Sofia sat with lich-form Bookie on a mountain of corpses. This place was where the Kidjikkiks dumped their dead and their broken tools and furniture. The dead and dried worm-people were like locked in time, unable to rot and decompose. Needless to say, for the most part, their skeletons were in perfect condition.
So we hit the page limit. And you didn’t even know about it?
Bookie shook his head.
Well, fifty pages should be enough. We’ll have to do some trimming later, but it’s good enough. It might be better that we have this limit honestly, having so many options is not always a good thing. In the heat of the moment it’s better to know exactly what we are going to summon than to have to ponder over which of a thousand pages we should use, right?
Even with no air in her lungs, Sofia sighed.
It’s more than enough, Bookie. Definitely more than enough. I’m not disappointed…
Let’s reorganize your pages, what do you think? Would that make things easier for you?
Bookie nodded enthusiastically at the idea.
Alright!
Let’s create categories.
Sofia worked with Bookie to organize the pages of skeletons into groups, it took a while, but they were both happy to have it all well organized. Sofia looked at her notebook with a smirk.
Favorites
1 Crowie 10
1 Elven Engineer 500
1 High priest 50 000
1 Emperor pearled Snake 300 000
Recon units
1 Rat (New and improved) 10
50 Crows 500
54 Black turvins 540
100 Rats 1000
1 Nightrune Owl 1000
100 Three-eye spinews 10 000
5 Spellhounds 50 000
10 Dire wolves (Fine tracking)50 000
500 Red Flailer (Blood fish) 50 000
Utility units
1 Boar 50
10 Boars 500
10 Worker Kidjikkik 500
1 Elf caretaker (Strong) 1000
100 Digger Kidjikkik 5000
100 Worker Kidjikkik 5000
100 Cleaner Kidjikkik 5000
1 Solar mage 20 000
1 Stone ogre 30 000
1 useless hero toxic plants 30 000
1 Firebird (My new oven) 35 000
Mounts
1 Saltwater Spinefish (Fish) 5000
1 War horse 10 000
1 Quetzalcoatlus 10 000
1 Soguva (not fluffy >:( ) 10 000
1 Sandworm 100 000
Support units
1 Soldier with bow (5rat) 50
25 paladins 5000
Stolen story; please report.
1 Fat-eyed bear (Iwa’s kill) 10 000
5 Fire salamanders 15 000
5 giant ice spiders 50 000
1 Sirhellion 50 000
10 Female stone Ogres 100 000
Defense units
3 Templars 30 000
20 Guardian Kidjikkik 20 000
5 Quetzalcoatlus 50 000
100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000
100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000
1 Quartz Giant (Gemite) 10 000 000
Attack units
20 Soldier Kidjikkik 20 000
4 Withered Vampire 40 000
100 Soldier Kidjikkik 100 000
100 Soldier Kidjikkik (More.) 100 000
100 Soldier Kidjikkik (MORE!)100 000
3 Sirhellions 150 000
5 Sandworms 500 000
1 Magicless fae! 500 000
Truly a great harvest!
Do you think you’ve got enough fog to summon 400 worms at once?
Bookie seemed hesitant, but he did not straight-up deny being able to do it.
You’ve sure progressed a lot too from the beginning when twenty five paladins was already pushing it. Keep up the good work! Sofia communicated to Bookie while patting his skull.
After putting on an unlife rune and climbing out of the pit, Sofia switched back to the [Master Thief] title and covered herself in a long black cloak she just remembered had been sitting in her storage. This was the stealthiest she could get.
I got this for now but I should really work on recoloring the bone armor. Shouldn’t be too hard…
Wait. Bookie, let’s try something, we’re going to have to change one of your pages. Let’s delete the one with a single boar.
Sofia jumped back into the pit. She had an idea.
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Her preparations done, she headed to the square staircase tower, sneaked in by phasing through the ground, and started to make her way down. When she almost reached the bottom of the winding staircase, she stopped and called Bookie out.
Bringing the preemptively emptied exoskeleton of a guardian Kidjikkik, Sofia grabbed and ripped bookie’s newest page: a single guardian Kidjikkik. Following Sofia’s instructions, Bookie made sure to let the Fog solidify within the dead shell, having it enter through a round hole in the exoskeleton’s chest.
It’s in! Wait, don’t move yet.
The undead skeleton fit well within the exoskeleton, after all, it was originally its own. Sofia had ripped the skeleton out of the shell for Bookie to eat. That being said, with all the meat and blood gone, the end result was not very convincing, so came the next part, the stuffing.
Rest in peace, my luxury cotton-stuffed blanket, you will be missed.
The process of getting the stuffing inside of the shell through the small round hole wasn’t too hard since Sofia could manipulate bones to pull it from the inside. Sadly, the mattress wasn’t enough, so Sofia also had to sacrifice a few pillows, but in the end, the result was surprisingly good. Sofia put a yellow scarf on top of the worm’s back, thinking that if the bottom level was a restricted area, there was a better chance for an Elite guardian to go unnoticed. The last step was to plug the round hole in the shell with a vision-sharing token, and everything was ready. She had also left another vision token higher up in the stairwell so she could watch her own back. Since there were almost no Kidjikkiks staying up through the night, though, it would probably be safe to stay there for several hours.
Sofia could now just sit there on the stairs, and let her infiltrator skeleton go down by himself. She watched it crawl down the stairs with its many legs. She had to say, the inflitrator’s movements were a bit stiff, but from afar, it was convincing enough.
The place she discovered was almost in total darkness, the luminescent algae did not extend past the exit of the stairwell. It was hard for Sofia to see much through the token, but some weak light came from the pit linking this undercity to the one above, just enough for some square building tops to be visible.
Is it another city under the city?
This hole in the ceiling is the same I saw the red light in earlier… The giant worm wasn’t in the upper city, so either it came up from here while I was coming down, or it’s here somewhere, not making any light...
The infiltrator skeleton turned back, and Sofia quickly charged a lightstone and dropped it down the stairwell. The skeleton missed it and the stone shattered on the ground.
Hoy, I don’t have so many we can’t waste them. I’m throwing another one; catch it properly.
This time, the skeleton successfully caught the lightstone. With his new light source in hand, he left the stair tower again.
The light was not very strong, but enough to see the outlines of buildings up to a few dozen meters away.
It really is another city. The architecture is similar…
Guiding the skeleton into the city, Sofia quickly realized something. This undercity was almost the exact same as the one above. At least in the area near the stair tower. The only major differences were the lack of the glowing algae, and the relatively bad shape of the buildings. Some had collapsed, others were just missing. Sofia had the check inside one of the less destroyed homes, which were completely empty, and she had a hard time understanding what the point of this second city was.
Did it become uninhabitable somehow and so they had to relocate above it? There are a few broken buildings but that should have been fixable, most of them look to be in decent shape, still…
Wait, step back! Look at the ground.
Stop, not so far back! Yes, right there.
The skeleton had crossed a street, and Sofia barely noticed it, but the stone ground there was particularly battered, full of small holes and cracks which formed a trail.
I’ve seen worm-people leave the stairs earlier, so this lower city is not completely abandoned, this must be a path they regularly take. Follow it.
She had to order the skeleton to stop looking at the ground because he never did so by himself and she could only see through the token which was also showing only the ground when the skeleton leaned forward. Following the cracks had led the skeleton back to the stairs.
Woah, I can’t believe I missed this the first time. I was too busy looking at the buildings to look at the ground… Well, what are you waiting for? Follow the other direction.
This time, the tracks led the skeleton to a set of doors in the cavern walls that did not exist in the upper city.
What do we have here?
Wait a bit, this is the limit of the token range…
Sofia carefully came down the stairs, having the infiltrator check in all directions for any hint of a red light. When it looked safe, Sofia swiftly ran from building to building, minimizing her time spent in the streets, and traveled all the way to the building closest to the skeleton, where she hid on the third floor.
Alright, we’re good, forward!
The skeleton pushed open the large set of heavy doors, and he was greeted by a quartet of raised spears. Four yellow-scarved elite guardians had been waiting behind the doors in a sort of small antechamber, where the luminescent algae was also growing, bringing some light back.
Crap!
While Sofia was lost as to how to order the skeleton, it simply kept following her last order, and continued walking as if the spears pointed at him weren’t there. And surprisingly enough, that worked. The guardians lowered their spears and let the infiltrator through, returning to their position.
Really?
Is it because he also had a scarf? I don’t get it anymore… And I had a hunch but…
This skeleton is really dumb.
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