Maria’s words were tinged with bloodlust and it caused Yun Chi to freeze up, almost in fear. Maria’s in-game personality was oozing out of her right now and she quickly realized this after seeing the poor MC act up like that.
“Oh! I'm sorry!”
Maria touched her face and noticed that her mask wasn’t on. She had been so angry earlier that she had forgotten all about it.
“Ah, I-I’m sorry about that…” Maria said as she slightly bowed her head.
“Eh? No, please don’t mind it! Anyone would be upset after losing a battle! I completely understand where you’re coming from since I frequently lose battles in the Colosseum Arena inside the game!” Yun Chi hurriedly explained.
“...”
Maria was silent but Yun Chi continued to try to uplift the mood by following it up and commenting on how she really looked in real life.
“Even I get frustrated! Hahaha, anyway, it’s quite surprising to see how you really look! It’s like the character Maria from the game came out to the real world! Or should I say that the real-world Maria was the one who entered the game, right?”
Since it had already come to this, Maria just let it be and stopped trying to make an effort in hiding her face since it was already exposed.
“...I wasn’t going to show it because I, unfortunately, used my real face when creating my character…”
“Haha! Many people always thought that you enhanced your beauty or something using the game’s options and you were hiding your face because of that! We never imagined that the real person would look so much more beautiful!”
“Eheheh...th-thank you…”
Maria replied with a blush. Many people began to swoon when they saw her like this, especially her stream’s viewers who only saw her apathetic, cold, and serious side when inside the game. The crowd had been cheering since she had finished the match and despite the somewhat lackluster ending, they respected her sportsmanship though she hadn’t intended for that to happen. Maria was only trying to preserve her own dignity by not stooping so low as to gang up on an enemy when she was on the verge of losing. It didn’t sit right with her and since she wasn’t going to lose anything when admitting defeat, she didn’t hesitate to do so.
However, if this was inside of the game, Maria would have used everything in her arsenal to win, even if it meant having to use her subordinates. The feeling of dying...that wasn’t something Maria wanted to feel again. Also, even if she did admit her loss this time, Maria remembered that she was still pulling her punches as she hadn’t even gone into Nightmare mode since she needed to preserve that technique. There was also the fact that she hadn’t summoned her Primal, Bahamut, to help her in battle, but then again, using this skill would still breach her principles of properly having a one-on-one match with Thor, so she wouldn't have summoned it anyway.
Maria hadn’t entirely gone for broke earlier even though she had to use her [Shin-Zantetsuken] on Thor. This little bit of consolation lifted Maria’s mood a bit so she stomached being on the stage for a while longer instead of just storming off in anger as she had originally intended. Since her anger had lessened a little, Maria waited until it was the proper time for her to get off of the stage and quickly met with David who was waiting for her with a new face cover.
Everyone finally realized that this man who had been following after Maria wherever she went was truly her butler and not just some kind of errand man. Now that she laid herself bare and showed her face, everyone could see that Maria truly came from a good upbringing since she moved and acted with poise and grace...except during that previous episode where she stepped out of the game booth and nearly stormed off the stage in a fit of anger.
All of the participants present could tell that despite this only being a fun event, Maria was taking it extremely seriously, especially since she had displayed a bunch of her unique and powerful skills in her battle against Thor and nearly killed the overpowered monster. To them, just nearly defeating the monster which was designed to be her antithesis and was supposedly un-killable was already an amazing feat in and of itself. Not only that, but she had also established a world record of most damage dealt using a single skill on a boss monster.
Over 2 million damage in an instant, it wasn’t a number anyone would be forgetting anytime soon, especially since it appeared in an event that would be remembered for ages. David gave Maria something cold to drink to calm her down before he leaned closer and whispered something to her. Maria glanced at David before nodding. Since the Boss Hunting Event was the last event of the day, the closing ceremony where the committee would be handing out the medals and rewards for the participants was soon going to start.
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He suggested that Maria return early today while he would go in her stead to receive the rewards which she readily agreed to. Maria wanted to go punch something right now and what better to do it than in Virtual Reality. David led her out of the stadium after contacting his first young master, Mikael, who had agreed to take his little sister back to the hotel. Maria met up with her older brother outside of the stadium who was already waiting for her in a car. Before she entered the car, Mikael walked over to her and gave her a comforting pat on the head before hugging her.
“Is my little sister okay? I’m guessing that was your first loss since playing the game?”
“...I’m fine. I can’t always win so I should get used to this feeling…”
“Haha, but from your expression, you were quite furious back on the stage.”
“Gee, you think? Stop stating the obvious, Mika...you’re being annoying...”
“Oh, is my little sister lashing out at me now?”
“Ugh...just take me back already…”
“Yes, my Queen.”
“Kuhk...stop it already!!!” Maria yelled with a blush on her face as she began to lightly punch her brother’s chest.
The way her brother said it, he was obviously trying to imitate the way Ash did it. She was used to her subordinates calling her as such but not anyone in the real world. It was so embarrassing to be addressed that way in real life but in the game, she had gotten used to it that it became a natural thing for her.
“Anyway, let’s head back so you can cool your head off. Are you planning to head into the game?”
“With what? I didn’t bring my headgear and it’s not like the hotel will provide us one…”
“You didn’t pack such an important thing?”
“I...I didn’t think I’d need to…”
Mikael sighed before saying, “Well, you’re in luck since David had gone out of his way to do it for you. You should thank him later!”
“Huh? Really? He did?!” Maria asked with light shining in her eyes.
“Yup. Go cool your head off in the game once we get back to the hotel.”
While Maria and Mikael left, the award ceremony was currently ongoing on the stage, and in Maria’s stead, David was there to receive her awards. She won an award for being the first to complete the Obstacle Course Race with a record time.
Surprisingly, the committee gave Maria the winning prize for the Monster Hunting Event despite her loss. They said that it was because the event was designed to be unbeatable for her but even with the difficulty amped so high like that, Maria had nearly killed her monster which was enough for the committee to recognize that she had won that battle instead of losing it, despite what the outcome showed.
The IGC committee openly admitted that the hell-mode settings when Maria stepped up onto the stage had been customized to meet her 'demands' of wanting a proper challenge. The devs were being a little petty here because of the words she spouted during the preparation period just before the IGC started. They even recorded her response on that day and displayed it for everyone to see, so that no one would blame them for any biases and only did it because Maria demanded them to do it.
More details about the boss monster was released and it turned out that the devs had purposefully regeared Thor to be somewhat like a mirror image of Maria. Not only was his battle AI developed based off of her, but all of his skills were more or less copies of Maria's skills with a select few being original skills taken from the actual Thor within the game.
Maria had already left the venue when this was announced, so she wouldn't have known that Thor also possessed the same immortality skill like the one she possessed, [God Save the Queen], which was the reason why it was able to survive her final attack. Not only that, but it also had a similar transformation skill like her [Nightmare] skill which was called [Thunder God Form] and the only reason why it didn't use the skill was because Maria herself never used her skill. This boss monster really was a monster tailored to defeat Maria though in the end, it almost failed.
Since the news was out about this, everyone felt nothing wrong with that last-minute change since Maria would have won anyway if she hadn’t forfeited the match and just attacked Thor with her subordinates. Of course, Thor could've also done this. He could've summoned his own subordinates onto the field, but it didn't come to this because Maria admitted defeat and dismissed Ash and the others. If she had stubbornly decided to continue fighting, the battle's development would've turned into a war right then and there, which would've been an unexpected turn of events for everyone present.
On top of getting the winning reward, Maria also received a record-breaking award for the most damage dealt in a single instance to a boss monster by a single individual. The real-life rewards were medals and a trophy or plaque but there was a serial number engraved on each of the rewards which could be inputted inside of the game to redeem some very generous in-game rewards.
The streamers that participated in the events were looking forward to seeing what these in-game rewards were but they were a mystery. However, the event’s staff did hint that the rewards would be generated by an AI to suit what the players needed. Naturally, the quality of the in-game rewards would drastically increase based on the placement they achieved during the event. It was already expected that Maria would likely receive some very rare rewards but the person in question wasn’t on the stage but her butler instead.
David gave the committee the excuse that she had returned early today to start grinding and honing her skills so that the next time she faced Thor, she wouldn’t lose again. It was a somewhat understandable excuse that didn’t put her in a situation where she seemed arrogant for not attending the closing ceremony which was probably not good for her image. The players admired her zeal, especially since she was very likely in the top rankings of the game in terms of combat power despite her level being low. The rankers watching didn’t feel at all confident in facing her in a battle since Maria was equipped with a one-hit kill technique.
If she landed that skill on them, they’d instantly be killed. Not even the strongest tank in the game with his vast HP pool was confident he’d be able to tank Maria’s skill even after he had thoroughly buffed himself. 2 million damage...and it was done to a boss monster whose stats had been amped thanks to a skill. That amount of damage would likely be amplified by tenfold or more if executed on a player.
Nobody could wrap their head around it even though they had just witnessed Maria using the skill. Just how could one player obtain such a skill? What's more, this player was obviously not even a swordswoman, and yet she obtained a skill befitting of a Sword Saint. People on Unitale’s forums had already begun calling Maria the Sword Saintess. Comparing her with the likes of the game’s strongest Swordsman, a player named El Cid, who was currently the strongest Swordsman class player in the game.
This person was a true practitioner of the sword as he was a swordmaster in the real world. Comparing their pure skill, many still believed that Cid was better at the sword but those comparing couldn’t help remembering Maria’s exquisite sword dance when she executed her one-shot ultimate technique. No one knew what the skill was called so they just called it Maria’s Ultimate skill. They weren’t wrong that it was Maria’s ultimate skill as it was currently the strongest skill she had in her arsenal if it was just in terms of pure damage output.
The people in question though weren’t commenting on the thread. El Cid was a known hidden ranker and was always immersed in hunting and honing his sword skills in the game so he never paid any attention to such discussions.
Maria was the same and right now, she had just arrived back at her hotel room and with her brother’s help, finished setting up her VR Headgear and dived right into the game after eating a meal with Mikael down at the hotel’s restaurant.