Skill Tree 4
The biggest change when Heroines Chronicle became Heroes Chronicle had to be the balance patch.
The prime example of that was none other than 3-star Grace.
In Heroines Chronicle, 3-stars were the kind of units people called pretty totems, warehouse keepers, or SD figure bait. Their stats were so abysmal you would never, under any circumstances, field them in actual combat.
But Grace in Heroes Chronicle already possessed scouting skills solid enough to hold her own in the forest, and with growth she had the potential to aim for the tower's upper floors. She had never once allowed a Horned Wolf — the kind of boss that butchered Novice Adventurers — to get the drop on her.
"My holy arts are… a little more extreme than those of my sister priestesses."
As if baring some private shortcoming, Irene flushed faintly and dropped her already soft voice even lower. A priest's holy arts typically followed the standard fantasy novel kit: healing, purification, barriers, and a variety of buffs.
But from her explanation, Irene's talent was skewed to an extreme degree.
"Anything beyond minor wounds is difficult to heal on the spot, but my barriers… well, they tend to come out a bit, ah, excessive…."
Summarizing: a sustained DoT heal rather than an instant burst, a purification so thorough it layered on status immunity buffs, barriers that burned through mana but came out several times tougher than normal — and stat buffs she couldn't use at all.
Wasn't this basically a caster-type tank?
From a gamer's perspective, the lack of buffs was a little disappointing, but factoring in her 5-star stats she was a frontline healer you'd get on your knees and beg for. And considering Hanna would be feeding her skills, there was a real chance those missing buffs might show up eventually.
From the Temple's more practical standpoint, though, Irene's holy arts left far too much to be desired.
"Which is why, to spread the Goddess's will, I must climb the tower."
One of the Temple's duties was serving as a kind of emergency room for the injured inside the city — people run over by carriages, adventurers who barely crawled out of the tower with their lives. What an ER needed was one powerful heal that could yank a dying patient back from the brink, not a slow, sustained recovery.
As a barrier-specialist priestess, her low healing efficiency made her useless for civilian charity work. Other priestesses handled that far better anyway, so there was no point forcing her mana into it. And purification skills only mattered if a plague was sweeping the city — you rarely needed an immunity buff on top.
For a priestess carrying the title of Candidate Saint, she seemed less proud of her formidable purification and barriers than ashamed of her weak recovery. And into that quiet self-reproach, Hanna dropped a single question.
"Then why our party… ah — wait! I'm not saying I don't want you!"
"Yesterday, I saw Sir Roland training alone on the eleventh floor. When I asked the gentleman leading his party, I learned his name. He had broken through to the thirty-seventh floor without a single wound, and outside the tower he had saved countless people as well."
That tanker with the kite shield — so he knew me. Well, once you hit the mid-floors, most Advanced Adventurers knew each other by face. It was like someone who worked at a broadcasting station recognizing celebrities and famous directors.
You ran into them on outside commissions, or when hauling supplies up toward the highest floors. It happened often enough.
And as for saving countless people outside the tower… I supposed I had. The pay was solid, and I'd body-checked my way through the commissions everyone else avoided. I'd just been grinding toward the dream of owning my own place, but to someone of the Temple it must have looked like I was personally taking on all the dirty, thankless work.
No wonder the priestesses I occasionally met on jobs had always been so friendly.
"It feels shameful to say this, as though I am only serving my own selfish ends… but I believed that if I stood beside someone like him, even my meager holy arts could still carry the Goddess's will far and wide."
My healing is weak, so I'll stick with someone who doesn't get hurt. Even she seemed to feel how shameless that sounded; her pure white cheeks flushed scarlet. Of course Hanna, whose eyes had practically rolled back at the appearance of a 5-star priestess, was already busy soothing her.
"Selfish?! Everyone has things they're good at, and even with real-world limitations you're still finding a way to serve your faith — who would ever criticize that? If it doesn't feel shameful before the Goddess in your own heart, then that's enough, isn't it?!"
Hanna, who normally stammered whenever she slipped into casual speech or told a lie, was suddenly working her tongue like a politician on the campaign trail. From her posture to her voice, her personality ran toward the timid side, and she carried herself as if requesting a party transfer were some kind of sin.
Obviously it wasn't. Priestesses almost never requested transfers, sure — but that didn't make it a crime or a dirty deed. Adventurers themselves were constantly forming up, splitting apart, and brawling. If anything, a decision made for the sake of faith, the way a priestess would make it, was cleaner than most.
Parties had members dipping into the shared funds, or falling into messy affairs with each other, all the time. In an industry full of people who lived by the sword and carried on like third-rate thugs, a priestess wasn't just respectable — you could call her a dignified princess and it wouldn't be an exaggeration.
"I… suppose so. Thank you for saying that."
"Of course! People who don't even know their own shortcomings are worse than people who admit them. Ah — wait, is that the right way to put it?"
I was glad to have a barrier specialist join us myself. If you never got hurt, a recovery specialist became useless. Far better to have her glued to Hanna's side, holding the line with barriers while I ran wild on my own.
At any rate, Irene seemed to feel the sincerity buried under Hanna's rambling mess of words. She offered a soft smile and gave a small nod.
"I'd like to accept the transfer right away. Alice! It's fine if we bring her into our party, right?"
"Of course. The priestess herself requested it, and there's no disqualifying reason. Getting the previous party members' blessing isn't even mandatory."
"Ah — I already explained it to them yesterday."
Those party members had no idea gacha characters existed, so they'd been disappointed but respected her wishes. Well, when a priestess wanted to leave of her own free will, who was going to hold her hostage? We'd snagged a talent by pure accident, but their circumstances weren't my problem.
Hanna on the left, Grace on the right, Alice behind — Irene, suddenly buried among the women, whispered in her tiny voice, and the three of them answered with enthusiastic agreement every time. Hanna because her eyes had flipped at a 5-star, Alice because she was thoroughly smitten with Irene's beauty, and Grace out of faith and her soft spot for the sacred.
"Then, while we're at it — I'd like to confirm your holy arts, if that's all right."
Seeing Irene look a little flustered under all that attention, her shy nature showing, I gently cut the chatter short. A priestess joining the party was always welcome, but we couldn't just charge into the tower without checking our coordination first.
Hanna nodded hard at my words. Whether she simply wanted to see a 5-star's power, her eyes were bright with anticipation as she stuck herself right to Irene's side. Given how reserved Irene seemed, that much attention ought to have been overwhelming — yet she nodded with quiet confidence.
"Let's head to the courtyard out back and just check the barrier."
"Yes. How do you intend to test it?"
Even if her healing was no help to the city's citizens, a quiet confidence showed through — the belief that her barriers would hold inside the tower. Fair enough. Without at least that much self-assurance, she never would have resolved to climb it herself.
Alice must have dumped her remaining work on another receptionist, because she came along as the group headed for the guild courtyard. Four rare beauties moving in a pack like that had a few of the men already hanging around the yard flexing their muscles for attention — not that any of them earned so much as a glance. Pretty funny, honestly.
"Can the barrier only be used on yourself?"
"No. I can protect a set range centered on me."
Her voice was clearer now than when she'd been explaining her circumstances, though still soft. She raised a short staff — a little shorter than a mage's, with a religious symbol mounted at the head instead of a mana crystal.
"O light, grant your protection."
The symbol flared, and a curtain of pure white light — different from a mage's shield — wrapped around the women. Even with Grace, Hanna, and Alice standing in a line at a distance from Irene, the barrier still had room to spare. In both intensity and breadth, it put Hanna's shield to shame.
"Hmm. This is something else…."
More precisely, it put every other priest's barrier I'd ever seen to shame as well. Her claim that they came out "excessive" hadn't been empty talk — of all the barriers I'd witnessed across countless commissions, none had shone this brilliantly or this beautifully.
I reached out toward that glowing empty air.
"Um… uh?"
Just as I had when testing Hanna's shield, I pressed my index finger in hard. The barrier didn't so much as twitch. Wondering if anything this solid could even be real, I put my whole hand into it the way you'd sink your fingers into clay, and squeezed.
"What the…?"
My fingers skidded with a nasty grinding scrape. Even with mana reinforcement, the barrier didn't take a single scratch. The grip I'd just used could have crushed an ordinary monster's skull like an apple — and still, nothing.
"Wow, it's incredibly solid."
"So this is a priestess's holy art. It's so pretty."
Inside the barrier I could see the women's faces, all of them marveling at the rippling light. I, on the other hand, was simply stunned. Irene's barrier didn't take a mark until I wrapped my fist in mana and hit it with everything I had.
With a sharp crack, the light barrier shattered under the mana-charged punch and scattered into nothing. Breaking the barrier didn't seem to harm the priestess herself; Irene only looked up at me with dazed, bewildered eyes. The ones making a fuss were Hanna and Grace.
"Kyaa! Wh-what was that?!"
"Ah — just needed to run a quick experiment. You're not hurt, are you?"
"No. Even if the barrier breaks, it doesn't cause me any harm."
I'd never seen the character Candidate Saint Irene before, but I had a pretty good idea what her passive was. Characters at 5-star and above seemed to start with one passive the way I had.
Yeah — that one. The barrier passive Steel Saint Johanna had carried. The absolute monster who had completely killed every DoT character — poison, burn, bleed, the lot — in Heroines Chronicle's arena. The most broken unit of the century.
Complete nullification of all damage below a fixed threshold.