Level Up Saintess

So yeah, I guess I’ve gotta go scavenge for exp around the place. I have a few new things to protect myself with, so I guess I could head over to the slums and try my luck there again, but… Well the idea is still really spooky, you know? What if I cast my skills too late, or if I somehow misunderstand how the new ones work? Or what if I use [Judgment] in the wrong situation and I get penalized and lose all of my exp?! Ugh, I’m really worried about going there, I don’t know if it’ll go well at all. …But if I don’t go there, then… Well what the hell else am I supposed to do?

After getting that sweet free +30 exp from the daily quest, eating, and getting all the morning cleaning out of the way, I nabbed Chella and asked her opinion on where I should go.

“What, you want to go healing in the slums? …Don’t you remember how that turned out last time?”

“Well yeah, but I learned that [Benediction] skill, and I also have a few other new ones that I might be able to protect myself with, so, you know…”

“Hffff… I think you’re underestimating the slums a little bit, Arissa. Just because you have skills doesn’t mean that they don’t. They’re broke, not idiots; If they see a weak girl who’s wearing the clothes of the church, some of them are gonna get ideas just like the last time. And if any of them know that you’re the Saintess who recently showed up around here, then you’re even more likely to get targeted! How much do you think the church would be willing to pay to get their Saintess back?!”

Yeah, what she was saying was definitely true. Chella’s face even looked like she couldn’t believe I was dumb enough not to realize all of this on my own. Honestly, I felt like a kid being scolded for almost running out into the street and getting hit by a car.

“...It’s not like I don’t know that it’s dangerous there, but-”

“But what?”

“...But… Someone might need some healing over there… A-and I already healed everyone who came to the church, so…”

Chella’s glare was awful, awful enough to make me nervously laugh.

“Arissa… No, I guess this is all because you’re a Saintess. It must be true you’re all supposed to have some weird burning need to help people, huh? That’s good and all, but it’s not worth risking your life for, you hear me? You’ll help plenty more people by staying alive, rather than dying here now!”

She definitely had a point, but she also didn’t know my true motivations. Yes, I need to do my Saintly duties, but it’s much less out of compassion or a server of duty, and much more for the sake of leveling up. Not getting the exp from healing those people is risking my life, woman! I can only help people in the future if I make it to the future! Geez! …But there’s no way I could say that to her. She’d think I’m absolutely nuts for sure.

I guess my pouting ‘Damn I can’t say anything back’ face made her sigh and back off a bit. Chella’s actually very attentive, although she pretends not to be. I’m sure she must have felt how tight of a spot I was in right now.

“Look, if you really want to go out and do something dangerous so badly, then why not check in with the adventurer’s guild again and get yourself a license? Later on, when the main church takes you in, I’m sure they’re gonna want you to subjugate some really bad monsters, since they try and make every Saintess do it for them at one point or another. It’ll be better if you get in some practice with some easy ones now, before you get blindsided by the worse ones later.”

Wow, now that she said it, that really makes sense. Well, it feels weird having a Saintess doing adventuring work, but I can totally see the merit in it. Besides, I’m pretty sure my main quest says that I still get exp from defeating monsters, right? Or, well, it said ‘evil’, but I’m willing to bet that that counts, if history says anything. Yeah, I guess it’s time to go on my first adventure!

~~~

Chella was kind enough to escort me to the adventurer’s guild again. Maybe she just did it to make sure I wasn’t going to sneak off to the slums, but either way it was super kind of her. She led the way in like the place owed her money, marched right up to the counter, and just said ‘Give the Saintess a license’, and that was it. It’s amazing how that was all that it took. The receptionist handed us a paper to fill out and a small… I guess it was a pencil-type-thing? It certainly seemed like that was what it was supposed to be, and the end of it had some sort of charcoal-like material on it, so I guess I’ll just say that’s what it was. Chella pulled me over to a vacant table and sat me down while she stared over my shoulder.

“I never asked, but do you know how to write?”

You know, that’s an excellent question! Since I can speak whatever language is used here and read it just fine too, I’m sure that I could also write it as well, right? I moved the ‘pencil’ to the spot where the page wanted my name, and I wrote what I recognized to read as ‘Arissa’, so it certainly seemed to me that I could write just fine. But just in case, I glanced back up at Chella for confirmation. Her face looked a little scrunched and doubtful, which probably isn’t a good sign, right?

“...Did I do it wrong somehow?”

“Huh? …No, it’s not like you spelled it wrong or anything, just… Wow. Maybe you aren’t used to writing. Let’s blame it on that.”

Funny how she wasn’t willing to say it could have been the weird looking ‘pencil’ in my hands' fault. Oh well, if it’s at least legible then it doesn’t really matter; I’ll just have to take some time to work on my handwriting later. For now let’s finish filling this out. There’s my name, and… Okay I had to ask Chella how to write the date down, which secretly also taught me what the date even was, although I forgot it pretty quickly in the end. I figure for occupation they probably wanted me to put ‘healer’ so they could find a way to fit me into some kind of party, but considering that I wasn’t coming to this guild to get stuck with some random people, I just put ‘Saintess’ down instead. I’m sure that’ll make it plenty easy to pick out my paperwork later on if they need to.

There were a few other little bits to fill out, like whether I preferred to be in a team of all women like me, or if I was ok with a few men being in the party. That’s nice that they include that in there. Honestly I don’t really care if they sprinkle a few guys into the mix, but uh… I think there’s mostly men here, isn’t there? When I was healing everyone it seemed like only a little less than a third of them were actually women, so… How many all female teams could they really accommodate?

After I filled out a few more sections about my preferences, the paper was all filled up, and Chella walked me back to the counter. I could see the receptionist also pull a quick face, but it was almost unnoticeable. I guess they were trying to remain professional in the face of my apparently atrocious writing. That’s… really sad. Part of me was hoping that it was all just Chella being her typical prickly self instead of her actually telling the truth. Oh well, I guess it doesn’t really change anything. It's fine. I'm fine.

It only took about 3 minutes before a card was issued to me. It wasn’t that big, maybe the size of a credit card, and it seemed like it was made out of tin. While I was checking it over, Chella led me over to a board covered in many small scraps of paper. Many of them really were scraps, too, with all kinds of varying sizes and qualities of paper. Some of the more difficult looking quests seemed to have been written on bigger, more expensive looking papers, or small scrolls. But almost all of the simpler and lesser quests, like the one Chella ended up plucking off of the board, seemed like they were written on little leftover bits and bobs of paper.

“Here, this should be a good starting point.”

She handed me a note smaller than my hand. The handwriting on it was nice, and it simply stated ‘5 intact slime cores for 1 Riffle each’. So she’s starting me out with slimes, huh? I guess that makes sense, so long as the slimes here aren’t big or acidic or anything. If they were too dangerous for me I doubt that Chella would have picked it, so it should be alright. At least she didn’t go for the bunnies that were listed right next to this; I’m sure I wouldn’t have the heart to hurt such cute things. But puddles of goo? I don’t think I’d be hurting my emotions all that much by taking those things out.

Here’s the thing though… What the hell is a ‘Riffle’?

Like, I’m not stupid, I can guess it’s the currency around here, and I’m sure it’s probably a really lesser one since it’s my reward for killing one of the simplest monsters. But still… Riffles, huh? Riffles. Sure, whatever, they can name the money in this place whatever they want to name it. I’m sure if I was naturally from here I wouldn’t have even thought it was weird.

Aw, who cares what it’s named?! I should just be happy that I’d make any money at all by doing this; I’ve actually just been running around broke this whole time! I don’t even have a penny to my name! Or, I guess, a Riffle. Whatever! Maybe if I make some money I can finally get something to wear under this silly toga. I’m lucky I haven’t managed to flash anyone in this thing yet! Although idunno, maybe once I get to level 10 and prove to the Head Priest that I’m really the Saintess, he might give me different clothes to wear. The toga that the priests wear isn’t too terribly bad compared to this one, and the thing he wears is even more concealing than that. Or maybe they have some special Saintess robe that I’ll get. …Maybe it’s better to see what the new options look like before I go buying anything. Yeah. I think I’ll just do that.