Level Up Saintess

Turns out the [Lullaby] skill works a bit differently than I expected. I didn’t have to touch someone to do it, unlike my healing skills, which was good; My plans of using it for self defense would have ended very quickly otherwise. I just had to look at Chella, say [Lullaby] which would start up the magic, and then begin singing. I tried the singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, and thankfully that seems to work, so I have a definite song prepared for the next time I need to use the skill. I made Chella try to keep her eyes open and look at me the entire time to see how effective it is, and she immediately started blinking like she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open from the very first second. I was barely on the third line of the song before her eyes fully closed, and by the time I got to the second ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ in the song, she’d already started snoring. Chella usually takes a little bit to fall asleep, so it seems like it was a huge success.

 

Let’s hope it wasn’t only that successful because she was already exhausted.

 

Anyways, since it didn’t expressly say that I couldn’t use it on myself, I also tried that too. I laid down all nice and comfy and closed my eyes, and I started up the spell. I began singing the song, and before I finished the first line, I could feel myself starting to doze off. However, somehow I suddenly woke up from hearing myself make a deep snore, so I think since I’m the one who has to sing the song, it’s probably not all that effective. At least it gets me most of the way there, so it’s not a total bust, but still, damn.

 

Chella mentioned to me while we were getting ready in the morning that she’d actually slept really well last night, which is definitely a plus. I’m pretty certain I can remove any insomnia debuffs with my [Cure], but if someone’s insomnia is being caused by some other external factors, then maybe I can treat them with my [Lullaby] instead. It definitely seems like it would do a good job at least.

 

Oh and also, in a surprising twist of fate, Chella randomly gave me a hair tie made out of two feathers weaved together. It wasn’t as amazingly elastic as you’d expect a hair tie to be, but it certainly would work to hold my hair in place, and the feathers seemed pretty darn sturdy too. They even had a pretty gold flecking on the whites of them that solidified into a line of gold at the tips, so it was actually really beautiful, and I really liked looking at it. I think she only got it for me because of how nice of a sleep she had, though. Or maybe it’s because we’re totally friends now. I hope it’s the second one. But true to her kind of tsundere form, I guess she decided to give it to me in a kind of mean way.

 

“Your hair looks absolutely gross right now. It’s like you left it in the sun to dry and then poured a hard alcohol on it or something.”

 

She handed it to me with her head turned away, so either she just didn’t want to look at my ‘gross’ hair anymore, or she was just very embarrassed. Or maybe she couldn’t stand to look at the ‘Really, bitch?’ face I was making at her.

 

“Just take it. I can’t use it anymore since I cut my hair, so it’s worthless to me now.”

 

Yeah, Chella has had her hair cut in a cute and fluffy maroon colored bob for the entire time that I’ve been here, so either she got this thing just for me, or it's a remnant from when she used to have longer hair. I wonder what the story on that is. Maybe I could ask Ferr when we see her. I’m sure that would be super funny.

 

For all that Chella talked shit about my hair, she still helped me to put it into a simple ponytail so that it wouldn’t keep getting in my way and poking me. She’s a really good person; If only she could get over her prickliness. Oh well, maybe it’s part of her charm. At the very least I only have to feel her being prickly, and not my hair right now. I should totally figure out what to do with it sometime; I know this is a purgatory run, but I don’t want to let myself suffer more than I have to. I’m not the type to wear a crown of thorns just because I’m repenting for something, sorry. This dumb hair has got to be taken care of sometime.

 

Anyways yeah, I fiddled with the cute feathers sticking out of the hair tie a bunch during the morning prayer. Somehow even the 30xp from the daily quest looked flecked and lined with gold, just like them.

 

~~~

 

Welp, it's been another day.

 

I’d love to tell you some big story about how I roamed around the place and found another hidden goldmine, but uh… Nope. I got my 30 exp from the morning prayer as usual, and then, well... I guess maybe I took the whole ‘food delivered right to my door’ thing with the morning and night mass a little too much for granted. See, the thing is, I already treated most of the people who needed treating. The town’s not that big; Anyone who heard about me healing for free in the church and actually believed it had already shown up. Most of them turned up in that packed room in last night’s mass, and the rest of the people who were convinced by seeing them healed turned up to the next morning one; And even then, besides the regular devout people, I only pulled about 20 people more, and out of all of those, they really only needed a quick [Heal] or [Cure], nothing fancy. Anyone who needed more drastic healing would have already shown up yesterday for the mere chance of being healed, free or not.

I even bit the bullet and used [Cleanse] on everyone since the numbers were so reasonable, and I still only managed to rack up 470 exp.

 

And sadly enough, the night mass didn’t have any new takers. Guess any new people showed up in the morning. Since there wasn’t anyone that needed to be healed, and I felt too guilty to just become a washing service in the name of maintaining the ruse, I chose to not do any ‘healing’ at all.

 

I’m acting like it was a total bust, even though I’m 320/800 into level 8 now. I must be getting really spoiled with these major exp buffets I’ve been having the past few days. Honestly, usually I’d rather take things slow and not rush all the time like I have been, but I guess I’ve been a bit impatient to get to the end of things lately. Also, maybe I just like seeing my numbers tick up a bit too much. Idunno, maybe it’s just my OCD or something, or maybe it’s part of the overall appeal of video games, but seeing yourself level up and get better is just plain satisfying. And getting new skills to mess around with is also very very nice. And it’s also great to know that I’m helping people who are in pain, so I-

 

Yeah no, I’m kind of lying to myself.

 

I know this was all forced on me by the Goddess in the guise of being a redemption run, and I know that I have a constant timer chasing me and threatening me with a hellfire filled death… But I’m also not blind enough to not realize that I’ve been given a much better second chance at life than I ever could have gotten in my previous life. I’ve made two wonderful friends, all the priests have been nice to me, and I even got a new promising life where people need me. Smack in parents who love me and it might have even been the ideal new life for me. I should really be feeling grateful right now about this new chance I’ve been given, but… Maybe I'm greedy, I don't know... But the most important thing is missing, and there's no way it'll ever come back. And so long as that point is true, then I can never be truly happy here, and this will continue to just be some kind of atonement run for me.

 

No matter what happens, I can’t stop thinking that I’m just following along with what the Goddess wants until she finally gives up on me and sets me free. I’m grateful that she cared enough to do all this for me, really, but… my life is already done. I’ve lost everything that I could stand to lose, and unless all those things somehow magically come back, then I don’t need to artificially prolong things like this while waiting for the Goddess to finally be done with me just like everyone else.

 

I’m too weak of a person to hope to start over again.

Thank you for the chance, but I’m really really done this time.

Goddess, it’s been a nice week, but the magic is finally starting to fade, and now I’m ready.

You can give up on me now, okay?

 

~~~

 

Okay yeah, sorry, ignore all that. I had a silly little setback or disappointment or whatever, and I immediately gave up and got depressed. It’s something I hate about myself, and it’s gotten in my way hundreds of times, so it’s nothing new. By the next day I usually manage to snap myself out of it, and luckily I didn’t do anything too drastic, so it’s alright. And I was even lucky enough to have Chella around and worrying about me, so everything turned out okay enough in the end.

 

I’m not a strong person, but I’m also not stupid; If I really gave up now, then I’d be cast off to hell and I’d never get the peace that I was trying to get. And besides, if I go to hell then I’ll never get to see Ka-

 

...Yup, I’d better get back to work.

 

I’ll admit, at this point I was keenly aware that I still had the better part of a week left before my death timer would kill me, and I really wanted to be lazy and procrastinate on it and just let the exp trickle in each day until I leveled up again. I’m sure I probably would have been just fine subsisting like that, but I also know myself too well; If I just sat still and did that, then I’d have too much time to think and get upset like I did before for not really doing anything. I’ve learned plenty of times that being alone with my thoughts never works out well for me. And besides, I’m not trying to sit here stretching out my time between levels; I’m in a rush to reach the finish line! This ain’t some kind of vacation, and there’s no time to be wasting here!

 

The church isn’t going to be a good enough exp hunting ground anymore, and I’m not comfortable with just cleaning everyone and pretending that I’m ‘healing’ or ‘blessing’ them. In fact, if possible, I’d rather like to stay away from lying to people at all. I always promised myself I wouldn’t grow up to be an asshole like my parents, and lying to a big group of people who believe in me like that really feels like it’s tipping over to the asshole side of things, so let’s just stay away from that.

 

I’m already level 8, so that means if I can scrounge up enough scraps of exp and get to level 10, then I can finally go back and regenerate all those missing limbs I promised I’d help with later. I may not be altruistic and righteous, but if I know I can for sure help someone with a problem then at least I’m gonna try, and that goes double for the people I already promised to help before. So I guess even if I don’t know when the Goddess is going to cut me loose, at least I can aim for making level 10 my goal for now, and-

Oh wait, right, I'm level 8 now!

 

Ah crap, I got so distracted last night that I didn’t even pay attention to my new possible skill! Yes, right, let’s make sure to check that. Let’s see, level 8, level 8… Yup, I guess the next one is [Soothing Bell].

 

{[Soothing Bell]: The Saintess rings an ethereal bell, which plays a note so soothing that it pacifies all who listen. (150 energy)}

 

Woah. Well for starters, that’s the most costly skill I’ve seen so far. I guess maybe its area might be pretty wide or something, so that could have something to do with it. Or maybe it’s just not easy to pacify people. I bet this’d be great for calming down a riot or something like that. I wonder if it would even work on monsters too, you know? I bet that’d be crazy strong.

 

Also, you know… Maybe instead of that embarrassing freak-out I had last night, I could just ring a stupid bell and calm my dumb self down. ...Or maybe it wouldn’t; I don’t know if being ‘pacified’ also makes you stop being sad. Could totally be the case, but I’m a bit doubtful about it. I also know myself well enough that I’m sure I’d be stubborn enough to not do it in the first place. When I’m upset, I just wanna stay upset, you know?

 

Well who cares if it wouldn’t work for my stupidity?! It’s a really nice skill and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to use it, so I’m gonna take it anyways! Hmph! And if I happen to try and use it on myself every now and then, well… No one can blame me for it, right?