Sky was able to quickly complete one part of her hunting quest and decided to take a break since she’s been at it for over 3 hours already.
Non-stop hunting wasn’t really her thing. She’d hunt for 2-3 hours tops during her gaming sessions but thanks to a unique item called [Pearl of the Sea God] that gave her a 200 percent increase in experience gain, she was able to keep her levels high up in the rankings.
It was a ‘cheat’ item that she obtained very early on in the game due to a freak accident where she was duped into joining a random team of players for an undersea dungeon because of her race.
They left her to die inside the dungeon after seeing that it wasn’t something anyone could finish that early on in the game, but the difficulty was high only for those whose race couldn’t fight or breathe underwater.
Sky, being a naga, didn’t have that problem so she was able to somehow complete the dungeon all by herself, and thanks to her amazing accomplishment of clearing it solo, she received the [Pearl of the Sea God].
Since the item had such a rare effect, Sky kept it secret and didn’t dare to let anyone―even her friends―know that she possessed it. Even if they were her friends, she knew just how greedy people can be and how quick they were to turn their backs on someone.
Sky had experienced it firsthand just from her first few days playing Unitale. The person who had invited her to the dungeon team and left her to die was one of her upperclassmen from school that somehow found out that she was a player and added her to their friendlist.
After the betrayal, however, she blocked the player and tried to cease any contact with that upperclassman in real life though it wasn’t working out so well. The best she could do was ignore the backstabbing fool and although it was indeed ‘just a game’, the game itself was too realistic that she felt severe emotional pain from being left behind like that to become the rest of the team’s meat shield.
That was all in the past now and thanks to that event, she was able to grow both as a player and as an individual. Her player rankings were high and she made some new, trustworthy friends, both IRL and in-game.
...: Yo, Sky, where you at girl?
Speaking of friends, one of the few friends she added to her friend’s list just sent her a message. Luckily, she had decided to end her hunt today and continue some other time, or else she would have entirely missed the message.
She quickly messaged the person back after checking that it was her friend, BiggerBetter, or Big for short.
“The secret place. Ya need something B?”
...: Yeah, if I ain’t disturbin’, we need another member for a dungeon run, you in?
Sky checked her quest page and saw that the murlock hunt was the only quest currently active. The secret place she meant was the independent sub-world that she somehow acquired from completing a hidden main quest that was separate from the Main Scenario’s Main Quest that the Fallen Angel’s Guild had completed.
Of course, this sub-world wasn’t as resource-abundant as the Fallen Angel’s rewarded world. Instead, it was filled more with monsters and dangers. Since it was a sub-aquatic world that had most of its monsters living underwater and few on land, it was the perfect place for a naga like Sky.
The marshes she was on were one of the few places on the planet that weren’t dominated entirely by water. She had an underground base here that housed the teleportation device that let her move in and out of the planet.
She would have opted for an underwater base but unfortunately, all of the hidden caves and crevices of the underwater world were occupied by many monsters, those whose levels were even higher than hers.
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Sky was able to hunt the aquatic monsters here, but she still didn’t dare to go too deep underwater in fear of running into one of those powerful monsters that could snuff her little life with just a breath.
Since she wasn’t doing anything too urgent right now with her murlock hunting quest not having any set completion time, Sky decided that it was fine to go help out her friends. She also wanted to take a break from hunting and look into the newly awakened player.
The new player, Maria, who was now present on the awakening leaderboards, had a different awakening than her. It was hard for Sky to miss the ‘Awakened Variant’ that was written right next to her name after all.
She needed to find out the difference between her and this newcomer. Sky wanted to know if the Awakened Variant was a step above the Awakened stage or if it was just the same stage but with other benefits to it that a normal Awakened didn’t have.
Sky began moving back to her base while searching for any news on the forums about the newly Awakened player. However, when she searched for the keyword, ‘Maria’, the top searches always directed her to a thread about the up-and-coming Switch Streamer, Dire Queen Maria.
She was a frequent viewer of Maria’s streams since she was in a similar situation as her, being on a new planet without anyone else on it. Sky wanted to take a thing or two from Maria’s books and try to conquer her planet using some of her methods.
For now, she was coming up short mostly because the NPCs or monsters on her planet were much too primitive and had little to zero intelligence. The inhabitants on her island only knew how to band together and attack anyone that didn’t look like their kin.
It was a stark contrast to the vampires, ogres, and other kinds of monsters or NPCs on Maria’s planet. However, Sky had faith that she would be able to replicate what Maria did on her planet because she hadn’t fully explored her sub-aquatic planet just yet.
She might get lucky someday and find an intelligent species on this planet and hopefully, become allies with them or better yet, be like Maria and lead them. Sky felt motivated whenever she watched Maria’s streams because the young girl’s aspirations of taking over the planet were adrenaline-inducing.
Maria was pushing forward with her objectives relying solely on her own efforts. This was what Sky believed because no other players were helping her out. The NPCs were all part of Maria’s strengths and efforts because it was hard to recruit an NPC for one's own cause.
Though she never said it on stream, all of her viewers―including Sky―could only imagine how difficult it was for her to recruit the Vampire Duke, Ash, and the little vampire sister, Alexa.
What came afterward was the fruits of Maria’s efforts and although there was undoubtedly some luck involved in her gaming progression, people still acknowledged her efforts and enjoyed watching her streams.
Sky wasn’t able to do what Maria did and stream her activities precisely because she has trust issues with some of the people around her, but she and Maria both started on the same line together inside the game.
She wasn’t disheartened from her efforts and failures in the game but continued to persevere hoping to one day get lucky and finally get her big break. Sky saw on Maria’s streams that there were some times that the girl wouldn’t be so lucky and nearly lose or die due to a mistake.
One couldn’t always be so lucky and this was true. Even though Maria was successful now, she started out just like any other player. Sky wondered if the newly awakened player was actually the young girl that she admired.
Maria wasn’t streaming right now so she couldn’t find an answer. However, being able to show up on the rankings allowed Sky to add the person to her friend's list. She sent the player named Maria a friend request and waited.
Unfortunately for her, even after she got back to her underground base somewhere within the murlock marshlands, the friend request she sent earlier still wasn’t being processed.
“Hmm...maybe this person doesn’t want to be known? I could find out if it’s true once she starts streaming again. An Awakened player will be pretty easy to distinguish. Too bad there’s only 2 of us right now so no one would be able to see any difference.”
Sky’s female naga character had four arms and on each wrist, there was a circlet-like light blue-colored halo on them. It was the unique characteristic of an Awakened player to have some kind of halo-like object suspended somewhere on their bodies.
Maria had one and it was suspended just above the back of her head, in between her two large wings. Once Sky sees this, she’d immediately know that the Maria she watched was indeed the other newly Awakened player.
Sky had become an Awakened Player very early in the game and this allowed her to start her Awakened Quest much sooner than other players. She was almost done with her Awakened Quest even and once she completed it, there was supposedly a large bounty for her who was the first player to complete the quest.
“If that is Dire Queen Maria...I guess I can only say that our luck went into different areas.”
Inside her underground base, Sky slithered over to a black box that was actually the interstellar teleportation device. She quickly activated it and soon, she was teleported back to the starting planet, Eur.