After that, they wrapped it up, and Wilhelm accompanied Jules to the Friendly Fiend Inn, while Aelindra and Cecilia went to their home. But not before Cecilia exchanged a few words with Jules about discussing it together at a later date.
Cecilia's room was, as Aelindra had said, exactly the same way it was in the game. It was even more luxurious than the one in the inn, as all items and furniture were of [diamond] quality level.
The [diamond] furniture gave good bonuses, so Cecilia never spared resources in building the best possible.
It was already late evening, and she was in bed, again finding it hard to sleep.
"I finally have some time to myself… So much has happened today."
She started recollecting everything she learned since early morning.
This world was real, as the childbirth experience proved to her. Yet, it had a lot of the game systems in place and fully functional.
She casually opened the UI and checked the stats, but the [Friends] button had an exclamation mark on it, which prompted her to open it.
[Friends: 0
You have a friend request from Grosfou.]
"Huh? Did Jules send me a friend request? Okay, let's add him and see what it does."
She accepted the request, and soon his profile was available for her to see, and there was a [Message] button now. She pressed it, opening a chat screen.
She quickly wrote a 'hi' message and sent it. Soon after, the guy answered.
[Oh, it works. Nice. Now we can talk through here, like we would do in the game. Why are the game systems still here if this is reality? And why am I still my character?]
Cecilia smiled as she related to the guy's plight. So she shared what she learned with him, including the fact that there is some entity with the power to rewrite memories.
[Wait, rewrite memories? And you thought that it can be triggered if the people of this world learn too much about the time of the game and our world?]
[Yes. That's why I stopped you from asking about it earlier today. Aelindra was my 'daughter' NPC in the game and has a lot of memories from that time, so talking to her about the world back then triggered the rewriting.]
[I see… that must've been scary. But what I wonder is how did we end up here. I was just playing the game normally…]
[About that, I suspect that my real body out there might be dead. But I was a person living on life support in a hospital bed. That's the reason I think that dying would be something that could have happened…]
[Hm… Afaik I was a healthy person tho. Seventeen years old, no history of health issues. I worked out, had a balanced diet… I don't know how I could have died.]
Cecilia thought about the person she met earlier. It was hard to reconcile his appearance in this world with his identity as a seventeen-year-old who worked out.
Well, it isn't like she was allowed to say anything about it. Cecilia and Morielen looked like two wholly different people.
((I wonder what Helen looked like in real life… I mean, this is real life now. I miss her dearly…))
Maybe she thought about the hypothesis of having died as the first option because of the pact she made with her fellow guild members. Everyone in it pledged to die while logged in to the game.
[?]
((Oh, right. Jules.))
[I'm sorry, my mind wandered a bit. Well, the reality is that we know too little. There are other players appearing, so maybe if we talked to them we could gather more information. But we should work with the hypothesis that there's no way to go back in the forefront of our minds.]
[Yeah… I really want to go back, though. But you are right, we need to learn more about our situation. I hope that our world hasn't experienced five hundred years as well, tho. Well, anyway, I'm getting too sleepy. Good night.]
[Good night.]
((A bit sudden, but it's good. I need some time alone anyway.))
She closed the UI completely, but her mind was still restless.
"Even if I had the option to go back, I wouldn't want to go… It's so good to have a body where I can walk around freely, and to have a loving daughter…"
She rolled again in bed.
((But it's exactly because of her that I need to dig deeper into the truths of this world. I don't want her memory to be messed with again. I need to learn as much as I can, while protecting her from whomever did that thing to her.))
She didn't dare to say that thought out loud, fearing that some weird entity could hear her.
Instead, she brought up the memories of her followers and guild companions.
"Next thing, I'll go to my hidden base. But not tomorrow, as I need to spend some quality time with Aelindra. Then, I will go to Mycorgloom. I bet that that forest has changed much from that time. It would be easy to get lost in there..."
She opened the UI again, checking the map. It only showed the areas she had been in since awakening in this new reality. Everything else was black.
In the game she didn't have to learn the way by heart, because when she set up that base she was already powerful enough to have a permanent teleport rune inside it, so after the first day when she set the place up, she always went there by teleporting.
She then checked the state of the teleport runes for the umpteenth time. The three slots were empty, meaning no rune was set for an easy teleportation trip.
"Tomorrow I'll set one here. The second will be in that base. The third I'll leave free for now, but maybe I should've set it in Aberswan. I definitely want to go back there. I hope that they are all doing well. I should definitely visit there soon."
:::
In the depths of a forest far away, a regular one made out of trees, some people were gathered around a campfire.
"So, are we going to attack or not?"
"Not yet, Dorfik. Hold your horses. The spirit hasn't been roused enough."
"I don't know why you put so much importance into that spirit thing. If he rampages, what will there be for us?"
"Don't be stupid, Dorfik. It would just do the dirty job for us, so after it goes back to its slumber, we just show up and recover all the goodies. I doubt that an ancient spirit will be on the lookout for gold and gems. We'll just need to wipe the corpses clean."
The man laughed, a hoarse sound that sent the surrounding birds away.