Maria’s friends were worried about her and tried getting in contact with her but she had fallen asleep and was resting.
In their group chat, Lizzy was constantly spamming pings while bringing up topics to discuss the video and how hateful some of the people were acting from the very resentful and borderline malicious comments they posted.
[Liz: How will she take to this?
Liz: Has anyone gotten a hold of Maria?
Liz: Heeeyyy~!
Amanda: Liz, will you give it a rest already?!
Emi: Mary’s probably asleep right now. She just finished a long quest after all.
Liz: True, true, but still...should we go raid her house?
Amanda: And get smacked by an angry Mary? You do it yourself!
Emi: Yeah, don’t drag us down with you!
Liz: Fine...]
Lizzy pouted when she saw her friends disagreeing with her. She was just very worried about Maria right now.
She knew her friend very well but she didn’t know how she took criticism or hate since there was never a time when someone hated her or criticized her for anything. The video she posted was just for a game and it was nothing real, Lizzy couldn’t understand how people became so resentful over a game.
It wasn’t like Maria had harmed any players and there wasn’t any misconduct that she did that should warrant the kind of hate and malice she was garnering from the video. Her friend did kill a lot of NPCs with impunity, but this was only for a quest.
Lizzy even saw some big-name players from UT that were commenting how they couldn’t tolerate Maria’s lack of empathy for the NPCs. At the end of the video, the world she was on did end from an apocalypse so her killing the NPCs didn’t matter at all.
However, some were nitpicking her choices. They wondered why Maria didn’t try to find a way to save those NPCs instead of contributing to the apocalypse by killing every one of them she saw.
She didn’t spare the women, children, nor the elderly even though throughout the video she had a conflicted look on her face. The comments were saying that Maria knew full well that what she was doing was wrong but she still went through with it.
There was even a random comment that petitioned for her to take down the video and stop her streams. This comment was bombarded with many dislikes from Maria’s fans who didn’t care what she did in the game at all.
There were games in the past that pitted people against NPCs that would sometimes have the players massacre them but those games didn’t garner any negativity but this somehow did.
Of course, a large part of it was contributed by the extreme realism of the game where it pretty much looked like Maria was committing genocide but it was just stupid in many people’s opinions since it was still just a game in the end and not a real-life occurrence.
The sensitive and resentful people didn’t think of it like this. ‘If she was capable of doing this in such a realistic game then what’s stopping her from doing it in real life?’ Some people were psychos that actually thought like this and this was what pissed off Lizzy.
Maria used to be the face of her guild and people were slandering her and even her competitor guilds were making hateful comments about her while also deriding her guild in the process.
[Maria: Shouldn’t you guys have better things to do than get angry for my sake?
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Liz: Mary!
Maria: Go do the Second World Main Quest. I’m still waiting in my world for you guys to get here.
Amanda: Are you okay, Mary?
Maria: What’s there to not be okay about, Ama?
Amanda: I guess I was worried for nothing. Are you reading this Liz?
Emi: Liz is just angry because people are slandering our bestie.
Liz: Of course I’d be angry! Those assholes are smearing our friend’s good name and ruining her reputation!]
Maria didn’t know what Lizzy was talking about so she opened up her Switch page like her friend told her to and saw the mixed reactions on her video.
When she read through the comments and saw the negative ones that had some that were borderline malicious, Maria only scoffed.
“Pretentious people that don’t even know anything. You try completing a nearly impossible quest that penalizes you with reduced levels and no gameplay.”
Maria continued reading for a while but she only grew angry with each one until finally, she stopped caring. The people on the internet didn’t even know her and were trying to force their ideals on her like pretentious brats.
She did admit that what happened left a bitter taste in her mouth but it wasn’t like it harmed anybody. She really didn’t like how people were so quick to judge her and even brought up her IRL behavior.
It didn’t sit right with her that people were judging her in IRL because of her actions in a game. There were players that PK others and steal from other players in the game while all she did was kill a few hundred or thousands of NPCs.
She wasn’t even the one responsible for destroying the planet. Planet Irchol was already on the verge of destruction and her quest just happened to bring her there.
“Hmph, I won’t care about them. It’s not like these people will impact my life or my gameplay.”
Maria wanted to open up a stream soon so that she could address this. However, she expected that there would be some toxicity in her stream chat with all the criticism she’s racked up from the Ascension Quest video she uploaded.
However, she wasn’t going to change the way she dealt with NPCs or how she played the game. If anything, she was probably the number one player in the game that had so many NPC subordinates and connections.
Her entire faction, the Dire, consisted of only NPCs besides herself. Empathy and those other hateful things she read in the comments regarding her treatment of NPCs could go to hell.
She was the leading figure concerning NPC interaction. She had befriended a high priestess, an old sage, and a demon archmage so early in the game while other players were busy running around completing quests, running dungeons, and hunting monsters.
No one in the game or real life had the authority to criticize her about how she treated the NPCs in the game. All of the NPCs in her faction treated her like a goddess and this attested to her good treatment of them.
They wouldn’t treat her like that and worship her so sincerely if she had wronged them in any way.
“I hate that kind of thinking. It was only one instance and they’re judging me like some kind of criminal.”
The biased criticism still lingered in her head and it made her angry.
“The next time I get a quest like that, I’ll stream it and burn the planet into ashes personally,” Maria said out of spite.
“Hmph!”
She slammed her laptop shut and jumped onto her bed. She stared up into the ceiling with her fists clenched before she slowly fell asleep again from frustration and exhaustion.
*****
Maria started her day earlier the next morning and began streaming after doing her chores and eating breakfast.
Her early morning stream garnered a lot of viewers. Her longtime fans and regular audience along with a lot of new ones. However, before she could even greet everyone watching, the chat bombarded her with many words of hate, criticism, and loathing.
When she saw the spam of messages, Maria’s expression darkened greatly. most of the people spamming her chat were those that found her stream after watching the video.
They weren't her long-time viewers and fans who had subscribed to her channel as a member. Thankfully, none of the people with the membership icons said anything bad about her. In fact, they were actively bashing the rude people in her chat and defending her dignity and character.
Maria was touched when seeing them fight for her so she quickly opened her mouth to address all of her viewers, the good and the bad ones.
"Hello, everyone, it's me again! Welcome to my stream!"
Her fans greeted her but they thought that this was different. It was unusual of her to greet them when normally, she would just start the stream and say what she was going to be doing for that stream. Maria usually didn't do any greetings or the like because she would start her stream when she was in the middle of a quest, a hunt, or something similar.
"I have something important to announce today. I'll be changing my stream's chat to a member's only chat. I don't like reading stupid things so I'd rather not have it in my chat window. I'm sure a lot of you first-time viewers are probably complaining about the recent video I uploaded and only found my stream because of it."
Maria took a deep breath and continued saying, "For the first-timers, all I have to say is that I don't have time to answer all of your stupid questions or read any of the biased and hateful comments you have for me. I don't care at all what you think about me and if I had to burn an entire planet again to make that clear, I'll gladly do so. Let me play my game and you guys can go about your day without hurting anyone's feelings."
"If any of you were expecting an apology from me then you're sadly mistaken. I did what I did in the video for the quest I had to complete and I don't need any of you to lecture about morals and get in the way of me playing my game. If you condemn me for massacring a bunch of ones and zeros then how about directing all that hate and criticism to the PKers in the game and those groups of people that directly try to interfere with other players' gameplay and turning their enjoyable experiences into miserable ones."
"No one, especially those who haven't watched me for so long, has the right to judge me. I see many of my long-time viewers defending me and I very much appreciate that. I thank all of you for understanding how I am as a person and as a player. I have nothing to say to you all besides my utmost thanks."
Maria paused a bit before reading the chat one last time and seeing a lot of hateful spam reeling through the window before opening her mouth and saying, "For those that only came here to bash on me....Fuck. You."
Maria said those last words very slowly before she ended her stream.