When Maria received the quest, she immediately looked at it on her [Quest] menu.

Quest: First Summoning Rank: A Type: Sub-Quest (Chain) Description: The Astrals and Gods have activated the gates to the Void Sea and are using their subjects to try and summon them back to the physical plane after being sealed away by Gaia. In fear of what was to come, Gaia has tasked you to go into the Void Sea and either befriend or subdue one of the Primals that have lived there since ancient time, long before the mortal plane was created. Objective: Subdue one Primal of your choosing! (0/1) Note: You may select only one Primal so choose carefully Rewards: None Failure: -5 Level(s)

“...what the hell is this? Why is there no reward?!”

Maria exclaimed in question after she read through the quest description. There were no rewards but there was actually a penalty for failing it. She turned to glare at the little goddess that was looking up at her with a hopeful expression. When she remembered that this goddess was so poor that she couldn’t even afford any food and had to steal it, Maria wanted to pull at her hair in frustration once she came to the realization that her subsequent quests would probably not give her any sort of reward just like this one. Then there was the problem of the final quest reward.

“N-No way, then the whole quest!”

Maria quickly opened up the quest again and noticed that the first objective had been changed to [First Summoning] while everything else had remained unchanged. The rewards hadn’t changed and it was still [Unknown] but this caused her to worry that those rewards might be nothing at all in the end just like this sub-quest.

“That Death...I’ll remember this…”

Maria was seething inside, even though traveling to the second world was already a reward in itself, that was different from the quest rewards. However, when she thought about subduing whatever this Primal was, she planned to keep it for herself and not give it up when the quest ended. She needed something to compensate for her free labor and this Primal sounded like something very important so she wanted it for herself.

“Tell me...where do I have to go to get into the Void Sea?”

Gaia’s eyes brightened since this meant that Maria had agreed to do what she requested of her. Naturally, Maria was reluctant and she would have declined if given a choice seeing that there was no reward. However, the penalty was too much for her so she couldn’t decline it but if there was no penalty, it would have been a different story. She also didn’t like the thought of extorting a poor goddess after seeing that she literally had nothing and lived in a rundown, abandoned temple.

“H-Hey, you’re thinking about something rude, aren’t you!” The small Gaia raised her voice and asked after seeing the subtle look Maria was directing at her.

Maria was looking at her with a bit of pity and sorrow but she cleared her throat after hearing what Gaia said.

“No…”

“You were!

“Tch, stop wasting my time and tell me where to go already!”

“F-Fine!”

Gaia walked to the center of the abandoned temple and she placed small pieces of what appeared to be crystals on top of it. Maria heard from both Lizzy and her brother about the crystals that their factions wanted to activate to complete their first main scenario quest of Gaia so when she saw those crystals, she naturally had some questions for the goddess.

“Hey...are those―”

“Yes...they’re fragments of an Origin Crystal if that’s what you’re asking…” Gaia replied before Maria could finish her question.

“Hmm, so an Origin Crystal is needed to get into the Void Sea but what are we going to do with fragments?” Maria asked.

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“Naturally, we’re going to form an Origin Crystal!”

“You can do that?”

“There were 4 Crystals in total when I was born...one of them was sacrificed and used to seal the Astral and Gods into the Void Sea when they tried to ruin my body while the other two as you know, were enshrined in temples that are now in the hands of the followers of the Astral and Gods…”

“And I’ll assume that’s the last of the 4 Origin Crystals...what happened to it?”

“Each Origin Crystal held a part of my divinity and they can be used to cross into the Void Sea. 2 of them are being preserved by my enemies while one of them was sacrificed and by doing that, I lost part of my divinity so I’ve fallen into this wretched state while the last one...was shattered when Death and a few other higher gods tried to descend on the planet!”

“Eh?”

“T-They tried to see what was happening but my body, the planet, rejected them. Despite the rejection, they tried to force themselves on me and it caused one of my Origin Crystals to shatter, so I lost even more of my divinity! It’s because of them that I’ve lost more of my divinity than I originally planned after sacrificing one of my crystals!”

“...O-Oh…”

The way Gaia phrased that sounded a little wrong to Maria. However, now that she knew the backstory of why Death wanted her to help the poor goddess with little to no reward, she could sort of understand. He and his cohorts had done something horrible to Gaia and to make it up to her, he sent his champion to help, but after thinking about it a little more, Maria felt as if she was being used and treated as some convenient errand girl.

“That bastard...does he think of me as some kind of errand girl that's clean up after his mistakes?”

Maria cursed underneath her breath and pinched the bridge of her nose when she finally understood that she was here only to fix and clean up the problem that her patron god, Death, had caused.

“It’s no wonder there was no specific quest reward and the penalties were so fierce that it’s giving me no choice and basically forcing me to complete it without objection!”

When she thought about this, Maria groaned and said, “I might as well be doing free labor at this point!”

If she could meet with Death, his actual self and not his incarnation, the first thing she was going to do was throw her Calamity at the guy’s face for putting her through all of these unreasonable events because of his own negligence. Maria snapped out of her reverie and turned to Gaia and asked her another question, “How long will it take for you to reform your broken Origin Crystal?”

“...I’m not sure, but I am missing a few crystal fragments. If you can retrieve them for me, I can probably reform them right away. If you don’t want to, you can wait for me to reform the crystal on my own but it will take maybe a week or two.”

When she heard that she didn’t need to do anything but wait for a while, Maria had thoughts of waiting before she remembered that the Pantheon and Celestial Order had two complete Origin Crystals and could probably send players into the Void Sea already. If she had to wait 2 weeks for Gaia to finish assembling her Origin Crystal, she would be left behind again by the other players for taking too long. She didn’t like the thought of that and decided to help Gaia instead of waiting around like a bum.

Maria sighed before replying, “Give me the coordinates of their locations or a method to find them. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great!”

Gaia walked over to Maria and beckoned her to crouch down. Maria didn’t do as she asked and instead used her [Wrath's Heart] to bring Gaia up to her.

“Oh!”

“...”

The little goddess was surprised for a moment before she adjusted to moving in the air and got close to Maria. She lightly kissed Maria on her forehead and a notification bell rang in the latter’s ears.

*DING*

You have received the Goddess’s Blessing!

Name: Gaia’s Blessing Description: A holy blessing from a goddess! The planet's fortune will aid you in your adventure! Effect 1: EXP Gain increased by 1000%

Effect 2: Item Drop Rate increased by 100%

Effect 3: Origin Crystal fragments have been marked on your map Note: Blessing will only apply when defeating enemies that are in possession of a crystal fragment

“Hm, now that’s convenient.”

It was nice that Gaia gave her an incentive to hunt the fragments now. Hopefully, the monsters she would have to battle was high-leveled boss monsters so she could get the most out of the blessing.

*DING*

You have accepted the optional quest: Treasure Hunt!

Quest: Treasure Hunt Rank: B+ Type: Sub-quest Description: You have accepted the task of searching for Gaia’s broken crystal fragments that she hasn’t yet retrieved. The general locations have been marked on your map but do take care, all of the creatures that are in possession of a fragment have their growths influenced by the goddess’s divinity. Objective: Retrieve Origin Crystal Fragments (0/100%) Reward: Gaia’s Favor, Spellbook: Gaia’s Verdure Failure: None

“Oh, that’s nice. There’s actually a reward for this one.”

Maria opened her map and quickly scanned for the nearest location that had a crystal fragment before turning to Gaia and saying, “I’ll be going now. I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“Yes! I wish you luck. It will probably take a while before the Pantheon and Celestial Order can send anyone inside of the Void Sea. They’ll need to activate a higher blessing to equip their followers with the necessary means to survive in that empty zone…”

“How long do you think it will take?”

“Probably 2 or 3 days,” Gaia answered after thinking for a moment.

“I’d better hurry then.”