Level Up Saintess

I don’t get it. What just happened? Did… Did the world skip because I accidentally talked about my past life? Or maybe it only happened for Chella and I in here? I guess it makes sense, since I got that weird sudden pop up, but… Wow, I never knew it could censor me like this! Maybe I should be grateful that the Goddess didn’t let me dig myself into that hole with Chella, but… Oh wow. I don’t think I like that that can happen. I don’t think I like that at all, in fact. Holy shit...

 

At this point I was feeling disoriented, confused, and if I’m being honest, a little bit scared. And it seemed like Chella could definitely see the agitation on my face. She tried to ask me a few times what was wrong, but I completely didn’t know what to say, or even how to process such an odd cosmic event. Eventually she must have made some guesses of her own about what was bothering me, because she knelt down and took both of my hands in hers, and spoke really quietly to me.

 

“...Is it that you want to see that ‘Kale’ of yours again?”

 

Oh. Damn, she’s right, this totally isn’t the time to be stressing out about what I just made happen! Kale is still waiting for me to save him!

 

“Yes!”

 

“Well… If you promise not to faint like last time, then maybe I can convince Meria again…”

 

Welp, not like I can really promise that, but if it means I get to see Kale again, then I’ll promise anything, even if it’s totally a lie!

 

***

 

The promise was made a long time ago, when Kale and I were still in our mid-teens. He had a busted lip from getting hit by his mom because she didn’t like the look on his face, and my arms that were reaching out to clean away the blood on his lip had dark bruises on them from the day before, when I’d gotten yanked out of my father’s way.

 

“Rissa,” Kale had muttered, “Maybe we should just get married and run away.”

 

His voice was wavy, like he was trying to hold himself back from crying, so I didn’t really take his words seriously. We could both get a little overly emotional after tussling with our parents, and it wasn’t the first time that we said exaggerated things to each other.

 

“Oh yeah?” I’d replied, “Should we?”

 

And he’d said “Yeah. We spend all our time together anyways; Maybe if we got married and moved really far away together, we could finally be happy.”

 

And of course I laughed and agreed, because I also thought that that would have been amazing. But, like I said, we often said things we didn’t really mean during our patch-up sessions, so I quickly let it fall from my mind. It wasn’t until about 13 years later, when Kale brought it up again, that I even remembered that it had happened.

 

“Rissa,” He’d calmly remarked as we were up late drinking to the new year at his place, “If neither of us are taken by then, I think it would be nice if we got married in 3 years, just like we promised.”

 

“What, you still remembered that? I don’t remember promising anything, though.” I’d laughed.

 

“Yes, but you did agree back then... I think we waited long enough, right? We’ll be 30 by then; Isn’t it a good enough time as any to get married? If anything, it’s actually rather late.”

 

The smooth way he said it made me actually think that he was just teasing me at first, and I’d just laughed it all away. But then a week later he brought it up to me again, now with different talking points. And when he did the same thing the week after that, the only thing I had left to say was simply ‘Yes’. We'd both been a bit wary of love and relationships throughout our lives, owing up to how awful we'd seen both our parent's marriages turn out, but it seemed that we'd finally grown up enough to try and look past our childhood trauma and reach for what we really wanted. It’s not like we couldn’t get divorced if we decided we didn’t like it; I mean, after all, both of our parents got divorced at some point or another, so how hard could it have been?

 

Kale was worth taking a leap for anyways, no matter what the risk.

 

***

 

I woke up feeling like I’d barely slept.

 

Chella had asked Meria for me, but she said she would only take us to see the birds again if I got a good rest and got the color back in my face by tomorrow. When Chella told me her response, I wanted to beg her to go back to Meria and insist that it had to be today… but there’s no way I could burden Chella more than I already had, so I just quietly accepted it and did my best to hold myself back. Chella’s already done so much for me, and I still feel kind of guilty for whatever weird rip in time I caused to happen to her, so yeah. If I had to wait until tomorrow to see Kale again, then I would do it. If anything, he was worth the wait.

 

For the rest of the afternoon I had distracted myself with books on this country’s laws. Turns out the country we’re in right now is called Kardia? They have many tentative treaties with other nations, but apparently those can be broken and turned into wars quite easily, it seems. The only firm, unbreakable treaties that they have are with the beast kingdom, the elven kingdoms, and the dwarven kingdom, since those were all negotiated by the Saintesses or mandated by the Goddess at one point or another.

 

It’s obvious to guess what happened there.

 

So yeah, as far as I can tell, in Kardia’s laws it’s perfectly legal to turn any unprotected nation’s prisoners of war into slaves. In fact, it seems that’s the only legal way to get slaves here. It’s been that way for the past 700 years, and oddly enough that one wasn’t negotiated by a Saintess, although it was done by someone that that time’s Saintess was friends with. Hilarious. Are Saintesses the only driving force that ever changes crap in this stupid world, or what?! I wonder if the existence of Saintesses just makes everyone else lazy or dependent or something. Geez...

 

Anyways, after many hours of reading, I found that I’d either have to spend 1 million Riffles to remove someone from slavery, or prove in a court of law that they were somehow innocent of their war crimes. Let’s be totally real: Neither of those things were likely to happen. And even if I did pull either of those off somehow, it wouldn’t remove the hatred for the bird-folks, or the chance that Kale could be captured again for whatever made up reasons and get re-enslaved.

 

If I wanted to keep Kale safe after releasing him and also keep him by my side, then I would need something bigger and better than anything I could do. Something cosmic. Something divine. …Something like the Goddess.

 

...Guess I’ll need to get busy leveling up soon.

 

~~~

 

“...Are you ready to leave?”

 

Chella was looking at me like she expected me to start bawling my eyes out at any moment. I guess blanking out while I stared in the mirror and pretended to brush my teeth wasn’t really fooling her into thinking I was fine now. Oh yeah, and I guess there’s also that gloomy look on my face that’s probably worrying her too. Yup, I see it now. Let’s fix that before I see Meria; Don’t want her changing her mind and not taking me.

 

“Yeah… Let’s get going.”

 

The morning prayer wasn’t any different than usual. No one shot me weird glances or tried to come talk to me about yesterday, and I cleanly got my daily free 30 exp... But all of that really fell apart once breakfast time rolled around. The quiet priest shot me a few worried glances, the balding priest looked straight up concerned, and I could tell even the Head Priest was hovering nearer than he usually did to try and listen in on our conversation. It was Meria, of course, who initiated the talk.

 

“Arissa! We were all so worried when we didn’t see you at dinner. Are you feeling any better now?”

 

Ugh. This is all incredibly awkward. For the umpteenth time, I really wish I hadn’t fainted yesterday. At the very least, I wish only Chella had seen it. Seems like I’ll have to go through the embarrassment of easing everyone’s minds if I want to ever move past this... Here, take this public apology to the press, I guess.

 

“I… I’m fine now. I’m sorry I fainted, and it won’t happen again… Thanks for worrying about me, everyone.”

 

Meria clasped her chest as if she was truly grateful, and the balding priest smiled as if he’d never been worried in the first place. The quiet priest turned his head away, as if he didn’t want to be caught paying attention, and the Head Priest busied himself with getting a plate of food.

 

Chella still looked completely unconvinced, though.

 

“My, well if that’s the case, then it’s fine! You must be starving! Sit and let me get you some food.”

 

I honestly couldn’t care less about eating right now, though-

 

“Wait!”

 

I grabbed a handful of Meria’s sleeves before I could even think about it. This super isn’t going to convince her that I’m back to my regular self, but screw it, I have to know, no matter how mortifying my stupid impulsive actions are!

 

“I… Are you still going to take me back to see K- um, to see the birds later?”

 

“Oh…”

 

Meria gently removed my hand from her robe and clasped it between her own, while giving me a reassuring smile. It felt very warm, and honestly I wasn’t sure how to take whatever emotion it was making me feel.

 

“If it’s something you want so badly, then of course I’ll take you, Arissa! But please just promise me you’ll look out for your health while we go this time, okay?”

 

Of course I promised her, there’s absolutely no universe that I wouldn’t have done it in. It burns a part of my heart, though, that I don’t know how I should feel about her. Right now and up until yesterday, I truly thought she was a sweet and caring person. But seeing her in the backyard yesterday with the slaves… I really don’t know what to think about her. It’s stupid of me, since I know there’s not really such a thing as black and white, and that most people have at least a little bit of a bad side to them that others don’t normally see, but… I don’t know, it feels like I’ve forgotten my sense of doubt for the people around me since I came here. Maybe getting Kale back will help me learn how to see through people again. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten a bit of how jaded I used to be now that I’m younger.

 

Maybe this is all just part of the Goddess’s test for me.