In order to disguise herself, Maria actually went and cut her hair short so that she looked more like a boy, minus the obviously feminine-looking face. She also dyed her hair red so hopefully, her viewers wouldn’t be able to recognize her.
For good measure, Maria bought a suit of armor for herself from one of the blacksmith shops in the city so that she’d look exactly like a local because all of the spare items in her inventory were a little too unique and they couldn’t be used as a disguise.
She also bought a helmet that could cover her entire face as insurance so none of the people that would be watching her video could get any clues about who the mysterious MC of her apocalypse video series was. They would only know the MC as the persona she created and presented to them.
It was a helmet with an adjustable visor, but Maria requested the blacksmith that she bought it from to weld the visor in place so that she wouldn’t be able to lift it. She didn’t want to accidentally push it up and inadvertently reveal her face. The request was weird but since Maria had the gold, the blacksmith didn’t inquire about it any further and just completed her simple request.
Once her armor set was complete, Maria bought a sword and a kite shield. She obviously couldn’t use her usual fighting techniques so she needed to improvise. The sword and shield were something she always wanted to try using because, if she used them properly, she could even employ a bit of her dual-wielding techniques with them.
“Alright, my disguise is set, now let’s get the show on the road!”
Maria quickly sent a thought transmission to her minions to get ready to attack Dor’ian City in a few days. She wanted to align the timing of the attack with the zombification of the people in the refugee camp.
She didn’t return to the refugee camp but stayed somewhere in the outskirts as she waited for the day to arrive. While she was waiting, Maria wasn’t idle. She moved around the city and filmed the reactions of the citizens about the recent events that occurred in Melu’er.
Maria was able to capture the worry of the gossiping citizens and she even snuck into the buildings of the city’s officials and filmed their take on the matter. She was able to get a lot of good footage of what the NPCs were going to do and she even learned about their plans to fortify the city and place everyone on high alert while also sending out a scout team to see what was happening in Melu’er.
The city’s officials had already sent out a scouting team before, but the team had been annihilated the moment they got too close to Melu’er because Maria was still there and she wanted to keep anything about the city a complete secret until her preparations were finished.
Now that they were finished, Maria decided that this time’s scouting team would have a different development route because she wanted to advance her story’s plot, so when the team departed, Maria sneakily chased after them and purposefully got herself caught.
“What are you doing here, kid?” The captain asked after his people brought Maria to him after they had captured her and bound her with rope.
“I want…revenge,” Maria resolutely answered. She was now in character, so she was going to act the part of a tragic teenager that had lost his family in the Melu'er undead invasion.
They had removed her helmet but Maria didn’t stop recording and, instead of recording it from a third-person point of view, she recorded it from her perspective. She had changed her voice so that she could sound more like a boy and, thankfully, she was successful after much practice. Seeing the fierce look in Maria’s eyes, the scout team’s captain frowned and asked, “What’s your name, boy?”
“...Rio…”
“Rio, huh? Were you from Melu’er?”
Maria, or rather Rio, responded with a gloomy nod. Rio was the name of the character she was going to portray in this tragic story she had concocted.
“So you’re a refugee...but where’d you get the armor and weapons, kid?”
“It was my parent’s. They’re dead now…because I had to kill them,” Rio answered with hatred in his voice.
Everyone in the scout team had a shocked look on their faces while, inwardly, Maria was congratulating herself for being such a good actor. The scout team had seized Maria’s weapons and even though she had just bought them, Maria spent a while making the armor and weapons look well-worn so that a scenario where the captain was suspicious of her story didn’t crop up.
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From their reactions, Maria was certain that they weren’t suspicious of her story but what alerted them instead was the fact that she said she had killed her 'parents'. The scout team’s captain pulled out his sword and pointed the tip at her, “Why’d you kill them? If you lie, I'll behead you right here for the crime of being a murderer.”
Maria was hoping for something like this to happen so she quickly spoke up and answered, “Because…because they turned into monsters!”
“Monsters? Explain yourself, boy!”
Maria began divulging her story and painted the unfortunate background for the character she was playing. The boy’s name was Rio and he was a former citizen of Melu’er. His father and mother were both B-rank mercenaries but were now dead because of the attack on the Mercenary City by an unknown dark army that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She continued to elaborate that when the city was on the verge of falling, everyone was ordered to evacuate, and luckily, their family was able to get away, though many were forever left behind.
Rio’s father was injured in the battle and he had been bitten by one of the monsters that attacked the city. It was just a normal injury that a potion couldn’t heal, but even after using the potion, his father didn’t get any better. He only got sicker and sicker by the day until, finally, he died while they were on the way to Dor'ian. He died, but instead of remaining dead, he suddenly stood back up and attacked his mother. Rio's mother had her neck brutally bitten by her husband and, after dying, she too rose up and became a monster just like him.
Rio didn’t want to die, so he picked up his father’s sword and his mother’s shield before miraculously killing the two of them with his own hands without getting hurt. It was the most miserable day of his life and he swore that he’d get vengeance on the monsters that did this to his family. The scout team’s captain was convinced by Rio’s hate-filled story and ordered his men to untie him and give him back his weapons.
Maria put her helmet back on and switched the recording perspective back to third-person again. She thought that she had completely convinced the captain and his team since the man didn't turn her away, but he still had one final question for her.
“While the story for your sword and shield does check out, your armor set doesn’t. Aren't you a bit too small for your age to be wearing your father's armor?”
“...”
“Don’t lie to me, boy. Even though it might look well-worn, I can see that the armor you are wearing is still pretty new.”
Maria was at a loss for a moment but her brain quickly spun up a story as she clenched her fists and replied–praying that this would work.
“I had to sell my family’s horse…”
“Hm?”
“His name was Brun…”
After listening to her words, the captain continued to glare at Maria, who seemed pretty tense and maybe misunderstood her reaction as reluctance–reluctance to answer because he didn’t mean to sell the horse. Unlike his parents whom he had to ‘kill’, his family’s horse was the only thing left behind from them, but he had to sell it away to buy armor that fit his body so that he could go and take revenge.
If this was any other person, the captain would've mocked them and called them a fool, but the hate and rage that was silently burning in Rio's eyes when he looked at him earlier were a bit overwhelming. This time around, the captain was convinced by the answer and said, “Boy, you can ride on the packhorse. Just don’t expect us to fight anything later. We’re only the scout team.”
One of the team members walked over to the captain and asked, “We’re taking the kid, captain?”
“Why not? He seems to know something about these monsters and, from his descriptions, they could be zombies.”
“Zombies? What could those filthy creatures be doing all the way out in Melu’er?”
“That’s the golden question that even the city lord wants to know, which is why he gave us this mission.”
“But why bring the kid?”
“He knows the lay of the land. If he managed to escape from an army of zombies, he should know about a few safe routes to get in and out of Melu’er’s territory. Taking him along might just boost our chances of survival."
"Hmm..."
"You do know that the previous scout teams hadn’t come back, right?”
“Y-Yeah…they're all presumed to be dead.”
“Exactly, and do you remember what all of those teams had in common?”
“What is it?”
“They lacked a guide who could show them the way.”
“Didn’t they recruit some people from the refugee camp?”
“Heh, and where’d you hear that from? Obviously, their recruitment was in vain. Those mercs won’t accept a job unless some money is involved.”
“Oh…”
“I also heard they were organizing a strike force so they didn’t have the time to spare for our ‘useless’ scouting.”
“Couldn’t they have at least shared some information with us?”
“They did, but the City Lord wanted people of his own to go confirm whether the information was true or not.”
The captain got onto his steed while Maria was led to the small group of pack horses at the center of the team’s formation and got on one of them.
Seeing that they were ready, the captain ordered them to start moving again. They were moving pretty slowly before because the team didn’t feel any sense of urgency and wanted to be more careful with their journey since previous scout teams hadn’t returned, so the captain wasn’t too surprised by how Maria was able to keep up with them on foot, but obviously, it was because of her OP stats and nothing else.
The captain turned to his vice-captain whom he had been talking to earlier and said, “Keep an eye on the kid. I feel like he’s different and could become useful to us in the future.”
The vice-captain looked at him with a puzzled look but he quickly answered, “If his words were true and he had survived a powerful zombie wave as well as killed his zombie-turned parents, he must be pretty talented and tougher than he looks. He could become a great asset to our city's forces if we take him in and nurture him.”
The vice-captain nodded and replied, “Yessir.”
While all of this was happening, Maria had a broad grin on her face that was hidden underneath her helmet since everything was developing even better than anything she could have hoped for.
'I knew it, this is so much fun!'