Chapter 6 – Strange Light From Nowhere

Darya blinked at the painting.

For a moment there, she was sure she recognized the woman in this painting.

“Seris, who is this here?” she asked, turning the painting towards the elf who was still drawing the complicated healing spell.

“Oh, the things you’ve forgotten, princess. That’s the Reverend Mother of Light. The last prophetess of Dovar. There’s a grand temple for her in Karossa.”

“Is that where I got this book?”

“Must be, although I didn’t see it. You just had it with you one day,” Seris said with a shrug. “Put that away now, this spell is ready!”

Darya lay back down, placing the book near the pillow.

Seris drew a line down Darya’s chest with the glowing tip of the wand. The room glowed a pleasant green with the mana vapor emanating from the stone. It all gathered into a pattern of concentric circles that rippled inwards. Seris held the wand with her mouth and started manipulating mana with her hands with elegant motions.

The tingles that Darya was feeling all along were nothing compared to what she felt when her body absorbed this massive amount of mana. She felt vapor trails seep in through every pore, spreading like water on cotton through her flesh and wrapping around her bones. She closed her eyes, drifting away.

“All done, princess!” Seris announced at some point, snapping Darya awake. The luminous mana vapor had thinned to a faint tint.

Darya blinked lazily at her, stifling a yawn. She felt too good to move.

“I need to get going,” Seris said, tucking the wand into the harness hung on a nearby chair. “Fom’s signaling from the shore. Feels like it’s going to start raining soon. We have to pack if we want to leave in the morning.”

“I’ll come too,” Darya said, stretching lazily.

“You can rest—”

“I feel rested enough.” She didn’t want to feel like a freeloader with two servants.

She started sorting through her wardrobes. Most of her dresses were brown, and they had similar bikini-like necklines to the dress that she was wearing.

Is this my uniform or something?

She put on a dress and started checking herself out in a tall mirror while Seris was getting ready in a hurry. She had caught glimpses of herself in the bathroom mirrors, but she had been too distracted to pay attention.

She felt strange seeing herself up close.

It was as if a stranger was staring at her soul from a world inside the mirror. The odd feeling dissipated quickly. She was new to this body, but she still belonged in it somehow.

She had to get used to her new looks.

Darya Altazark had vibrant brown hair, perfect honey-colored skin, and bright orange irises. Her eyelashes were naturally thicker, and her sharp eyebrows framed her eyes perfectly. Her face was oval with a slightly flat chin. She had the most perfect nose shape, and the exact right lip combination for the shape of her face.

The rest of her body wasn’t as exceptional, but it was nothing to dismiss either. She was built thin like Seris, but she had more curves in the right places. The overall verdict was that she wasn’t too far off from the average fashion model.

Her outfit had been tailor-made to make her look attractive, and she felt rather exposed with the open neckline and the half-open back. This wasn’t the sort of dress that she would’ve dared to wear unless on vacation.

Great. I’m on indefinite vacation, and I look hot as hell now. How do I get used to that?

She had no idea how to deal with it, because she had never felt about herself that way.

“I’m ready!” Seris announced, tying the loose strings of her new dress, which was more silky than the last. Darya caught herself before she got distracted by elf charms yet again.

There was a task at hand. Pack. Ship. Fominel.

They took the boat again. The waves were more turbulent than they were in the evening, and they had to use a lantern to see anything. They were about fifty meters away from where they should’ve been by the time they got to the shore.

The campsite looked a lot smaller than before. As it turned out, Fominel had gotten all the work done while Darya and Seris were buttering each other up on the ship.

First, he had washed himself clean. Next, he had collapsed two tents and packaged everything. He had caught eleven fish, and he was grilling them over hot embers, waiting for them.

“It’s going to start raining in an hour or so. Eat up. We have to haul all of this back to the ship before the storm starts,” he said, carving soft white pieces off a grilled fish into a plate with a fork.

“You work so fast! All we did was bath,” Darya said, sitting next to the fire as he handed her the plate he had been preparing for her.

“We’ll never match Fom’s speed in getting things done, princess. I gave up on that a long time ago,” Seris said, sitting next to her with her fish on a stick.

“How did you even catch this many fish?!” Darya asked, looking around.

Fominel laughed, gesturing at his manablade hilts. “Hunting is not a problem for me, princess,” he said rather proudly.

Darya suddenly realized how useful a silently expanding energy blade really was. No normal creature had the reaction speed to avoid them. The blue one was sharp enough to slice a Dreagan from the inside. Fominel could make sashimi out of great white sharks if he wanted to.

Dear god, he’s the most useful party member by far! He may as well be the main character.

After this quick dinner of grilled fish, they started hauling all the packages back to the ship. Darya and Seris helped Fominel load the boat. It took five trips to get the entire campsite back on the ship.

The first drops of rain fell when they were lifting the boat into its hold. The storm followed as they finished hauling all the packages to the storeroom from the weather deck.

They gathered back in the living room afterwards. Seris was drying herself next to the fireplace, and Fominel was preparing three cups of tea with hot water from a large vacuum flask.

Darya stood next to a window, watching the stormy sea between gigantic lightning bolts that cracked the sky. She found stormy seas mesmerizing to look at, but she was more scared than relieved looking at this one. It was more ferocious than anything she had ever seen before.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The Desert Rose was being tossed in every direction as gigantic black waves crashed into the wavebreakers of the lagoon. They would’ve already crashed into the reef if they weren’t anchored. If broken waves hit this hard, Darya didn’t want to imagine what sailing out there would’ve been like.

“Now would be a good time to decide where we go next, princess,” Fominel said, handing her a steaming cup of tea.

“Where can we find a Seer the fastest?” she asked, joining them at the dining table.

“The nearest would be Raidola Isles,” Seris said, sipping slowly from her cup. “But that place is full of RCMF thugs. We won’t be able to get anywhere near the port without causing a scene.”

Darya was vaguely familiar with the abbreviation, but she couldn’t remember what it stood for. “RCMF?” she asked.

“Red Crescent Maritime Forces,” Fominel said. “Think of them like government pirates wearing uniforms. That’s basically what they are.”

Darya remembered them right away. She had worked on a complicated path-finding algorithm for some enemy type in this archipelago. Maritime Forces in these equatorial waters were supposed to be a tyrannical faction.

She hadn’t really touched this area in version six, and she had only played underground in her archdemon solo run. The last time she had seen this area was when she playtested it several versions before sixth, back when most assets were placeholders.

In the VRMMO, the factions were just a backdrop and another group for the player to engage in combat. Things had to be far more complicated in RLP. Factions would be real people, real politics, and real motivations. They would be people with salaries and families to feed, not NPCs.

Shouldn’t get into unnecessary situations where people could end up dead. I’m not here to be a mass murderer.

“Any other options besides these RCMF-infested islands? Can’t we find a Seer in smaller fishing islands to the south?”

Seris looked at her, bewildered. “You forgot everything, but you remember islands in the south?!”

Darya had made a mistake. It sounded weird after claiming not to remember anything.

“I just saw them on the map,” Darya said, nudging her head towards the wall behind her, where a giant map of Vainfall was framed with dark wood. She hadn’t actually bothered to look at it beyond the overall shape that she remembered by heart.

“We could certainly try our luck there, but it won’t be as easy as Raidola Isles,” Fominel said. Seers are part of the guilds. The easiest way to get one is to pay for one, and anyone worth anything can afford rent in the cities.”