I guess the look of absolute horror that was on my face was perfectly readable, because the Bishop quickly stepped in to reassure me.

  “Their curse might be frightening, but it takes a bit of time before it consumes its host. It doesn’t take a Saintess to remove such a thing; Even Chel and I will be able to purify anyone who should become infected by it, so long as it’s not the original host.”

  Oh… So it’s not an immediate loss if you get cursed, is that what he’s saying? But then how did this even-

  “However, curse or no, a demonic beast is a demonic beast for a reason. They may look to be easily pierced, but they’re quite difficult to kill, and they are capable of massive amounts of damage. The only soce is that they move quite clumsily, and are rather slow. But with so many of them in one pce, well…”

  Ah, I get it. Them being slow isn't really that much of an advantage when you’re stuck in what basically amounts to a mosh-pit full of the things. Anyone coming to fight them melee is probably going to find themselves crushed into a pancake, or maybe ground up like meat. And the fact that most of our defensive line out there seems to be packing swords and daggers and little else… doesn’t really give me very much hope, here.

  I don’t know, maybe I can find some super secret way to help if I appraise them? They’re really freaking strong, so it’s probably extra important that I stick to the rules I made for myself and do that first to avoid any nasty surprises popping up. The problem is that they’re really far away right now. I’ve never really tried using my [Appraisal] from such a long distance before, you know? If I have to get closer to check these guys out, well… It’s probably for the best that I don't do it then, if that's the case.

  Doesn't hurt to try though, right?

  “...[Appraisal]?”

  Oh wow, it actually worked, huh?

  {Dreg

  Health: 250/250

  Energy: 30/30

  Status: ^%?`She did this>@#~

  Skills: [Spit], [Scream], [Jump]

  A poor soul who :{;!Don’t listen to her lies”@(\ and has now become cursed to +&,-It’s her fault that this happened_?*/ forever seeking-}

  “Oh no, look!”

  The shout made me tear my eyes away from the defective status screen that I’d been studying like my life depended on it, and look off to the left fnk of the field, where the fighting seemed to have started first. A group of five had already surrounded one of the dregs and had begun to attack it, but the fact that this group was mostly made of close range attackers didn’t seem to be doing them any favors, like I’d expected. As we watched, one of them made a risky lunge at the backside of the dreg, seeming to have put the entire force of his body behind the attack, only for the dreg to easily grab him out of the air with one of its back feet and crunch him like an empty snack-wrapper. The other members of the team reacted quickly, doing their best to take the dreg’s attention and become its new target, which luckily seemed to convince the dreg to toss away its broken toy and focus on them instead… but the way that the guy was practically thrown into the ground made me doubt if he was going to make it out of that whole ordeal alive. Heck, it would already be a miracle if he didn’t die from that awful crunching that happened to him...

  Thankfully, the Guild Master was there yelling instructions to everyone, and someone was quickly dispatched to grab away the poor guy’s body, while someone else was ordered to take his spot. It was all really efficiently done, to the point where I had to wonder what the Guild Master had gone through in the past to be able to efficiently lead so many people like this. I guess it makes sense though, since I’m sure he must have had a pretty prestigious career to get the title he has, even if this town is on the more backwater side of things.

  I already knew that I was going to be disgusted and sad about looking at the guy’s mangled body, but seeing how young his bruised up face looked made me feel about 10 times worse. I had to look at him too; I couldn’t just pawn him off to Chel or the Bishop because of how grave and extensive his injuries were. Even without appraising him, it was obvious to see the several spots where his bones had broken and his limbs were twisted, and even more obvious to notice where his bones had burst through his skin and were straight up exposed to the air. And the amount of blood that he was covered in, was… Well, it made me worry for the first time if my healing would also magically give him back his blood, because if not then he certainly wasn’t going to make it, no matter how much I patched him up.

  They said the dregs were slow, but from what I’ve seen, they’re certainly fast enough close range that I’m really starting to think that we might be pretty fucked...

  ~~~

  I’ve been healing for about two hours now. Always healing, constantly healing, just healing healing healing all the time, trying to keep up with all the people who are coming in. If I were to say that we had a force of a little under 200 fighters outside, then I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that I’d personally healed through over half of them already, and that Chel and the Bishop have been slowly working through maybe about 30. Luckily I’d already managed to level up to 18, so I was sitting pretty on my energy at the moment, but it was obvious to see that the fight was beginning to turn over to the dreg’s side, no matter how much I thought we’d been keeping up with the healing. No matter how fast we fixed whoever showed up, that still meant that there was a spot left open on the battlefield that needed repcing, and with how deep into the fight we’d gotten, there were no longer any people waiting on the sidelines to fill in the gaps like there were in the beginning.

  And the fact that we had a few deserters trickle out once things got too real for them had only made it harder on us.

  The icing on the cake would have to be the dregs’ curse eating away at our people. What I’d thought to be the slime-like sack of liquid that made up the bulk of their bodies had actually turned out to be an oddly thick sack of smoke-filled air. On occasion, either when pierced or just seemingly whenever the damn things felt like it, they would erupt into a spew of smoke, spreading their curse to whoever breathed it in, and then would slowly begin to re-infte themselves. Usually the dregs got more sluggish afterwards while refilling, which made it much more possible for the more advanced teams to kill them off, but by then the curse would already be working on them, weakening whoever they’d managed to afflict. Whoever became cursed would gradually begin to slow down, showing fever-like symptoms, which was hardly ideal to continue fighting with. And what’s even worse, their energy, already lowered from all the constant fighting, would also begin to drain away, meaning that using any skills would become almost impossible.

  That’s how the curse kills you, I’m told.

  It kills you from energy exhaustion, and then sucks out your soul once it's succeeded.

  It’s already bad enough that the battle had been raging on for over two hours with very little to show for it, meaning that everyone was most likely getting absolutely exhausted, but adding on the curse on top of it made things almost impossible. We’d already barely made any progress with everyone having all their energy at their disposal; How the heck would our side possibly be able to continue this while tired and running low on resources?

  And yet here I am, sitting inside a tent with 2450 energy.

  Did I maybe make the wrong choice? Should I not have stayed in the medical tent like the Guild Master said, and joined everyone on the front lines instead? I’d been doing my best to efficiently use my skills up close so that I wouldn’t burn through my energy very quickly, but would it have been the better choice to be out there with everyone, using my ranged heals to keep them going? At least then we wouldn’t have to waste time switching people out as often, and they could immediately join back into the fight. ...Or, since I do have all of this energy at my disposal from leveling up, would it have been a better idea to have bit the bullet and finally taken [Rejuvenate]? Then at least we wouldn’t have to worry about everyone running out of energy, and the fight could continue on for longer. The killing might be slow, but given infinite fighting time, we would eventually win against them, I think. Buuut I'm pretty sure I can only use that skill through touch, since I don’t think my ranged augment will work on it because it’s not a heal or a cure. Sneaking over to use it on the busy melee people would probably be impossible… Unless I only use it on the mages and other ranged people, then the only other pce I would be able to use it on is with the people who’re brought to the healing tent, right?

  Or, maybe I’m thinking about this all wrong? Is it possible that I should have been using all of this energy of mine to attack instead of defend? There are over 70 of the dregs left, but if I used a bunch of judgements on them, and it managed to one-shot them like it should, then maybe I could have killed off a good chunk of them by now. Heck, maybe it would have given me enough energy to level up while doing it, and I could actually finish most of them off by myself! No one would be around to handle the super bad injuries, but with less enemies, wouldn’t there be less injuries as well? Offense is the best defense, as they say...

  Yeah, I’m really starting to think I did this all wrong! I should get out there and start taking these things down right this instant!

  “Arissa? Where are you going?”

  I ignored Chel’s words, in far too much of a hurry to properly reply to her. And yet, I still made sure to check that Kale was following after me. Does that make me a bad person…? I hope she won’t get mad at me for it ter. Maybe if I do a good job here she’ll let me off the hook for being rude...?

  Stepping outside of the tent felt like a completely different world. The sky was overcast, gray and ominous looking, and I could hear the sounds of the fighting much more clearly, along with the disgusting gurgling noises that the dregs were making as they moved. As my heart began to pump faster with a little bit of fear, I scanned the scene in front of me, looking for the best pce to start. And when I found the team that seemed to be struggling the most with their dreg, I locked onto it and shouted out my attack.

  “[Judgment]!”

  The usual golden light dropped down from the overcast sky, pointing out my target, and what looked like the silhouette of an angel flew down from the heavens, plunging a beautiful sword of light into the waiting dreg. Surprisingly, even though it had no eyes or even a face left on it, the dreg almost seemed like it was looking up at the angel somehow, as if it was eagerly waiting for its attack. It didn’t even try to move out of the way, letting the angel’s strike cleanly slice it.

  Unlike the deaths of the other dregs, this one simply colpsed into a puff of shadow-y smoke, simply dissipating into the ground.

  I was extremely pleased with myself for a moment, but that feeling quickly faded away when I looked around for my next target and noticed that something strange was happening. Somehow, I could tell that every single one of the dregs had suddenly turned their attention to me.

  …And that feeling became all but confirmed when they all started stampeding towards me in unison.