Level Up Saintess

(Caution: Mentions of suicide)

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So I guess I’m a saintess in another world now. It sounds crazy, I know, but even crazier is that fact that it’s meant to be some kind of punishment. Let me tell you about it.

 

Ok, so growing up I didn’t have the most amazing parents. My mom was the kind of person who left us when I was 6 without even thinking of bringing me along, and yet was trashy enough to still pop up every few years to ask for money. Worst of all, she left me alone with my asshole of a dad. I can’t even really blame her for leaving the guy either, like, he was that much of a jerk. The whole time I lived with him he would dump all the household chores on me and just drink, and man was he a bad drunk. So yeah, as soon as I got old enough and had the chance, I got out of there as fast as I could. Turns out, a year or two later the guy actually managed to burn the house down, so I guess he really actually didn’t know how to do all that stuff he made me do. Amazingly enough mom still kept coming around to beg for money even after dad was gone, but one day she just kind of stopped showing up. I never did figure out what happened to her, but honestly it didn’t matter to me at the time, so it was no skin off my nose in the end.

 

I was mostly a loner type of person, you know? I’d have the occasional fling, or a one night stand, but I could never find anyone that I really wanted to keep around. The only person in my life that I ever had any kind of connection to was the best friend that I’d had since I was really really young. We were always amazing partners in everything we did, and I feel like we were the ones who knew each other best. He also wasn’t too lucky in love, and we were starting to get old enough where everyone else we knew were constantly getting married left and right, sooo we made a deal. We promised that if we reached a certain age then we’d just get married, and then everyone could finally stop asking us about it or trying to set us up with people they knew.

 

But then we actually got to that age. And we were like…well we did promise.

So, crazily enough, we got engaged.

…And then he managed to get in a car accident and die.

Super tragic, I know.

 

In the end I couldn’t really take it. I managed to struggle along with my life for a few weeks, but he was the only real pillar of support I had left to keep me sane. I did my best to not be an asshole like my parents growing up, but I never really tried to hold on to any of the random ‘friends’ I made, so there wasn’t anyone who really mattered to me around to help me through the grief. We may not have been together in a romantic way, but he definitely meant a lot to me, you know? I loved him, in my own stupid way. And with him gone, I couldn’t really find the point in anything anymore. Everything just hurt too much all the time.

 

So yeah. I offed myself. Simple as that.

Or well yeah, it was supposed to be simple, but I guess nothing ever really is, right?

 

~~~

 

Honestly, everything started out very easily. I somehow just knew that I'd been taken to another world. There was a goddess in charge of this one it seems. It's pretty neat that you're just outright told what and who it is, instead of having to fumble around and guess like in the last world I was in. She even had a name, although I couldn't tell you what it was for the life of me, since I guess I didn't care enough to bother remembering it. What I did know was that I'd been sent here to repent for the sin of killing myself in my previous life. I knew that if I failed to complete the task I was given then I'd be sent straight to hell, which was apparently 100% real here, and was very very torturous. And you know what? Considering I'd killed myself to get away from all the torture that was in my previous existence, I can't say I'm crazy thrilled that it turned out like this.

 

Well, what could I do? Say no? Even if I was mad about it, it’s never changed what was happening to me before, and it certainly wouldn’t change things now.

Such is my life. Or uh… I guess death, now.

 

As I resigned myself to what was happening, silly though it all was, the world began to take shape around me. Almost as if everything was slowly being illuminated by light, I could steadily make out more and more of the world around me, until my vision was finally just as good as it was when I was still alive. Nothing looked hazy or gritty or cobbled together like in a dream; It all looked clear, and crisp, and well… Let me be honest, I think my eye-sight was actually even better than before, and I could even feel the freshest air I’d ever breathed filling up my lungs with every breath I took. The scents were vivid, the sounds surrounded me, and while I hated to admit it, it all came together to reinforce the belief that this couldn’t possibly be fake. If this were a dream or a hallucination, then the rest of my life had just been some cheap picture book.

 

My dazed staring through the entrance of the cramped alleyway I’d found myself in didn’t last for very long. Something suddenly popped up right in front of my eyes, bright and blue and almost flashing, as if to show off its importance.

 

{Congratulations! You’ve now become a [Saintess]! Complete your first quest to access your character page and skills!}

 

Two small, less as eye-catching boxes appeared below the previous one. The first box simply said ‘confirm’, but the one below it said ‘View Quests’. I think it’s obvious which button I clicked. Well, I say clicked, but it’s more like I tried to press a finger against it and ended up just poking right through it, but hey, if it worked then it worked.

 

{You have two quests available!}

 

Inside the new box that appeared over the last one were two quests in brackets. The first one read [To the church!], and seemed pretty obvious since apparently I was becoming a Saintess(?), but it’s probably safer not to assume and to read it over first. The thing that really worried me though was the title for the second quest: [Do your best not to die, Saintess!]. At first I didn’t even want to try and see what that thing was going to be about since it seemed so crazy ominous, but eventually I knew I was going to have to bite the bullet anyways. Before I even showed up here I was informed that this was all a punishment for how I gave up on my life last time, and I knew that there would be some kind of task that I had to complete if I didn’t want to suffer in hell for all eternity. I should at the very least look at what my nightmare of a redemption task was going to be.

 

I poked my finger at the second quest, hoping that would do the trick.

 

{Main Quest: [Do your best not to die, Saintess!]

You’ve become a Saintess, the savior of the people and the beacon of light to a weary world!

 

-Heal, do good deeds, remove evil, and save others in any way that you can, to gain experience and level up!

-Leveling up will give you access to new skills, which you can choose from!

-At level 15 you’ll be able to ask for one minor wish from the Goddess!

 

Note:

-Committing crimes or hurting others for no reason will cause all current experience gained to drop to 0.

-Failing to level up by the time limit will cause the Saintess to die and be sent to hell.

 

[You have 6 days and 19 hours left until death!]}

 

“What?!”

 

My yelling made some of the passersby on the road look at me like I was a freak while they hurried away. The fact that I could still see them through the slightly opaque blue notification board was nice in some sort of way, I’m sure, but I really didn’t need their judgment right now.

 

At first I had a small freak-out over the fact that I only had about 7 more days left to live, but after having a tiny crying session against the wall and curling up into a ball for a while, I finally got over it enough to think a bit more clearly. No, it’s not that I had 7 more days to live, it’s that I had 7 more days to redeem myself so that I could finally die. Isn’t that what I wanted, a peaceful death where I didn’t have to get hurt anymore? The problem is that I doubt I could become this ‘Saintess, savior of the people’ in only a week, which means that I was for sure destined to go to hell. Wasn’t my task to level up by doing good deeds? Did the Goddess expect me to just bust my ass doing as much good work as I could before she dumped me off? I’m sure I was told that I’d only be sent to hell if I failed, right? So then there has to be some kind of way to succeed? Maybe there’s a certain level I was supposed to reach to pass the test or something?

 

I looked back to the window that was still placed right in front of me, even though I’d moved a short distance and crouched down. My eyes immediately got drawn to the words that were in the brackets, [Do your best not to die, Saintess!]. Surely that implies that there’s some way not to die too soon and get sent to hell, right? I reread the quest carefully and this time didn’t let the looming death counter scare me away from understanding what it was truly saying. Didn’t it say right there near the end that so long as I leveled up, I wouldn’t fail? Maybe if I level up by the time the counter ends, it’ll just… reset? The hope that that’s the case is the only thing I have going for me, so I guess I’ll just have to run with it and test that theory out before the week is over with.

 

Alright then! I’m ready! I won’t be going to hell like this! Let’s go do a good deed!

 

~~~

 

Turns out it’s incredibly hard to just ‘do a good deed' when you’re in a strange new world with strange new things and you don’t have even the slightest idea of how things work. I can’t offer anyone who’s lost any help, since I don’t know where anything is. Apparently this seems like the kind of fantasy place that should have healing and stuff since it mentioned it in the quest, and I’m a Saintess so I guess I should be pretty good at it, right? But I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to even use anything like ‘magic’ or whatever it is that they’d call it here, so that’s off my options for now too. I learned from my brief session of floundering around trying to find something to do that I can in fact speak the language here, but that doesn’t really amount to much if I don’t know what I should be saying to get someone to let me help them.

 

Eventually I managed to get a stroke of good luck and saw an old lady drop a bag of fruit that scattered all over the road. I rushed over like a crazy person and scared her, but in the end I managed to help her pick it all up and put it back in her bag. She thanked me and squeezed my hand with her leathery one, which, I won’t lie, felt kind of gross. But hey! In the end it was all worth it since I saw a light blue ‘+5xp!’ float up above her head. At first I was absolutely ecstatic about finally gaining some experience, but then I encountered yet another problem in the list of problems I’ve been accruing:

 

I don’t know how to check my progress.

 

It’ll probably tell me about it when I level since it seems like the whole system revolves around that, but until then, how will I see how much more experience I need? I ended up scanning over the quest screen for a while once again until I remembered that there was a-whole-nother quest for me to do. Didn’t it say I had to complete my first quest to see my character sheet and skills?

 

{Tutorial Quest: [To the church!]

You’ve just begun your thrilling life as a Saintess, but there is much to learn if you want to survive!

 

-Make your way to the church and inform them that you are the new Saintess!

-Receive your lodgings and church robes.}

 

A blue line appeared on the ground in front of me, clearly marking which way I should be going. I have to admit that that’s pretty thoughtful of the Goddess to have done for me. I’m pretty good at remembering my way around a place, but I can’t possibly know the way to somewhere I’ve never been to before, and I’d hate to have to keep asking random people for directions. I guess it’s time to follow the quest and see what’s awaiting me. Hopefully there’s some kind of pity exp waiting at the end of it for me.

 

After you, blue line.