Level Up Saintess

With me surrounded by the team, we quickly made our way towards the building. Time was of the essence, and if we took too much of it, the chubby man would definitely get eaten. It was a bleak thought, but hopefully the blood-beast had some pre-meal ritual, like playing with its food first, or maybe even something nice like washing its food before it ate it. Anything at all to buy more time for the man would have been appreciated, so long as it gave us the time that we needed.

Here’s my ‘brilliant’ plan by the way: I was going to use [Soothing Bell] for the first time ever. It said it was supposed to pacify my surroundings while it was cast, and the only thing I could hope for was that the infected people didn’t have some weird resistance to it that would cause them to still maul our faces off. Hell, maybe it’s possible that even while pacified and lacking any hatred, they still had the impulses to do harm. It could be that the infection made them feelingless, just like the slimes are. Truly, this would be a huge gamble.

I desperately held back the horrible feeling of impending danger that was winding up in my stomach as we stepped closer and closer, and once the infected finally began to take notice of us, I started channeling the skill.

“[Soothing Bell]!”

Without really thinking of what I was doing, my hands stretched out as if to cup something, and above them a head-sized ethereal bell appeared. It sparkled and glittered as if it were made of the most beautiful of gems, all while being ghostly and see through, with a soft blue-silver halo of light surrounding it. And when it suddenly chimed it was like standing next to a gigantic gong, and you could feel the vibration of the sound go over you. I could feel a tingling feeling pass through me, maybe even absorb into me, and I watched everyone around me, including the team, experience that same odd feeling. I could see the infected people who had been running towards us stop in place. Their arms dropped down to their sides, and their mouths that had been ferociously baring their teeth quickly closed, instead resting with a slight smile sitting on their lips. Some of them stood, some of them sat. Some of them even laid down.

Even the team lowered their raised weapons or arms, and just stood there as if they lost all their will to protect themselves, or were maybe just peacefully dazed.

Thaaaat’s pretty bad actually. Looks like I’m the only one who kept their head here, which I guess means I’m not really affected by the soothing effect. Boo. Well at least I know that now.

I have to keep channeling this skill or else everyone’s going to sober up, so I need the team to wake up and go defeat the blood-beast for me while I stay here, but it looks like they’re not going to be in the mood to do that like this. They’re gonna need to get out of my skill’s effect quick and come back to their senses. I shouted for them to go kill the boss, but they barely responded, and since we were so strapped on time, I ended up panicking and kicking at them to try and wake them up. They made little noises of pain even though they were still being protected by my [Benediction], so it seemed like it was working, although it’s odd that I can still damage the people that I’ve put shields onto. After I kicked Hill and Frete enough, they were the first ones to come to their senses, although they still seemed a bit drowsy. They helped me to shake awake the other two as well, and after about a minute of getting themselves back together, they rushed off to the main building, vowing to kill the blood-beast.

It’s great that it all worked out, although my legs and feet hurt now from kicking against all that armor. …I’m a bit worried whether they’ll be okay against that big bad boss monster, though, since they only just woke up… They do still have my [Benediction] on them, even if I gave them a bit of light damage with my kicks, and I was also told that they’re a B ranked party, so they must at least be some kind of good at their jobs, right? Maybe I’ll just choose to believe that B ranked adventurers have gone through ‘quick wake-up’ training or something. It’s not so far-fetched I think, I mean surely they would have had to fight plenty of things that put them to sleep or in a trance or something before this, right?

Let’s just hope this isn’t a case where my Saintess powers are so cheaty that the sleepiness is extra hard to shake off.

Anyhoo, I guess I just chill here and wait for now. It’s a bit unnerving to be surrounded by all these infected maniacs, but so long as I stay still and keep this bell channeled, I should be alright. Seeing most of them sitting and laying down doesn’t really get to me as much as the ones that are just standing in place and staring off blankly; It makes me feel like their heads will turn to look at me at any minute and realize that I’m not one of them, like I'm in some kind of horror movie.

…Maybe I should just look through my stats while I wait. Channeling this skill isn’t so intensive that I have to keep staring at it for it to work; I just need to keep my hands where they are and not try and use any other skills, so it should be fine. Let’s see… So far I’ve reaped in a big profit of exp from this adventure. I’ve gotten 845 exp overall at this point, and as I mentioned before, I did level up, so I’m now sitting at level 10, with a nice 400/1000 of the way towards level 11. I bet I’ll get even more experience by the time we finally make it home, so it wouldn’t be crazy if I was right on the edge of reaching level 11 by then. I wonder if I’ll get any of the exp from killing the boss, since my [Benediction] is still on the team. …Is that how it works? I have no clue, I’ve never actually hunted anything with anyone before.

Truth be told, even though I want the exp for it, I really don't feel like I deserve it. After all, they're all over there risking their lives in a boss fight, and I'm just over here taking a nap with the boss's mobs outside. Sure, it's an important job, and maybe if I didn't have this skill then trying to get past this wave of infected could have been even more intensive than the boss fight, leaving us exhausted by the time we actually made it to the blood-beast at the end. But seeing that I'm just twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the good news... I can't help but feel a little lame and guilty, like I'm being carried through a hard fight that I don't belong in by higher leveled people.

Eh, maybe it's better that I'm not in there, since it means no one can run up behind them and ambush them while they're busy.

Well, at least I hope they can't.

Anyways, I know I can finally get [Regenerative Heal], but since I have no clue how to press buttons on this stupid character board without the use of my hands, and I have to keep my hands in place right now, I’ll just have to wait until all this is done to try and take it. It’s not the worst thing in the world, I mean it’s not like I can heal any of these deranged infected people until all of this is resolved, and not many of them are even really missing any of their limbs anyways. Maybe I can see a stray missing finger here or there… Oh, that one is missing an arm, actually. And that one seems to be missing an ear…

Besides scanning over the various wounds on the people surrounding me and watching my energy tick down by 20 each minute while I kept [Soothing Bell] going, I really didn’t have much to do. All in all, my mind kept wandering to the fact that I’ve been left out of the all important fight. I guess in the future, when they add my accomplishments into the book of Saintesses, if they decided to say I selflessly held back the hoards of infected so the adventurers would take down the evil blood-beast, it wouldn’t sound too terribly bad. Or maybe they just won’t go that into depth about it and will just say that we all did it together or something. Hell, it could be that they just give me all of the credit, since it is a religious book about Saintesses, after all. Better to over-glorify a symbol of their religion than to under-glorify it, right? I’ll have to scan through that book again and see if that’s what it seems like they’ve been doing.

{Congratulations! The Side Quest: [Save Midliff town!] has been completed!

The blood-beast has been slain, and the townspeople have been rescued from the evil blood curse that had infected them!

Reward: 300xp and 1 skill point.}

Well I guess if it’s all done I don’t need to be channeling this skill anymore, do I? I dropped my tired arms and looked around to make sure everyone seemed like they were still not trying to kill me, before I read the notification more closely.

300 experience is amazing, but I feel like 1 more skill point is even more amazing, isn’t it? I’m sure in the long run that’ll really come in handy. From the skills further in that I’ve looked at, some of the more outrageous ones down the line cost a bunch of skill points. Even [Greater Cure] at level 20 costs 3 whole skill points for me to take it, so it’s probably for the best that I stockpile some points, or go out of my way to do these quests that hand them out to me.

Also, hang on... I had an actual quest for this the whole time just sitting in my quest list? How come I never knew? I mean, I don’t really check that screen unless I want to check on my death timer, so I guess that explains why I never really noticed that I got it, but wow... Well, I suppose it makes sense that something of this magnitude gave me a quest, huh? Did the other little hunt quests I took at the guild also generate an actual quest? Ahhh, there’s a chance that that could have been so helpful! I’ll have to check about it next time, I guess…

Oh, and since I was already on that screen, I of course checked on my death timer. It was compulsive, really, since I already knew it would have refreshed from me leveling up. Surprise, it's still just a week left to live! Hooray. I'd been hoping that after reaching level 10 it would have bumped up to 2 weeks or something, but no dice. How sad, I would have liked to have some more breathing room.

…Oh well, let’s stop thinking about that and just take this [Regenerative Heal] already!

{[Regenerative Heal]: Regenerates any missing pieces of the target’s body, including partial and full amputations, as well as organs. (100 energy)}

Yup, with this skill I can finally have the Head Priest acknowledge that I’m really the Saintess. I wonder what exactly will change? Will I get a cool new outfit? I sure hope so; This toga is cute and all, but it’s just much too risky for my tastes. At least I hope the new outfit will be something that will thoroughly hold all my bits in place. Some support would be nice too, but with this being an underdeveloped time period, I doubt that I’ll find much of that in any of the clothing. I mean, I’m sure corsets exist, but I’m not much one for wearing tight clothing, so if something hugs me too closely then I won’t want to wear it very often. Maybe I could be convinced to wear it once in a blue moon though. I guess we’ll see.

Oh, hey, here comes the team. Welcome back you all, you did a good job and- Ohhh no, they’re actually quite hurt, aren’t they? Oh gosh, Hill’s got a lot of deep cuts, and Frete is definitely limping. And why is Tilly covered in blood?!

…But Dale looks fine though. Wow. Good job I guess, but… I guess Dale still puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Part of me really thought that my cheaty [Benediction] shield would definitely be enough to protect them while I wasn’t there, but it seems like the blood-beast was stronger than I thought… Oh crap, imagine how they would have ended up without my shield on them! There’s no way they wouldn’t be dead, right?! …I don’t see the sheen of my [Benediction] on Dale anymore either, so I suppose he actually did participate in the fight and take some damage after all. I should really stop being so harsh on the man. …He’s not making it easy, though.