The Developer Reborn As Archmage

Drakva’s room was in the dungeons beneath the colosseum. His guards separated Darya, Seris, and the mermaid from the rest of the prisoners on his orders and dragged them down the stone corridors. Darya was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. The Mermaid was laid on the table, and Seris was tied to a leg of the same table.

Ikaro brought Drakva right behind them and laid him on a red silk bed while the girls wearing red dresses hurriedly arranged the healing scrolls around him. Drakva was wheezing like an engine. His body was falling apart even as he was being healed with the scrolls.

“L…leave me,” he groaned, clutching his chest as he lay back. The girls protested this order immediately. Ikaro sat silently on the floor and stared at Drakva with a blank expression.

They’re not going to leave him. Sarka needs to come up with a different plan.

It wasn’t going to be easy to convince them to leave him alone with the prisoners. There was no good excuse. He was stuck in bed, unable to move. There wasn’t anything that he was going to be able to do with three female prisoners, even with the worst intentions.

Leaving it all up to Sarka, Darya focused on the mermaid who was now sobbing her eyes out after her first brief taste of freedom just a while ago. The guards had tied her on her back, splayed her out as if she was being readied for Drakva’s dinner.

Seris was trying her best to speak with her eyes, but she also looked terrified. She hadn’t noticed the soulstone ring on Drakva’s finger either.

Keeping them out of harm’s way will be hard. The mermaid’s going to panic out of her mind. Seris is definitely going to try something the first chance she gets.

The worst problem here was Ikaro. The giant dumb druid was a loose cannon. Darya didn’t even need to use inspect to know he was just as strong, or even stronger than Drakva. She didn’t have enough mana left for another battle of that level, even if she could land all the hits.

Seris clicked her tongue to get her attention, and Darya was horrified to see the leather straps around her wrists already loosened. Seris definitely wasn’t going to survive a blow from Ikaro. Darya shook her head aggressively, doing her best to make Seris stay in place. It was hard to communicate ‘we’ll be fine’ when Seris was convinced this was a do-or-die moment.

Sarka hadn’t noticed anything. He was busy gasping for air as more blood oozed out of his neck wounds.

Darya readied herself for the worst. She could break out of the restraints just fine. She could certainly land a fatal blow on Ikaro if the situation called for it, but it wasn’t going to be an instant kill.

Anything less than that is risking Seris or the mermaid.

They idled while the girls fussed around Drakva, trying their very best to heal him as he stained the sheets. Ikaro sat there watching his boss bleed. He made no sound, and he didn’t seem particularly concerned beyond staying near Drakva. Darya wasn’t sure if it was a result of the enslavement or if he was just born this way. The man was a living sledgehammer and nothing else.

She was going through her options when suddenly, a high-pitched voice pierced her ears. She wasn’t sure where it was coming from at first. Her vision wobbled, and she felt as if invisible ropes had been attached to her eardrums.

She saw Seris curling up on the floor, trying to hide her ears. The girls and Ikaro were being pulled towards the table.

Darya only saw it when her eyes brushed past the mermaid. The blaring voice was coming from her mouth. The sound was hard to describe, something between a command and a song. Darya’s body was reacting to it before she even knew what was happening. Even Drakva rolled to his side on the bed, straining as if he was being pulled by his head.

The mermaid transformed right before her eyes. Her teeth grew sharper, and her yellow eyes started glowing dark red. Her black pupils glowed from the inside like two miniature flashlights. Her malicious tune pierced everyone's ears.

Oh shit! This must be why she was gagged all this time!

Darya toppled to the floor with the chair, falling on her side as her feet involuntarily pushed her forward like a worm. Ikaro barely managed to stand up, but he fell over backwards, his huge body obeying the mermaid’s song rather than his own brain.

One of the girls fell next to the table as the mermaid arched her back, throwing her head back to sing her song louder. The next second, the girl wrapped her arms around the mermaid as if she had just met a long-lost friend. 

Hanging upside down, the mermaid stopped singing just long enough to bite the girl’s neck. The healing scroll fell from the girl’s arms, rolling away limply as she wobbled on her weakened knees.

“V-venomous?!” Darya exclaimed. She and Seris seemed to fare better against the onslaught of the malicious song. Perhaps because they were higher-level mages, or because the mermaid wasn’t focusing on them.

“She’s a siren!” Sarka wheezed, rolling out of the bed headfirst. The second healing scroll rolled limply away.

Ikaro did the same thing as the collapsed girl. He wrapped his giant hands around the scrawny mermaid, unable to pull himself away, even with his level of strength.

Darya’s body had carried her near the table. She watched the mermaid dig into Ikaro’s shoulder with her fangs. The venom had to be a neurotoxin because the heavy man collapsed just as fast as the first girl did.

Unfortunately, he fell straight on the upside-down mermaid, tilting the table with his immense weight. Her siren song ended in a loud yelp as she disappeared under Ikaro’s mountain-sized body. The legs of the table collapsed on Ikaro’s side, sandwiching the mermaid at a diagonal angle. Her tail straightened once and started flapping wildly as she disappeared under Ikaro.

The second girl opened her mouth to scream for help. Seris charged forward in a mad dash, passing Darya like a gust of wind. She saw them both crash into the bedpost.

Getting ready to free herself from the restraints, Darya used another Terminate to break out of the chair that she was trying to slither with.

[Vainfall: Terminate]

She rotated as fast as she could, moving her body faster than the prediction dots to phase out of the restraints and the chair. Rolling across the ground, she came to a stop near the bed where Seris and the girl she had slammed into lay in a heap.

[Wind Step]

Careful not to kick Seris, she landed right next to them with her fist raised. She held off on punching the girl while everything was frozen. She didn’t want to accidentally kill her or slam her own fist on the floor with enough force to crush her hand.

She moved in the last half a second as the world caught up with the splash of prediction dots. The punch landed on the girl’s cheek, twisting her head to the side. She was aiming to dislodge her jaw if she couldn’t knock her out. With the added bit of acceleration from the tail of the Terminate, her punch did both.

The girl flew two feet across the floor, slammed her head on another piece of furniture at the end of the bed, and went still. Darya’s fist scraped the ground, and she didn’t need to take a look to know her knuckle was gored.

“Seris!” Darya said, grabbing the elf as she came to a halt at the end of her movement. Seris was already getting up, and they both slammed against the bed.

“Princess! wh—”

“No time to explain! Heal his neck!” Darya said, hoisting Seris up with all her strength.

“Huh? Why!”

Darya grabbed Drakva’s limp hand and waved it at Seris, showing her the soulstone ring. “This is Sarka! He’ll die if he bleeds out!”

It took a few seconds for her to register what was said. She gasped, falling on her knees next to Drakva, who had fallen out of the bed. With both healing scrolls gone, he was bleeding a puddle on the floor.

As Seris burst with green mana, Darya rushed to Ikaro and slammed against his limp body, trying to roll him off the table. The mermaid was pinned under, bent at a weird angle. Her tail had already gone limp.

Ikaro weighed like a car. It took everything she had to push him off the table. The mermaid slid away with him as another leg collapsed, tilting all three of them off to the floor.

Darya managed to grab the mermaid’s head before Ikaro’s clay-like body snapped her neck.

“Hey! You alright! hey!” Darya slapped her face. The mermaid’s eyes fluttered open weakly, and she opened her mouth like a fish out of the water.

Darya kicked Ikaro’s body out of the way; his arm and leg were still pinning the mermaid to the floor. There was no time to fully free her. Darya massaged the girl’s chest as hard as she could.

In the panic, the girl suddenly drew a large breath, flaring her ribs and gills open.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Darya panted, pulling the girl from under Ikaro’s paralyzed limbs. “Can you breathe?! anything broken?” she asked, prodding the girl everywhere. The tail half seemed to be fine, but getting crushed by a car-sized druid surely had to break something.

“H-healp! help me!” the girl clung to her, and then groaned loudly. It was suddenly clear where she had suffered most damage. Her right shoulder had popped out of the socket, and her elbow was bending at a weird angle.

Somehow, she had been lucky enough not to get her lungs crushed against her ribs. With the upside-down, arched back angle she was lying in, that was in itself a miracle.

“Seris, are you finished?” Darya asked, grabbing the mermaid’s dislocated shoulder.

“Coming!” Seris said urgently as Darya dragged the mermaid out.

“It hurts!” the girl cried, twisting in place.

Darya brought her to Seris, who had just finished plugging Drakva’s neck. They didn’t even have enough energy left in them to communicate with words. Darya gestured at the mermaid’s weirdly bent arm, and Seris hopped over, immediately bursting with green mana again.

“Sarka?” Darya panted, falling on her back. Drakva was wheezing like an engine. “Swap back, you can’t stay in that body any longer!”

Drakva’s dreamy eyes fell on Darya for a moment. He nodded, wheezing hard.

He’s still dizzy. Lost a lot of blood. Sarka’s got to go back in the ring!

“Mana! here! Use mine! Hurry!” Darya grabbed the soulstone ring with all her might, channeling all the mana she had left into it. Drakva weakly lifted a hand and placed it over Darya’s. Breathing hard and holding his breath, he closed his eyes.

Purple mana burst out of Drakva’s nostrils and ears, twisting down his arm. Red mana rippled out of the soulstone ring, flashing as it spread up his arm. The two souls passed each other. 

Sarka’s purple mana disappeared under Darya’s hand. She waited for the ring to absorb all of it. When the last bit of red mana rippled out into Drakva’s body, she pulled the ring and hurriedly put it on her own finger.

“Sarka!” she panted, rolling away from Drakva’s wheezing body. He reached towards Darya, his face twisted with rage. “Hey! Sarka!” Darya whispered, watching Drakva’s chest heave for the last time.

Drakva K’letoth Defeated

Damage Dealt: 9,678 (90%)

EXP: +6,481 (View Axes)

“Sarka, did you make it out!”

Darya slapped the ring as if that could get a response out of the archmage. “Please be alive! Please be alive! Come on!”

Sarka’s first noise was a deep breath. He coughed several times, flashing the purple mana swirling inside the ring.

“Mother Goddess!” he whispered, “I thought I saw the pearly gates for a second there. I couldn’t even think straight, let alone warn you I was bleeding out!”

Darya laughed in relief, leaning back against the bedpost. “Well, that was stupidly dangerous. I won’t ask you to possess a dying orc again!”

“Ugh. Dying or not, why did I even agree to turn into a horrid orc? Shame upon my bloodline!” Sarka said indignantly.

“You two!” Seris grunted as she carefully lifted the injured mermaid into her arms. “Mind explaining anything that just happened?!”

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