AN: Sorry for the week late chapter! Just found out I'm about to get really busy, so I'm sadly gonna have to go missing for the next monthish! I'm gonna try my best to come back sooner, but we'll have to see ^^;

Alsooo, I recently realized that I've accidentally been 100xp off of what Arissa should actually need from about last chapter to uh... abooout chapter 99? Basically it's been literally a year of me being 100xp off. I went back and fixed all of the times that it lists what xp she's at, but it'd take me literal days to comb through and make sure that all of the math is correct (which I'm 100% sure it's not now with how precise I tried to be before, lol), so I'm sorry, but that's gonna be wonky. Please forgive me! I promise I won't mess that up from now on, lol! ><

 

_____

 

We were now deep into the heart of the forest. It’d already taken us four days of nonstop travelling just to make it this far. I’d had to almost constantly keep healing the horses just so they wouldn’t collapse. Everyone looked absolutely haggard from the pace that I was making us go at. Honestly, part of me had been worried that we weren’t going to make it for a little while there.

 

If I hadn’t stopped to cast [Judgment] on almost every single monster that we came across along the way for the first two days, then I for sure would have been a goner.

 

With everything that’d been going on, I hadn’t really been keeping track of my death timer at all. Imagine my surprise when I forcefully made the entire team rush out on what I was told would be a multiple day trip, only to realize that I only had a little over two days left on my timer! I was obviously completely panicked. Really, for the first time in a long time I really really thought that I was going to die.

 

We’d come across a group of about 8 goblins patrolling in the woods, and I had the completely stupid thought of ‘Oh, we should just pass these, since we’re in a hurry and I don’t need experience right now’. What a stupid thought! It was so bad of me, a person who literally is only alive because of exp, to think… But thankfully I took a quick compulsive pick at the timer like I normally do whenever this kind of thought came up, and immediately did a 180 to go hunt down all of those goblins. From then on, I was constantly on the lookout for exp. I was like a drowning woman in a fast river desperately grasping at any branch that might keep me from getting swept away. If I could kill them from the back of the wagon, then I would. If we had to stop and fight them? Well then you’d better know that I made everyone stop! I even stayed up all night, constantly peeking out between the two paladins in the driver’s seat, all to make sure I wouldn’t miss seeing any possible buckets of exp that we might be passing by.

 

Honestly, I was barely a person while I was on the lookout, purely just from all the desperation and lack of sleep.

It’s a miracle that no one mutinied on me from how crabby I was getting.

 

Thankfully, after a day and a half, I managed to kill enough monsters to make it to level 27. I’d been worried since they’d been a little sparse near the path that we’d been travelling down, but luckily nothing I encountered gave any less than 60xp, and I made extra sure to not let the paladins steal any of my kills, so it all worked out somehow. It’s good that I levelled when I did, really; I’m not very good at staying up for multiple days in a row. It’s totally possible that I would have passed out after another hour or two and died. …It’s horrible to even think about.

 

But luckily I made it, close though I came.

 

When I woke up almost half a day later after practically fainting from relief, I stopped and admired my handiwork for a while, staring at my newly refreshed timer, my character sheet, and staring at all the skills I could possibly buy now that I’d gotten the 3 required skill points that I needed. I have to admit, [Give Alms] still really appealed to me, although it’s probably just because of how shocked I was at seeing the entire town of Tarsus starving like that. Even if I took the skill, I’m sure it wouldn’t be very cost effective to try and feed more than a couple people with it. Sure, I bet it’d be a nice way to farm some exp, but in a severe situation like that one or the one with the farming village before it, it’d really only be a drop in the bucket with how expensive it’d be to use.

 

At this point, there were really only two skills that were appealing to me right now.

 

{[Desperate Prayer]: Pray to the Goddess to find the right path! Offers 100xp to the Goddess in exchange for a ‘hint’.}

{[Aegis]: Creates a large, translucent shield in the chosen location. An allowed person’s skills may pass through the Aegis, but movement is not allowed through it.}

 

It’s those two.

 

They’re both obviously good, but it’s hard for me to figure out which one is better, you know? Like sure, [Aegis] sounds like it could come in handy lots of times, but don’t I already have my [Benediction]? Will I really be getting in situations often enough that I’m able to effectively use [Aegis] and not have people just sneak around it? I mean, how often do I get myself stuck into bottlenecks anyways, besides that one time in the mine? I’d hate to spend all my skill points on it and then just find out that I practically never need to use it again.

 

And then there’s [Desperate Prayer]. It sounds really really helpful, especially when I’m feeling stuck or have absolutely no direction to go on, but the fact that I literally have to drain away my lifeblood to receive just a ‘hint’ from a very sketchy Goddess is… worrying. Like, what kind of hint will it even offer up? Is it gonna be a direct one, like ‘Go here and talk to this person’, or is it gonna be something incredibly vague like just telling me one single cryptic word and hoping that I solve a riddle?

 

These are the important things you’d wanna know before investing in a new skill, right?

 

Honestly, I was all excited to get a new skill now that I could, but it’s probably better to just save my points and just use ‘em when I need ‘em, huh? Choosing now would just be like blowing all of my money on a feast when I’m not even hungry, right? It’s not too late for me to pick what’s needed on the fly.

 

“Excuse me, Saintess?”

 

Kale suddenly speaking to me almost made me jump; I’d been so absorbed in debating over my skill choices that I’d almost completely forgotten what was even happening around me. …Or maybe I’d just gotten so comfortable with Kale being next to me that I just stopped registering his presence. He’s gotten so familiar that I think I might be starting to take his presence for granted.

 

…I really have to make sure I don’t make that mistake again.

I know full well how bad it feels for someone to fade into the scenery like that…

 

“Ah, um, huh? Yeah? What is it, Kale?”

 

“Are you still looking for monsters to hunt, Saintess?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

I looked out of the carriage towards where he was pointing. It was hard to see between the densely packed trees, but there was something lurking past there, something that was obviously moving around in the kind of suspicious way that no natural animal or person would. Clearly, it must have been another monster.

 

That’s so sweet… Look at him, still trying to help me with this unreasonable quest of mine. I guess I collapsed too quickly to tell him that it was fine to stop now, huh? Of course he has no idea why I was doing it, or that I managed to level up! He probably thinks it all has something to do with whatever silly reason that I dragged us all out here to meet the Lord… Or that it has something to do with me being a Saintess, which honestly isn’t too terribly far off.

 

“Oh no, it’s-”

 

Ah wait! Wait wait wait! Stop right there, Arissa! Don’t you dare say that it’s okay!

 

Complacency like this is how I got myself into that close call that I just escaped from in the first place!

 

I may have just leveled, but that just means that I’m practically 0% of the way to leveling up again! Getting a little under 2700 exp is by no means a small feat! I shouldn’t get lazy again and take the exp I have to get for granted! This place has actually been really accommodating with how much exp the monsters here have been worth! How could I possibly just pass it up now?! It’s like someone who was once starving not stocking up their kitchen while they can after finally having a meal! I’ll just slip into the exact same situation again if I’m not careful!

 

“Ah, I’m sorry, no. You’re right. We should totally go and check out what that is.”

 

If the forest is going to offer me some exp, I have to get up and go grab it for myself!

 

~~~

 

Well, I was all fired up with resolve, but the course of events that happened after replaced almost all of my fire with confusion.

 

See, we’d stopped the cart and went to go check out the monster Kale had noticed, only to realize that it was yet another beet. It was really interesting, you know, finally getting to see one in its natural habitat. Just like the [Appraisal] told me, they really did live in little tilled patches in the forest, although they were only deep enough to barely submerge most of their bodies in, and weren’t all that very wide, maybe only the size of your average house’s front lawn. For all that the one we’d fought first seemed absolutely terrifying in a farm field, this one seemed only mildly worrying in its natural habitat. All the scary advantages that it once had were completely negated if its playing field was only gonna be that big. It’s like fighting a killer whale who was stuck in somebody’s pool. Really, I almost felt bad for the thing. No wonder they sought out farms.

 

At least finding this thing here meant that we must have truly made it to the mountain, seeing as that was where the beets were supposed to be from.

 

For safety reasons, and maybe to test out a few things, I’d been getting ready to once again try using my [Judgment] on it while looking at it with my [All Seeing Eyes], since I hadn’t really gotten to successfully do that last time. It was worth attempting, since I could definitely use the practice; After all, using [All Seeing Eyes] was already difficult enough, without the added skill use on top of it.

 

“[Judg-]”

 

But just as I was about to cast the skill, suddenly something completely freaking weird happened. Somehow, I could feel a sudden shift in the air. It was a strange feeling, but somehow it was something familiar, something I couldn’t quite put a finger on, but something that I was sure I should have recognized.

 

And then, not even a second later, the beet in front of me was abruptly, inexplicably, shredded.

 

Weird, right? We looked all over, but we couldn’t figure out at all what had happened. None of us, not me, Kale, nor either of the paladins had done anything. And considering that we couldn’t find any signs of anything or anyone else who could have possibly been the culprit, in the end we were forced to just shrug our shoulders and move along, accepting that weird things just happen sometimes.

 

Until the next weird thing happened again, only 20 minutes later.

 

“Uaagh! Please, don’t! D-don’t do it! Spare me!”

 

There was an abrupt scream up the road from us, along with the sound of several metallic boots clanking as they ran. Worried, we urged the horses that were moving the wagon forward, but by the time we made it up the road, it had already been too late.

 

The man who’d been crying out for his life was already dead, his body now lying motionlessly on the ground, his neck already having been severed by the knights who now stood around him.

 

I almost flinched in fear when the knights all seemed to finally take notice of our wagon. Even from where I was watching in the back, from behind the two paladins, I could almost feel the cool, dangerous look that was coming from their eyes. It felt like at any moment, we might be the ones that the knights would be hunting down next.

 

Honestly, with how many of them there were, I’m not sure that we would survive if they decided to attack us. From my count, there are at least 8 of them, double how many people we have. If they’re anywhere as skilled in combat as those kidnappers in the slums were, which I highly expect them to be, considering they all seem to be knights, then it’s very unlikely that we’d be able to win against them without some casualties.

 

Just as I was about to open my mouth and warn Kale and the paladins that I was going to use my [Pressure of the Divine] though, suddenly the knights all knelt and bowed their heads, showing deference towards the wagon. The knight in the front, the one that seemed to have the most medals pinned onto his armor, spoke up shortly after.

 

“Excuse what we’ve forced you to witness, oh holy paladins! Please avert your eyes and continue upon your path; There is but nothing to see here.”

 

Ooooh, so they realized that the two driving the wagon were paladins, eh? I guess the flashy looking armor that they’re both wearing must have really showed it off, huh? Must be well known, at least to those in a similar profession. Makes sense that knights who were lower on the totem pole would have to treat them with respect, especially if most of the paladins have some kind of noble blood in them, like the lady paladin does.

 

The guy paladin, to his ever constant credit, piped up and asked the question that it seemed the knights were desperately hoping for him to avoid.

 

“...And what is it that went on, here? What, may I ask, is this man’s crime?”

 

Even though I couldn’t see his face from this angle, I could tell from his tone that he found the situation as odd as I did. Good to know that the guy paladin isn’t blind to random killings that happen in front of him. Honestly, who knows what the morals are like in a primitive world like this, where caring about people seems to be completely left to the ‘Saintess’...

 

“Ahem… No, you misunderstand, Sir Paladin. You see-”

 

The lead knight looked back at the body, his gaze seeming to linger upon it.

“-That is no longer a man. We had to kill him before he transformed into a beast.”