Gamer Girl Isekai

Ragni's voice was not quiet.

"You do not speak to me like that, ever." He growled. "You do not talk back to me, you do not disrespect me."

It occurred to Emma that he spent an awful lot of time telling her what she could and could not do. More, perhaps, than a man with the means to show her would.

"Alright, you've pushed your luck too far." Emma told him plainly. "I can blow people up with mind-beams, I can create shields, rip off limbs from afar, I can do things you haven't even seen and can't even imagine. That's why you're working with me, and that's why you're doing all this shitty posturing. It's not working though. I've seen through it, your bluff is being called. Stop now before it turns into more than that."

You won't like how that turns out. So help her, Emma almost added that last part out loud. But no. If she turned her response into an outright challenge, Ragni might just be dumb enough to meet it. That would be bad for him, and quite possibly worse for her.

She still remembered how Hagor had looked at her. Giving him an opportunity to strike was a death sentence.

Ragni looked as though he might do it anyway, for a second. Emma tensed, preparing herself for the stupidest decision she'd ever seen a person make. But it never came. His body's tension slowly leaked away, and was replaced by a certain forced laxness that Emma could only take as a good sign.

***

Aexilica was training. It was almost novel, to do so as she was. Because for the first time in a long time, she had proper sparring partners. They came at her fast, but with no killing intent, and took direction to help her push whichever skill she wanted in whichever direction she needed. Five or six at once, for the most part. But every now and then she'd find the schedules of some berserkers freed up to take a few of them.

Those sessions tended to leave her bruised enough that even her body took its sweet time in recovering, but she was always careful not to push herself too far.

It had been so long since Aexilica hadn't staked her life on a fight, that she'd actually forgotten…It was fun. She liked it. She loved it. The feeling of burning muscles, the constant test of her reflexes and alertness, the victories—the avoidance of defeats. Even when she lost, she enjoyed the bout itself. And when she won the triumph was like nectar on her tongue.

And these Sculds knew how to make good practice weapons, too. No improvised sticks for her, Aexilica was swinging blunted sparring irons and having them swung right back at her. It was as fine a simulation of true combat as she'd ever seen. The bruises were easily worth it.

"Fucking brown bitch."

The remark caught her off-guard, and it took Aexilica a moment to realise what was being said. Then she soured, instantly.

Brown.

She was, apparently, brown now. Or bronze, or copper, or any number of other mildly disparate colours. It wasn't novel. She'd been pale in Aethiq, and she was dark here. And in both places she was hated for not being similar enough to the rest. She shouldn't have been surprised that Scurlga of all lands were idiots about her mixed heritage, but somehow it always surprised her. Always felt strange that people didn't just…Know better.

Aexilica decided then that she'd had enough of sparring, for the day at least. Enough of other people. She moved onto the more physical side of things.

That actually did cheer her up, at least. The Sculds had a thousand things for that as well. Weighted swords, made of dense lead cast in iron, left even her superhuman musculature straining to swing with any great speed, and as that strain built and grew she could feel her body accommodating it.

"You might have quite a lot of growth ahead of you, you know." Larry cut in. Aexilica almost dropped one of her swords, so suddenly did his voice come. She'd forgotten he was there.

Another annoyance added to the rest, but of course she and Emma had both agreed to always keep him with at least one of them given how much interest certain parties had shown in him. And there was no way they were letting him into that damned party. So Aexilica was stuck tolerating him while she tried to work the equipment of Scurlga's training hall.

"Oh, ignoring me now?" He continued. "Very mature. I notice I didn't get much thanks for helping you rescue Emma, either. You're welcome for that too."

Aexilica tuned him out. Or tried to.

"I could give you a few hints about how your powers work, if you'd stop being such a bitch and quit ignoring me."

She stiffened, considered that. Then, reluctantly, paused her training and turned to him.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Larry grinned.

"It's crazy how much time we'd save if you all just—"

—"Powers, talk now." Aexilica cut him off. He paused, did his signature attempted-nod, and continued.

"Right, yeah, so, uh, basically…You're probably going to be able to make yourself much stronger through physical conditioning."

Aexilica turned back away, already tired of having even this much of her time wasted.

"No, wait." Larry pressed, "I phrased that weird but fucking hold on alright? Christ. I'm saying you have a higher ceiling for improvement than people with…Normal bodies, I guess, for want of a better term."

That captured her attention, and she turned back to him.

"Explain."

"Be nice to me." Larry countered.

Aexilica wondered if he could hear her teeth grinding, so hard was it happening.

"I will not kick you, if you explain now."

He seemed to weigh his options.

"Basically you heal fast, right?"

She nodded.

"The magic that does that also means that you heal better, and from more. Your body can do more to fix itself. The flip-side of that is your body can also do more to optimise itself. A normal person lifts heavy things a lot, they get maybe twice as strong if they really work at it. You could go a lot farther than that."

Despite herself, Aexilica had to admit to being…Interested. A lot farther than twice her own current strength sounded…Pretty damned good. Larry, apparently, wasn't done yet.

"You've probably already noticed minor differences even from just a day or two, right?"

In fact, she hadn't. He sighed.

"Nevermind then, you will. I'll bet the early spikes of progress come to you a lot faster, too. Give it a week and you'll already be seeing what I'm talking about."

Aexilica stared at him.

"How do you know so much, anyway?" She asked at last. "Where does this all come from?"

Larry looked at her as if she'd just asked the stupidest question he'd ever heard. As a woman who knew Emma, it was a mortifying thought.

"I'm a millennia-old cosmic spirit tasked with observing humanity and displacing them between worlds to…Help them settle into their new lives." He replied, doing an admirable job of hiding that he'd just been about to say more but opted not to. "I've seen every kind of magic there is, pretty much. Eventually you learn to just recognise patterns. The mystical doesn't have a lot of mystery left when it's all you work with."

She had to admit, the explanation seemed convincing if nothing else. But all good lies did. There was more being left unsaid here, Aexilica would bet her arm on it.

What was she saying? Millennia-old cosmic spirit was about as unconvincing as anything she'd ever heard. Aexilica had been seeing too many impossibilities of late, they were starting to erode her natural scepticism down. She'd have to be careful about that. Gullibility killed better than steel did.

"Do you have a moment?" Aexilica had experienced a lot of very traumatic and terrifying events, of late, and so when she heard the strange voice abruptly ringing out behind her, from mere feet away, her first response was to whirl around and raise her fists. It was a near thing, but she just barely kept herself from striking out into the face of Priest Guldin. Perhaps not a good thing, though.

"Fuck off." Aexilica found it hard to hear, suddenly, over the sound of her own heartbeat. All she could think of as she eyed this weedy, old rat fucker of a man was the feeling of straining against her shackles and watching his knife. Now he'd come back all smiles and tried to strike up a conversation?

How she wished she could kill him here and now.

Her retort just bounced off him, though. The only time Aexilica had ever seen the Priest shaken at all had been when Emma was making her offer to Ragni, and it seemed being cursed at by a complete stranger didn't quite capture that same intensity for him. He kept talking, all too confident that she would not, in fact, run him through here and now.

"There's no need to be hostile." The Priest smiled, like a strangled weasel. "I'm here to try and extend a hand of friendship, I think you'll agree that the two of us cooperating will be far better for us both than if we remain at odds, yes?"

Technically, he was correct. In that he was a powerful, influential magic user. And of course Aexilica's own killing power was something he'd beheld already. There was just one small issue. A minor thing, really more of a nitpick, but still she couldn't help but give it voice.

"You tried to kill me."

He smiled again, and somehow managed to make the most apologetic expression Aexilica had ever seen, heard about or imagined.

"I am sorry about that." He lied, like a snake, "But circumstances were different at the time. Would you truly have treated me in any other way?"

"Yes!" She snapped.

He arched an eyebrow.

"Come now, your people have sacrificed just as many Sculds as we have Aethiqans."

Aexilica was halfway through retorting to that when she faltered, actually thought about what he was saying, and decided that it wasn't nearly as easy to argue against as she would have preferred. The stupid bastard seemed to take that as some kind of victory on his own part, continuing just as smugly as before with his eyes practically shining by the word.

"I simply want to ask you a few questions." He assured her.

"About what?"

He took a moment before replying, seeming almost tense, almost hesitant.

"Your companion, Emma—"

—"Fuck off." Aexilica interrupted again, this time fully turning away from him as he tried to hurriedly spin her back around with words alone.

"Be reasonable," The Sculd growled, "I need to know what she's capable of if I'm to make the most of this alliance."

"We don't have an alliance you stupid fuck." Aexilica snapped. "We work with the man you're also forced to work with, because you were a sneaky bastard who betrayed your old leader for one reason or another. What makes you think I'd—"

Her tirade, justified and righteous though it was, was cut off as a newcomer approached them both. He wasn't anyone special, that much Aexilica could see as a glance. Young and weedy in a way the respected men of Vichin simply were not. At her guess, he was a messenger. Her guess proved correct.

"Aexilica, Priest Guldin." The young man nodded at them both with, surprisingly, roughly equal respect. It seemed being a useful killer earned Aexilica that much at least.

"What do you want?" Guldin snapped. In a shocking turn of events, he seemed not to be nearly so polite when speaking to people from whom he didn't need something. The messenger was undaunted of course, probably he was used to this sort of treatment from his moronic countrymen.

"Forgive the intrusion, I have a message from Earl Ragni. He wants to meet with both of you together."