Maria walked over to the large dragon who was standing in the middle of the room waiting for her. She fixed her hair a little bit first before she walked over to stand in front of him and said, “I’ve completed your trial!”
Bahamut nodded and said, “Indeed. Normally, I would have you face an incarnation of me in battle as a second test but since you’ve mastered Odin’s [Shin-Zantetsuken], you’d be able to easily defeat my incarnation.”
“Oh?”
“Anyway, here is your reward.”
Bahamut lowered his claw down to Maria and in the center of his palm was a small red crystal. Maria floated onto Bahamut’s claw before tapping a finger on the crystal and after touching it, the crystal began to move and merge itself into her chest to her surprise as a notification window popped up in front of her.
“O-OH!”
*DING*
You have successfully formed a pact with the Ancient Primal, Bahamut
*DING*
Quest: First Summoning, has been completed!
Maria sighed as she finally finished it and avoided the minus 5 level penalty.
“Please take note that the Bahamut you will summon is only an incarnation of myself. Its powers will be degraded since I cannot physically enter your plane even through the summoning pact magic.”
“Okay.”
“Here is one final gift for you. It is a present for one that has taken the courage to step on both sides of the universal spectrum and forging their own path.”
You have received Bahamut’s Primal Blessing
A red light began shining from Bahamut’s center horn and Maria was bathed in that light. She felt her wings heat up as her black feathers began to shed before they were replaced by red feathers. The chains binding her wings began to loosen and drop to the floor as her wings changed shape and transformed into those that were similar to Bahamut’s large wings.
*DING*
[System Notification: Your Taint Value has been reduced to 0]
Be advised, changes have been made to your character’s body]
Maria looked at her new pair of wings and exclaimed in excitement, “Wow!!!”
They were shaped exactly like Bahamut’s wings and their colors were now the same as well. Not only that, but the previous soft parts of her wings had become covered by a thick layer of black-gold scales.
*DING*
You have acquired a new racial characteristic: Bahamut’s Wings
Name: Bahamut’s Wings Description: The indestructible wings of the Ancient Primal who rules the skies of the Void Realm, Bahamut Effect: Flying does not use any SP. You are free to change from double-winged flight to multi-winged flight at any time. The dark-gold scales on your wings can block 20% percent of incoming damage and return 10% back to the enemy.
Maria flapped her new pair of wings just a little bit but managed to kick up a small windstorm so she immediately stopped. She was able to change the forms of her wings from the conjoined version that was like Bahamut’s to the regular ones that Maria normally had. She rather liked her new appearance since her wings were now red in color instead of black. She looked up at the large dragon Primal with a big smile and said, “Thank you!”
“Mhm...now, you should go. It isn’t safe for you to stay here any longer.”
“I’ll open up a portal for you,” Odin said as he took out Zantetsuken and slashed the air in front of him.
A small portal was opened, similar to the one that Gaia had opened to bring her here. Maria had a slight look of reluctance as she trained her eyes on Odin. The Primal Allfather had been helping her for the longest time and now they were going to separate. This might be the last time she even sees the old Primal in the game. She wanted a memory of him so before stepping into the portal she asked Odin for one last favor.
“Odin, can you take your helmet off?”
“Hm? Sure.”
Odin took off his helmet to reveal the face of the kind old man with an eyepatch that had helped her during her stay in the Void Realm. She moved next to Odin and wrapped her arms around his before taking a photo of her and the Primal. She then swooped into the air and posed right in front of Bahamut’s large head and took another photo. When she looked at the pictures, Maria let out a smile as she was satisfied with them. She saved the pictures and downloaded them in the hard drive of her Capsule before landing on the ground in front of the portal.
Both Odin and Bahamut were confused by her earlier actions but seeing that she was ready to go now, they didn’t ask her anything.
“Goodbye, little disciple!”
“Farewell, contractor.”
“Goodbye! Please send my regards to Ultima and Sleipnir!”
Maria waved back at them before entering the portal. Once she was gone, the portal slowly began to disappear, leaving behind Odin and Bahamut in the room.
“Hmmm, she was an interesting mortal,” Bahamut said.
“Not only interesting, but she's also extremely diligent, intelligent, and talented!”
“...”
“Looks like you’ll have something to do for the next few centuries,” Odin said to Bahamut with a little bit of envy in his voice.
“You should have just contracted with her in the first place if you were going to be jealous like this.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Heh, you know I can’t do that.”
Bahamut grunted and said, “Suit yourself, Allfather. If you don’t mind, please get out of my castle.”
“Hahaha, I’ll see you again... Dragon God.”
“...”
*****
While Maria had been training in the Void Realm and despite time flowing much faster for her, it was still flowing for other people as well. A few things happened in the real world and in the game’s normal plane. First of all, the International Grand Colosseum’s preliminaries had finished up as many of the participants began to fall out of the competition after matching up with those that were much too powerful for them to handle.
This was especially true for those accounts that had ridden the ‘bus’ and only been power-leveled to meet the level requirements. The organizers of the event thought that it would take much longer as there were so many participants trying to qualify for the IGC’s main stage event but with around a thousand battles going on every single day with many players moving forward and others being knocked out, things progressed much quicker than they anticipated.
The sports channels that wanted to broadcast a little of the action weren’t even given a chance to show anything good as the players just overwhelmed each other using pure skill or pure strength. Most of the battles were evidently boring but many were still anticipating the main event because that’s where the truly powerful players would be fighting.
Not everyone participated in the IGC but some were actually invited to participate in the side-events that were still being tested to become future main stage events. They would show these side-events as intermissions in the IGC. Many big-name people were being invited to test these stages. Most of them being real-life professional athletes, celebrities, and even some of the game’s hidden rankers. These side-events entailed activities outside of PvP which was the IGC's main focus.
To name a few, there was an obstacle course event, a random boss battle event, a material collection event, an item creation event, and a weapon forging event. There were a few more but these stages were the ones that many people anticipated to be a hit. Luckily enough, Maria had also been one of those people that had been invited to take part in the IGC's side-events.
When a report about her condition had landed on the game devs’ table, they investigated a little bit and found out that she had actually gotten preemptive access to the Void Realm through a unique hidden quest. Everyone knew that the Void Realm had an accelerated time compared to the rest of the game, but they didn't expect the impact to a person's health if they stayed in it for too long because they were still running tests on that area as it was still not released to the public yet. The developers quickly convened and decided to have the AI enforce a time limit for anyone entering the Void Realm or any other such time-accelerated areas to protect them.
The update was implemented almost immediately after their meeting ended which was why Odin told Maria that she only had a few weeks left in the Void Realm. For now, the time limit for anyone staying in the Void Realm was 3 weeks. The game's main AI, Zeus, had run a few simulations based off of the data that it had acquired from Maria's situation and judged that staying in a time-accelerated area for more than a month would be when the health problems would start if a player was using the standard VR equipment.
To prevent any complications from happening, 3 weeks became the limit for anyone, regardless if they were using the standard VR equipment or the highly advanced one, the Capsule, which was set to launch after the IGC. The devs didn't want to take any chances, so they enforced this limit onto every player.
A player would be forcefully ejected from the realm and other time accelerated areas if they reached the limit and wouldn't be able to go back inside until a real world month's time had passed. The devs also made sure that the AI would send notification messages to any player who stepped inside of a time-accelerated area to warn them. Although Maria's situation was kept hidden, the devs still released a post notifying players about the dangers of staying inside of a time-accelerated area within the game. These areas would be marked as danger zones and players needed to quickly get out of there after they completed their business inside of them.
Why did the game even have such dangerous places to begin with? Well, it only came to light after Maria's incident. Before Maria's incident, no one, not even the devs, knew about those areas being potentially dangerous to the players. During development, the devs didn't have anyone to beta test these areas because the beta test never got to a point where it reached any of those time-accelerated areas. Those areas would only pop up further down the main story's plotline. Most of the later stages were also created by the game's AI, Zeus, and the AI didn't report anything faulty because it didn't have any abnormal data to report.
The dangers of those time accelerated areas would probably have stayed hidden if Maria didn't come up with her 'genius' plan to stay inside of the Void Realm to train for such a long time. The devs were lucky that they found out about this sooner and quickly put in a patch to fix the problem. If the Void Realm became accessible to the rest of the player base and more issues like Maria's started popping up, they would've had to suspend the game for a while to fix the problem and they'd have to deal with the issue of their game causing direct health issues to their clients, the players.
While the devs would've preferred if Zeus completely deleted those dangerous areas, they unfortunately couldn't have it that way because some of those places were tied to the game's main storyline. If they deleted those places, then they would have to replace them and that would take a long time. Not to mention that the patch would also require the game to go under maintenance for an excessively long time.
The game company naturally didn't want this, so they decided to make a compromise. They had Zeus delete the areas that weren't tied to the main story line to keep the players safe and impose the aforementioned time limit for the places that were tied to the main storyline. With this, those areas' quests would now have a time-attack sort of function and if the players failed, they would be ejected from the area and have to redo the quest after the cooldown time to re-enter was over.
The devs were very grateful that Maria decided to keep her situation hidden from the public eye because if she decided to release a statement, it would look extremely bad for their company. They did compensate her with the newest gaming gear, the Capsule, but they felt that it wasn't enough since, in more way than one, she had saved them. The company's PR team wanted to do something more for her, and the organizers of the IGC found something that they could use.
The footage of what Maria did inside of the Void Realm that lead to her health complications was something a few people saw and one of them just happened to be the person leading the IGC's production team. She saw her flying through the Void Realm's canyons and skies, and had the idea of making a flying obstacle course as one of the side-event for the IGC. As the person who inspired this, Maria was invited to attend the IGC as a guest who would participate in the IGC’s side-events. Of course, Maria still didn't know about this because she had been recovering and the moment she did recover, she immediately returned to playing the game, so no one could inform her.
When Maria got out of the Void Realm through the portal Odin had created, her first priority was to report her success to Gaia who congratulated her and was very shocked to hear that she had managed to form a pact with the Dragon God.
Maria had forged a pact with one of the most powerful Primals in existence and Gaia was extremely grateful for her success. Gaia could only open the portal once and she was hoping that Maria would at least get a Primal that wasn’t a lesser or normal rank because those Primals were weaker than the Astrals and Gods she would be facing later as they worked together to prevent the Celestial Order and the Pantheon from warring against each other again.
Gaia’s physical body wasn’t going to be able to withstand the abuse of another war since her Origin Crystal had broken apart once already. Her Origin Crystal was like her soul while the planet was her vessel, her physical body. With her Origin Crystal already being so fragile, she could die if her physical body was assaulted by the clash of energies between the Astrals and the Gods. The impact wouldn’t be as much as before since the Astrals and Gods can only be summoned by the players and NPCs now, but if enough damage piled up, it could still spell her doom.
Of course, Gaia was still trying to recover her vitality but with how fast the players had managed to gain access to the Void Realm, there wouldn’t be enough time for her to fully recover. It was up to Maria to prevent the war from happening too quickly and the only way to do that was to sabotage each sides’ plans and that was the second objective that Gaia entrusted Maria to do.
*DING*
You have received the Quest: Preventing the War
Quest: Preventing the War Rank: A Type: Chain Sub-quest Description: After returning from the Void Realm with your pact with a Primal established, Gaia has requested of you to help her prevent the war between the Celestial Order and the Pantheon from occurring. Sabotage the plans of both sides while keeping yourself anonymous. If either the Astrals or Gods discover you, they will immediately find out about the existence of Gaia and hound her for being the cause of their banishment into the Void Realm. Objective 1: Sabotage the war preparation plans of the Celestial Order and the Pantheon. Meet with Gaia’s agents and follow their instructions.
Objective 2: Stay anonymous. Do NOT let either faction know of your existence. Reward: None Penalty: -10 Level(s) Note: Targets for Objective 1 will randomly appear on your map in 1 day intervals! Please make sure to constantly check your map for information!
Maria read through the quest objectives and sighed, “Haah...another quest with 0 rewards…”
She hadn’t been rewarded for completing the first chain quest, the First Summoning, but that didn’t matter too much since she acquired a lot of rewards during her stay in the Void Realm. Her new pair of wings, the upgrades to her abilities, equipment, and skills along with the Zantetsu-R she received from Odin, and the summoning pact with Bahamut. Maria thought that she would have to give the pact up to Gaia but that wasn’t the case because the summoning crystal had merged with her soul so she couldn’t give it up even if she wanted to.
This was good news to her because there was no way she’d be willing to give up on the ability to summon Bahamut to the normal plane. Of course, she hadn’t found the time to summon Bahamut and if she wanted to, Maria knew that she shouldn't because it would only attract attention to herself. Her newest quest required her to remain anonymous, so experimenting with the Summon was not something she could do at the moment.
After receiving the quest, Maria checked her map and noticed that no marker had appeared. The note did say that her quest targets would appear randomly in 1 day intervals, so it was likely her target would only appear tomorrow. The only thing she could do now was wait and since there was nothing for her to do, she decided to take a break. Training in the Void Realm had been fun and all, but she had completely neglected doing a lot of things in the real world and thought it would be best if she stopped playing for now and take it easy for a few days.
Thankfully, the quest didn't appear to be urgent, so she was allowed some respite. The IGC’s main event was just around the corner as the organizers issued an announcement that with the preliminaries finishing ahead of expectation, they decided to move up the date of the tournament’s main stage. The prelims had been divided between nations and since this was an international tournament, the countries of the world would be competing with one another through their players to see which country had the best Unitale players.