CHAPTER 48: REINCARNATION IN BATCHES THEORY

Later that night, Aelindra came to visit her in her new home, and Mina prepared dinner.

Turns out, the Maid job opened a lot of cooking recipes that Cecilia had never heard about in the game. Apparently they were added in the last big update before the announcement of the closing of the servers.

And it wasn’t monster food with status effects. Those were recipes of common foods without any effects besides being tasty and filling.

"Can you believe, Aelindra, that Master is now teaching a little kid?"

"Oh, really? Mother is a great teacher. I still remember a lot of what she taught me back then. A lot better than Martin, that’s for sure."

"What do you mean? Did Martin teach you something?"

The three were around the table, eating curry rice and chatting.

"Yes. After you went on your travels, he took up the task of teaching me. His methods were a lot different from yours, though. He wouldn’t take me on trips. Instead, he would make me copy the laws of Drakenstadt over and over again.

He would often bring me books and make me read them and write down summaries about them. Always books about governing and politics. I remember one about What is Property, from a man called Proudhon. I still have it in my room."

((Huh? What was Martin doing, giving real-world political books for an AI to read? Well, she’s not an AI anymore, so I’m glad that she had access to those, but still...))

Martin was an ardent admirer of Proudhon, a French writer, and he would often talk about it when they were out doing quests and commissions together. That’s the reason why Cecilia, who didn’t even attend high school, knew about those books.

"That explains how you gained all those levels in stuff related to governing..."

"Yes. He was preparing me to inherit the throne at some point. That’s why when he also disappeared, the other players elected me to be queen. It was right before... right before... right be... be..."

((FUCK, not again!))

"This curry rice is really delicious, isn’t it my daughter? Mina is such a skilled cook..."

Cecilia hurried to change the subject of conversation the moment Aelindra showed the first signs of reaching a dangerous memory. Aelindra stopped for a moment, blinked, then looked at Cecilia, smiling.

"Yes, it’s so delicious. Better than the cooks at the high-end restaurants in Drakenhof, I can attest to that. But I was talking about something else earlier... What was it again?"

"Oh, it was nothing. If it were important, you would remember it. So, what do you think of my new home?"

Cecilia was really eager to steer the conversation away from any risky subjects.

"It’s quite nice and beautiful. I was about to say that I would prefer if you lived in the capital with me, but if I can just visit at any time, it’s fine."

Mina was watching it all without saying a thing. She was just a maid, according to herself, so she didn’t need to think about anything. Still, she found the way Cecilia was steering the conversation weird, though not as weird as the way Aelindra behaved right before that.

She didn’t ask about it because she wouldn’t dare to undo whatever her master was doing. She just shelved it somewhere in her mind and focused on eating.

:::

"Ugh, if only Helen were here... She would have some great insights about the situation. I feel like I’m fully out of my league here."

Cecilia was sitting on the sofa of her living room, thinking and sipping tea. Aelindra had already gone back to her home in Drakenhof, and Mina was cleaning the kitchen.

The air of the evening was a bit humid and cold, like the air right before rainy season, making her think that she knew nothing about how seasons worked in this world.

There was the voice of a Japanese singer, coming from an artifact that was on the tea table. The game offered several original soundtrack disks, but it also had a premium feature in which one could connect to a popular streaming service and download playlists into the game.

The hidden base still had the in-game disks with her favorite playlists on them, so she simply brought them to her new home.

((Hehe... I bet I’m looking like the proverbial old lady, drinking tea alone and listening to music. It’s not bad at all.))

She opened the system’s screen, went to the chat, and sent a message to Martin.

[Good evening, Martin. Are you on?]

It took less than a minute for an answer to come.

[Yeah. What’s going on?]

[Do you think that Helen might be in this world as well? What happened to her after I... left?]

This time, the time for his answer was a lot longer. After some excruciating minutes, a message finally came.

[If she is, I think that you will hear about her before I do. Because she will head to the Obsidian Keep the moment she learns that Aelindra is the queen.]

The ’DarkLord92 is typing’ appeared and disappeared some times, before a new message came in.

[She had terminal cancer and was on palliative care for a long time. The medics had given her six months, yet she survived for six years. She died online, in a ceremony with the members of DNS that were still around at the time. It was a government-approved euthanasia.]

Cecilia felt her heart tighten and tears well up in her eyes when she read that message.

"Helen..."

’The Witch of the North,’ ’The Hospice’s Librarian,’ and ’The Ultimate Loremaster’ were some titles that Aurenvaelir, Helen’s character, had.

Cecilia remembered her as an optimistic and talkative girl who always looked like a ray of sunlight breaching through the dark clouds of Cecilia’s life. Yet, she would never talk about her own problems.

Cecilia knew that she was someone who had some severe disability or other, because that was a hard requisite to join the guild, but that was all she knew about the girl’s personal life.

[That happened how long after I left?]

[Exactly one year. The exact day.]

Cecilia’s heart skipped a beat reading that. It was a bittersweet thought. Bitter knowing that the girl died, but sweet when she thought about the possibility that the girl could appear in this world, like she and Martin did.

[Have you encountered many other players?]

[Not really, no. But I’ve been researching into them. Several have been trying to keep themselves under the radar, while others just shout away in hopes of reaching the devs. There was a spike of player sightings around the time when you woke up, but it died off after a few days.]

[Died off? Wdym?]

[Players stopped appearing. It seems that whatever is reviving them is doing it in batches. I was in the first batch, along with a few others, and you were in a second batch, far bigger than mine. I don’t know when or how big will the third batch be, if there will be one.]

Cecilia remembered Martin telling her that he had been in the world for five months at that point. If the theory about ’batches’ was true, then she would have to wait for a new batch to come and then look for Helen again.

[If Helen were here she would have so many insights about the situation...]

[I know... And she missed you a lot too, during that year. She would often start a conversation only to talk about you... Exactly like you did today.]

"Master? Why is your face so red? Is that perv saying something pervy to you? Don’t worry, I’ll kill him..."

"M-Mina? How long have you been there?"

"Long enough..."