The Guilds of the Celestial Order and Pantheon were all meeting together to deal with the Black Shadow threat that had been sabotaging all of the Main Scenario-type quests that their guilds were carrying out. Maria had only sabotaged a few quests but her presence had become a threat to everyone because of the factions' contribution point system.
For all of the guilds that had joined either the Celestial Order or the Pantheon, they would receive daily quests that rewarded them with contribution points which would determine their standings in their respective factions and these quests were the only viable source of a steady income of contribution points. The contribution points could be used to purchase specific guild buffs and rare items. Not only that but buying property within Discordia City or any land within Gaia needed these contribution points instead of just normal gold.
Of course, the guilds could donate gold to their respective factions but there was a daily limit and the amount of contribution points received paled in comparison to the amount awarded from the daily contribution quests. These contribution quests were very important not only due to the contribution points they rewarded but also because they could only be completed once a day and failing the quests would result in the deduction of a few contribution points and retaking a failed quest was impossible.
Once Maria began sabotaging the progressions of these quests, it was immediately brought to the attention of the guilds’ upper echelons. They thought it was only a one-time thing so they hadn’t paid too much attention to it at first but after Maria continuously sabotaged the quests for a few days, dealing with her became a top priority. There weren’t many ways for the guilds to earn or obtain faction contribution points so her interference directly attacked all of these guilds’ interests. The only guilds that Maria didn’t attack were her brother and friends’ guilds and adventurer teams but no one noticed this because they thought the attacks were random and the guilds that weren't attacked were just lucky
With the IGC’s restrictions in place, the guilds weren’t able to complete any of the guild daily quests until the IGC was over but they were given compensation in the form of daily passes that would allow them to take a few daily quests all at once at the expense of one of these passes. Since no one was taking any of the Main Scenario quests, the attacks had ceased but the problem would soon arise once the IGC was over. The guilds had convened to discuss how to deal with the Black Shadow, a.k.a. Maria, because they didn’t want their daily passes to go to waste once they could use them.
The attacks never happened simultaneously as the 'monster' couldn’t be in more than one place at one time but the Black Shadow always targeted those who had higher ranked quests, basically those guilds who were ranked within the top 10 of their respective factions in terms of contribution points. However, it didn’t mean that Maria would only target those within the top 10 as she would attack anyone as long as they were quest targets.
When Maria received her quests, she’d receive intel on those who were carrying out the quests from NPCs in the areas and she’d immediately move and attack. It was just a coincidence that she happened to attack those within the top 10.
Another important thing that had to be mentioned was that the faction contribution points were also needed for a guild to gain access to the Void Sea Realm and the amount was quite steep but with Maria constantly getting in their way, they wouldn’t be able to enter the Void Sea any time soon.
******
While the guilds were gathered together and planning all sorts of methods to kill or at least pin down Maria and prevent her from sabotaging their quests, the person in question was training even harder than ever before as her recent loss had become a large motivation for her.
“Tsk, these small fries are only as good as punching bags...I need a real opponent if I want to improve my technique!” Maria mumbled in dissatisfaction after she impaled and decapitated a few Arcane Bandits all at once.
Compared to her fight with Thor, these mindless monsters just kept rushing at her. Their methods were sometimes straight forward and sometimes tricky but they were incomparable to Thor’s fighting style.
“Agh, the way Thor fought is exactly like how I fight! I need a mimic-type monster or something but where in the world can I find one of those?”
Maria cleared the area of monsters with her Odin’s Swordsmanship and flew away. Once she arrived in the air, she began flying in a random direction while opening up the forums to see if she could find any mimic-type monsters on Gaia. She didn’t know if such monsters actually existed in the game yet but most games would have those kinds of mimicry monsters that were usually the most troublesome monsters to deal with because they would copy their opponents or some other creature to even out the playing field.
She typed in the keyword but unfortunately, all she found were irrelevant threads that didn’t have the information that she wanted. She was a bit disappointed because without that kind of monster, she wouldn’t be able to ‘fight’ herself. She cleared the search and was about to exit the forum page but a thread at the top of the page quickly caught her attention. She opened it and found that the thread was talking about some kind of dungeon that was discovered just recently.
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“It’s bugged?”
The dungeon supposedly had a visual bug because when a player entered it, their vision would immediately go black and using any sort of light source wasn’t possible to illuminate the dungeon. Even players with the [Night Vision] or [Dark Vision] skill were no exception to this as their visions would go black. Thanks to this, the dungeon which was actually called the Dungeon of the Blind, to everyone’s chagrin, had been dubbed the dungeon of bugs because if going blind wasn’t enough, the monsters that attacked the players inside of the dungeon actually sounded like bugs.
When the monsters approached to attack the players, they would make a skittering sound reminiscent to the sound created by the movement of some bug monsters within the game. The blindness only amplified the terror as the monsters which were presumed to be bugs would push a player down and start biting at their bodies, particularly their face.
“...Blindness...It’ll be a great challenge fighting while blind. It’ll give me a chance to improve my senses and in turn, my swordsmanship!”
Maria’s eyes brightened when she thought of this so she immediately scrolled up to find the location of the dungeon and downloaded it before synchronizing her map with it.
“Thankfully, the navigation function of the map became much better after a few recent updates. Now, I won’t get lost if I just follow the arrows!”
Once the marker was in place, Maria immediately followed the arrow that pointed her in the direction of the Dungeon. She hummed happily on her way to the dungeon but after some time flying, she noticed that she wasn’t getting there when she should have already arrived by now, especially with her flying speed.
“What the heck?”
She quickly checked her map and noticed that the indicator on her map marked that she was right on top of it so she quickly landed...only to find herself in the middle of nowhere next to a mountain. The dungeon was bugged but it was popular because of the bug. A complaint had already been filed by the players and the devs were looking into the bug at the moment but were still unable to find any problems with it.
Since it was popular, players should be swarming the dungeon entrance try and have a taste of the bugged dungeon for themselves but she couldn’t find anyone within the vicinity.
“It should be here...right?”
Maria looked around for a moment but couldn’t find any player within the area let alone the dungeon’s entrance. She flew into the air and looked around but couldn’t find anything. Even when the map had been updated and the navigation function had been improved, Maria still somehow managed to get lost, which was actually quite an amazing feat to accomplish.
“Ugh, seriously?! How do I still manage to get lost even with the update?! It’s useless! Useless I tell you!”
Maria stomped the ground in frustration but what she didn’t know was that the marker was pointing to an area that was underground. It wasn’t above ground nor was it on ground level. She missed this small detail because she forgot about the 3D aspect of the map. If she had activated that, she’d soon see that she was right above the dungeon entrance while the entrance to the underground level was actually only a few tens of meters away from her present location.
“Well...what now…?”
Maria began walking around the area and hunted down the monsters nearby. Whether it was due to her luck or not, she managed to find the underground entrance that was nearby and walked in out of curiosity. She soon found the underground space that was turned into some kind of plaza as many players were gathered around and either talking about the dungeon, selling items, and recruiting a team for a test run of the bugged dungeon.
Her appearance in the makeshift plaza was quite noticeable since she was quite unique. Maria checked her map and noticed that the marker of the bugged dungeon’s entrance was right where she was and it finally clicked in her mind.
“Ohh! The dungeon entrance was underground!”
Maria took a mental note of that before dismissing the system windows and quickly flew to the dungeon entrance. A few people had just mustered their courage to go and speak with her but were a little too late when they saw her move to the dungeon entrance.
“Hey, wait!”
“Oh no!”
Maria was already fixated on entering the dungeon so she didn’t hear anyone trying to stop her. Honestly, it was pretty stupid of them to think that she’d be helpless inside of the bugged dungeon. They thought that because she was a girl, she’d be helpless. If Maria knew about their motives and how they looked down on her like that, she’d be pissed and immediately kill them.
Also, no one should bar a queen’s way and if a player did, even with good intentions in mind, Maria would cut them down. Her nature inside of the game was a bit unbridled but it wasn’t like that was a bad thing per se. Once she entered the dungeon, Maria was surprised that the visual bug was actually there. Her vision was impaired even with her racial skills, [Dark Vision] and [Night Vision].
“Oh! This is surprising...I’m sure that my eyes are open but I can’t see anything!”
She looked through her [Log] but there wasn’t any message that indicated the cause of the blindness. Maria didn’t have time to think, however, because she soon heard the skittering sound that was making its way closer to her. She sensed danger approaching and reflexively pulled out her two weapons, holding them aloft and at the ready. With her battle sense which was honed quite sharply thanks to Odin’s help, she immediately dodged whatever was trying to attack her and swung her Calamity down on her previous spot.
“KIIIIEEEEKKK!!!”
Her attack connected and a loud shriek was raised. Maria backed off as she shook her head in pain.
“Ugh, that was a loud shriek…” Maria mumbled. “Well, two can play at that game.”
Maria quickly activated her [Scream of Pain] and blasted whatever tried to attack her with her skill’s sound waves. It was a mistake though because the space she was in amplified the sound waves and made her skill much more powerful and loud. It didn’t hurt her but it did destroy her eardrums and caused her to fall into an [Injured], [Impaired], and [Imbalanced] state.
“C-Crap...That was a mistake…”
Even though she was afflicted with a few physical status problems, Maria quickly dodged to the side when she felt something swinging down at her and counterattacked by using [Calamity Cleave]. The warmth in her hand told her that her Calamity-Z had ignited so there was no problem with the skill’s execution but the fire that should have lit the cave didn’t light anything up at all.
“Hm, so nothing really can light this place up, huh?”
Maria quickly swung her weapon in a large arc and sent a flaming sword aura in front of her which blasted away the monsters that were trying to attack her. Hearing the shrieks that were raised assured Maria that her skill had properly connected with the monsters.
“Hmph, this is a good place to train. Let’s see if I can clear this dungeon while I’m at it.”