When Maria finished training routine for the day and dismissed herself from her coach, she took a quick bath and meal before heading back into UniTale again.
Upon her return, Ash, who was in her room looking through a few documents, quickly greeted her, “My Lady, you’ve returned.”
“Mhm, did I miss anything?” Maria quickly asked.
“Nothing of importance. Alexa went to take care of a bandit group just earlier.”
“...There’s been more of those lately.”
“Yes, my Lady. However, we believe that they aren’t your ordinary bandits.”
Ash continued to explain that the recent increase in banditry and outlaws within their territory likely had something to do with the central regions’ vampire nobles. The bandits and highwaymen that were captured and interrogated were all pretty high-leveled and possessed quite a bit of skill.
When Ash and Carmilla went to check on them, they were all notably Vampire Knights and that wasn’t normal. There was no such thing as a stray Vampire Knight since all Vampire Knights belonged to a Lord.
“Those vampire nobles from the central region probably see our lands as potential pillaging targets,” Ash said.
Maria thought for a moment on his words before saying, “...Tighten the security on the borders and add a few more soldiers to guard the workers completing the construction projects. Kill any intruders on sight and don’t take any prisoners, I have no need for them. They’d just be extra mouths to feed if we take them in.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
If the vampires thought that by owning noble ranks they’d be safe, then they were wrong. Normally, mid-level vampires like those that possess a nobility ranking, no matter how small it may be, would be on Maria’s first-to-convert list.
She didn’t like missing out on recruiting some powerful vampires for her army but now that these vampires were trying to cause mayhem in her territory, Maria wasn’t going to trouble her soldiers by asking them to only subdue the bandits just so she could convert them.
It was all too much work and it was better if her soldiers didn’t suffer any casualties or injuries by holding themselves back to capture their enemies. If anything, Maria thought that these vampire bandits would do well to serve as training partners for her soldiers.
Once they were strong enough, Maria would promote their ranks herself. All vampires needed was a sufficient amount of battle experience and blood energy cultivation to progress their nobility rankings.
Speaking of Blood Energy, that resource she unlocked a while ago which merged with her MP was pretty useful. She noticed that the new energy resource provided a passive increase in her natural Health regen for both inside and outside of battle. She couldn't accurately determine how much it increased her HP regen, but it was there because she noticed her HP bar filling up faster than before.
The other racial skills she obtained from her awakening was [Charm] and [Blood Drain]. [Charm] was a passive skill that regularly initiated mental checks on 15-minute intervals on those that look at Maria's face who she deemed as enemies or didn’t recognize as her ally. If their resistance wasn't high enough, they'd be afflicted with the [Charmed] debuff and wouldn't be able to attack her properly.
[Blood Drain] was used to refill her Blood Energy aka MP and a small portion of her HP, but it was unlikely she'd ever use the skill since her MP regen was quite high. Since Maria now had the lineage of a vampire, she tried learning some Vampire skills from both Ash and Carmilla, but unfortunately, she couldn't learn any because she wasn’t a 'complete' vampire. She was still a Fallen Angel in the end, so learning vampire skills wasn't something she could do even though she had some pureblood vampire blood coursing through her veins. She would just have to remain content with the various stat increases she obtained from the awakening her Pureblood Bloodline gave to her.
Maria finished up whatever paperwork she needed to do in her office and went to hear some of the complaints or concerns of her officials that were managing the lands of her faction’s territory.
Everything used to be so much easier for her, but with the increase in her influence and land, so did the workload that came with it. Nowadays, other than the times where she really needed to abdicate her position as Queen for a while to complete a random quest or the skill book quest, she would normally be dealing with her territory’s matters.
She no longer had time to even hunt and most of her streams lately had been chatting and hang-out streams with her viewers.
It wasn’t her fault that she was so busy but thankfully, most of her fans didn’t mind just sitting around watching her work and talking with her. She even started using Connect, a communication platform that Unitale’s company had recently just developed, to communicate better with her viewers while she was in the game.
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Connect allowed her to join a call with her viewers while she was playing that synchronized the time discrepancy between the real world and the virtual world.
Now, those lucky enough to be selected through a random lottery that Maria hosted every stream, would be able to connect to a call on the Connect platform and directly speak to her while she was playing.
Maria would usually have 10 or so people connected at one time and sometimes, things would get pretty rowdy but they were all well-mannered when talking with her. They even took turns talking so as not to confuse Maria when they were discussing a topic and she needed to answer.
The heat she received from the backlash of her uploaded video that was full of controversy had slowly died down since people were now more focused on UniTale’s opening of the Second Main Scenario World.
New quests and content were constantly overflowing from the Second World and there was even a new PvP Arena feature that wasn’t there in the previous world.
This was something all of the players had wanted from the beginning, a place they could show off their equipment and flaunt their individual battle skills. That was currently all the rage right now as players were constantly climbing the PvP leaderboards and earning high points in their Matchmaking Ratings or MMR for short.
Maria wanted to see how she fared against those high MMR players but on her planet, she couldn’t access the Arena.
It was just a bummer because most of the streamers right now were streaming their leaderboard ranking climbs and whatnot. There were even some that were giving lessons to their viewers on the fighting mechanics of UniTale.
There were so many things to do and Maria thought that it would be a great learning experience for her because she was currently learning how to fight in real life and with the Arena opening, she could polish her fighting skill there.
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be as Maria was stuck or what she’d like to say, imprisoned, on her own planet. For some reason, she’s been having odd streaks of deja vu lately because of this.
It was like this wasn’t the first time it happened to her and she wasn’t wrong. There were already previous moments in her gaming career where she was forcefully isolated from the entire player base just so that she could complete a quest.
She couldn’t do anything about that so she stuck to doing what she did and didn’t complain too much about it.
*****
“Carmilla, is there anything that needs to be done today?”
Maria asked one day after she completed all of her document signings and reviewing and noticed that there wasn’t anything else on her desk. She expected someone to burst through her door and dump a new pile of documents on her desk but after waiting for nearly an hour, no such thing happened.
“No, my Lady. There’s nothing,” Carmilla replied, looking up from the texts she was reading.
“Eh? Are you sure?” Maria once again questioned, quite skeptical this time.
“Yes.”
“...”
Seeing her apprehension, Carmilla chuckled and said, “Ash and I have finally worked out a system where only the most important of documents are needed for you to personally be there to address. Your workload won't be too daunting anymore, my Lady.”
“Really?!”
“Yes, my Lady. From now on, only those really important ones will be handed to you while the rest will be taken care of by Ash, me, and your other subordinates.”
“Awesome! So I have free time now, right?!”
“Yes.”
“Alrighty, then, I’ll be going out!”
Carmilla nodded and said, “Take care, my Lady. Do bring Lilah and Red with you when you go out. Your hound needs some exercise while Lilah should be there to keep you from getting lost.”
“Okay~”
Maria had a spring in her step as she opened the door and walked out, only to bump into Ash. She immediately paled and looked at him up and down to see any documents he was carrying on him.
Carmilla saw her and chuckled, “My Lady, I will not lie to you.”
“Is there something you need, Your Highness?” Ash asked.
“N-Nothing…”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, I’ll be going out...if that’s fine…?”
“I see, well then, take care, Your Highness,” Ash bowed and stepped to the side to give way to her.
Maria stepped past him cautiously before quickly walk-running away.
“Hmm, I guess Carmilla really didn’t lie.”
She then turned the corner before stepping back to peek in the direction of her room. She saw that Ash had come to pick up Carmilla and after exiting her room, the two left arm-in-arm for somewhere else together.
Maria had a sly smile on her face before she jumped in the air and cheered, “Yes! I’m free!”
She quickly began flying through the corridor and quickly found an open window to fly out of. She didn’t forget to resummon Lilah to her side before going down to the stables to pick up Red.
“Master, are we going somewhere? I was in the middle of eating some treats that the chefs baked for me…” Lilah said with a somewhat dejected look.
“Don’t worry about that right now! We’re going on a trip, just me, you, and Red!”
“Oh? Are you finished with all your tasks, Master?”
“Yeah, finally! I’ll have more free time now thanks to Ash and Carmilla so with my newfound freedom, it’s time for us to go...to go…”
Maria stopped for a moment before she started to think. Now that she was free to do what she wanted...what could she do?
“...Uhm...Hmmm...I wonder what I should do actually…”
“Master…”
After being called, Red soon arrived as he sprinted towards Maria and stopped right next to her before he started licking her face.
This dog―or hound―of hers had grown so big now that his head was taller than Maria. That's right, only his head. Even sitting down, Maria had to look up at him.
“Red, come down here.”
“Rah!”
Red laid on his belly and placed his head in front of Maria who immediately began patting him and scratching his large, droopy ears.
“Hmmm...I wonder where we should go…”
“Master, I heard that the Church of Death has finally completed its second renovations. Should we go there and check it out? I hear that they made it much larger and grander than the one back at Enoch.”
“Really? Then let’s go visit it.