Maria, Alexa, and Raiju quickly made their way back to Discordia after a while. With her directionally challenged self, Maria was still having problems finding the city even though she used the [Map]’s guiding options. All she had to do was follow the arrow but knowing her if she found something interesting moving on the ground, then she just had to go down and see it.
Their journey back which should have only been 15 minutes to half an hour had taken almost 2 hours to complete all because of the numerous detours and stops along the way. Maria’s frivolous and curious nature was something she could never get rid of, especially since she inherited those traits from her late mother. Speaking of her mother, Maria did not doubt in her mind that if she was still alive, she definitely would have loved to play this game with her daughter.
“...Too bad…”
Once they returned to Discordia, Maria and her party of 3 quickly went to the last dining place she went to when she met up with her friends the first time she arrived in the city. She was a frequent guest of Dawn Pavilion now so when she arrived a few of the NPC workers immediately asked if she wanted a VIP room since one was open. Naturally, she didn’t decline since she wanted to have a private chat with her new NPC subordinate.
The Dawn Pavilion NPCs knew about Maria’s exploits in the Colosseum Arena as she had gone undefeated in the PvP Colosseum. Word gets around pretty quickly in the NPC circle so they knew about her. Even though Maria didn’t know nor did she register for it, she was already one of Dawn Pavilion’s VIP customers.
A waitress was assigned to guide Maria and the others to their room and once they got inside, she quickly began ordering a few meal courses and extra dishes before she leaned back and unequipped all of her armor. She sighed and began pounding her shoulders once she got out of the stuffy armor. In battle, she wouldn’t feel it at all but once she wound down like this, the armor felt all stuffy and burdensome to her.
When unequipping her armor, Maria’s casual clothing, the dresses she acquired from the beauty competition she held way back when were randomly equipped in her armor’s place. This time around, it was the dress that her subordinates made that won 2nd place in the competition. Since it was tailor-made for her, it was very comfortable to wear. Seeing her big sister like this, Alexa similarly took off her armor and stored it into her [Inventory], leaving only the tunic and pair of pants she wore underneath on her body. She then turned towards Maria and asked, “Big sis, do you want me to massage you?”
“Hm? Sure.”
Maria turned her body so that her back faced Alexa and the vampire began kneading her shoulders and back.
“O-Ohhh~ that feels good~”
She had a blissful look on her face when she said this but she didn’t forget about the reason she came back here other than to have a little bit of downtime before her next outing.
“Anyway, don’t just look around and be silent. Start talking, Raiju,” Maria said to Raiju who was sitting across from her and silently looking around in wonder.
Raiju’s attention was shifted towards her master who had just spoken up. She saw her getting all comfortable and with the atmosphere changing to a rather serene one as she saw her master wait for her, Raiju relaxed a little before speaking up.
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“Okay, master...well, where do I even begin.”
“You were sealed inside of that statue...why?”
“Well...I guess we can start there…”
Maria always found the backstories of her NPC subordinates to be quite entertaining to hear ever since she heard about Ash’s tragic backstory of being betrayed by someone who he thought was his closest friend. Alexa lost her parents due to the new Vampire Lord who coincidentally was her uncle’s betrayer and Carmilla who could have been the new Vampire Lord but chose to seclude herself because the beloved she couldn’t possibly obtain had fallen, only to be reunited with him later on.
There were many others in her Queendom that shared their stories with her whenever she got a bit of downtime from performing her queenly duties and they were all quite interesting though there were some that didn’t pique her interest. Generally, those who had a higher power level tended to have a better backstory than those at a lower power level since it meant that they had experienced many things to get to where they were.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t asked Odin to tell her his story which was regrettable but unavoidable because she was so focused on her training back then. It would probably have been an epic tale but she did hear a lot about his son Thor since Odin kept on babbling on and on about him from time to time. Even though he always complained, Maria could tell that Odin was proud of Thor since other than the complaints, he always sung about the accomplishments his son made which were plenty interesting to Maria.
It was also because of those stories that Maria was able to know a bit of the copy Thor’s abilities that she fought in her Boss Hunting Event match. Anyway, she liked listening to the stories of her NPC subordinates when she had some free time since they were all very interesting and much better than the novels she reads in real life.
“Hurry up then. We don’t have all day,” Maria said as she urged Raiju to hurry up and start telling her story.
“First of all, I’m not a malevolent spirit by choice. I was once just a normal Noble-rank spirit but I was a bit playful and it resulted in my sealing inside of the Karni Amat statue.”
“Karni Amat, who is that? A Goddess?”
Raiju nodded at Maria’s question and said, “Karni Amat is the Goddess of Rats that all rodent-type creatures worship. She also doubles as a thunder deity and with me being a thunder spirit I somewhat have a close affinity with her.”
“Okay…”
Raiju began talking and as she continued to spill out her story, Maria noticed that the favorability bar next to her status window was slowly rising. It was only natural because Raiju had been sealed for so long inside of the statue. Years, centuries, or even millennia of solitude due to a mistake that angered a god caused her to be alone for so long. When she had been released, the first thing she relished was her freedom but Maria had immediately taken that away from her with the pact they formed.
It was a mutual pact of course but it didn’t mean that Raiju was happy with it. She held a little bit of resentment for Maria who had shackled her immediately after she had only been freed. Her favorability started at the lowest point possible due to this but as she continued sharing her story with Maria and complaining about the unfairness of the situation she had been put in for the past uncountable amount of years, that bar was rising.
Since Maria had taken in Raiju as her subordinate, she empathized a little with her situation. Before her sealing inside of the Statue of Karni Amat, she had been a regular, noble-rank spirit whose nature was a little mischievous and playful. Karni Amat was a goddess that reigned over lightning and rodents. Being a lightning goddess was something common since many gods had similar abilities related to lightning manipulation but her highlight wasn’t her lightning-type abilities but her rule over all rodent-type creatures.
If Maria had to put it in a way, she was like a P*kachu goddess. What was P*kachu? It was a character from a children’s TV show that Maria enjoyed watching when she was a child with her mother. It was an adorable yellow-colored mouse about the size of a cat that could use lightning to attack its opponents. So the first thing she thought of when she heard Karni Amat was the goddess of lightning and rodents was this adorable little creature.
Raiju herself was a thunder-type spirit in the shape of a mouse so she had some affinity with the goddess and one day, she was mistaken as the goddess herself. She thought it would be ‘funny’ to impersonate the Goddess for a while and that’s exactly what she did. She wasn’t too familiar with the goddess but she wasn’t on bad terms with her or anything and Raiju only wanted to have a little fun and prank the goddess.
During her harmless and fun little prank, Raiju didn’t do anything detrimental to the goddess nor her followers but all of that resulted in Karni Amat’s wrath and Raiju’s punishment was to suffer eternity sealed away in her statue so that she could permanently ‘become’ Karni Amat.