Level Up Saintess

It took me half an hour outside of town to make it to the lake that the slimes apparently spawned from. Luckily for me, it wasn’t that far from the road, and since the road leading to the forest nearby saw a lot of foot-traffic from the town’s adventurers, it was deemed to be a moderately safe trip. For the record, Chella just guided me to the edge of town, told me where to go, and then sent me off. It’s nice to know that she trusts me enough to handle all of this by myself, but um… I kind of wish that she didn’t. At least for the first time I do it I want somebody to hold my hand! This just doesn’t seem fair or safe, you know?!

 

I say all that, but I’ll probably be alright. Chella stressed to me that slimes were the easiest of the easiest things to fight, or at least these slimes were supposed to be. And besides, if they’re weak enough and I don’t fight too many of them at once, then I should be able to heal myself up nice and quickly if they do manage to hit me. …I really don’t like getting hurt though, and I’m a complete baby when it comes to pain. I guess I’ll have to try and focus on dodging really hard. Yeah, maybe let’s do that.

 

Maybe it’s a sign that something irregular was in the water, but what should have been a tranquil lake was oddly turbulent. And it wasn’t even like the whole thing was being moved or anything, just, you know, random pockets of waves and bubbles were all over the place. Too many bubbles for it to just be anything normal. Everything in me seemed to tell me not to get closer and try and see where those bubbles were coming from, but morbid curiosity can be one hell of a strong force sometimes. So yeah, of course I looked.

 

Surprise surprise, getting closer made the slimes get interested! I’m sure no one could have seen that one coming.

 

I saw a lot of them start moving my way, but when I quickly scooted myself back, I managed to only keep the closest one’s attention. Good job me. Out of a mucky patch of sandy water that it had stirred up by moving, a kind of dirty looking slime about half the size of my shin slowly came out. It was… I don’t know, I guess it looked a bit gray? I was told that these lesser tiered slimes were supposed to be blue, but um… Yeah, gray is definitely a more accurate color here. It had little bits of rocks and mud and twigs and clumps of grass swirling around inside of it instead of just its core like it was supposed to, so it kind of supported the whole ‘dirty’ idea.

 

Right, yeah, my quest was to get its core, wasn’t it? But if I recall correctly from my time playing video games in my last life, you had to damage a slime’s core to kill it. Honestly it sounds pretty difficult to both kill a slime by attacking it, and also leave the core in pristine condition afterward. And it might be a bit harder to hit with all that random crap swimming around inside of it, too, so I bet it’d be really difficult to be accurate as well.

 

Luckily for me, I think I’m a bit of a cheat character.

 

“[Judgment]!”

 

I’ve gotten so used to using skills that I wasn’t too worried about getting my first cast of this one wrong. And if it turned out that I had done it wrong, then I’d be pretty sure it was just because this one was a touch based one like my healing or something like that, so yeah, I was confident. And my confidence wasn’t wasted, it seems, because I could see my energy drain by 100 out of the corner of my eye, and less than a second later there was a parting in the clouds where a thin beam of light came down. The light surrounded the chosen slime, and a small musical sound played, which, again, was honestly way too video-game like for my tastes, but it is what it is I guess.

 

Oh yeah- And then there was a big clap of thunder as the slime got obliterated by a small bolt of lightning.

…It was hard to see from all the light, but a little ‘+10xp!’ drifted up from where the slime used to be, too.

 

Alright I’m exaggerating, it didn’t get ‘obliterated’. I think it would be more factual to say that the slime just kind of um… dissolved? Idunno, maybe that’s just how slimes die. All its little dirty chunks of whatever that it had picked up all fell to the ground looking fried, along with its core.

 

I won’t lie, the attack was so massively overpowered against the poor small slime that I kind of don’t feel like I really won, you know? In fact, if anything, I feel pretty bad for the thing. It didn’t get a chance to do a single attack even, or get particularly close. Maybe I’m just way too much of an unfair cheat character for something like-

 

“-Fuck!”

 

A pebble got launched into my head, really hard.

 

I’m an idiot. I guess since I came closer to try and look for the core I was supposed to pick up, four other slimes noticed me again and slipped over to me. I touched my hand to my temple and could feel that it was wet, and pulling my hand away to look at it confirmed that the red stuff on it certainly wasn’t sweat.

 

“[Heal].”

 

The slight sharp feeling that I didn’t even register at first quickly faded away when I felt the wound close up, but I could still feel the wetness trying to run down the side of my face. And of course, my hand was still noticeably red. I had to resist the urge to wipe off the blood on my toga, remembering how pure white it was. I tried to lean down to wipe it on the grass, but suddenly I felt a white hot burning feeling from something touching my leg. Leaping away and looking back, I could still see the outstretched tendril of the slime that had been trying to wrap around my shin. I also managed to catch sight of another pebble whizzing past me during my coincidentally timed dodge, and while my head snapped over in its direction, a twig was launched at me like a little arrow and grazed my shoulder.

 

Okay yeah, I’m being a complete idiot about this right now for real. Of course I knew there was more than one slime coming for me, and of course the one who shot me the first time was going to try to shoot me again. Just because the first slime died immediately doesn’t mean these things are harmless by any means! These are monsters! I’m fighting literal monsters and acting like a fool.

 

I ran some distance between us and hid behind a tree, all while trying to ignore the pain in my leg that I could feel every time my muscles moved. It wasn’t until I was safely leaning behind the tree and panting that I realized I could have just cast [Heal] while I was running. It was so obvious, but I was too panicked to think about it I guess. Damn! I’m being so stupid about this! How am I messing up so badly?! These things are supposed to be the easy ones!

 

I clenched my fists against the bark as I tried to calm myself down and steady my breathing. A quick [Heal] to get rid of my injuries certainly helped to steady my mind at least, and it also helped to ease the strain on my lungs somehow. Luckily, I saw as I peeked back around the tree that the slimes were horribly slow, and I probably still had about a minute or two until they would make it over to me. Let’s get myself together and actually make some kind of plan in that time, even if it’s not a very good one.

 

It’s obvious that I’m going to have to hit them with [Judgment], but there’s about 4 of them all trying to reach me right now. I don’t think I cast my skills particularly slowly, but I certainly think it’s slow enough that I’ll get hit a few times while I try and take care of them all. If I’m unlucky they could get a really good shot in, and I shouldn’t underestimate their speed too much and let myself get burned by them touching me again. Agh, it hurts just remembering it... If only I had some kind of way to stall them or maybe protect myself, then-

 

Oh no, I’m being an idiot again; I completely forgot to use [Benediction]!

 

I’ve been using it as a fakey ‘blessing’ so many more times than any kind of actual shield that I guess I just kind of… stopped thinking of it as one. Yes, of course, let me put a [Benediction] on myself. Even if it’s crappy and only blocks one instance of damage or something, that would still be incredibly good. Let’s see, would that be enough? Do I need anything else? I could try and put one of them to sleep, but it takes so much time, and the other three could definitely get in a few attacks while I do it. Ugh, and [Soothing Bell] would be nice if they were attacking me because I did something, but I’m not too terribly sure that slimes even have emotions, you know? It’s not worth risking it and finding out that it didn’t work.

 

I hate to say it, but of all the skills I’ve been offered, dodging a little better because of [Blessing of the Fleet-Footed] would have been really good right now. Scrolling through my skill list to go searching for it wouldn’t be such a good move at the moment though, I think. I should probably rethink it later when I’m not busy panicking; After all, hasty decisions are rarely good ones… Just like these other decisions that I’m making right now.

 

Alright fine then, I guess I’ll just have to make this be good enough.

 

“[Benediction].”

 

I didn’t waste any time once the shield was applied to me; I peeked out enough to check where the slimes were and chose which one to start on first.

 

“[Judgment]!”

 

The furthest left slime, the one that I could just barely see well enough from the way I was leaning out, was shrouded in a ray of light, and then out of nowhere it lit on fire, spontaneously burning to a crisp and leaving only its core behind. Yup, it’s still crazy effective, although it’s surprising how differently this cast decided to kill it. Maybe it’s just random every time.

 

I wasted no more time and leaned out more so that I could cast a second [Judgment] on the next one over.

 

Mhmm, it’s definitely random each time it seems, cuz that one had a spear made of light drop down from the heavens and kill it. Wow. Amazing. I almost wanted to clap with how impressive it looked. But you know who wasn’t impressed? The two remaining slimes, who both threw something at me because I was distracted and peeked out for too long.

 

Good news is, my [Benediction] did a great job blocking both of them.

 

I really shouldn’t have been sleeping on this whole [Benediction] thing. Maybe the slimes only use weak attacks, and maybe I’m just a baby for thinking they hurt, but it could be that my [Benediction] shield is actually really sturdy. The two slimes are almost here, and I’m probably crazy for even wanting to test such a thing, but…

 

I stepped out into the open and cast another [Judgment] so there would only be 1 remaining test subject left. I’m not an idiot enough to try and test something out against 2 possibly acidic attacks, but if things go south then maybe I can bear at least 1 of them. I clenched my fists as the slime I’d just attacked spontaneously pixelated out of existence like a video game enemy, leaving behind its core, and watched as the last remaining slime slowly jiggled over to me. I watched it closely as it reached out its tendril over to me just like I’d expected it to, but as I squinted and readied myself for its oncoming touch, it just… kind of bounced off, instead.

 

It’s like it smacked into a forcefield or something. At least when Chella was trying to hit me to test it out I could still feel the laws of physics applying, but this one didn’t even feel like a poke, or even a tap. Wow. That’s amazing. I guess slimes are really just that weak, huh? Or maybe Chella just hits really well, who knows. I reached out to give the slime a poke, not feeling particularly scared by the thing anymore. I didn’t even get to touch it while I had [Benediction] on, I could just see its watery body bending around my barrier so that we never made contact. How odd. I could still touch people to heal them just fine when I’d had [Benediction] on me before... I guess it’s because this thing can hurt me with just a touch? Huh.

 

Well I guess I’m glad I can’t feel it anyways; I mean, the thing is pretty dirty and I don’t really need it getting on me-

 

Oh! Oh oh oh! Hey, you know, what if-

 

“[Cleanse].”