Vessel's Blessing on This Wonderful World

Lake of Alligator

The day after Verdia appeared, your party was in the guild hall, watching Aqua drink herself into debt. It was quite entertaining watching as she panicked when given her bill.

Which then led to her begging Kazuma to give her money, and since the party didn't have much to begin with, led to you taking a quest about purifying a lake.

A rather long series of unfortunate events, sadly, but at least your party is doing something besides eating, drinking, or menial labour.

But... Kazuma was dragging Aqua along in a carriage, and you was being used as the horse, even though you had the lowest strength stat, all because you said you had a charm called Unbreakable Strength, and they immediately thought it made you physically stronger.

They were right, but it was very mean of them to ride the cage you were dragging around for them!

Luckily, you are the master of charades, and could easily imply your anger via wildly shaking your limbs and a sharpie.

"Y/n, hurry up, we don't have all day!"

Briefly stopping for the sole reason of staring at Kazuma condescendingly, the cage rattled to a stop.

"What?"

You point to the sun, your wrist, and Aqua in under a few seconds.

"So what if it will take Aqua all day?"

You sadly started dragging the cage along, as Aqua was loudly singing alongside Megumin and Darkness.

'I want to die again, just to ask for a voice, that's all!'

After a few more hours of breaking your back to drag along the cart, you finally arrived at the river.

Kazuma was slowly pushing the cage out to shore, while you were floating around the lake, somehow the shell on your head would float by itself, so you didn't have to try to hard to float around.

After a while of floating around, you heard Aqua yelling a little, "Kazuma, there's something in the water!"

You could barely hear Kazuma yelling back, "It's just Y/n, chill out."

"Y/n doesn't have scales!"

Oh, the Alligators found Aqua... That's nice, they were actually trying to bounce you around, like seals. It was quite fun.

"Kazuma, the cage is making sounds a cage shouldn't be making!" Aqua was now crying, which meant that whatever the Alligators were doing  wasn't family friendly pg-13.

When you looked over, you saw the Alligators were biting the cage and trying to break through it and Aqua chanting purify repeatedly.

You might as well help, it could get you... EXP.

Right, you actually needed that to upgrade your skills.

Abyss Shriek would not give itself to you.

So you briefly stared at your Alligator friends, and sighed as hard as you could. 'Im sorry, little one.'

You jumped into the air and started slamming your nail into the Alligators. It was a massacre, and they couldn't stop you.

An Alligator here, another there, they all met the business end of your nail.

By the time you finished, you probably leveled up at least once, maybe twice. Everyone would soon hear of the Great Alligator Massacre.

You pulled out your Adventurer ID and saw a few things.

Charm Upgrade- 5 points
Nail Upgrade- 5 points
Abyss Shriek- 15 points
Shade Soul- 10 points
Descending Dark- 10 points
Shade Cloak- 20 points
Void Heart- 1 point
Shade Lord- 50 points, Abyss Shriek, Shade Soul, Shade Cloak, Descending Dark, and Void Heart

You were level 7, and had around 35 points.

That means around five points per level... Which meant...

You could purchase Shade Cloak and Abyss Shriek! That means you have a way to avoid damage and the strongest ability. But... Shade Lord seemed ominous, but that was the name of the Absolute Radiance ending, you were pretty sure? Which means that would probably your best ability, but it required fifty points and all other ability upgrades. That would round out to about... 106 points total, that would take about 22 levels in total, excluding Nail and Charm Upgrades.

Lord forgive me, but this amount of points will require a crusade, but how would you convince Aqua to allow you to go on a literal crusade? You could promise her Alcohol? Spread her name? Something a god would want surely?

At some point, the Cage was getting attacked again... Which meant more Alligators, which meant more kills for the XP grind.

'I guess the grind is life.'

Timeskip brought to you by Chibi Y/n pogoing off Kazuma's head

It was finally over, it took all day, but we could pay off Aqua's debt...

If it weren't for the Exp you obtained from that you would have probably fallen asleep by the time your party got a quarter of the way through.

"I'm in a cage... Off to be sold!"

Oh, and let's not forget that Aqua is kind of traumatized.

...Your reward consisted of getting to drag Aqua back to the town.