The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame [Isekai - LitRPG]

It took them almost two weeks to find Gann's group wandering around in the tunnels. The cave in of Mount Herdo resulted in a number of tunnels collapsing and they had to dig the group out once the sniffers finally found them.

The well-provisioned players were traumatized, but they were alive.

Shela helped transport them back to the village where she turned them over to the healers. Exhaustion couldn't be healed away. They needed a warm bed and some uninterrupted sleep.

Once that was done, Shela went to check on Rayna.

She had been placed in one of the disused cottages on the edge of the village, since she didn't really need tending. Evolution wasn't something they could really help with; that was why it was so dangerous.

Every Lerian succeeded or failed on their own.

Shela had never gone through a plateau. The thing about being only part Lerian was that you never quite knew when your heritage would rear its ugly head. Her mother had gone through her first plateau at a hundred years old and it had taken her five years to get through it.

Many halflings never woke from the first evolution.

Shela shook her head. Rayna would be fine. Not only was she not a halfling—at least, Elder Lona didn't think so—but she also had a substantial amount of control, considering how close she had been to evolving.

Shela had heard horror stories of the temper tantrums Lerian children threw when they got close to their first plateau. They were known to level villages if their parents didn't take the proper precautions.

Rayna had certainly lost her temper a few times, but she kept her emotions in check when it mattered. She would find that a lot easier once she woke up.

Shela entered the dimly lit cottage, frowning at the stacks of books and clothing that covered every surface. She would have to tidy the place up a little. Rayna shouldn't have to wake up in a glorified storage room.

She went over to the fireplace and used the poker to get it going again, then she turned to the bed.

Shela froze.

The bed was empty.

Had someone kidnapped Rayna? Or had she just been moved to a new cottage.

Shela ran over, finding a folded piece of paper and several vials of green liquid on the bed.

She unfolded the note, but to her chagrin, it was written in a language she didn't know. She should have invested in a translation spell by now, but they were so expensive nowadays, since practically everyone wanted one.

Shela threw the green vials in her Soul Realm and sprinted across the village to where Jelin was helping some of the younger children with their studies.

He stood up when he saw Shela's expression. "What's wrong?"

"Rayna disappeared. I found a note on her bed, but I can't read it." Shela shoved the piece of paper at Jelin. He had managed to pick up a translation spell in his last Ascension.

"I can try," Jelin said, taking the note. "But my spell doesn't cover everything."

Shela's nose itched as he activated the spell. One of the children nearby grimaced and rubbed his ears.

Jelin nodded. "It's legible, though her handwriting is atrocious."

"What does it say?" Shela asked impatiently.

Jelin cleared his throat and read the note aloud.

Sorry for just leaving without saying goodbye. I was supposed to meet a friend of mine tonight and I'm already late. If you need to contact me again, you can talk to Lord or Lady Emery, or you can look in with Abbott Quar at the Temple of Eldar. I will leave some contact information with him when I can.

Thank you for your help,

Rayna.

P.S. I don't have any money, so I'm leaving a few items as thanks. They're Azutin Mucus. It's highly acidic, so don't touch it. They're supposed to be expensive.

Shela grimaced. She did not want Azutin Mucus in her Soul Realm. At least the vials were standard System vials. They wouldn't break easily, but Shela had a lot of stuff in there that could be easily ruined.

"I get the feeling that she doesn't know how long she was asleep," Jelin said.

Shela nodded. "And she didn't bother asking anyone before she left. Can you send someone to check for her at the temple? I can't go back to Ellis until I'm sure Myre has forgotten about me."

"I will," Jelin said, handing her back the note. "In the meantime, go tell Elder Lona what happened. He'll probably want to search the mountain, but I'm not sure we'll be able to find her with her hair dark. Unless she absorbs some Essence, we're just going to have to rely on numbers."

Shela headed straight for the Elder's cottage at the center of the village. The mountain was too cold to have a newly evolved initial running around without even a proper cloak. If she got lost, she was likely to freeze to death before help could come.

* * *

Rayna loved the map's tracking feature.

The white line that stretched along the ground to lead Rayna to the hub was rimmed with blue lines to contrast from the stark white of the snow.

She left a note for Shela on the bed she had woken up in. Rayna appreciated the help, but the sun was starting to go down and she was going to be late to meet with Corban.

She marked the village on the map so she could properly thank them later. If she worked up the courage to go back there, that is. One of the reasons she had left without saying goodbye in the first place was the fact that she could see some of their name tags through the window of the cottage they had put her in.

There were Lerians in that village.

They didn't look like Rayna at all, in fact, their appearances were so varied that Rayna couldn't find any common thread between them besides a race name.

They were living so close to Ellis, and yet no one seemed to know what a Lerian was. Something was off about that. Were they somehow related to Lord Myre? Or was this an entirely different secret that she had stumbled upon?

Either way, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Rayna was a little achy from her ordeal, but other than that, she felt fine; nothing that couldn't be cured with a hot bath and a long nap.

Rayna's stomach growled and she pulled out one of the palatable bowls of pickleberry stew to eat while she walked.

The sight and smell of food intensified her hunger, and she inhaled three bowls before she couldn't stomach the taste anymore. She pulled out several of her System rations and ate five before she even noticed the texture.

Rayna stopped with the sixth ration halfway to her mouth. What was she doing?

Her stomach rebelled and she nearly emptied the hastily added contents into the snow, but somehow she managed to keep them down. Despite the speed-eating induced nausea, she was still hungry.

Rayna forced herself to eat slower, nibbling on the side of a ration that somehow didn't taste unbearable.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

They say that hunger is the best sauce.

By the time she reached the hub, she had eaten three more rations and another bowl of pickleberry stew.

The first thing she noted was the shiny barrier that surrounded the hub. Had something attacked them? The area around the hub was empty, but there were several sets of footprints that overlapped each other and obscured their shape.

Rayna cautiously entered the hub.

The main lobby was packed with people. Players came and went via both the stairs and the portal. The busy atmosphere felt almost like a convention, with players chatting boisterously around tables and a few card games being played on a mat in the back of the lobby.

Rayna's presence brought an end to all conversation in the room. All eyes turned to her, a mixture of surprise and concern sprinkled throughout the sea of faces.

Jade, the asian woman that had greeted Corban and Rayna in the tent city, approached Rayna cautiously.

"May I ask what business you have with the Chosen?" she asked, apparently not recognizing Rayna.

Rayna wasn't too surprised by that, since their only meeting had been brief, but the tense atmosphere didn't bode well for human-emberian relations.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine: Corban Wells? You led us to our tents a couple days ago." Rayna pulled out a vial of Azutin Mucus. "I was the one that traded the Mucus for a week of lodging."

Come to think of it, Rayna hadn't been able to use most of that time anyway. She wouldn't bother asking for a refund, but it felt like a bit of a waste. Maybe she could get some coins for it now that System coins weren't useless anymore.

"Rayna?" Corban asked incredulously, appearing at the edge of the crowd. "Is that you?"

Rayna grinned. "You know any other folks with glowing hair?" She grabbed a handful of her hair before she remembered that it wasn't glowing anymore. "Oh, well, with white hair, I guess. Honestly, I think I like this better than the blue. Maybe I can force it to glow a specific color…" she mused.

Rayna had no idea how she would go about doing that, but it sounded like a fun idea.

Corban shook his head. "Umm… have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"No, why?" There hadn't been any mirrors in the cottage. "Do I have something on my face?"

She touched her face, wiping her hand against her cheek, but she didn't feel anything.

Corban cleared his throat. "She's with me, everyone. You can go back to what you were doing."

Noise slowly returned to the lobby.

Corban turned to Jade. "Get Stela, Avery and Harry and meet me upstairs in Rayna's room."

Jade nodded and politely navigated her way through the crowd.

"Come on," Corban said. "I need to find you a mirror."

* * *

"I have horns?!" Rayna traced her fingers over the blue protrusions growing backward from her scalp. They were similar to Amon's horns, but they pointed upward instead of downward at the tip.

"Congratulations on having passed the first plateau," Amon said, something unreadable in his voice.

"Why do I look older?" Rayna demanded. "And since you seem to know what this is why do I have horns?"

Not that she was complaining about looking older. She still didn't look her age, but she would take late teens over the pre-teen look any day.

"That can sometimes happen," Amon said. "Though it's pretty rare. It usually means that you woke up sooner than you should have. Your body used the excess Essence in your system in the only way it could without direction. Hence, the rapid aging."

"So, all of this is normal for Lerians?" Corban asked, looking as confused as Rayna.

He sat on a three person sofa with Jade, an empty seat between them. Three people who had yet to be introduced stood behind the couch, quietly observing the odd discussion.

The room that Amon had given Rayna was massive, it made even the posh room that she had stayed in at Lord Emery's mansion look like a hovel. Curtains draped over the king sized bed that had more pillows than Rayna had owned in her twenty-seven years of life. A desk, wardrobe and small sitting area with a dining table filled a good portion of the rest of the space in the bedroom.

Connected to the bedroom by a lockable door was a separate sitting room—the one that they were in at the moment—with a fireplace, a sofa and a small reading nook. Through a door at the back of the room was a kitchen, though Rayna hadn't had a chance to explore it yet.

When she asked Amon about the cost, worried that this would bankrupt her, Amon discreetly assured her that she didn't have to pay and that he would explain when there were less people around.

"This is a normal part of every Lerian's progression," Amon said. "Albeit a dangerous one. The System has minimized the possibility of failure, but it cannot make the process entirely safe."

Rayna shook her head. "You know what, I don't even want to know. Corban, fill me in on what happened while I was gone."

Corban nodded. "Well, first of all, you've been gone for two weeks…"

"Two weeks?" Rayna turned to Amon. "I thought you said I didn't sleep long enough."

"'Long enough' is relative," Amon said. "I slept for three months during my first plateau. I have heard of others that awoke in a few hours. It depends on your lineage and how much Essence your body is able to absorb."

"This just keeps getting better and better," Rayna muttered.

"Anyway," Corban continued. "We have about seven hundred Chosen living in the two hubs. Jade, Stela, Avery and Harry are the Tutorial Leaders for their groups."

Rayna frowned. "Four Tutorial Leaders and only seven hundred players?"

"It's not what you're thinking," Jade said. "My group was the only one that decided to stick together. The others split their tutorial groups into five or six parties, so you're only seeing a fraction of the people that survived the trials."

The other three Tutorial Leaders nodded, easing Rayna's concern.

Corban continued. "After a minor scuffle with some bandits on the way in, Amon thought it would be better to keep the hub as a sort of safe zone for now. Only humans are allowed in and out of the force field. We've been more or less stuck inside, but since Amon has access to the System store, we're well stocked and we won't run out of coins as long as we have the dungeon to hunt in."

"The hub has been attacked several times since then," Amon said. "I believe that until the Chosen are high enough in level to protect themselves from outside threats, we should keep the people of Ember out of the hubs."

Rayna nodded. "That's reasonable. What about Ronari? How is she doing?"

"Administrator Ronari stopped by to introduce herself to the humans, but for the most part, her time is occupied with maintaining System functions."

Rayna understood the meaning behind his words. 'Ronari is too busy to bother you, so you can stay here without worrying about her interfering in your plans.'

"Thank you," Rayna said. "Now before you go back to work, is there anything else I need to know about being a Lerian?"

Amon nodded. "You should have a special ability known as an inheritance. They are passed down in families, though the powers differ slightly from person to person. Have you discovered any abilities that are not present in your Character Sheet?"

Rayna rubbed her chin. "Teleportation? I can open portals, I think." Rayna demonstrated, opening a small portal with her finger. "They lead to some sort of a mirror dimension. Not super useful, but it got me out of a bind back in Aeteraut Forest."

Amon frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not familiar with the power, unfortunately. You can ask Ronari if you wish. Otherwise, you may have to discover the secrets of your inheritance on your own. The particulars of each inheritance were usually closely guarded secrets known only to the family they came from and the crown."

"What was yours?" Rayna asked, suddenly curious. She had pretty much confirmed that Ronari, Amon and Aila were all Lerians, which meant she actually had a friendly source of information for once.

"I was a shadow walker," Amon said. "I could teleport through shadows. Unfortunately, the ability did not follow me into my Simulacrum Stone."

"I see." Rayna nodded. "Thank you for all your help, Amon."

Amon inclined his head. "I hope your meeting goes well. Call me if you have need."

He vanished, and Rayna turned to face the others in the room. "Right. Well, I'm Rayna. It's nice to meet you all. I'll be honest, I don't know why Corban called this meeting."

"To introduce you to the group leaders," Corban said. "And because the leaders wanted to meet the owner of the hub and thank you personally for letting us stay here."

Rayna's eyebrows furrowed. "I don't own the hubs."

"For all intents and purposes, you do," Corban said. "Amon explained to us the situation with your sponsorship and subsidization of the hub rooms. If it weren't for you, we would all be sleeping in tents still."

"I'll admit, I was skeptical at first," Avery, a tall blond man with an old-west-style mustache, said. "But it's nice to finally meet you in person."

"We didn't even have tents," Stela, a short brunette woman with round glasses and several piercings on each ear, said. "We thought we had more time to prepare, but then the System booted us out of the tutorial with nothing but the clothes on our backs and what we had in our inventories. All of our tents were left in the courtyard."

"Hey Corban," Rayna said through gritted teeth. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Corban followed Rayna into the bedroom, closing the door behind them.

"What are you doing?!" Rayna hissed, praying that the walls were soundproof.

"Making it clear why you're the only Emberian allowed in the hub," Corban said. "They already know that Amon isn't the owner. This way, they don't go looking for deeper reasons as to why you're calling the shots."

"Are you sure about that?" Rayna asked. "Because it sounds to me like you've given them an awful lot of information, most of which is complete bullshit. And what's this about me subsidizing the rooms? I can't afford that."

"It's not costing you a single coin," Corban assured her. "Amon and I worked this plan out last week when some of the Chosen were asking too many questions. It's why we gave you the highest tier room. We're setting you up as a rich philanthropist who rented out the hub for the foreseeable future in order to house the humans. It makes you seem more charitable and helps smooth over the fact that you're not human."

He winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean—"

"It's fine," Rayna said dismissively. "That part, at least, is true."

Rayna was a little surprised herself at her total lack of emotional reaction. Apparently, magical hormones had been messing with her head more than she thought. She felt silly when she thought about how many times she had cried or flown off the handle in the few days preceding her unscheduled nap.

Not that the emotions weren't all still there, they were just easier to manage now.

"Honestly," Corban said. "We've been getting a lot of trouble from the Emberians. Some idiot told them that the Administrator is hiding up here and now they all think that Amon can fix the System. Some people are even bringing offerings to him like this is some sort of shrine.

"Others tried kidnapping humans to ransom in exchange for titles or free levels. That's why we stopped leaving the hub."

Rayna sighed. "In other words, the human-emberian hostility will cause an issue if I don't have a good reason to be here."

Corban nodded.

Rayna squared her shoulders. "Fine, I'll play rich sponsor. But don't give them any more details than they need. Rich sponsors get their privacy, too."

They already knew about Rayna's evolution, but she figured that there was nothing they could do with that information.

"Understood," Corban said. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm drooling over this room. Did you know there's a magic tub in the bathroom over there?" He gestured to yet another door that Rayna hadn't noticed yet.

Rayna hadn't known about the bathtub, and it did, in fact, make her feel better.