By taking advantage of the vampires that Carmilla had enchanted, Ash was able to make all of his plans proceed smoothly and it didn't take long before he managed to reclaim about half of the Red Plains once he launched the operation. The traitors soon lost their value after Ash wrung every bit of information and use they had for him. When he launched the operation, he quickly executed them right after for the crime of treason against Maria and the Dire.
It was because of them that Ash had to needlessly sacrifice soldiers and citizens for the operation's groundwork. He blamed himself for not seeing this coming and preventing it ahead of time. The Dire lost a lot of manpower and resources thanks to the invasion and now they had to sacrifice even more just to take back what they lost and repel the invaders. Just taking back the Red Plains wasn't enough. Ash planned on taking much more than what they originally had. Once they reclaimed all of the land they lost, he planned on having his armies continue onwards and take over the lands of the vampires that had attacked them.
There was another thing he had to do as well and that was to purge the villages in the Red Plains since he had found out that many of the people living in the Red Plains were also traitors. Maria's invasion and occupation of the plains had sparked a lot of hatred from the people she had spared who were living there and even though she had showed them mercy, they didn't want to live it down and conspired with the Dire's enemies the moment they got the opportunity and this made Ash incredibly furious.
"Her Highness shouldn't have spared any of them. Those ungrateful bastards helped the enemy even after she had showed them grace and mercy..." Ash coldly said while overseeing the execution of an entire village in the Red Plains. He already had a list of targets thanks to the traitors spilling the information. This village he was razing was only one of them and he had plenty more to destroy.
Naturally, not all of the vampires who were originally living in the Red Plains had turned traitor. There were actually quite a few who didn't help the invaders but unfortunately, those villages met a gruesome end thanks to their enemies. He originally didn't want to be so heavy-handed because this would set a precedence for the future and it could lead to a bad outcome plus this was definitely not what his master wanted to do. However, he thought that it was only fair to give the villages who turned against them a similar end to those that had remained loyal, but paid for it by losing their lives to the enemy.
This was the problem with forceful conquering and occupation of a land that was previously filled with inhabitants. Gaining the populace’s trust and admiration after just taking over their lands wasn’t something Maria, or anyone else for that matter, could do within a short period of time. Some of the inhabitants did start to like her and decided to take their chance and live under her rule, but most didn't take to her so well.
The Red Plains was a zone that the vampire nobles in the west left alone because it was supposed to be a 'neutral' zone. The vampires living in the plains were all 'free' vampires that didn't live under another's rule, so when Maria came and conquered the land, many didn't like her. Maria should've done more to consolidate her rule over the Red Plains, but before she could, Death gave her a mission to go to Planet Gaia and help the goddess there.
Maria was already so busy, but she had to take the quest since declining it would mean failing the quest and the amount of penalties she would received from failing the quest was just absurd. She had to take the quest and it was unfortunately at a bad time. If she had still been around, the invasion likely wouldn't have happened and she would've been able to consolidate her claim over the Red Plains just as Ash and Carmilla wanted her to do.
Ash and Carmilla had worked hard in order to free up her schedule so she could go visit the Red Plains. Who would have thought that Death would suddenly give her a quest that could only be completed off-planet. The vampires weren’t like ordinary people because unlike them, the vampires weren’t tied together through interests, welfare, and profit. The vampires were tied together through blood and breaking apart blood ties wasn’t something easy to do.
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The two of them had foreseen something like the Red Plains invasion happening, but Ash and Carmilla didn’t think it would happen so quickly after Maria left. They had plans to indoctrinate the people living in the Red Plains already though it was quite unfortunate that they couldn't implement the plan quick enough before the invasion happened. Many things could have been done better by Maria's side which could've prevented the invasion from happening in the first place.
However, it just wasn't meant to be and now the Dire had to face this problem without their Queen and because of that, Ash was even more determined to fix his mistakes and do better which resulted in the current brutality that he was committing.
******
So while Ash and company were taking action to retake the Red Plains and conquer the land beyond it, Maria had finished grinding her levels and was back to fighting in the Colosseum Arena by herself since her friends were busy with something else. After all, running a guild wasn’t all fun and games. Maria knew this to some extent considering that she had her own faction to run which was a bit similar to a guild.
Right now, it could be said that she was taking a long vacation from her duties and responsibilities to the nation she had built but she wasn’t one to complain since this was a good thing for her though she only thought this because she didn't know what was happening back on Vanhal. Besides, not knowing was probably the best for her right now or else she would've started stressing herself out. Maria originally wanted to play the game just for the sake of playing it but as time went on, a heavy burden and responsibility was thrust upon her shoulders and she couldn't enjoy the game like she used to before.
When Death had specifically asked her to help out Goddess Gaia, Maria didn't think about the consequences of what would happen if she left Vanhal and just agreed to it immediately. She didn't want to waste the opportunity presented to her which would allow her to temporarily relieve herself of the burdens she was carrying as the Dire's ruler, even if only for a little while. She knew that this wouldn’t last long because once she returned to Vanhal, the faction war to replace the vampire’s Blood Faction with her own faction, the Dire, would start. By then, she wouldn’t be able to rest or relax at all while inside the game because she would be busy dealing with that.
Things wouldn't stop there, however, because once the Blood Continent fell into her hands, the continent where the lycanthropes lived was going to be her next target. Maria was going to turn the entirety of planet Vanhal into her own little playground, so she was definitely going to be super busy once she returned from this 'vacation'.
“...I wonder how Ash and Carmilla are doing...the back of my neck hurts and I feel like Ash might have messed something up…”
Maria had just finished her 20th PvP battle in the Colosseum for today which added another notch on her current streak of victories. She was now focused on just the standard PvP mode and stopped playing the Battle Royale Mode along with all the other team-related PvP battle modes because without her friends, it was quite boring. Playing with her viewers when she streamed was also getting a little old after a few weeks passed though the audience still enjoyed it.
However, it was her stream and when Maria got bored of something, she wanted to go look for something else to do instead. The Goddess that she was supposed to be helping hadn’t shown herself even once since the first time they met and this was starting to piss Maria off because if Gaia didn’t give her a mission, she’d be stuck on the planet for an indefinite amount of time.
“Dammit Death, you should have given her a time limit!”
Just as Maria was about to go back into the arena for another battle, two World Announcements suddenly appeared and after those announcements, she received a notification that Goddess Gaia was looking for her.
*DING*
World Announcement: The Testament Guild of the Pantheon have unlocked the Deity Gate
World Announcement: The Nine Hells Guild of the Celestial Order have unlocked the Astral Gate
*DING*
The Goddess of the Planet, Gaia, is urgently summoning you! Please quickly make your way to her temple!
“Finally!”