Level Up Saintess

Maybe it was foolish of me, but my first action was to leap for Kale and cast [Benediction] on him. There were so many other better skill choices that sprang to mind after the fact, but all I could think about was keeping Kale safe first. Heck, I still hadn’t even covered myself with a [Benediction] yet, and considering the way I was positioned when I flung myself onto Kale, I was actually in much more of a prime position to get shanked than he was.

 

Understandably, Kale looked down at me in confusion for a moment, but then raised his arm and opened his mouth as he looked back up at the quiet priest again, seeming like he was about to use the same skill as he previously did to stop him, or maybe something even deadlier. Meria screamed once again, this time to the tune of the quiet priest’s name. Honestly, no surprises there.

 

No, the real surprise came when someone suddenly tackled the quiet priest from the side, knocking him down to the ground and causing him to drop his knife.

 

“Frieder! Calm yourself!”

 

At first I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at, but then when I heard the voice, I finally realized what was happening.

 

Apparently the Bishop had joined the fight.

 

From what I could tell, the Bishop must have chased after me when I suddenly bolted out of the room, and only just made it here to try and stop the fight. The quiet priest was honestly quite the tall man, but the Bishop was by no means small either, and was actually doing a pretty good job at pinning him down. It probably helped that the quiet priest was absolutely littered with wounds, too; Gives a pretty good advantage I bet.

 

As the Bishop struggled to keep the quiet priest pinned down and tried to talk some sense into him, Meria looked slightly relieved to see the Bishop she must have somewhat trusted in, because she too once again tried to join in and calm the quiet priest down.

 

“Frieder please. I don’t want any of this! I understand why you’re mad, but it’s not okay to attack people like this! Please just stop already, okay?”

 

So far the quiet priest hadn’t responded to a word that the Bishop had said to him, only focusing on trying to wrestle the man off of himself and reach for his fallen knife. However, once he heard what Meria said, suddenly his resistance faltered, and he shouted his own words back.

 

“How could you side with them, Meria? Weren't you just like me? Didn't you hate them too? I thought you understood! That thing’s not a person, it’s a bird! Those awful rotten birds that took all of our friends away!”

 

Meria seemed to choke at his accusatory words. She fisted the sides of her robe, looking like a confused child as she shook her head at him.

 

“No no, I was just scared… and I… I did what I had to do to stay safe! But this is wrong, Frieder! It’s wrong!”

 

“I don’t see anything wrong about getting rid of that thing before it causes us more damage!”

 

The quiet priest renewed his attempts to grab at his knife, but luckily the Bishop managed to knock it just a bit further out of reach before he could finally get to it. Unluckily, though, the Bishop moving in that way gave the quiet priest enough room to finally struggle free from underneath him, and before the Bishop could stop him, the quiet priest had managed to pull out yet another knife from his summoned storage. The knife quickly found a new home in the Bishop’s shoulder just a moment later, causing him to fall away from the quiet priest in pain.

 

“Agh, F-frieder-!”

 

“Get out of the way! If you’re all too weak to get rid of him, then I’ll handle it myself!”

 

With that roar, the quiet priest sprung up and dashed towards Kale and I once again, his hands raised up and over my head, in position to grab at Kale’s face; And I could just barely hear him angrily muttering another [Remove] under his breath as he came. It happened so swiftly and suddenly that I wasn’t quite prepared, and all I could think to do was move my arm up defensively, reflexively trying to take the blow for Kale instead. I heard Kale gasp and felt him moving, trying as fast as he could to pull my arm away, but it was already too late; The quiet priest’s hand had already reached me first, and I could feel his spell working itself against my existence, actively trying to remove it.

 

“Saintess!”

 

As the spell began to unravel my body, I knew I didn’t have much time left. I turned my head to Kale as quickly as I could and gave him as big of a smile as I could manage, even while my mind was freaking out and screaming at me in fear.

 

“It’s okay, Ka-”

 

And that’s all that I could get out before over half of my body was sucked away by a shadowy black hole.

 

~~~

 

Ah… It’s so dark. No matter which direction I look in, I can’t seem to see a single thing…

 

Is this death?

Am I dead?

Is this what death is like?

Does that mean that this dark place that I’m in is hell…?

 

But uh… If that’s the case, then why am I glowing…?

And why does this feel so familiar?

 

Ohhh, wait a minute. Is this maybe… what I think it is? The ground certainly feels right, and the way I can move feels right, and I’m able to think thoughts just fine… Unless hell is just eerily similar, than isn’t this-?

 

<Foolish girl.>

 

Ah, yup. I must be right, if this guy’s here… Well, it’s completely possible that this guy is just the doorman to hell or something, so I shouldn’t be getting my hopes up too much yet, I guess.

 

“Hello again, shadow…”

 

Oh hey, what do ya know; I actually can talk in here! I mean, there’s still the possibility that this isn’t the divine realm or whatever that the Goddess had summoned me to before, and that that’s why the rules are different here… But if that’s not the case, and this is the same place that I went to twice before, then that just means that it was purely the Goddess shutting me up that one time, and not that it’s just a rule that I’m not allowed to talk here.

 

<This is no time for pleasantries, girl; This is the moment where your choice truly matters! This is your chance to join me!>

 

Uhuh, right… Of course that was what it was gonna say, huh. This guy’s like a broken record.

 

Well, maybe I can use this guy to get a bit of information while I'm here? I remember planning to do that while I was busy fighting those undead, but I really didn’t think I’d get the opportunity to try and grill this guy so soon, you know? Truth be told, even though I’d planned to do it, my heart hadn’t really been prepared to try and question a giant scary shadow-monster-looking thing… But considering I think I might have just died, I guess now’s as good of a time to throw away my fear as any.

 

“Okay… So then what do I get if I do join you, huh?”

 

<I will lend you my power: The power to break free from the Goddess’s tyranny and finally remove her and the blight of the world that she has created!>

 

“...Uhuh, neat… But, like… Wouldn’t I die too, then…? Why would I want that?”

 

<…Death is a preferable alternative to being shackled to the Goddess’s will. No one should be forced and twisted along to her desires any longer.>

 

Hmmm… For some reason, what it just said doesn’t sound as spirited as the rest. If anything, it actually sounded quite… Hmm, what’s the word, sad? Melancholy? Regretful, maybe? For sure it sounded pitched down from how demandingly it usually talks to me. Whatever it is, there’s definitely something there. Makes me kind of feel a bit bad for it, honestly.

 

“Alright, well, I can totally see where you’re coming from. It’s not like I came here because I wanted to in the first place, and it’s sounding like you didn’t want to either, shadow… Oh, um, could you maybe tell me your name?”

 

I guess if I’m gonna be talking this thing into telling me stuff, it’ll probably be better to be calling it by its name while doing it, right? Idunno, maybe I’m just asking because I’m getting a little bit more curious about it now.

 

<...My name… You ask me my name… My name is->

 

<Oh, daughter, there you are.>

 

Ah-!

 

I tried to make a sound in surprise at the voice that suddenly echoed through everything, but I couldn’t make a single peep, my lack of a voice heralding her arrival.

 

From above, an arm made of cosmic sky reached down, and glass fingertips gingerly picked me up, pulling me up towards the light. My eyes turned to look back at the shadow figure that I’d just been talking to, but as my light left the dark abyss, nothing was left to illuminate its form. Somehow it felt a bit heartbreaking, leaving the shadow alone in the darkness like that…

 

Soon I found myself placed back up on the top of the cliff, back in the same position I’d been in all those days ago, looking quietly up at the Goddess once more.

 

<It took me a while to find you, daughter. You shouldn’t go running off like that here.>

 

Huh? But I didn’t even do that, though! When I came here I was already down in that abyss! …Is she just blaming me for it because she really doesn’t know? Or-

 

I tried to open my mouth in protest, but before I could even get frustrated at my lack of a voice, the Goddess's words boomed out.

 

<Well, it doesn’t matter. Now that I’ve found you, it’s best that you go back now. Forget what you’ve witnessed, and continue on your journey. Keep striving to live on, daughter. Survive for as long as you can.>

 

Wow, this is the longest the Goddess has ever talked to me, isn’t it? Um, but why do her words feel a bit unsettling to me…? Or maybe a better word for it would be 'pressuring'?

 

I didn’t get to stew on how her words made me feel for very much longer, though, before her large cosmic palm came smacking down on top of me, plunging everything back into darkness.

_____

AN: Aaaand we're back! Sorry for the wait, folks!