The Developer Reborn As Archmage

Seris created the best possible diversion that Darya could’ve asked for. They waited a few more minutes until the ferry was halfway towards the next island. The ambient light from the last one faded into the mist, and it was hard to see even four feet ahead of oneself in the stormy darkness.

Darya was just as blind as everyone else because she wasn’t wearing her Dovarist jewelry with her fisherman’s wife disguise.

After nodding for each other’s approval, Seris pointed her wand underneath her hand towards an unoccupied corner of the ground level. It was near the closed gates of the raft-like part where it had been firmly locked with thick chains.

A shimmering bolt of white-green mana flashed from the tip of her wand and spiraled its way towards the gate in a wide arc. It was bright enough to flash everything green. The crack was deafeningly loud.

Darya watched as everyone crouched where they were, expecting the thunder to drop. The Chain that held the gate slipped, deteriorated, and fell to a smoking heap in the stunned silence.

Woah. Didn’t know she had attack spells like that! Why wasn’t she using these against Sarka?

Darya didn’t have time to linger. The yells and panicked cries began when people realized the gate was partially open. Huge bursts of seawater splashed in through the crack. It was going to be utter chaos very soon.

She picked a gap between flashes of lightning and leapt off the railing in the darkness.

She had to time her next steps just right.

[Vainfall: Terminate]

She landed on the roof of the carriage, sending splashes of prediction dots in every direction. She let herself fall to her knees with the same momentum, placed her hands on either side, and slammed her forehead directly into the roof as fast as she could.

It took all her willpower to overcome her survival instinct, but she slammed her head against the wood hard enough for her upper body to phase through.

Opening her eyes, she got a quick glimpse at the layout of things inside. It was just as she feared. The carriage had no seats. It was like a truck bed, filled with various packages and parcels tightly secured with rope.

She had been worried about her head phasing into something on the inside. That wasn’t the case. It was safe to drop in because there was a gap between the roof and the goods inside.

It was too late to reverse her initial decision, though. She had intended to perform this like splashing her face really fast into water. She pulled herself out as fast as she could, phasing out of the roof again. The monochrome world was catching up to the prediction dots when she was fully out.

[Vainfall: Terminate]

The second one was chained with the first one, with only a slight delay between. The world flickered around the corners of her vision. She had already seen these visual artifacts before. It took several chained Terminate commands to enter the void.

This time, she leapt an inch off the roof and jerked her body with the most sudden downward movement that she could. It was enough to phase straight through, leaving ripples of prediction dots behind.

She used her hands to position and break her fall to the floor of the carriage, but it did not work. There was too much happening. She saw her hands slowly slam against the packages. Her forehead was headed straight into an edge. She did her best to lean back to delay it.

The monochrome world faded, and Darya fell into the carriage like a crash dummy. She didn’t even know which limbs hit what, but she certainly felt the pain.

“Uff!” She groaned, pushing herself off a cylindrical package that had knocked all the wind out of her lungs. Her head slammed against the edge that she wanted to avoid, and she saw stars. “Ow, ow ow!” she winced, curling with her head in her hands.

It took a while for her to gather herself again. The carriage was sealed so tightly she couldn’t hear anything from the outside.

“Let’s see what we got here,” she mumbled, getting on her feet.

“Permission to speak?!” Sarka asked in a quiet voice.

“Shh!” Darya hushed him, bringing the ring right next to her ear. “Speak as quietly as possible!”

“Wh-what sort of magic did you use, princess! fair to say I’ve never felt anything like this before! Did you even use mana? I didn’t feel anything!”

Darya scoffed. Sarka was asking too many questions. He didn’t know about her resurrection yet. Hell, he didn’t even know about his corpse killing her once. He would’ve apologized to no end if that were the case. He was still reeling from the fact that his corpse was roaming outside, beating young women.

“I have my methods. This is a discussion for later!” she dismissed it. “Tell me, can you sense anything here?”

“I can sense multiple mana signatures, in fact. There are some valuable trinkets in here somewhere.”

“Good,” Darya said, looking at the parcels stacked everywhere. “You can still hear the outside?”

“Yes, not well, but enough. They are hurriedly fixing a metal chain. Everyone is panicked about a thunderbolt.”

Darya looked around for some sort of tool to help unpack things. There was an unlit lantern hanging from the roof near the back door. She took it off its hook and quietly shattered it under her heel. Wrapping a handkerchief around a sharp piece of glass, she started slashing the neatly packaged parcels with it.

The first box she opened had a set of green-grey coins inside an orange fluid. “Whatever this item is, let go of it!” Sarka said urgently. “It has malicious mana color!”

Cursed coins. Well, whatever. Let’s see other things.

She put the open box on the floor and kicked it away. Some of the packages on the right seemed to be the same size. They looked like bricks wrapped in brown paper.

Is that Cocaine or Heroin?

She slashed one of the bricks with the glass shard. It revealed a thin board box that smelled good. She unwrapped it fully and slid the box open.

“Aha!” Darya giggled, staring at shiny cylinders of gold coins. The brick weighed at least half a kilogram. “Ohho ho ho!” she sang, her heart all fluttery from the inside.

“What is is princess?!” Sarka asked curiously.

“Gold coins!” she said sheepishly. She hadn’t brought anything to carry a lot. She wasn’t sure if weight was a good idea for phasing out of the carriage, either. Still, she shoved six boxes' worth of gold coins wherever she could.

“I wonder whose money it is!” Sarka said.

“Who cares. RCMF is protecting it. It’s blood money anyway. We can use it to do some good.”

Money was money. Stealing from these people made her feel like robinhood for the first time in her life. She felt a lot better about giving money to charities on Earth. This was a more direct way.

Each cylinder had twenty-five coins. Each box contained six cylinders. For all she did, she hadn’t stolen enough. The money in this carriage could pay to renovate that decrepit village colony 981.

Alas, I have to plan a better heist if I want to pocket a few million.

She took another box to make the stolen amount greater than a thousand. That many gold coins sounded a lot better to say out loud than nine hundred.

“Hm, what else! What else!” she muttered as she excitedly poked a differently shaped box. “You don’t sense any weapons or Manacers in here, do you?” she asked Sarka as she slashed across it.

“I can’t be certain. Some of the mana signatures are from things that could indeed be useful!”

“Let’s play hot or cold.” Darya looked around. She had to find all the useful things quickly.

“What’s that?” Sarka asked eagerly.

Quickly explaining to him what to do, she started going through all the parcels one by one. Sarka told her which ones contained mana signatures, and soon enough, she had found the strongest ones.

The first and most obvious one was a giant box that was half as tall as she was. Inside it was a glass box with some living thing submerged in a red fluid that glowed in the dark. Spiky gray fingers slammed against the thick glass when she peered in, and she didn’t waste any more time on it.

Some sort of foul creature. Who knows what they are?

She used this glass box as her backlit table to unbox other parcels on.

The second package was as long as a forearm, about three inches in height. The box inside the packaging was covered with soft red velvet. It looked expensive just by feel alone. She slid the box open and let out a gasp when she saw what lay inside.

[Inspect]

Weapon: The Ritual Dagger Of Sorma

Rarity: Relic

Grade: 47

ATK: 1,155

Status Effects: Bleeding, Terror

Designates target(s) of whose blood stains the Sun God Crystal as living sacrifices for the Great Mother [Eternal Demoness].

“Holy crap, there it is!” she said excitedly as she checked the intricate hilt. It was decorated with distorted men and women swirling around the whole handle. They were intertwining their limbs like a woven basket.

The dagger of doom and hell. Probably worth a lot!.

The guard of the dagger was made of arms and hands flaring out like a blooming flower. She could tell the blade was going to surprise her based on the short scabbard. It looked twisted along the axis.

Pulling it out revealed a mirror-polished blade, both sharp edges in a single turn spiral. The middle was hollowed out, embedding a strange orange shard flawlessly with the metal.

“This is definitely illegal to carry,” Darya muttered jokingly as she examined the twist of the sharp edge. The orange crystal pulsed when she clenched her fist around the handle.

The unknown creature in the red tank went wild, slamming its hand and unidentifiable parts of its body against the glass.

“Whoa, calm down, buddy,” Darya said, loosening her grip. “Sarka, what do you think about this one? Is it cursed or not?”

“My verdict is the signature is neutral. What is this item, princess?”

“Wow. I thought this for sure was going to be cursed just based on how it looks. It’s a creepy, expensive-looking knife called the Ritual Dagger of Sorma. Ring a bell?”

“From Sor-sorma!” he barely managed to hush his voice. “That’s an old artifact of an ancient civilization. They were known for blood rituals and sacrifices to—!”

“Well, I’ll take this thing anyway. It’s the first weapon we found. Seems to work with my mana.”

“It is inadvisable to use something without knowing how exactly it works!”

“That’s good advice indeed,” Darya said as she shoved the dagger box down her cleavage and stuffed it against the belt from the inside.

“Where are we?”

“We are two stops away from Galtea, princess!” Sarka said.

“Hm. Now, how exactly should I get out?” Darya whispered, looking around for ideas.