Bunny Girl Evolution [A Monster Evolution LitRPG]

Important note: Corunia is the country that is run by the changelings. This has only been mentioned once in the story currently, but whenever I get around to editing B2, I will go back and add a few more mentions of it to make this a bit smoother.

As Nick and Bianca approached, Elise tried to use her new skill, {Sense Emotions}, to tell what they were feeling. What she felt… were definitely emotions. The engaged couple was most certainly feeling some emotions at that time. Which emotions they were though, Elise had no idea.

She had been hoping to get some actionable insight from the skill. Were they feeling grateful that Elise had saved them? Confused about how she had become what she was? Whether she was like that the whole time? Wary of ulterior motives? Angry for deceiving them? Elise really wished she knew, but all she got from her skill was jumbled, unintelligible feedback.

She wished she had more time to experiment with the skill. She could feel the emotions of everyone around fluctuating, and she could feel distinct differences between the imprisoned former guards and the freed prisoners, but beyond that, she had no clue what anything she felt meant. If she had more time, she could have used her other new skill, {Forced Feeling} to force some specific feelings on peop- monsters and then define them with {Sense Emotions}. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that time, and she would have to do things the hard way.

She switched to her human form as they approached, and almost immediately regretted it, as it made both of them flinch.

Why did I do that? she wondered.

Her first instinct was to do it because it was easier to talk to people in that form, but to them, it was probably pretty jarring seeing their former pet turn human. She considered turning back, but it was too late. They were already ten feet away. She barely resisted closing her eyes to brace herself when Nick started speaking.

“Thank you for rescuing us,” he said, bowing deeply.

“Yes, thank you,” said Bianca, mirroring his bow.

Elise was a bit taken aback, but recovered quickly.

“Oh,” she replied. “I barely did anything.”

In terms of the overall mission, that wasn’t true, but when it came to Nick and Bianca, it was. She actually didn’t do anything. She just showed up at the end and helped them a little bit. With how the rest of the Operation was going, someone else would have arrived to help not long after Elise did, and they would have been rescued all the same.

“If not for you, Bianca might be a vampire right now.”

“Someone else would have come to help if I didn’t,” said Elise.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it was you that did it.”

“We talked to Hans,” said Bianca. “He said that the only reason you came was to rescue us. And you did. Whether you think you did it all or not, you came here to save us, and you did save us. So thank you.”

Elise glanced over at the injured fey, who was sitting on a stump and talking to two other Ostra members. She looked back at Bianca who looked very earnest in her thanks.

“Y-you’re welcome,” said Elise.

“Since you’re here saving us instead of looking for her…” said Nick, trailing off for a second. “Does that mean that Sophie is… already safe?”

“N-no,” said Elise. “I don’t know where she is. I looked, but…”

“...I see,” said Nick, his expression dark.

“I’m sure she’s fine!” said Bianca. “We were both fine, after all!”

“‘Fine’?” asked Nick.

“We survived, didn’t we?” asked Bianca. “Sophie’s a smart girl. I’m sure she was able to take care of herself.”

Nick didn’t respond. Elise didn’t know what to say either. She had more that she wanted to say. That she needed to say. Specifically about Sylvanna and Corwin. But it really didn’t feel like the right moment to bring out their corpses, so she decided to wait until they brought it up. It didn’t take long.

“And my parents?” asked Nick after a long, tense silence.

Elise hesitated. She knew they would ask, but she still had yet to prepare a response. How could she? How do you tell someone that their parents are dead? More importantly, how do you tell them that you have their parents’ corpses in an extra-dimensional pocket hanging from your neck.

“...Dead,” said Elise eventually. “Th-there was nothing I could do. I-”

A tear rolled down her cheek, surprising her. She wasn’t expecting to cry then. She had been expecting them to be the ones crying. A moment later, Bianca moved forward. Elise flinched back, half-fearing an attack, only to be wrapped up in a warm embrace. A moment later, the tears were pouring out freely as what felt like months of suppressed emotions all came out at once.

After a few seconds, Nick walked over and put a hand on Elise’s shoulder. They stayed like that for a full minute until Elise managed to calm down. She felt a bit silly about losing control of herself like that, and doubly so for needing to be comforted by these two. They acted so mature then, but Elise was pretty sure they were both younger than her by at least a year.

When they finally broke apart and Elise was able to speak again, she gave them a brief, heavily redacted version of what had happened since the warg attack. She skipped over most of the early details, saying she just had a few encounters, and jumped to when she met Penelope and what had happened from there. She also obviously left out the part where she was reincarnated and was sentient from the start. Instead, she claimed that after barely escaping the warg, she had evolved into a Rabbit Fey and retained her memories from before.

That earned her some looks of pity as they now believed that she was basically only a few months old, but she would just have to live with that. She wasn’t ready to come clean to anyone about her true origins yet.

After Elise shared her story, Bianca promptly did the same. It was pretty much as Elise had already heard, where she was stranded in the wilderness on the continent of Carsas before meeting with a professor from Jelor on a research trip and making her way back, but she included a few details that Elise hadn’t heard. For example, her new class. {Inspect} now showed that she was a Primal Nature Witch, rather than just a Nature Witch, and this was apparently due to the place where she had teleported to.

Unlike the other known continents, Carsas was largely unexplored. It had only been discovered recently, and all the settlements there were relatively new, and limited to the coastline. On the continent, many species of plants and animals previously thought to be extinct were discovered, as well as many that no one had ever seen before. Bianca had been dropped right in the center of the island, and was forced to acclimate to her new surroundings, using her skills in ways she never had before, and this ultimately led to her unlocking a new path.

Her time alone had actually been relatively peaceful compared to Elise and Nick’s. She was able to avoid all the greatest dangers of the continent, and actually had a rather enjoyable time with the professor’s expedition before she returned. Then, of course, she got kidnapped by the Blood Syndicate, but even then, she wasn’t harmed until the final moments, at which point Nick and Elise arrived to save her.

Nick, on the other hand, had the opposite of a peaceful time. Elise had known that he was a pit fighter, but hearing his story from his own mouth really put into perspective how terrible his time was. He didn’t go into great detail, but by the time his tale reached the present, Elise felt bad for ever thinking she had it bad. She was stressed and surrounded by dangerous people, sure, but she was in a safe–or at least somewhat controlled–environment the whole time.

She also wondered what had happened to this “the Lady” person. She assumed that was Rayna’s subordinate who had broken free and gone rogue, but none of the vampires Elise saw acted like the one Nick described. She assumed that one of the other groups must have taken care of her, but she would have to check in with Ostra to make sure of that before telling Nick anything more.

Shortly after Nick finished his story, Penelope finally woke up, so they went over to where she was resting and being healed and continued the conversation there. Maia, who had been helping to process the former prisoners, joined shortly afterward, and for the next hour, they talked about mundane things like food and school. No one made any mention of the past few months. This left Elise sidelined for most of the time, but she didn’t mind.

While Penelope’s external wounds were mostly recovered, apparently receiving large quantities of healing at once caused immense exhaustion, so she soon fell back asleep, and the conversation dwindled until one of the Ostra members who had been speaking with Hans approached

[ Vespulan Royal Guard, lvl ??? ]

They were more or less a giant wasp with their only vaguely humanoid feature being how it walked upright on its two hind legs. Nick and Bianca visibly tensed as it approached, with Nick putting a hand on the hilt of its sword. It seemed to notice this, and stopped 10 feet away, careful to make no sudden movements.

“We have received some news from our headquarters,” it said in a soft female voice. “Hans would like to share it with you, but he is currently unable to move. Would you please follow me?”

Hans was looking in their direction, nodding as he continued to receive healing. His open wounds were closed, and his complexion looked better, but regenerating lost parts was much more difficult than healing existing ones, so he still was far from top condition. It looked like they had put in extra effort to regenerate his thumb and index finger on one hand so he could gain some independence back, but the rest were still no more than stumps.

Elise immediately started moving toward him, and the others followed shortly after.

“I’ll keep this brief,” said Hans when they reached him. “I have some very good news for you: Sophie Gray has been located.”

“She has?” asked Nick, stepping forward.

“Yes,” said Hans. “She’s safe and not currently in danger. You won’t be able to see her right at this moment, but I can have you sent somewhere that you can meet her again tomorrow.”

“Alright,” said Nick immediately. “Thank you so much.”

“All part of the mission,” said Hans, shrugging. “We were going to teleport you back to Jelor originally anyway. Changing the destination isn’t a big deal. If you really want to thank someone, thank her.” He nodded toward Elise. “She has been looking for all of you ever since she discovered you were missing.”

“What?” said Elise.

She had never told anyone at Ostra about that. Not directly, at least, and she most certainly hadn’t requested that they help her search.

“Otto is one of our agents,” explained Hans.

“What?” asked Maia. “I thought he was independent.”

“Independent under us,” said Hans with a shrug. “We don’t control him, but we’ve worked closely with him for years now, and have a buy order out on any sensitive information he gathers to make sure he doesn’t disseminate things we don’t want him to. He’s not bound by contract, but he’s functionally under our employ.

“That’s a bit beside the point though. That’s only how we found out you were looking. Actually finding Sophie was more of a happy coincidence. It was- well, I’m not allowed to say here. I don’t have the right privacy skills. But you’ll see.”

“She’s really safe?” asked Nick after a few seconds.

“Your sister might be the safest person in the world right now,” replied Hans.

“What does that-?” Nick started before cutting himself off. “When we arrive, will we be able to get the full story?”

“Yes.”

“Then can we leave now?”

“As soon as the teleportation pad is charged.”

“Thank you for everything,” said Nick, bowing.

Bianca mirrored his motion while Elise awkwardly nodded.

“Transport back to Jelor will be arranged as well once you arrive. You won’t have to worry about being stranded and unable to get back.”

“Stranded?” asked Elise. “Where are we going?”

“Everspring, the capital of Corunia.”

***

After breaking the barrier around the island and finding Iris asleep, Sophie decided to take a walk around the island to check her surroundings. Half of her was paranoid that the barrier would somehow reappear, while the other half was curious whether their surroundings had changed. From what she understood of Iris’ explanation, the barrier around the island was a kind of spatial isolation field, meaning that while it was active, the island wasn’t actually anywhere. It was in its own space. Now that it was broken, they were back “in the real world” as Sophie liked to think of it, she wanted to see if perhaps they were close to any other land.

While her paranoia turned out to be unfounded and the barrier didn’t return, her surroundings had no visible changes either. There was still nothing but open ocean as far as she could see. She thought that perhaps the waves looked a bit bigger than before, but she couldn’t tell if that was actually true, or if she was just imagining things. Relieved and disappointed, she turned back toward the center of the island, yawning and getting ready to join Iris in slumber, but stopped at the edge of the clearing when she saw that someone else was already there.

Standing next to the sleeping dragon was a tall, well-dressed man with long golden hair and bright blue eyes. He turned to her, showing off a blinding smile, and called out.

“Oh, hello there!”

Sophie didn’t respond. She felt like her legs were locked in place. Her {Dragon Eyes} were active, and looking at the man, she could see unfathomable power. He didn’t have as anywhere near as much raw mana as Iris had, but what he did have seemed much more controlled, and he also had a lot more of the other energy, aether. He was also incredibly handsome, and his appearance was identical to the the description of the Prince in Sophie’s favorite book, so she found herself blushing a little bit.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said.

Sophie moved forward nervously, still not sure how to respond. He was the first person other than Iris she had seen in months, and his appearance raised so many questions that she didn’t even know where to start. What was he doing there? How did he get there so fast? Was he waiting for the barrier to come down, or did he just happen to be nearby? He didn’t seem surprised about the dragon, so did he already know about Iris?

“What’s your name?” he asked, bending down slightly so that they were at the same eye level.

“S-Sophie,” she replied.

“What a lovely name. My name is Frederic, but you can call me Freddy. Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Gray, would it?”

“How did you know?”

Had he come looking for her?

“Someone has been looking for you?”

“Nick?!” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said with a mysterious smile. “Regardless, I’m glad I found you before someone else did. I can send you back to meet your family if you’d like.”

“You can?!”

“Of course!” he said. “Well, you probably won’t be able to actually meet them immediately, but you definitely will by tomorrow. I can still send you over right now though, if you want.”

Sophie was about to almost shout that she did indeed want that, but the words caught in her throat as she glanced at Iris. Her family was important, but the crazy dragon had helped her out a lot. She didn’t just want to abandon her without a word like this.

“Worried about Irylax?” asked Freddy.

“Irylax?” asked Sophie. “Her name is Irylax?”

“She never told you?”

“She said she couldn’t remember it.”

“Couldn’t remember…?” Freddy trailed off, and his smile faded as he looked at the dragon. “Is there anything else she couldn’t remember?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sophie truthfully. “She’s not very… coherent… most of the time.”

“Hmmm, I see,” said Freddy with a serious nod. “In that case, let’s go with a different plan.” He pulled out a scroll from a pocket inside his coat and handed it to Sophie. “When Irylax wakes up, give her this. Tell her it will take her somewhere that she can have her mind healed.”

“What about my family?” asked Sophie, suspicious of the scroll.

“I’ll make sure they’re there waiting for you,” he said with a smile. “Don’t worry, they’re perfectly safe. I think. Hold on.” He pulled out a pocketwatch from inside his cloak and checked the time. “Yes, they should now be safe.”

“They weren’t safe?” asked Sophie.

“Don’t worry, it’s all under control,” said Freddy. “I’d love to stay and chat a bit longer, but I’m afraid I have to go right now. You and Irylax made a bit of a commotion when you appeared, so to keep you from being bothered before she’s ready, I have some work to do. But don’t worry. I promise that your family is safe, and that you’ll be able to see them tomorrow.”

“Wait-!” said Sophie, but the man was already gone, disappearing in a cloud of foul yellow smoke.