Mornn

Chapter 831 - Biological weapons?

“Is it that bad?” Sonia asked, surprised at Sofia’s reaction to whatever was beyond the door.

Sofia turned around, her eyes still closed, “Worse than bad, they’re everywhere, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, so many eyes that there are even tall piles of them on the ground…”

Sonia pulled a strange face hearing that, and quickly made her mind, “let’s seal this up and leave. It’ll be a disaster if those get out and start turning the entire zone into a gigantic pile of evil eyes.”

Sofia wanted to say so...

Chapter 830 - Recurring them

At Pestle’s remark, Sofia looked up from piles of gold and into the next room.

Pareth? she called out in her mind.

She could not see or hear him in the next room over, her link to him was still nearby, but in the forbidden layer, it was too blurry to pinpoint. What was really surprising was that there seemed to be no answer to her call, just silence.

A bad feeling in her heart, Sofia rushed over, jumping through the half-collapsed doorframe, she entered the next room, looked around, and saw Pareth’s back, out o...

Chapter 829 - Gold diggers

Author note:

Was dealing with some water damage today from last night's heavy rain, sorry for the lateness 人´∀｀)

Standing on the edge at the end of the tunnel, Bookie pointed at the ledge where he and Crowie had died.

“Hmm, I see the pieces of mithril scattered about, but no traces of a monster around there,” Sofia told the others, easily able to clearly see something that ‘close’ between her magic eye and the h...

Chapter 828 B - Join the bone scouts today!

Before going, the group endeavored to test everything they could and could not do, to be sure not to miss anything. What they found was rather depressing.

As they had guessed before, the vast majority of everything was suppressed to a point where they could barely be used if at all. There were a precious few outliers not impacted by the zone’s restrictions. In Sofia’s case, she was the least affected. Her specializations [Heat Death] and [Sovereign of Unshackled frames] were both still active, and ...

Chapter 827 - Turning back time?

Although the desert was becoming a frozen wasteland under their eyes, there was no excessive panic among the group. The unseen ice creature from before was clearly going wild now that there was no more heat to suppress it. For Pareth and Sofia who were immune to cold damage this was not too worrying, as long as the creature did not directly attack them again, there would likely be no danger. Even for Sonia, when she compared this cold to the forced underworld water bath from before, it was still quite bearable.

They all sincerely just ...

Chapter 826 - Holding a grudge

Sofia threw the cursed sword in a corner before her dagger could start a rebellion and strip away her title for touching another blade too much, and bent over to grab the flaming book on the altar.

“Honestly I am almost surprised you managed to eat that. Are those white flames going to stop or are you just a burning book forever now?”

Bookie summoned himself, his short skeleton also surrounded by quiet white flames. He looked a bit different, his bones closer to Sofia’s Lumian bones than his usual.

“Hehe, I’m not ...

Chapter 825 - You played and you lost

I’ll play dumb.

Sofia had only froze for a fraction of a second, decisively she continued, ready to transpose herself away to the statuette of her Pareth carried if need be. She took a step in the air, over the skeleton.

The swirling curses around the sword latched onto Sofia, seeping into her armor, melding with her mana. The philosopher’s stone felt slightly cooler inside of her glove.

Seeing the skeleton was still perfectly still, she reached for the claymore’s hilt, and touched it with the tip of a finger...

Chapter 824 - Masterminds of life and death

Although Sofia was eager to add another skeleton to her collection, she did not rush to enter the room, crouching in the hole in the wall she had just created, observing the ever burning skeleton on the altar.

If there was one field Sofia was starting to be relatively knowledgeable in, it was the notable high level creatures griffins, basilisks, hydra, drakes, Kleptran drones, and of course, the mythical Phoenix. It was already something she had some interest in since the time she was an orphan, and now that she had easy access to more...

Chapter 823 - Question of lineage

Sofia and the group tracked the discovery of the birds after almost half an hour of exploration. The crows led them to a region of the desert that was even hotter, where it was starting to become a bit unbearable. While the skeletons weren’t normally too cognizant of heat, it was getting so bad there that the surface of the desert almost looked like it was melting, sand glistening, while the ambient air warped from the heat. It was still not dangerous for anyone involved, but it was certainly uncomfortable.

“This could be the actua...

Chapter 822 - Searching / Finding

“A prison? For that thing?” Sofia reacted, “First of all, I hope you are dead wrong, or things are not looking great for us, but also, how did you even get to that conclusion?”

“Three– No, four things,” Sonia answered, while she fixed her wings’ feathers one by one, “The loop is clearly there to trap something or someone, then there is that thing down there which, with how aggressive and weird it is, I could see someone wanting to imprison. Following that, it attacked us with that giant stick of ice, and what better e...

Chapter 821 - It Never Leg Day

“You go ahead then…” Sonia told Pestle, as she slowly spun in the air, scanning the horizon, “I’ve got nothing this time. Best I can think of is waiting for night and hoping it’ll change something.”

“Pesle is go!” the fairy said, disappearing from view.

“Or we can find whatever is maintaining the loop, right?” Sofia asked Sonia, opening the visor of her helmet.

“Maybe…” Sonia said before falling silent for a few seconds as she thought of a proper answer, “Could just be a property of the zone. I...

Chapter 820 - The sands of time

“So we traded like that, and that’s all there is to it. Honestly I would have liked to trade for the corpse of one of the giant ants but it really did not look like it wanted us around any longer,” Sofia finished her story as the group flew close to the underground sea’s charred ceiling toward a hole they had located from the leyline before the ambient darkness had fully returned. 

“I see… You ran out of schematics to trade anyway so who knows what it would have asked for next. Overall you were quite lucky, it’s rare...

Chapter 819 - Aberr-ant

For Sofia the easiest way to organise all the spells she knew was just chronologically. Hence why, pulling bone strings from her armor, she started drawing the rituals from Scripture’s necromancy grimoire one by one, all except the knowledge rune of Pareth’s and Sorrow’s ritual. When she was done, she presented the stack of bone disks, each a sculpted ritual circle, in front of the wooden giant.

With a glance, he made the disks fly up to his face, and observed them one by one. In the end, the disks all crumbled except for one, th...

Chapter 818 - Ant-restingly reasonable

AN:

Happy new year! Welcome back, and don't forget to get a quick look at the previous chapter if you need a refresher on what's going on :D

Sofia barely had time to react, in front of the huge monster of wood and mushrooms, she was like a bug, and apparently, she was treated as one. The monster shrieked when it realized what had transpir...

Chapter 817 - You c-Ant escape its sight

Ant-aur note: And this is it for this year, I wish everyone a merry Christmas / happy holidays, and see you soon on January 7th ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊

(Sorry for the cliff, you know I just had to :^) )

“So how do we find the seed from here?” Sofia asked, “We search for a place with a lot of big ants?”

“Pretty much,” Sonia answered, “it shouldn’t be too far up now that we’ve reached ...

Chapter 816 - The Ant-ire picture?

Sonia made everyone rub themselves with sticky leyline sap to mask their smell from the ants, and they took their time looking for a safe way to go up. They observed for a while, spotting a few possible tunnel entry points that very few ants seemed to use, and waited until there was an approach opportunity.

After a long wait, one last ant turned away from the hole, and the group flew up without a word. They all entered the same leyline root tunnel, Pareth first followed by Pestle, Sonia and Sofia. Crowie and Bookie were unsummoned to a...

Chapter 815 - Dear how you have nice Ant-Lures

The second ant went down much faster than the first. The crow led it into an ambush, before it could react, the ant was pinned down by Pareth and Crowie as a horse-sized dragon. A pre-charged hundred million mana piercing bolt drilled a hole in its back, and an exploding arrow landing into that hole the next second turned the ant’s insides into a scrambled mush. 

Somehow it still lived through that, but then all Pestle had to do was enter the wrecked ant to enjoy some free meat paste before it could heal enough to fight back, an...

Chapter 814 - First member of the Ant-hology

“Tough motherfucker,” Sonia spat, flying up to the dead ant, “Now imagine getting swarmed by twenty of those.”

“Let’s not,” Sofia immediately said, washing away the sticky goo on Pestle and Pareth with pressured splashes of summoned blood. “Hmmmm?!”

“Something up?” Sonia asked, watching Sofia suddenly freeze.

“My aura is reacting to the ant.”

“Your aura… Bones?”

“Yes. The bark! It’s… It’s not quite bone, but it’s apparently close enough that I can influence it a little�...

Chapter 813 - Ant-Icipation

Sonia looked up, failing to see much since her vision was still limited to fifty meters. “So… How much do you know about leylines?”

“Not a ton, to be honest, I did not get much time to research that.”

“Alright… I’ll stick to the essentials. Leylines are like… Underground trees, basically. They absorb mana from the surface, build up an immense stockpile, and gradually spread it throughout all of the planet’s layers. The roots we’re on do not actually absorb anything, quite the contrary, they periodically pump...

Chapter 812 - Happy coincidence

Getting a closer look on the giant mosquitoes made Sofia wish she hadn’t. Their hideous appearance made it crystal clear that they were indeed from the same place the Kleptras originated from. 

Sofia realized too late that her saintomancer’s stars would bring more harm than good with their current range of two meters, and even Sonia’s physical arrows somehow disappeared into thin air two meters ahead when they left her bow. Because of this, they were forced into close quarter combat against the insects.

They were fast ...

Chapter 811 - What were you even trying to imitate?!

It’s alive?!

At Pestle’s warning, Sofia wanted to run back over the edge to reunite with the others, but before she could, she felt mana stir beneath her feet.

A faint tingle brushed her senses, [Heat death] reacting to incoming magic. With no hesitation, Sofia activated it, her mana instantly tanking by half.

A hundred million?!!!

The cube’s magic was interrupted, and the gigantic thing shook underfoot.

It took a backlash!

I can only cancel one more, n...