Level Up Saintess

From what I was told, around when Chella had finally convinced the Bishop to reluctantly give healing me a chance, I suddenly gave off a bright flash of light, and all my wounds disappeared. They believed it must have just been some innate Saintess skill that they didn’t know about, or that the Goddess had saved me or something, but what it seems like happened is that I just leveled up and everything fixed itself. I always used to think that it was only my energy that refilled when I level, but I guess this confirms that it’s also my health that refills, too. I never would have noticed that fact, since I rarely ever leveled up without my health stat being full. It's certainly good to know.

 

And how did I level, you ask?

Simple.

I completed a quest!

 

It feels like it’s been forever since then, but I remember being surprised that me doing things was generating quests sometimes, and promising myself that I would pay more attention to any quests that might have been sneakily generated in the future. Yeah, pretty sure I made that promise to myself... Sucks, but I completely forgot to be doing that. You can’t blame me, since these surprise quests only show up during guild missions or when something big is happening! I’m always busy when they show up, so of course I don't notice them at the time!

 

But yeah, apparently once I killed the devil that had been feeding off of the captured people, I completed some [Rescue The Imprisoned Citizens!] side quest. And you know what the reward was? Exactly 500 exp. Yeah. I only found out about it after I had gone to my quest screen and saw that it was still listed there, grayed out. I’m sure there must have been some kind of pop up, like that time when the blood beast was killed, but… maybe it went away? I guess maybe if I take too long to accept a popup, it just fades away or something. The only reason the quest was even still there and grayed out was just to let me acknowledge it quickly before it went away, since I never saw what the popup said in the first place. Interesting.

 

Honestly, I’m just glad it still gave me the rewards, you know?

How messed up would it be if that 500 exp just went away because I didn’t accept it?

 

Maybe I would have died if that weren’t the case. Crazy to think about.

 

Oh yeah, and you might be wondering, ‘Hey Arissa, just how long did it take you to acknowledge that quest so it could go away?’

2 days.

I was in a coma for 2 freaking days.

 

When Chella told me about it, I didn’t want to believe her at first. But then I looked at my trusty death timer, and lo and behold, I only have 5 days left to live. 5/1500 exp, and only 5 days left. Woo…

 

Well, at least I’m level 15, so I can’t be too broken up about it. I finally made it to my goal! I can finally save Kale! I did it!

 

I grabbed onto Chella’s arms. This time I would be the one doing the shaking, even if it wasn’t quite as effective as hers.

 

“Chella, has the Goddess said anything?!”

 

“Huh? How did you-? Oh. Uhhh… Yeah, actually the Bishop went to kneel in front of the altar about an hour ago, saying that the Goddess was speaking.”

 

“...An hour ago?”

 

Does it take so long to receive the words of the Goddess? Wouldn’t it just be as simple as her saying it and it being done?

I guess my confusion was showing on my face, because suddenly Meria chimed in with an explanation.

 

“Whenever the holy edicts are passed down by the Goddess, every lead member of a church is required to write what they heard down on a scroll along with their signature and then send it to the main cathedral, to make sure that everyone heard the same thing.”

 

“Oh, so he’s actually busy writing, then.”

 

“No, it’s more like he’s busy protecting it while it dries. Heinrick says that the paper it’s recorded on is very tough, and that waiting for the ink to dry on them takes a long time.”

 

Well, that certainly explains why he hasn’t finished yet, then. Although it does worry me how long it’ll take for that ink to finally dry, if even people from this time period, who seem to have much more patience than the people from my old world, define the wait as ‘long’.

 

~~~

 

Turns out that the Bishop also had to make a copy of everything before sending it to the church in the capital. So yeah, you can expect that the already long waiting time became only that much longer, which meant I had a lot of time to think while I was impatiently waiting, you know? It was the first time since I came here as the Saintess that I finally got the time to sit down and really think, without anything else important in the way. At first my mind just wandered, digesting all the things I’d come across over the past few weeks, but eventually I thought really hard and deep about what I should be doing next, now that I achieved my goal of saving Kale. Of course I was going to keep him by my side no matter what to make sure he’d be safe, since it seemed like I was going to be releasing him into a country that really didn’t at all like his kind… But that was just the bare minimum, the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more that I was going to need to get done if I wanted to make things right.

 

Like, for instance, I needed to set things right between the bird people here and their oppressors.

 

So it begs the question: What can I do to fix things between Kale and the priests once I freed him? What can I possibly say or do that could make things right? It’s not like the priests were doing anything wrong in the eyes of the law; It’s only me who believes what they did was bad. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, so it wouldn’t be the right thing to do for me to just enslave them right back, and what’s more, it would be totally against the law. Besides… they’ve been nothing but nice and accepting to me since I came here, and it’s been so hard for me to accept that those same people could do something so bad like this. I don’t want to do anything to hurt them, even if it’s in revenge for Kale and the other birds. It just wouldn’t feel right to me. I suppose the only thing that I can do for now is get them to apologize, and then see what we can do from there, but really, what could possibly make up for enslaving people for almost 5 years? I can’t think of a single sane thing that could work. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think the priests deserved some kind of punishment for their actions, but I also think I care too much about both sides to be truly objective about things.

 

I guess the only option is to get the two sides to talk, and see what kind of solutions they can think up.

I’m not from here, I don’t really know how this place works, so I’ll never know the right answer by myself.

 

Yeah, that all sounds good and dandy, but then it brings up the problem of confronting Meria and the quiet priest in the first place, right? I’m absolutely terrible at confronting people. I mean, when I was growing up, if I voiced my opinions to my father, it was a sure way to get hit. And then after I moved out, Kale would often step up to protect me from having to do it, since he knew how much it hurt me to do in the first place. He was always so kind and considerate to me… But maybe he coddled me too much. Perhaps I entrusted too many hard things to Kale, and let myself get too weak without him holding my hand.

 

Truth be told, maybe I tried to hold off on having to do this as much as possible because I was too scared to, but now I can’t put it off any longer.

Now it's time to reverse our previous roles and be the one to defend him.

I’m sorry that I’ve been such a coward, Kale.

 

~~~

 

<The Bird-kins shall be freed, and treated with equality and humanity by all.>

 

That was what the Goddess had passed down. It was simple and maybe a little lacking in my eyes, but apparently it matched her other proclamations of freedom for the other races so far, so I guess I’ll take it. If it gets the point across, then there’s nothing more I can say on the matter.

 

Thank you Goddess, for keeping your promise.

 

I should have been jumping around for joy hearing those words from the Bishop after he’d gathered all of us around in the chapel, but seeing the disquieted expressions on a few of the priest’s faces quickly overwrote my joy with a bitter feeling instead. In fact, the only reason I saw what expressions they were making was because I’d been expecting it from them. Well no, I just knew they’d have some kind of reaction, really. I’m just glad none of them looked mad about it; If I’d seen that, then the situation would have probably turned a little bit violent.

 

It pains me a little that none of them looked happy or even neutral about it except for Chella, though.

 

Heck, even the balding priest, who never even looked after the birds looked a little bit worried about the news, although I’m not exactly sure why. I could have made all kinds of guesses why it was, but it’s not right to just assume how he’s feeling… Maybe I should ask him his thoughts on the issue later. Or maybe I shouldn’t, if I don’t want to risk being disappointed.

 

The Bishop was very busy, what with his duty to record a literal gigantic religious event and all, so he entrusted a small key to the quiet priest and swiftly left. The quiet priest stared at the key for a while and looked like he was thinking really hard about something, but eventually he closed his fist around it and nodded resolutely, having come to terms with something.

 

I’m glad, it seems like he isn’t going to do anything odd or petty at least, if the look on his face is anything to go off of.

 

As he started to walk off, my eyes turned to Meria. If my plan for reconciliation was going to work, then I needed her to be there too when the birds were freed. Let’s drag her along before she can escape.

 

“Meria? I’d like you to come along too, please.”

 

I grabbed her hand like we were friends, to encourage her to come along. Maybe she could see how absolutely serious I was about this, because she still willingly came along with me even though the unwilling look on her face hadn’t budged an inch. Good. Maybe the scared look on her face boded a bit ill for how things would actually go once we got there, but at least she would make it there in the first place, so that’s at least the first step down.

 

Chella tried to follow along with us, just like she always did, but I looked back at her quietly and shook my head to dissuade her. No, Chella couldn’t be here for what’s about to happen. If things didn’t go well, and I had to resort to a bit of strong-arming to resolve the situation, then I didn’t want her to have to see what was going to happen. I’ve already put too much of the weight of my actions on her so far, and besides… I think she would be very hurt if she had to see Meria acting ugly again.