A Newbie's Lecture Stream
Race change.
Of all the countless systems, features, and settings packed into the virtual reality game Devil of Angel, the one known as the most special was without question Race Change.
Every player in DeoEn was forced to begin as a Human, but through special hidden pieces, class traits, or hidden quests, one's race could be changed.
Upon changing race, the stats, skills, and even physical structure maintained as a human were completely overhauled, granting abilities on an entirely different dimension from before.
Such a difficult process came with plenty of advantages, but there was one, single, glaring drawback...
"A Nymph?"
"Yes. That's right. A Nymph. Me. Yeah..."
Leo took another deep breath and brushed back her navy-blue hair.
The part of her ear that had been hidden by her locks was pointed sharply upward. It was similar to an elf's ear, yet somehow subtly different.
A Nymph, huh.
Nymphs could indeed be considered a kind of spirit. Whenever one ventured into the deep forests untouched by human hands, fairies and nymphs were always gathered there, living in communities.
In a way, it only made sense that Leo, a spirit sorceress, would turn into a Nymph.
"How did it happen?"
"W-well... my third-tier quest was raising Spirit Affinity, and—hah. Agh. Water. Water, please."
Leo gulped down the water bottle resting on the bench. Maybe because she was so small now, she had to grip the bottle with both hands to drink it.
Pwah! She let out a breath.
"Take your time. There's no rush."
"Okayyy..."
"...Whew. Okay, I'm better now. Anyway, continuing—since I needed to raise my Spirit Affinity, I traveled all over the place. And then, by chance, I ended up going deep into the forest."
Following a mid-tier spirit into the depths, she had come across a group of nymphs playing with the spirits. They were smaller than elves, yet considerably larger than the spirits themselves.
Leo, who had still been human at the time, sensed immediately that this was a special quest and decided to help the nymphs. In aiding them, she learned Spirit Affinity firsthand and was able to commune with a great many spirits.
And then—
"The moment of choice came. A race change, which even back then only a handful of players had ever experienced."
Having grown close with the nymphs and envious of their Spirit Affinity, Leo accepted without a moment's hesitation. And so she gained an affinity even greater than the nymphs' own, along with superior stats, skills, and physical abilities.
The only problem was...
"Um, yeah. I didn't know there was a penalty..."
First of all, she had gotten younger.
Leo, who had stood around 170 centimeters tall—fairly tall for a woman—had instantly plummeted to under 150, and her appearance had transformed into a petite, adorable little face.
The bigger problem was her speech and personality. She kept stammering over her words, and her personality itself had regressed to that of a child. She deliberately tried to speak in a mature way to resist the penalty, but before she knew it, she would catch herself talking like a little kid.
"Damn penalty..."
"...I see. That sounds rough."
"Ah, well. Yeahhh... It's been about a year now, so I'm used to it. Other than feeling a bit frustrated sometimes, I'm totally fine, oh-kay."
"......"
That's nobody's business but her own, huh.
Granted, my timeline was a bit different.
Thirty times as long, give or take?
I'd nearly blown my cover earlier when I panicked, but by now living this way had become the more familiar side of me. After all, I had lived longer as Lily than I ever had as a man.
"Ah! Wait, this isn't what I came here to talk about."
Leo shot to her feet as if an exclamation mark had popped up over her head. The fact that standing up barely changed her height at all was its own little comedy routine, though.
Saying she was going to wake up one of her spirits for a moment, Leo moved her hand.
Th-th-thud... The empty ground of the clearing began to churn, and from a distance, something started running toward us.
From below?
Not across the surface—but from underneath it.
Before long, something poked smoothly up through the green earth. A brown, adorable little spirit with a neatly rounded head, in the shape of a mole.
"It's an earth spirit. A mid-tier one, and this little one carries its blessing."
"Oh..."
I stepped down from the bench and looked at the mole spirit. It took one look at its master, then swung around toward me and wiggled its V-shaped front claws in greeting.
Taking after its owner, I supposed—it was cute too.
"Hello there."
"Cute, right? Don't be fooled—it's incredibly strong."
Leo declared this with an emphatic ahem! while pointing at her friend.
...Now that I looked closer, her mannerisms really were childlike too. She probably hadn't noticed herself.
I nodded and sat back down on the bench.
"I can guess what you want to ask about, can't I?"
What Leo wanted was most likely a blessing.
Contracting with a spirit was merely borrowing its power, but obtaining a 'Blessing' was akin to gaining the spirit's entire being. The difference in power might seem comparable on paper, but pouring someone a cup of water and handing them a copied water jug were two entirely different things.
If I had to put it into words, it was something like a shed skin, I supposed. Calling it a "shed skin" for a being that was itself spiritual felt a bit off, but still.
"You're curious about the Blessing of Nerindia, aren't you?"
"Yes! I've never once gotten a blessing from a high-tier spirit or above. I thought maybe there might be a way."
Leo's eyes sparkled. If she could obtain a blessing from a high-tier spirit or beyond, she could become far stronger than she was now.
I pondered for a moment.
Frankly, there was no harm in telling her, and I'd already mentioned it once on Yena's stream—that Spirit Affinity and conversation were what mattered.
But if someone asked whether it ended there, my answer would be no.
Conversation was merely the act of opening the door to a relationship with a spirit. Everything that happened afterward was up to the spirit sorceress.
Sitting on the bench, I showed Leo the Sylphid Ring.
"You know what this is, right?"
"Yes! It's the Spirit Ring. The really, really expensive one."
"I never contracted with the spirit that gave me my blessing. Neither did Yena. In other words, a blessing is nothing more than an outer shell. Just like this ring."
The fact that a spirit dwelt within the ring was a slightly different matter, though.
Leo tilted her head.
"So a blessing is... equipment?"
"Something like a shed skin. Ah—though my theory could be wrong. What I think of as a blessing might mean something entirely different in DeoEn."
After all, the idea that DeoEn merely resembled the world I'd possessed was just that—a guess. Whether they were truly the same would remain an eternal mystery unless I stormed DeoEn's headquarters itself.
"Hmm..." Leo murmured, giving a tentative nod of acceptance.
"Anyway, by my understanding, a blessing is a part of the spirit itself. It's important to the spirit, but it's like a shed skin—so it isn't that precious."
"...Now that you mention it, Muddy did just hand hers over once we got close."
"Exactly. It's not something so critical that it must never be given away, but she wouldn't just hand it to anyone either. Think about it—would a spirit give up her own shed skin to someone who doesn't understand what it is, without any care for how it might be used?"
That shed skin had once been her body, after all.
It wasn't just her physical form; her very abilities were woven into it, and no spirit in this world would hand that over carelessly.
"I'll say it again—my theory might be wrong. It's just what I've come to feel, that's all."
Though I did hear it confirmed directly from the Spirit King, so it's correct.
But that place and DeoEn could be different.
Leo agonized for a long while, then before long seemed to accept it, nodding her head vigorously.
"No, no! Thinking it over myself, I think you're right! Whenever she seemed weirdly reluctant to give one but then finally did, she never had any lingering attachment to it afterward."
"That's right. The reason a high-tier spirit's blessing is so hard to obtain is that the longer they live, the firmer their attachment to themselves and their identity becomes."
"So that's why they're even more reluctant to give them away? Not just because they're lofty and high and mighty?"
"Exactly."
With everything now understood, Leo wore a satisfied expression and asked her final question.
"Then how do I get a high-tier spirit's blessing?!"
"You'll have to have a very smooth tongue."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"You heard me."
Wasn't that just obvious, though?
Where in this world was anything free?