“May I ask a question?”
“Um, s-sure… Uh, I mean, yes…?”
Gillene’s serious, unwavering eyes stared right into my flustered, worried ones. It was such an intense look that it almost made me feel awkward… not that I was ever very good with this much eye contact to in the first place.
“Is this… what you would like of me, Saintess?”
“H-huh? Um-”
The archaic phrasing confused me for a moment. Heck, even after I realized what she was saying, I was still very very confused. I was sure I looked like an absolute idiot tripping over myself left and right during such an important moment, but I just couldn’t figure out what to say back to her. I had responses planned for if she was happy, sad, or angry, but never in all the simulations of this conversation that I ran through my head or rehearsed with the guy paladin did I ever plan for her to ask me anything like this.
In my defense, I’ve had very few times in either this life or the previous one where someone ever sincerely wanted to hear what I wanted like this when they didn’t have to. …I don’t think even the old Kale or the new one had ever really done it either. Sure, they would both give in to my odd little whims and follow me around a bunch, but they were both surprisingly stubborn in their own ways; If I actually did something either of them didn't want, they'd definitely step in in their own way soft way to stop me. For someone like me, who’s basically rolled with whatever life tossed their way for the most part, all this authority and decision-making was absolutely foreign, let alone someone prioritizing what I actually wanted.
“B-but, Gillene… That's not…”
Luckily, Gillene saw me floundering and decided to step in and explain herself.
“Saintess, were it not for you, then I, this town, and my father, might all have perished by now or met another tragic fate. You’re the savior of all of us. My feelings on whatever you choose no longer matter here. This has all become much too large to remain just my or even my father’s choice.”
My teeth clenched together. My chest felt weird. I couldn’t tell what face I was making anymore. It was obvious even to me that I was getting agitated.
What she was saying made complete sense, but a part of me was still trying to reject it.
“No, there’s no way that that could be true! You should still-”
“Please, Saintess.”
Gillene put her hand up, gently stopping me from talking any further.
“I’m thankful for your kindness and benevolence towards my father and I, but I’m firm on my stance here. No matter what you say, my feelings on the matter won’t change. All I wish to know is what you truly want.”
“...What I want…?”
It was such a simple thing to ask, such an easy question, something that I'm sure almost anyone could answer, and yet I felt absolutely stumped. I opened my mouth several times to try and reply, but for some reason I kept stopping myself. In the end, Gillene was forced to explain herself more once again, since I seemed to be refusing to.
“Yes. If this path you’ve given me is what you wish for, then I will follow it wholeheartedly, no matter what obstacles may come my way. Though my father may be shocked for now, he’ll soon come to agree with me as well. We’re not a family who forgets their debts, after all... The way you saved us shall always be remembered. So please, Saintess, give me your orders. Tell me what it is you wish of me, and I will gladly do it.”
The more I listened to her words, the more I felt a disgusting feeling growing inside of me.
I no longer wanted to have this conversation.
I just wanted to run away and not feel like this anymore.
With a feeling like I was being weighed down by something that I'd just managed to cast off, I forced myself to open my mouth and give her the answer that she wanted.
~~~
With everything in Tarsus finally taken care of, Kale, the paladins, and I all made a hasty retreat from the town, continuing on our way to the capital. The guy paladin tried to pester me about going off script as soon as we returned to the wagon, but I refused to listen to it, letting Kale shield me from him. The lady paladin on the other hand still refused to talk to me just as she’d been doing ever since our confrontation in the woods, but she now had a complicated look on her face, as if she was stopping herself from saying something to me.
Whatever it was, though, I honestly couldn’t care less right now.
No, my mind was completely preoccupied by another matter: I was still too hung up on my conversation with Gillene. Unsurprisingly, I still felt uncomfortable with basically ordering her to go along with my little plan. The fact that I bolted out of there before I even got to hear what it was that she actually thought about it or wanted bothered me greatly. But what weighed on my mind wasn’t all that… it was the question she’d asked me.
What was it that I wanted?
Of course, she wasn’t asking something so broad like that, but my first instinct had been to say ‘I want to be a good saintess’. Something didn’t quite feel right about that answer, though, so I ended up stopping myself from saying it. It’s completely true that I want to use the power that I’ve been given to help people and all that, yes… but that’s not what I really want. If anything, it’s just kind of an obligation I feel, a sort of ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ line of thinking. To say that that’s what I really want wouldn’t be quite right.
But if that’s the case, then what’s the actual answer?
It was a thought that was particularly bugging me.
I'd be lying if the answer of 'keeping Kale by my side' didn't come up multiple times among all the possible answers I'd thought up, but even that thought was complicated, you know? Much too complicated for me to claim it as my answer. I mean, I don't know if I just want to keep him around out of obligation, or responsibility, or because of my lingering feelings for the real Kale, or maybe any new feelings that I might be growing for him, or-
Oh!
Thankfully, as the town finally faded into the background, a ‘Lv 28!’ pop up suddenly appeared along with the familiar two note fanfare that always played whenever I leveled up, ripping me out of my confusion. And as my eyes opened wide from surprise, a notification was shoved into my face explaining exactly why.
{Congratulations! The Secret Quest: [The Downfall of Tarsus] has been completed!
Through your kindness and caring heart you’ve saved the town of Tarsus from its imminent demise!
Reward: 3000xp and Divine Compass.}
Seeing that instantly erased the bad mood I was in. 3000 exp! No wonder I’d just leveled up! That means I’m 1045/2800 into level 28 now! That’s crazy! It took a long time, but this quest line turned out to be totally totally lucrative! I would have followed along with it anyways, but this was a super big cherry on top for sure, one that I was more than happy to receive!
Suddenly reeling with excitement, I whipped my head over to look at my skill sheet, searching for the other half of my promised rewards. There was of course [Healing Aura], [Confession], and even the one that I’d gotten for eating that last relic, [Incarnation: Teer], there... but no matter how much I looked, for some reason I didn’t have any new skills added to the list. I read through everything I had, just in case, but still, there was no ‘Divine Compass’ hidden anywhere among them. It was a fact that made the excitement on my face diminish just a little bit.
…Maybe it’s just in my skill options? Like maybe it’s some special kind of unlockable skill that hadn’t been listed before or something? I don’t think that’s such an odd assumption considering [Pressure of the Divine] was a special case skill like that… If that's the truth, then maybe I should be happy that it’s giving me the choice when to buy it, instead of how [Pressure of the Divine] was just flat out bought for me right then and there.
With that in mind, I scanned through the list of my most recently available skills, but after reading [Aegis] and [Give Alms], only the newly unlocked [Goddess’s Favor] skill was there, which didn’t sound anything like a ‘Divine Compass’.
{[Goddess’s Favor]: Absorbs incoming attacks on the target for the next 5 minutes, healing them for the amount instead. Can only be used on the target once per hour. (800 energy)}
It was unique, considering it was the only skill so far that had any kind of a cooldown attached to it, but it still wasn’t at all what I was looking for. With a pout I kept scanning forwards and back through the list, but I still wasn’t able to find anything that said a single thing about a ‘Divine Compass’ in any way. I was seriously starting to feel a little bit like I’d been scammed out of something cool, to be honest.
Still, that didn’t mean I was just going to give up on finding the damn thing.
It was a reward for a ‘secret quest’, so there’s no way that it wasn’t going to be important!
After spending about an hour searching around like I was paranoid or something through both my screens and the wagon we were riding in and causing Kale to shoot me a few concerned glances, I finally figured out where the stupid thing had been hidden. It was actually in my [Small Dimensional Space], the skill I’d barely had any freaking use for up until now, since I didn’t really own anything! I felt like I was going to cry when I pulled it out and held the golden colored compass in my hands; All the anger and angst that had been building up in me while I searched seemed to just blow away.
And then I realized I couldn’t open the stupid thing's cover.
I spent a long time fiddling with it, trying to open it, and yet the compass wouldn’t budge, or reveal anything at all to me. I could feel a faint amount of divine energy coming off of it like with the bird-god's feather, but no matter what I tried casting on it, nothing seemed to make it respond.
But at least frustratedly casting [Appraisal] on it gave me a bit of information.
{A Divine Compass, kept hidden over the ages. It awaits the energy of the chosen, leading them to the truth that they seek.}
Aaaand that’s it. Just that cryptic little blurb. It didn’t offer me a single thing else, no matter how many times I tried to appraise it.
I spent hours overanalyzing those words, trying to figure out what it wanted me to do. Once again I tried every single skill I had on it, but I only succeeded in wasting my own time. The message had said it was awaiting the ‘energy of the chosen’, which I could only think could be my energy, considering the damn thing was given to me and all… but it just wasn’t taking it. All of my skills ended up just bombing and doing nothing.
So, that just means that if my guess that I’m the chosen one is right, then the way that I’m going about giving it my energy must just be the problem.
I can only assume this means one of two things. Option one is that this is some kind of overarching puzzle where I’m going to eventually get the right skill to unlock this compass. Either I’m just not the right level for this just yet and I’ll make it there eventually and be offered the skill, or there’s yet another secret quest that I have to do to unlock the right skill for this thing.
That’s the one that I’m hoping for, although from the way that the message is worded, I’m starting to think that it’s the much less popular option, option two.
...Option two is that I just need to channel my divine energy into the silly compass to make it cooperate, which seems muuuch more likely. Of the two, it definitely sounds easier on paper… But for someone who’s only ever used skills and magic and everything through this cheaty little system that the Goddess hooked me up with, it’s gonna be very very hard to pull off.
I’ve seen how slow people who’ve naturally learned how to use their energy to cast skills are, and they've been practicing it for a long time.
There’s no way I’m gonna be able to do anything like that anytime soon!
…Well I guess there’s no use agonizing about it anyway, since no matter which option it ends up being, it’s going to take quite a while before this compass actually gets to get put to use. Maybe I’ll just put it away again for now. We’re only four days away from the main church, after all. I’ve already got my hands full right now; I don’t have time for any silly compasses.
_____
AN: Happy new year everyone! Hope it's going good for everyone! With this chapter, we've made it about 3/5ths of the way through the story, I think. Look forward to the next post, where we (finally) make it to the main church, lol
