“...Huh?”

  That’s the only thing that would come out of my mouth in reply, even though my mind was swirling with a number of different thoughts about what the padin had just said to me. I’m sure he must have been quite a bit more educated about the past Saintesses than I was, but for some reason I just couldn’t really believe him about this. I mean, the fact that I found Kale again in this life, with the exact same face, voice, and mannerisms as the one that I knew, only a few weeks after being brought to this world, hidden in the exact same church that my very first quest practically bee-lined me to go to, is far too crazy of a coincidence for me to just believe it wasn’t orchestrated somehow! If every single Saintess ends up with someone, then Kale is clearly a pnt from the Goddess so that I try my best doing what she wants, right? It doesn’t make sense to me otherwise! The odds behind it without her having interfered somehow would just be astronomically low!

  And besides, I still clearly remember that time when the shadow was tempting me, showing me all those horrible scenes, and Kale’s feathers came down to rescue me. That wasn’t a dream, that was real. And if that showed up to me in whatever strange dimension that the Goddess and the shadow both live in, then that must mean that Kale, too, is connected to all of this Goddess craziness in some way!

  So if all of that is true, and she pced Kale here as some kind of leash or motivation or whatever for me, then why would what the guy padin said be true?

  Why even bring him here if it doesn’t change anything for me if he dies…?

  …I couldn’t stop my hand from grabbing onto the side of Kale’s shirt, afraid of what all this could mean. It almost felt like he would suddenly be taken away from me by something, now that I learned that he wasn’t absolutely ‘necessary’.

  “Is what you said just now… true? Is there proof somewhere of that?”

  The way he said it was pretty teasing, so maybe it’s possible that he was just being a bit of a jerk since Kale was the one asking the question? He’s been kind to the both of us so far, at least shallowly, but maybe now that he’s trying to kiss up to me all of a sudden, there’s a chance that he no longer likes Kale’s presence around me or something… Or at least that’s kind of how it feels could be the case to me.

  “Ah…”

  The guy padin pulled his face in a way like he’d suddenly been put in a rough spot. Or maybe like he’d been caught doing something that people might not have liked him doing.

  “Hmm, well, yes, Your Holiness… There are, ah, certain things that… Well…”

  “Yes?”

  “...Mmm, perhaps I exaggerated a bit! There are indeed plenty of Saintesses that die shortly after they lose their lovers! Why, if I had to give it a percentage, then-!”

  Ugh, not the stupid percentages again!!! I don’t think my heart can take hearing any more of his insane percentage rates like this! No matter what numbers he tells me, I’m just gonna agonize over them anyway! I’m not ready to hear this right now, I’m not I'm not I'm not!

  “-Let’s just keep moving for now, okay?!”

  If I really need to know, then I’ll look it up ter when we make it to the main church! If he says there’s proof of it somewhere, then I’m sure that I’d be able to find it there just fine! So it’s okay if I don’t learn any more of these ugly truths now, okay?! Okay!

  I practically ran away from that conversation, too afraid of what I might have heard next from his mouth.

  ~~~

  Oh, huh. What the heck is this thing all about…?

  There, at the end of the st path that we followed along, there was an odd, muddy, ke-like area, slightly sunken into the ground. The end of the mineshaft looked particurly different than the rest of the mine that we’d been touring through, as if it had been roughly dug out by something, or maybe the more appropriate word would have been ‘melted away’ rather than ‘dug’, considering how messily done it all looked.

  If anything, it seemed like getting too close would be particurly dangerous.

  “So I’m guessing that this is where all the rock slimes are coming from…?”

  “Yes, I’d have to agree, Your Holiness.”

  Mhmm, I figured as much. It may be extra muddy, to the point of being sludge-like, but somehow it’s a bit reminiscent of that ke that I first fought those dirty slimes in, in a way. Which begs the question from me:

  Do the rock slimes that are infesting this pce spawn here because of that muddy ke, or are they the ones who made the ke muddy?

  “Hey, Sir Werner. Is this the pce where all the slimes are coming out from?”

  “Well, it seems quite likely, Your Holiness, but we can’t really be sure.”

  Aw, I asked him because he seemed pretty knowledgeable about stuff, but I guess it’s mostly about things he studied in the church, and not about monsters or anything like that, huh?

  “Kale? Do you know?”

  “...I’m sorry, but I do not know very much about slimes, Saintess. They were not very common enemies up on the mountains.”

  Yeah, I figured as much. Still, at least it was worth a shot.

  We’ve already been in this mine for a while now. I don’t really wanna spend a bunch more time and energy trying to fix this muddy area just to find out that it was a complete waste, you know? I want more exp, for sure, but I also don’t want to be in this stupid mine all day, breathing in this musky air for any longer than necessary. I’d rather just fix the problem, hopefully level up while doing so, and finally go back and y down somewhere.

  Besides, the longer that we’re here, the more likely this padin guy is to say something else that I don’t want to hear.

  “Okay, well, do you guys happen to see any slimes in this pool of mud here?”

  All three of us have been staring at it for a while, but I know that at least I haven’t been able to spot anything in there so far. It’s a bit harder to spot the telltale bubbles that the dirty slimes had been leaving in the ke before, since this mud pile seems so sludgy and thick.

  “Hmm… No, Your Holiness, I can’t say that I-”

  “Yes. I can spot a few hiding inside of there, Saintess.”

  Oh, good job! Kale’s bird eyes are coming in clutch for me here!

  “Great! Where is it?”

  “There.”

  His finger pointing at a certain spot in the mud was appreciated, but um… honestly wasn’t very helpful for me. Really, I don’t know what I expected him to do; It’s not like this is really a video game, and that the stupid slime was suddenly going to get highlighted or something because he’d pinged or scanned it or whatever.

  It’s at this moment that I’m starting to seriously reconsider that [Detect Evil] skill.

  “...Could you maybe get its attention for me?”

  “I’ll try, Saintess.”

  Kale waved a winged arm, causing a small volley of his feathers to cut through the air and whiz towards whatever slime that he’d been targeting. At first, it was impossible to tell if those small feathers had been enough to even reach the slime, let alone to attract its attention. Soon, though, with a bunch of yucky sounding gurgles and pops, the rock slime that Kale had hit began to angrily pull itself out of the mud, shaking its way towards us.

  Welp, now that it’s in pin view, I should really get to appraising this thing. Really, it’s actually been pretty dumb of me that I’ve come across 16 of these slimes already and haven’t even appraised a single one of them. I take a short break from fighting things, and suddenly I become rusty about using it on everything like I promised myself I would. Or maybe I can get away with it by saying that I was a bit distracted ever since I came in here... Yeah, maybe there’s enough of an excuse there that I can forgive myself for it.

  “[Appraisal].”

  {Rock Slime

  Health: 80/80

  Energy: 16/20

  Status: Fortified

  Skills: [Split], [Spit], [Acidic Skin], [Assimite], [Fortify]

  A rock filled slime that has made its home in the cave in-}

  “Saintess!”

  “Your Holiness!”

  Huh? Why are the two of them yelling like that? I’m busy reading over here! I know the slime that Kale pulled is shooting out rocks like a shotgun right now, but I just put new [Benediction]s on us a little bit ago, so we should all still be perfectly safe for-

  Oh. Ohhh, I see now. It’s not just one slime. Lots of them seem to be coming up out of the mud now!

  Well I guess that means this pile of mud is what we were looking for then, huh?