Of course, my first instinct was to try and run away. Having so many big lumbering monsters rushing at me at once was hardly ideal! But again, they were ‘big’ monsters, and I’m only one small girl; Even if this new body of mine had proven itself to be particurly nimble many times over, that doesn’t mean that I was gaining any ground against the damn things. It was obvious that I had less than a minute and a half-ish of running-time left before the horde of dregs was going to catch up with me.

  What gives, I thought these things were supposed to be slow?!

  …Or maybe I should be thanking my lucky stars that I’m even able to run away from such humongous things for as long as I can in the first pce.

  So if running isn’t the solution here, then what can I do? Sadly, it looks like there’s no way that I can spam out [Judgment]s fast enough to get rid of all of them before they'd absolutely annihite me. See, it was a bit too far away for me to tell clearly at the time, but from the quick peek at my character screen that I dared to take while running, it seems that killing them gets me about 90 xp, so given infinite running time, I could very well kill these things off faster than it would drain my energy. I’m at 320/1700xp right now, and 2350 energy, so if my brain is doing math correctly while I’m running for my freaking life, then I should easily level up before my energy gets to be less than 800, right? If that’s the case, then I wouldn’t have to worry at all about my energy getting so low that energy exhaustion kicks in and makes me unable to run. Yeah, like I said, given infinite time, killing off all the dregs would actually be a walk in the park!

  Too bad I’d die before I could even kill more than 10 of them, let alone the 70 that were chasing me.

  The good news is that they were so impatient to reach me, and so blind of each other, that they seem to be pying bumper-cars against themselves. Doesn’t really change anything for me too much though, since the ones in the lead don’t seem to be causing too many troubles for each other. I’d love to think that quickly killing off the 5 or so in the front would give me some extra breathing time, but it really just seems like it would only open up the way for the ones that are next in line, so that probably won’t do much to help me. Really, this ‘good news’ isn’t really all that helpful to me at all. But you know who it could help?

  The people who tried to step in and help me!

  When I started running away, there were plenty of people who thought this was their chance and tried to step in and sneak-attack the hyper focused dregs that were chasing me. Heck, even if it wasn’t enough of an advantage to immediately get a kill-strike on the dregs, perhaps it would have been enough to at least slow them down with a bit of good damage and maybe save me, right? Honestly, I totally thought it was a good idea when I saw a bunch of people stepping in and attempting it.

  But I was wrong. And they were wrong. Turns out absolutely everyone who jumped into the tidal wave of dregs was completely, and utterly, wrong. Turns out that there was no ‘good news’ to be had about any of it.

  See, with how much time had passed, I guess everyone forgot that when the fighting began and everyone split into their little dreg-fighting teams, they’d done their best to separate the dregs out and fight only one of them at a time. At most I saw two of them being fought at once, and that only seemed to be done by a very strong looking team. Absolutely no one had tried to fight multiple dregs that had been squeezed into one pce at once, and now I could see the reason for this first-hand. Didn’t I say that they looked bouncy like slimes? Didn’t I mention that the main part of their bodies were like sacks of air?

  If people weren’t getting trampled by the tidal wave of dregs, then they were getting explosively bounced away like they’d been smacked by a gigantic balloon.

  And from the looks of it, the force of their ndings seemed to be bordering on deadly.

  …From what I can see, the likelihood of me being rescued from all this by the adventurers and mercenaries was looking particurly impossible.

  If it’s up to me to rescue myself from my impending demise of being crushed, then what is it that I can even try to do? …Is it possible that the 20% speed boost from [Blessing of the Fleet-Footed] would be enough to keep me going? If I bit the bullet and spent the points to buy it, would it make me fast enough to keep running from the dregs for the hours it would take until I’m finally able to pick them all off? Would it maybe possibly work…? In the grand scheme of things, 20% can actually be quite a lot. But you know, if I only have about another minute remaining, and using that skill only gives me only about 20 more seconds to run away, then well… Yeah, it’s probably not going to be the answer that I need, now is it? That’s definitely not going to buy me enough time.

  Is there any possibility that my [Benediction] would be able to keep me alive long enough if I spammed it? It could be that maybe using it in combination with [Blessing of the Mountains] would make it even more effective at protecting me. Honestly, I’m sure if it was just getting trampled that I was worried about, then I could actually probably find a way to live through it so long as I could chant out [Benediction]s fast enough, right?

  Too bad I’m sure that the dregs have more pns than just running me over me once they reach me…

  Alright, so then what else is it that I could do? I’d have to get really freaking close to try and use my [Pressure of the Divine] against them, and I don’t feel comfortable risking getting close enough just to see if it works. Idunno, that seems like more of a st ditch effort kind of attempt, especially since it’d absolutely decimate my energy and I wouldn’t be able to use any skills while I did it. Um, okay, well then what about [Soothing Bell]? That has a longer range, and it’s much more cost-effective, right? But who knows if it’d even work, considering how mindless these things seem to be… It works on the undead, so I want to believe it’d work on these guys, but considering they don’t have a soul anymore, what exactly is there left to soothe...?

  They’re not really slimes even if I compared them to them originally, so I doubt [Cleanse] would be able to do much to them. Honestly, if it was an ordinary slime, I’m sure [Cleanse] wouldn’t work on it anyways, since the only reason it worked those other times was because those dirty slimes ran off of their dirtiness. Maybe there’s a chance that I would clean out their smoke-sacks and slow them down a bit, but considering I can only do it one at a time, it’s not very much better than me trying to use [Judgment] on them. Or maybe it is? If it worked I could maybe make a bit of a traffic jam and really slow them down, right? Or maybe with their roly-poly bodies they’d just steam-roll over the slowed ones without being slowed very much…

  I guess the only option that’s left is for me to try and [Cure] them, right? But from what the Bishop told me, it won’t do anything, not even if I’m the Saintess. Should I maybe just try it just in case and see? It could be that there’s something going on here that he doesn’t know about, right? I mean, Saintesses seem to have a lot of unknown secrets and hidden stuff about them, so isn’t it maybe possible that something could happen? Besides, it’ll only cost 10 energy, so what’s the harm in trying?

  Well, if I’m going to try anything, it’s better to try it now, while I still have a good distance from the dregs. Trying to aim over my shoulder is gonna suck, but so long as I don’t smack into anything, it shouldn’t slow me down too much. Let’s just look back and-

  Ah jeez, they’re way closer than I expected to see them be!

  “Uh, um, that one- [Cure]!”

  I focused hard on my chosen dreg as I felt the skill connect. I watched to see if there was absolutely any possible difference in its appearance or the way it was acting. And you know what? My [Cure] unexpectedly actually did do something to the dregs.

  It pissed them all off even harder!

  Now instead of all of them just rampaging towards me like they couldn’t see anything else, they’d also started moving oddly like they were agitated, and little jets of air kept escaping their bodies in a really creepy way! And I don’t mean creepy like it was bad to look at or gross or something, I mean creepy as in ‘It sounds like they’re moaning and wailing at me’! It almost sounds like they’re trying to communicate somehow, but it’s completely impossible for me to understand it, no matter how hard I try. Idunno, maybe it’s because it’s not too terribly loud of a sound, or because of all the competing sounds that are coming from everywhere. Maybe there’s a possibility that if everything settled down and I could hear it more clearly that I could make out what they’re saying. The only thing that I can tell for sure is that trying to cure them only made all of my problems worse!

  Ahhh fuck, they’re really starting to get close now! So far I’ve never gotten near enough to them to notice, but amongst the loud stomping sounds that their hand-feet are making while they run at me, and the moaning/wailing that they’re doing, they’re now close enough that I can also make out an odd glorping and churning noise coming from inside of them as they move, which I’m sure isn’t a good sign! I’m too afraid to look back; If I turn my head and see how close they’ve gotten, I might just have a heart attack and die before the things can even reach me! Is it time? Do I bite the bullet and try using [Pressure of the Divine]? Or maybe it’s better to try and test out how far spamming my [Benediction] will get me? Or maybe-

  W-why are my feet not touching the ground?!

  As I looked around in bewilderment, a rge gust of wind suddenly lifted me up into the air, rocketing me high into the sky. Judging from the glittering white feathers tipped with gold that were fluttering around amongst the wind, it was obvious to guess who the cause of it all was.

  There, up in the sky, was Kale, waiting to catch me.

  “Kale!”

  Oh man, how did I ever forget that Kale flying me out of there was an option?! Of course it was the only way out!

  “Oh my GOD, thank you Kale! If it wasn’t for you, I’d-”

  “Saintess, I’m sorry but there’s no time for this right now.”

  As Kale spoke he wrapped one of his arms around me, and the arm that he wasn’t holding me with began to slowly fp, gliding us along through the skies, above the battlefield.

  “I can’t keep this up for too long. Where would you like me to take you?”

  “Huh? You can’t? Why-”

  “Fffpshlllorp-!”

  And with that odd sound, like a fizzling, almost exploding noise, a compacted and slimy-looking ball of air whizzed right past us.

  _____

  AN: Oh man, life is really kicking my ass right now @.@ Everything's just busy busy busy all the time. Sorry for the slow updates!