Chapter 3 — Saintess Summons Skeletons

The person who opened the door was a younger girl in a maid outfit. She was probably not even sixteen, and strode into the room pushing a small cart. The top level had a pitcher of water, an empty cup, and a small loaf of dark bread. The bottom held a tiny chamber pot and a neatly folded white cotton robe.

“H- Hello Saintess, these are the supplies for today, as ordered by the Magisterium.” She bowed but her face looked uncomfortable.

“My name is Irina, this humble servant will be your personal maid for the whole length of your stay in the church.”

“Hello, Irina. Nice to meet you. I’m Sofia, you can just call me that.”

“I would be honored, Saintess, but this lowly maid couldn’t possibly do so. ”

“Alright I get it. Is this all the food I’m going to get?”

“Yes, Saintess. I must apologize but nothing can be done about it.”

“It’s ok. Anything else I should know?”

“…” Irina worriedly looked through the door, her shoulders relaxed when she saw no one there. “Do not leave this aisle of the building without the Magisterium. For your own good. Dutifully follow the orders and whatever happens, avoid angering the high priests, at all costs. Stepping out of line in their presence is ill advised,” she whispered in a frightened tone.

“Thank you, Irina, you can leave if you need to, don’t get in trouble for me.”

She left the room without taking the cart. Slowly closing the door after another bow.

The bread was rock hard.

The white robe was nice, if a bit tight, a simple and elegant design with some lace around the hem. Certainly something Sofia would have expected to see a Saintess wear, without a doubt the most luxurious piece of clothing she had ever touched.

With nothing else to do, she decided to follow her original plan to discreetly explore outside her room. The marble room was at the very end of a long corridor, it had four doors along the left side, another door at the other end, and the right side was open arches leading to a square cloistered garden. It was all neat and shiny everywhere. The stone walls and marble floors were polished clean, and the garden full of healthy vivid green plants and trees.

Sofia counted four floors above this one, and that was probably not all of it. The high spire projecting a shadow on the garden wall from a distance had her think the whole place was at least twice as big as this cloister, if not more. It was the Holy See after all, home to the four high priests and the famous two hundred paladins of the church, it had to still be a lot larger than that to house them all. The spire was probably the Oracle’s place.

Since there was no one around, she opened the second closest door to her room. It was a small room with a few bookshelves lining the walls. There were probably only around 80 books in here, all lined on the shelf closest to the door. Everything else was empty.

Almost all of them were like this. It would have been a hard task to put together a duller collection of books. Three of them stood out to Sofia however.

“Don’t mind me, just looking around.”

The guards looked at each other for a second, the one on the left shrugged and threw a card on the table.

“Your turn, Jeff.”

Sofia left and closed the door.

It took her forty minutes to read the first book on the shelf, it was about the ranks of the court and was utterly boring. The sun was high up in the sky, almost noon.

Nobody else came to see her until the sky got dark. She had read nine more books in the meantime, and she was getting quite hungry.

Sofia had found out long ago that she couldn’t level up this skill by reading the same books over and over; it had never gone up again after she had read the orphanage’s whole library. This was why she had been sending different commands to the skeleton every time, just in case the same one wouldn’t grant xp twice. She glanced back at her previous messages.

The only difference she could see was the mana cost of orders decreasing by a bit. She had been saving up for the last hour and a half and her mana was capped.

For all she knew, maybe it had just followed what she thought had been around ten minutes.

She could only sit on her bed in the dark and wait. The city outside looked quite lively at night, but no sound reached her room. Three consecutive

  [Holy Skeleton] –

  [Heal Undead] – Level 1

  [Summon Blood] – Level 1

  [Blessing of Deep] – Level 1

  [Menial chores] – Level 7

  [Sprint] – Level 3

  [Fast reading] –

  [Shenanigans] – Level 48

  Lv.2 Holy Skeleton (Human)

“It really fused with the blessing one…” She tapped her nails on the bed frame, it was a habit she picked up in her childhood. She did it without noticing whenever she was lost in thoughts.

Sofia went to sleep after sending a few more orders to the skeleton.

She later woke up to the sound of footsteps behind her. It was still night.