"I could offer you a food I'm willing to bet no one in this world has ever tasted before!"
This wasn't really a part of some grand plan or anything, nor a strategy designed to score me some brownie points.
It was the most genuine attempt I could make at proving my words that I could think off. And it just so happened to be all about food.
Either way, whether it was by luck, fate or a total coincidence, mere mention of food became a fuel for the sparks of curiosity in the sword-saintess eyes, leading her to sigh and then shake her head.
"Fine," she finally spoke, her guard lowering a tiny little bit further. Still, rather than magically conjuring hot water out of the thin air, she looked around instead. "While I don't really understand how a bit of boiled water could help you, I sense no falsehood in your words. Still," the saintess then shook her head and looked around again, this time more to indicate what she meant rather than to take the stock of her surroundings.
"To boil water here would be a death sentence. Still, if you really want my help," the girl's face, already halfway through all the ice that formerly covered it, has frozen all over again, the curiosity in her eyes replaced with the cold, hard pragmatism. "If you want my help, you will have to try to stick around until I'm done with the job."
The saintess sighed before finally lowering her sword and then even going as far as to sheathe it.
"If you want to stick around, fine, but I can't afford to take my time escorting you out of the forest."
Hearing all of this, I nodded my head first before closing my eyes and slowly bringing my hand up, like some kind of a student in a primary school requesting the teacher to let him speak.
"I really don't want to be obnoxious, entitled or simply annoying," I raised my face and with a perfectly still look in my eyes, I stared directly into the saintess deep, blue eyes. "But I'm powerless. Even if my system didn't just die on me, I would still be stuck with an FFF-rank system in a place where I clearly don't belong."
Even though my voice made it clear I was raising an issue, the saintess had enough kindness in herself to let me speak.
"Judging from the power you used to defeat that monster, there's one thing I can tell with absolute confidence," I spoke out, taking a step towards the saintess, or to be more precise - stepping right into the carved-out trail filled with upturned earth and chipped pieces of wood left in the wake of her approach.
"Any attempt at following you will be no less lethal to me than trying to defeat that monster from before with my bare fists," I've stated the obvious that the Saintess somehow failed to notice. "You telling me to follow you is no different from a death sentence. And if it's certain death one way and only a likely death the other way?"
I shook my head again, internally giving up on all the hopes as I readied myself to commit my fate to… well, my destiny.
I had nothing to convince this woman to put her quest aside.
The food in my backpack?
Yeah, as if something that simple, even if delicious, could sway someone of SSS-rank on their quest!
And so, rather than only further straining my dignity and begging even though it was obvious doing so would bring no real benefit, I decided I might as well try to leave this forest myself.
Either way, I had better chances of blindly crossing it without any unfortunate encounters with local predators than I would have trying to survive within the wake of the saintess movements!
'If I'm going to die anyway, I can at least try my dumb luck,' I thought, trying to find solace in how, at the very least, I would remain in charge of my own fate up until the very end, regardless of what that fate would be.
'That seems to be the sad, pragmatic truth of life. People read books because they are always about those who've won. In real life, though, for every hero's victory, there's a thousand unmentioned side-characters that live, suffer and die without anyone taking notice.'
With my thoughts taking on this grim feel, I blinked my eyes a few times before locking my sights on the saintess face.
"And if that's the case…" Right as I started speaking, another memory threathened to unveil the very foundations of this fake confidence I tried to instill in myself.
'My dumb luck? Ha! Did you already forget how lady luck treated you in this world thus far?'
A little devil part of me screamed out in glee from the bottom of my soul.
That left me with no other choice but to conviniently ignore it to prevent a total mental collapse on my part.
"If following you is a certain death and trying to leave this jungle is impropable…" I shook my head again, my face calming down as I now stared at the saintess with a somewhat empty look in my eyes. "Then impropable escape still offers better odds than certain death. As such," I leaned my head slightly to the side, my eyes taking on a slightly deeper tone as the unpleasant and terribly useless part of my soul started to surface.
"Would you be so kind as to point me in the right direction? Just so that once I try to cross this jungle, I will at least move in the direction of some path or town, rather than just going deeper and deeper inside this deadly place."