Sofia stood up, she was very sore, and the absence of mana in her body made her lightheaded, but she needed to check the ‘dead’ corpse of the demon. If there had been no kill notification, it could only mean two things, either the system had fucked up. Or the demon was still alive.

She walked closer to the body that was burning up. She had thought it was burning because of the nearby magma, but that wasn’t it. This wasn’t regular fire. This was the body disappearing. Sofia almost cried out at the sight of the disintegrating giant bones, but she understood well what this meant; the titan had been a mana construct, like her graveyard skeletons. There had never been any chance of her being able to make a new body for Pareth out of it.

It would have been so nice; I don’t even have a replacement ready… I guess I still have his first body in the ring; better than nothing. Maybe I have time to hunt a few stone ogres before meeting with Alith.

There was a very real possibility that the demon was still alive, but at least it wouldn’t be a ten-meter-tall giant curse bird anymore. Sofia couldn’t even really bring herself to panic; if a level 299 decided to kill her now, there was nothing she could do to defend herself. She didn’t have the slightest hint of mana left in her body.

The theory that she was still alive confirmed itself soon after; the giant Demon body had burned up enough that Sofia could see hints of the ordinary Demon woman, passed out on the ground, protected by the corpse’s ribs.

[Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse - Lv. 299]

[You have been affected by : insanity. But your skills negated the status]

Ah, yes, still the same, very alive, Sofia thought as she hid the insanity status notifications.

The corpse kept disappearing in fake flames until nothing was left of it. Sofia observed the Avian Demon sprawled on the ground. Her original appearance was much cuter than whatever the bird abomination from before was. She was the bird version of Sofia’s more combat-reptile-looking demon form. Also, she actually had a face with eyes. Her wings were covered in small fleshy black ‘feathers’, and her body was that of a thin and slender but tall Avian woman, except covered in the signature Demon style gray black leather and scales. Not quite as tall as me, though.

The only part that weirded Sofia out was that she had both a beak and a mouth. How is that supposed to work?

She couldn’t do anything but wait for the mana penalty to be over, so she sat back down and watched the magma lake stop bubbling and start solidifying.

Oh, is the darkness still there?

She cut off her enhanced vision, and everything turned black. Ah. This eternal darkness might be worth coming back to investigate later.

I wonder how that bird will react when she wakes up. Hopefully, she won’t straight up obliterate me.

A random system notification sound disrupted the weak sound of bubbling magma.

[ERROR]

Out of nowhere like this?

[Failed to establish mainframe connection, user currently in scribe-only mode]

[Following emergency procedure R-02.8, a quest has been issued]

[EPR-02.8 : Forceful Scribe-only repair of an outdated Scribe-only third party]

[Instructions : Press the palm of your hand onto the outdated user ‘Evranarheimlein’s forehead and wait for the data transfer to be over]

[Rewards : ‘Gachapon box’ * 3]

[Penalty for failure : Scribe privileges revoked]

[This quest is mandatory]

Scribe privileges revoked? I’m unsure what that entails, but I don’t want to know.

Repair? Outdated scribe-only? Data transfer? Did her Scribe break? Outdated means too old, so… Will I become outdated if I stay in Scribe-Only for too long?

Let’s do this, then. I hope she won’t wake up and slap me out of existence.

Sofia stood up again and walked up to the Demon on the ground. She was in an awkward position, so since Sofia had to touch her anyway, she took the opportunity to put her in a more comfortable one. Then she kneeled near the Demon’s head and pressed her palm against it. She could sense some mana moving back and forth between her hand and the woman’s head. And yet I’m stuck at 0? The whole process took about five seconds.

[Quest complete, congratulations! Your reward will be delivered soon.]

[ERROR]

[User in Scribe-only mode, please provide the mana required for reward delivery]

[Paid Mana: 0 / 30003]

“...”

Whatever…

Sofia sighed and walked back to her spot to lie down. The demon hadn’t woken up.

Half an hour passed, the mana penalty wore off, and Sofia could finally feel her condition stabilizing; even her health started going up a bit faster. Her first move was to summon the book as soon as she had 15000 mana ready and summon her five Fire Salamander Skeletons. She had to do this while the magma at the lake's center was still liquid to make things easier, so it had to be at the top of her priority list.

Since she could feel the positions of the ring and the staff, she tasked the Salamanders, whose natural habitat was lava, to retrieve them. It wasn’t long before the skeletons came back carrying the items. Undamaged, but very hot. Picking up the red ring from the tooth, she was relieved to see it still worked. She took out some chalk and a hundred gold, and then she got to drawing the [Generosity of Sun] ritual once again. I knew it would be useful when I picked it, but I didn’t expect it to be that much. In hindsight, I would have been an absolute sea goblin to pick anything else. Everything needs tons of mana. It's almost comical that my mana pool, which is supposed to be huge for my level, is still insufficient. She also put on the Saint set items and sat down, finally getting a good source of healing to help her back up to full thanks to the usually underwhelming set effect of regaining one health and mana per second while sitting.

Next in line was dumping a big load of bones from her armor’s storage. She first made it into a large flat sheet of bone on the ground, then carried the Avian on it and reshaped it to make it into a coffin of sorts. The demon was constricted into thigh bone encasing, with only her head poking out. Then Sofia patiently waited to have enough mana before turning that into her blessed marrow construct. She had seen with the greatshield just how sturdy the construct was. This would be an excellent way to prevent anything untoward from happening when the Demon bird woke up; a kind of one-person prison.

And finally, she got to work getting Pareth up again, using the same skeleton he had once used when she was level 1. She didn’t bother to enchant his bones or change the circle this time. He wouldn’t stay in this boring old human skeleton for long anyway. She wanted to have him back as soon as possible. He appeared with his now usual bow, and Sofia felt safer.

“What now?” she wondered, looking at the Demon still sleeping inside her bone coffin.

Do I wait for her to wake up? We can’t talk, but there should still be ways to communicate with hand signs or drawings.

Alternatively, I could throw her into the lake and be done with it. It doesn’t feel fair, though; I don’t think she attacked me of her own volition. I feel somewhat bad for the Son of Dread I killed before; maybe he could’ve been saved unless this one was a special case.

I can also leave her here and get out of this place, but what was the point of this whole fight then?

Guess I’ll wait until my mana is full and throw on a rune before she wakes up.

In the end, Sofia was too bored and decided to pay the mana for the boxes first since the demon wasn’t showing any signs of waking up anyway. The three boxes appeared near her after she paid, and she managed to see some mana movements as they arrived. Looks like teleportation magic.

Let’s see what I get. I could use an Analysis scroll like Alith had.

[Congratulations ! ‘D’ rank draw! You won : Pain relief pill (10min)*1]

That’s… Kind of useless, but why not.

[Congratulations ! ‘E’ rank draw! You won : Warm socks*1]

I suppose it’s better than the ‘E’ rank lensless glasses Alith got…

[Congratulations ! ‘A’ rank draw! You won : Miner’s flair scroll*1]

“ ‘A’ rank!” Sofia exclaimed as she observed the scroll, “Now you have my attention!”