Chapter 961 - Oh Aphenoreth, what have you unleashed…

It took a bit to share the spell structures, after which the armored lich hurriedly announced his departure, citing an urgent factory mishap he had to deal with, and leaving as abruptly as he had arrived.

Sofia and Saria were left alone in the moss-covered cathedral, having both received Arrenham’s teachings in the form of pulsating flashes of light that had directly engraved the two spell schematics in their memories.

Saria looked at Sofia with a strange expression, “So… Did you also get a recipe for Chrome-fried mimic legs mixed with the spells, or was that just me?”

“... I didn’t dare to say anything. I suppose that the memory sharing spell he used isn’t as easy as he tried to make it look. Are you actually going to learn the spells?”

Saria shrugged. “I couldn’t even use the call if I wanted to. The eyes, though? I’m thinking about it. My class is sooo very combat-oriented– aside from the lair I don’t really have any utility spells, might be a good start.”

Sofia nodded along, glancing at the two spell descriptions Mr.Scribe had provided after analyzing the spell schematics. She would still need to manually learn the spells if she wanted to use them.

[Myriad Eyes]:

The infamous Holy Lich’s secret ‘Fleshtide Overseer’ spell series - Eye ver.

Summon one eye to be part of your eye network.

The eyes can relay visual data to other eyes or to you, up to 300km away, and understand simple instructions.

Each eye can hold up to one hundred million mana.

Total mana sustain cost:

Visible : 1/s

See-through : 2/s

Invisible : 5/s

Faded : 10/s

Sustain cost is doubled while relaying images.

Initial summon cost: 100 mana, 1 sliver of soul

Eyes within your field aura may consume ambient mana for sustain.

Estimated blueprint cost: 0.2s

So much for long range communication being complex without teleportation, turns out the liches had it figured out long ago, just leaving pieces of their souls around.

Fundamentally the eyes should have the same kind of faint link as I have with Bookie’s summons, just with extra image transmission.

It’s truly a lightweight spell too… But why are the mana circuits so weird? I’ve never seen anything that messy. It’s shocking that this works…

And the other one is the same.

[Gods Call Thee]:

A fearsome and vicious spell that can disconnect one’s body, soul, and mana heart, making even resurrection difficult.

Forcefully sends the target’s body towards the superphysical and soul toward the subspiritual planes, splitting them and causing great planar friction that can damage the core and blueprint.

Casting time: 5 (2.5) seconds

Mana cost: 100 000 000

Casting requirements:

Must hold staff at least 1.5m long.

Must possess at least three different gods’ and three different recessed essences.

Must have visited both destination planes.

Tip of staff must be touching the target at the end of casting.

All requirements reunited, base success chance is 100%, but the following factors may cause it to decrease:

Target currently has more mana available than caster (including this spell’s cost).

Target is immune to curses. (~50% decrease)

Target possesses more divine essences than caster.

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Target’s mana substats are higher than caster.

The following factors cause the success chance to increase instead:

Target’s body and soul are damaged or restrained.

Target hears the caster chant the spell’s name. (~10% increase)

Tip of staff is touching closer to target’s core.

Estimated blueprint cost: 0.7s

It’s not bad… The loss of the skeleton, though…

Still thinking about whether she liked the spell, Sofia left the cathedral with Saria, not wanting to disturb the lich’s place more. Sofia left a bone effigy in a nearby forest, and since she still had yet to regain enough divinity for another transposition, used her ring to enter Zangdar, and Saria’s to exit it directly in the sisters’ private walled-off area on the eastern border of Ser’Extra.

Sofia played around with the broken stone key in her hand. “At least now I have a proper reason to go explore the last sanctuary even if I already have its mirror.”

“Heh, who knows, you might even get a different variant of it when you go? After all, the one I got last time was different from yours, and you said the last one also had variants.”

“Possible. I would not be disappointed even if I did not, honestly, [Singularity edict] is already incredible.”

Saria sat on the ground, her back against the outer wall of Sofia’s massive leveling cube. “Speaking of which, care to elaborate on [Roaming Free]’s details? The way you described it before and the skill description aren’t really all that clear.”

“I am not quite done testing all the details, but to make it simple huh… There are three parts to the skill. I have a mark that I can leave on anything or anyone by touch. I have not found any way to get rid of it except dispelling it myself, even leaving it on a bug then killing the bug, the mark would still stay where the bug died. I even suspect it might reattach to the target if it’s resurrected. Wherever the mark is, I can sense it, and I can grab it, basically. That’s the first part.”

Saria took mental notes. “So if you marked me you could follow me into the lair maybe?”

“Yes. That’s the second part, I can just, uh… Rip the planes open and jump through? The landing spot is either wherever the Mark is, or at the same place I currently am, but in another plane. And yes I can jump straight to the Deep… Technically. But Ser’Extra must be built inside of a wall in the Deep, because I’ve not been able to see much or get through, but it was distinctly connected during my tests, that I am sure of.”

“Can you take someone along?” Saria asked.

“No, but yes. Skeletons can wait in the Painted Halls and that works. For now I have not managed to get anyone directly through the opening otherwise. Not even Pestle with her [Halt] mirror quasi time-stop. It actually gets me into a quasi time-stop state as well, and it is really weird how the two interact.”

“And there’s no cost or cooldown?”

“Technically no, but actually, it all drains a lot of stamina, and leaves me quite mentally tired as well. The plane-tearing stuff also requires perfect focus, and I don’t think I could pull it off in a dangerous battle.”

“Which leaves the ‘always whole’ part,” Saria continued.

“Yeah that… Just think about it saying that I can bring my physical body and stuff to the other planes, and that is pretty much it.”

To demonstrate, Sofia had the graveyard Nymphs pull both of them to the spiritual plane, and while on one hand, Saria’s appearance in the spiritual plane was naturally that of her souls like everybody else, Sofia was still her usual self, and even able to directly touch spiritual matter.

“Actually, good time to test, can you hear me?”

The spiritual plane was generally pretty silent, souls made no sound, and a background noise like a distant howling wind was all one could usually perceive. Saria’s soul, which looked more like a human-shapêshifted dragon than a human's soul, seemed to be nodding, although it was hard to tell.

Saria extended a ghostly hand, trying to touch Sofia, only for her soul to phase through Sofia’s face.

On the contrary Sofia could touch Saria’s soul with no issue, which Sofia found quite funny.

I’ve become a reverse ghost.

Bookie called VPPV the ‘become not-god’ skill. Now I also have ‘become not-ghost’.

Let’s try something. Nymphs, get Saria back to the physical plane, and just… Just leave me here.

Normally ‘just leave me here’ would just cause the half-ghost state the Nymphs give those they touch to end, thus ejecting them back to the physical plane. But now that Sofia could fully be wherever she wanted, could she not stay?

As expected once the Nymphs disappeared, leaving Sofia more in the spiritual than the physical plane, she just stayed there, while Saria’s soul became slightly more faded and blurry, her consciousness having returned to the physical world.

“What a neat trick. Since I’m ‘fully’ here now… Is there even anything left of me in the physical? Probably not, right?”

Seeing Saria’s soul looking around, Sofia assumed that her guess was right.

Curious, Sofia grabbed her staff out of her storage ring. There was no issue, at first, but when she let go of her staff, it just disappeared. She could still see a faint spiritual outline where the core of the staff should have been moments before, but that was the only thing left.

“It just got booted back out to the physical plane, then?”

“What about…”

Sofia summoned some blood, feeling the spell resolve, and she saw the blood appear in the air in front of her, falling a few centimeters before disappearing just like her staff.

Interesting.

I almost want to play around with explosive bolts now… Not the time and place, though…

Well now… The Nymphs should be able to bring me back, but let’s get some training in.

Sofia grabbed space in front of her, and a fissure to the physical plane opened. Compared to the first time she had used the skill, leaving a sanctuary back to the physical plane, going from the spiritual to the physical was a lot easier, due to how closely linked the two planes were. She still had to focus to keep the fissure stable and open it wide enough to jump through, but the effort was relatively lesser.

Before Saria even realised what was going on, Sofia appeared back in front of her, landing in a puddle of summoned blood.