Maria got out of her customized gaming capsule and stretched her body. She sighed after stretching and looked outside her window only to see that it was still around midday. It was a Saturday so she was able to play from the morning until now. It was her first time dying since the start of the game and although she shouldn’t have been logged out, her complete SP consumption penalty which was tripled by the [Aura Mastery] skill sent her out of the game after her suicide attack.
“Jeez, this is the first time I experienced a logout…” Maria said as she sat down on her bed and hugged her favorite plushy. “I hope Lizzy and the others are doing okay.”
Speaking about her friends, Maria quickly got up and rushed to the living room. When she opened the door, Maria bumped into her maid that was here to bring her lunch.
“Young Miss?”
“Oh, Stacy! Can you help bring my lunch to the living room? I’m going to go watch something there.”
“Alright, Young Miss. As it so happens, the First Young Master is also there too.”
“Big brother? That’s a surprise, I thought he’d be at the company with dad.”
Maria and her maid walked to the living room and just like her maid Stacy said, her eldest brother, Mikael, was there as well. He was currently watching the live broadcast of Unitale’s [The Great War] Main Story Quest.
“Brother, what are you doing here?” Maria asked after she went over and sat down next to her big brother.
“Mary? I thought you were in the game?” Mikael asked.
There were a few minutes of time discrepancy between the game and the live broadcast so as Mikael said this, the TV showed Maria executing her suicide attack which resulted in her logout.
“T-That’s why…” Maria embarrassedly pointed at the TV and said.
“Oh…well, that’s okay. You did fight a very powerful adversary,” Mikael said as he patted his pouting little sister on the head. “Did you eat yet?”
“I was just about to.”
The maid, Stacy, quickly began setting up a small table next to Maria and serving her the food the kitchen prepared.
“Thank you, Stacy.”
“It’s my pleasure, Young Miss.”
Maria slowly began to eat her meal before she almost choked on it when she saw what her Summon did after she was killed.
“H-Holy crap…”
“Wow, that’s your Summon, right? He’s really powerful. Oh no, did your friends and allies also get caught in that blast?”
“Ah…”
After seeing the devastation caused by her Bahamut’s [Tera Flare], Maria hoped that not all of her allies and friends had been killed by that attack. It would be quite devastating to her if the cause of their faction’s alternate Main Story Quest ended up failing because of her.
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“L-Lizzy’s still alive, that’s a relief…I’m guessing everyone else is too since they haven’t called me yet.”
Maria sighed in relief after knowing that. Her friends and a handful of her allies that were caught in that blast managed to survive because of Lilith. She was able to cast a perfectly timed [Mass Teleportation] spell which saved all of them from Bahamut’s Ultimate Attack and Ultimate Spell.
The screen changed and began showing the perspective of what was happening elsewhere outside of the main battlefield. The Goddess Faction players that hadn’t participated in the main battlefield stage were all simultaneously attacking the fortresses of the other factions and killing as many Summons and Summoners as they could. Everything was going as planned and with so many deaths on the main battlefield, the powerful elites of the 2 enemy factions couldn’t support the fortresses and players that were being attacked.
“Well, at least the plan’s working. I guess I don’t have to worry,” Maria said as she continued eating her lunch.
“Hmm, so you’re faction’s main objective wasn’t that battle?” Mikael asked.
“Yup, that battle was merely a sideshow, really.”
Mikael looked at his watch before standing up and saying, “I have to go now, Mary. Go outside and do something later, okay? The game is good and all, but you shouldn’t be too disconnected with reality, alright?”
“Yes, big brother. I understand.”
“Good. I’ll see you later,” Mikael patted Maria on the head before leaving and ruffled her hair a bit.
The fight on the main battlefield was more or less over with Bahamut annihilating over 70 percent of the forces from all 3 factions. They couldn’t continue the fight and since the 2 factions’ castles were destroyed already, they had effectively lost. The Goddess Faction’s castle was still standing but only for a few minutes as it too collapsed not long after all of the surviving players were saved from the crater created by Bahamut’s Ultimate Attack.
Maria sighed before mumbling, “I hope I don’t get chewed out tomorrow when I log back in…How was I supposed to know that dying triggered Bahamut’s Ultimate Attack and Ultimate Spell.”
After she ate, Maria went to their family’s indoor gym and began exercising a bit. It was mostly her dad and brothers that used this place but after she started playing the game, Maria became a frequent visitor of this place as well.
Her dad had even hired a trainer to help her learn how to use the equipment and create a workout routine for her which she did regularly ever since she learned how important it was for her body and mind to be in sync so that her movement in the game would be more fluid.
Maria did a lot of incredible movements inside the game but she felt that she could do better if she learned how to properly control her body in real life which could be reflected inside of the game. Her combat ability had risen by leaps and bounds ever since she started working out and properly taking self-defense classes. Real-life abilities could be brought into the game and thinking back to her fight with Hecate and Ophelia, Maria knew that she was lacking compared to her.
“That weird girl… How did she get so strong? Even before using Aura, she was already tough to deal with,” Maria thought aloud as she was exercising.
It was quite clear that Hecate and Ophelia brought their real-life abilities into the game and her fighting abilities were something Maria was quite envious of.
“Well, I can’t have everything in life so I shouldn’t feel envious. I bet she worked hard to get to the level that she’s at, but she’s still a bit weird.”
Maria couldn’t forget that her enemy’s personality would constantly change in the midst of battle which threw her off a lot while they were fighting. The sudden change in her opponent’s attack tempo caused her to reveal a lot of exploitable flaws which she was heavily punished for. She stopped exercising for a moment and began rubbing her chest, stomach, and face before pouting, “I can still feel the pain she caused when she kept on kicking and punching me with her aura-infused hits…so mean…”
Maria finished her routine 2 hours later and went to take a shower. After showering she watched for any updates on Unitale before heading out with her butler, David. It was a rare day where she wasn’t playing and idling around. All of her homework was finished and she didn’t have anything to do so she decided to just go for a walk around the city. Naturally, she had to cover her face up so that people wouldn’t recognize her.
Her rise to fame thanks to her IGC debut was both nice and quite the pain. In the past few days, people had been coming to her school just to catch a glimpse of her and some game news reporters were constantly bugging her for an interview. Making her character the exact same as her real-life self wasn’t so smart. Now, everybody knew that the celebrity Monique’s social media post of her meeting a very good cosplayer was a lie and she had instead met the real Maria during the IGC.
Thanks to that and her performance, Maria became an internet celebrity and she had fans all over the world. She even heard about there being a fan club for her though she never bothered to look too deep into it. Fame came at a cost and she didn’t like paying that cost. She just wanted to live as she normally did before but that was not going to happen.
Maria went to the park for her walk and enjoyed the tranquility of the place. Although Unitale was taking the world by storm, there were still many people who enjoyed their time outside of their house. Luckily, no one was able to recognize her and David wasn’t in his usual butler get-up so she didn’t attract any attention. From an onlooker’s perspective, they just seemed to be a pair of friends walking through the park.
“Young Miss, there’s a food stand over there, do you perhaps fancy a snack right now?” David asked.
Maria looked over and saw a row of food stands serving a variety of snacks and food. She had just finished exercising so she nodded at David’s question as she was feeling a bit hungry, “...Sure.”
“Okay, please wait here then.”
Maria found a nearby bench that was empty so she sat down and just stared up blankly into the blue sky while feeling the warm breeze that blew on her face before mumbling, “...I can’t even tell the difference anymore.”