The soldiers nearby all backed away with their weapons raised at her but they were trembling in fear, not able to even hold their weapons steady. Their pale faces and frightened appearances caused Maria to frown.
She remembered the title she had just recently acquired that was a combination of her previous titles.
Title: Species Eradicator A Rank: Unique Description: Invokes a STAT check every 30 seconds on the creatures 50-meters around you. If their (LV x 100) + (STR + AGI + INT) is below your total STATS (STR + AGI + INT + VIT), the [Primal Fear] debuff is applied. Enemies inflicted with [Primal Fear] will become vulnerable to your attacks and take 50% more DMG! Note: Killing monster whose attributes are 50% lower than your own will not give you any EXP
All of her ‘Slayer’ related titles that came from Maria’s excessive amount of hunting monsters had all combined to form this title. It had a really good debuff effect but the downside was the impact it had on her EXP gain.
Before gaining this title, Maria’s genocide of every living creature during her journey to her present location had provided her with so much EXP that she had risen a level despite the NPCs and monsters not being too high leveled.
Not only that, but she also gained a few new ‘Slayer’ related titles. Maria figured that the ‘Eradicator’ title had a prerequisite of having many high-ranked ‘Slayer’ titles because at one point, all the titles combined into the [Species Eradicator A] title.
Most, if not all of Maria’s ‘Slayer’ titles were S-ranked. This was because of her habit where she would single-mindedly wipe out an entire area of monsters over and over again until she got bored or moved onto a different hunting area that Ash or her other subordinates found for her.
Even though the penalty of her new title was rather harsh on her leveling, but she wasn’t the type to complain too much about it. She already got it so naturally, she equipped it. The 50% increase in DMG was enough for Maria’ to forgo the penalties anyway.
The penalties didn’t matter too much to Maria since, in the first place, she would normally be hunting monsters that were of a much higher level than her.
The title’s [Primal Fear] debuff was the reason why her very existence caused all of the city guards of Irchol’s mega-city to tremble in fear for their lives. They just stood there like statues with their weapons raised at her with not a single one of them having the courage to attack her.
She didn’t have to do anything but just stand there and these NPCs would freeze up like deer in headlights, even the ones that were running over to support their comrades. Seeing their fear caused Maria to think back on her previous thoughts of whether this was the right way to complete this quest or not.
“No, if I think too much, it’ll only make this all the more complicated and I don’t have much time left,” Maria said as she looked up at the burning sky.
Maria turned her attention back to the NPC guard in front of her and when she tried attacking the NPC, the person didn’t even register their hands falling to the ground, separated from their arms at a wave of Maria’s Calamity. They just remained trembling in place as the stumps of their arms bled out like a faucet. They didn’t even register the pain at all.
The only thing on their minds was the instinctual fear they acquired from Maria’s presence. There was no screaming, no cursing, or any noise at all.
“Humans would scream and fight back, but none of you did...I guess you’re all just humanoid animals after all.”
Even until the point where she cut off the trembling guard's head, the NPCs around her didn’t even raise a single bit of noise. This provided Maria with a slight bit of relief because if they screamed, struggled, and begged, it would definitely bite away at her conscience.
“Hmmm, this is better...I guess...”
Maria used [Gehenna’s Eye] and eradicated all of the guards near her location. More were still coming from all over the city walls and since they were out of range of her title’s influence, they weren’t caught up in her [Primal Fear] debuff just yet.
“As I thought, these NPCs are all low levels. The highest is 50 and the rest are even lower than that...Whether I get any experience or not, it doesn’t even matter at this point since they’d give so little anyway.”
Maria rose into the air and began casting [Fire], [Blizzard], and [Aero], sending each spell to a different location on the walls. She used her [Dark Ray] to attack the buildings within the walls and her [Gehenna’s Sacrifice] was constantly proccing every now and then since all of her enemies were of lower level than her.
Maria continued moving forward and didn’t once look back at the carnage she saw. She feared that her mind couldn’t take it so when she had the urge to look back, she stopped herself.
“...Ugh...this quest leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth…”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She decided not to think deeper into it since this was just a game and she was only completing a quest. Maria mindlessly cast her skills and spells on all of the structures and NPCs inside of the city as she slowly passed through in the air, heading straight for the majestic castle in the middle.
Maria could faintly hear the cries of the city’s inhabitants but she drowned out the noise by sending more [Dark Rays] in the areas that she heard those screams from.
When she got to the middle of the city, where the large castle was located. She nearly gagged and threw up from having to smell the disgusting odor that wafted into the air.
“Disgusting… Soaring winds, cast thy fury around me, [Aero]!”
She pushed back the odor using [Aero] before landing in front of the castle gates.
“Phew, finally, I’m here.”
“Knock, knock!”
Maria wound up and punched the gate with her dainty fist. She had her levels raised quite a bit and had plenty of FSPs lying around and she had just invested them into her stats.
This time, however, she didn’t invest a single one into her INT stat but spent it all on her STR, AGI, and VIT stats. There was no particular reason behind this. Maria just wanted to increase her other stats a bit more.
The increase in her physical power this time left Maria satisfied. With just a punch, the castle gates were unhinged and blown away. The gate flew back and crushed the soldiers and people that were behind it.
It left a long trail of blood that Maria didn’t want to step on so she flew a bit off the ground and entered the castle grounds.
“Well, now I can invest all of my FSPs into my INT. Now, where are these Higher Life Forms?”
Maria looked around and started killing everyone around her. She felt something dangerous approached her from behind but when she turned around, she didn’t see anyone. Instead, she saw a big flaming rock slowly falling on the city.
“Crap.”
The meteor could definitely wipe out at least half of the mega-city. She needed to quickly find these higher beings and kill them before quickly getting out of the place.
Maria ignored all of the people and quickly charged towards the castle’s throne room. She found nobody there and quickly flew outside.
“Where are they?”
She charged up to the castle’s highest tower and burst through the window. Yet again, no one was there. By now, Maria could already feel the sweltering heat that was caused by the slowly approaching meteor coming down on the city.
“No, not like this! Where, just where could they be?”
She had maybe a few more minutes left before the meteor crashed onto the city. She quickly had a thought and yelled, “The dungeons!”
A castle such as this would definitely have some kind of secret escape passage and to her knowledge from history and books, those kinds of passages would be located in a storage house or the dungeons.
The storage house could wait, Maria quickly went down and tried to find the dungeons. It wasn’t too hard since she reckoned that the lowest place in the castle was the dungeons.
She found nobody there. All of the prison cells were opened and there were no traces of any hidden passages.
“NO!”
When Maria rushed out of the castle, she gasped in fright when she saw the meteor already so close to the city overhead.
“...”
At this point, even if she was the Angel of Death that brought down Death’s judgment on the people here, Maria felt like she was but an ant in the face of mother nature’s power. However, she refused to just give up and die here.
“I-I can’t die here!”
Maria quickly tried to fly away. She used [Haste] and even used [Aero] to manipulate the winds around her to further enhance her movement speed.
“Please, please, please!”
However, no matter how hard she tried, Maria was just too close to the meteor’s impact radius. When the flaming rock finally crashed into the city, a large shockwave was generated from the impact and it quickly hit Maria who was still in the air.
Maria had just luckily, or not, arrived at the edge of the mega-city’s walls before she was hit by the shockwave. The shockwave rattled her bones and it flung her far beyond the city.
“AHHHH!!!”
With no way to control herself, Maria felt like she was spinning in a tornado. Once the shockwave came, the heatwave was next.
Maria had fallen from the skies and struck the ground quite harshly. One of her wings broke and it caused her to scream in agony.
“[Cure]!”
She mended her broken wing immediately after snapping the bones back into place. Maria tried to get up and re-orientate herself but the heatwave soon arrived and she was completely caught off guard by the blistering heat.
“GAAAHHHH!!!”
It felt like her skin was being flayed but she mustered up the will and concentration to cast her protective spells.
“[Barrier]! [M.Barrier]!”
Maria continued to layer her two protective skills but the heatwave was too much and it was quickly melting her barriers despite how many times she stacked them on each other. If she didn’t do anything quick, she would be the next thing to melt.
She panicked but quickly used [Terra] to form an earthen dome around her and applied [Aero] outside of the dome to manipulate the air around the dome and prevent the heat from seeping in.
This wasn’t a sure fix because the heatwave was also burning the air into nothing and Maria could feel this.
‘What now, what now?’
Maria looked down on the ground and thought that this was the only way. She reapplied [Barrier] and [M. Barrier] around herself before using [Terra] to burrow into the ground.
It wasn’t long before the earth dome she made was reduced to ashes and the blistering heat followed after her down the tunnel she made. Maria continued burrowing downwards, trying to escape from the heat that was burning her wings and backside. She could feel it slowly engulf her so this wasn’t deep enough and continued going.
Her mana was abundant so she didn’t care about the MP cost at all. She continued digging before she dug through some kind of stone and found herself inside some kind of tunnel… then she fell flat on her face.
“Ow!”
Maria felt the surroundings were a bit cold but didn’t forget about the tunnel she created so she quickly twisted around and used [Terra] to collapse the tunnel she dug before moving out of the way.
Stone and earth fell onto the spot she was previously at but thankfully, the heat was blocked out.
“Haah...th-that was close…”