AN: sorry for how te this one is! I had meant to put it out earlier, but my internet went out for a while!

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  “Saintess, are you alright?”

  “...D-don’t ask me that right now.”

  Look at me, I just threw up on a tree. Do I look okay, Kale?!

  It’s been three days since we left. You’d think I would have gotten used to riding in the shitty carriage that the padins rented by now, but obviously that’s not the case. I’m sure I remember that Kale and I had to ride in a carriage on a few of our school field trips before… But there’s absolutely no way that it was this bad any of those times! Is it because the technology here sucks? Are there not the right springs and wheel parts and stuff to make it as smooth a ride as I remembered it to be? Or is it because the roads are so super freaking underdeveloped? I’ve already had to use [Heal] on myself several times over the past few days because of the random bumps and rocks that sent me flying for a few seconds every time we rolled over them!

  Guess I’ll make that a few [Heal]s and a [Cleanse], now.

  “Would it be possible for us to stop in a nearby town and let the Saintess rest, Dame Rayanne?”

  The dy padin, Rayanne, who Kale asked, didn’t even say anything back; She just kept staring at me like I was some super disgusting insect. Well, it’s been three days of this, even more when you count the days back at the church before we left, so it’s not like it’s anything particurly new. It’s kind of nice to see the feathers on the back of Kale’s neck ruffling up like that whenever he notices her acting that way, though. Too bad he keeps making the wrong choice and trying to talk to her; The dy padin’s usually much too distracted with disliking me to ever give Kale a proper response.

  Good thing we have the guy padin here to at least keep things neutral.

  “Rayanne, come look at the map with me, okay? Let’s try and find a suitable stop for the Saintess.”

  He had to kind of drag her away to get her to cooperate, but at least the two padins actually did go back to the carriage to look at a map, although I could still hear them bickering about whatever back there.

  “...I’m tired of this, Kale.”

  “I’m sorry you have to suffer through this, Saintess.”

  Kale helped to prop me up against a different, non-barfed on tree, and even rubbed my back for me. Really, if he weren’t here with me then these three days would have been even shittier. Would I still have felt like this if it were Chel or Fer who’d come along with me instead, for whatever reason? Nah, I guess that's a silly question. The two of them do brighten my spirits, but I don’t think that anyone makes me as comfortable as Kale does. Still, it would have been nice if I could have kept all three with me. I asked them if they wanted to come along too, of course, but they both told me their pce was there in the town. It makes sense, really; Fer still has the brothel to protect, and the church would only have two people left in it if Chel leaves. When we all had to say goodbye they promised that they’d make a trip up to the capital to visit me once everything was more stable, but… I don’t know. From the state of the town, I’m not expecting to see the two of them again anytime soon.

  I’ll admit, I cried a little the night after I had to leave.

  …I’m sure that didn’t win me any more points with Rayanne though, to be fair.

  Really, I’m not liking this trip so far. I knew I was going to have to go to the main church one day, but I never expected it to be so far away, you know? It’s only been three days, how the heck am I supposed to make it through an entire month of this?! I know the padins are trying to hurry and ‘get me to safety’, but if we don’t end up taking more breaks than this then I don’t think I’m going to make it.

  Besides, if we don’t stop in a few more towns every now and then, then my whole ‘level up to live’ situation is gonna start getting a bit worrying.

  “...This would have been so much better if it were just you and me, Kale.”

  “If that’s what you wish for, Saintess, then I’m ready to leave when you are.”

  Yeah, that's just like him; No matter what I needed to do or any strange choices I made, Kale definitely wouldn’t question it at all. Adn, you know, there’s also the fact that Kale’s flying is much faster and smoother than this awful carriage we’ve been cramped in…

  Well, but to do that I’d have to burn through a ton of my energy each day giving it to him, so stopping at the towns we passed by and trying to do my Saintly duties there wouldn’t really pan out very well, would it? We’d definitely have to stop in the towns for multiple days if that was the case… There’s a chance that the trip might end up taking even longer than this crappy one would, then. Still, I think it would definitely be more enjoyable for me overall.

  Oh, but there’s a chance that they won’t believe I’m the real Saintess if I show up at the church with just Kale and I. The padins did already send a message to them saying that they were leaving with me, after all. And, you know, there’s the whole ‘I don’t look like a real Saintess’ thing… I wonder if they have some sort of magical Saintess-checking device that they could use on me to prove it? Or maybe they’ll just find someone who’s missing a limb and have me grow it back with [Regenerative Heal], since that’s the benchmark they gave me before. It’s kind of odd that that’s what they go off of, though, since from what I know there are a couple of high ranked priests that can also use that skill… I guess it’s just special because I’m young? This body is only 17, and those high ranked priests are supposedly all super old, if what I heard was right.

  …If they ended up doubting me too much, then would using [Pressure of the Divine] on them prove who I am? Or maybe it would just make things more complicated, since it could be seen as me attacking them…

  Agh, really, why couldn’t the Goddess have just given me a special mark or something that I could show to prove who I am?!

  ~~~

  I guess I looked miserable enough for the padins to settle on taking me to the closest town on the map, although when we got there it was a vilge, and not anywhere at all town-like. They didn’t even have an inn in the pce since it was so small, so we ended up having to crash at the vilge chief’s house. The padins were gracious enough to not show it, but I could tell from the way that they were pnning to leave as soon as possible that they didn’t really like that this was the pce that they ended up stopping in.

  Of course, the chief hadn’t pnned on having so many important people staying over at once, and his house pretty much only had a bed for him to sleep on, so he summoned a bunch of vilgers over to at least fetch some bnkets for us to use so the floors wouldn’t be too hard. It was super sweet of him, considering we were stopping in on him completely unannounced. And since he was putting in so much effort to keep us around, the padins couldn’t just bounce as fast as they wanted to, so we were definitely gonna have to stay the night.

  Which meant that this was my chance!

  At first the vilge chief looked skeptical when I said that I was the Saintess, just like everyone does, but then he organized everyone in the vilge into groups super efficiently, and sent them my way. Honestly, the man seemed exceptionally good at getting his people together, to the point where there wasn’t a single bit of pushing or shoving, which I found even more amazing when I saw the absolute state of everyone.

  Obviously there were a few people who were just a bit sick, or had a few minor injuries, just like anywhere you'd go. And, you know, I found it maybe a little bit weird that so many of the vilgers had some respiratory problem or another going on with them, but maybe that could have just been something that was going around, right? But I knew something must have been up when I started seeing a bunch of people with little bits of rock and metal embedded in them showing up.

  Yeah, that particur grossness is a sight you just don’t really forget.

  I immediately remembered those people I healed from all those weeks ago that had the exact same problem.

  I never got to ask what happened to the previous 4 people that I saw with it. Honestly, I was so swamped with people to heal and just generally grossed out at the time that I didn’t really care to find out anything more about it. Besides, I had a whole ‘don’t ask how it happened, just fix it’ mentality going at the time, too. But now that I’m in a vilge that’s absolutely littered with people that are being afflicted with this strange problem, I just gotta know what's causing it!

  “Uh, excuse me, can I ask how they all got hurt like that…?”

  The vilge chief had been staying nearby the entire time making sure that no one was doing anything rude or odd to me and ruining the vilge’s reputation, and he’d been exceptionally kind to me this entire time, so it wasn’t hard at all for me to ask him.

  “Oh? Oh, I suppose it’s not something that a precious person such as yourself would commonly see, Saintess… This is a mining vilge, you see.”

  “A… mining vilge…?”

  Was that just supposed to expin it to me or something? Is this another one of those common knowledge things in this world that I was already supposed to know about?

  “Why yes, a mining vilge. I suppose it makes sense that you’re confused, since most mines have towns built around them.”

  Uhhh… Yeah, that’s why I’m confused.

  “And the reason that this pce isn’t a town is…?”

  “Ah, yes, it’s because of the dangerous rock slimes that inhabit the mines. Usually they would only make their homes in abandoned mines, but for some reason this particur mine has become a nest for them. It’s only a coal mine, and it would have been much too expensive for this territory’s lord to possibly send in troops to take care of them, so the slimes have simply been left in there. But mining is this town’s only export, you see, so we couldn’t just give up on it…"

  Oh, I see…

  Well then if that's the case, should… should I take care of it, maybe?