Saintess Summons Skeletons-Chapter 689: Balloons

“Everyone Is All Warmed Up Now? Form Groups Of Four Next, You Get Team Sports!”

The giant stairs disappeared, the ground level rising to where everyone currently was.

Sofia quickly joined the rest of her group, while the other participants either did the same, or for those who had already lost teammates, formed random groups on the spot. I took less than a minute for every group to be formed, except for three people who were left behind, as there was an uneven number of survivors.

Er’Gakk menacingly looked at the group of three from above. “Does This Look Like A Four To You?”

One of his legs slammed down before they could even say anything, leaving only a mist of blood where the three unlucky people previously stood.

“Better.”

I’m starting to get why nobody wants to have to deal with the Kleptras…

Large square zones appeared, behind the Kleptra, each with a white flag on a pole planted in the middle. He looked at the group and gave them the second instruction for that event.

“Now Get To Your Team’s Flag!”

At a glance, Sofia could already tell that this was another deliberate concealed competition, there were far from enough flags for each team to get one.

Kuli first secured one of the closest zones and it was quite easy, not only was she one of the fastest runners, but nobody tried to stop her or compete with her for the flag. The others all would rather try their chance at the other flags.

After a messy scramble for the flags, where people attacked each other without being able to inflict any damage, exactly twenty five teams were left without a flag. The zones automatically pushed out people who were not from the team of the person holding the flag, so all of these people were left in the margins between the zones. The ground in those spaces disappeared, and the people fell.

He’s really warping this reality to his every whim… Sofia thought as she looked down at the infinite drop those contestants had been sent into. There was no ground in sight, just a continuous way down, while the zones the contestants were on were like thin planes of ground floating on nothing.

[Eternal Lights - Times survived: 12]

I guess at least it upped the score.

“Perfect. Now, Give The Flag To Whoever You Chose For The Strength Test. Choose Wisely,” Er’Gakk announced with a sinister laugh.

“Should I?” Mornn asked, “I’m guessing we all get a different test.”

“We could all take this one,” Kuli said, “It’s more about who we want to keep for later.”

Pareth cut the negotiations short, holding out a hand to take the flag from Kuli.

Kuli nodded and gave it to him.

“Are you sure, Pareth, in that Skeleton?” Sofia asked.

Pareth nodded, displaying his health bar.

[Health : 65 709 559 / 65 709 559]

“Oh wait you still have the hellspawn skeleton stats… You also show as at in my status, huh, I didn’t even notice. Yeah you’re by far out best choice for this then.”

“We’re counting on you,” Kuli told him.

“Everyone Has Chosen, Let The Strength Test Begin!”

Sofia, Kuli and Mornn suddenly found themselves unable to move at all.

What now?

At first nothing else happened, and the flag holders looked around, trying to understand what they needed to do.

The sun, high in the sky, was not moving, but long shadows started looming over the teams’ zones. Pareth looked up; a giant block of strange blue sky, the size of the entire zone, was falling straight down from above.

“You May Want To Use Both Hands,” the kleptra suggested to everyone with a cackle.

Pareth activated the sanctified grounds, took position with his hands up at the center of the zone to catch the falling sky, and dropped the flag. The giant block fell, and Pareth held it up like a skeletal pillar, his bones grinding together under the weight. Everywhere in Sofia’s field of view, groups were not that successful. Many were just not strong enough to catch the falling sky, and got crushed with their entire groups. The groups then regained their ability to move, but the people holding the sky had to stay in position.

Sofia looked up at the thing Pareth was holding right above their heads.

Feels like a block of straight up mana painted in the color of the sky… It doesn’t seem to be moving to the sides at all, just pushing straight down.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Probably not worth it to put up bone support pillars, they’d just get crushed if Pareth fails to hold the thing up anyway.

[Eternal Lights - Times survived: 16]

Nice.

There was no time to really discuss anything or even ask Pareth if he needed help, as Er’Gakk moved on to the next thing right away.

“Now Pick Up The Flag For The Multitasking Test.”

“I’m up,” Mornn declared right away, picking up the flag.

I could have performed well there too, but she might arguably be the best pick considering how many of her flying swords she can control individually at once.

Sofia and Kuli were frozen again as the multitasking test started without a warning.

A loud buzzing came from below, and it was not long before Sofia understood where it came from. She could feel the monsters’ mana as they flew up. It was an entire swarm of dog-sized flying monsters.

Even without her items, Mornn invoked a flurry of mana swords and got ready. The giants insects soon came into view, looking like ugly flies with a stinger and two pincer claws. The ones around Sofia’s group all had the same target: Pareth.

Mornn’s swords zipped through the air, impaling the insects and cutting the in halves. They were relatively weak, it seemed, all dying in one strike, but there were many, coming from the four directions.

They target the people holding the sky blocks. If a single person fails at their taks everyone fails. Though I guess in our case even if they managed to reach Pareth it would likely be fine. I can’t see these things getting past his defenses, not in a million years.

“Next, Pick Up The Flag And Bring It To The Top For The Balance Test!”

Sofia and Kuli exchanged a glance, nodded at each other without a word, and Kuli grabbed the flag. She weaved her way through the incoming insects and left the zone, climbing up the side of the block of Sky.

“Good! Slot The Flag In The Hole And Jump On It! You Have Five Seconds!”

Sofia couldn’t see what Kuli was doing, but she immediately felt a change, as the ground started to wobble slightly. In fact, every other zone started to wobble, and in the distance, one of the zones and its block of fake sky toppled over, sending its team plummeting down.

They need to balance on top of that tiny flagpole and that’s what makes the entire zone stable or not.

A long thirty seconds later, with a few of the other zones collapsing, Sofia’s group was doing well. Kuli was stable one the flag so the movements of the ground were very minimal, Pareth was still holding up without much trouble, and Mornn’s dozens of flying swords flawlessly defended against the continuous assault of the giant flies despite it gradually increasing in intensity.

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“And Now! The Last Task! Perception!”

Sofia’s vision warped, and she found herself in a different place, amidst a crowd of about two hundred other people. Er’Gakk was there, looking over the group.

“You Need To Find Your Group’s Tower! You Have Five Minutes!” he announced, as tiny head-sized replicas of the zones appeared. They each had their own flat ground, a blurry figure holding up the block of sky, a swarm of black dots buzzing around it with another blurry figure fighting them, and a person balancing on a flag at the top, making the entire thing more or less wobbly.

Oh. This could be hard…

The replicas were positioned in a circle around the crowd of people, Sofia summoned herself outside of the crowd to have a closer look at the first replica.

Too shaky.

Checking the more than two hundred replicas in under five minutes meant that she could spend on average one and a half seconds on observing each of them. A lot of people are going to fail here.

Sofia checked the replicas one by one as fast as she could, keeping a mental map of the one which could be it and discarding all the other ones. Anything too shaky or with too many black dots around it at any time was immediately out, any one where the sky block moved vertically was also eliminated as Pareth was extremely steady. That still left plenty of possibilities.

The process was not helped by the occasional replica falling over, its perception contestant losing with it and exploding into a mist of blood and gore.

Nonetheless, in under two minutes, Sofia had done a complete loop around the replicas, and narrowed her selection down to eight choices.

She checked them one by one.

The first one, she observed for a few seconds, it was very steady in all ways, but the black dots seemed to not die too easily, instead being pushed back a number of times before dying.

Not that one.

The second one, a certain Tartaros was already standing next to. He seemed pretty confident about his choice.

Huh. Probably not that one then. I’m surprised he didn’t pick the strength test instead.

Sofia kept checking her choices one by one, continuing the process of elimination by looking at the pattern of the flies’ deaths.

Finally on the sixth replica, she found one that seemed to match. The flies died from single target attacks, and Sofia could almost follow the paths of the swords as the black dots faded.

This must be it!

Just to make sure, she used the extra time she had to check all of her main choices again, even the one Tartaros was standing next to. She returned to her choice after that, convinced that she had picked correctly, and was surprised to find a dwarf standing there, observing not the replica but Er’Gakk.

“Hey, I think this is my team,” Sofia told him.

“And I think you’re wrong,” the dwarf answered without even turning to look at her.

“Have it your way,” Sofia said with a shrug. There was no rule against two people picking the same one anyway.

Standing next to her choice, Sofia spent the rest of her time observing the other people. The only other person she recognized aside from Tartaros was Cinthia, quite far away from where she was, and she seemed also quite confident about her choice, unlike many of the contestants, who were still frantically checking the replicas one by one.

Sofia counted the seconds in her head.

“Time Is Up!” Er’Gakk gleefully announced, raising a leg.

Sofia watched as the dwarf next to her and many others inflated like skin pouches full of water and started rising high into the sky, before exploding in a shower of gore. Out of the approximately two hundred people at the beginning, only fifteen were left.

What a mess…

Sofia wiped the blood off of her face.

We started with around six thousand people I think… That makes it only sixty of us still alive…

[Eternal Lights - Times survived: 20]

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