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Demon Princess: Chapter 9: First Morning
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 10:29:16 +0000 UTCChapter 9: First Morning
Lily awoke tangled in thick velvet sheets.
For a blissful moment, she didn’t move. She rolled from one side to the other, eyes shut, trying to sink back into the heavy warmth of the mattress. The bed was too soft, too deep, like a black sea trying to swallow her whole. But she couldn’t get comfortable. Something kept pressing against her skull.
She had horns.
Lily groaned, pulling a pillow over her face.
Slowly, her memories trickled back; the hobo who had shot her during her night shift, the damn idiots who had “summoned” her, and the way last night had played out. She sat up with a long sigh, running her fingers through her hair, careful not to jab her scalp on her own horns.
At least she felt… rested. That was new. Not that she was a morning person, not by a long shot. Normally, she’d lie in bed, phone in hand, scrolling through Discord, guild forums, ladder boards, and whatever else kept her brain buzzing while she avoided actually getting up. But here? No phone. No internet. So, she had no excuses for fooling around.
With a theatrical groan, she swung her legs out of bed. The velvet curtains draped around the four-poster blocked most of the light, until she yanked them aside.
Sunlight flooded in through the towering window. Bright, merciless, stabbing into her crimson eyes.
“Argh—!” She hissed, throwing up a hand. “Who designed this window placement?”
The light made her head pound. With a flick of her wrist and a muttered thought, she pushed at it with [Telekinesis]. The curtains snapped shut across the glass, plunging the room back into gloom.
“Better.” She exhaled, rubbing her temples. “Jesus, magic is so handy.”
A grin tugged her lips. “Lucky I’m not Matz…”
The thought came unbidden. Matz, her guildmate, with his eternally edgy vampire build. If he were here, that sunbeam would have roasted him like a marshmallow. She chuckled, imagining his outrage. And then, of course, his character name flashed in her memory.
[Lord Sucker]
She wheezed out a laugh. “Oh my God, if that had been me… I’d have died on the spot from embarrassment. Imagine having to introduce myself to those cultist idiots with a name like that.”
The laughter died as quickly as it came. The ache beneath it was sharper than she expected. She missed them. Her friends. Her guild. Their dumb banter, their stupid names, the late-night raids. She chuckled again, softer this time, just to mask the ache. Matz—Lord Sucker—had finally cracked the top 1000 with their last raid, #978. She’d planned to gift him something for it, a little token for being the last of their guild to claw his way up to their rank. But now? She’d never get the chance. She wouldn’t see him again. Wouldn’t see any of them again. The thought pressed heavy on her.
Shaking herself, she looked down. Her gown from last night lay crumpled on the floor, boots beside it. She frowned. At least she hadn’t been summoned completely naked. She still had the plain starter underwear every new avatar spawned with on her.
RP dresses? Yes. Battle armor? Sure. Even a handful of “cosmetic” outfits she’d picked up for events. But underwear? She had never thought to stash backups in her inventory. Why would she? You didn’t swap those out mid-raid.
“Fantastic.” She sighed. “New world, new problems. Add underwear shopping to the quest log.”
All the more reason to get into town today.
She padded slowly into the mansion’s bathroom, just through the door from her bedroom. Luckily, back in her RP days she’d decorated everything with obsessive care, and even tucked away little basics under necessities in her inventory; soap, towels, a toothbrush. She really had lived a second life online, hadn’t she? She pulled the toothbrush out and got to work, brushing her teeth as best she could, though it was trickier now with the fangs.
Her canines clicked against the bristles. The rest of her teeth felt sharper too, like her whole mouth had been remodeled for tearing and biting. She spat into the basin and frowned at the sight. “Oh wow, I have a perfect smile for a toothpaste commercial. If the target audience is Satan…”
Once done, she returned to the bedroom and eyed the gown again. She wasn’t about to wear the same thing twice, not if she had choices. With a thought, she pulled another outfit from her inventory. A gothic dress, black with silver-threaded trim, dropped onto the floor with a whisper of fabric.
She stripped quickly and tugged it on, smoothing the skirts with brisk, practiced motions. At least her dresses fit as flawlessly here as they had on her avatar. She pulled up her boots, adjusting them until they sat snug.
Her eyes lingered on the gown she’d discarded. She flicked her fingers, sending it vanishing back into the inventory with a shimmer. Surely there’s a spell for cleaning clothes, she thought. Or I can just conjure water and drown the stains. Well, future problem. Besides, it didn’t look all that dirty anyway.
She stretched, then frowned. Another observation: items materialized in front of her, or directly into her hand, but never just auto-swapped onto her body. Which meant…
“So, if I get attacked,” she muttered, “I can’t just click ‘equip’ and be instantly armored. I’d have to duck behind a tree and wriggle into it like some LARP dropout.” She snorted, shaking her head. “This reality is way too realistic. I already hate it.”
She wandered back to the mirror. Her reflection stared back: pale skin, crimson eyes, horns curling elegantly. The dress hugged her figure in all the ways she’d designed it to. For a second, she let herself admire her own work. Hours spent in character creation had paid off.
Then she flicked open her skill list, scanning through the glowing icons.
Something new caught her eye. Yesterday, she’d been too busy to notice, but now…
When she focused on a skill, her mind didn’t just show her a tooltip. It showed her the runes. The entire circle, etched in light. She understood instinctively how to weave them, how to pour mana through her hand to form them in the air. It was as if she’d always known. But she hadn’t.
The sensation was unsettling. Like remembering a song she’d never heard before.
She scrolled slowly, searching. Until she found them:
[Illusion], [Transform]
Her lips curved. “Perfect.”
If she was going into town with her merry band of cultist idiots, she couldn’t exactly waltz in looking like the Princess of the Abyss. They had made it pretty clear that demons weren’t just rare here, they were seen as outright evil. So, [Illusion] could do the trick. [Transform] maybe even better.
She closed the menu and exhaled, pacing back toward the window. The curtains stayed shut, holding back the bright world outside.
Town. Civilization. Answers. Supplies. Maybe even underwear. Not a bad schedule for someone who, just yesterday, had no idea what to do in her new life here. But mostly she wanted to find out if this world actually was like the Xantia she knew from the game, or if she was blundering through something entirely different.
Lily rubbed her hands together, her crimson eyes glinting. “Alright, idiots. Let’s see what kind of world you’ve dragged me into.”
☽⛧☾
The cultists had been awake since the first touch of dawn. The lake beside their camp was alive with noise, frogs croaking, insects humming, birds calling out in the trees. The [Campfire Stone] still burned with its steady, smokeless glow, warding off the chill and casting a warm circle of light around them.
Garron had already waded into the shallows and managed to pull out two fat fish. Now he crouched with the twins, showing them how to gut and clean them while the smell of fresh water and scales lingered in the air. Soon the fish were sizzling on skewers over the magical fire.
It was almost… idyllic.
Marie sat with her arms around her knees, watching them. For a moment, it didn’t feel like a cult at all. Not a gang of outcasts, not a band of would-be demon worshippers. Just a small group of people sharing a fire, catching their breakfast, laughing a little as Tristan fumbled the knife and nearly dropped a fillet into the dirt.
They weren’t family. Not friends, either. Marlon had once tried to call them that, but it didn’t fit. They were something in between. Something that still mattered. They looked after each other.
Marie sighed.
Earlier, before the fish, Sevrin had started in on one of his speeches about their trip to town—what to buy, how to behave, what to avoid. He and Marie had argued, of course. They always argued. But for once, it hadn’t ended with shouting. He had even surprised her: after lecturing them all, he’d passed the Mithril Crown around, letting everyone hold it for a moment.
For all his arrogance, even Sevrin cared for his people.
And Marie? She wasn’t an exception. She hated to admit it, but these people were the ones she cared about most in the world. Even when she wanted to strangle Sevrin daily. They had been through too much together to pretend otherwise.
The morning’s discussion had reshaped their plan. At first, Sharen was supposed to go to town with him. But Marie had pressed the issue. She had her own questions, and she needed answers. That canvas in the Princess’s mansion—the date written beneath it—gnawed at her. She couldn’t let it go. Sharen had eventually agreed to stay behind with her twin brother, and Marie had taken her place.
She trusted Sharen to keep Sevrin from losing the coin, but she trusted herself more. Especially with the problem of the coin’s value.
Marie’s mind ticked through the numbers again, as she had all morning. The standard system was simple: one hundred bronze equaled one silver, one hundred silver equaled one gold, and so on. A straight ladder. Which meant the Mithril Crown in Sevrin’s pouch was worth—at least on paper—one hundred million bronze crowns.
Her stomach tightened. That kind of wealth was beyond imagining for people like them. It could save their lives. It could also destroy them if they mishandled it.
There were, as far as she could see, three possible ways to exchange it.
The first and best option was the Asara Bank, if the town even had one. A bank could handle a Mithril Crown, break it down into platinum or gold, and only take a small fee, maybe one or two percent. Safe and reliable. But banks also asked questions. Names. Papers. Where the money came from. Outlaws like them didn’t just stroll in with royal-tier currency and leave without anyone raising an eyebrow.
Still… Marie wondered. She still had her family name. Baroness, technically, even if her parents would rather see her hanged than welcome her back. Maybe she could bluff her way through. Risky, yes, but it was a card she hadn’t quite thrown away.
The second option was the mage guild. They’d definitely take a Mithril Crown, but not for its value as money. They’d just melt it down and use the metal for wands or magic gear. Which meant they’d pay less, maybe ten or twenty percent under, more if they felt like squeezing. Still, at least they wouldn’t ask too many questions.
And then there was the third option. The adventurers’ guild.
Marie’s jaw tightened at the thought.
That was the riskiest choice of all. Adventurers were curious, always sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Too many of them had skills to peek at your status or see through lies. If even one of them caught a glimpse of what she really was—what any of them were—it would be over in an instant.
Besides, adventurers’ guilds ran on smaller budgets. She doubted one in a mid-sized town could scrape together enough crowns to cover the full value of a Mithril coin anyway.
Which left them trapped between risk and necessity.
Marie’s eyes flicked back to the fire. Sevrin sat tall, proud as always, the faint glimmer of the coin’s pouch at his belt. He probably thought it was their salvation. To her, it looked just as much like a curse.
She tore her gaze away, back to the fish crackling over the fire. The smell of cooking made her stomach growl, but her mind was far away, calculating, weighing, searching for a path that didn’t end in disaster.
Then a voice cut through her thoughts, and through everything the others were doing.
“Nice camp you’ve got here.”
The voice was warm and almost friendly. And also strangely familiar. Marie’s skin prickled. She knew that voice. She was sure she’d heard it before. But from where?
She and the others turned in unison toward the sound. Out of the trees, across the clearing, strolled a woman. She was tall and elegant, with golden hair that caught the morning light. A green dress clung to her form, far too fine for someone walking casually out of the woods. And then Marie saw the ears, long and sharp, even longer than the Demon Princess’s. Her skin was pale as moonlight, and her large green eyes sparkled with a smug kind of amusement.
An elf.
Marie had never seen an elf before, not outside of stories. But the features were unmistakable.
Silence fell around the fire. No one dared to breathe. The woman chuckled softly, her tone playful. “I’m here to pick you up for our town trip.”
Our town trip.
Marie froze, her eyes narrowing as her mind raced. The smile, the voice, even the slight tilt of her head, she recognized them all. No, it should be impossible. And yet, it was. Her stomach dropped as realization struck: the Demon Princess, disguised as an elf, was standing right in front of them.
Comments
Snow2Reaper
If this is the same world I wonder if she still had a valid adventurers guild registration, presuming she was an adventurer in the first place.
