Maria was now very far away from her previous location, but she stopped in midair and turned back to look in the direction she had just come from. After waiting a while in midair and staring into the distance only to find nothing, she turned around and continued flying to her destination.
“Hmm...who were those players? They actually got that close to me without me noticing anything. If they didn’t use [Inspect] on me, it would probably have been too late if they had decided to ambush me…” Maria mumbled to herself before continuing inwardly, ‘Though it wouldn’t matter. I’ll still kill them all if they attacked me.’
The next location that she was headed to was quite far away that she had to travel for a total of 15 minutes and nearly used up all of her SP while flying despite moving at nearly supersonic speeds. However, before she engaged in battle with the next boss monster she was going to be fighting, Maria used her [Shadow Weave] skill and pulled out the mutated Red Orc’s corpse from her shadow, intending to do something with it. She wanted to try out one of the abilities that Envy used in their battle that made it so annoying and difficult to deal with him. It was still part of the [Shadow Weave] skill though it was applied in an unusual way.
“[Shadow Weave].”
Envy had only one skill and it was called [Shadow Weave] and it was the skill she gained from defeating Envy after consuming its soul and equipping [Envy’s Umbra], the item she acquired from defeating the annoying sin devil. The Sin Devil, Envy, was able to use that singular skill to cause many headaches for Maria during their battle. The shadows that it manipulated were able to control dead monsters and seemingly ‘raise’ them from the dead.
It was so annoying because after Maria had released the seal that bound it, Sin Devil Envy quickly rushed out of the temple it was sealed in and before it battled against Maria, it started attacking the monsters in the area to stockpile on the corpses. Maria didn’t understand why it was doing this and thought it was a good thing for her at first because the sin devil was clearing away the monsters for her. However, this was a mistake because after decimating a large number of monsters, it turned its fangs and claws back at Maria.
From there, the problems began for her. At the time, Maria didn’t know about Envy’s troublesome skill. If she knew about it beforehand, she definitely wouldn't have let it kill so many monsters. After killing most of the monsters surrounding the temple where it was sealed, Envy used its [Shadow Weave] skill to reanimate the dead monsters it killed and used them to swarm Maria from all sides, to the point where the monster swarms felt endless. Unlike before when she fought Greed, Maria wanted to fight the subsequent Sin Devils by herself because she wanted to have some ‘fun’, so she didn't bring Ash or Lilah with her.
Since she didn't have the good graces of her subordinates around, it took Maria a very long time to kill the sin devil because she had to first deal with all of the reanimated dead it controlled. It was later during the fight that Maria noticed that the reanimated dead was quite different to a necromancer's undead minions because instead of reanimating the corpses using necromancy, Envy injected its shadow directly into the corpses and moved them around like a puppet.
To Maria's knowledge, undead monsters were able to use skills and such after being reanimated by a necromancer, but these corpse puppets weren't able to and they could only move in a somewhat linear fashion. Since there were so many of them, Envy wasn't able to exert precise control over them and just gave them a single directive which was to attack her, so they just charged at her without any sort of plan of action.
Simply put, the skill Envy used to raise the dead was like a degraded version of a necromancer’s [Raise Undead] skill, but nevertheless, this skill greatly intrigued Maria because it had a lot of potential. She needed to raise an army for her faction, the Dire, and any sort of skill that could help her out with this was something she greatly desired. She wanted to learn how to raise the corpses of the dead using Envy's skill and now was the time to experiment.
Back on Vanhal, she couldn't do it because she was too busy running her nation and didn't have the time. Now that she was on 'vacation', she had to take advantage of this free time she had to explore more of the abilities she gained from the sin devils she defeated. Maria made sure her surroundings were safe before she started her experiment. Unlike Envy, she wasn’t going to use her [Shadow Weave] skill to control so many bodies at once, but instead planned on using the skill on a select few corpses of powerful monsters in order to effectively control them with more precision.
Although it would be nice to control a mass sea of monsters using her skill, pulling off what Envy did in their battle was impossible for her unless she used some kind of external third-party program to aid her because she was only human while Envy was an AI. Naturally, third-party programs was illegal and using them would breach Unitale's terms of service. If you were caught using them by the game's AI, Zeus, you'd be permanently banned from the game. Not even making a new account would save you.
“First, let’s test if it actually works or not…”
Maria manipulated her shadow and injected it inside of the monster corpse before trying to make it stand up. It was harder than she thought but it did manage to stand up, though its posture was awkward and a little unnatural. Maria scratched her head before walking over to the monster corpse that was now standing and gave it a light tap on its chest. Immediately, the corpse fell to the ground like a sack of meat.
“Tsk...how the hell…”
Maria tried to recall how Envy used the skill and remembered that before using [Shadow Weave], it had a glossy, snow-white body that turned black when it started manipulating the corpses. Not only that, but the controlled corpses seemed to mirror the sin devil’s movements and this fact immediately caused Maria to understand something.
“Ah! I know what to do now!”
Maria recalled her shadow from the monster corpse and used the skill on herself.
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“[Shadow Weave]!”
Instead of coating the shadow on her body like an armor to trigger the [Shadow Armor] effect, she intended to use the skill to merge her shadow into her body like how Envy did. When she used her skill in this manner, her shadow began to 'boil' before it started climbing up her body like a slime, seeping into her skin and merging with her muscles. When the shadow had completely covered her body, Maria’s long, platinum blonde hair had turned pitch black as the sclera of her eyes also turned from white to black. This form also caused her red eyes to glow ominously as her milky white skin had also darkened to a dark grey color. This was the true and proper use of Envy's skill and she had finally unlocked it.
"This...feels weird, but not unpleasant at all..."
The way she looked right now was rather...eerie. She looked at herself in her status menu and thought that this was the true personification of a fallen, sinful angel. Her shadow, which had merged into her body, was wriggling around nonstop and adding a creepy black aura around her body and wings. Not only that, but Maria lost control of her Awakened transformation, so her hands had returned to being those large, grotesque claws that she normally hid.
Her other sin devil item, [Lust’s Sigil], became visible now that her armor and clothes had decayed around her chest area. When she equipped the item, it adhered itself in the middle of her bosom, right where her cleavage was, like a tattoo. Since the item glowed, Maria made sure to always cover it up because she didn't like it glowing in such a compromising area. Now, however, it was on full display and she could no longer hide it. It was as if the item was desperately trying to announce its presence after being covered up for so long.
The item's shape was actually pretty cool, so if one ignored where it was located, it actually added quite an aesthetic charm to her character. The item was shaped like a demonic eye that was similar to the eyes that opened up on her wings when she used her [Gehenna’s Eye] skill. The only things that didn’t change at all were her 8 black wings that were already black to begin with and the Awakened Halo that was floating behind her. It maintained its crimson color though there was a little tinge of the color black here and there.
Her entire character had experienced a massive change in appearance, but that wasn't the only thing that had changed. Since she was already looking at her status screen, she couldn't help but notice that her stats had changed as well. To her surprise, she saw that her STR and AGI stat had actually risen by 10 percent while her VIT stat had risen by 20 percent which in turn increased her total HP.
She thought that this was really incredible. She had just inadvertently acquired a transformation skill and it came with stat enhancements. The only thing wrong about this transformation was the 50 percent decrease to her INT stat which was a humongous loss since it decreased her spells’ damage output and her total MP.
“Alright, this is new...and interesting. I didn’t know I could use [Shadow Weave] like this…” Maria marveled at her new form when she finally noticed that her chest was now exposed. “HYAAAHH!!!”
She cried out in surprise and embarrassment as she tried to cover her chest but it was no use. Even though she had been looking at her character's appearance in her status screen, she was too enamoured by the cool-looking appearance to notice that her chest was now exposed.
“Ugh...this is so embarrassing, but the stat increase and the puppetry skill...it looks like I’ll just have to live with it, Maria reasoned with herself before remembering that she had something more important to think about than worry about her appearance. "Okay, let's not get sidetracked!”
Maria turned her attention back to the mutated red orc’s corpse and raised one of her large hands to it as a black thread extended from her fingertips and landed on the corpse. Right when the black thread touched the corpse, the dead monster's red skin turned black and the flesh that was missing from its body due to Maria having hacked it off during their previous battle, quickly began to regenerate.
Once the corpse was whole again, Maria willed it and the red orc, which was now a black orc, slowly stood upright. Unlike before, its stance was much firmer and it exuded a very threatening aura. The experiment worked and now she finally had her own monster puppet that she could control.
"Alright! This is awesome!"
However, she still needed to do something about the black thread that was blatantly visible which showed her connection to the black orc. She remembered what happened during her battle against Envy and the tipping point that allowed her to win. Midway through the fight, she had taken notice of the black threads that connected the sin devil to the monster corpses it was manipulating and she tried breaking them. To her elation, the monster corpses whose threads she had cut off were immediately released from Envy’s [Shadow Weave] skill, so the sin devil could no longer manipulate them unless it reconnected the thread.
Maria immediately broke any black threads she saw and in the end, Envy was only left with a few monster corpses in its command which leveled the playing field for Maria in a way. She easily defeated the sin devil because unlike its other fellow devils, Envy was actually physically weak and only relied on its puppet master ability to wear down and kill its enemies. Without its puppets, it was actually pretty weak and to think it would blatantly display its weakness for its enemies to exploit.
If she hadn't noticed the threads, she would've been exhausted and ultimately killed once she used up all her SP and couldn't move or use any of her skills or spells. She needed to do something about this weakness, so she tried to use something else other than her hands to connect her shadow thread with her puppet. She retracted the thread from her hand and tried using her wings. The puppet ability worked once the black thread connected with the monster corpse, but the thread was still visible.
She tried racking her brain to think of a solution and she immediately found one.
“Ah, I know!”
Maria merged her shadow into her Greed's Chains before wrapping it around the monster’s neck and by using the chains’ dimensional hole deployment function, she was able to ‘invisibly’ connect her black thread with the monster.
“Hahahaha, I’m a genius!”
Maria’s voice had also changed while she was in her blackened form. It had become gravelly and raspy which only added to the evil vibe that the new form gave to her, but with the new ability now firmly within her control, she decided to go around looking for some monsters to test the black orc’s fighting prowess. She finally found some and immediately put her puppet to the test. Naturally, the first battle was a failure and her puppet was nearly destroyed. She had to quickly step in and fight the monster her puppet lost to, but to her surprise, something very interesting happened.
After she had stepped in, the black orc stopped moving for a moment before suddenly charged back into the fray with some very peculiar movements. The peculiar movements were rather familiar to her and this was because those were the exact same actions she made when she stepped into the fight.
"Oh! It's mimicking my actions!"
The level of mimicry was very limited, but at least it was learning how to fight. Her puppet defeated the monster it was previously losing to with relative ease after it started using her attack and movement mechanics. Once the fight was over, it returned to Maria's side and started mirroring her movements. If she stood still, it stood still. If she moved forward, it would move forward. If she threw a punch or kick, then it would also do the same.
"This is pretty neat!"
She continued finding a few more monsters to conduct her experiment and as her puppet learned more, the battles went by even easier. During the fights, Maria didn’t need to consciously control its every attack and movement. The puppet did everything all by itself after she gave it a simple command like attack, evade, or defend. She even tried joining in on the fights and it felt like she had gained an extra limb or something. The puppet didn’t interfere with her attacks, but instead followed them up and even created opportunities for her to land an attack or chain one of her attacks into a combo.
“This...this is so convenient!”
Maria laughed happily and began decimating the monsters in the area alongside her new puppet.
“Hahaha! Easy, too easy!!!”
Through Envy’s skill, she had gained the abilities of a puppet master. Now, all she needed to do was collect a few more powerful corpses and turn them into her battle puppets. It was a very entertaining and convenient ability, so Maria became lost in trying to find out the full extent of this ability that she completely forgot about her quest to collect the Origin Crystal Fragments...