dungeon, but she seemed fine? They covered her in so many magic items I don’t think she could even get hurt in the dungeon if she tried. In there at least she was having fun, no clues about the rest of the time. You’d have to ask Zerei.”

“What about Asty?” Sofia asked next.

“Out leveling.”

“Of course… Your plans on that haven’t changed?”

Saria shook her head, “No changes. I’ll guard mom until you come back from the trial, then we swap.”

“Alright… We really need to get her back before the Phageid attack. Getting closer to just one year left.”

“We’ll never make it to a level that really matters before the attack so no need to think too deeply about it.”

“... I know. It is just really bothering me still, if I cannot protect the city…”

Some time later, Sofia had regained enough divinity to hop back onto the planet, landing on the other side, in the general area that the key was pointing toward.

Sofia dismissed her armor, she and Saria had arrived high in the sky, over an area of vast lush plains and sparse short forests. The sun shone brightly up above, a calm wind rustled the verdant plains and rolling hills below. There were no obvious dangers or high level monsters in sight, only birds, and peaceful mammals grazing in the tall grass.

“Looks like the ripe middle of nowhere,” Saria commented, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. “No signs of civilization anywhere in sight.”

The key no longer pointed straight down, but at an angle, which was a good sign that they were close.

Following the general direction the light pointed toward, the sister flew across the plains, and slowly signs of civilization did start to show. But they were few and far between, moss-covered, overgrown ruins of what vaguely looked like human-made stone buildings. Barely anything remained. Whoever had inhabited these plains had been gone for thousands of years at the minimum.

As they followed the light, the ruins became more common, and a few more complete buildings appeared, though still heavily overgrown. Perhaps it had just been too long, but Sofia did not really feel any human skeletons around.

Then a much grander building pierced the horizon. It was also overgrown, but had maintained enough structural integrity to stand tall in the middle of the ruined plains.

“Now that’s a fucking temple,” Saria muttered.

“Yeah… It wouldn’t even fit in the city if we removed the entire temple district,” Sofia added, seeing the building’s ridiculous proportions.

The key was clearly pointing at something below said building.

Still quite high up in the sky, Sofia and Saria flew over, and now that she could see the entire thing from above, Sofia finally understood what she was looking at. She hurriedly pulled some old papers from her storage ring.

It was a floor plan of a rather uniquely shaped building that she had acquired from Nex’s room back on Cerberus Beta. The layout perfectly matched the outline of the building below.

‘Cathedral of the Holy Lich’

So it was pointing to the last mirror.

The other part of the key must be here.

We might have to retreat for now…