"Mistress, your body temperature has increased and your face is red. Are you sick?" Lulu asks.
Eris clears her throat and answers, "I'm fine. Just a little flustered. We still don't know anything about where we are or why we are even here right now. We need to proceed with the utmost caution in order to keep ourselves safe."
"I completely agree with you, your highness. Acting too rashley at this point will only get us into trouble, as we are weakened by our blatant lack of knowledge of this land," answers Chrono.
"I suggest that we send out scouts, mistress. Preferably aerial units that can travel for long periods of time while relaying information to us, both visually and auditorily," Lulu suggests.
"Indeed. I can think about a few summons or others of our forces that can do so." Eris then detects a strange smell, and sniffs her arm only to realize that it's coming from her, "Damn. I guess sleeping for a thousand years in that red sludge really made me all smelly. Lulu, can you prepare a bath for me?"
"Of course, mistress," the homunculi answers with a bow.
"Chrono, I want you to go and check on the worker units and make sure that they're still alright. Even undead can still have afflictions of the mind," the vampire orders.
"Understood, Empress." the demon replies before teleporting away.
Lulu walks with Eris as she moves towards the bath. After wandering through the halls for several minutes, the pair find the doors to the bathing area and open them. Eris smiles in relief as she looks upon the hot springs that she built within the castle. The hot springs look to be natural, but the rocks that surround and form the pools are all created by Eris. There are ten pools total, each one is steaming. The entire room is shrouded by a thin shroud of warm fog. To Eris' left there is a shelf filled with cleaning products and to her right there is a shelf with a large amount of towels.
"Would you like me to bathe you, mistress?" Lulu asks.
Eris thinks for a moment, "I'm sure that most people would be embarrassed to have someone bathe them. However, I couldn't go anywhere by myself so there was always a nurse there to help me clean up in my past life. But, at the same time, I'm in a different and much stronger body now. I don't really need anyone to help me bathe." She then answers the homunculi, "I appreciate the offer, but I don't need anyone to help me bathe. I'd like you to remain outside and make sure that no one enters."
"It shall be as you wish, mistress."
Lulu goes outside the bathing room and Eris strips off her clothes and jewelry, puts them on other shelves to her left and moves towards the baths. She slowly dips her body into the hot water, and though it kinda stings at first, the more she's submerged, the better it feels. Eventually it reaches up to her shoulders, and gives a relaxing sensation throughout Eris' entire body, the first she's felt since she got into her current situation. The young vampire can feel her worries melting away with the strange odor on her body.
"Haaaa. This is amazing. I've always loved warm baths, but this is better than any I've ever had. Maybe it has something to do with me not moving much for the past few thousand years. This feels even better than it did in the game."
Time passes, and Eris starts to use the cleaning products that she got from the shelf to wash her body and her extremely long hair in the hot spring. Suds form on the water as the smell that originally covered her body completely fades away. She gently grabs a handful of her raven black hair strands to smell it, and finds that it smells similar to strawberries.
Eris breathes a sigh of relief, "Thank goodness. I was worried that the smell of healing potions and blood would always stay on my body. It's really weird. I don't remember Healing potions being that smelly in Legend Conquerors Online." she sighs, "Man. All of this is so weird. When that panel said that it'd give me a second chance at life, I had no idea that this was what it meant. Now I'm a blood-sucking monster, I have an army of over ten million undead monsters, and there are at least thirty individuals here, that are just as strong as I am, who follow me like dogs to their master. If that wasn't weird enough, we're all also on a completely different planet and inside of a castle that I made in a full-dive MMO game. I need to make sure that I act like I should, otherwise if I disappoint them, they might all turn on me. At the same time, I need to get a grasp of the situation that I've gotten myself into. It'd be nice if I wasn't the only vampire in this world. At the same time, if there are humans in this world too, they might see me as some kind of horrible monster. But even if they do, I don't care. I'm not the same person as I was in my previous life. I won't let anyone take anything from me again. I'll use this power to protect those close to me in this life," she states with her red eyes glowing with determination.
Meanwhile, in an area to the west of Eris' castle, there's a massive forest that's buzzing with activity. A young girl moves through the thick brush at an abnormally fast pace. She looks to be around twelve years old, has scarlet red hair tied in a ponytail, slightly pale skin, pointed ears, and ruby red eyes. She wears a frilly, black dress and shoes that are both not designed for her face-pace running. Her dress is also ripped, tattered, and covered in mud in some areas. She stops behind a tree. She's breathing heavily as she looks to the east.
"That aura. That's her… It's gotta be her!! But, can I make it? No, I have to make it! She's the only one that can save us!"
Suddenly, she can hear the voices of several men approaching, "I think I heard something over here!"
"We have to get that little bitch now!"
The little girl's expression becomes one of concern, but she still tries her best to shrug off her exhaustion and accelerates towards the east, filled with hope.