My Parasite Skill System

Fight settled down.

The goblins were dead. They had been killed. And now, the slightly tense atmosphere loosened up a little.

Bumped was fooling around and he was called out on that by Leader. Slug was exhausted and said nothing. And Sorceress was just silent as usual, she wasn't so talkative.

Fight settled down, yes. The only person still active and this time was the priestess. She got to do her job. Rushing to Leader, she started applying healing spells–but finally, no.

She wouldn't do that and was stopped.

Leader had only been grazed by the goblins at the knees. The cut wasn't deep at all and didn't require saving by me.

Why would she even heal that? And it was the same with Bumped. He, too, had been slightly wounded. Would she go and heal him, too?

Surprisingly, Slug hadn't even been wounded in the slightest, by the way.

But anyway, the priestess did try to make use of her mana of light … before she was stopped right away. She was told 'no.'

Why shouldn't she heal her teammates? Because their wounds are nothing, or because of a different matter?

Leader explained:

"Hey, no, but no. Seriously, wait … and hear me out, all of you, guys. … Hm, and you hear me out, too, little man."

"Oh … me?" I finally said, treading my way towards these lively people.

"Ahem, so that's what we're doing–"

The leader of the team explained and explained.

The priestess shouldn't heal them because … they needed to save her mana. This was as simple as that. It wasn't because the wounds weren't needing saving or anything.

They just needed to save her mana. And as far as Leader was concerned, their wounds weren't all that bad at all, to him. He knew the priestess worried much about her comrades–but even then, let her not heal them.

Saving her mana was the point.

The priestess, Clumsy Babe, protested: why should she save it up? So far, she hadn't even done that once. In all their outings, to this day, she didn't have to save her mana.

So, simply, why? She wanted to perform her healing spells. It was her job. She wanted it done.

The girl's eagerness to heal was unfathomable. And her comrades agreed to that. They were totally with her. Aside from Bumped who didn't voice any concern of any sort about them not being healed, for now, that was how it was.

But Leader had reasons, and that's when his plan was fully exposed to them and me.

On today's day, first off, the goblins were acting weird and weak. Usually, in these deeper parts of the forest we were in right now, they weren't all so shy and absent.

This was weird.

And to contrast that even further, as they all knew, even in their hunting grounds, there were barely any monsters at all.

Leader, exposing these facts everyone saw clearly already, was being honest saying he didn't know what to think of that … but maybe it wasn't so important.

And maybe all it indicated for sure was that they could go and last deeper and longer into this forest than usual.

Facts were just there and that was it.

Bringing us further in his explanations: Clumsy Babe wouldn't heal anyone when it wasn't necessary since we'd stay longer in the forest. They'd be hunting for longer than usual.

Today was the occasion to progress further into the woods and map more of this forest's surface area (that was a task people did, too).

Since they'd stay longer in the forest, they'd be needing more of their priestess healing spells, it seemed to him.

So that was his plan. Staying longer hunting, basically. They needed to use their energy well if they wanted to last long.

"What do you say, guys?" he reiterated. "Are we up to this … going out of our way in order to make further progress … or are we not?"

Of course, though, he would let them the majority decide as usual.

Their ways were funny.

I thought they should only let the most competent, efficient, and intelligent of them take on such a decision; but they trusted in the majority. A fool's thing, if you ask me.

The majority ought to be stupid and not competent, doesn't it?

Anyway, after a good three minutes of discussion and proposition, they all were on board with this.

Doing as Leader said was the occasion to make more money than usual, basically. But, likewise, experience and progress were things they couldn't neglect, in the first place.

By doing that, too, they'd gain credit at the Guild, probably. And needless to say, that was enticing to them, too.

The Party understood pretty much well the terms of Leader's proposition. All agreed. As I was given a voice in this affair of theirs, I needed to choose, too.

I, who was so silent up and observing should take a part in their decision, said, Leader.

Meekly taking a step onward, towards them, I didn't really know what to say–so I just stated I trusted Leader, too, just like the others.

It made everyone laugh. They said in spite of the seriousness I'd put on my face when uttering that … I was cute. Clumsy and Leader said that.

I didn't like it, but I said nothing about it.

And this was that.

What surprised me, on the other hand, though, was how absolutely no one of them dared make a comment about me … and the ability I had to see my surroundings with [Mana Perception].

I did mention it since they didn't at all. With a slight crisp on virtually everyone's face (or maybe I imagined it?) they said nothing of it.

And while I thought, that maybe, this would be playing a big role, too, in the leader's decision of going out of their way, confidently, they really said nothing about it.

Anyway, maybe they didn't care about it. I didn't care about it. Because, that's right, who cared about that?

Just as per Leader's instructions, we would go back to exploring, now. We had no time to waste. Already an hour had passed since we arrived. The Party hardly spent more than three hours here, usually.

Now, this time would be extended to roughly five hours, if they could handle it. This was a big leap for them. But they could do it. With confidence. And with faith.

And so they had to go.

Bumped took care of the looting, as usual. The lacking-manner human wasn't grossed out by searching and digging through the monsters' bodies.

Was that part of adventuring, then? I observed him.. It was interesting me.