Chương 2: Wyvern Trail

A flash of light broke through the night sky, and then it slammed to the ground. Grass and trees swayed hard from the center of Alicia's landing point, some to the point of breaking. Her landing may have been a little bit harder than she intended, but, well, nothing was around her, so it was no big deal. Still, I better fine-tune control of my abilities. She patted her clothes a bit before standing straight.

Naturally, she was wearing beautiful and elegant clothes, a bundle of event items she acquired for her character. She wore a white dress with black frilly outlines and black stockings. She also had chest pieces, alongside pauldrons, gauntlets, and greaves acting as her armor above her clothes, though they were quite light in design and heavily enchanted. Even her hair was quite stylish.

Her waist-length hair swayed gently as she looked around, a crown braid running above her silver hair, and she had blunt bangs with two locks of hair framing her face at the front, tied together with a white flower hair pin on the side. It made her look like some kind of doll-like princess ready to head out for battle, which was why she originally bought it, because she wanted to use it for the demon king subjugation quest with her friends and show off, looking all cute and cool.

She felt a little bit conscious now that she was really wearing it, though, because she kind of looked like she was looking for a fight, or she looked like some clueless rich heiress. Both meant that she was probably painting a massive crosshair on her back. Then again, I don't know what threats are ahead of me. Best to keep my best items on. I just hope no one jumps me because of it. Her lips formed a thin line as she walked forward. So far, she hadn't seen any signs of civilization nearby.

This was quite a remote part of the world. Unfortunately, she couldn't access her in-game maps, and every anchor point for her teleportation spells was bunk. In other words, she would have to manually map out this world first and see it for herself, one step at a time. Was it so bad, though? As she parted leaves to find a decent place to set up camp, Alicia thought back about the sights she had seen so far. As an esteemed, ahem, member of high society, Alicia had never been one to see the sights of nature a lot.

Well, she did go on a lot of vacations and outings as a child, but those weren't really real nature, not to mention this world seemed so much more wonderful. From strange, horrifying monsters like massive black serpents that could eat an entire deer in one go and drakes slumbering in their territories to ominous glowing flowers, the journey here, while aimless, had been quite the satisfying one.

Seeing them inside of a VR world was quite cool, but seeing them in this manner, where they were so real she could touch them, was truly fascinating. This world was so alive, so beautiful, and so breathtaking. Even simply taking a glance at the forest, this expanse that she found herself in, she would be momentarily struck by its grand display. Her vision and senses, so refined and sensitive due to her high stats and levels, could practically see how the ambient mana and magic ebbed and flowed through the world.

It's so colorful… Alicia smiled to herself a bit. Sure, she had been so exceedingly lonely and confused for hours now, but just seeing this, it made her want to plop down on a silent patch of grass and simply admire the sights. A girl like her, so sheltered for most of her life, wasn't exactly used to these sights. Tourist sights were nice to see, but they were no match to the sight of this untouched corner of the world. Nearby, a monster, level 122—a simple unicorn—watched Alicia.

The creature, if untamed, was normally hostile to people, and even high-ranking adventurers usually avoided them out of fear of being killed with its powerful magic and physical attacks. Being gutted by its singular horn wasn't exactly a fate many would like. Yet, it simply watched Alicia, warily, before backing off. Then, it ran away. She curiously watched the little thing. I wonder if most monsters will act this way toward me? Being strong sure had so many perks.

Alicia would rather not lift a finger unless she had to, and since she wasn't just playing a VRMMO game anymore and she was now essentially in a real-world scenario, Alicia repeatedly told herself earlier that she should avoid violence as much as possible. Mostly because she didn't want people to find her as a threat, but also because she didn't want to go down a path where she would abuse her absurd strength. She mindlessly played with her fingers, looking down, before taking a deep breath.

Which way should I fly next? While she tried to wrack her mind about which way to go, another thing was bothering her. It was certainly quite mild, but, even after somewhat recovering from her awakening, there was this lingering lethargy that seemed to be dragging her down. She briefly wondered about the cause of that, so she opened up her stats. [Name: Alicia Allister] If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

[Race: Vaelrin (Vampire)] [Class: Vampiric Archmage (Lv 999)] [Titles: King of Vael, 8th Princess of the Royal House of Allister, Angel of Death, Demon Slayer…] She winced a bit at her contradictory titles. Being called the king of the Vaelrin was a little bit weird when she was also called 'demon slayer' at the same time. Apart from the fact that it was somewhat of a derogatory term to refer to the Vaelrin as 'demons,' being the 'King of Vael' and being the 'demon slayer' was deeply ironic.

But she couldn't do anything about it, so she simply glazed over it and began mentally scrolling through her absurd stats, the ridiculous skills, spells, and item summons she had available until she arrived at her current status effects. Alicia Allister was a vampire. Vampires feed on blood. Alicia Allister, therefore, needed blood, and right now, she wasn't acting like a vampire at all. Yes, vampires could subsist on animal blood instead, and they usually did that.

It was equally as optimal as consuming the blood of normal people, so at least she wouldn't have to go and do that. Unfortunately for her, Alicia seemed to have functionally not had a sip of blood for centuries now, human or otherwise. She didn't know if she was materially existing all this time before she was reincarnated to her avatar, but one thing was for sure—Alicia needed blood. A lot of it. Her face practically turned green from that. Goodness me. She closed her stat screen and stood up reluctantly.

Larping as a vampire has to be the worst decision of my life. Now I have to drink blood too? She probably only needed a few bags of blood, and she would last weeks on that alone, considering her ridiculous stats and, thus, an extremely efficient and resilient body, but Alicia still would have to suck some of the nasty liquid. Her human soul recoiled at the idea, utterly disgusted at the possibility of drinking blood, while her vampiric flesh was now visibly thirsty.

She looked around for prey and discovered that she was no proper predator. All the monsters around her didn't seem like good candidates for bloodsucking. No, Alicia was still a proper woman. She wasn't going to suck the blood of that strange giant black spider over there, and when she tried looking at a poor white bunny hopping through the forest, she was distracted by its cuteness before even considering drinking its blood. She facepalmed. This wouldn't do.

So, she cast [Fly] on herself again and zoomed to the skies. Flying was comfortable and a little bit of a relaxant to the mind, though she imagined that normal people wouldn't be able to even think about anything else, much less use [Fly] thirsty. While her mind seemed to have some kind of inherent hypercognition that made the usage of complex and extremely sensitive spells trivial, that didn't mean [Fly] was a trivial spell. It was something most mages took decades to even try for the first time.

Those who mastered it usually were one cough away from death unless they were an ingenious human or they were born a vampire or an elf or any other elite race. Luckily, as a [Vampiric Archmage], this was so trivial that much of her mind was now fully allocated to satisfying her thirst for blood. Her eyes darted left to right rapidly, sensing and analyzing the various animals and monsters below to find a good target.

Of course, since monsters were a little bit grotesque, unless Alicia found something good-looking, she wouldn't sink her fangs into it. So that left animals. But Alicia also wanted an animal that she would be able to maybe cook and eat, something that wasn't going to taste bad. I wish I had some kind of system skill for cooking… Since childhood, someone else cooked for Alicia. If she ever cooked for herself, it wasn't out of necessity but out of curiosity.

As a result, she knew nothing about how to cook everyday meals. She only knew how to bake cake, make desserts, and you get the gist. Alicia wasn't someone who could expertly turn deer meat into a serviceable dish. She was someone who would only play around in a high-end kitchen in her free time to make fancy stuff for herself. But, with a new life, I have no choice but to experiment. She curled her fist, determination flooding her face. I'm going to suck the blood of a pig, then eat some pork chops.

I mean, all I have to do is to fry it on a pan, right? I can't possibly mess that up! Unfortunately, when she saw a hog running below, it kind of looked a little bit nasty and too furry for her to suck blood from. Of course, it didn't look like a domesticated pig, so it was instantly less appetizing. Dear god, how do vampires in this world even stomach doing this? She was further disappointed upon realizing that hog probably spent time bathing in mud, and well… She soon landed on top of a small hill.

It was already night. She hadn't eaten, she hadn't drunk blood, and she hadn't seen civilization yet. She stared at the horizon listlessly.... Adjusting to a new life isn't easy, huh? She wondered what the Vaelrin would think of her if they found out that she was their king now. Of course, she wouldn't reveal it haphazardly, but she still wondered, why did the crown go to her? At the end of the day, she was just some spoiled girl given godly powers out of nowhere. She recognized that. She didn't deny it.

And it made her pause. What should she really do with her powers? The wind swayed her dress gently. What? With her enhanced eyesight, Alicia noticed something far away on the horizon. It was hard to mistake them for anything else—two hind legs, two wings, serpentine tails, and scaly skin as dark as the night sky. There were multiple wyverns over there! And they seemed like they were throwing fireball bolts from their mouths straight into the ground.... Are they hunting for food?

Alicia simply continued observing the distant fight. For some reason though, whatever they were attacking seemed to be fighting back. She could see concentrated mana being flung from the ground, striking the wyverns over and over. Yet the wyverns seemed to be too strong for their enemies to scratch them. She felt pity for whatever poor animal or monster was fighting them.

There were a lot of magical creatures, after all, that could use magic too, not just those wyverns, but the truth of the jungle was that the stronger would prey and win against the weak. Until she saw a simple projectile darting upward through the night sky. It was a projectile that she, a former human, knew well. Powered only by a simple string, muscle, and faint embers of mana—it was an arrow sent straight into one of the wyverns. A desperate attack that missed pathetically. People. There are people over there!

That was all Alicia needed to know to switch from detached observation to active intervention. Adrenaline flooded her veins, the latent mentality of her heroine avatar taking over her, and in an instant, she used [Fly] to rush to the fight.