Maria quickly returned to the Goddess and this greatly surprised the little deity. She had only left for 2 hours at best, but now she was back saying that she had completed her quest and found all of the fragments of her shattered Origin Crystal.
“W-What the heck?! You finished my request in under 2 hours?!” Gaia exclaimed in disbelief.
She wanted to believe that Maria was lying, but the proof of the quest's completion was presented to her on the altar and not a single piece less.
"J-Just how???"
“What? Is it that surprising?” Maria asked back dully.
“How about you become my envoy instead? I’m sure that we can─”
“Don’t push your luck, goddess. I may be helping you and Death, but it doesn’t mean I’m happy to be anyone’s errand girl!"
"U-Uhh─"
"I used to think that being a god’s envoy was something to be proud of, but all I can see is that I’m being used as some kind of labor force that can be called upon at any time!”
Hearing Maria’s blast of complaints, Gaia was immediately taken aback. Most envoys that gods choose were those that were completely faithful to them. This was the first time she met an envoy who was completely the opposite. Instead of always singing praises of Death, she would sometimes outright badmouth him and even complain. Maria was truly bizarre in Gaia's eyes, but this didn't stop her from wanting this person to be her envoy.
“Hmph, hurry up and finish your Origin Crystal. I don’t want to waste my time.”
“F-For a helper, you sure are demanding!”
“I just want to get this over with.”
“...”
Even though she favored Maria, Gaia felt a little dismayed that she was being treated like this. However, it wasn't like she could get angry and resent her. She did come all the way over to her planet just so she could help her out and all the things she's done up until now have been very helpful and beneficial to her. Maria had gathered her scattered origin crystal fragments within a day and helped her out when she was 'looking' for food on the streets like a beggar.
Of course, that was only just a test to see Maria's character and she had passed it with flying colors. Unfortunately, there was more to Maria's personality and Gaia was a little overwhelmed by it. She didn't conform to the norms and spoke her mind even if it meant offending a goddess like her. Well, at least she was there to help. Gaia honestly had no where else to turn to for help and Death had extended a helping hand to her. She naturally took it and although the helper she got was a little rude, but at least she was doing her part properly.
“The process will be completed in a bit. Just wait here and once I’ve finished, I’ll reward you and open the gate to the Void Sea Realm.”
“Alright…”
Maria went to the side and started stretching her back and wings before manipulating her shadow and pulling out the drake corpse from her [Shadow Storage]. Gaia noticed this and couldn’t help but stare at Maria because the girl was directly violating the sanctity of her temple by bringing out a corpse in it.
'What is she doing???'
Gaia wanted to say something, but she was just too dumbfounded that she couldn't. She decided to just stop paying attention to her because it would be useless and she'd likely get scolded for not focusing on repairing her Origin Crystal. She closed her eyes and focused her efforts on her job while tuning out everything Maria was doing inside of her sacred house.
Maria didn't see any problem with what she was doing, so she just continued with her preparations to turn the Sky Drake into her puppet. It took her a few tries, but she managed to turn the Sky Drake into another one of her puppets. This time it was a flying one, so this was really good. Having an extra pair of hands in the skies was always a big help and it could act as her flying mount if she ever got tired of flying, which was something very unlikely to happen since Maria really loved flying.
What she was doing completely disrupted Gaia's focus as she opened her eyes again and looked at what Maria had done. Seeing the reanimated sky drake, Gaia frowned and sighed. She thought that this was expected from the champion of the God of Death. It was only natural that she'd be able to bring back to life the corpses of her fallen enemies. She only wished that Maria did this outside of her temple because while Death was the personification of Death, she was a goddess of life, the polar opposite of what Maria and her god represented.
She closed her eyes again and focused all of her attention on repairing her Origin Crystal as she thought to herself, ‘Maria has too many death-related abilities. Let’s give her something that will bring life to balance things out…’
Maria didn’t know what the goddess was up to but it wasn’t any of her concern. She just wanted her rewards for the menial task she had completed and whatever she received, she naturally wasn't going to complain as long as it was worth her time.
“Okay, now let's take a closer look at all my puppets~”
Maria extended her shadow and summoned the rest of her Shadow Puppets into the temple. Gaia sensed this, but she wasn't bothered at all by Maria's actions and just continued to focus her attention on her task.
“[Black Orc], [Shadow Cockatrice], [Black Troll], [Shadow Tiger], and [Dark Drake]. Hmm, out of the 8 mutated boss monsters, I was only able to get 5 of them…”
Maria was a bit displeased by this since her perfect effective control limit was 10, so she was missing 5 more puppets. She had been experimenting with her ability, so she naturally knew what her limit was for her puppet manipulation. 10 was the effective limit if she wanted to perfectly control all of her puppets, but she could naturally go even higher if she only wanted to brainlessly use her ability just like Envy had done and just throw corpses at her opponents. If she had taken the other 3 boss monsters, she would've only been 2 puppets away from reaching her limit.
“That mutated Treant monster that I nearly lost would have been a good tank-type puppet...all I have are purely offensive puppets, so the composition is a bit unbalanced," Maria mumbled to herself. "I need more diversity in my puppet army. I guess I really have to make that appointment with Lilith and her party. Having others around to help me will surely make things easier and faster."
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Maria dismissed her puppets and turned to the small goddess who was sitting cross-legged above the abandoned temple’s altar with the broken Origin Crystal floating above her head. She could see the fragments and cracks slowly mend as the crystal’s light began to grow brighter and brighter with a divine aura.
“...This might take longer than I thought but I shouldn’t go anywhere...just in case she suddenly finishes it early. I want to quickly finish the first Main objective quest.”
Maria decided to wait around in the temple and with nothing to do, she began reading through Unitale’s Forums and saw the many threads of people complaining about her. Of course, they didn’t know that it was actually her since she was in her Nightmare form and no one could use [Inspect] to obtain her information, so there were only pictures of her in her nightmarish form. Many even started to believe that this person was someone from the Devil's faction, but there were others who noticed that she had the wings of an angel, though they were black. A few of the smarter ones were able to trace back that small detail to Maria, but didn't try speaking up because they weren't sure about it.
Among those people who were paying close attention to the black figure's details, Maria's friends were naturally part of them. Although her skin and body had darkened to a grey-black tone and the black aura of her transformation was obscuring her face, they could still recognize her by the way she carried herself and most importantly, the blackened demon ax that the black figure was carrying around was just way too familiar to them. Only one person in the game had an ax similar to the black figure in the posts and that was their friend, Maria.
“Gosh...that’s definitely her, right?” Lizzy asked as she turned to her friend Emily who was sitting next to her.
“Her form may have changed and all, but that’s definitely her. There’s no way I’ll ever forget about those curves~” Emily had a lewd smile on her face as she said this while looking at one of the photos of her friend's new form which was circulating around the forums. “Hehehe, she’s become a bit bolder, huh?”
“W-Why do you sound like an old pervert?”
Lizzy stared at Emily like she was looking at something and not someone. This really wasn't how she normally acted, but Emily really couldn't help herself. Maria's Nightmare was just a little too...sexy. It just wasn't in line with how their friend usually dressed up and Emily was liking the change in style though Lizzy was a little concerned.
“Oh come on, just be honest! Even if we are girls, Mary has that kind of appeal that attracts both genders! Though I’m not saying I’m sexually attracted to her or anything, but her sexiness in this new form of hers is just something you have to appreciate! Come on, back me up here, Amanda!” Emily said as she tried to justify herself and even turning to their friend, Amanda, who wasn't even on Gaia and was talking to them through the game's video call feature.
Emily knew Maria the longest out of their little gang, so she was more comfortable when expressing things like this to her friends and to Maria.
“...”
Lizzy could only remain silent as she continued listening to Emily’s rant.
“Normally, she’s so modest and barely wears any clothes that enhance her sex appeal so this is rare! Extremely rare!”
“Haaahh...you really are the weirdest one out of us!”
“Says the gaming addict!”
"Quiet, nerd!"
"Yeah, bookworm, you shut up!"
The 3 of them began bantering with each other before Lizzy decided to send a quick message to Maria to ask her about the details of her situation and if she really was the black figure being talked about in the forums. She naturally didn't care about her friend kill-stealing the bosses and was more curious about her new form. She wondered if it was some kind of ability, item, or just a temporary effect from a quest she was doing.
Naturally, Maria's 3 friends weren't the only ones who were aware of her being the black figure being talked about in the forums. Practically everyone in Maria's small circle of connections knew about it. This included her brother, Gerald, and friend, Lilith. Gerald sent a message to his little sister and what he asked was more or less the same as what Lizzy, Emily, and Amanda wanted to ask her. Lilith didn't really care about what was happening in the forums and only sent her a message to ask about when they were going to meet up later.
Lilith: Maria, I just heard from Yuno and the other 2! When are we going to meet up? I'll go to the Dawn Pavilion once you're ready! Maria: I'm just waiting for my quest to be completed. It shouldn't take too long. I'll let you know immediately when I'm done! By the way, I almost got into a fight with your friends earlier, haha! Luckily, things didn't escalate that far and a fight was avoided. Lilith: I heard. I'm glad it was avoided, but they said that you didn't recognize them which caused the misunderstanding! Maria: Hehehe~ well, I’ve never met your friends, so I didn’t know what they looked like! If I did, I would've talked with them first because they were trying to hunt my quest target! Lilith: Well, our time was short inside of the magic tower, so you only saw them in passing. When we meet up later, I’ll introduce everyone to you properly! Maria: Thanks! I'll see you later then!
Maria chatted simultaneously with all of the people that messaged her and time passed by without her knowing. After an hour or so passed by which felt extremely brief to her, a bright light began radiating from the altar where Gaia was repairing her Origin Crystal. The light flooded the entire temple with a divine aura and it was quite glaring, so Maria had to shield her eyes from it. She could feel the powerful wave of energy emitting from the crystal and it was a little bit suffocating.
'Ugh, so this is what true divinity is like?'
Maria strained her eyes and through the cracks of her fingers, she could barely make out the silhouette of the child-form goddess and the Origin Crystal that was shining a few inches above her head. The crystal slowly began to descend from the air and it fell into Gaia’s chest. Once the Origin Crystal had merged with the goddess, another flash of light was released, causing Maria to quickly shut her eyes.
Once the light subsided and she opened her eyes to see what happened, Maria saw Gaia sitting on top of the altar but she wasn't in her child-like form anymore. Perhaps due to her Origin Crystal being repaired and a part of her divinity returning to her, Gaia's form had completely changed and she was more of an adult now.
“Death’s Envoy Maria!”
Maria quickly dismissed all of the system windows in front of her when her name was called. She couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of awe towards this person but it was only because of the divinity she felt from her.
“You’re Gaia, right? Nice new look,” Maria said as she evaluated the young lady before her.
“I thank you, Fallen Angel─No, it should be Fallen Ophanim, right?”
Maria nodded at her and let the goddess continue, “Thank you, Fallen Ophanim Maria, for helping me restore my Origin Crystal and returning my Divinity to me!”
“I just did as I was told.”
“...Though you lack respect, I do like your straight forward personality and...modesty. The quest has been completed so now I will bestow upon you this reward. I hope you do not reject it.”
“Just give it to me already. There’s no reward that I would reject,” Maria quipped.
Gaia smiled and it gave Maria a slight sense of foreboding. She raised a finger and pointed it straight at Maria. A light was ejected from this dainty finger and it immediately sunk into her chest.
“?!”
It was at that exact moment that Maria began feeling something warm welling up in her chest. That warmth soon turned hot and then a moment later, it suddenly turned cold. The temperature of her body fluctuated wildly and Maria recalled the last time she felt something like this happen to her and cursed, “C-Crap, I know this feeling!”
Maria had felt this before and it was when she had first transformed into a fallen angel from an angel. This hot and cold feeling inside of her body that battled and tried to outdo each other was unpleasant. It was so unpleasant the first time that she fainted from it. Whatever was happening to her, it was changing the nature of her body. Whether this was a good thing or not, she couldn't tell. However, the unpleasant feeling made her want to curse at Gaia for putting her through this again.
“Dammit…”
Maria took a deep breath before staring at the goddess and saying, “This is the reward, huh? Ack, how unpleasant. Is this revenge for my callous treatment?”
"Hmhm, of course not. This is a reward that will certainly help you."
"Sure... Tsk, I really hate this feeling..."
Even though her body was being assaulted by this discomfort, it didn’t hurt like the previous time she felt it. Maria was also kind of used to these situations because every time she devoured a Sin Devil Soul, an extremely hot energy would well up inside of her and she would have to endure the heat before being able to make the power she consumed completely hers. Thanks to all her prior experiences, she quickly adapted to what was happening and dealt with the discomfort quietly.
The only problem was the extreme cold she was feeling that was clashing with the extreme heat in her body. All this time, she only had to deal with the hot energy, so this cold energy was new to her. She struggled quiet a bit to adapt to this coldness, but eventually, she was able to overcome it. Since she was able to overcome both the hot and cold energy inside of her, Maria thought that things would be over now, but unfortunately for her, she wasn’t prepared for the struggle that was coming.
This time, it wasn't simply about dealing and overcoming the pain of the cold and hot energies inside of her. She had to deal with the clash of these two energies as they tried to merge with each other.
“Urgh! W-what's this?”