“Oh, that’s boring. You could only manage 4?”
Maria said with a bored look on her face as she watched the gaudy guard captain or city lord struggle to resist 4 of her undead soldiers. They could kill the poor guy at any time, but Maria had specifically given her army the order to kill everything except this guy so they didn’t deal any fatal blows to him. Maria needed the person alive because she needed to extract information from him.
The 4 undead continued to corner the clown and toy with him while the others flooded everywhere else on the walls. The gates were brought down a few moments later and Maria’s shadow and undead army poured into the city, wreaking havoc on all living beings hiding in the city. No one was spared and that included the children, elderly, and women NPCs.
Maria coldly observed all of this before turning her gaze away and looking elsewhere with a gloomy look on her face, “In order to exterminate everything…even those defenseless people have to be dealt with with impunity. Tch, How tasteless...”
She clicked her tongue in distaste because this honestly wasn’t the way she operated, but unfortunately, her quest objective required her to do this.
Maria began questioning the rationality of the devs who created this diabolical questline. If this was anyone else, they’d probably be too nice to do it and, for those that were crazy in the head, they would likely enjoy all of the killings. At this point, Maria even thought that perhaps she was part of those crazies because she rationalized the slaughter by convincing herself that it was all part of her quest so she shouldn’t falter.
“Tsk, whatever, it’s just a game anyway.”
Maria stopped feeling remorseful for her decision and just strolled into the city through the broken-down gates along with her Lich, Necromancers, and Bone Fletchers following behind her. The cries of the city’s citizens rang through the air and Maria tuned it all out by focusing her attention on the chaotic battles that were happening all around her.
“Hmmm, having an army sure is convenient. They do all of the tedious things for me~”
It took around half an hour before Maria’s army completely swept through the city and killed every living being in it. Morte brought the gaudy guard captain to the city’s castle where Maria was currently occupying. He was forced to kneel in front of Maria, all battered and bruised from her undead familiars’ mistreatment from earlier.
They hadn’t injured him gravely during the battle, but they did abuse and treat him like a punching bag until he completely stopped resisting and began begging for mercy. Of course, mercy was the last thing he needed right now because the moment he was brought in front of Maria, every fiber of his being began alerting him that the beautiful young lady he was kneeling in front of was even more dangerous than the shadow and undead that abused him.
“You’re that clown on the walls earlier today. You seem to be important, so I spared your life. Now tell me, are you someone important?”
“Y-Yersh!” His face was beaten up so badly that his words were slurring.
Seeing his ugly mug, Maria clicked her tongue and cast a [Hi-Cure] that completely healed him before saying, “Start talking. Who are you and what can you tell me about this planet? If I find you useful, then maybe I’ll give you the honor of becoming my subordinate.”
The person that Maria’s minions had captured was actually the city lord of this city, which was called Meluer the Mercenary City. The city lord also doubled as the city’s guard captain because he was previously a high-ranking mercenary who was voted by the citizens to be the next city lord. He couldn’t let go of his mercenary ways, so he opted to not only be the city lord but also the city’s guard captain.
Apparently, he was supposed to be one of the strongest humans on this planet, but Maria found that pretty laughable because he had been beaten black and blue by her shadows and undead who weren’t even named or high-ranking familiars. The ones that attacked him were the lowest of the bunch and yet he could only hold his ground against 5 of them before being overwhelmed.
If Maria had heard that this person was supposed to be one of this planet’s strongest, she’d have higher expectations of him. Thankfully, she didn’t know or else her disappointment would’ve been immense. Instead, she just got a few laughs and giggles from watching this clown prattle around and dance with her minions.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“One of the strongest…Haha…hahahaha!” Maria began laughing after hearing this guy say this before she summoned her Calamity and cleaved the ground next to her while yelling, “Goddammit Death! You really did send me to a playground!”
If Maria was fighting with equal-leveled or possibly stronger NPCs and mobs, she wouldn’t be feeling so miserable after wiping out the defenseless people of the city. She wasn’t a fan of bullying the weak and to think she’d be doing exactly the thing she abhorred the most.
“Tch, great…just great!”
While she was cursing Death in her mind, Maria forgot that this was just her Second Class Advancement quest–once again, this was only just her Second Class Advancement. If she were an ordinary player, Maria would be struggling to complete this quest even if she was at level 100 because killing an entire planet all by herself? That was a pretty insurmountable task and instead of cursing at how easy it was, she’d be cursing at how hard it was.
She’d have to blame her legendary legacy class for the quest’s extreme difficulty, but with all of the upgrades she had received prior to and after reaching level 100, everything just became way too easy for her, so she shouldn’t be complaining about her immense ‘luck’.
Even at level 128, Maria was equivalent to a Global Leaderboard Player who was at level 200 or higher and it was extremely likely that she was even above them, especially with the might and power she displayed during the public broadcast of the events inside of the Realm of War back on Planet Gaia.
With her actual combat ability being at level 200, it was only natural that Maria would see this level 100 quest as an easy quest. This realization sank in after she turned quiet and thought long and hard about it.
“My Second Class Advancement should’ve been completed when I was at level 100, but since I’m so much stronger…things are turning out to be so much easier for me…”
Maria stopped cursing at Death as her face started to blush after realizing that this was her own mistake, “This shouldn’t be my fault. Doesn’t the system at least adjust the difficulty rating according to my actual combat power? It keeps on systemizing everything based on level and that’s so constraining as well as misleading! I guess even this ‘super-advanced’ game has its flaws too, huh?”
The devs that were monitoring Maria began to cough up whatever they were drinking and, for the first time since they began their Maria’s Monitoring Duty, actually wanted to see if they could screw her over by directly tampering with her quest’s difficulty and rating parameters, but unfortunately, they couldn’t do that because only the Main AI, Zeus, had the power to influence things inside of the game.
All they could do was monitor Zeus and make sure that the AI was running smoothly while also inputting some main scenarios or event updates into its database which, by its own discretion, could implement them inside of the game but anything else besides that was going to be flagged by the AI as external malicious conduct.
This kind of conduct was also against Universe Games’ company policy and those that were found guilty of misconduct would be dismissed, so the ones that were monitoring Maria only recorded her words and shook their heads in anger at her before beginning an interesting discussion right after.
“Sheesh, does she think everybody in the game is an anomaly like her? Most players would be happy if their Class Advancement Quest was easy! Some of the players have to wait a long time and grind their levels far past level 100 before being able to complete it, but here she’s just having a merry time, and yet she’s complaining?!”
“The nerve, I tell you, but seriously though, it’s quite amusing to watch her, right?”
“Well, that is true. To think that a single player could get so lucky and ‘unlucky’ all at the same time.”
“Tell me about it. If this was a normal Dark Priestess, then they’d already be a Dark Saintess or even a Dark Arbiter at this point. She’d be on the level leaderboards and people would fear her for being Death’s Agent.”
“Yeah…but isn’t this more interesting? Don’t you think Maria’s at a level that far surpasses those estimates? She’s already taken over an entire continent, became the Blood Empress and has throngs of shadow puppets, undead, and vampires at her command!”
“She’d be better off having the Blood Empress as her Main Class.”
“Now listen here, man–”
The monitoring team that was on Maria’s case began having a heated argument over their lovable but hateful little angel and the duality of these people was surely amusing. Earlier, they had been threatening to try and up her quest’s difficulty level, but now some of them were arguing on her behalf and debating with their colleagues.
Maria didn’t know about this but she felt the back of her ear itch, which caused her to frown, “Is someone talking bad about me?”
“N-No, your greatness! I wasn’t talking bad about you!”
“Hm? Oh. I almost forgot that you’re still here.”
The city lord, whose name was Calen, immediately began to tremble in fear when he heard Maria’s words and started begging on his knees. The man was so pathetic that Maria clicked her tongue in distaste when she saw him groveling.
“Oh yeah, let me confirm this again, you are one of the strongest on this planet, right?”
“Y-Yes, oh Great One!”
“I see…well, I should reward you for all of the information you gave me, so I’ll take you in as my subordinate.”
The man groveling under Maria's feet had already given her all of the information he knew about this planet and, thanks to him being the city lord of the very well-known Mercenary City that had relations with nearly every nation on the planet, Maria was able to gain a lot of information about the power distribution of this pathetic planet.
Calen could see the goodwill in Maria’s eyes but what happened to him next was beyond his expectations. A sword was driven through his chest as his hopes had been elevated. Feeling the morbid pain on his chest, those hopes quickly plummeted deep into the ground as he felt his life slipping away.
“I-I…I thought that–” Calen’s words were cut off when he saw Maria’s beautiful smile.
She opened her mouth and said, “Don’t get me wrong. I am rewarding you, just in a different way.”
“...Ugh…”
Calen died but his soul was still around, so Maria quickly released one of her powerful Death Knights and sent it to Morte’s Undead Legion before she pulled out her Necronomicon and raised Calen from the dead with his soul still intact.
“Rise, my servant.”
Calen’s corpse was engulfed in a roiling shadow that seeped into his body and reanimated him, giving him life as Maria’s eternal subordinate–one of her undead.