After the rest of the participants gave their impressions and input, the next event started right after Maria and the others left the stage. Maria was going to lay down a little and rest because last night, she hadn’t been able to get much sleep since she was so excited for today. The next event was catered towards lifestyle classes anyway so it wasn’t something she would be too interested in watching. She went to the ladies' room first to tie up her hair and the movie celebrity, Monique, walked in while she had her hoodie and mask down.
Monique didn’t pay any particular attention to her as she went into a stall to do her business but when she walked out and saw Maria still in front of the mirror, tying up her long hair in a bundle, she finally noticed.
“W-Wait...are you Maria?”
“Hm? Oh, hello, Miss Monique.”
“Woah...it really is you…” Monique gawked at Maria who looked exactly like her in-game character. “You didn’t change your facial features or build at all when you created your character, huh?”
Maria smiled and replied, “Nope, it was too much of a hassle. I just wanted to play the game so I just skipped the character creation after picking my race!”
That was a lie. Maria just didn't know how to customize her character's appearance outside of being able to pick her starting race and this was only because she had to choose it for herself. If the game didn't have a race selection as a default gimmick in their character creation menu, then Maria would've likely skipped it and played as her human self in the game. Although Maria was lying, she wasn't about to be truthful about her blunder.
“Haha, how fun! No one knows that you look exactly how you do in the game, right?”
“Besides my friends at school who are also keeping it a secret for me, no one else knows...well, excluding you of course.”
“Hehe, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me! My daughter loves watching your stream and it was quite the honor to play with you in the event earlier. Part of the reason why I chose to participate also had to do with you! If you don’t mind, can I get a photo with you and your autograph? My daughter would be so thrilled!”
“Sure!” Maria didn’t see why not so she readily agreed after she finished tying her hair.
It was normally hard for her to become comfortable with anyone, but she quite liked the Italian celebrity who seemed so down to Earth and shared a common interest with her. They snapped a few pictures though it was a bit weird since they were inside of a public restroom. Thankfully, it was very clean and they took closeups so the background wasn’t really highlighted, especially since the faces of 2 beautiful women were in the picture.
“Oh, it’s such a shame that I’d have to keep this to myself. It’d look great on Stargram!”
Maria thought for a moment before saying, “You can post it if you want.”
“Hm? But I thought you wanted to keep your face a secret?”
Maria shrugged in response to her words, “It’ll get out eventually but for now, why not just say it was a fan cosplaying as me or something. Wouldn’t that work?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“That just might actually...but are you okay with this?”
“Don’t worry, it’s fine. I bet your children would be thrilled.”
“Thank you!”
With Maria’s consent, Monique posted the picture on her social media account, and immediately, it attracted quite a lot of attention. Everyone saw that the picture was taken in a bathroom so when Monique said that she met up with a cosplayer, everyone took it seriously, except for a few people who actually knew who Maria was of course.
“Hey, guys, look...isn’t this Mary?”
Back at the VIP room where Maria’s friends were enjoying the unique sport that came from Unitale that was being projected through a holographic setup, Amanda spoke up and gathered everyone after she had been browsing her phone and suddenly caught notice of something that was trending on Stargram.
“Met up with a fellow fan of Fallen Angel Maria, her cosplay is soooo accurate!” Emily read the post’s description before looking at the photo, “Cosplay? Isn’t that just Mary herself?”
“It definitely is, but people are convinced that it’s cosplay. They’re even praising how good the cosplayer is for making her makeup and face look ‘almost’ the same as Fallen Angel Maria, haha!” Lizzy added with a laugh.
“That’s funny and all, but it’s that Italian celebrity that she took a picture with...man, she’s hanging out with some big-name people right now, huh?” Gerald said after he looked at the post on Amanda's phone and whistled.
“Her name’s already out there. Don’t forget, she’s practically a celebrity in Unitale,” One of Gerald’s friends chimed in.
“True.”
“Anyway, this magic football game is quite interesting. There are even 3 different types, ground, air, and underwater. IGC’s organizers sure know what they’re doing...I won’t be surprised if a Virtual Sports league appears within the coming year.”
Back to Maria, she and Monique exited the bathroom and talked for a little while before they parted ways as Maria went to the lounge to catch some sleep while Monique’s agent came to fetch her. David, Maria’s butler, met up with her at the lounge where he was told to wait for her. He quickly walked up to her and placed a coat over her shoulders and asked, “Are you going to rest, my Lady?”
“Mhm, wake me up when the Monster Hunting event starts.”
“Yes.”
Maria plopped down on a chair and moved the coat over her chest as she slept through the next event for the lifestyle players. This event was basically a normal sports event but with a magical twist to it. However, instead of regular IRL sports, it was the game’s sports instead. The sport that's being played today was a mix between basketball and football but with magic in it. Just like Gerald said previously, there were 3 modes to this game namely, the land mode, air mode, and water mode. Each of the 3 modes had been announced before the start of the event but for now, the land mode was currently being played while the other 2 modes would come on a later day of the IGC.
Maria didn’t know too much about the details and although it did sound interesting, she was a little too tired to go watch it. There were a few other Unitale sports that the IGC committee was trying to introduce but this magic football-like game was probably the most popular one and was currently the only one that mattered because a few players in the game had already been playing it on the starting planet since Unitale’s launch.
It was a good pastime for many lifestyle players but as a player who sought enjoyment in hunting monsters and completing quests, Maria wasn’t too interested in such activities. She was already playing a game so there was no need to play a game in a game. It just seemed weird to her that people would do the same things they did in real life inside of a game.
Unitale was basically a second life granted to the people where you could become anyone you want to be and wield amazing powers that you wouldn’t normally be able to have in the real world, yet others didn’t take that chance to become something they couldn’t be in the real world and instead just did what they did in real life.
To Maria, it was such a waste of a good opportunity to do things you normally wouldn’t be able to do in the real world, like fighting monsters, learning magic, or maybe some other absurd things. Take, for instance, Maria, she had broken the human limit inside of the game and it was only possible because she did things completely out of the norm. Many of the high-ranked players in the game did similar things as her but they were only a handful compared to the vast population of players that played Unitale.
To each their own, as Maria would put it. It wasn’t like she was going to or was able to dictate how a person should play Unitale. It’s all up to the individual’s taste and priority. Not everyone was like her who was always trying to move away from normality and move towards absurdity.
People were amazed by her feat in the previous event but they were wrong if they thought that was all Maria had up her sleeve. She still had one more event to participate in today, the Boss Hunting Event, and she planned to go all out in it since she wanted to vent all of her pent-up battle lust that she couldn’t unleash anywhere for the past few days just watching the IGC.
With how large the difficulty jump of the Obstacle Course Race on the main stage compared to the test run, she had expectations that the Boss Hunting Event’s difficulty would have increased by a similar or even larger scale. Maria was sleeping right now while the crowd enjoyed the new sport that Unitale presented to the world but it was like the calm before the storm because once she stepped onto the arena again, she planned to live up to everyone’s expectations as the streamer who just loved to have a good battle.