Chapter 503: Yes, Yes, a Thousand Times YES!_Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

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

 I decided to tackle the angel in the room first - [Angel of Mercy]. It represented such arge 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 ss 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 regrly 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 ss and ascend. Out of the blue like this, as aplete surprise?

 The timing was super unfortunate.

 My Radiance ss 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! Sheined. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she was just as entitled to beingzy 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 ss. 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 ss.

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

 That left the five healing sses.

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

 [Healer of the Stygian Dragon, Rainbow Phoenix] was the expansion ss, 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 ssed 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, butcked any of the charming extras from the other sses.

 [The First Oathbound Healer] was the [Oathbound Healer] upgrade. It was like a mix of [Savior] and [The ine], 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 sses I would be unhappy taking?

 I rapidly arrived at the answer of no. I would be perfectly content with any of the offered sses. Even [Saintess of the Dawn] was an eptable 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 ss 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 sses 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 ss 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 ine] as the fastest leveling ss, but that was assuming a long measure of peace. [Arbiter] leveled from far more activities than [The ine] 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 sses.

 That was if shit hit the fan

 [Healer of the Stygian Dragon, Rainbow Phoenix] once again was bottom of the ranking in terms of leveling speed, and was slowly making its way to the do not consider pile. With enough power and mana at my fingertips, it didnt matter if I was eating a modest torge penalty healing Fenrir and other dinosaurs - I could simply brute force it. Not being able to heal nts hurt a little delicate part of my heart, the one that liked blooming flowers and lush fields to run through, but if it came down to one old man or a hundred million stalks of grass, Id be picking the man every time.

 Four sses left.

 [The Arbiter of Life and Death] was the one sticking out the most, and I figured Id give it the [Angel of Mercy] treatment, and ask myself if that was what I wanted to do, if that was what I wanted to be.

 The answer was a swift yes.

 Id spent most of my life working as a Ranger or a Sentinel. Yes, the fae had utterly fucked me over, but I was proud of myself, of my aplishments. Of what Id done as one, of what I could do. Of my training and abilities. I was fucking good at my job, and took deep pride in it.

 It was a home for me. Fertile ground for me to nt roots in. A rock throughout the ages that Id been able to tether myself on. Night was living proof that being a Sentinel could be a satisfying eternalmitment, out to help others and push back the forces that would destroy civilization and lives.

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 eptance of my role as a Sentinel, of the ss itself, didnt automatically mean I was going to take it though. Was it the best ss to act as a Sentinel as? If yes, was there more to me and my goals than simply being the best Sentinel possible?

 It went to the top of the pile, but just barely. It didnt knock away thepetition in a way that made it a clear winner, but it certainly didnt lose.

 Who was I? What was the beating heart of ine? Which ss reflected that the best?

 [The ine] was an obvious contender for that question, the ss literally named after me.

 Medicine was at my core, and at the core of my first ss slot. From lowly [Apprentice Control Healer] to [Light of Hope], going to [Constetion of the Healer] and [The Dawn Sentinel], I was all about fixing people up.

 Which one of my sses did that best?

 That wasnt an easy question to answer at all.[The ine], [Savior from the Stars], and [The First Oathbound Healer] all had different strengths and weaknesses in that respect, and the math was <emplicated. It hurt that I had nobody to double-check it, and Librarian was me - she couldnt do it any more than I could.

 [Oathbound] had the obvious aspect of [Oath] moving into a ss skill slot and gaining a healing cost reduction. Except [Savior] was getting [Celestial Spirit] instead of [Celestial Mastery], letting each point of mana and control gain more oomph, and it stacked on top of arger healing efficiency gain than [Oathbound] was getting. The two greater efficienciesbined might be more potent than the skill moving up for now. Future upgrades might change that.

 [The ine] had simr efficiency gains as [Oathbound], but could boast a higher leveling speed. With how potent each level was at a ck-quality ss, only a dozen levels more was a world of difference.

 Except then [Oathbound] countered that by having more bang for its buck per level thanks to the improved and capped [Oath], and

 The math was a fucking mess.

 In the end, [Oath] was simply too strong, the singr core of my entire life. Yes, [Savior] had better buffs to my healing on an individual skill basis, but three skills improving things was better than two.

 After the math came the application, and it became a goddess-damned mess again.[Savior] and [The ine] both had the best increase in range for the new and improved [Wheel of Sun and Moon], but [Oathbound] shot back hard with sheer numbers. 8% was dramatically more than 5%, and that was before [Sentinel''s Superiority] came into y.

 My head hurt.

 Slowly, piece by piece, possible questionable calction after possible questionable calction, a picture was made clear. [The First Oathbound Healer] was my strongest pure healer ss, thanks to the weight of my [Oath]. Which was no surprise.

 When it came to my utility skills, [Oathbound] lost out hard.[Sunrise] was buffed in both [ine] and [Savior] to a great degree, but not [Oathbound]. Simrly, those two sses got upgrades to [The Stars Never Fade], while [Oathbound] was left in the dust. [Arbiter] had an armor skill, and both it and [The ine] enjoyed decent upgrading to my shielding capabilities, although nothing as potent as [Saintess of the Dawn]... skill-wise. When it came to power behind the skills though, [Saintess of the Dawn] would lose out after a hundred levels or so.

 [The First Oathbound Healer] was the pure power ss when all the numbers were crunched, with decent peacetime experience if a narrow scope. I was forced to mentally readjust various leveling ranks - it leveled about as well as [Savior] did, with extra experience from the minor fame aspect.

 If healing was all I cared about, the ss was a winner. Now my big question was - did any of the utility from any of the other sses outweigh the power of [The First]?

 I was getting a no. Sure, there were lots of fun skills everywhere, but nothing that stood up and screamed YOU HAVE TO TAKE ME! While [The First Oathbound Healer] had its own few useful skills, the biggest win skill-wise was opening up a new General skill slot. Nothing super impressive, no fantastical magics that would change anything, but it gave me a lot of options on another axis. Some of my most powerful and useful skills were general skills, each and every one of them a cornerstone of how I lived my life. The School had helpfully given me a massive list of all of the best general skills and how to get them, and Id get to y what to take once again.

 [The ine] had fallen by the wayside, the various utility interesting but nothing standing out. It was also losing in the power department. The biggest thing it had going for it was I wanted to have a ss called [The ine]. Shame I couldnt just cut the cover off and move it onto another book.

 I circled back around to [Arbiter of Life and Death].

 I enjoyed being a Sentinel, I wanted to be a Sentinel, and I would keep being a Sentinel.

 What did that mean? Did I want an armor skill to stand boldly in the vanguard, telling our enemies to try their best? Or did I want to sit back, less obvious, less shy, but getting the job done better?

 At the same time, if I was alive, it was easier to keep everyone else alive. If I died, that would mean a lot of other people died. It was fairly basic resource allocation. If I failed one person, that was one life out of the equation. If I failed myself, that was ten thousand lives out of the equation. An armor skill helped with that but with how cheap my healing was going to be in some of the sses, was the loss of regeneration really worth it? Or would I simply be burning a skill slot and regeneration for no good reason?

 The math the math suggested my own body and healing was far better armor than a skill at this point. Which was weird, and super counterintuitive to my entire life and training.

 [Arbiter] felt like it was out, and I was down to two.

 [Savior From the Stars], with its expanded scope of abilities and utility? With its better application of healing to people?

 Or [The First Oathbound Healer], with its slightly improved power?

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

 The results were shocking.

 Id calcted percentages and rtive ratios in all my previous calctions, 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 misced a 0 or multiplied a number wrong.

 It couldnt be right.

 It undeniably was.

 The difference between the two sses 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 gettingpletely 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 ce was impossible?

 I did a simr calction for [The ine] and [The Arbiter of Life and Death], and the numbers told a simr story. [The ine] 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 ss, 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 apletely different reason.

 [The ine] 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 ss, 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 ine] 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 ssers - 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 thatrge 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 bezy.

 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.

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

 My carefullyid ns 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?

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