Sofia was still at the door of the walkway. She had been staring at the sun until her eyes started to hurt, which wasn’t too long, but the Deep whale hadn’t resurfaced.
Maybe I saw wrong. Ahah.
Let’s just say that I did… I need to focus on the small one first. There may be multiple even. If they took over every elf that was manning the temple except those that managed to end up like the engineer one I found.
Let’s hope there weren't too many personnel in this temple.
Who am I kidding? This place is big enough to host hundreds of people… But I only saw one on the outside, so that’s promising. They’re clearly powerful enough to break the walls and doors but they don’t, so that’s also good news.
Perhaps if I just made a bone cube to hide into they wouldn’t even try to break it to get to me.
I’m not going to try that though.
I could try walling them off though. The range on [Bone dominus] is only twenty two meters, but if I hide behind a wall and use a fog skeleton as lure… Well, one thing at a time.
First, let’s locate that thing again.
Sofia walked back into the northern building, carving open a hole in a random room’s door with her mithril weapon before returning to the walkway. She brought out the book and used the page with a single rat, unsummoned the book and ran back to hide further in the room she’d just opened.
Lords I was so scared that it might be coming from behind me…
As she hid, the rat quickly advanced, stopping in the middle of the walkway. Sofia really hoped that the elf monster wasn’t in the same building as her anymore. If it had gone back to roaming on the path around the main building, not only did it mean she wasn’t currently stuck in the same place the monster was, but also that she could reliably set up traps on the path the monster liked to return to. It if was just walking at random, then the situation would be a bit worse.
It did not take long for the rat to move. It jumped on the spot once before running off to the main building. Bad news.
If the monster came walking from the main building, the rat was to wait until it came close and jump into the sun. If not then it was to lure it towards the main building. One jump before that meant that it had come from the sky while two jumps meant that it was a swarm which came.
It really came flying again?!
The rat should lure it away at least…
I’ll have an issue if that thing comes flying as soon as I try to use mana, but it took about ten seconds to get here. I can work with that.
I’ve seen with the dog that physical attacks were a desperate cause.
If the whale is anything to go by, even the sun’s temperature isn’t a reliable way to kill them. What does that even leave me with?
Trying to cast a bolt is just gonna give my position away, not counting the damage it would do to the temple. The rot would also attack the structure so it’s annoying to use.
Oh, the rat jumped down. Good job, you survived quite a long time. Hmm well. Let’s return to my safe room and get to work.
28 days left.
It took Sofia a good while to think about a proper plan and to set it up. She was currently in her safe room, but she had prepared a trapped room not far from there. Getting it right had been a tedious process. She had to make sure to lure away the monster first every time she wanted to use magic outside of her mana isolation zone. She couldn’t expand it more despite having the enough power cores for that because she simply didn’t have enough mana to fill them up. Not in a short time at least, and this trapped room was the only place near it where the architecture was right for her plans without tearing everything down.
It was a relatively small room of about seven meters long and large that she emptied by hand. She had checked the interior of nearby walls with her graveyard skeletons for any pipes that might get damaged before she pierced small holes leading to two other rooms and carved her own door to a third room. There was also a hole in the ceiling that led to the outside, and more stuff she prepared on the side. Most importantly, every square centimeter of wall, floor and ceiling in both this room and the adjacent ones were covered in a thin layer of smooth white bone.
She left the safe room to go into one of the side rooms. From the small hole in the wall, she had a perfect view on the middle of the trapped room and the hole to the opposite side room.
She had also replaced most of the floor’s doors with bone doors, to make moving around easier and safer, only the safe room she didn’t touch, since it worked perfectly how it was.
Her side-room was partially covered by the mana isolation field’s boundary allowing her to hide inside it or to come out to use her magic on the other side if needed.
Such a convoluted layout all for that one monster…
I know now that it’s dumb enough to follow the rat every time, so I can have it come here multiple times. That’ll be really important. Unless the first plan works.
Once more, she summoned the poor lonely rat out of the book, but along with the three templars this time. The templars stood unmoving inside of the isolation zone while the rat scampered at full speed through the air vents, down to the first floor and onto the open-air walkway, at the same spot he returned to every time.
Without surprise, the elf abomination came flying, but for the first time, it was led inside of the northern pyramid. The rat led it through the corridors and up the stairs, luring it toward the trapped room.
As the monster flew behind the rat, trying and failing to grab it multiple times due to its imprecise movements, Sofia and the templars got in place. Sofia stayed inside of the isolation zone, channeling a piercing angel bolt with one templar to her side. The second one took the bone doors to reach the opposite side-room, and the third one was behind a door leading to the trapped room, ready to rush in if need be.
The templar on the opposite side’s job was to leverage his invincibility that came from the sunlight leaking into the room through a hole in the ceiling that Sofia had made. He was to intercept the bolt should it somehow go through the elf, to avoid destroying the elven machinery that was unfortunately on the other side in the next next room.
The rat entered the trapped room. The elf and his iridescent parasitic Deep puppetmaster followed. Sofia stepped out of the isolation zone, the monster was line up with the hole in front of her. She released the Angel’s bolt.
The precautions to intercept the bolt with the templar proved useful, the bolt crashed into the elf’s torso, carving a hole straight through and coming out from the other side and into the templar’s raised sword.
What exactly…
The elf was pierced, but the parasite inside of it was unharmed. It was as if the bolt had phased through it like Sofia liked to phase through walls. Sofia was a bit unsettled by the unforeseen result, but she proceeded with her plans nonetheless.
Out of her storage ring and directly over the elf, she summoned a bone cage, blessed by bone dominus, and had the ground of the trapped room instantly open up slightly to let it slide into it, locking it in place.
With the monster trapped, she activated [Heal Undead]. The pillar of light formed in the void on the outside, shining onto the roof, and streaming into the trapped room by the hole in the ceiling.
The dried and cracked corpse of the elf was instantly covered in rot. But once again, the creature inside seemed unharmed, the holy light bouncing off of its iridescent skin like it hit many small mirrors, dispersing it in every direction.
Sofia was happy that her precautions against her own attacks worked, the templar soaking up the bolt and the bone-covered walls being protected against the rot. But she couldn’t say the same about the success of her experiment.
The parasite slid out of its host body, leaving the dead elf behind, Sofia saw a glimpse of the monster’s true form as it fled, sliding through the bars of the cage.
If she correctly understood what she saw, the monster was actually a larger version of the bulbous spider-like things that made the swarm. The only difference was that the top of the bulb had bloomed into the constantly expanding and contracting honeycomb structure that birthed the little swarmlets.
The parasite fled and Sofia also followed her protocole in case of the monster’s escape, she ran to the back wall and used the graveyard skeletons to phase right back into her safe room.
She trembled in disgust as she pictured the parasite sliding out of the dead elf’s body again and again in her mind. Yet, deep inside, she rejoiced. The trap room hadn’t been worthless, for the first time, the monster had fled.
Sofia was still at the door of the walkway. She had been staring at the sun until her eyes started to hurt, which wasn’t too long, but the Deep whale hadn’t resurfaced.
Maybe I saw wrong. Ahah.
Let’s just say that I did… I need to focus on the small one first. There may be multiple even. If they took over every elf that was manning the temple except those that managed to end up like the engineer one I found.
Let’s hope there weren't too many personnel in this temple.
Who am I kidding? This place is big enough to host hundreds of people… But I only saw one on the outside, so that’s promising. They’re clearly powerful enough to break the walls and doors but they don’t, so that’s also good news.
Perhaps if I just made a bone cube to hide into they wouldn’t even try to break it to get to me.
I’m not going to try that though.
I could try walling them off though. The range on [Bone dominus] is only twenty two meters, but if I hide behind a wall and use a fog skeleton as lure… Well, one thing at a time.
First, let’s locate that thing again.
Sofia walked back into the northern building, carving open a hole in a random room’s door with her mithril weapon before returning to the walkway. She brought out the book and used the page with a single rat, unsummoned the book and ran back to hide further in the room she’d just opened.
Lords I was so scared that it might be coming from behind me…
As she hid, the rat quickly advanced, stopping in the middle of the walkway. Sofia really hoped that the elf monster wasn’t in the same building as her anymore. If it had gone back to roaming on the path around the main building, not only did it mean she wasn’t currently stuck in the same place the monster was, but also that she could reliably set up traps on the path the monster liked to return to. It if was just walking at random, then the situation would be a bit worse.
It did not take long for the rat to move. It jumped on the spot once before running off to the main building. Bad news.
If the monster came walking from the main building, the rat was to wait until it came close and jump into the sun. If not then it was to lure it towards the main building. One jump before that meant that it had come from the sky while two jumps meant that it was a swarm which came.
It really came flying again?!
The rat should lure it away at least…
I’ll have an issue if that thing comes flying as soon as I try to use mana, but it took about ten seconds to get here. I can work with that.
I’ve seen with the dog that physical attacks were a desperate cause.
If the whale is anything to go by, even the sun’s temperature isn’t a reliable way to kill them. What does that even leave me with?
Trying to cast a bolt is just gonna give my position away, not counting the damage it would do to the temple. The rot would also attack the structure so it’s annoying to use.
Oh, the rat jumped down. Good job, you survived quite a long time. Hmm well. Let’s return to my safe room and get to work.
28 days left.
It took Sofia a good while to think about a proper plan and to set it up. She was currently in her safe room, but she had prepared a trapped room not far from there. Getting it right had been a tedious process. She had to make sure to lure away the monster first every time she wanted to use magic outside of her mana isolation zone. She couldn’t expand it more despite having the enough power cores for that because she simply didn’t have enough mana to fill them up. Not in a short time at least, and this trapped room was the only place near it where the architecture was right for her plans without tearing everything down.
It was a relatively small room of about seven meters long and large that she emptied by hand. She had checked the interior of nearby walls with her graveyard skeletons for any pipes that might get damaged before she pierced small holes leading to two other rooms and carved her own door to a third room. There was also a hole in the ceiling that led to the outside, and more stuff she prepared on the side. Most importantly, every square centimeter of wall, floor and ceiling in both this room and the adjacent ones were covered in a thin layer of smooth white bone.
She left the safe room to go into one of the side rooms. From the small hole in the wall, she had a perfect view on the middle of the trapped room and the hole to the opposite side room.
She had also replaced most of the floor’s doors with bone doors, to make moving around easier and safer, only the safe room she didn’t touch, since it worked perfectly how it was.
Her side-room was partially covered by the mana isolation field’s boundary allowing her to hide inside it or to come out to use her magic on the other side if needed.
Such a convoluted layout all for that one monster…
I know now that it’s dumb enough to follow the rat every time, so I can have it come here multiple times. That’ll be really important. Unless the first plan works.
Once more, she summoned the poor lonely rat out of the book, but along with the three templars this time. The templars stood unmoving inside of the isolation zone while the rat scampered at full speed through the air vents, down to the first floor and onto the open-air walkway, at the same spot he returned to every time.
Without surprise, the elf abomination came flying, but for the first time, it was led inside of the northern pyramid. The rat led it through the corridors and up the stairs, luring it toward the trapped room.
As the monster flew behind the rat, trying and failing to grab it multiple times due to its imprecise movements, Sofia and the templars got in place. Sofia stayed inside of the isolation zone, channeling a piercing angel bolt with one templar to her side. The second one took the bone doors to reach the opposite side-room, and the third one was behind a door leading to the trapped room, ready to rush in if need be.
The templar on the opposite side’s job was to leverage his invincibility that came from the sunlight leaking into the room through a hole in the ceiling that Sofia had made. He was to intercept the bolt should it somehow go through the elf, to avoid destroying the elven machinery that was unfortunately on the other side in the next next room.
The rat entered the trapped room. The elf and his iridescent parasitic Deep puppetmaster followed. Sofia stepped out of the isolation zone, the monster was line up with the hole in front of her. She released the Angel’s bolt.
The precautions to intercept the bolt with the templar proved useful, the bolt crashed into the elf’s torso, carving a hole straight through and coming out from the other side and into the templar’s raised sword.
What exactly…
The elf was pierced, but the parasite inside of it was unharmed. It was as if the bolt had phased through it like Sofia liked to phase through walls. Sofia was a bit unsettled by the unforeseen result, but she proceeded with her plans nonetheless.
Out of her storage ring and directly over the elf, she summoned a bone cage, blessed by bone dominus, and had the ground of the trapped room instantly open up slightly to let it slide into it, locking it in place.
With the monster trapped, she activated [Heal Undead]. The pillar of light formed in the void on the outside, shining onto the roof, and streaming into the trapped room by the hole in the ceiling.
The dried and cracked corpse of the elf was instantly covered in rot. But once again, the creature inside seemed unharmed, the holy light bouncing off of its iridescent skin like it hit many small mirrors, dispersing it in every direction.
Sofia was happy that her precautions against her own attacks worked, the templar soaking up the bolt and the bone-covered walls being protected against the rot. But she couldn’t say the same about the success of her experiment.
The parasite slid out of its host body, leaving the dead elf behind, Sofia saw a glimpse of the monster’s true form as it fled, sliding through the bars of the cage.
If she correctly understood what she saw, the monster was actually a larger version of the bulbous spider-like things that made the swarm. The only difference was that the top of the bulb had bloomed into the constantly expanding and contracting honeycomb structure that birthed the little swarmlets.
The parasite fled and Sofia also followed her protocole in case of the monster’s escape, she ran to the back wall and used the graveyard skeletons to phase right back into her safe room.
She trembled in disgust as she pictured the parasite sliding out of the dead elf’s body again and again in her mind. Yet, deep inside, she rejoiced. The trap room hadn’t been worthless, for the first time, the monster had fled.
