With the IGC ending, Maria, Lizzy, and the others returned back home to their country. They continued on with their daily lives so Maria naturally returned back to the game once she returned home from school.
Speaking about the school, she and Lizzy sort of became celebrities now among their peers. Lizzy’s amazing performance of winning a few of the IGC’s events, earning her a few medals, trophies, in-game rewards, and a substantial monetary reward.
The same went with Maria who revealed herself to be the strongest player in the game right now. Her battle against Thor was widely discussed in many game forums and websites that published eSports-related articles.
The local newspaper was also a large factor as to why the two received so much attention and recognition by the people in their city since they had gone and represented their country in the international tournament before coming back home with a lot to show for. Unitale has slowly become an integral part of society that news about circulated quite quickly around the ordinary folk who didn’t even play the game.
Their school even announced their accomplishments in a morning assembly and they had been bugged with many questions, visits, and requests from their fellow students. Well, it was mostly Lizzy because no one approached Maria due to her rather cold demeanor that made her unapproachable.
Back in the game, Maria appeared in Discordia as she stretched her wings and felt liberated from all of the pesky people in real life. Even though she was unapproachable to her peers, this didn’t stop a few small reporters and other kinds of people from tabloids and magazines from approaching her when she was outside of her school.
Thankfully, David was there to pick her up and prevent these people from bothering her too much. It’s been a week since she returned and so she had been bothered by such people for an entire week now. It was truly exhausting for her since she didn’t like talking or being approached by strangers.
The same went for Lizzy who similarly had someone chauffeur her from home to school and back. She and her friends hadn’t been able to go home together or hang out after school because of the people trying to approach them.
“Anyway, I should probably start focusing on completing the second objective of my quest but those guilds are even more prepared and vigilant of my attacks now...it’s become a real hassle.”
Maria had been sabotaging the contribution quests of the guilds that were part of the Pantheon and the Celestial Order for the past week so they were now much more prepared for her. During the first few days, she had noticed that the players performing the quests had become cautious and were careful when executing their quests that she had a hard time finding the teams that were executing those quests.
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She still managed to stop them from completing their quests but after a few days, the guilds had been able to create countermeasures against her and there were times that she even failed. However, even when she failed, there was no consequence. The only downside to the failure was that she didn’t receive the small bit of reward she was promised for completing the quest.
The rewards were small so it didn’t matter too much and speaking about rewards, Maria’s rewards from the IGC were still waiting in her in-game mailbox and code exchange menu. She had completely forgotten about them again because once she came back into the game, Maria immediately went around to complete quests and hunt monsters right after she was done.
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It was just like her friend to forget all about that stuff but Lizzy, on the other hand, didn’t forget to redeem her rewards and accept the ones delivered in her in-game mailbox. As a participant of the IGC who ranked either first or second in all of the events she partook in, Lizzy amassed a lot of rewards other than just gold, materials, and the like.
For achieving second place in the PvP event, Lizzy had actually been rewarded with an Awakening Catalyst Item called [Dark Dragon Blood]. The system had generated her rewards to fit the uses for her character so none of the rewards she obtained were wasted.
She acquired Starlight Ore, a rather precious material used to forge powerful equipment or accessories, from getting first place in the Boss Raiding Event, and the skill book [Dragon’s Breath], from getting first place in the Battle Royale Event.
The final event she participated in, the Demon-Slaying event, where she once again ranked first place because Eos still hadn’t awakened during that event so she was still hailed as the strongest player in the tournament, Lizzy obtained a class change book to her surprise.
Her original class, the Berserker, was an ordinary hidden class that she chose because it synergized well with her racial skills but it wasn’t a powerful class at all, especially when compared to Eos’s hidden class, Caedes’s hidden class, or Arthur’s hidden class.
She was a few tiers below them but she made her class work to her advantage. This class change book, however, was something that she greatly needed because it granted her the Azure Dragoon class. It was the first time she heard about the class and after reading through the class’s description and details, Lizzy didn’t even hesitate for a second to class change into this new class.
The Azure Dragoon class had similarities with the Berserker class but it leaned more towards a knight-type class. However, the class’s effects complimented many of her skills as a Dragon race player.
Not only that, but once Lizzy had class changed into the Azure Dragoon class, she was immediately rewarded with another significant prize which was a dragon egg. A dragoon naturally needed a dragon and she was given one to raise from young.
There were many self-proclaimed dragon tamers and dragon riders out there but they were basically just Beast Tamers that had tamed a lesser dragon species like a drake, wyvern, land dragon, flood dragon, and others.
None of them were truly purebred dragons like the one in Lizzy’s dragon egg. The creature that would hatch out of her dragon egg was genuinely a dragon, but it remained to be seen whether the dragon was a western or eastern one.
Whether it was one or the other, Lizzy was on cloud nine when she received the egg after her class change. It didn’t matter to her because her precious baby could be the first player-owned genuine dragon in the game.
However, the class change didn’t happen immediately right as she used the class change item. Lizzy had to spend the past week completing numerous chain quests before she was able to class change into the Azure Dragoon and obtain the dragon egg.
Most importantly, she had to do it alone so she had taken a bit of time off from her responsibilities as the Guild Leader of the Fallen Angels.