As I felt [Pressure of the Divine] begin to take effect, it immediately hit like a wave over my surroundings. Like a spreading ring, one row of rock slimes after another suddenly fttened themselves out against the ground, looking almost puddle-like, slowly forming a dirty, rock-filled, gummy looking carpet along the cave’s floor. It was almost eerie how suddenly quiet it became, as not only the shotgun sounding rock spewing stopped, but even the odd bouncy gurgling noises that they’d all been making abruptly went away.

  In a way, it almost felt surreal, like something natural had been stripped away.

  “Wow…”

  It’s crazy how effective this was. More than any of my other skills, this one really makes me feel how powerful I can be. Well, I guess that makes sense when you consider that this is actually a skill that I wasn’t supposed to even have access to yet, huh…

  Alright, so now that I got what I wanted, what do I do with it? Going off of a rough estimate, I’ll have about 7 minutes to use before I start running low on energy and completely become useless… So what is it that I need to do to miraculously fix all of this within that time frame? Do I just march over all of these slimes and use [Cleanse] on the ke? That would fix one of the two problems for sure, but then they’d all be released and dogpile me afterwards, so that’s kind of looking like a stupid choice at the moment.

  If I had enough energy left to take out Inaiah afterwards then maybe she’d be able to kill off all of the slimes that are left over for me, since she’d hardly have a choice in the matter at that point. …Nah, actually, that’s still a really bad pn, now that I think about it. From what I’ve seen so far in my cleaning adventures, I highly doubt that cleaning up this ke will level me or anything, even if cleaning up that ke is super important for keeping any more rock slimes from spawning. Maybe it might get me close, but it definitely won’t be enough. If I call up Inaiah, there’s no way that I won’t die of energy exhaustion afterwards, and even if I manage to squeak out the st bit of exp that I’d need to level up and not die to my death timer afterwards, that just means that I’ll have another monster wave to deal with too.

  No no, I definitely can’t bring out Inaiah to solve any of this.

  So then what is it that I can do?!

  Hmmm. I guess the only option is to kill the slimes first, and save getting rid of the ke for afterwards. Would it be possible to kill them all before I run out of energy? There’s 6 minutes left, now… Ugh, I really wish I had some kind of damaging spell that could hit a bunch of these slimes all at once. If I had something like that then I wouldn’t even need to rely on my [Pressure of the Divine] right now! Honestly, I’m kind of starting to kick myself for picking [Judgment] instead of one of the other two damage skills; Either of them would have been able to take care of this situation much better for me right now.

  Oh well, at least I have Kale and the guy padin on my side right now. The time is tight, but at least they should be able to weed through a bunch of these enemies before I start turning useless.

  “Kale, Sir Werner-”

  …Huh? Why are they-?

  Oh! Oh no!

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll fix it now! Get up now, please!”

  Ah, crap! I forgot to make sure that they weren’t affected by my Pressure! I was too focused on the slimes, and I kinda took a step forward once I activated my skill, so I couldn’t really see them until I looked back just now. Ahhh, I feel so bad, I must have been forcing them down onto this dirty spiky floor for over a minute now!

  “Ugh…”

  The guy padin looked like he was stiff and confused, like he had no clue what was going on. And Kale- Well, Kale’s seen this before, even if it’s been a while. He wasn’t the one getting pushed down by it until now, though, so I guess it is a bit surprising how completely unbothered he looks by it.

  “Ah, wait, I’m sorry and all, but we don’t have time for this now! You two, go and kill all of these slimes! We only have less than 6 minutes left before they start moving around again, so don’t do any useless fshy moves and just focus on killing as fast as you can!”

  ~~~

  It made me feel a little proud how fast Kale listened to my words and got to work. Really, out of anyone in this world or the st, he’s the only one I can ever count on. The guy padin, on the other hand, took a few seconds to break out of his confusion and listen to my damn instructions. Once he got into it he was pretty darn efficient though, so I guess it’s all okay. Unlike earlier he only made his bde glow, instead of pulling out that ‘Smite’ skill or whatever that he used before, so I guess he really was just showing off to me back then. Huh. Crazy to think that someone would ever want to show off to me, of all people, like that. My, how things change when you suddenly become important…

  I still don’t think I like it.

  Kale, for the record, seemed like he was pulling out all the stops. His movements were almost like he was dancing, and with great waves of his arms he controlled an almost arrow storm-like wave of his feathers to flow around, cutting through one slime after the next and shredding through their cores. In a way, it was beautiful to watch. I’d never seen Kale truly dance before in my st life, so in a way, this felt like I was seeing a very special moment of his. I can’t help but wonder, if maybe, at the wedding, I could have-

  Ah ah ah, this is a very important time! I don’t have the leisure to think such stupid thoughts right now!

  Anyways, um, I realized something important while all this was going on. So far we’ve killed a little under 30 of the slimes… and maybe about under half of those have been giving me exp? The slimes aren’t able to move, so it’s not like I’m getting any experience from my [Benediction] or anything… I know there was that one time with the zombies that I got exp for Kale killing them, and I kind of just thought that it was just because this game-like system that the Goddess set up considered him as being in my ‘party’ or something, you know? But now that I’ve been paying attention because of the random ‘+40xp!’ pop ups that I’ve been seeing, I think I’m pretty sure about what’s happening here…

  It’s not just a party thing.

  I’m not getting any exp from the guy padin killing things, only Kale.

  For some reason, I get all the kill credit for anything that Kale takes down.

  Like see, right now, if Kale kills that rock slime there-

  “...Yup, just like I thought.”

  There’s that familiar two note chime and pop up. I’m now level 24.

  That sure takes a load off my shoulders, honestly. We only had a little under 2 more minutes left, so I was starting to get pretty worried. It would’ve absolutely sucked if I’d run out of energy and become useless when we weren’t even halfway through killing all of these things. I’d been wondering if maybe I should trust in my [Benediction] for a few minutes and try and get some kills in, but it was really starting to get a bit close, so I wasn’t really sure. It’s great that things worked out like this in the end though, even if it kinda makes me wonder why exactly things are set up the way they are between Kale and I.

  Let’s see… Now that I’ve leveled up and I can breathe a bit easier, have I gotten anything interesting on offer that might help with this situation? There were a couple times in the past that I was given a very useful skill right after I needed it, so-

  Hmm, okay, it’s a good one, but not particurly applicable to the current situation really.

  {[Healing Aura]: The Saintess’s aura of divinity extends towards those around her, slowly healing them of their wounds. (50 energy per minute)}

  It’s definitely something that I’d like to take. If I weren’t in a life or death kind of situation right now, I totally would have taken it right away… But idunno. There’s a chance, although very doubtful, that one of these other untaken skills that I've been sitting on might just be the better option, you know? The skills above level 20 all cost about 3 skill points each to buy, so if I took the aura now then I’d only have 1 skill point out of the 4 that I currently have left to work with. What if it ends up that the only way out of here is for me to get [Blessing of the Fleet-Footed] so that we can hightail it out of here? Or what if I decide to get [Blessing of the Brave] to help these two kill off the slimes faster? Or-

  “Excuse me, Your Holiness, but how much longer will this skill of yours persist...?”

  “Huh? Um, I can probably do it for about another 10 minutes now, why?”

  “Hmm… I hate to say it, but my energy is beginning to get a bit low.”

  Ah yeah, I see. I guess the guy padin is starting to look a bit tired, huh? He’s getting into that huffing and puffing territory. It’s kind of surprising since it’s only been a few minutes, but I guess he has been constantly throwing out all of his energy for a little while now to kill off the slimes as quickly as he could; Not everyone is an energy abundant monster like Kale and I are. It’s already amazing if this guy even has 500 energy to work with. Still, to be fair, it seems like he’s actually made double the killing progress than Kale has, so I shouldn’t be too hard on the guy.

  For the record, Kale still looks like he could go for a while longer, but it doesn’t seem like rock slimes are too terribly good of enemies for him to go up against, what with how cutting-based his attacks are. I hate to say it, but if we lose the guy padin now, then having only Kale left to try to kill through 30+ more slimes is hardly ideal… Should I just stop my Pressure right now and [Rejuvenate] the padin back his energy? Would it be worth it? Hmmm, but then I’d have way less time and energy on my side to work with…

  No, I don’t think it’s the best idea to stop holding down these rock slimes just yet.

  …You know what? I’m starting to think it’s time for me to bite the bullet and stop trying to do this perfectly. Waffling like I have been isn't going to do me any more favors. It's time to do something decisive. It may be a silly idea, but maybe I’m gonna have to say screw it and take a few risks here if I wanna get things done. It’s better to do something sloppily and get it finished than to try to do something perfect and not finish it at all, right? Worse comes to worst I still have Inaiah up my sleeves if things go too south too quickly, so why don’t I take a gamble here and see if it pays off?

  “Hey, you guys step back. I’m gonna try something.”

  “Hmm? But Your Holiness…”

  “Saintess…?”

  I started moving towards the slime carpet, but for some reason both of them reached out to stop me, as if I were doing something idiotic. Well… Maybe they’re not wrong, maybe it will end up being idiotic, but if we wanted to finish things for now and get out of here, then this is just gonna have to be how things go.

  “Let me go. I have to do this!”

  “Why don’t you tell us what your pn is first, Your Holiness, and then-”

  “Saintess, please. It’s dangerous.”

  Hmm… I’m gd that they’re worried about me, but time is ticking here. I’m sorry about this you guys, but I can’t have you holding me back like this right now.

  Silently, I put my pressure back onto the two of them, and when they could no longer hold me back, I rushed my way towards the ke.