Maria’s genius plan was to train here in the Void Sea Realm where time was vastly accelerated compared to the time outside of it. She didn’t know how it would impact her but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like she could just return here any time she wanted, so instead of wasting her time running around looking for those Primals whose locations she didn’t even know of, Maria thought that it would be better to just train for a while since she now had all of the time in the world in this place.
Maria hadn’t forgotten about the videos and clips she saw on Switch that showed the advantage of bringing real-life skills into the game and this naturally meant fighting skills. She saw a lot of martial artists try their hands on this game and they were good when using the Pugilist class of the warrior class branch. Real-life archers were also better than the average Archer-class players and this was the same for the other classes as well, be they the Lifestyle classes or the regular combat classes.
Maria had begun taking martial arts lessons because she wanted to bring those real-life techniques into the game and even learned a few axe and war scythe skills while she was at it from her instructors. The only problem was the constraint of time that she had on her. She had to juggle gaming, school, and other things on top of learning martial arts and she didn’t have a lot of time doing all of them. Now, however, since she was able to do that inside of the Void Sea Realm, she wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. Her real-life body may have been restricted in learning a few of those martial arts skills, but that wasn’t the same for her in-game body.
She had the form down in real life and with her in-game body, she was able to provide the ‘substance’ to those techniques. Maria thought that it wasn’t enough though so she wanted to refine those techniques but never had time to do it. With the Void Sea Realm, she now had all of the time in the world to do it. Maria materialized her Calamity and began swinging it in accordance with the moves she remembered from her martial arts instructors.
It was exhausting and time-consuming but time wasn’t a problem for her anymore as Maria continued to tirelessly swing her Calamity. With her in-game body, it was almost impossible for her to feel any physical exhaustion but instead, it was mental exhaustion that she was feeling and to top it off, the strain from the Void Realm’s energy that she was repulsed by only amplified that exhaustion. However, Maria persevered and continued swinging her axe tirelessly until a notification bell rang in her head.
*DING*
You have acquired the fundamental skill: Battle Axe Mastery D
Skill Name: Battle Axe Mastery Level: 1 P. EXP: 0/1,000 Rank: D Description: When using an ax-type weapon, increases damage dealt by 5%! All skills using axes will have their rate of completion increased by 10% and their effects enhanced by 8%! Upgradeable: [Supreme Axe Mastery] Requirements: [Battle Axe Master Rank ???], [???], [???]
“Oh?”
Her efforts were repaid when she acquired this skill after she had swung her axe-form Calamity 1000 times properly. Normally, this skill was something a player could purchase from the basic Warrior Instructor at the starting planet after they class-changed into a warrior. Naturally, there were other weapon mastery skill books like [Bow Mastery], [Staff Mastery], [Sword Mastery], and so on which could be learned by each specific class instructors.
As a priest, Maria should have gotten the [Staff Mastery] early on from High Priestess Hella, but since she had been using Calamity, she thought that the skill book wasn’t needed and decided not to purchase it since it would only be a waste of money. Maria wanted the [Axe Mastery] skill from the Warrior Instructor, but since she wasn’t a warrior, she couldn’t buy it. The [Battle Axe Mastery] skill was the enhanced version of the [Axe Mastery] skill which had to be learned after ranking it up to Rank A and buying the skill book to evolve it.
Maria, however, had only done repetitive movements of a real-life technique and managed to acquire it all on her own. This was the beauty of Unitale since it was actually possible to acquire skills through repetitive and trained actions without the need to purchase the relevant skill book to learn the skill.
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The exact requirements for learning skills through repetitive actions weren’t exactly known, but some crazy gaming researchers had actually tallied the average number to be around 1000 to 2000 after performing an experiment inside of the game. However, the actions had to be proper or else they wouldn’t count onto the tally so actually, Maria had swung her Calamity probably over 5000 times or even 10,000 times just to get the 1000 or so proper swings that let her acquire the [Battle Axe Mastery] skill.
It really was a grueling task, but it was all worth it because she acquired the skill she wanted. Now, the game would assist her movements when she trained and provide additional damage increase to her attacks when she used her axe-form Calamity's normal attacks.
“F-Finally! I finally did it!”
Maria had been intrigued by this group of people’s experiments and since it was a plausible thing to do, she wanted to try it. Naturally, other players saw these people as total nutcases for doing so much for just a game, but Maria saw those players as the nutcases instead. If they didn’t take anything seriously, then how could they expect to get anywhere in the world with that kind of attitude. Maria knew that the people who criticized those geniuses were just those ordinary plebeians that didn’t want to put any effort into a ‘game’ or in anything else for that matter. They were the players in Unitale that wouldn’t be able to leave their mark on the game at all, so their opinions were completely irrelevant.
“Alright, now that I’ve gotten [Battle Axe Mastery], it's time to get the mastery skill for my scythe...”
Maria quickly changed her Calamity’s form and began swinging her scythe. She stopped after a moment, however, to check the time and noticed that this time, 10 hours had passed by.
“W-What the hell?” She exclaimed in shock, “I’ve been swinging Calamity for over 10 hours and I didn’t even notice?!”
Maria had been so focused on the task at hand that she had completely forgotten about it. Thankfully, she was inside of the Void Sea Realm because if this was back at the normal plane, this would have been extremely unhealthy for her. Added with the previous hours she had spent, over 15 hours had gone by since she started playing the game. If time had passed by normally and her father had found out about this, there was no doubt in her mind that Corinthus would have confiscated her VR gear.
“Th-Thank goodness this is the Void Sea Realm!”
After checking the time, Maria finally saw the conversion clock next to the elapsed time clock and noticed that it was only 11:46 right now.
“Ah, so an hour here is around 20 minutes in the normal plane which means it's around 6-7 minutes in the real world!” Maria hummed as she had another few hours left before lunchtime.
Thankfully, this was a Saturday so she could spend her entire day playing. Her father and brothers didn’t mind her doing this as long as she kept in mind her health and her studies. They were glad she had found something to be passionate about, so it was alright for her to spend all of her time doing what she wanted.
Maria continued to swing her scythe for the next few hours inside of the Void Sea Realm and after logging off for lunch, she noticed that her mind felt quite exhausted. Even though her body felt no different than before, besides only being a little bit hungry, the toll on her mind for staying up for so long and just mindlessly swinging her Calamity was draining.
“Hmm...I can’t go on like this. I’ll balance the training and resting inside of the Void Sea Realm. Maybe that will help me out a little…”
******
A few days went by in the real world and inside of the empty space of the Void Realm, an 8-winged angel was still tirelessly swinging her weapon, training her skills and techniques. Just a moment ago, she had been using an axe, but now it was suddenly a scythe. Sweat dripped down from her chin and brows but the angel didn’t stop. She instead wiped the sweat away before she resumed swinging her weapon. This was naturally Maria and for the extremely long time she's been inside of the Void Realm, she had been training her axe techniques, scythe techniques, her martial arts, and even her skills and spells.
Maria managed to level up a few of them by 1 or 2 ranks. A few days had passed in real life, but inside of the Void Sea Realm, 9 times as many days had passed by for Maria. She spent a little over a month inside of the Void Realm already, building up her strength and training her skills and techniques but even after all that time, she still wasn’t satisfied and continued to train. The proficiency level and ranks of her [Battle Axe Mastery], [Battle Scythe Mastery], and [Hand-to-hand Combat Mastery] had increased significantly as they were now at B rank and closing in on A rank.
She thought that it still wasn't enough and wanted to at least level the two mastery skills to the highest rank possible, which was likely S rank if not A rank. During this time, Maria thought that she was all alone and training in solitude but actually, a figure had emerged on one of the larger land structures overlooking the area where she was training at and this figure had been observing her all this time without pause.
This figure appeared to be riding a large horse and was holstering a large sword on its back. It had emerged when a week had passed inside of the Void Realm and had been observing Maria ever since.
“...What an interesting little thing.”
Maria had piqued the interest of this unknown being and whether this was a good or bad thing, she would soon find out as the being had decided to finally move over to her spot after contemplating about it for so long.