Maria had to say that the test run of her new skill, [Nightmare], was a definite success. Although she didn’t use all of her skill’s effects since she needed to keep them a secret to act as her true trump card, the puppetry and transformation effects were already powerful by themselves. As for the other effects, she was going to test them out later once she finished with her quest and was sent into the Void Realm.
In her Nightmare form, she was able to battle with strength and ferocity that would put other warrior and knight-class players to shame, and she was only a Dark Priestess. Becoming a Dark Priestess was one of the best things she had decided when playing this game, but Maria was only dissatisfied because Death was somewhat of a jerk. At least, that’s how she saw him. Of course, she was grateful to him on most occasions since the quests Death gave her were always fun to do though there were some that made her a bit miserable.
Maria made her way to her next quest objective and saw that a few players were already fighting it. Upon noticing that it was about to die from their attacks, Maria snarled and quickly rushed at it with Calamity, “This is mine!”
The players attacking her quest target immediately turned to look at the person who just suddenly yelled and cried, “Huh?!” “A kill stealer!” “Block her! Block her!” "Dammit!"
Maria didn’t give the players the time to stop her as she quickly arrived in front of her quest target, used [Arc Swing] to fling it up into the air, and blasted it with a [Gehenna’s Eye] to quickly end its life.
“NO!”
“Don't let her get the drops!”
"Shameless!"
Maria knew that she wouldn’t be able to get out of here if she was too greedy so she flew up and drove her hand into the mutated boss monster which was some kind of large alligator or something and pulled out the origin crystal fragment before quickly leaving the battlefield without taking any of the monster drops. Thanks to her landing the final blow on this boss monster, it did give her enough experience points to level up so she was now level 101.
*DING*
Level up! You are now level 101!
“I don’t need to be greedy. All I need are the last hits and the crystal fragments.”
Maria began rushing to her next quest targets after she nearly came close to losing one of them to random players. She shot towards all of her quest targets with extreme speed and left alone the ones that hadn't been discovered yet since they weren't in imminent threat of being hunted. She had to prioritized those that had already been discovered by the players because if she let them be, the players would snatch away her precious EXP.
Thankfully, she managed to kill-steal all of the boss monsters that had been discovered by other players, but the unfortunate thing was that she had to give up their corpses along with most of their item drops. She managed to snag a few items for herself, but didn't dare to be too greedy and linger around for long because the angry players who just had their boss monsters stolen would definitely try to kill her.
It was a major loss for Maria who wanted to create more shadow puppets and expand her shadow puppet army. However, it was alright because even if she did expand her puppet army, there was still a limited number of puppets she could control at one time. Having too many of them out would just hinder her control over them and uselessly use up her mana. Of course, her mana pool was very large, so she didn't have to worry about it depleting, but she could never be too careful.
With her [Nightmare] skill being at EX rank, its cooldown was practically 0 as long as she could keep her form up for at least half of its total duration since the cooldown of her skill was only 30 minutes while the skill’s maximum active duration was 60 minutes.
After dealing with the monsters that needed immediate attention since they were being attacked by other players, Maria was able to collect 3 additional crystal fragments. She nearly lost one of them when she had arrived almost too late on the scene. It wasn’t like she could see the statuses of her targets so she had to scout their locations and conditions in person which almost made her lose one of them.
With the 3 origin crystal fragments she already had, Maria now had 6 in total after going around kill-stealing her own quest targets. Naturally, a few people were infuriated so they began posting ‘Wanted’ threads and bounty rewards on the game's forums while a few even expressed their grievances using an item that allowed them to speak in the World Announcement chat. Maria could only laugh at their reactions since they were the ones who were technically stealing her quest targets. She didn’t want to fail her optional quest even if it didn’t have any consequences for her because she didn’t want to pass up on the rewards.
Maria went around killing the rest of her quest targets that, fortunately, still hadn't been discovered despite her going around killing those that were being raided by players which took around half an hour to do. It would have taken her a lot longer to complete this quest if the players hadn't 'helped' her out.
She finished off the second to the last boss before her Nightmare form wore off and she had to activate it again. This was probably the fastest quest she was soon going to complete since it has only been a little over an hour since she started it. This was a record for her since most of her quests usually took days, weeks, or even months to finish. However, she met with a slight mishap on her way to the last quest target. She left this one for last because it actually had the lowest level among all the monsters that hadn't been discovered yet, so she thought it was going to be the easiest since it was the weakest.
When Maria arrived at the spot where she had last seen it, she couldn’t find it. She had left one of her puppets there and used [Shadow Phase] to jump back to the location immediately, but the monster wasn't there anymore.
“Where did it go?!”
It hadn’t been that long since she left after finding the monster. It was a dragon-type monster called the Sky Drake so it was really hard to miss. Maria quickly checked her minimap and noticed that the red indicator was moving erratically. This could only mean that someone was trying to fight and lead it away. Once she realized this, she was enraged.
“Someone dares to steal from me?!”
She was upset about someone trying to steal one of her targets, but Maria really wasn't one to talk, especially after she had just gone around kill-stealing bosses. She quickly took off into the air and it didn’t take her long before she caught up to the Sky Dragon... and the party of people who were battling it.
“Tsk!”
Maria was about to charge towards the players and quickly deal with them but she noticed that the players weren't trying to kill the Sky Drake. Instead, they were throwing nets and ropes around it as they wanted to subdue the beast. Maria soon discovered why when one of the players, a Beast Tamer, tried casting the [Tame] skill on the Sky Dragon.
“So they’re trying to tame it? Is that even possible???”
Of course it was, as she had done this plenty of times already. Naturally, her way of taming a monster was subduing them through sheer force and subordinating them so it was different from how a Beast Tamer would tame a monster. When a Beast Tamer tamed a monster, they would turn the monster into one of their pets, not subordinates. Although what they were doing was interesting, it wasn't something that she could allow, so she quickly shot towards the Beast Tamer player and knocked him off of his feet.
“Ugh!”
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“What the hell?”
"Ambush!"
Maria looked around before she cut the Sky Drake loose and said, “You people dare to steal my prey!”
She knocked the players closest to her off their feet with an [Earth Shock] spell before chasing after the Sky Drake that was now loose from its bindings.
“After her! She’s that kill stealer everyone’s talking about!”
“We can’t let that Sky Drake go!”
“Then off your butt and after her!”
The leader of this party was actually someone who was acquainted with Maria as they had crossed paths before. He was the Knight named Exel who was in the same party as that one friend Maria had made back in her early days of playing Unitale, the mage succubus, Lilith. She still remembered who Lilith was since they would occasionally talk from time to time to discuss about magic theory and how much freedom Unitale's magic system gave to the players.
The Beast Tamer she had knocked away earlier was also someone that was familiar. It was Curio, the former Archer player of Lilith's party, who had now become a Beast Tamer through class advancement. Although the party of players were people who were barely familiar to her, Maria still couldn't wrap her head around as to why they were a bit familiar to her. However, it was because of this familiarity that she didn't outright kill them.
For now, Maria still didn't know who these players were and since Lilith wasn't around to clear things up for her, she still viewed them as enemies since they were trying to steal her quest target, the Sky Drake.
Curio and Exel had gone out hunting with some of the new members of their party. They were going to hunt in a rather low hunting area on Gaia and fortunately stumbled onto the mutated drake. It seemed like a boss monster and when Curio tried analyzing it, he found that he could tame it so naturally, the party wanted to help him tame it. A variant monster was usually stronger than their normal counterparts, so Curio wanted the mutated Sky Drake.
Unfortunately, they didn’t know that it was Maria’s quest target. Maria did leave behind her Black Orc puppet to stand guard in the area and it was the reason why Curio and Exel led the Sky Drake away from its original spot. They sniped their target from afar and managed to grab its aggro. They led it away from the Black Orc whose AI wasn't intelligent enough to go after the players. Maria left a command to patrol the area from players entering it, but didn't tell the puppet about how to deal with the players outside of the area she designated the puppet to patrol.
This was how Curio and Exel's party successfully led the mutated monster away from the menacing Black Orc. They didn't want to try attacking the Black Orc because it seemed like a boss monster. Dealing with two boss monsters wasn't within their party's capabilities yet. With their painstaking efforts, the party had managed to pin the flying monster down to the earth and were in the process of taming it when Maria suddenly interfered and released it.
All of their efforts were put to waste and they immediately reported the situation to their leader, Lilith. Lilith was still in Discordia City handling the player distributions of her Adventurer Party's hunting teams when she got the message from Curio and Exel as they chased after Maria. She immediately told them not to lose her as she would quickly make her way over with reinforcements.
"Don't lose her! I'm making my way over with reinforcements! Send me your coords!"
"I've sent it! Please hurry up! We can't lose this tame-able unique boss!"
"Got it, just hang in there!"
Lilith had heard about the good fortune that struck Curio and Exel, but now that they were about to lose it. She naturally didn't want that to happen, especially since the person that was stealing the fortune away was someone who was currently being talked about negatively in the forums and in the World Chat.
“Ack, she’s too fast and that drake is now also in the air! It took us a while to even get it on the ground! All our efforts were wasted!”
“M-Maybe we can try to reason with her!”
“Are you kidding me? Haven’t you read what people are saying about her on the Forums and World Chat? Also, are you sure you can even reason with her? She might just be an NPC!”
“Y-Yeah, but don’t you think she looks sort of familiar?”
"What???"
Curio and Exel would never forget about Maria since she was the girl that their adventurer party leader, Lilith, always spoke to through video chat whenever she was free. Since the two girls loved talking about magic, it was hard not to recognize that girl's unique appearance and voice. The only reason why the two of them didn't recognize Maria immediately was because she was currently in her Nightmare form. The form that she hadn't shown to anyone just yet.
“Familiar my ass! Let’s just get to her before she kills that rare drake!”
Maria stopped paying attention to those on the ground as she continued flying after the drake, thinking that she had lost them. She sped up and arrived right above it and smashed the drake into the ground with her demonized fist. She didn’t know that Lilith’s party members were extremely tenacious and were still hot on her tail. Smashing the drake into the ground gave them the opportunity to quickly catch up to her.
Curio and Exel didn't immediately jump at the opportunity to attack Maria because they knew that she and the Sky Drake could just fly away again. They patiently waited behind some shrubbery and assessed the situation.
“She’ll probably fight the drake now. We’ll wait until she lowers its HP and once there are only a few percentages left, we’ll rush in to stop her while you, Curio, take that chance to tame it! With its HP in the critical zone, taming the monster might be even easier...”
“That player will probably kill us right after we take the drake…”
“It doesn’t matter. The Sky Drakes were our objectives in the first place and since we found that unique one, it’s ours! I won’t let the kill-stealer take it away from us!”
Maria battled against the Sky Drake while Curio, Exel, and the other members of their party, waited nearby for the monster’s HP to fall low. Yuno, the party's priest, arrived onto the scene after hearing Curio and Exel's predicament. She and her party were actually nearby so they arrived pretty quickly after hearing from Lilith about their situation. Lilith and their adventurer party's last original member, Felice, were still on their way.
As the fight between the kill-stealer and the Sky Drake went on, Curio, Exel, Yuno, and the rest of their party members all began to slowly doubt whether or not they'd be able to pull off kill-stealing from the kill-stealer. The Sky Drake's level was the lowest among all the field boss monsters in the nearby hunting areas, but it was actually the strongest amongst all of them because it was a dragon-type monster that could fly.
Fighting a normal drake would take much more effort than the cockatrices that were a few levels higher even though they were both dragon-type monsters. The Drakes had a much purer dragon bloodline than the cockatrices and since they were also able to fly and use the dragon race's signature [Breath] skill, it was only natural that it was much tougher to beat. Not only that, but the drakes even had the dragon race's incredible regenerative capabilities.
Maria had to say that she was mistaken to believe that this low leveled drake was easier than the other mutated boss monsters that she had previously faced. It had higher attack power, defense, agility, and vitality compared to all of them, but fortunately for her, it still wasn’t her match since she was in her Nightmare form. The only problem was that she had to split her attention to her surroundings because she sensed that some people were watching her.
She had to remain cautious of her surroundings and this distracted her a bit from her fight with monster. She wanted to summon her puppets out, but opted not to because they could become a trump card later on when the players watching her suddenly jumped in to attack her and steal her kill.
Even though Curio, Exel, and Yuno, weren't too sure about their odds of success in stealing from Maria, they still made their moves once the Sky Drake's HP hit 10 percent. Exel, who was now a Templar after his class advancement, used [Charge Strike] on Maria to get behind her and followed it up with a [Shield Strike] to stun her and smash her away. Maria was expecting it, but she was still caught off guard from the suddenness of the attack. Exel kept his momentum, chaining a few more attacks and skill combos on her before launching her even further away from the Sky Drake with a [Shield Bash].
"Do it! Now!"
Hearing his words, Yuno quickly stepped out and used her [Light Binds] on the Sky Drake while the rest of the party began throwing nets and rope at it. Curio used [Windwalk] to quickly approach the Sky Drake and then help his teammates pin it to the ground with his [Ensnare Trap] skill. Once the monster was bound, Exel used [Taunt] to attract the Sky Drake's aggro and once the aggro was fully on him and not on Maria, he shouted, “Now, Curio!”
“Right! [Tame]!”
“[Barrier]!”
Maria quickly got up from the crater she had created after being launched away and angrily glared at the party of players who were once again, trying to steal her quest target.
“Okay, that's it! No more playing around!”
Maria released all stops this time and summoned all of her Shadow Puppets from her shadow realm. She ordered them to attack the players in front of her before using her skills, [Gehenna’s Eye] and [Dark Ray], together. Her [Gehenna’s Eye] secondary effect, [Gehenna’s Offering], was luckily triggered the moment one of her black rays struck Curio. It stopped him from casting [Tame] and even sealed it away. The rest of the players who were struck by her skill combo were only blinded and burnt, but this gave her shadow puppets the opportunity to mount their attack unimpeded.
“Sh-Shit, my [Tame] skill is sealed!”
Yuno tried to cast [Dispel] on him but it didn’t work, “I-It’s not effective!”
“It’s that girl again!” Exel exclaimed as he tried putting out the black flames that were burning him.
“Q-Quick, stop her Exel!”
“Huh?”
Maria zoomed past Exel before she arrived right in front of the Sky Drake as she let her shadow puppets deal with the players. She wasn’t going to forget her objective which was the origin crystal fragment so she unleashed all of her skills, spells, and attacks on the drake who had less than 10 percent of its HP left. Multiple copies of Maria suddenly appeared as a shadow domain descended around her. The copies began striking at the drake before exploding and Maria didn’t hesitate to use a charged [Dark Ray] skill to quickly end the monster’s life.
With her mana depleted from the charged [Dark Ray], Maria’s Nightmare form was dispelled and she reverted back to her normal form. She quickly caught her breath from the exhilarating fight where she nearly lost her quest target and started laughing and jumping around in elation.
“Hahahahaha! I win! I win! I win!!!”
Maria turned a smug glance at Curio, Exel, Yuno, and the rest of the players present who were now surprised to see that blackened version of hers slowly disappear as she transform back into the player that they were familiar with.
""“Maria?!”"" All 3 of them shouted together as they were the only ones present who actually knew her.
“Eh?”
“Holy shit, it’s you!”
"Damn, so you were the kill-stealer! Holy moly..."
"Aww, so we were fighting a friend this whole time? What the heck..."
"You could've said something to us, Maria!"
Maria tilted her head in confusion at the 3 of them before asking, “Huh? Who are you guys again?”