The Developer Reborn As Archmage

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 paddle 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.

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."

"Hm," Darya tapped her lower lip. "In that case, can we hide the ship on a small island and take a ferry to Raidola?"

Fominel clicked his tongue. "I won't leave the ship in these waters. We'll be lucky if the thieves leave us a paddle. Maybe you and Seris could handle this while I stay behind, or Seris can stay behind and I—"

Seris raised her hand with a determined look on her face. "I'll go with the princess!" she said eagerly. “As opposed to staying behind and facing thieves on my own, no thanks to you, Fom!”

Darya almost spurted tea out of her nose. Fominel laughed, patting Seris on the shoulder playfully.

The conversation went from planning to more casual banter between them, and eventually, they were sipping their cups in silence.

Darya went back to watch the storm through the window. She had almost gotten used to the movement and the deafening cracks of thunder.

A flash of purple light filled the entire living room for a split second.

It had come from somewhere on the opposite side, through windows that opened to the weather deck.

Darya turned around, eyes wide in surprise. She couldn't even tell if she imagined the light or not. Fominel and Seris were similarly alarmed, with deep frowns on their faces.

"Did something happen?" Darya asked, taking the last sip of her tea.

"A lightning bolt?" Seris asked, looking curiously at Fominel.

A loud crack reverberated just in time, as if to confirm it. The frown on Fominel's face remained the same. "Could be," he muttered absent-mindedly.

"You don't think that's—" Seris asked, but stopped.

"I was going to check things anyway," He said, placing his cup on the table.

"Put on a raincoat, please!" Seris said, gesturing at the hangers near the door that opened up to the weather deck. Fominel nodded as he headed that way.

"What was that?" Darya asked Seris curiously. They seemed to be worried about something.

"Nothing to worry about," Seris said with a reassuring smile.

Sounds like something to worry about.

Fominel put on a raincoat and opened the door to the weather deck with a spare lantern in hand. A small slice of the storm blew in through the gap of the door as he hurried through.

"Is he going to be alright out there?" Darya asked as his lantern light disappeared into the heavy rain and darkness. The ship was swaying as if it were a cot for a giant baby. A slippery weather deck was the last place that she wanted to be in these conditions.

"Fom won't be able to sleep until he knows every knot is tied correctly," Seris said, grabbing the empty cups to wash in a small sink nearby.

"He loves the ship that much?"

Seris laughed.

"It's well beyond love. Fom was checking the shipyards in Karossa months before you even arranged the money for this ship. He was there for everything, selecting the right sort of oakwood and the right shades of paint. It's almost like you footed the bill for his most expensive hobby!"

"I dare say this is worth every penny," Darya said, still unable to get over how good everything looked.

"What's a penny? This thing cost a hundred and sixty thousand gold before you stopped telling us the real numbers!" Seris gestured at the surrounding air as if the money was still floating around like particles.

Worth every bit of gold, too. What good is money if you don't spend it? A princess should definitely have way more than a few hundred thousand gold.

She had learned this lesson on Earth by having money and doing nothing with it. In hindsight, she should've bought that fishing boat and sailed into the sunset just to feel better about being alive. She was lucky that she ended up with a princess yacht at the start of her second life.

"We should get some sleep if we're leaving in the morning," Seris said, closing all the curtains and turning off the oil lanterns.

They retreated to the bedroom. Seris kept the door slightly open to know if Fominel passed by at the end of his checks.

“We can sleep once we see him go to his room,” she said, loosening her hair and untying all the threads of her dress.

Darya leaned on a bedpost, watching Seris awkwardly. She was about to sleep with the pretty elf. She wondered exactly how close they could be now that Seris had gotten naked in the bathtub without a second thought.

Maybe they were even closer in sleep. The thought made her body tingle all over again.

She didn't get to be tingly for too long.

A series of loud cracks reverberated across the ship. It was perhaps the loudest sound that she had ever experienced, because she felt them on her diaphragm just as much as she heard them through her ears.

She found herself flat on the ground with no clue when her knees gave out.

The ship was shaking instead of lulling on waves in the aftermath, vibrating in place as if the world itself was coming apart underneath.

Darya stumbled onto her feet, quickly grabbing her Warblade staff as Seris stood upright from the other side of the bed where she had fallen.

"What was that?!" Darya yelled, but Seris didn't answer. Her eyes were wide open, and she didn't even seem to hear anything.

Fominel’s outside on the weather deck!

Darya ran out of the bedroom in a hurry. She passed the living room at a run and bolted out the door into the storm.

The paddle boat had slipped from its hold and was lying on its side, attached only with one rope as it scraped loudly across the wooden ground with each sway of the ship.

"Fominel!" Darya yelled, her voice immediately lost in the howling storm winds.

Between the mist and the crashing waves, it was too hard to see anything. Now would've been a good time to be wearing that Dovarist jewelry set that could grant her darkvision. Unfortunately, they were still in Seris's bag.

Darya waited for a lightning bolt, using her Warblade staff to stand upright.

Things were burning near the steam chimney, flames quickly getting snuffed out by the rain. The water was sizzling into steam, vapor twirling away in the winds.

It smelled exactly like what she imagined wet wood burning would smell like. Something had hit the ship, and Fominel was nowhere to be seen. Darya's heart raced faster.

Half the weather deck exposed to the island direction was bathed in a purple glow. Darya caught glimpses of the source of this light as she struggled to move forward. Having run out straight from the bedroom, she was barefoot and soaked from head to toe.

She reached the chimney and looked at the ruined wood below her feet. It looked as if something lashed the ship a hundred different times, leaving scars everywhere.

"Fominel! Can you hear me!"

She couldn't yell louder than the storm.

Seris caught up with her, slipping and sliding as she came running barefoot. Her face was frozen in shock. She grabbed Darya by the shoulder, holding her tightly.

"What is that light?" Darya yelled in her ear.

"It's coming from the island," she said, looking ahead.

A purple column of purple light loomed in the distance above the treetops in the storm-battered island. Everything was smeared through the thick mist, but the column was bright enough to cut through it. Rows of tall coconut trees swayed wildly in the foreground.

"Th-that's Sarka!" Seris said, squeezing Darya's shoulder. "He's warped back!"

"And Fominel?!" Darya yelled.