We have walked quite a distance, I think. I never enter the forest so I didn't really know.

"Where are we going exactly, Matron?"

"Hmm... here." She said as she pointed toward a big white tree.

It was pretty eerie to have a white-colored tree inside a gloomy forest. Well, not as creepy as the rat hanging on my staff.

"I did explain how the barrier of the temple protected the area right? However, just the barrier alone will be hard, or to be more precise impossible. Fortunately, the predecessor has planted miasma repelling trees as the first base defense."

Miasma repelling trees? That tree?

"Most strong monster has miasma around them, and they really hate those trees. Small undead still could pass through though, but they will be repelled like the miasma so there is no need to worry. If any strong monster passed through they could damage the barrier, so in other words, the existence of this tree really important to reduce the burden to the barrier."

Amazing.

"But! Because it has been living in a miasma filled forest for decades, it actually has started deteriorating."

"Eh?" I was surprised.

If the miasma repelling trees disappear, then the burden of the barrier will become too great to hold the corruption of the death forest?

"But it looked alright?" I tilted my head.

"Well, there is my errand. To reduce the deterioration of the miasma repelling tree, I must use 'purification' toward it every few days. It really helps to fight the deterioration. I will go to purify it, you could continue to use minor heal toward that rat."

"Yes, Matron."

I sat at one of the tree roots while Matron heads toward the miasma repelling tree.

Alright! "Minor heal!"

Greenish light appeared again, this time the undead rat move around as if hurting, and white smoke started to appear to it.

Again. "Minor heal!" The smoke became bigger, but the rat hadn't disappeared. "Minor he--!" ah, suddenly I felt lightheaded. I don't have enough mana?

Ugh...so three times is my limit? The undead zombie has yet to be purified.

I couldn't send it to the embrace of the earth mother.

Why my minor heal so weak? Is there a way to increase effectiveness? Or probably reduce the mana usage?

I looked toward the Matron. She placed her hand on the white tree. I could see white light appear in her hand. Is that purification? How long until I could use it I wonder. That looked so cool.

Because we were walking, and I focused on Matron's explanation, I did not pay much attention to the trees around. However, now I could see it clearly. Although the trees we passed looked gloomy, it was actually pretty verdant compared to what I saw behind the miasma repelling tree where Matron was.

Beyond that, was miasma filled world.

Scary...repulsive.

So that was the death forest.

After a few minutes, the Matron returned.

"How is it?" She asked me. I showed her the still existed rat zombie.

"I couldn't purify it."

"Well, it is your first day. But... Hmmm, let me see."

Matron took the rat from me.

"What were you thinking when using minor heal?"

Hmm, what was I think? I want to dest---wait.

"What should I think?"

Matron smiled. "We are the subject of the earth mother, who signifies life and love. But life always accompanied by death, using healing magic toward the undead, mean bring back them to dead. It was a type of salvation. Well, it might be my bad to teach you healing magic with undead, but we could not wait for anyone in the orphanage to get hurt do we?"

"I see. Let me try it one more time."

I have rested for a bit, and the last spell actually only needed a little bit more mana, so I thought I could manage.

I focused my mind. I want to save this pitiful rat which bound to this world by an evil power, bring her back to the embrace of the earth mother.

"Minor heal."

The greenish light looked more impressive this time. And I felt my power flowed better.

White smoke appeared from the zombie rat, and it suddenly crumbled. Became ash.

"You did it." Matron pat my head.

Yeah, I did it! It was a simple spell minor heal, but I did it!

##Lumie learned "Minor Heal"

"Well, it was the most basic healing spell. And since you have blessing light affinity 1, it shouldn't be too hard. However, Heal should be taking some more time."

"Umm... when could I use purification like Matron?" It was really cool.

The Matron looked at me and smiled.

"That would depend on your hard work. After you could use heal, you will learn purification. Your training, for now, is to use minor heal to small undead animals that appear between our temple and the miasma repelling tree.  Although they could not bring harm to humans and the barrier will destroy them, we need to reduce the load on the barrier as much as we can. Basically training and helping Head Temple at the same time.

There are sevens miasma repelling trees, we will go to different tree tomorrow. Let's go back."

I nodded and follow the Matron back to the orphanage.

...

...

My routine has changed. In the past, I usually played or studying with other children, but now every morning I trained under the supervision of Head Temple and then hunting zombie or skeleton critters with the Matron. Finding the critters en route to the miasmas repelling trees was not that hard, but catching it by myself still a bit hard, they were small.

But I must do it because if I didn't use minor heal every day I won't be able to learn Heal and Purification quickly. It was a pretty essential skill for the priestess. Even if I don't become a priestess in the future I could heal myself if I got hurt. Not that I plan to get hurt, I hate pain.

Head Temple hadn't taught me any staff skill but only told me to swing the staff again and again. Sound simple but it was pretty hard.

But I won't give up! Head Temple had shown me one of her staff skill to me once and it was really cool, it went whoosh whoosh whoosh. I wanted to become like that fast!

Staff skill mainly for defense, it has a lot of parry technique but doesn't have high attack power. Well, as a girl self-defense skill alone is enough I guess. If I become an adventurer in the future I will leave the front to muscular men.

During my outing with Matron, I asked her why not increase the number of miasmas repelling trees, but apparently, it is impossible.

The trees did not reproduce like a common tree. Even the Head Temple did not know how to make them. It was a legacy during the war against King of Chaos. They have once requested the Main Temple too, but apparently they also could not make new trees, while the sapling left there already distributed to the more seriously affected area.

That's too bad. And here I thought I have found a good solution.

I really wish I could help Head Temple and Matron.

Even when learned many things from the Matron and Head Temple, I still don't think I want to become a priestess.

And I feel Matron and Head Temple also did not want to force me to become one.

I just learned them for fun, and because they might be useful for the future.

And, small hope, that I might be able to help Matron and Head Temple with it.

I didn't think it was bad, living in this place until I became like Matron or Head Temple.

But well, the Matron and Head temple won't allow it. I also didn't really wish for it, maybe.

Something... I felt like I must do something before I leave this place. But what? I didn't know. A weird feeling that I didn't know, something bothering me, but what was it?

During the time Matron did her usual purification, I sat on the tree root and looked toward the death forest.

As always it was filled with miasmas. If I could use purification, perhaps I could purify it?

Huh? T-that's it!

"Matron!" Matron who walked toward me looked surprised hearing my voice.

"What is it?"

"Is it possible to purify the death forest?" Rather than only purifying the miasma repelling tree, if we could purify the death forest itself then there is no need to worry about the barrier.

Matron looked surprised for a moment.

"Theoretically, it is possible."

Her reaction more normal than I expected.

"But it is impossible."

Apparently she was surprised with my voice, not my idea.

Matron started to explain to me as we walked back.

"To purify a large area like death forest you will need a lot of priests or a number of priests with greater purification or higher. The more priests the shorter it the time it would take, but even with a thousand priests, it will need months. It is not realistic to gather that much of priests in this era and let them stay at the forest for months to purify a death forest also not really plausible. It might be plausible in the future if more priests graduated from the temple.

Wait, are you thinking of purifying the death forest?"

Matron seemed to understand what I tried to say and looked at me.

"We don't have any priest in our branch temple. And you are not even able to use purification yet." She placed one hand on my head and rubbed my head.

"That's true, but in the future, if I could use purification I think I could try to purify the death forest."

That thinking was pure. In the first place, the Matron never counted Lumie to help her purify the miasmas repelling tree or help Matron maintaining the barrier. Lumie brought to this forest to practice healing spell. And that was because it might be useful for Lumie's future, that's all.

So there was no reason to deny her foolish wish to purify the death forest. No matter how foolish is it.

"You could try..." But the thing she said still outside of her own expectation.

Matron shook her head. That's fine, isn't it?

"When you learned Heal and Purification, you could try to purify a bigger undead. And the day you couldn't find them, you could try to purify tree outside the miasmas repelling tree. But, that must wait until you could learn them."

Lumie nodded her head.

Matron didn't know why she answered that way. Perhaps a foolish expectation, or perhaps...