By what must have been a couple of hours that had passed at this point, Delphina had noticed something else that was odd. No one had knocked or tried to enter her room since she'd woken up. She hadn't woken up late in the day, and the Sun was climbing up steadily higher into the sky, as the room she was in became brighter practically by the minute.
The fruit and fresh water she had snacked on absent-mindedly must have been laid out right before bed, or shortly before she'd gotten up. Was this her breakfast, or a well-thought-out snack Delphina could regularly look forward to? Dropping her eyes towards the paper she'd written her notes on earlier, Delphina tried to think of what she might have missed.
"The families, that's a good point".
"Delphina is a de Velasques, but what were the other notable families again? What was her rank besides being a Sword Master? Why can't I remember that? It seems slightly more important than who was the most popular male lead of the game…"
Drawing out a low hum from her throat, she stood up and threw the few books she'd managed to pick out onto the bed. Reading at the desk seemed better, but just in case anyone did eventually come and found her reading in bed. She could at least claim she was unwell and didn't want to leave her room as a result.
The original Delphina didn't seem like someone who'd laze in bed regularly, or at least, she assumed that was the case.
"After all, aren't Sword Masters stereotypically crazy about training? I can practically smell the early morning private training grounds she must have used from here. It would explain why she mostly has trousers in her wardrobe too—so, trope number two: the female knight who rejects historical femininity."
"Tut tut, I bet she only ever wore her hair in a ponytail and didn't let any maids assist her. Maybe that's why no one's checked in on me yet?"
Delphina nodded to herself before focusing back on the books in front of her.
"A Brief History of Mareveil pre 'The Darkening' 2030-50MA".
"The Four Great Families".
"A Reconstruction of the Imperial Continent".
"An Ode to his & her Majesties failures".
"An Introduction to 'The Gap', for aspiring Martial Artists".
"Let's start with The Gap. I don't recognise that name at all from the game. Maybe it's a different name for The Gates? Regardless, I'll skim read anyway."
With a shrug, Delphina settled herself amongst some bolster pillows to read more comfortably.
Less than 10 minutes later, she'd slammed the book shut and thrown it across the room. A cold sweat seeped through the back of her nightdress as she sat up and stared blankly in the direction she had thrown the detestable book.
"This is nothing like the game, not in the slightest, and quite frankly, the fact that there's some awareness of outside worlds connecting to this one is making my stomach ache for God's sake. That SSS difficulty label for this World wasn't a joke."
Delphina began to pace around the room, hoping the exercise would help clear her head.
"So to summarise, The Gates connect to The Gap. The game covered that much, it just didn't give a name to the space beyond The Gates. Then, The Gap is just a plane filled with different Worlds that have been killed off because the Mana was eaten up? And the Mana was eaten by Mega Fauna… Which is what we train to hunt. And Sword Masters are the peak of those Martial Artists because they use their own 'Life Energy' instead of Mana to cause astronomical damage to Mega Fauna…"
Delphina paused her pacing to look down at her own hands.
"Why does this now sound like something out of a Xianxia novel… In more advanced Martial Artist books, they're not going to start cracking on about Dantains or qi, are they?"
Lifting her hands towards the ceiling, she began to dissociate as she watched the sunlight pour through her fingers and reflect off her pale digits. Very fine scars criss-crossed her palms, creating a delicate silvery sheen that truly made her seem like porcelain at that moment.
"Delphina, just how hard did you work to get to this point. I feel like you'd shatter just from the reality of this. Or were you not that delicate? Was your character in the game just a warped reflection? Or did you go insane from what was happening beyond The Gates? Well, it's not like you can answer any more."
"Still girly, incest is a no-go".
Delphina burst out laughing as she finished with that bombshell before her face darkened again.
"I wonder if any of those Worlds ended up getting eaten, too."
"It's not something I should be reminiscing about right now, though. No one's knocked on my door just yet, shall we check out the Four Great Families for some light-hearted reading instead?".
Settling back onto the bed, Delphina practically dove into the next book she'd chosen to learn from next.
As the Sun reached its zenith, she was still reading through the few books she'd chosen. Brows furrowed and steam practically rising from the top of her head, the level of concentration was obvious. Letting out a profound sigh that even made some of the bed drapes move, Delphina finally rolled over to take a break.
"I can't, I need to write down some of the more critical points, or I feel like I'm going to forget. What is this, a literature exam?"
Chuckling darkly as she walked back over to the desk to compile more bullet points.
- Yamino-Mareveil Imperial Family- in decline due to 'The Darkening'.
- De Velasques- Sword Masters, Information Network leaders, and Hunters for the Imperial Family.
- De Luna- the former strongest Mage family, went into decline due to traitors in the ranks. Leaders in studying The Gates.
- De Rios- Trade, artificers, and alchemists. Responsible for the magic-to-technology handover.
- Burgess- a lesser noble family raised into a Dukedom due to their contribution to Gate clearance during 'The Darkening'.
- The Heroes vs The Villains- created 'The Underworld' of Mareveil, basically responsible for a lot of civilian deaths and destruction of cities across The World. Probably caused the attraction of The Gap due to the power imbalance their presence caused.
Here, Delphina stopped writing briefly as her fingertips had started trembling.
"It's so much worse than what I thought. If they find out I'm not honestly Delphina, or even a Delphina who has remembered her past lives. That's it, they'll have my head on a god damn execution stage mainly because I'm a de Velasques—the scandal it would create would over turn the Empire."