CHAPTER 26: PRAYERS

I counted five total.

And I couldn’t kill any of them.

"Fucking ass bitch shit motherfucker."

I swore quietly under my breath, though, spamming it like a Texan and tightened my grip on the shield.

"C’mere then you ugly sonovabeaches."

I intercepted the first two before they got too close, letting them bashed against my shield, felt like I was holding back a whole tsunami. The system pinged me with aggro markers, but that didn’t stop the others from circling wide.

Hailie remained knelt, eyes closed, lips moving.

Yeah, ignorance is bliss, you deaf slut.

Okay now I’m just being rude, sorry.

The spirit floated around her now, circling, speaking in broken phrases that echoed:

"You are... Hailie. Follower of the Goddess... You do not understand this place. You do not understand me." She said, audibly intrigued in a weird way, "But you reach, even when in silence...."

"Do you know what they did to me? Do you care?"

Wait, can Hailie hear those words?... Wasn’t she deaf?

I didn’t have a chance to confirm that as the attack happened.

I pushed into one of the pilgrim shield-first, driving him into a tree, Another grabbed my ankle, I kicked, twisting, and backed away.

Still no attacking, obviously, which was a horrible problem against zombies-like enemies specifically who didn’t care for reasons. I couldn’t even push them too far or it’d count as dealing damage.

So I taunted them instead.

"Hey!" I hissed. "Come on, bastards, if you lose, I’ll piss on your grave!"

I raised my middle finger to one, then bashed my shield against the ground.

Two of them lunged.

Perfect.

I opened my arms wide. Yours truly let them both bit my waist like dogs, which dropped my HP significantly.

HP: 78/102

I should have flinched, but guess what.

"BY REGAINING MOVEMENT DURING THE REM-SLEEP STATE, I CAN ENTER THE KONAMI CODE IN THE BOOTUP SCREEN AND TURN OFF DAMAGE SENSOR! MUWFEHEHEHE!"

I yelled out my trick, knowing full well shit ain’t matter because the only player around was deaf.

I bear hugged the two of them, sinking their teeth into my stomach, as long as I kept that HP at a good level, I should be fine.

The ritual dragged on.

And the spirit grew... agitated, I raised my ears up to listen.

"They bound me here, Hailie. My sisters, my families... They planted me like a tree, my sorrow was too loud. They said that I disturbed the sapling prayers." It started screaming, "And you? You kneel like they did, and you wear the same robes! How are you different?"

Hailie didn’t answer, or more like, she couldn’t.

The little Sonder just held her hands together tighter, and her lips kept moving.

A glow began to build around her. A beautiful, haloic glow that was faint, then bright, beautifully so... It was a yellow halo, like sun through dead leaves.

"C’mon..." I muttered, panting, circling the boulder like how Qin Shi Huang did. My stupid beginner shield I stole from the Lion’s Parade was a hair away from cracking.

With both hands occupied, my shield was on my back to block backshots (no pun intended, and it worked wonders).

But I couldn’t stop.

"Fuck... Fuck... This is too hard."

One wrong move, if one damage tick get its way to Hailie, we are dee-oh-en-dee-fucked. We’ll lose all spirit progress, that meant restarting the whole reconciliation from scratch, and I only have so much healing items in my inventory when we’re only halfway through.

I growled and shoved my shoulder against a charging pilgrim, redirecting him without dealing damage, it was going decent, until my feet slipped on moss, and I fell on my butt.

The two wroegbound was released from my stomach.

Now that four of them were aggro-ed on me, one started charging towards Hailie.

"Heh, doesn’t matter, git good, scrubs."

I saw that the light had reach its peak, which meant...

"ENOUGH!" The spirit screamed, her voice split the air like lightning underwater.

The glow around Hailie intensified; bursting outward in a shockwave that passed through the enemies harmlessly but knocked every leaf from the nearby trees.

The Wroegbound stopped, before dissolving into the soil beneath them.

And the Mourner of the Pale Branch... knelt.

"I remember," she whispered.

"I remember your song... Not from this life.."

"You are not them."

"You are not me."

"But I forgive you."

[Spirit Reconciled: Mourner of the Pale Branch]

[Progress: 1/3]

The spirit dissolved into thin air.

They had a conversation only they could’ve heard, I would assume.

I went over and gave Hailie a kiss on the cheek, that was the cue that everything was over.

I stood in front of her, with two open wounds on my stomach and a scratch mark on my face as Hailie opened her eyes.

She blinked slowly, wiping off tears she hadn’t noticed were falling, this was awkward for me, because I was not good at reconciling sad people, as I’ve mentioned before and, as one can see from the simple fact that I’ve never played any support roles.

"This feels so... Real, I love this game..." She whispered, "I love the fact that I can do anything here... I can, oh... Um, I can run, I can feel the wind, I can experience things I’ve never even think about before... The life of that woman is so tragic, I can’t believe how much hardship her family went through."

Before I could give an answer to her incessant rambling, Hailie suddenly yelped with her avatar as she looked down and noticed her white knight was wounded. Yeah, about damn time, idiot.

I collapsed next to her, panting, while taking out my Healer’s Toolkit, and gave it to her.

"Come on, we have two more, patch me up"

She didn’t hear any of that, because I was kind of looking around, so she couldn’t read my lips

But she still offered me a shy thumbs-up, before awkwardly trying to figure out how to use the toolkit.

Of course, I’m not going to teach her, because she was awkwardly touching my body all sorts of way and I’m into it.

Muwfehehe~