“With fairies allying with the dark ones . . .” Bordeaux sighed. “We will not win this war.”
“Not with our current strategies,” Tempeste said. “We need to find a new advantage.”
“Captain!” yelled an officer as they moved aside from the main telescope.
Bordeaux and Tempeste stood with the young officer, their hearts racing when they saw the frightened look on his face. “What is it?” Tempeste asked.
“Another ship is inbound,” said the officer.
“Great,” Tempeste said.
Bordeaux looked through the telescope, focusing on what the young elf saw. There was indeed another ship entering the battle theater, one he did not recognize. It looked as if it had descended from the skies above, far above. “What in Asteria’s name is that?”
“Let me see,” Tempeste said, and he offered her the telescope.
She looked, gasped, and pulled away. Tempeste knew something he did not. “Star-dwellers.”
Bordeaux raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure, Tempeste?”
“Yes.”
“The star-dwellers rarely visit our world. Why are they here now?”
“Asteria must have sent them to help us,” Tempeste said. “Like they did a few weeks ago.”
Bordeaux grunted. “I hardly call babysitting a fairy princess help.”
Only it was. Ever since the Lumière Kingdom took in that fairy princess, the reality corruption had gifted Lumière with more soldiers with combat classes and a landscape that provided top-tier gathering and mining points. Star-dwellers brought the fae princess to them, and her presence changed the lands further and helped turn the tide of the war.
This was the advantage they needed.
“Follow them,” Bordeaux ordered as he pointed at the star-dweller ship. “Set a course for those star-dwellers. Have the rest of the fleet fallback to Lumière.”
“Just us alone?” Tempeste asked.
“If we travel together,” Bordeaux said, “it will leave a hole in our defenses.”
She folded her arms. “And if the enemies find us?”
Bordeaux used his telescope to examine the green forested land below. “There,” he said, as he pointed to the surface. “Land us in the clearing ahead. The trees should keep us hidden for the time being. We shall reach the star-dwellers on foot.”
The crew carried out his request. The Sirocco flew away from the fleet and toward the region they suspected the star-dwellers were traveling to. The star-dweller ship was moving really fast, too. If he did not know any better, he would say the star-dweller ship was crashing, not landing. Impossible, their machina rivals our technology.
“Tempeste,” Bordeaux said to her as he walked aside from the railing. “If the dark elves have allied with fae from another realm, then we are finished.”
Bordeaux’s will to end the war allowed him to conjure a blank Quest screen. With it, he created a quest and set the rewards.
Recruit the Star-Dwellers
Objective: Find where the star-dweller ship landed, speak with its crew, and ask them to help save the Lumière Kingdom from the dark elves.
Issued by: Bordeaux
Reward: 1000 Experience Points
Issue quest? Yes/No
He gave it to Tempeste.
“Find us a champion among the star-dwellers who will save us from the dark ones,” Bordeaux said. “We cannot win this war without their aid.”
Tempeste accepted his quest. “I shall, captain.”
Chapter One
Guy looked at the Crafting screen, eying the ingredients he was about to use.
Breakfast Platter
Cooking level required: 5
Loaf of Bread x1
Sliced Bacon x5
Egg x12
Flour x2
Buttermilk x1
Sugar x1
Vanilla x1
Thermal Crystal x1
Everything was in place.
“Behold,” Guy said as he pushed the “Confirm” button on the Crafting screen. He held the thermal crystal and tapped each of the ingredients on the table, “the breakfast of champions.”
He had an audience too, Xanthe and Henrietta. They sat at the dining table inside the Seraphim’s galley, eagerly watching. Xanthe leaned closer as Guy’s cooking synthesis began. He placed the crafting crystal on the table, and it morphed into what he sought to craft. It surprised Guy that he kept his eyes away from Xanthe’s cleavage. Her breasts looked as if they were about to pop out from her belly dancer’s bedlah.
The synthesis had finished, and the crystal transformed the selected ingredients into a breakfast platter. Plates of bacon, eggs, toast, and pancakes filled the Seraphim’s galley with a scrumptious scent, like an early morning kitchen. The only thing missing was fresh coffee, though Guy could synth that too.
His cooking skill rose too, level 6 now. Xanthe and Henrietta were awed at the breakfast plates and stared with their eyes opened wide.
“Dig in, girls,” Guy said to the duo. “My treat to you.”
“Incredible.” Henrietta took a generous serving of bacon, eggs, toast, and pancakes, sat at her side of the table, and pulled out a fork and knife. “Thank you, Guy.”
“I am impressed,” Xanthe said as she picked up the last pancakes, smothered them with whip cream, then poured syrup as dark as her tanned skin over them. “It would seem I picked the right ship that fateful day.”
Guy settled for what they left behind–bacon, toast, and eggs. He made them into an egg sandwich, bit in, and indulged on the smooth, over easy egg as its yolk broke in his mouth. Silence came as the trio ate. Henrietta smiled at Guy from across the table. He hadn’t seen Henrietta that happy since he had given her that PDA full of digital books to read. Her smile distracted him from noticing that Xanthe pulled her chair beside him. The feathers of her left raven wing brushed his right arm. Xanthe’s perfume was something else, too.
“Like who?”
That was Arn.
Guy spun to the galley’s entrance, watching as Arn entered and walked toward the three seated at the table. Arn still wore that fox headdress, too. Guy wondered if Arn was a star-druid, or a land-druid who got sick of living on a planet.
“What?” Guy asked Arn.
“Who’s the champion?”
“It’s a saying,” Guy said and gestured at what remained of the breakfast platter. “Eat up, should be enough left for you.”
Arn stopped ahead of the table, looked at Guy, looked at Xanthe, then down at her cleavage, then at Henrietta. Arn laughed and pointed his finger at Guy.
“Oh, I get it now!” Arn yelled. “You’re building a harem, aren’t you?!”
Guy dropped his sandwich. “What?!”
“And you’re feeding them the best food this galley has ever had,” Arn said.
“It’s not a harem!” Guy said as he shook his head.
Arn snorted. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that, bud.”
Rachael arrived in the galley next. She was wearing her nurse’s outfit, and a nurse’s cap on top of her long cherry redhead hair, a white hat with a red cross on it. It was Rachael’s idea of reminding everyone she was not only the trained medical professional aboard, but was also the only person with a healing class leveled. That and the Sirocco had seen no action since leaving the fae homeworld, so there was no point in wearing their armor.
“Oh, there you are, Guy,” Rachael said as she approached the table. “Was looking for you . . .”
Rachael glanced at how close Xanthe sat to Guy, and the big grin Henrietta was giving Guy. Rachael did the opposite of Henrietta and frowned at him. Sweat poured down Guy’s face.
“Uh,” he said while rubbing the back of his head. “I made breakfast!”
“For them . . .” Rachael said, her voice carrying a slightly bitter tone. “You never made me any food.”
“There’s extra,” Guy offered.
“And you offered it to me,” Arn said and swiped the last of the breakfast pla
tter. The star-druid put the plate to his nose, shut his eyes in bliss as he took in the scent of it. “Man, this shit looks good.” Arn grabbed a piece of bacon and brought it to his opened mouth. He stopped and pulled it away to ask. “Hold on, is this afflicted?”
Guy nodded. “Yeah, but—”
“Then no.” Arn handed the plate to Rachael. “Have at it. I don’t wanna end up like you freaks.”
Rachael looked at the plate’s contents, wincing. “It’s bacon and eggs . . .” she said and sighed. “I’m a fae. We can’t eat that.”
She can eat pancakes, though, and I know that was part of the platter. “There are pancakes,” Guy said and pointed at the platter tray. An empty platter tray. “Oh fuck.”
Guy and Rachael shifted their gaze to Xanthe as she finished downing the last pancake, then licked her lush lips seductively. “Oh, I am sorry,” Xanthe said. “Was I supposed to save you some?” Xanthe finished with a cheeky grin directed at Rachael, then added. “Guy, can you prepare this for me every morning?”
Guy fucked up. He had to change the topic.
“Hey now, eating crafted food doesn’t always change people,” he said. “Arn, you tried my food before and never got afflicted.”
“Not taking any chances,” Arn said and reached for a box of cereal idling on top of the fridge. Arn found a bowl in the cabinet and grabbed a jug of milk from the refrigerator.
“Eventually,” Guy said to him. “You’re going to run out of that stuff, and you’ll have to eat my cooking.”
Arn poured himself a bowl of cereal. “Eventually, we’ll get to go back home.”
“What are you afraid of?” Guy asked.
“Uh, not being normal?” Arn poured the milk into his bowl, walked to the fridge, and put the jug back. “Always being a target of sentinels and the empire?” He went for a spoon and settled for regular food.
“You already are by being on this ship,” Guy said.
“And if it gets captured, they’ll let me off the hook,” Arn said and ate while standing. “The rest of you, though? They’ll kill you and turn you all into those weird soul crystals. So, I’m going to do the smart thing and stay normal.”
Since their adventure started, a strange force reshaped the cosmos, adding RPG rules to everything. The Autumnfall Empire, Faeheim’s most powerful nation, also changed and began a slaughter of the fae people who had classes. If you suffered permadeath as a class, your body morphed into a soul crystal, and the empire wanted those crystals for some devious plot. Guy and his friends hadn’t gotten around to figuring out what it was. They just knew that it involved princess Averyl Autumnfall and the sword that transformed Guy into the Paladin class, Asteria’s Sword.
Xanthe tugged on Guy’s arm, pulling him closer to her. “Hey,” she whispered to him.
“Sup?”
“Could you please make me dinner tonight as well?”
He saw Rachael sigh from the corner of his eye. Whenever Guy and Xanthe were in the same room, Rachael got pissed. He wondered if it had to do with the hand job Xanthe gave him a while back. Or was it because it looked like Guy had built a harem, despite doing everything in his power to not do that as a promise to Rachael. She firmly believed that harems were sexist.
“Oh, by the way, Ulysses wants to talk to you,” Arn said with a mouthful of cereal. “He’s on the bridge.”
Guy left everyone in the galley, walked through the Seraphim’s corridors, and past the sliding doors that let him onto the bridge. The star-elf Ulysses sat alone piloting the starship as the bridge’s computer equipment shone their glow upon their faces. Guy eyed the windshield as he stepped behind Ulysses who was seated at the controls, whistling at the blue planet that took up much of the sight. The planet was Alfheimr, the homeworld of the elves.
It took the Seraphim a while to get to Alfheimr. They bumped into the odd sentinel patrol during their journey, forcing them to flee back into hyperspace to hide. What was supposed to be a week or two trip turned into a month-long one. It forced the Seraphim to consume more fuel and food than expected, which resulted in frequent pit stops at various planets inhabited by land-dwellers to resupply.
The affliction had hit half those planets, giving their population classes, mutating animals into monsters, and restructuring the landscape to have dungeons and other RPG craziness. Guy expected Alfheimr to be the same.
He stood behind Ulysses, seated at the pilot controls. “You wanted to chat?”
“Yeah,” Ulysses said, his attentive eyes focused on the controls ahead. “Where do we land?”
“No idea, never been here,” Guy said. “The quest doesn’t say where.”
Guy waved his hand, bringing up his in-progress quest list, found and selected the one that asked them to come.
The Planet of the Elves
Objective: Travel to the elven homeworld and investigate the second Averyl.
Issued by: White Dragon
Reward: 2000 Experience Points
It offered no other clues to go by.
After leaving Faeheim, they discovered they were two Princess Averyls, one aboard the Seraphim and another who traveled to Alfheimr. Guy waved the screen away, and looked ahead to see the clouds of Alfheimr through the windshield. They had dove into the planet’s gravity well and were approaching the surface. Somewhere on Alfheimr laid the answer to their question and the aim of the quest.
“Any sign of the Gabriel?” Guy asked. “That was the ship that brought one of the Averyls here, right?”
“None that I can see, mon ami,” Ulysses said, shaking his head no. “We’ll have to ask the locals if they saw the Gabriel and when it left.”
“Was going to say, we should hit the port the Gabriel did . . . but, wait, what’s that?”
Guy pointed at flashes of light brightening the fluffy clouds as they flew past. It looked like lightning, though the clouds weren’t thick enough to make a storm. There was something else moving in the skies.
“Looks like an airship battle . . . but.” Ulysses squinted his eyes at what Guy pointed at. “Well, that’s strange.”
“That’s a lot of lightning flashing,” Guy said.
“I think those are Mages,” Ulysses said. “Those airships are using unconventional tactics. Let’s take a closer look.”
Guy sat at the vacant navigation station and activated its computer screens. The Seraphim angled toward the cluster of airships engaged in a battle below the clouds. It looked like a violent thunderstorm erupted around the battling airships. Ulysses was right. There were Mages on the top deck of one airship, casting lightning spell after lightning spell—
The bridge’s ceiling lights and computer screens flickered on and off.
Outside, three stray lightning bolts collided with the Seraphim.
Not a big deal. It’ll take more than a lightning strike to take us down.
And then the power went out, surrounding Guy and Ulysses in darkness. The only light source came from the flashes of lightning seen through the windshield.
“What the fuck?” Ulysses checked his computer, barely operational with the power out. “We’re crashing.”
Not that he needed to explain that. The airship battle view moved up and out of sight as the Seraphim began an uncontrolled nosedive to the surface.
“Why are we crashing?” Guy said with concern in his voice.
“Got hit by a big ass spell.”
“Lightning shouldn’t do this.”
“Unless some Mage cast it.”
Partial power returned, giving Ulysses minimal control over the crashing Seraphim. However, he couldn’t power the engines, only angle the ship’s nose to prevent the fall from being a straight nosedive to the ocean below. Zuran entered the bridge, walking past the sliding doors that struggled to open correctly. The dark-skinned and muscular fae stood behind, placing one hand on the back of Guy’s chair, and the other on Ulysses’s.
“Yo, I think we are crashing,” Zuran said.
“Yeah, we’ve noticed,�
� Ulysses said while grabbing the flight stick hard with both hands. “Hang on, everyone!”
Henrietta joined Zuran, her panicking gaze shifting to Guy and Ulysses. “Oh my,” Henrietta said. “I think something is wrong.”
“Yep,” Guy said. “We noticed.”
Rachael arrived on the bridge and stood behind Guy’s seat. “Are we crashing?”
Ulysses snorted. “Yes . . .” And kept the ship’s nose up to control their crash.
Arn joined them on the bridge. “Are we?—”
“Yes!” Guy cut in.
“Well, let me take my post and fix it,” Arn said.
Kam entered, stopped, and stepped past those standing ahead. “Hey, lads, hate to break this to ya, but I think—”
“Yes, we’re crashing, no I don’t know why!” Ulysses yelled.
“Magic bolt hit us,” Guy said calmly. “That’s why.”
“Since when did elves have the power to bring down a starship?” Rachael asked.
“I don’t know,” Ulysses said with a groan. “But tell you what, if we don’t die instantly after crashing, I’ll make a mental note to ask them . . .”
“I’ve been dead before,” Guy said. “It isn’t so bad so long as you have LP and a Cleric ready to cast Resurrection.”
Arn put up his hand. “Yeah, but I’m normal. I can’t come back from death.”
Guy broke out with laughter and spun the chair around to face Arn. “Sounds like someone should have taken the chance to eat my food!—”
“Hey, mon ami,” Ulysses cut in. “Can we save the banter until after we crash?”
The Seraphim plunged from the clouds and into the blue ocean, splashing down with enough force to release a massive tidal wave. When the rippling waves subsided, the ship from the cosmos arose from the water, its buoyancy allowing it to float as if it were a boat.
The sudden and unexpected crash had flung everyone to the floor, except for Guy and Ulysses. They ended up over the forward dashboard. Everyone slowly got to their feet and groaned. Guy felt little pain. His high defense and HP prevented that. Speaking of HP.
Mirror Princess: A LitRPG Space Fantasy (Sword of Asteria Book 2) Page 2