Chapter 2. Guinea Pigs
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Looking at the water, I see a cute androgynous face looking back at me. After a few minutes of confusion, with a dash of what may have been panic, I have somewhat calmed down and decided to take a state of things.

Firstly, I am currently indeed in the body of Haille, and after a quick check, the male form of it. Honestly, there is not much difference between the two forms. Thanks to the original race being a Wood Elf-Halfling half-blood, Haille was already quite petite, and turning into a Nymph Kin just emphasized that, along with making the features much cuter. With long light green hair, a petite frame of a preteen, soft facial features and a permanent mischievous smile, Haille looks like a young girl indeed. Changing the sex, at least while it was still a game, only changed the reproductive organs, but did not do anything else.

Each Nymph Kin is unique, as they are based on not only the original race but also on the Nymph that gave their blessing, along with many other factors, so I do not really know the life expectancy of this body, but, based on the original race as well as the game lore regarding Nymph Kin, living for a millennium is basically the minimum, and could be quite a bit higher. In other words? I get to be a cute shota, or loli if I figure out how to change the sex, for hundreds of years!

Looking down at myself, I see that I am wearing the same thing my character was last time I played, which is a one-piece, sleeveless white dress that comes to the knees, along with matching colour panties. That's it, nothing else. Due to a random passive skill I acquired at some point or other, I can create a thin, invisible membrane of mana around my feet while in an area filled with enough nature mana. Thanks to that, I tended to forgo any footwear. Sure, one could argue that they provided vital armour points, but I liked to roleplay when playing, so as long as I didn't need to suit up for battle, I tended to wear what looks nice.

Breathing in, I feel the fresh air of the surrounding forest. Perhaps it is the world, or maybe due to my race, but I can feel how alive the surroundings are. It's almost as if the trees are singing to me, and the wind is dancing to the tune.

"Well, might as well get moving."

Listening to my cute voice, and yes it's cute, I'm not just being narcissistic, my smile widens for a moment and I follow in the direction the river is flowing, all the while familiarizing myself with the new body, and, most importantly, figuring out how all my skills, magic spells and so on translate over to here.

Stuff like a status window, a quest menu and so on are totally out of the question it seems, after trying to summon them for quite a while, but skills and spells on the other hand are in a much better situation. Skills have an instinctual feel to them, so when I try to use one, I automatically know how to do it. Magic, while a little more complicated, works as well. Instead of knowing it purely by instinct, I sort of have knowledge injected into my head when I try to do a spell.

For example, for my most basic healing palm spell, I understand how to move my mana through my body, and how to channel my intent into it. For a slightly more complicated spell, such as song of nature, I know what the chant is, or aria in this case, along with how to do it in conjunction with channelling intent and moving my mana.

All in all? Things are fantastic. If I had to learn how to do things from scratch, I would be next to useless. I mean, sure, thanks to my long game time and knowledge of lore, I do know a big portion of the chants anyway, and I could do a decent few of my runes and ritual circles, but that's about it. Channelling intent or moving mana would be, while maybe not impossible, ridiculously hard. Like trying to use an entirely new organ, except that if you mess up you might explode a piece of your body.

Oh, I can use my inventory as well! Fantastic. While I did leave a vast majority of my stuff in my home, I do still carry a good bit on me. While the game does have an inventory limit, it is only really in effect early on. After that, there are a huge variety of ways to bypass it, though the offset to that was that you lost everything on you should you die, along with a few other penalties, so people still didn't just carry everything with them. Though, considering that my method of bypassing it involved linking it with a domain, mine will probably be limited again, even if not fully.

Thinking of my inventory in my head, I get a sort of mental list of what I have; a decent stock of potions, several weapons of different types, plenty of food, a ridiculous number of clothes and a few hundred herbs of various varieties. Now that I think about it, I was collecting ingredients for potions, so that makes sense. Well, aside from that I have a few random things here and there, but the general stuff is covered. As far as capacity goes...hmm, I do feel there is a limit, but I can't tell what it is, something to figure out another time.

After a few hours of walking, mostly spent on experimenting with magic and skills and getting used to it all, along with finding out that my biological needs are indeed present and I do still need to eat, drink and pee, the trees have become sparser, and indeed, it seems the forest is about to end.

As I happily move forth, my ears pick up the sounds of battle, the clashing of metal, grunts and shouts make it quite easy to guess. In theory, I should have been able to pick up those sounds earlier, but it seems I am still getting used to things.

I decide to speed up a bit, using instinct deep in me letting me know how to step to move swiftly and silently, along with an air magic spell for increased movement speed. I reach the end of the treeline within a short moment and stop to inspect the scene.

'Of course, after being sent into a different world, I still get random encounters at the perfect times...well, at least I have someone to ask about the world, I wonder if it is the same Durion I played in.

The two sides are locked in combat, but the attackers have a clear advantage. The defending side has a single carriage in the centre, surrounded by only six soldiers defending it, while the attacking side has twenty-four, one of which looking like a mage of sorts, perhaps fire if the red-coloured robes and the staff with a red gem are to be of any indication. The defending side seems to have been attacked while taking a small stop, as the horses are tied off to the side, neighing loudly.

Now, I am not really a defender of justice. If anything, the morals of the modern world would paint me as an evil person, not that I care much for such a silly topic as good and evil. Still, the attacking side already has this in the bag, so any help would be redundant, and might just make them wary; while helping the defending side would make them indebted to me, which would make things easier for myself. As such, without further ado, I change my mischievous smile into a calm one and start lightly walking towards the battle.

They are not too far from the treeline, so it only takes a moment before I am spotted by the defender facing this side. His confusion is quite entertaining, to be honest, but at least it prompts one of the attackers to look behind them as well, which causes a chain reaction of everyone being more or less aware of me.

Now, normally this would not mean anything. After all, why would they stop fighting just because they saw someone else appear? At most one or two of the attackers would have switched their attention to me. Alas, I am cheating a little bit, as I used a weak lesser charm aura spell to get their attention. While not strong enough to make them fall in love with me, it gives me an aura that slightly attracts attention, which couples well with my out-of-place clothing and peaceful facial expression.

Approaching until I am around ten meters from the nearest person, I do a partial curtsy, in which I decided to hold out my dress, but I kept my head straight without bowing. My lore knowledge tickled the back of my head, letting me know that holding out the dress or skirt is used by young unmarried women or girls while bowing my head would have implied that I consider the other person to be of higher status, which is why I did not do it. As I rise from the curtsy, I initiate conversation in what has become a silent battlefield.

"Greetings gentlemen, pardon me for interrupting, but I happen to have business with an occupant of that carriage, would you so kindly halt your hostilities?"

Of course, I doubt they would actually agree, and just as I thought, they looked between each other and a few guffaws rang out.

"Listen here young lady, you seem to be a little lost and confused, why about I help you out, hmm?"

The magician approaches me with a mean smirk and is about to grab me, when I do a small sidestep and casually pass by his side. While doing that, I touch his side with my palm and use one of my favourite moves: a nature spell called regeneration, along with a nature spell called boost growth, both of which are then facilitated by two of my specialisations: limit breaker which allows me to cause effects stronger than the original limit of spells, and spell melder which allows me to cast multiple spells at the same time and melds them together, leading to various results depending on the combination.

The result, in this case, being a bloody explosion as I cause the mage's insides to rapidly grow and burst. The blood spatters on my pristine white dress, making me furrow my brows slightly.

It seems I have a lot more freedom with my spells than in the game. I accidentally poured in too much mana, which led to this bloody explosion, instead of what should only have been his internal organs bursting. Seems I have to research this more...and would you look at that, I still twenty-three guinea pigs left.

Turning away from the bloody mess on the ground, I smile at the now pale soldiers in front of me, the smile apparently triggering some fight-or-flight instinct in them, as they charge at me, shouting various vulgarities such as 'You bitch!' or 'bloody whore!'

I click my tongue at their poor manners and decide to experiment with my spells since they so eagerly present themselves. Weaving between them with the grace of a dancer, I casually tap each attacker I pass. Some burst just like the mage because I use too much mana, some just scream in pain but don't die as I use too little. With each try, I get better and better control over it; finding myself being able to direct the mana to particular organs, which leads to increased efficiency as I can just focus on the heart alone. Not even a minute has passed and twenty bodies lay on the ground in various states, a few of them still alive even.

The other four had the perfectly reasonable idea to get the hell out of here after seeing my massacre, but I don't feel like letting them go, so I try out another combination in my offensive healing repertoire, this one requiring a chant.

"Hear my plea, sylvans of old, hunters of the forest, aid me with my prey"

A green light escapes from both my hands, forming the shape of a beautifully carved curved bow, partly physical and partly not. I pull back the magic bowstring and four arrows made of wind appear, ready to be fired. I once more imbue boost growth and regeneration together, into the wind arrows, making a combination of three spells this time. I aim in the direction of the escaping combatants and let loose, the wind arrows filled with my intent home in on the enemies, each one hitting them in the back, roughly where the heart is located; causing it to burst.

Normally, the spell sylvan bow is good enough by itself, but the path I choose turned it into a support spell. The wind arrows do no damage by themselves, but in exchange, it removes the cost of melding spells into it. The melding of regeneration and boost growth still cost the same of course, but melding those, or any other spells, together with sylvan bow comes at no extra charge, making it my main long-range method for combat in smaller engagements.

Looking down at myself, I realise, though it's not exactly a surprise, that my dress has more red in it than white at this point, and I feel blood slowly dripping from my long hair. Funny enough, my feet are still pristine, perhaps I should inspect if the new flexibility in spells carries over to skills, having a layer of mana around my entire body would keep me clean next time I go on a slaughter at least. Well, that's an issue for another time, now I guess I will just cast a quick immaculate spell and get chatting with the group I just saved.

Turning towards them, now clean and with the bow dispelled, I see all but one of them shrink away from me. That one is a rugged-looking man, filled with scars and wrinkles, clearly already a few decades into his life. When I was experimenting, or fighting if you could call it that, he was the only one on the side of defenders that wasn't just dumbstruck and actually attacked the enemies while they were distracted with me. He didn't do all that much since I was quite fast, but he still struck down three of them.

I make my way over to him, the bloody ground leaving not a single stain on my feet, and give him my usual smile, one that has a slightly mischievous feel to it according to others. I don't bother with doing another curtsy and start talking right away instead.

"Greetings, I seem to found myself a tad lost, would it be an issue for me to request some information on the surroundings?"

While speaking, I pay attention to his movements, his wary manner is obvious, though I cannot blame him. When I mentioned the word 'information' he tightened his grasp on the hilt of his sword, though he relaxed it right after I continued. All in all, nothing out of the norm, though I presume that someone here knows some valuable information. My thoughts last barely a moment, apparently even faster than they were in the past. Another perk of this body, I presume.

Alas, what brought a stop to my thoughts was not the man I questioned, but rather a voice from the carriage, a young, girly voice at that.

"Grande, what is going on?"

I could practically feel the man, Grande apparently, flinch at the voice. Clearly, the young one in the carriage did not look outside at all, and could only go by the noises they heard. Considering those mostly consisted of shouting, screaming and wet bursting sounds, the young one must be quite courageous, or simply oblivious, to speak up at this point.

"Miss Aria, we have been...", Grande takes a brief look over the bloody mess on the ground, "...assisted by a skilled traveller, who seems to be lost and in need of directions."

I could hear the sigh of relief from here, though it was quiet enough that a regular human would not have noticed it. After a brief movement, the door of the carriage opens from the inside, and the young Miss Aria appears.

While I was never particularly talented in estimating the age of others, her body is in a similar state of development to my own, though a glance tells me she is a tiny bit shorter. Her hair is shorter than mine, a healthy curled blonde reaching her shoulders. Her eyes are a lovely shade of green, working decently with her fancy long olive dress. Before I have the time to bother with the details of her dress, my gaze is drawn to her cute face as it is coloured in surprise when she gazes at the evidence of how I 'assisted' them.

Before she has the chance to take it in further or make a comment, I repeat my curtsy from earlier in her direction and smile lightly as I greet her.

"Greetings Miss Aria, my name is Haille, it is a pleasure to meet you."

First proper chapter since I had it more or less ready already. Quick question for you fellows: Should I tag this as 'reincarnated into a game world' since technically the reincarnation is based on the game character and stuff, but on the other hand this world doesn't operate on a game system as you see in litrpgs, so I am not sure if this counts or not.

Oh, and any other tag suggestions are of course welcome.

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