Roars and howls of fear rang throughout the entire mountain range that day. Maria took her army and systematically scoured the mountain for all ogre villages and conquered them. With the help of the few ogre leaders she dominated, Maria was able to gain some knowledge of the ogre villages' locations within the mountain range.
Her work became easier as she conquered one village after the other, steadily increasing her forces. However, she was soon met with a problem after conquering her sixth village. The ogres became too diverse and it led to some in-fighting amongst the tribes that weren't on good terms with one another.
Naturally, she disciplined them but it was only a temporary fix. Going on like this would be destructive and eventually lead to her downfall. Maria decided to stop here for today and made her way back to the Mountain Blade Ogres' settlement to meet up with Ash and Orh'bankhur.
*****
"M-My Lady...w-what is this?!" Ash exclaimed in shock when he saw the massive ogre army following behind his mistress.
Earlier, when the village's ogre scouts saw the large army approach them, Ash and Orh'bankhur were immediately alerted. However, when they saw Maria riding on Berserker, leading the army towards them, they quickly went out to meet her outside of the village.
After Maria told them about what she did in the past few hours, Ash was shocked while Orh'bankhur roared in elation. The twin-headed ogre was elated to know that his new master was such a powerful and domineering person who got things done without too much talk. Yet, at the same time, he was a little saddened that she had gone out to war without him.
"Queen! Take Orh'bankhur, next war!" Orh'bankhur said while he tapped one of his large fists on his chest.
"Yes, yes. I'll put you to work next time!" Maria promised. She then turned towards Ash who was holding his head with one hand.
"What's wrong with you? Got a headache? I thought vampires didn't get sick?"
"My Queen, although your efforts are appreciated and you've brought back such a large force with you... where are we going to house them?"
"Uhh..."
"By no means am I trying to reprimand you, my Queen. But we should have at least finished expanding and reinforcing our base here before we went out to raid and conquer the surrounding ogre villages..."
Maria huffed and said with a whiny pout, "You can't blame me... I got bored..."
Ash hurriedly tried to brush off his earlier remarks and proposed, "N-never mind then, my Queen. I'll try and work something out. If you'll let me, I'll go back to the capital and personally escort our best engineers here to hasten the constructions."
"Okay, you do that then."
"Great, but can you promi—"
"Don't worry, I promise to hold off on attack any other ogre settlements until our fortifications here are done," Maria cut him off and said.
Ash heaved a sigh of relief and said, "I'll quickly leave for the capital now, my Lady, but please...please don't do anything unreasonable until I get back?"
"Who's doing something unreasonable?! Your grandma's doing something unreasonable! Get outta here now before I change my mind!"
"Y-yes..."
Ash quickly left for the Dire's capital city leaving behind Maria, Alexa, Lilah, and Orh'bankhur to their own devices. Unfortunately for him, Maria was already giggling and laughing once he left.
"Hehe, I'm your grandma idiot~ watch me get unreasonable! He's been getting a little too comfortable with me lately!"
Lilah heard her master's words and didn't even try to dissuade her from her next course of action. Instead, she even asked, "Well, master, which village are we going to attack next?"
Maria smirked and pulled out a map that she had pilfered from one of the larger ogre settlements. The ones from that settlement were rather stubborn so she burnt everything to the ground and massacred all of the ogres in it.
Thankfully, she didn't burn down the ogre chieftain's hut so she was able to get some rewards, such as the map which had a basic outline of all the ogre settlements within a 200-kilometer radius from where that village was located.
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It even showed the location of Orh'bankhur's settlement but unlike the others, Orh'bankhur's settlement was marked with a red indicator. She didn't know the meaning, but it was handy since it served as a clear pointer for their location on the map.
World Map updated!
"Oh?"
This was something new. It was the first time Maria saw such a message box so she quickly placed the map on the table and opened up her [Map] window.
"Ohh! My map was updated!"
Her system's map was updated after she read the map from earlier. It showed the same things but since it was the system's map, it had more detail in its terrain than the physical map.
"We'll raid and conquer all of the surrounding ogre villages. As for the other monster settlements, destroy them if they resist and take them in if they submit! The same as usual, and as for their accommodations... I think we can just reuse the settlements we conquer!"
Maria began placing markers on the remaining 7 villages that were close to the Mountain Blade Ogres' village. Her forces were large enough that they could be split into 3 forces that could attack 3 settlements separately. As for the leaders, she already had the perfect people in mind.
She had gathered all of the ogre leaders, Berserker, and Orh'bankhur into the Mountain Blade Chieftain tent for a war council. Besides, Orh'bankhur, the rest of the ogre leaders and Berserker didn't have much say in the council despite it being a 'council'.
It was just Maria doing all the coordinating, planning, and talking. Orh'bankhur wasn't much of a planner so he just listened to Maria's arrangements and Berserker mindlessly followed her orders. The other ogres were losers so they couldn't have an opinion.
They didn't want to anger their new war chief who had forcefully made them submit to her. One wrong word or suggestion could leave them without a limb or worse, without a life.
"We'll attack the less powerful villages and slowly work our way until we gather together and assault this one...looks more like a town than a village, but we'll attack this last," Maria said as she pointed down at the settlement which seemed to be larger than the others.
It was at the very edge of the map that was mapped out for her and since it was bigger, it was probably more powerful than the rest.
"For this time's raids, we can't destroy the villages since we'll be reusing. You can destroy a few buildings, but keep most of them intact! Relay this message to everyone or else I'll cut apart their limbs and feed it to Little Red!"
Little Red who was lying next to Maria licked his lips when he heard this. Any kind of meat, especially those from powerful monsters, was his favorite. He loved his master for being such a magnanimous owner that constantly fed him the meat of high-leveled monsters.
"As for the leaders, obviously, I'll be leading one of the groups. The other two, one will be led by Orh'bankhur, and the other will be led by Berserker who will have Alexa and Lilah as advisors!"
"Wahahaha, finally, war!" Orh'bankhur bellowed and began tapping his chest with his two left fists.
It was like some kind of ritual and every other ogre within the tent began doing the same. The tapping became louder until it sounded like war drums beating. Maria smirked and yelled, "You newbies better remember who's in command! I appointed them myself so if I hear any news of insubordination, I'll kill you~"
"Y-yes! War chief!"
"Great, now head out and divide your men. Orh'bankhur, I want everything ready by tomorrow. For now, just eat and sleep. Tomorrow, we march!"
"Yes! Wahahaha!"
******
Maria logged out of the game and quickly sat up. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her body.
"Uwah...hmmm, that sure was fun. Oh yeah, I better send the map data to Gerald. Other than those villages, I found a dungeon and 2 mines! I got more soldiers and followers so it was a great harvest!"
Maria booted up her laptop and quickly sent her brother the map data and images that she collected earlier. She also told him about the war she was going to be waging tomorrow and that she wanted to stream it. She hoped that it would be good content for the viewers.
Before going down to eat, Maria checked the UT's forums and saw the large impact that she made with her debut stream. Links to her Switch Channel, SNS accounts, and even her UT profile were posted in a separate thread that had her as the main topic.
She read through the praises, criticism, skepticism, and other nonsense that the people were posting on the thread. Maria didn't take anything to heart and only found it all amusing. She quickly received an email from her brother and saw that there were multiple attachments to it.
The email had the link to the thread of the brainy players who deduced her location. She read through it and was a little impressed. Just a small amount of visual data was enough for people to conclude that she wasn't on planet Eur anymore.
"Well, not like it changes anything. If they come baring hostile intentions, I'll just have to trample over them~"
Maria went back to the email and downloaded the attachments. One of them was her schedule and the other was an edited video of her duel with Orh'bankhur.
"Ah, the video is out. I guess I should post this?"
Maria opened up the SNS account her brother made for her and quickly uploaded the video and the beautifully edited image of her schedule onto it. There was already a copy-paste in the email her brother sent her about what to write in the public post.
"Heeh~ big bro sure is smart. If he told me to post the schedule and the video, that's all I would post!"
The public post on her SNS account was divided into 3. The first was her formal introduction which also had a link to her UT account and Switch Channel. The second was the post of the schedule, and the last one was the video's link.
The video was going to be immediately uploaded onto her Switch account by David, her butler, once she made the post. Once she completed everything her brother told her to do, she closed the laptop and went down to eat dinner with her family.
"Hmmhmm~ food~ food~ time to eat food~"