Chapter 503: Yes, Yes, a Thousand Times YES!

Chapter 503: Yes, Yes, a Thousand Times YES!

I decided to tackle the angel in the room first - [Angel of Mercy]. It represented such a large departure from everything else that it was worth evaluating first. If I was going to take it, great, that killed the rest of the discussion. If I wasnt going to take it, that neatly eliminated a single class from contention.

Id earned [Angel of Mercy]. I had no issues taking it in that respect, and the idea of flying around with wings and a halo was appealing. My understanding was mana and resources werent as much of a concern, but time was always a problem.

Itd also mean leaving life on Pallos. I didnt regularly see angels flying around smiting evil. I didnt personally know about any angel guardians, although stories were filled with them. My time on Pallos would basically be at the end, moving onto the next level of existence.

Id love to be an angel. Id love to fly around like one. But I wasnt ready to leave Pallos. I wasnt ready to leave Iona. I wanted to see what stupid trouble Artemis got into next. I had long walks with Night to go on. I had dinners with Susan to attend. I had drinks with Julius. I needed to make Katerina Immortal, and I wasnt ready to leave my brothers and sisters of the Sixth Legion behind.

I had mangos to eat, books to read, and magic to learn. I just wasnt ready. It was too sudden, too much of a surprise.

If Id known ahead of time, if Id gotten the warning or had a few decades preparing my final approach so to speak, Id be more willing to take the class and ascend. Out of the blue like this, as a complete surprise?

The timing was super unfortunate.

My Radiance class was approaching its own 768 upgrade, and I loved flight. Hopefully I could get an angelic theme going there, and get 95% of the benefits, with none of the downsides.

With a heavy heart I leaned back in the plush chair.

Alright, bring me back in, Im not taking [Angel of Mercy]. I told Librarian. She flicked a hand at me.

Bring yourself back in, Im not your chauffeur! She complained. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she was just as entitled to being lazy as I wanted to be. I mentally flexed, and floated the chair inside with me still sitting in it. I mentally summoned the six books, spreading them out in front of me.

[Saintess of the Dawn] was next up. It was a fantastic class. I could see myself taking it, handing out peace, protection, and healing to everyone who came to me. It had a dizzying array of spells and skills I could take, a thousand and one options for me to use. It scratched so many itches I never knew I had until I saw the class.

It was also far too weak, and I couldnt believe I was saying that about a blue class. The Dawn Sentinel was only dark green, and just barely dark green at that. [Saintess of the Dawn] was unquestionably a large qualitative upgrade.

It just wasnt good enough. I knew what I wanted to do primarily - heal people. I could heal more people, better, with every other class I was offered. For the remaining aspects, the buffs, the protection, I could lean on my wizardry for most of it.

The only thing I was truly saying goodbye to were proper, strong shields and barriers. Preventing people from getting hurt in the first place was admittedly superior to patching them up after from the harm reduction perspective, and it wasnt like I was sitting in the backlines waiting for patients to be brought to me.

No.

I was usually in the thick of things, perfectly positioned to throw shields into the way of approaching harm.

I reluctantly put [Saintess of the Dawn] at the bottom of the pile, with a little mental note that if I decided to take up the path of shields and protection, to revisit the class.

That left the five healing classes.

[The Elaine] was a fame-based class, one with amazing leveling speed and pretty decent improvements across the board.

[Healer of the Stygian Dragon, Rainbow Phoenix] was the expansion class, one that let me heal far more than any of the other options. The going wide aspect naturally lent itself to going up next time I classed up power-wise.

[Arbiter of Life and Death] was the Sentinel option. In many ways, its identity was clearest, and the questions posed the easiest.

[Savior From the Stars] was the pure healer upgrade. It won across the board in numbers and boosting my healing abilities, but lacked any of the charming extras from the other classes.

[The First Oathbound Healer] was the [Oathbound Healer] upgrade. It was like a mix of [Savior] and [The Elaine], a little bit of a halfway mark between the two.

The first question I asked myself was simple, and sort of useless.

Were there any classes I would be unhappy taking?

I rapidly arrived at the answer of no. I would be perfectly content with any of the offered classes. Even [Saintess of the Dawn] was an acceptable result!

Okay, great! I couldnt make a wrong decision here. I wouldnt be tormented by my decision. Unlike [Firebug], which looking back on what an idiot Id been as a kid still made me wince, I doubted any of these choices would cause me regret.

The question was, which one was me? Which one did I most resonate with?

Or did I want to do some min-maxing, and select a class that best boosted my powers?

In that respect, [Healer of the Stygian Dragon, Rainbow Phoenix] was the clear loser. With minimal buffs to my abilities, and the lowest stats, what it had going for it most was sheer diversity. The other classes all had strong points in their favor.

Which one let me be the most powerful healer?

From a healing perspective, [Arbiter of Life and Death] was in fourth. It was the class to take if I believed myself to be Sentinel Dawn deep in my heart, but it wasnt as cleanly focused on healing as the other three. It did include more personal protection and protection for others, along with a suite of interesting abilities, but the pure number crunching had it a little weaker.

Where it shone was active experience gain, and that led me on a wild tangent down that path. Everything was interconnected. Experience led to levels, levels led to stats, stats led to healing abilities.

Id ranked [The Elaine] as the fastest leveling class, but that was assuming a long measure of peace. [Arbiter] leveled from far more activities than [The Elaine] did, and when push came to shove and I was screaming in battle with the rest of the Sixth Legion, it would level faster than any of my other classes.

I went back to my math, and tried to calculate how many people I could heal in a single day after gaining 150 levels.

The results were shocking.

Id calculated percentages and relative ratios in all my previous calculations, but when running the numbers on how many people can I heal in a day, my jaw dropped. I triple-checked my numbers, absolutely certain that I mustve misplaced a 0 or multiplied a number wrong.

It couldnt be right.

It undeniably was.

The difference between the two classes was do I want to heal 9,000,000 people in a day, or 8,000,000 people in a day?

In a 16 hour day. Not even a full 24 hours!

It was stupid. It was absurd.

It was right.

The added power for [The First Oathbound Healer] was getting completely wasted, vanishing into the void. Who cared if I could heal a million more people in a single day when finding that many hurt people in the first place was impossible?

I did a similar calculation for [The Elaine] and [The Arbiter of Life and Death], and the numbers told a similar story. [The Elaine] could heal quite a lot more than [Arbiter] could, but I was looking at degrees of stupid numbers no matter how I sliced it.

Fine.

The utility discussion, which I had axed earlier as nothing is drawing me as much as the raw power, was back on the table. Annoying that I had to loop back to it, but this was my main class, my core. It was worth spending the time and doing it properly.

[The First Oathbound Healer] didnt have any true utility. I was getting a general upgrade across the board, and admittedly, a free general skill slot wasnt nothing. My general skills were some of my most-used skills in day-to-day life, and I could do amazing things with another open slot. Still a contender, but for a completely different reason.

[The Elaine] was a little weaker. Most of its added utility was in being the healers healer. Boosting other healers, leveling quickly, having some interesting skills with [Sing My Name] and the like.

[Savior] was chomping at the bit with a half-dozen extremely powerful buffs, each one packaging a number of different abilities and improvements. A few of my skills I wouldnt drop under any circumstances, but between the open slot from [Wheel] and [Dance] merging, [Sunrise] and [Mantle of the Stars] being optional skills, I could potentially grab three powerful auras or buffs to help others.

[Arbiter of Life and Death] came roaring back onto the stage when it came to utility. It was the battlefield Sentinel class, and it packed a number of goodies. There were the significantly stronger shields - not quite[Saintess of the Dawn] level, but good enough. There was the armor skill, and there was the battlefield awareness. I was unsure how good the battlefield awareness truly was - [The World Around Me] was busted as hell, and I doubted anything could top it - but it existed.

The sheer strength and quality of the offerings in [Savior] and [Arbiter] quickly outstripped both [The Elaine] and [The First Oathbound Healer], narrowing down my options to those two.

More analysis time! At least Id cut down my offerings down to two, and I wouldnt be upset at either one winning.

Buffs were arguably better for an army and supporting high-level Classers - like Iona and Fenrir, a little less so with Auri - while shields were better for weaker people and individuals. My shields would be good, they werent going to be shield an army good like War Sentinel Legions could be.

The tiebreaker ended up being a fairly simple idea.

I couldnt heal everything. Things like the rock smashing Specs head in, the elf being executed by the Wardens. Overwhelming damage that was immediately lethal, even with the instantaneous nature of my healing.

A shield could stop things like that. With the increased shield, I couldve snapped it above his head and blocked the killshot. Improved stats and buffs galore wouldnt have helped him in the moment, not with a rock that large going that fast.

Even with [Savior From the Stars] generally having better skills healing-wise than [Arbiter of Life and Death], they both ran into the healing = yes issue, where the improved skills didnt matter that much for my healing, it was already at utterly fucking stupid levels.

It wasnt what I had expected to take at all. I was so close to taking [The First Oathbound Healer]. If I hadnt triple-checked the math in every way, shape, or form, I wouldve taken it and possibly been left feeling dissatisfied when I realized how much it wasnt working.

I quietly closed the books, and reshelved them for Librarian. I wasnt going to be rude and just leave unchecked-out books lying around! Especially not when Librarian also wanted to be lazy.

I tucked the ancient leather bound tome under my arm, and turned to face Librarian.

I would like to take [Arbiter of Life and Death], please.

I woke up from the world of my soul, dozens of notifications ringing in my ears. My awareness briefly flickered as [The World Around Me] turned back on, Iona kneeling by my bed.

Her smile lit up her entire face as she saw me waking up, and she held out her hands as she asked me the question Id been waiting for years to hear.

Elaine, love of my life, star of my world, will you marry me? She asked.

My carefully laid plans around the sword Id secretly forged and stashed under the bed went right out the window. My heart raced with joy as I leapt out of bed, into her arms. My lips met hers.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I cried out.

Then my brain caught up with the rest of me, and I realized what Iona was holding.

Wait, whats that?