Another few in-game days passed as Maria continued to sweep through her territory and purge it of all traitors. It was the first time since she started ruling that such a thing had ever happened. Before, her citizens were grateful because they had such a kind ruler but now, everyone was fearful. The news about her going around razing towns and villages to the ground because she found traitors living in them spread everywhere throughout her territory. If a single traitor was found in a village, she would raze and kill everyone there without mercy even if they were innocent.
This set an example for everyone who thought about double-crossing her and this made all of her citizens wary. Their wariness wasn’t directed towards Maria, however, but to those around them. Since they knew that this queen of theirs disposed of entire villages and towns if a traitor was found, they needed to be careful because even the innocent were implicated. If they didn’t want to die, then they needed to be scrutinizing of their neighbors just to be sure that they weren’t spies or held any disloyalty towards their queen.
In the eyes of her people, Maria was no longer the benevolent and kind-hearted queen that she previously was. Instead, everyone gave her the new moniker of the benevolent tyrant. Maria still wished for her people to be prosperous but she didn’t tolerate disloyalty and would kill anyone who betrayed her, thus the moniker, Benevolent Tyrant. There were some villages and towns that had traitors but managed to survive her cleansing because once word got out of her actions, those towns and villages started profiling all of their residents. Anyone that was remotely suspicious and didn’t have a clear background or history was immediately labeled as a traitor and were presented to Maria once she arrived at the town or village.
Maria made sure to [Inspect] the NPCs that were rounded up before she killed the ones that were confirmed to be in league with her enemies. As for the others, she would spare them because they helped her weed out the suspicious individuals but Maria didn’t trust them entirely. She had Ash place a few agents in these towns and villages since the inhabitants of said settlements still needed to be monitored just in case they lied about the people they found to be traitors.
Maria wasn’t going to just foolishly take their word for it. She needed clear confirmation and once she’s got that, she’d leave the town or village alone. Although her actions would make new migrants think twice about moving to her lands, at the very least, she showed that she wasn’t someone to be taken lightly anymore. Her methods were a bit extreme but compared to the other vampire nobles, hers was actually still pretty lenient.
In the other vampire lands, whole tribes and species could be eliminated or turned into blood slaves at the whim of the Vampire Nobles. Whereas for Maria, she had only taken such extreme measures since she had to purge all of the traitors in her lands. Her actions had a reason and meaning behind them but in the other lands, such cruelty was committed just because the vampire nobles wanted to for entertainment.
Even if the migrants had to think twice about moving to her lands, it was still much better than staying wherever they were before. Of course, the new immigrants had to be profiled to make sure that they were clean. As discussed before in the meeting prior to Maria’s journey to cleanse her lands, the new policy would be able to weed out any spies before they could infiltrate her lands.
Maria’s cleansing of her lands ended after a few more in-game days. In reality, a week had passed since then and the first group of players that finally exited the Void Sea Realm appeared. She was currently having lunch while watching TV with her brothers when Gerald switched to the gaming news channel that was showcasing the new summoning ability that the players that had exited from the Void Sea Realm were able to do.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Oh, so that’s what that place was for! Hey, Mary, does the Goddess Gaia also let us go into that place?”
“Continue doing the chain quest and officially join her faction then you’ll find out.”
Maria had informed her brother and her best friends about Gaia opening recruitment slots for players which was still a tight-kept secret for now. Gerald, Lizzy, and their guilds were still part of the Celestial Order so if they took the quest to join Gaia’s Faction, they’d be abandoning the Main Questline for the Celestial Order and all of their current rewards and benefits. There still wasn’t much Gaia could offer but immediate entry into the Void Sea Realm was one of those few benefits.
This was a pretty enticing offer for the new players that had just arrived on Gaia but it wasn’t too tempting for those players that had gone to Gaia on the first or second wave since their questline would have already allowed them to enter the Void Sea Realm.
Gerald, however, was quick to jump ship considering that his guild wasn’t too big and a decision could be made very quickly after everyone voted on it. His guild members had decided to jump ship because there wasn’t much they could gain from staying in the Celestial Order. All of the bigger quests and more rewarding chain quests had been snatched up by all the bigger guilds.
It wasn’t as if Gerald’s guild was tiny or anything, they had a few thousand players but compared to the guilds that had tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, theirs was indeed considered tiny. Lizzy’s guild, the Fallen Angels, needed some time to make their decision because not everyone on their executive board was too keen on the faction change. The benefits to be had on Gaia’s faction still wasn’t clear and from the looks of things, her faction didn’t seem as powerful as the other two factions. Sure, it was a hidden faction that had just opened up to the players, but with the faction being so obscure and unclear, her guilds’ executives had split decisions on what they should do.
Maria did recommend it to them and everyone knew how that powerful girl was best friends with their guild master so her words could be taken for granted as she wouldn’t lie to her, but the newer executives that had just come into the game didn’t care about that relationship. What they cared about were the profits. If it was good to move, then they would’ve agreed on jumping ship but after some extensive research into Gaia’s faction, making that decision this late into the game’s Main Storyline wasn’t good at all.
They’d be losing out a lot since they’d have to start fresh again with the new faction while others would be ahead of them and the gap between the guilds would only grow bigger if they couldn’t obtain a significant reward for joining Gaia’s faction.
Lizzy and her friends could no longer make such decisions arbitrarily because now, they had to think about the hundreds of thousands of players that were in the guild and not only themselves. If they could make the decision, Lizzy and the others would’ve jumped ship right as Maria told them about it. If she was on Gaia’s faction, then the rewards were bound to be great since Maria wouldn’t join a random faction just for the fun of it. There must be some kind of hidden reward or benefit to be had since she was on the goddess’s team.
Also, this was the goddess of the planet they were on. Sure, the Pantheon’s gods and the Celestial Order’s Astrals were likely on a similar level of existence as Gaia, but they were intruders while she was the patron goddess of the planet. In many walks of fiction, literature, and film-making, there was never an instance where the ‘invaders’ would be the ones to come out on top at the end. It was always the natives that would win whatever war that was being waged on their planet.
Anyway, for now, Lizzy’s guild couldn’t jump ship just yet but Maria advised that she should and do it quickly before the war started and that option was no longer available. Maria only warned that by the time the next Main Storyline quest started and her friends still weren’t part of Gaia’s faction, they might meet each other on the battlefield but not as allies, but as enemies. Lizzy didn’t want that but there were a few executives in her guild that thought Maria was only boasting and full of herself. What could one player do? That’s what they all thought.
A few of the executives who had been with Lizzy for the longest knew exactly what Maria could do. She was a solo player but if their guild’s elites were to ever run into her, they’d have to run the other way because Maria could decimate all of them in an instant. The only player that could rival her was likely their guild master but even this was uncertain since Maria and Lizzy had never fought each other before. However, from how Maria carried herself in the recent battles in the IGC, the fear of their guild master being one-shotted from full to 0 HP in an instant weighed on their minds.
Her [Shin-Zantetsuken] was a skill that was still feared by all of the players in the game and although the impact from her skill had already settled down, it was still a topic of discussion in the game’s forums and some players were looking for ways to learn the skill or even replicate it.