Chapter 964 - Creeper?! Ooooh man...

“Ah! No, no! First it’s the… The… Uh…” Bookie interrupted Sofia.

Seeing him struggling to find his words, she turned the page, seeing that next came a featureless silk ribbon bookmark over a page of ten lizard-looking skeletons with ugly skulls.

“These… Wait, they give you thirty percent mana?!”

Bookie nodded, “It’s the silverthings from the forest! Pareth gave me a lot of skeletons to try and these ones give 3% mana each! So now I have three pages of them…”

“Oh the Silversneers from the lake above where we found Zerei, really? And these weak things are limited to ten a page? Well the 90% mana increase is well worth it even if three pages is a lot.”

“I wanted more but I ran out of pages I could let go…”

“Hmm… Right, did you keep a free page like I asked you to? I have a skeleton for you.”

“Oh! Is it the cat thing from the ice cube?!” Bookie asked.

“Ah, no, you’re going to have to let go of another page if you want to try that one. I’m talking about a high templar of scripture. I quite like the idea of using his own soldiers against him. The Abereth got his mana heart so we should also put his bones to good use.”

“High templar? Is that better than the templars we already have?”

Sofia nodded, “It’s the evolved class, and he was level 340, so he should have much better skills and training. Plus if the skeleton ends up being not too dumb it might be able to give us some information on what scripture is doing. He was captured quite recently by the empire before we got him.”

“Did he say anything when he was alive?”

“No, he was already in unlife like the paladins who attacked… you know, before I got you.”

“Hnn…”

“Well, enough of that. Defense category! Nice ribbons by the way, they’re really cute.”

“Elsep made them for me!”

“Oh? I hope you thanked her properly.”

“I did I did!”

“So what did you change for the defense skeletons, tell me.”

“Eeeeh… Not much…”

“Not much?”

“I let go of the Quezabirdus and the single leyline ant, and then the spots were taken by the Pearled snake and the skeleton Ihuarah gave me.”

“Oh! The one I put out a bounty for? I didn’t know someone had actually claimed it already!”

“I ate it just before leaving with Pareth!” Bookie added.

Sofia nodded, and turned the pages until she found the skeleton in question, it looked like a huge sandworm body with a draconic skull and two wings each as large as the body was long.

A true basilisk. Nice.

Sofia had especially sought out an adult basilisk’s skeleton, but she had to leave the hunting to someone else, as they were usually above level 400. Between their natural resistance to magic, huge sturdy body, rapid flight and even faster swimming, she couldn’t think of any skeleton that could better complement the aerial and underwater ranks of her defensive skeletons. To add to that, they also possessed strong corrosive magic, could spew highly toxic miasma, and could even temporarily turn invisible. Seeing how ferocious the skeleton looked on the page, Sofia could empathise with what the Avians must have gone through when thousands of these things were specifically on the hunt for them.

Technically the Defense category had shrunk a bit, and doing some quick calculations, Sofia could tell that the Attack category had shrunk as well, but such was the price of adding more utility and stat-only pages.

“So lastly for the attackers…” Sofia quickly looked through the section, “Two Kidjikkik pages are gone, the Fublins are gone, the four vampires Asty gave us are gone, and so are the Sirhellions. Interesting. Do you want to explain your choices?”

Bookie nodded, “I tried to do what you would do! The page with twenty Kidjikkik was just bad, and three hundred soldiers was too much since we only have two hundred guardians so I let a hundred of them go. The Fublins were ugly and dumb so I took more Silversneer instead because at least they give more mana. And for the Sirhellions and the Vampires I each replaced them with something better!”

“You seem pretty confident. Let’s see… Big bird? Oh, that’s the Bamboo guy. Is he good? He costs a lot.”

“Very good and strong! And he can make me bamboo armor and weapons whenever I want and they last for a really long time!”

“If you say so… Can he really fight well with that huge beak in front of his face? Hell, if he can deal with that I really have no excuse with my chest, huh… Is he the replacement for the vampires?”

“No! Here,” Bookie said, flipping the pages.

“Oh, these are… Yeah.”

“They’re really scary,” Bookie whispered, nodding furiously.

On the page were five lanky humanoid things with bear-like skulls, bird feet, long limbs and ever longer curved claws like five sharp pruning hooks on each hand.

Sofia stared at the page for a while. They really were quite scary.

“Where did you even get those?”

“I… Uh… So… I was taking a walk in the city, and a merchant stopped me. He said he had skeletons for sale.”

“And you just bought them?”

“They were only a hundred gold each!” Bookie defended himself, “They’re scary but they looked really yummy…”

“Alright… And who was that merchant exactly?”

“Well, that…” Bookie started hesitantly. Under Sofia’s curious stare, he continued, looking away, “I tried going again the next day but the shop had disappeared so…”

Sofia was speechless at the story. She didn’t believe for a second that Bookie was lying, so it seemed that someone was having a lot of fun in her city, for a lack of a better explanation. Either way seeing how the skeletons looked and considering that the page with just five of them cost a whopping 250 million mana to summon, it was likely fair to say five hundred gold for them had actually been quite a bargain. As for who the mysterious merchant was, Sofia could think of at least one necromancer that lived nearby and liked to stick the bones of multiple different creatures together…

Taking Bookie for a quick trip to the library, Sofia grabbed the two dozen books about monsters that she had in stock, and started searching for what the things could be, not expecting to actually find anything. To her surprise, she found the exact creature in the very first book she had opened.

Verminthar Flesh Nester. Endemic to the frozen reaches of Verminthar’s ice-tree forest, the flesh nesters are notorious diurnal predators with astounding stamina. They are particularly swift and violent, naturally practicing multiple forms of body-enhancement spells. As the name implies, they like to spend their nights nesting in the still-warm flesh of their prey before consuming them the next morning. Your best bet, should you encounter one, is to make yourself look as small as possible, as they tend to overlook small game unless starving or enraged. If you really have to fight, stay mobile, and aim for their physikstone, always located right at the base of their nape, protected by the spine.

The south pole?

Maybe it’s Zoth who brought these back along the saint set piece, and Love played the mystery merchant? I could see that…

The flesh nesters and the bamboo warrior bird were the only two additions to the attack roaster, which left Sofia with a single page to check, which Bookie seemed particularly excited about.

“The replacement for the Sirhellions is the skeleton on the Mirrored page, then?” Sofia asked.

“It is, it is! It’s suuuuuuuper good! Can you guess what it is? I give you one try!”

“Hmm… Replacement for the Sirhellions, so it should fly and have lightning magic, right, at least that much?”

“Hmmhmm!”

“I do not know too many of those… A lightning Drake?”

“No! Sofia you lose!” Bookie exclaimed, grabbing his book form from her hand and directly flipping to the mirror pages to show her, “ta-dah!”

Sofia desperately wanted to share his enthusiasm, but she pained to hide her confused expression seeing that the page contained nothing but a sparkly drawing of a straight rod with pointy ends, without even a mana cost. If not for being significantly too thin, she could have mistaken the damn thing for the Abereth.

“Sorry, Bookie, but… What is it, exactly?”

Confused, Bookie turned the book around to look at the page.

“Agh! I forgot it looked like that…”

Sofia chuckled, petting his skull, “Well I’m sure it’s good even if it looks a bit strange, can you tell me what it is? Should I summon it he–”

“NOOOO!” Bookie yelped suddenly, “Not here! Not here! The library could explode!”

“Explode?!”

“It’s a lesser lightning elemental!” Bookie finally revealed.

“Oh, shit. That could have been bad.”

Even Bookie wiped off non-existent sweat from his forehead.

While Sofia still needed to try this one out, as well as an explanation as to how it got there, or about how that strange rod even counted as a skeleton, she at least now had her list of the skeletons fully up to date, only missing the High templar skeleton Bookie had yet to eat.

Favorites

1 Crowie 10 000 000 +10% Processing

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

1 Crowie Dragon 150 000 000 +115% All

1 Pestle 500 000 +300% Speed, Aura & Charisma

1 Shadow-Ice Fox Lixi 10 000 000 +100% Processing

1 Elven Engineer 500 +25% Processing

1 High priest 50 000 +5% Mana

1 Phoenix 100 MM +1000% Charisma

Recon units

100 Crows 1000 +10% Processing

100 Rats 1000 +10% Agility

1000 Filarines (Long fish) 100 000 +5% Speed

3 Harcrows (I like crows) 30 000 000 +60% Aura

Utility units

1 Forgotten (Who?) 30 +1% All

1 Old Jim the Human Cook 100 +10% Fire resistance

1 Elf caretaker (Pro Maid) 1000 +10% Strength

100 Digger Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Health

100 Worker Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Strength

100 Cleaner Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Health

1 Avian librarian 10 000 +25% Processing

1 Gardener hero (he’s fine) 30 000 +20% Charisma

1 Oven the Firebird 35 000 +15% Speed

1 Goldpaw Rabbit (Lucky) 50 000 +15% Aura

Support units

25 paladins 5000 +10% Health

5 giant ice spiders 50 000 +10% Processing

10 Female stone Ogres 100 000 +25% Strength

1000 Spring Zappers (BZZT) 1 000 000 +10% Speed

100 Dart Shamblers (EWW) 10 000 000 +100% Agility

30 Spike Shamblers 30 000 000 +5% All resistances

1 Ram Shambler (For a beastkin, Sonia seems like she’s never seen a ram if this is what she named that fucking thing) 100 000 000 +200% Health +200% Strength

Stat fodder

10 Silversneer Useless + 30% Mana

10 Silversneer Pointless + 30% Mana

10 Silversneer NeverUsing + 30% Mana

Defence units

3 Templars 30 000 +25% Strength

100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Health

100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Health

1 Emperor pearled Snake 300 000 +20% Health

10 Leyline Worker Ants 1 000 000 +100% Health

1 Quartz Giant (Gemite) 10 000 000 +1000% Health -200% Speed

1 Basilisk (HUGE) 100 000 000 +200% Health +200% Speed +150% Charisma

Attack units

1 Tall Mimic (Next on the line)100 000 +50% Speed

100 Soldier Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Strength

100 Soldier Kidjikkik (More.) 100 000 +20% Strength

1 W.I.L.M-A 400 000 +5% Mana +10% Aura

5 Sandworms 500 000 +50% Health

1 Chimera 5 000 000 +100% Health, Strength, Speed & Agility

1 Goldie (Still a dwarf) 5 000 000 +10% Mana +100% Processing +100% Agility

1 Bamboo Master (Beak) 50 000 000 +100% Health +100% Strength +100% Agility

100 Grayskins 100 000 000 +100% Strength

5 Flesh Nesters (Disgust) 250 000 000 +250% Speed

Pain 10 000 000 000 +1000% Health +100% Mana

Mirror Page

Lesser lightning elemental (WILL FOR SURE EXPLODE, TWICE) ??? ???

Total bonus stats:

+2956% Health (From 2296%)

+726% Strength (From 256%)

+846% Speed (From 341%)

+526% Agility (From 271%)

+326% Mana (From 131%)

+396% Processing (From 151%)

+1586% Charisma (From 321%)

+501% Aura (From 311%)

+5% All resistances

+10% Fire resistance