Mornn
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Chapter 742 - Everybody gets a level up!
🕑 Added 2025-08-20 16:00:28 +0000 UTC[Skill optimization available]
[Your point balance is ‘983 882 026’]
[Skills available for guided optimization:
‘Spine of the Black Sun’
‘False immortality’
‘Runeforged Overlord’
‘The Book of Skeletons’]
Her hand on the optimization device, Sofia stared at the last line with narrowed eyes.
“This can’t be another trap, can it? Bookie?”
Bookie summoned himself next to Sofia, “Hmmmm?”
“Were you sleeping again? You’re strangely tired these days.”
“I’m alright! Why did you call me? Are we playing cards?!”
“Not this time no, we’ll have plenty of time to play when I build the city, though. Here, look at what the machine is showing me.”
“Oh! I can be optimizized?! I bet it’s uncle orator messing with the toybox!”
“He could certainly do that. Bad things happened last time this machine showed a weird upgrade though so I’m a bit wary. Should be fine, but still. Let’s check it out together.”
“I want to be optimizized!” Bookie happily said, raising his arms. Sofia grabbed him up with her free arm before clicking on the optimization path.
[Skill : The Book of Skeletons - Skill version index FORBIDDEN009_1.0]
Current version :
[The Book of Skeletons] :
As I predicted, you must have reached level 300. You are still a long way from completing your quest, mortal. Let not this success get to your head.
Oh that does sound like Orator, but more like he was at the start. I assume he left that message within the skill when he first made it. Forbidden 9… There are 8 other forbidden skills then? Let’s see what Bookie gets.
[Available branches (same version lettered upgrades are mutually exclusive):
2A - The summoned skeletons can now freely supplement their lifetime and mana reserves with ambient mana - 0 TP
2B - The Book of Skeletons gains 50 extra pages - 0 TP
2C - The Book of Skeletons’ pages can now contain significantly more skeletons - 0 TP
2D - The Book of Skeletons gains extra stats depending on the power and type of stored skeletons - 0 TP
You will be able to pick a second one of those four optimizations at class level 400]
Well… This is going to be tough…
“So, Bookie. What do you want?”
Bookie looked up at Sofia after reading it all, “I… I’m not sure, Sofia.”
“Alright, then let me break it down for you like I usually do with my skills. Version A would allow us to constantly have some of your summons around, but since mobility is an issue, that would probably just be Pestle, most of the time. And it would allow us to have skeletons as permanent workers for both Zandgar and our new city. We could have skeleton guards, farms, smiths, and all, but that would mean we discard a significant part of your battle-ready skeletons and only keep the smarter and strongest ones.”
“Hmmm… Having skeleton workers everywhere would be very nice! But if we have to get rid of a lot of our fighting pages… I don’t really like it! Even the dumb and weak pages are very useful!” Bookie protested, “Look at all the Kijikkikik!”
“That’s true, but it’s undeniable we’ll have to sacrifice some flexibility if we go with that. I’m sure Pestle would like it, though.”
Bookie shook his skull, “I am sure if we asked her now she would say ‘Pesle don’t care! Where leg?!”
Sofia couldn’t contain a giggle, “Why don’t we just do that then, care to get her out?”
Pestle appeared on top of Sofia’s head. She grabbed Sofia’s horns and quickly scanned the room, “Who kill?!”
“There’s no fight, Pestle, we’re choosing an upgrade for Bookie. And we want your opinion.”
“Pesle opinion?!”
“That’s right, can your read that?” Sofia asked pointing at the screen, “The first option concerns you, in particular.”
“Ack! Pesle concern?” She worriedly said, looking down at the screen, “Hmmm… Pesle has opinion!”
“We’re all ears,” Sofia told her.
“All ear? Luman and skelton, where ear? Pesle not ear,” the fairy asked in incomprehension, inserting her fingers in the empty ear holes on the sides of her skull.
“... I think you’re going to need more language lessons.”
“ACK! Lesson no! Pesle very language! Has opinion!” she cried out, “A is no care, Pesle escape Boki self self! No need! B bad! More page is Pesle less summon, no good! C is no care, very bored. D Boki kill! Very do violence! Pesle like!” she quickly said before unsummoning herself to escape the mortal threat of Sofia’s common language lessons.
“Well. You were about right,” Sofia told Bookie, “It looks like she thinks she can escape your pages by herself eventually.”
It was Bookie’s turn to giggle, “I think she would not even if she could. Sofia gives her too much free leg.”
“We’ll see how it goes, but I agree that I don’t really see her escaping. I agree with her on path B, it’s bad. We’re not really in that much of a need for extra pages quite yet. Plenty of less used skeletons we can afford to replace if we find something better. Though I think it would probably have to be our pick at level 400 no matter what we choose now.”
Bookie nodded along, “50 is still enough for now. I cannot summon too many at once anyway…”
“So next we have path C, which I think is just bad, honestly. The occasions to get that many skeletons at once aren’t so common in the first place, aside from the Kidjikkik army we don’t have too many repeats due to lack of space.”
“Pestle is right, it’s boring!”
“Who knew Pestle’s analysis would be so good, right? She may take a weird path to get there but she does get to the correct conclusions. Path D would help you get stronger in fights, and would give you a lot more fog to work with if pages give extra mana. If we take this it also makes taking the extra pages next time even better since it will give you extra stats.”
“But we don’t know how much the pages give! What if it’s bad?”
“Do you have no faith in your uncle?” Sofia asked with a smirk.
“But I’m bad at fighting…” Bookie mumbled.
“This would make you better. If you don’t want it, we go with path A and get permanent summons. We could have them work for us on many different things, even sending the Kidjikkiks to mine rare ore. The choice is yours.”
“I don’t know…”
In the end, it was how useless Bookie had felt during the Lilith fight that pushed him toward a choice.
‘You have spent 0 tournament points’
‘[The Book of Skeletons] has been optimized following branch 2D’
Bookie froze in place for a second, his bones shivered, and he was back to normal.
“All good?” Sofia asked.
“I… Do not feel any different,” Bookie deadpanned.
“Oh really? Hmmm… Maybe because I have technically not leveled up yet?”
“This must be it! Ah!” Bookie exclaimed like he just got shocked, “Ouch!”
“You’re hurt?!”
“N- no. My pages… They burned a bit, for a second, it felt like.”
Worried, Sofia let Bookie down and opened his book form.
She let out a sigh of relief seeing that the pages were all still intact. One thing had changed, however, at the bottom of each page, cursive letters spelled out a stats bonus.
The first page wage Crowie, and the bottom of the page read: ‘Processing 10%’
Not a bad bonus for a single 10 mana Crow. Even the pages recognize how smart he is.
Sofia quickly flipped through a few pages, before stopping and taking out her notepad. Let’s update the list!
Favorites
1 Crowie 10 +10% Processing
1 Elven Engineer 500 +25% Processing
1 High priest 50 000 +5% Mana
1 Emperor pearled Snake 300 000 +20% Health
1 Pestle 500 000 +300% Speed, Aura & Charisma
Recon units
1 Rat (New and improved) 10 +5% Agility
50 Crows 500 +5% Processing
52 Black turvins 520 +10% Speed
100 Rats 1000 +10% Agility
100 Three-eye spinews 10 000 +20% Speed
5 Spellhounds 50 000 +10% Agility
500 Red Flailer (Blood fish) 50 000 +5% Health
Utility units
1 Forgotten 30 +1% All
10 Worker Kidjikkik 500 +5% Strength
1 Elf caretaker (Strong) 1000 +10% Strength
100 Digger Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Health
100 Worker Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Strength
100 Cleaner Kidjikkik 5000 +10% Health
1 Solar mage 20 000 +5% Mana
1 useless hero toxic plants 30 000 +20% Charisma
1 Firebird (My new oven) 35 000 +15% Speed
Mounts
1 Saltwater Spinefish (Fish) 5000 +20% Speed
1 War horse 10 000 +15% Health
1 Quetzalcoatlus 10 000 +15% Agility
1 Sandworm 100 000 +20% Health
Support units
1 Soldier with bow (5rat) 50 +5% Agility
1 Guardian Kidjikkik 1000 +5% Health
25 paladins 5000 +10% Health
5 Fire salamanders 15 000 +10% Strength
5 giant ice spiders 50 000 +10% Processing
1 Sirhellion 50 000 +3% Mana
10 Female stone Ogres 100 000 +25% Strength
Defense units
3 Templars 30 000 +25% Strength
20 Guardian Kidjikkik 20 000 +10% Health
5 Quetzalcoatlus 50 000 +25% Agility
100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Health
100 Guardian Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Health
1 Quartz Giant (Gemite) 10 000 000 +1000% Health -200% Speed
Attack units
20 Soldier Kidjikkik 20 000 +10% Strength
4 Withered Vampire 40 000 +25% Speed
1 Tall Mimic (SPEED!) 100 000 +50% Speed
100 Soldier Kidjikkik 100 000 +20% Strength
100 Soldier Kidjikkik (More.) 100 000 +20% Strength
100 Soldier Kidjikkik (MORE!)100 000 +20% Strength
3 Sirhellions 150 000 +5% Mana
1 Wind-Ice-Lightning-Mana Aura mages (Wilma) 400 000 +5% Mana +10% Aura
5 Sandworms 500 000 +50% Health
1 Chimera 5 000 000 +100% Health, Strength, Speed & Agility
1 Fortune Dwarf 5 000 000 +10% Mana +100% Processing +100% Agility
Pain 10 000 000 000 +1000% Health +100% Mana
Total bonus stats:
+2296% Health
+256% Strength
+341% Speed
+271% Agility
+134% Mana
+151% Processing
+321% Charisma
+311% Aura
Comments
Peter Smith
Man who knew naruto existed in this universe...
Whyer
I think these are upgrades for Bookie only so the speed boost is because of Pestle, not to Pestle. But! with Sofia's level up Pestle gets a level up too so our favorite little meatgrinder is still getting a boost!
Inv7ctus
Casual reminder that Bookie contains the corpse of a God in case anyone forgets why he is in facted busted as fuck.
Matt Grayson
Um, Pestle FOUR TIMES as fast? She's already over Mach 1. Hypersonic Pestle will break window panes kilometers away wherever she moves. Cool!
Logen Felxon
Well, he did have a god + a lot of good shibazzle summons so I as a necromancy enthusiast would have picked the 2D option every damn time. It makes you able to have a J curve style powerup curve. While the more pages thing is the second best thing, it will very likely be the next choice. Regardless of bookie being made out of bony paper it's just so much better to have the paper being able to cut those that would harm bookie without any problem. Now all they gotta do is get some beings that have more mana than most things on the planet's skellies to put into bookie and he'll be able to summon all his things. :)
Mrluigi1111111
Huh. From my point of view the bonus pages was by far the strongest choice, and the stats maybe the second weakest. Bookie explicitly isn't a fighter, that's what the summons are for. I realize now that Mornn wouldn't want to juggle yet more pages, but with how often Sofia has to pick some to delete, the pages would be far more useful.
Tsorov
Do you mean stats? The stats in this story have always been hidden, the only ones known are the health, mana and stamina stats. Since he is a skeleton, he has unlimited stamina. The other stats, like charisma, are hidden and not shown. So we could maybe get mana and health, but that doesn't really tell us anything.
E
I believe we've just witnessed a limitation of Orator. He operates more on foresight and less on precognition. Even Regulator from 30,000 years ago was able to communicate with current Sofia. I guess that means Regulator has one up on Orator.
Tom Asciola
Could always see how he does in the master courses, if Sofia still has enough points for the basic levels
Emily Gurnavage
Neat. I wasn't aware of like 80% of the summons anymore, lol. Nice to get a lil refresher on them. Elven engineers, pestle, kjidikdjdiksjikdjks, crowie, other crows, rat swarm, fish swarm, and the sand worm is about all I tend to remember of the summons. Thats a good chunk of stat bonuses too, although Bookie is pretty weak to begin with so im not too sure how combat ready this really made him. Maybe just the difference of surviving or not in the sorts of fights they tend to get into, but still not enough to truly participate as evenly as Pareth or Pestle. It'll be interesting to see how he handles it though. Maybe while still on the Ark they can find some of the more average participants to spar with him and see how he compares to non-freaks-of-nature like Sofia and her team and Ez and his team.
Alexander Andrews
Awesome boosts for Bookie, any chance we can get a list of the actual numbers? Especially once Sophia and Pareth level?
Lazy Monster
The hounds were used exactly once for searching I think she usually used her dog that died in the sun temple though. The war horse has been used a few times as Sofia has mentioned that it can actually run faster than she flies and it’s been a mount for Pareth at least once. The forgotten turns to dust and is unkillable because of that.
Wensber
Thanks for the chapter! Nice to have a list of all of the pages.
Dan N
I mean, she's definitely going to have to kill at least one god well before level 500...
Dan N
Interesting that Crowie is worth 100 normal crows. Right, the rat is "new and improved" because the original single rat page died in the sun temple. Has she ever used the 5 Spellhounds? I can't think of anytime they've come up before. The Forgotten is that one ancient skeleton they picked up on the forbidden moon right? If I'm remembering right there was something weird about it's stats that made it unkillabe or something? I don't think she's ever used the Warhorse either. Probably one she could get rid of although an armored flying skeletal horse would be very aesthetic. The Quetzalcoatlus was definitely used at least once before as a mount for the High Priest but it seems pretty useless now that any of her skeletons can fly. Oooo with the stats from this new filter she'll finally be able to summon the Quartz Giant she's been holding onto since her employment test at the university back at the start of book 4 before even her level 250 Mana Heart trial. The Wilma skeleton was one she picked up from Sorrow's temple right? I'm not sure if I have any memory of that one? 🤔 It's crazy that 10 Billion Mana is even within the realm of possibilities for her eventually. But i guess it's a reasonable price to pay to be able to summon a god on command. I'm sure Pain is going to make things weird though, he seems like the sort to have absolutely no chill. Are those bonus stats applied to Bookie, his skeletons, Sofia, or some combination of the 3?
OmniGlitcher
Forgotten is the skeleton of the random noble she picked up on the Warped Moon. Pain is the divinity killed by Queen Ormoncleth on the same moon. I've written up details of the pages are on the wiki for convenience: https://saintess-summons-skeletons.fandom.com/wiki/Bookie#Pages
Clara
Yeah she still had the graveyard aura option to take
The Arcane Emperor
She would need 2000 times her current mana pool for that. The filter upgrade will multiply her capacity by a lot, but not that much.
Lazy Monster
Oh just noticed Rune Forged Overlord was added to the optimization list. That’s going to be interesting! Also wasn’t the graveyard of nymphs an option?
Kennyevilmonkey
Very much leg!
Malphir
Balance should be 1 less TP. From the ultimate run pin. Also have a full breakdown comment for math corrections in the previous chapter.
Ceasar Salas
Thanks for the chapter! Very interesting that the stat boost seems consistent with how often they are summoned/duration used. Since the stat boost seems non-linear. That or getting more has decreasing bonuses. Also, I forgot, who is forgotten and Pain?
OmniGlitcher
https://saintess-summons-skeletons.fandom.com/wiki/Bookie#Pages Wiki is your friend. :) (More just putting this here for others too)
OmniGlitcher
Boki upgrades, very nice very nice. Also thanks for the chapter!
Cyclone001
Heh. Struggling to remember some of the skeletons. Which one was Wilma again? Love that the plant mage is still there with the abuse he gets.
Lazy Monster
Well she’s got the apostles of domination and the stronger Ebb creatures. Maybe some of Scripture’s heroes will show up?
Songy
Pestle just has a leg up on the competition :P
Lazy Monster
Of course not we need the extra 50 pages to make the list longer.
Matt Grayson
Bookie gets a nice buff!
Lazy Monster
TFTC. Now General Bookie can lead the charge!
Tom Asciola
Surely she must be getting close to summoning Pain, right?
steamrick
Isn't that kind of juuuuuuuust a little bit overpowered? Also, it definitely inscentivizes throwing out mediocre pages and getting the best skeletons they can even if it's just for the extra bonuses. Also, is it just me or is Pestle hitting way above her mana cost?
Kennyevilmonkey
Holy lists Batman! Is that thing long enough?!
stephen moloney
The god Pain I think?
Codered999
Welp, Bookie is stronk on a personal level now hot damn
Spencer
Sofia is gonna he so ridiculously op, what in the world is she gonna be fighting after this?
Daemion
Of course they pick the most OP skill again... at lvl500, Sofia will be able to kill gods...
Karnevale
What was that really expensive pain one again?
