Stormborn Sorceress: A Fantasy Isekai LitRPG Adventure

He breathed a sigh of relief as she agreed and a deeper sigh as her lungs became his. It was a strange feeling like he’d been lying at the bottom of a murky pond only to finally be allowed to come up for air. Air that was moist and warm, filled with the smells of soil and the tang of iron.

Her body settled around him, reforming into his physique, her glaring wounds disappearing with her control. Her fair skin darkened to his midnight blue. Her hair, long and braided down to her middle back, shrunk back to his preferred style–long on top with shaved sides.

He sat on the floor of the cavern, a skewered Depth Rat beside him, the other maybe a meter off. Around him, the stone loomed, quiet and still. He listened.

Waiting.

The scuffle had not attracted attention yet. However, they were not far from the nest of the centipedes or the cockroaches. A scout looking for fresh corpses to add to their larders would arrive sooner than later, he was sure.

He waited another moment anyway. Listening. But it truly was quiet, both in the caverns and in his mind. The demonic whispering at the edges of his consciousness and the uncontrollable bloodlust had quieted. For now, he could think clearly.

“How are you doing?” he asked his host. He didn’t even know her name, he realized.

Dizzy, was all that came back. Not surprising. She had lost a lot of Health from all that blood loss. The low Stamina and single-digit Focus were not helping. He did not envy her triple crash.

“Do you see the fire?” he asked her, referring to the campfire in the center of the strange camp in her Soul Well. “Just sit there and rest up.”

He felt an acquiescence but little else.

He pushed himself up, slowly testing his form. It was built using her broken body after all. It might not be injured since it was formed after his identity not hers, but like a pot formed from too little clay, he should expect it to be more fragile than it would be otherwise.

It was also level 4.

He tried not to let his disappointment about that bubble up. He was in a very tenuous position. If he rocked her emotional state too much she would likely snap back into control on instinct. And if she did that, she would be back to bleeding out on the stone, dying.

Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.

Overall, his body was stable. He should not have trouble finding a safe place for her to recover.

That gave him pause. Did he actually want her to recover? He was a parasite living off her form now. A demon. This was his chance to steal control and live as himself.

No. He was no longer stronger than her. He had just been worried a second ago about rocking her emotional state. An ill-timed sneeze could swap them back, sending him back to the depths of her soul.

The System had taken the strength he had once had when it declared her the victor in their little contest of souls. He was truly only level 4 now, inside and out.

It was only a matter of time until her soul took over again, and if she felt a threat from him it would only happen sooner.

He shoved such dangerous thoughts aside and collected her things.

First, her hair tie. He had expected a ribbon or a metal clasp. Instead, he found an enclosed fabric loop.

He frowned as he tugged and twisted it. What was it made of? He had never seen fabric with such elastic properties before but it did not seem to be magic. It was simple enough to use though and a moment later his hair was tied back in a short ponytail.

Then, her staff from where the rats had thrown it. It was hardly anything impressive. Identify confirmed it was just a branch she had picked up off the ground somewhere. But they did not have another weapon and he did not have any useful skills he could inflict on an opponent without one.

A bladed weapon would have been better. But he could not think of a weapon he would not take over a random stick, so perhaps that was not saying much. He supposed he should be glad she was armed at all.

Rearmed with her weapon he activated Stealth and slunk down the corridor. His stealth was slower, wrapping him in shadows instead of wind. At his peak, he had been all but invisible while stealthed. Now, he could feel its incompleteness. The ways in which the body broke through the veil of shadows. The slight scuff of his foot against the uneven stone.

But he just did not have the dexterity anymore to move the way he wanted to. It was uncomfortable to know it was possible to move one's body with greater finesse but be completely unable to no matter how one tried.

Everything felt that way, actually.

He was stronger than this. He caught himself tempering the strength he did not have in an unneeded attempt to take measured and even steps.

He could feel the limits of his mind, how weak his Will had become and how slow his Alacrity. Thoughts came one at a time now, slow and unorderly.

He could still see in the dark, courtesy of his Racial skill Dark Sight, but the colors were all muted without his high Perception.

Everything okay? she asked.

“Yes,” he lied. He needed to focus. Both their souls were in the Soul Well, she would be able to feel anything he was feeling with ease. It might not even be hard for her to read his thoughts if she tried, given their difference in status and relevant stats.

“Just wondering about you.” It was better to misdirect the source of his anxiety. If she thought he was unable to handle things her instincts would snap her back into control whether that would help or not. Frankly, it was only a combination of her uniquely powerful will and her particularly battered state that allowed them to get this far as it was.

I’ll live. She did sound stronger than she had a few minutes ago. But then, oddly, her Soul Well did seem to function as a Safe Zone—which did not make sense but fine. Healing was significantly increased in Safe Zones.

“It occurred to me I don’t know your name.” He whispered it, knowing she’d hear it just fine but not wishing to attract unnecessary attention.

She chuckled. Didn’t need to know the name of the soul you were going to eat?

“Would it mean anything if I apologized for that?”

Probably not, but it also couldn’t hurt.

“I’m sorry for trying to possess your body the moment we met.” He was genuinely regretful. He hoped she could feel it. This wasn’t what he wanted for himself. “If I had any other choice…”

Sure, she muttered. She did not sound convinced.

She fell silent and he let her sit, focusing on navigating through the maze that was the Deep.

The caves were endless and uniformly made of the same dark stone and sporadically dotted with glowing mosses and mushrooms. At a glance, they seemed natural, weaving randomly from the shaping of the elements.

And most of them were. The caverns of the Deep cut sharp zigzags like lightning through the stone and were filled to bursting with dangerous creatures both natural and summoned.

But some of the paths had been created by people. The lair of the Centipede was one such corridor as was the path he was looking for.

Cass, her voice whispered from the Soul Well.

He paused.

My name, she added. You asked.

“Yes, thank you. Pleasure to meet you.” In truth, he did not know what he would do with her name. It seemed wrong not to know it though.

So?

“Yes?”

Are you going to tell me your name?

“Oh.” He had not thought that far ahead when he had asked. Maybe if he had still possessed all his previous Alacrity, he might have thought ahead to the single most obvious follow-up question and he might have picked a different distraction. Or maybe he was an idiot and no amount of mental stats would have changed that.

Oh?

He walked with purpose down the corridor, scanning for another landmark. Stalling. Uselessly.

Well, don’t tell me I guess. He could feel her pulling back. Their bond rocked with the breaking trust. He wasn’t going to be able to fix this. He could only hope she wasn’t bleeding out anymore. Maybe she would reform without the same specific wounds and would just have the generalized Health loss instead.

Or maybe she would be bleeding out on the ground again and they would both die.

He had to try to salvage this. “I don’t remember.”

She snorted, clearly unconvinced.

“Demons do not have names,” he admitted. It was hardly well known, it made sense if she did not believe him. Little about demons was widely distributed.

If… No, best not to follow that thought down that way. Now would be a bad time for the system to decide his thoughts broke the divine divide.

Don’t have names they just give out, more likely.

“Demons don’t have names unless they own themselves. If I had beaten you, I could have named myself.” Maybe reclaimed the name he used to have? What was it?

A chill ran down his spine. He did not remember.

There was a cold, dead spot in his chest. He could feel where his name was supposed to have been. Blurred faces of people calling him echoed through his mind, their voices garbled to his memory.

So what? I get to name you? Her words snapped him back to the present.

“If you like,” he said.

And if I don’t?

“Then I am just a Nyxdran Demon. Nothing more.” That hurt him more than he cared to admit. He was nameless. Little better than the monsters around him.

She did not say anything. He did not have a clear enough feel for the Soul Well to tell if she was thinking about what he had said, bored with their conversation, or if she had finally passed out from her wounds.

He spotted the landmark he had been looking for a few minutes later, a pillar of grey stone in the center of a wide cavern. Many tunnels connected here, all as dark and twisting as the ones before. But he knew where they were now.

He ran his hand along the pillar, following it all the way around. Once upon a time, there had been grooves carved into it. Stone Memory said the pillar remembered the grooves still, even though time and many hands had worn them away.

It took a second pass around for him to find the memory of the grooves he was looking for. The marker pointing to the Safe Zone.

He turned around and walked directly into the path before him.