With Maria’s speed, she soon flew past so many cities and sped through the neutral regions, and quickly arrived at the Dark Faction’s territory. However, what greeted her when she arrived at the border nearly caused her to break down in tears.
“Aw, come on!”
A large army of NPC soldiers of the Dark Faction were waiting for her in formation along the borders of the neutral regions and the Dark Faction territory. As she was flying earlier, Maria hadn’t been paying attention to the ground so she failed to see the large movement of NPC soldiers that were moving beneath her. The neutral NPCs had also gathered their soldiers so when Maria turned around to fly back, she saw that there was already a blockade waiting for her. The blockade was still moving into their formations but at this point, it was already too late for her to move back. If she tried, the soldiers below would start firing magic spells, arrows, and bolts at her.
The same went for the army waiting in front of her. The skies were also being blocked by winged knights or flying mounted knights. Just looking at everything happening around her frustrated Maria to no end.
“Just why...What did I do to deserve this?!”
All of the NPC names were in red so this showed that they were extremely hostile to her. Maria let loose a shout and this was somehow taken as an act of aggression so the armies down below began firing a few spells and projectiles at her.
“Darn it!”
Maria immediately began evading the attacks before she shot away using her supersonic speed from the battlefield. The armies down below were extremely surprised upon seeing the way she had disappeared suddenly after a resounding bang. None of the NPCs down below would ever believe that she would just run away like that.
They expected that she would at least put up a fight before eventually going down to their sheer numbers but nothing of the sort even happened. Maria may be clueless most of the time but she wasn’t dumb. She knew that she was strong but numbers spoke for themselves. She didn’t know what levels those NPCs were but considering the level limit of Planet Eur, they were likely below level 100. She could probably massacre a few thousand of them if she wanted to but there were easily over a few hundred thousand NPCs down there, maybe even a million.
Maria wouldn’t be able to kill everyone down there without experiencing some degree of injury on herself and if all those injuries piled up together or if something unexpected happened and she was continuously hit by control skills that stacked on each other, she might just end up dying from being immobilized by those skills. That wasn’t something she was going to risk so Maria decided that it was best to retreat. If she was killed or worse yet, captured by the NPC armies, who knows what kind of in-game punishment she would have to receive.
To her, all of this was unreasonable. She didn’t understand why there was a bounty on her head, a bounty that even moved all of the NPC armies to capture her. Maria didn’t know that her act of consuming the Sin Devil’s soul was the cause of all this and that ‘sin’ she committed had been amplified a few folds now that she had absorbed a few more of those Sin Devil Souls. Those things weren’t meant to be consumed but sealed or purified instead. Maria, however, only saw them as power-ups and since she had gone through thick and thin to obtain them, they were rightfully her spoils so she could do whatever she wanted with them.
However, all actions came with consequences and the consequence of Maria’s actions was her condemnation from all the NPCs of planet Eur.
“Tsk, at this rate, I won’t be able to make it safely to Enoch!”
Enoch was located at the core areas of the Dark Faction. If she were to charge into the Dark Faction’s core territories, she might not even arrive at her destination safely let alone get out of there. She was stuck in a dilemma so the only thing she could think of right now was to seek help from her friends. Of course, she didn’t mean Lizzy or anyone from the Fallen Angels guild. They would definitely not be able to contest against the large armies that were chasing after her.
The only person Maria could think of that was powerful enough to help her and maybe still be on her side was her mentor, Archdemon of the Northern Tower, Paimon. Maria was far away from the armies that were pursuing her so she pulled out Paimon’s Magic Tome, the one that her mentor had given to her upon her ‘graduation’ and activated the [Home Teleportation] spell.
She could set up a few markers and one of them just so happened to be Paimon’s Mage Tower. There was a limited amount of markers she could place but never replaced the one she had on her mentor’s mage tower.
Of course, with her prowess as a Magus getting better and better, Maria had unlocked many additional markers for her teleportation spell so there was no longer any need for her to erase or replace any of the existing ones. Since the distance between her and Paimon’s Mage Tower was pretty far, the amount of Mana needed for the teleportation was quite a lot but it wasn’t much for Maria’s mana pool. Around 25 percent of her mana pool was used and a large portal appeared in front of her. Without any hesitation, Maria jumped through the portal and it immediately closed behind her.
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Just as she disappeared, the armies of the Dark and Neutral factions arrived. They saw the portal she conjured and the commanders all exclaimed.
“Dammit, she was a high-level Magus!”
"Find her! Immediately!”
Over at Paimon’s Tower, in the room that Maria used when she was staying there, a large turbulent portal opened up and it greatly terrified Paimon who was inside the room. He was currently in the room because he was cleaning up the tower and although he could have sent a few servants to do that, Paimon felt that today he just had to personally do it. The demon mage just didn’t expect that a massive portal would appear in the middle of the room and a red-winged angel to emerge from it. The portal caused all of his efforts in cleaning the room to be for naught as it messed everything up again.
“Hey, what the heck!” Paimon cursed out at the person who emerged from the portal.
Maria was surprised to see Paimon in the room and she immediately jumped at him and exclaimed, “Paipai!”
“...kid?”
“Paipai!”
Maria was just about to hug the kid-sized Paimon but a barrier stopped her from doing so and she was lifted up off the ground by an invisible force. Paimon had his wand out and had it pointed at Maria, “Kid, you’ve got some nerve coming back here with a bounty on your head!”
“Oh, come on. Not you too!”
Maria waved her hand and used [Dispel] on herself, stopping the [Levitation] spell that was cast on her. She landed smoothly on the ground and turned to her mentor before placing her hands on her hips and glaring at him.
“What’s the big idea?”
Paimon floated over to Maria before flicking her forehead, “I don’t know what you did to have all the churches of Eur put a bounty on your head but you seriously damaged my reputation!”
“Hey, that hurt!”
“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t capture you now that you’ve personally delivered yourself to me? The bounty on your head has quite the number.”
“Uhhh, because I’m your magically cute student?”
Paimon stared at Maria with a distasteful look on his face before saying, “...I’m going to have you locked up now. You’ve certainly become wrong in the head.”
“Oh come on, I’m just joking! You wouldn’t do me like that, right?”
Paimon just shrugged at her before smiling a little menacingly.
“B-But I’m your student!”
“I just so happened to be in need of some cash~”
“Hey, don’t be like that! I don’t even know what I did wrong! Just what did I do to deserve such a large bounty on my head?!”
Hearing her statement, Paimon was quite surprised to hear it.
“You actually don’t know what you did wrong?”
“...No? I think?”
“You think?”
“Fine, I really don’t know. Okay? The bounty was announced abruptly one day after I returned from an adventure...just what wrong could I have done then? Just existing? That’s unreasonable!” Maria said as she picked up around the room and cleaned it up a bit with a pouty look on her face.
Paimon sighed after seeing how his student was acting. She truly didn’t know what she did wrong so he spoke up and informed her, “You absorbed a devil’s soul. That’s what you did wrong.”
“...Huh? That’s it?”
Maria really couldn’t see what was wrong with that. There were many devil-race players in the current player base so this meant that if they came to Eur...they’d be public enemy number 1? That thought process was wrong and seeing the skepticism on her face, Paimon further elaborated.
“Well, if it was an ordinary devil, we wouldn’t care. However, it was a devil that was burdened with a large amount of evil Karma.”
“Okay?”
“You really don’t know the implications of your actions, do you?” Paimon said with a surprised and exasperated look on his face as he saw that she still didn’t understand.
His student was indeed a genius as she had been able to master a lot of the skills needed to become a Magus in such a short period of time back when he mentored her as her teacher and that was something he took pride in until this very day, but there were times when she was a completely clueless baboon.
Maria knew which devils Paimon was talking about but whatever evil Karma those Sin Devils had on them, it didn’t affect her in any way besides giving her an immense power upgrade and a few changes to her appearance which were inconsequential. However, Paimon was giving her a scalding look so she spoke up and tried to defend herself, though it was a bit lackadaisical.
“Hey, I only saw them as a power-up so I just ate them,” Maria replied with a pout.
“And eating them would affect your mind, soul, and disposition! Why didn’t you think it through?!”
Maria tilted her head in response to his comeback and said, “Really? Then how come I don’t feel any different?”
“Eh?”
“I mean, I feel the same as I’ve always been...other than the fact that I’ve become stronger, of course...AND! I’ve even devoured 4 of the Sin Devils’ souls! Nothing’s changed about me at all”
Maria conveniently forgot to mention the changes to her appearance but most of those devil-like changes had disappeared after Bahamut used all of the Taint she had accumulated and transformed her wings. However, when her mentor heard that she had devoured four Sin Devils…he let loose a horrifying shriek, “FOUR?!”
He began checking up on Maria and scanned her a few times with his magic. In contrast to Paimon’s exaggerated reaction, Maria calmly replied, “I ate four of them. Wanna see?”
“Y-You can show me?!”
“Jeez, stop overreacting Paipai…”
Maria showed Paimon all of the Sin Devil powers and items she acquired, starting with Greed’s chains and her Nightmare form. When Paimon saw all of this and how calmly Maria was handling the power, he was extremely shocked.
“H-How is this possible? You’ve absorbed the Devil of Envy, Greed, Lust, and Wrath but...but your personality and soul, they’re completely unaffected!”
“See? That’s why I’m puzzled, just what wrong did I do to deserve all this hate? Eating those souls didn’t affect me adversely in any way and since that’s the case, shouldn’t everyone be grateful to me instead of hating me because I’m permanently erasing these threats for them?”
“...”
Paimon knocked his forehead a few times before saying, “Alright, come with me. You have me convinced but unfortunately, you can’t convince everyone else. Before they try and talk to you, the first thing they’ll do is murder you.”
“Where are you taking me? Not to the Bounty Hunter Association, I hope...” Maria warily replied.
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll find you here sooner or later so I’ll have to send you off the planet before they do.”
“Huh? But I have business here! I can’t leave without completing it!”
“And what business could you possibly have on this planet? You coming here just basically sealed your fate! The interplanetary teleportation gate has been sealed so you can’t escape back to Gaia so it’s only a matter of time before they find you! You have to get off this planet! Now!”