It was even snowing in her dreams, Petula dimly reflected. Then she felt the intense stare of her great ancestor on her back and shivered, quickly focusing her attention back onto wiping the windows. "That's it, a nice and steady motion that is both purposeful, yet refined," Cordelia instructed. "You should be like an additional decoration for the windows should any gaze that way."

  "Even if it's sunny out? We'd burn, wouldn't we?" the vampire noble-turned-maid grumbled. However, that earned a raise of the eyebrow from her teacher. Abruptly then, the time of day within her head shifted and became bright out, rays of sun beams coming through the newly cleaned glass panes.

  Instantly, Petula jerked back and stepped away before she was exposed too long and even then the back of her hand felt uncomfortably hot. She knew from painful experience that if it had been a few seconds longer, then her skin would begin to blister and blacken as if she'd stuck her hand into an open fire. It would've taken weeks to heal, aching and itching all the while, hence why the castle of House Cordis all had heavy curtains to block out the sun.

  Yet meanwhile, Cordelia stood there, almost basking beneath the direct rays of the sun. She turned and smiled at her awed descendant. "Ah, forgive me. Once I had acquired resistance, I found myself developing a love for the warmth of the light, like the flowers I do so treasure. One day, I hope you will enjoy this too."

  Hesitantly, the vampire's arms raised, as if reaching out- only for the dream to already be fading as the day began in the real world.

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  "Hm?" I blinked at Petula's question. "Why do vampires burn when exposed to sunlight?"

  "I was wondering about that," my maid-in-training questioned, seemingly from out of nowhere shortly after she began her morning drills. "Like it's a pretty glaring thing that stands out from the kinds of mortals isn't it? And a little unfair at that too."

  "At first glance, sure it does."

  "So I'm wondering if perhaps the wisdom of your era could explain things? What do we vampires get in exchange for this critical weakness?"

  Ah, that actually was a good question, one that had even the original developers of FLOW scratching their heads when they had realized how few vampire players there were during launch. Even though they had included [Daybreak] as a common enough skill to circumvent the weakness, a lot of folks had questioned the including of them alongside the more common fantasy races for player choices.

  I don't think the truth of 'the writing team's barely hidden fixation' would go over well in the world of Shin.

  But fortunately, they did actually back it up with lore that I could fall upon, forgotten knowledge now I suppose. That was what I explained to the curious vampire now, educating her on actions of the old Ten Divines- not the Ten Lights. "When the gods had created the world and began to populate it with mortals, each had a say. After bearing witness to the twins of Secret and Truth create demons together, the Reaper had been inspired to scatter their own people of the night across the world, with their own challenge too. To their children, they had declared them long-lived and possessing might- but only if they could overcome the perils of the sun."

  "Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the divine, but that sounds then like vampires should have been nocturnal to take advantage of." Petula frowned. "But we wake up and work the day all the same- why is that?"

  "Because vampires are social creatures, are you not?" I pushed. "You're close to your family, and closer to your friends. So those early vampires had realized that simply retreating into the night where all were asleep and only they were awake that loneliness only greeted them. Some persisted and were said to be cursed with madness and insanity- but the general population became inundated with civilization and thus took to matching their own schedules of working in the day and slumbering at night."

  That wasn't even covering the fact that was just the creation myth. The more in-depth lore from people studying the true origins of the world speculated wildly about how vampires could have been born from some forbidden magic attempting to fuse life and the unlife together into a single form, creating a hybrid that was both weak yet stable. Then they became mixed into the general populace, like orcs, and became accepted as manner of fact.

  But I don't think House Cordis or Cordelia even would appreciate being told they had been children of perhaps escaped lab experiments. That was quite rude, and again, only speculation from lore quests investigating the truth. The creation myth used by the faithful was much gentler and more comfortably to work with.

  "I see," Petula mused, considering my retelling. "I hadn't thought as much. So our weakness is our challenge for power and longevity?

  "Precisely. Your kind have the power to control blood and live longer than most, a powerful combination- but only if you can overcome such weaknesses." I paused, then frowned. But if the level cap was in place, then things might be different. "It might sound weird, but how long does the average vampire of House Cordis live for?"

  "Um, let me think. I think father once mentioned his own parents had reached the age of sixty before dying in battle." She shifted uncomfortably. "He said that they could have lived for another few decades if not for their duty."

  "So maybe a hundred?" I asked sourly, pressing my lips into a thin line. "Not as bad as I expected, but not as much as I'd hope for either. I guess a drastic downturn in quality of living also means a general drop in life expectancy."

  "But I mean, we still live longer than lot others. Only elves can match us really," she pointed out and I did have to concede the point. "I'm guessing the patterns stayed the same generally? Humans, kits, and orcs live shortest, followed then by demons and dwarfs. For elves and vampires, we age more gracefully, which is why my aunt looks younger than her brother despite being the older sister."

  "The lack of a beard helps too."

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "He is fond of it, and so too is my brother. Says it makes him look a lot more mature," she sighed before pausing to look at me. "Then there's puppets like you who apparently live forever. Why?"

  I closed my eyes and recited from the creation myth again. "For their people, the Trickster had deviously given both blessing and curse of eternity. As is befitting of their name."

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  Pouring magical energy into a tree to stir up memories of its youth was not exactly a precise technique, especially when one wasn't an elf ranger/druid combination who probably had much finer technique. While I had finer control over Frie now with the advanced body combined with [Doll Maestro], getting what I wanted on my first try was always going to be a gamble. So when the memory finally rose, it wasn't the fall of the floating islands like I had wanted.

  Rather, the recollection I awakened showed instead came before. Yet unfamiliar as it was to me, I was thoroughly fascinated all the same. Because at the time of server shutdown, the nomadic people of the sky had some plot advancement into at least founding a single city as their central gathering point for trade and commerce. They had been still a mostly independent and disjointed people, preferring to fly between islands on their airships in search of the crystals they needed to work their technologies or trade for whatever else they couldn't obtain like food.

  What I saw in the tree's memory had been nothing like that. Gone was the endless expanse of the rolling open sky- in its place, I saw through the sapling sky spruce buildings block the way up, almost like scraping the heavens themselves. Skyscrapers, I recognized from memories of my old world, and in such quantities that they crowded as if to block out the sun themselves.

  It appeared that in the time since the server shutdown, the nomads had gotten very busy in placing down their roots. Once us players had planted the first seed, they then took it further to build something that I think would classify as an early-modern era of technological advancement. Just that instead of things like classic cars roaring down these streets, it had been those cycle-fliers that individuals would use for personal transportation. I recognized them well- being gifted the ownership of one was a significant reward for helping their people and was a rare flying mount for player characters.

  Mikel had one that he'd paired up with whenever he played his engineer build for maximum style.

  Back in the day, according to the lore, they were rare outside of those gifted to honored allies. Very few NPCs even of their faction had one yet now, it seemed to be a very common mode of transport now. A pity, there was a charm I would say to those larger airship fliers that a lot of families back then had used, clustered around a larger mothership unit.

  "Hm," I mused while Frie's crystal core received the recollection and processed it. "Things have changed a lot. Suppose that's only to be expected though given those nomads were already on the verge of an industrial revolution."

  CARE (Sowing, watering, allies, friends).

  "Oh, they cared for you even still? They didn't take over everything just yet, huh," I considered. Indeed, there were a faint sensation of like hands gently burying the sapling in new soil alongside others. "Hm, but not in the wild. Maybe a farm? No, this feels too aesthetically cared for. Ah, a park then? I guess they did learn urban studies from those established nations below."

  Before I could think more on the matter, the sapling's memory abruptly had a shadow cast over it. I blinked and looked up, mouth dropping in shock. In the real world, Frie started and nearly broke the connection formed through the long meditation, sharing in my flabbergasted reaction. Because what the sky spruce recalled was something that had never been seen before in FLOW.

  A massive airship lumbered through the clouds, the size of which had been akin to the zeppelins of my old world. Yet I could tell that unlike such large balloons filled with gas to float, I could tell that these ones had instead relied on some sort of advanced propulsion engine, likely an upscale variant for the ones used by the cycle-fliers. It had to be just as large as some of the smaller islands entirely, maybe that was how it had started! But with all that available space then, what had they filled it with then?

  The answer had been simple: decks upon decks of bristling weaponry, akin to like broadsides of warships. And as if that hadn't been enough, there were also massive turrets mounted on both dorsal and ventral sides, giving this battleship- for what else could I call it other than that- full coverage on all angles.

  There were smaller, equally armed airships that had darted out alongside, clearly escorting the battleship. Cruisers and destroyers perhaps? I guess that now that since their fleets no longer needed had to be used purely for wandering, they had been free to pack it to the brim with whatever they wanted- and, in the case of the tree's recollections, it had been with tools for war.

  FEAR (Worry, uncertain, fire, battle).

  "Indeed," I muttered through Frie when the memory faded away, the recollection over. "What sort of conflict had they been preparing for? Had the world below become such a mess?"

  TRUTH (Memory, recollection, fire, downfall).

  The sky spruce, or at least its consciousness, wanted more knowledge and information. Which meant it needed more energy for the case. I wavered, briefly torn between recognizing a sunk-cost fallacy, and true knowledge of what had occurred in the past.

  I had thought I knew the extent of the Crystal Conflicts, something so devastating that it caused such a critical loss of knowledge. But I suppose that hearing about it one thing; To see it firsthand through memory was another. For a moment I faltered, not sure if I could handle watching the world of Shin rip itself apart when adventurers were all gone.

  Yet I steadied myself and reminded that to fix the issue, I had to know the problem. "I'll give you more magic. We're uncovering this together."

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