Maria’s brilliant idea was to record the undead apocalypse that she was going to bring to the planet, but instead of being part of the recording as the apocalypse’s harbinger, she wanted to regulate herself as a spectator and have her dark army at the center. To make the biggest impact, Maria was going to take recordings from both her army’s perspective and the victims that would fall to them.
Unlike in a movie where everything was acted out, the NPC’s reactions to the undead apocalypse would be extremely genuine and Maria wanted to capture that. From a certain perspective, it was like she was playing god, but that wasn’t it at all. The planet’s fate had already been sealed the moment she arrived on it and had to purge it from all life, so instead of just doing a plain old massacre, Maria wanted to have a little fun and add a nice flair to it.
For the next few in-game days, Maria didn’t go anywhere and stayed in the former Mercenary City of Melu’er. She had her minions rebuild and fortify the city until it was a proper stronghold and upgraded the city’s infrastructure a bit.
She couldn’t do much though, because she didn’t have any proper workers, but in the span of a few days, thanks to the help of her vast army of shadows and undead, the city had become a fortified undead stronghold.
Instead of Mercenary City Melu’er, it was now called Dark Citadel Melu’er. This was the new name the system had designated for the city after news about the Mercenary City’s fall to a massive group of shadows and undead had spread across the continent.
Now, everyone knows about Maria and her dark army. She, unfortunately, couldn’t slay all of the citizens of the former Mercenary City as a few of them had managed to escape and spread the word of the city’s demise. As for all of the city’s former residents that were killed by her, they were raised by Maria and her two Named Undead Familiars as either shadow puppets, skeletons, or zombies.
Naturally, they couldn’t retain all of the units in their armies after raising them, but the excess undead that became mobs were intentionally left to roam about the city because their presence alone was pretty useful. They could be used as cannon fodder and extra mobs in the event that their enemies try to attack them. Just being there would make breaching into the city an arduous and dangerous task.
It was a shame that Calen and Morte couldn’t give the mobs any specific orders to better coordinate their attacks, but they could still control these mobs to some extent since they were higher-ranking undead. The mobs in the game did have a strict pecking order and Maria was going to take advantage of it to complete her quest objective and have fun while she was on this planet.
“Okay, since the preparations here are done, I’ll be leaving now. Morte, Calen, you two better play nice, you hear me?” Maria said as she warned her two undead familiars who still seemed to not want to play nice with each other. She then turned towards the Lich she created and said to it, “Lich, you keep an eye on them and report to me if they try to attack each other. I’ll come back and properly punish them.”
“Yessss, Maaasssteeerrr…” the Lich said in a drawn-out ghostly voice.
Calen and the Lich were the only ones in her army of undead that could properly talk. The Lich used magic to project its voice while Calen was able to form proper words with his mouth, though after turning into a zombie, he’s been mostly quiet now.
After giving them the order to start expanding their undead minions and telling the Black Orc to assist them along with the other shadow puppets, Maria leaves the city to look for the second victim of her undead apocalypse.
Thanks to the map she found inside of Melu’er City, her previously empty World Map of the Planet now had all of its areas filled–mostly all of its areas. Conveniently enough, this planet only has 1 continent, so exterminating every living soul on it wouldn’t be too hard, since they could all be found on one landmass.
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Maria began heading towards the city that was nearest to Melu’er City. Thanks to her directionally-challenged self, it took a while before Maria finally found the city. If she knew where to go, Maria would’ve only spent an hour at most getting to the city on horseback. Instead, she spent a lot of time getting lost, so ultimately, it took her nearly half a day to arrive.
The city she was aiming for was called Dor’ian City and it was supposedly a pretty important city of the Lycer Kingdom–a kingdom that Calen described as being very corrupt and debaucherous because of the King and nobles who governed it.
Since it was supposedly a depraved Kingdom, Maria thought that it was fitting for them to experience the apocalypse first. She entered the city with the Fake ID pass that Calen had forged for her. Thankfully, this city had been receiving refugees from Melu’er, so the guards didn’t give Maria another look other than the pitiful one they gave her after they saw her identity card.
Maria was wearing a large cloak that covered her up completely and it was a bit tattered from her journey to find Dor’ian, so upon seeing the rather rough condition she was in, the guard that was inspecting her felt a little bit of pity and informed her of the refugee camps’ whereabouts after handing her back her ID card.
“The refugee camp for Melu’er survivors is located near the western wall. Just follow the smoke that’s rising into the air. Head there to get your rations…” Maria silently nodded and walked away, but from behind her, she heard the guard mumble with pity, “Poor kid.”
If someone could peek underneath her cloak, they’d be able to see that Maria had a broad smirk on her face. The moment she arrived in the city and was queuing to enter, she had her in-game video recorder rolling.
Maria intentionally wasn’t going to show her face in the video and only be something like an observer or a passerby that was just going to be watching and passively intervening in the events that would unfold in the future. She was posing as a Melu’er survivor and the reaction she got earlier caused her to smile because the genuine pity that the guard showed for her was extremely good. It was perfect for her video.
Now she definitely needed to go visit the camp that the guard was talking about. She followed the guard’s advice and just went towards the area that had a lot of smoke rising into the sky and quickly found…the industrial district.
“Eh?”
Even though the instructions were simple, follow the smoke that was in the west, Maria went east and followed the smoke there and found the city’s industrial area which was off-limits to ordinary people. After she asked around, Maria was guided in the opposite direction and found the camps that she was looking for.
“I…better cut that out…”
She was blushing underneath her cloak because of how dumb that part of the video would look if people saw the video’s ‘Main Character’ get lost before the plot even started. Also, she had to edit that out because people watching it would immediately know that it was her. Only Maria would be dumb enough to mistake simple directions and this was something all of her regular channel viewers knew about her.
Maria needed to make this look like a movie, so obviously, she couldn’t have that stupid blunder be there at the start. After arriving at the refugee camp, Maria made sure to get some good footage of the refugees’ suffering. They were only NPCs, but Maria felt a bit sorry for them even though she was the cause of their suffering.
“Oh no…”
Maria steeled her heart and began recording everything she saw in the camp. After a while, she arrived at what was probably the most devastating part of the camp–the area where the injured and sick people were housed and being taken care of. The sight was truly heartbreaking but Maria saw something in the injured and sick NPCs’ status window that caused her eyes to sparkle in excitement.
Name: Tom - Melu’er City Survivor Level: 10
HP: 104/568
MP: 100/100
SP: 10/78
Status: [Disease], [Zombification] Note*: When this unit perishes, there is a high chance the corpse will be reanimated into a zombie after a few hours
Name: Sally - Melu’er Survivor Level: 8
HP: 36/359
MP: 80/80
SP: 3/65
Status: [Disease], [Zombification] Note*: When this unit perishes, there is a high chance the corpse will be reanimated into a zombie after a few hours
‘Ohh, things are going to get interesting~’
“I’m done here, so I should leave now. I don’t want to get caught up in the mess that’s soon to come.”
Maria understood that if she lingered around in the camp, her actions would become restricted and her identity could be found out once the first of the NPCs turned into zombies. This wasn’t a dilemma for her because she still had her original plan to follow.
“It’s about time I went and disguised myself. After all, I have to play as the helpless ‘main character’ of this story.”