The IGC was going to start much earlier than what was previously announced at the start due to the preliminaries finishing quicker but it was still a few days away. Maria was just glad that she had finished all of her urgent, ongoing quests so she now had some spare time. Since she was so eager to watch the IGC, Maria’s dad, Corinthos, had even bought a few tickets for Maria, her brothers, and their friends to go watch the tournament right at the venue. All they needed to do was wait for the main event’s date to arrive and they’d fly over to Rome where the International Grand Colosseum would be held.
The IGC’s organizers had rented out an entire stadium close to the Roman Colosseum because of the event’s name. They wanted to add a little bit of background and history to the whole thing so they did this to mark the Virtual World’s first-ever Olympics or something along those lines. The ticket that her father bought for her was going to be wasted because one day while the Heltania family were eating dinner together on a Saturday evening, David, the family’s butler, brought mail that was addressed to Maria.
“It’s mail that’s addressed to the Young Lady.”
“Hm.”
“Mail for our little sister? That’s rare,” Mikael said. “Did you do something, Mary?”
Maria shrugged and said, “No, I’ve only been playing Unitale and going to school all this time.”
“Maybe it’s a scholarship. Who knows, a university might have sent a scout to our school and saw your grades or something,” Gerald said.
It was rare for any mail to be addressed to her so Maria had David open it up and read it to them. She didn’t have anything to hide so she didn’t care if the rest of her family knew what was in the letter.
“It’s from the...IGC committee,” David said as he opened the envelope.
“Oh?”
“What could the IGC want with Maria?” Gerald asked.
“It’s an invitation. To the Dire Queen, Maria the Fallen Ophanim, it is with our greatest pleasure to─”
“Just get to the main part, David,” Maria quickly cut in as she felt embarrassed that they had addressed her in such a manner from the opening line.
“Hehe, Queen, huh?”
“My little sister became a queen? Since when???”
“Hmm…”
“S-Stop it!” Maria embarrassedly said as she raised her fork and threatened her two older brothers with it. “W-What do they want?”
“The committee is inviting you to the IGC to participate in the prototype main stage events that are still being developed for the next IGC. Enclosed in the package that came with the letter are the VIP tickets, a Staff Pass with the Young Lady’s name on it, plane tickets, and a hotel suite keycard.”
David handed the letter to Maria along with a few papers that described what she would be doing. They also requested her to come a day earlier to the venue so they can arrange a few things for her.
“...So they want me to participate in the event’s sideshows, I guess?”
“Oh, really? I’ve heard about those. They’re going to be in future IGCs but right now, they’re still in the development phases so they won’t be included in this year’s IGC main event,” Gerald said.
Many eyes were on the upcoming IGC so people were digging up all kinds of information about it. Leaks about the side events were already being shown on the forums so this wasn’t a secret anymore. The only secret would be the participants. The players heard that IGC competitors wouldn’t be eligible to participate in these side events as they had the main event to focus on so the organizers were inviting other people to try it out.
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Maria just didn’t expect that she would be one of those invited people. There was no reason for her to decline so she said, “Well, looks like I’ll be going to Rome for another reason than just watching the IGC. I can actually participate in it!”
Maria was happy since she had failed to qualify for the IGC and was regulated to being an audience member. Now, she could participate in the IGC though it wasn’t in the main event.
“Congrats to you, little sis!” Gerald said. He had helped her grind her levels for a time and knew how much effort she put in to qualify but came up short in the end.
“Hmm, since you’ve got a few more VIP tickets, I’m guessing you won’t need the ones I got for you,” Corinthos said as he made note that Maria received a few more tickets that were of the same level that he had managed to procure.
“If that’s the case, can I bring my friends?” Gerald asked.
“Do whatever you want with them.”
“Awesome!”
On Monday, Maria went to school and told her friends the news and gave them the VIP tickets she got from the committee. Naturally, Lizzy didn’t need one because she was one of IGC’s invited participants. Her being the guild leader of one of the most powerful guilds in the game warranted as much so she didn’t need to go through the IGC’s prelims even though she wasn’t a ranker in the top 50s.
Lizzy wasn’t in the top 50s but she did secure a position as a top 100 ranker in the leaderboards. She was ranked 56 which was just shy of the top 50s but that was amazing already since as a guild leader, she didn’t have much time to grind levels by herself since she needed to attend guild meetings and plan things out for the guild. Emily wanted to participate herself but she didn’t feel like it though Lizzy kept on urging her to participate in the prelims. She did and got to the final part before she just gave up and let her opponent win without a battle.
Naturally, Lizzy was quite angry but she couldn’t do anything because, in the game, the Pantheon was making a move to try and get ahead of the Celestial Order by attacking the guilds and players that were part of the Order. With Lizzy busy with the IGC, it naturally fell to Emily to deal with the problems in the game. However, it was announced that conflicts in Unitale would be strictly regulated during the international tournament week.
This was petitioned by many guild members on the forum and the devs also saw the problem if someone tried to take advantage of this period where everyone was focused on the tournament rather than the game. If they didn’t do anything about this during the first IGC, it could impact the second IGC’s participation ratings. They didn’t want this so they added a protection period during the IGC week.
The IGC would begin next week on Monday so Maria and her friends still had a week of school before they would fly to Rome on Friday together with Maria after school ended. Naturally, they had to take a week off from school but it wasn’t a secret that Maria and her friends were very prominent figures in Unitale and had secretly become celebrities in their schoolmates’ eyes, the school board decided that they would categorize this as a school club activity so they permitted them.
Of course, Maria and the girls had to make a new school club called the VR Club so that they’d get permission from both the school board and the student council. It was easy to do this since they had a valid reason and quickly got the permission. The week soon passed by and during this week, Maria had completed a few objectives from her [Preventing the War] chain sub-quest. They weren’t as hard as she imagined since all she needed to do was move around in her Nightmare form and attack NPCs and players from the Celestial Order and the Pantheon.
Lilith’s party members were the only ones who knew about Maria’s identity as she went around sabotaging the Order and the Pantheon’s plans and daily quests, but thankfully they were friends so they didn’t rat out her identity when players from both sides began asking around about her. When she changed into her Nightmare form, the name tag above Maria’s head had changed from her name to the ‘Black Nightmare’ for everyone who wasn’t on her Friends List.
Maria made a mental note to herself that she shouldn’t ever use her Nightmare form in front of anyone because her identity would be found out and people would hound her for sabotaging their quests and all. She could only inwardly apologize to those people because it wasn’t her fault that their quests conflicted with each other. If she didn’t complete her objectives, she would fail her quest and in her opinion, it was better for them to fail than her.
She’d lose a few levels while they’d probably only lose some gold, EXP, and items. Their penalties could never come close to surmounting hers. There were many times when she wanted to summon Bahamut and use her new skills and weapons but she wanted to surprise the audience during the IGC when she came out bearing new equipment and skills. She streamed a few arena battles during the week and talked to her stream’s viewers about the fact that she would be participating in the IGC, so they’d be able to watch her on the IGC’s stream channel during the tournament week.
Many naturally asked how she was able to participate since they knew that Maria hadn’t been able to make the cut for the prelims and wasn’t in the top 50 so she didn’t get an invite. She may have her own faction but it wasn’t known outside of the people from her stream so it didn’t warrant her the fame that other guild leaders got that made the IGC committee extend invitations to them.
Maria told her viewers she got an invite but kept it at that. She didn’t spill any of the details and only said to her audience that they just had to anticipate her participation and performance in the coming days. The week soon passed and it was already Friday. Maria and her friends didn’t even need to wait for school to end as the school actually sent them off that day so they went home first before gathering together at the airport and waited for their flight.
They all felt a little nervous and excited because they never thought that a gaming event would become this large. While walking through the airport, Maria and the girls noticed that on one of the advertisement screens an ad for the IGC was being played. They watched it for a moment and could feel the energy coming from the video as it showed clips of players battling monsters, other players, and some highlights of the people that would be participating in the event, including those celebrities, athletes, and other well-known people that were invited.
Oddly enough, there was one short clip of Maria’s character where she was flying through the air at tremendous speed before it moved onto another person.
“Woah, Mary, you’re in there!” Amanda said.
“Y-Yeah…”
“As expected of the game’s fastest flyer,” Lizzy teased.
“Y-You were there too! I saw all of the 20 invited guild leaders being displayed!”
“Yeah, but unlike you, I didn’t use my real appearance when creating my character!”
“Ugh…”
Maria looked around before tying up her hair and pulling her hoodie over her head. It was very embarrassing for her because her character looked exactly like her real-life self.
“Hahaha! Now you’re regretting it? Too late, bub!”
“Tch, you guys could've warned me about it before I made my character!”
"Aw, but there's no fun in that, is there~?"