Chapter 497: Chapter 491: Sofia plays the cube game

“Wait, how many did you say are watching?” Saria whispered to Cinthia while Sofia paused for a second to sip on her drink.

“Twenty-eight…” the orc streamer answered after giving her chat a quick glance.

“Damn.”

“Twenty-eight?!” Sofia repeated from the end of the table, “Hey I am not about to ask you for a donation to keep watching, but I need a lot of divine essence for my racial skills, just saying.”

The three gods in the room were left speechless.

“What?” Sofia asked looking back at them, “I need at least forty, so I’m not even halfway through. I was hoping I could borrow a few from Death with how Clint designed my horns… Anyway, where was I… Ah, yes, so the sub-class that got me is actually not a real sub-class, from what I understand, just leftover data that the admins collected from relics of the lost epoch. Data related to the Lords, to be exact.”

People exchanged a few worried looks, but at this point, everyone present was starting to get used to Sofia’s antics when it came to the Deep, except for Richard, who was visibly having a hard time keeping his bones together, not from worry but from excitement.

Nobody interrupted Sofia.

“So that reacted with the Regulator’s essence somehow, and we ended up in the Deep,” Sofia explained like it was just another day’s work.

You what, now? Clint said first as if he’d misheard.

“Makes sense,” Saria commented, and Alith, Ihuarah, and Astelia all approved, while Everelle and Cinthia lacked any particular reaction, and Zephir seemed to be fighting a strong headache.

Erredis wore a complacent smile and said nothing, just relaxing on her chair, and Richard was eagerly waiting for the rest of the story.

Unexpected reactions came from the two celestial Gods; Moon and Sun looked at each other silently.

Not surprised?

Sofia continued since no one commented anymore, “There were some peaceful creatures there, affiliated with the Regulator, I think. It was a strange place, to say the least, and I did not feel safe there, so I did the obvious to try to get out, and called the Lords’ names.”

The obvious… Clint repeated, astounded.

“Right? I started with Aphenoreth, but I got no answer, so next I tried the Regulator. And uh, yeah… In hindsight, bad idea. I’m starting to get why people are afraid of the names now.”

“You did not get it before?!” Astelia cried out before realizing what she just did and hiding her face behind her hands.

“Well, kind of? There was the story you told me back then, and what happened to Alith when she asked for Orator’s essence, but besides that… Anyway, the point is, if you’re going to say their names out loud, maybe don’t, unless you’re talking about me, that seems to be safe.”

“We all already knew that!” Astelia reacted again.

“Sure but knowing it because you vaguely know of the Deep and knowing it because I told you is different. I mean, the previous times I used them did not actually do anything, except that one time with the fourth Lord, I guess, this one was a bit of an emergency situation…”

Human, you are crazy. Moon said , which were her very first words since entering Zangdar.

Sofia shrugged, “Just playing the hand I’ve been given, also it’s Lumian now.”

Another long silence befell the hall, pushing Sofia to keep going, “So, after I walked around a bit, I tried using the Zangdar ring and, huh, here we are.”

You lie. Moon called Sofia out, and Astelia grabbed her earrings, mumbling an apology to Sofia.

“You’re right,” Sofia simply admitted, “but this is all I’m allowed to say.” And you can confirm that this is true.

To this answer, Moon did not retort anything.

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“I really got here with the ring, though, and it should also still lead to the Deep, which is why Pareth, Bookie and I have been stuck here for months, doing whatever to kill time,” Sofia explained, fighting hard against her own inner demons to keep her expression neutral.

“That should not work…” Richard said, perplexed, “I made these rings myself… From what I know of the Deep… There is no way this could work…”

“Well, it did? My storage ring and the eye worked too, so…”

“THEY DID?!”

“Yes? I would show you a proof but the place I landed in was all made of a weird type of squishy rock, and it was immune to space magic, so I could not bring any back. I had no issues taking my items in and out, though.”

“So they worked but they didn’t… Interesting.”

“Hmm. Honestly I thought I would get stronger reactions from this story,” Sofia commented, “Or that I would get questioned more. Or asked for more proof.”

Sun shook her head, I have seen firsthand that you can deal with the Deep somehow. It is going to be hard if you want to surpass that. Not much you can do that is as unlikely to begin with, unless you somehow get Moon to cough up an essence or two. That would truly be unheard of.

Fuck off, Sun, Moon answered, which Sun candidly ignored.

“Well, if it is to shock you in particular, I do have something,” Sofia teased, “Now might not be the time and place, though.”

Ohoh? Sun reacted, bending forward over the table, both hands supporting her chin, Now I’m interested.

Sofia slightly shook her head, “Later, later. We have plenty of time. And, speaking of, is it alright for all of you to be here? Like… If Sun is here, who’s out there stopping the Phageid?”

Ahahah. I can be in several places at once, Sofia. Moon and I have been shielding the planet for tens of thousands of years, so just trust us. You kids keep worrying about your own things.

“Bold thing to say considering everyone present,” Richard commented.

What? Don’t like being called a kid, Richie? Come give a hug to big momma Sun!

“I’m not drunk enough for this shit,” the skeleton complained, “Great to see you were safe, Sofia, come back by my place to report on the eye when you can,” he said before his skeleton fell into a messy pile of bones.

“There he goes…” Erredis said, storing the Lich’s fallen bones.

“Well,” Saria said, standing up from her chair, “job’s done, can you show me around the castle, Sofia?”

“Me too!” Alith echoed.

After exchanging a few more words, Moon, Zephir and Clint all left, while everyone else stayed to follow Sofia on a short new Zangdar tour.

“Too much free time?” Erredis asked Sun in the back of the group.

The girl’s just a lot of fun to be around, don’t you agree, ‘grandma’? she answered with a radiant smile.

“... Don’t think just because you’re a ball of fire I won’t dare to bite you.”

“And this is the bone field,” Sofia presented a large bone-built warehouse on the outskirts of the platform.

“The bone field?” Saria repeated, “An indoor field?”

“This is the issue you have with it, and not the fact that it’s bones?” Cinthia asked from the side.

“It’s not a field field, I just call it that because that’s where I harvest bones. Well, where the bones harvest themselves.”

Inside of the warehouse, five Skelems were tied in a circle to the ceiling, over a large bin, around a small glowing ring made of bone blessed by [Bone dominus]. Whenever their lower body was fully healed, they detached their pelvis and legs, letting them fall into the bin, and the healing process started again.

“I can never have enough materials on hand, and my bone storage is so huge it’s hard to fill now, so these guys have been working hard to produce more bone. Their bones are not as good as mine but harvesting my armor is too time-consuming. Not worth it for general use.”

“Shit like this is exactly why necromancers are a headache,” Erredis commented from the back.

“Oh! Right, I was thinking of trying to find a way to use that black powder the rot leaves behind, thank you for reminding me. I have a few cubes full of it already but I haven’t really managed to make anything out of it so far except black chalk.”

“Cubes? Did you forget a word?” Alith asked.

“No, no, barrels are a terrible way to stock things, so I made bone crates, but since I don’t have to do any of the usual crate nailing and all, it’s just cubes. So I call them cubes. Made them one meter by one meter, too, so it’s easy to know how much volume I have of what. It’s easier to organize in my storage ring too,“ Sofia explained. To illustrate, she brought out one such cube full of carbon dust, and the curious people gathered around.

Alith was more interested in the cube than its contents, “Pretty nice! I could use small ones to stock my herbs, it is starting to get messy. By the way, Sof, I’m almost done with working back the formula for the pills you gave me, just need like one more month.”

“Pills?” Saria chimed in, “What I’m hearing is I might get to the first Aura breakpoint soon thanks to my sister’s generous donations?”

Sofia scratched the back of her head, “As long as nobody tells Kyle…”

Meanwhile, Everelle, who had a hand plunged in the cube of black dust, said something that captured 200% of Sofia’s attention: “You could make diamonds with that.”