The Developer Reborn As Archmage

They arrived at the beach after passing through the forest into the raging storm that had gotten ten times worse. Flying back to the ship was a battle against the wind. Fominel wrapped her with his cape, but the wet fabric didn’t help much with the cold. At some point during the flight, she passed out in Fominel’s arms. The next time she was jolted awake, they were landing on the weather deck.

She heard him mutter something about going back for Seris after dragging her halfway into the living room and quickly igniting the hearth. Darya lay in a growing puddle of water all alone until she passed out again. The next time she woke up, Seris was huddling next to her for warmth, and Fominel was putting more logs into the hearth.

Things were a lot better the next time she woke up. She was warm and dry for the first time in a while. Her dress and bandages were still damp, but the cold storm was a bad dream lying next to the orange warmth of the hearth.

Seris and Fominel were already up, already stripped down to their undergarments for more warmth. Her own dress smelled earthy because it was thoroughly drenched in mud. All the dirt and debris had dried straight on her skin. She felt disgusted enough to pull herself out of her dress.

She pushed the dress off her like an insect coming out of the cocoon before realizing she was completely nude. For the second time, she was wearing no undergarments. This was a nightdress. She had fought Sarka wearing a nightdress.

What the hell was I thinking?

Darya curled herself into a ball, feeling a lot better with the warmth radiating on her exposed skin. Seris tossed a towel on her before she embarrassed herself even further with an old man in the same room.

“We all need a bath, but you need it most!” She said, messing with Darya’s mud-caked hair strands. Her fingers came out brown and dirty.

“Drink this,” Fominel said, pouring a scalding cup of tea that he’d been preparing all along.

It had to be cooled for a bit longer, but it warmed her from the inside.

“I have to look for my sword,” Fominel said, sitting down next to her with his cup.

“No way you’re going out in this storm, Fom!” Seris said, blowing on her cup. “Just wait an hour or two, it’ll be safer to fly when the storm lifts.”

Darya cleared her throat, joining the conversation. “She’s right, Fom, wait for the weather to clear. You shouldn’t go alone either.”

Fominel grunted. “I’ll wait, princess,” he said. “I think it’s time for Seris to clean you up.”

Her next bath was an unglamorous wash with few buckets of hot water that Fominel had prepared for them. Darya was too comfortable to tweak out about the naked elf this time. She fell asleep in the tub as Seris cleaned everything. Her hands rubbed places that would’ve made Darya blush a bright shade of red if she didn’t pass out with a satisfied sigh.

She snapped awake when something poked her nostril. It was Seris shoving her pinky inside to clean them. Darya blew her itching nostrils, and blobs of mud burst out of them.

“You have mud in all sorts of places!” Seris exclaimed, watching Darya rub her nose.

“Well, I got stomped face-first into the dirt,” Darya said after washing her face. The water had turned lukewarm and brown. She didn’t want to tell Seris to cycle it because she knew they had no more hot water buckets to spare. She wasn’t ready for the freezing ocean water yet.

The fight with Sarka was a nightmare. Suddenly, she remembered the ring.

“Seris! Where is my dress! The ring’s in the pocket!” She said.

They had salvaged it out of a severed digit of Sarka’s amputated hand. She couldn’t trust Seris or Fominel to keep it anywhere on them since they were spooked by it. She wrapped it in a handkerchief and shoved it in her dress. She had forgotten all about it until now.

“It’s still got Dreagan stuff on it!” Seris said, pointing at a bucket where her muddied, dirty dress had been shoved in to soak. The ring was laid on the handkerchief next to the bucket.

Sarka had stopped talking abruptly when the ring was removed from her finger. It had something to do with mana flow. Soulstone needed to be part of a living host to be active. It had been working off the residue mana in the severed Dreagan flesh.

“Can you clean it up later?” Darya asked.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” Seris said. “You shouldn’t wear it. We don’t know if it’s cursed!”

“You promise me you won’t get rid of it?” Darya asked more sternly.

“Well, I can’t toss it into the waves and lie to you like I wanted to do…” Seris said with a pout.

“You planned that far already?!” Darya exclaimed. It was as she feared. She couldn’t trust these two with a ring they were afraid of. “What changed your mind?”

“Well, take a good look at it. That thing’s worth a lot!” Seris said excitedly.

[Inspect]

Item: The Ninth Soulstone Ring

Category: Jewelry

Weight: 0.03 lbs

Worth: 28,550 Gold

Effect: None

Stores the full or partial soul of [self] into the soulstone.

The value had to be super inflated. In the VRMMO, an item that cost this much would’ve been a joke. Anything with a gameplay function priced at this value would’ve broken the game economy. It wouldn’t even have been worth the effort to implement it, considering the target crowd being the top 1% of the whales.

Storing a soul in a stone had no MMO gameplay behind it in the first place.

This was a real relic of Vainfall.

Seris had told her this ship cost more than one hundred and sixty thousand in gold. This ring had a number, the ninth, which probably determined its rarity.

“I nearly fainted when I first saw it!” Seris said eagerly. “We could sell it! Also, you said Sarka might help us locate Emil and Rossarie. Fom thinks so as well.”

“You changed your mind real quick, huh?” Darya poked Seris on the cheek.

Seris giggled sheepishly. Darya wanted to tell her not to disobey her orders, but she wasn’t mad enough to be serious. She had already forgiven the pretty elf because she was pretty.

She didn’t want to tell her that the ring couldn’t be sold with Sarka in it. The actual value was much higher than twenty-eight thousand, with a missing archmage supreme inside. The value may as well be unlimited.

Back in their bedroom, Seris dressed her up in a soft yellow nightdress with a ribbon on the chest.

“You need to stay in bed, princess,” Seris said, tightening the ribbon and patting Darya’s cheek as if she were pampering a five-year-old.

“Yes, I think I’m done for the day,” Darya yawned as she sat down at the edge of the bed.

If she had any energy left, she would’ve gone to check the damage on her precious ship. She didn’t want to do anything now.

A stab of pain rippled from her side as she hunched lazily. She touched her side with a wince.

“Your ribs need another spell. I ran out of mana before I could fully heal you,” Seris said.

“Can you fix it before I fall asleep?” Darya asked. She was surely going to roll around in her sleep, and she knew it wasn’t going to be a good time.

“I need an hour or two to recover enough mana even with our mana wisp,” Seris said with a sigh.

Darya narrowed her eyes. A wisp had been mentioned out of nowhere. She had worked on those flying spirit creatures in version six. Wisps were one type of familiars that players could ally with. “Wait, we have a mana wisp somewhere?!”

“Of course, you forgot,” Seris scoffed. “You found one a few months back. It’s very young. Needs a lot of sleep and likes dark places.”

“A baby wisp?!” Darya asked excitedly. “Where is it?! I want to see it!”

Wisps were always cute, but a baby wisp had to be cuter. She needed to see what spirit creatures would look like in RLP. In the VRMMO, they were squeaky cartoonish things with big holes for eyes and tiny mouths.

“It’s down in the third deck somewhere. I’ll go find it soon.”

“Let’s go now!” Darya raised herself. She was willing to gather all her remaining energy for it. Seeing a wisp had to be worth the effort.

“No, you sleep now!” Seris pushed her back down, getting into bed next to her.

Darya sank into the soft mattress with Seris’s arm pinning her down.

They lay there on the warm sheets listening to the muffled storm and the creaking ship. This had been the longest day of her life. Despite her insistence on seeing the wisp, she knew she didn’t want to leave the softness of this princess's bed after her body relaxed into it.

Something poked her shoulder as she adjusted herself on the pillow. It was the book that she tucked there. She grabbed it as Seris watched her lazily.

“Don’t mess with that now,” Seris mumbled, reaching for it. “You’ve already lost enough sleep over it.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Darya handed it over and gestured at the cabinet. “I really wanted that translated, huh?” She asked for the sake of conversation, stifling a yawn.

“You more than Emil for sure,” Seris said, wrapping her arms around Darya after banishing the book from the bed.

“Emil?” Darya rolled into Seris’s arms, grabbing her like an elf-shaped pillow.

“He’s the only one that can understand those letters,” Seris said, letting Darya rest her face on her chest. “Oh, wait, he’s gone! He better not be dead, that idiot.”

Darya had heard something she never expected. Seris had just told her Emil, the missing member, could read English letters in that mystery book.

Wait, what the hell is he then? Is he from Earth as well?!

“Wait! Emil can read that thing?!” Darya asked, leaning back to look at Seris’s face.

She didn’t even bother opening her eyes. “Yeah? He’s a complete idiot otherwise, but somehow he knows those letters.”

“How do I know him?”

“Oh, what a question, princess!” Seris laughed, patting Darya’s back. “He’s your first friend. You met when you were toddlers. This was years before I came to Karossa.”

“Wait, I met Emil even before Fom?” Darya exclaimed. She remembered Fominel saying he met her when she was six, which wasn’t a toddler.

“Yes! Warlord Volfarro is a good friend of Lord Altazark. Emil is his youngest son. He’s about two years younger than you.”

For some reason, Darya had imagined Emil Volfarro as a forty-year-old Italian man with a big sword. That image got shattered to pieces, replaced by a child with a knife.

Sounds to me like finding this boy should be my priority number one. Well, that’s for tomorrow.

For now, she had a beautiful elf to use as a body pillow and a baby wisp to find when she wakes up. All things considered, her second life was good enough. She buried her face in Seris’s chest and closed her eyes.