Level Up Saintess

At first when I got back to the church I went to go sit on my bed and think things over, but after thinking about how the day went, I got up and headed back to the library. I still had about two hours until it was sunset time, and I’d promised myself earlier when Ferr was teasing me that I was gonna get some hard studying done once I made it back! If people are just gonna quiz me out of nowhere about Saintess crap and just expect me to know it, then I guess I’m just going to have to learn it all! If not knowing automatically means I must not be a real Saintess, then I guess that means it’s a requirement, now doesn’t it?

 

I of course started my learning with Saintess Seria, ‘The Saintess of Victory’. She was pretty in the picture, with long flowing sapphire hair, and sparkling green eyes. A quick read proved that this Saintess was the one that Ferr had been telling me about; Her relationship with the lesser noble-turned female knight, Ronia, was quite legendary, and even took up a good portion of her chapter in the history book. The major event she was noted for was of course the oracle from the Goddess saying to allow all same-sex couples their love, but there were a good number of other events she had a part in too. It seems most Saintesses had some fight with a horde of monsters, but apparently a particularly scary wave of monsters had shown up during Seria’s time. It seems she and her knight were the ones who stopped them, together. I’m sure Seria must have used a bunch of buffing skills on Ronia and just let her at them, but even then I’m sure that Ronia must have been an exceptional knight if she could handle all those monsters. That’s incredible.

 

Reading that really just reinforces the idea that I should have a bodyguard or my own personal knight or something. I don’t seem all that terribly strong right now, but how amazing would it be if I could just buff someone else and send them off to fight my battles for me? It really seems like the optimal way to play, if you ask me. Seria definitely had the right idea.

 

I also realized that a lot of oracles were passed down that somehow benefitted the respective Saintess of the time. I looked back at my skill tree and didn’t see anything that especially looked like an ‘oracle making’ skill, and the fact that the oracles were supposedly directly from the Goddess made that seem rather unlikely as well. After a lot of inspecting I realized that I was told about it from day one, in my [Do your best not to die, Saintess!] quest. I look at that thing all the time to check my death timer, but I totally didn’t pay attention to the rest of it! It says that at level 15 I can make a minor wish to the Goddess, right? Well I bet most of these ‘oracles’ are just the Goddess making the Saintess’s wishes come true. What if Seria just ‘wished’ that people would let her and Ronia be together? Wouldn’t it be easiest for the Goddess to just tell everyone ‘Let same-sex relationships be okay’ to fix it? And not every Saintess had an oracle, so maybe they wished for something that simply telling the masses wouldn’t fix? I’m sure that must be it.

 

The history book says that Seria and Ronia got married shortly after the oracle came down. At first I was surprised that no one cared about a Saintess getting married, but after I looked through a few more stories, it seems that a good chunk of the Saintesses actually ended up getting married in the end. I guess the church didn’t care about marriage, or maybe it’s just for the Saintesses. I mean, if a literal servant of god came down and said they wanted to do something, who could stop them, right? But still. Very surprising.

 

It’s also crazy that these people had time for romance in the middle of the Goddess threatening us with death. It’s possible they didn’t have the same death-timer thing going on that I do, sure, but if I assume that they did, then what the hell? I’m sure I’d be wayyy too busy with all of this to ever even think about such a thing. Like for instance, if-

 

“What are you still doing here? It’s time to get ready for dinner.”

 

Ooooh, thank god that Chella interrupted me there. I’m sure my mind was about to go into some dangerous territory any second.

 

I put a bookmark in the Saintess history book and followed Chella out. I said I was going to read that damn thing and I’m gonna. No more failing pop quizzes for me. No sir. Oh, and while Chella’s here…

 

“By the way, I wandered over to that brothel you told me about today.”

 

Chella’s body and face immediately stiffened, so that’s probably not the best sign.

 

“Oh…? And how’d that go?”

 

“It went pretty well. I met a really nice lady named Ferr and I got to heal a bunch of people. They’re worried about you, you know?”

 

Her face turned pretty hard, and I think she’s glaring at me out of the corner of her eye.

 

“...What are you trying to say?”

 

Yup, she definitely feels threatened. As always, I’m not any good with my words.

 

“I’m trying to say that they’re worried about you. Ferr’s going to pick me up and take me back there in a week; Why don’t you come along? Or at least meet with her and talk a little bit before you go. They’re worried about you. I mean it.”

 

I never got a response back from her. Chella was as stiff and quiet as a board for the whole rest of dinner. It wasn’t until we were bathing together that she ended up quietly asking me what healing I did at the brothel.

 

~~~

 

Once again, as if I was starting a new tradition, I leveled up after doing the morning prayer daily quest. Now I was level 3, and my exp was 20/300. I guess the exp requirement goes up by 100 each level? That’s better than the previous possibility that it doubled with each level, so I’ll gladly take it. Also, my death timer reset, and surprise surprise, I once again have a week to live. I know I'm only level 3, but I was kind of hoping that this thing would start increasing the timer the higher my level, you know? Eh, maybe it could still happen, I mean it's not like I've leveled up more than twice anyways. No one said being a Saintess was going to be easy, and this is a repentance run after all, so of course it would be hard somehow. Way to keep me on my toes, Goddess.

 

Maybe at level 15 I should just use my wish to ask the Goddess how long I have to keep doing all this for? This place is great and all, but I don’t really think I want to be here forever. I had enough disappointment and judgment in my last life; I don’t need to work myself to the bone here just to keep surviving in vain for as long as I can. If there’s a definite way out, I’m gonna take it. I already decided I was done, and I don’t plan to change my mind on it now. Let’s just get the Goddess to give up on the whole hell thing, and then I can finally go rest like I wanted to.

 

I tried to look at my skill tree while Chella and I were doing our daily cleaning, which earned me a hit from her at some point for spacing out and not working hard enough. From what I could tell before I got hit, it seemed at level 3 I could unlock the skill [Benediction], which puts a protective shield blessing on the target. Honestly that sounds a bit late, since I totally could have used that skill yesterday when I was being chased, although I suppose I was still quite stealable even if they couldn’t damage me. At the very least I wouldn’t have scraped up my hands and knees, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten hurt bumping into that adventurer earlier either. I had a free skill point from leveling up anyways, and the skill sounded pretty useful, so of course I bought it. Let’s see… How exactly does it work?

 

{[Benediction]: Puts a blessing on the target, shielding them from damage for 1 hour. (50 energy)}

 

Alright, that sounds simple enough, but I wish it told me exactly how much damage it would block. Does it just block one instance of damage and then go away, or does it just keep blocking until a certain number of damage or hits and then end? Don’t tell me I’m actually cheat-y enough to just block all damage for an hour…? That would be completely insane. Maybe it’s best that I test this out a bit before I go using it for real.

 

I quietly murmured a [Benediction] onto myself. My skin sparkled for a small second, but then the effect dissolved away. Even though I couldn’t see it anymore, I could kind of feel that there was something light but firm on me, you know? I took a peek at my status, and it did in fact say that I have [Benediction] on there, so I wasn’t crazy or anything, it really was still on me. And that means that it’s now science time.

 

“Hey, Chella?”

 

Chella looked up from her cleaning with a dissatisfied pout. I’m sure she wasn’t happy to find me not cleaning again. That look in her eyes made me not want to keep talking, as I’m sure it was designed to, but I kept going anyway. What was she going to do, hit me?

 

“Chella, can you do me a favor and hit me? I just learned how to use a shield skill called 'Benediction', and I wanted to test it out. Don’t worry, even if you hurt me I can heal-”

 

Before I even finished talking, Chella took a swing at me. Instead of the slap to my arm that she’d hit me with before, now it was a full on punch aimed at my cheek. I shut my eyes tight right before the impact, and I could feel a force as if I’d been pushed by something, but even after I opened my eyes again I couldn’t feel anything that hurt. I checked my health and it said I was a full 100/100, which hey, I hadn’t noticed, but I guess after I leveled this time it must have gone up. However, Chella next to me was making a pained face, and I could hear her hiss out a [Heal] to fix her now red fist. Guess my [Benediction] must have hurt her like she was punching a wall. Interesting to see some kind of physics interactions still being applied even though all of this was still magic.

 

Chella was frowning and glaring at me, which wasn’t a big surprise. She turned her head and went back to cleaning, but after a little while she finally spoke to me once again.

 

“Even if you have that shield, that doesn’t mean you’re safe. If you’re trying to go to the slums again like yesterday, you’ll probably end up right back into the same situation as then. I’m sure you know how dangerous getting kidnapped is.”

 

I nodded and agreed with her. I wasn’t actually sure just yet where I’d try to go today, but it did seem like the slums would be off limits for now. At the very least I would need a better way to defend myself if I wanted to go back there. Even if I learned an offensive skill to protect myself, I’d be too worried to actually use it on someone, since my [Do your best not to die, Saintess!] death timer quest says I could get penalized if I hurt someone or commit a crime or anything.

 

Chella peeked back at me for a moment, watching me nod, and then looked forward and went back to cleaning once again.

 

“...Since it seems like you’re such a trouble magnet, I might as well go with you this time. I can’t do much about the slums, but I can at least take you to see the adventurers. I know where the guild is.”

 

When she saw the goofy way my mouth was wide open in happy surprise, Chella grumbled and tried to smack my arm, but she just ended up coming away with a re-hurt hand again. Poor her.