When she emerged from the other end of the portal, all of her undead had disappeared and only she remained there. Maria looked around and noticed that instead of being back in Vanhal, she was at Death’s Domain.
“Child…”
An eerie yet familiar voice called out to Maria and she turned in the direction of that voice and said, “What is it, Death?”
“You’ve become a Divine Vessel now. You must select your path of Divinity.”
“Path of Divinity?”
*DING*
You have been prompted by the God of Death to select your Path of Divinity!
Dark Alignment Path:
Death
War
Destruction
Light Alignment Path:
Justice
Neutral Alignment Path
Chaos
Balance
Sin (Recommended)
Please select 1 of the listed options!
Note*: The recommended path is the path that your character is best suited for! You will gain bonus stat rewards and more suitable class specific skills if you select it!
The list displayed all of the available paths she could pick along with their alignment. These options were displayed to Maria after the system had gathered all of the information about her past actions and decisions since she started playing the game. The choices given to her were based on everything she did, so they weren’t chosen at random, though Maria did question why a Light Alignment path was available for her and, what is more, it was the Justice option.
Maria gave the list a rundown before she blocked the first two alignment paths without hesitation. First of all, the Dark Alignment Path put her in the same category as her patron God, Death, which was definitely a red flag.
Since Maria wanted to break away from him because she had become fed up with the quests he gave her, she needed to select a different path. The Light Alignment Path, which only had Justice as an option, didn’t seem to suit her so well for obvious reasons and she didn’t want to be light-aligned, since everything she had done until now was the complete opposite of that. Just how the system even gave her this option was beyond her. It just didn’t seem reasonable at all to give her that option, considering she went around everywhere and indiscriminately slaughtered everything.
Anyway, after ruling out the first 2 alignments, the only category left was the Neutral Alignment Path. Sin was part of this path and it had a recommended tag on it, so this category had drawn her attention from the start. Maria couldn’t see the description of any of the options so she uncharacteristically went with the recommended one, the Neutral Alignment’s Path of Sin.
“I choose the Path of Sin.”
Usually, Maria would make her decision after she carefully weighed the pros and cons of something once she compared it to any other available options. Since she couldn’t do that in this situation, Maria would’ve usually gone with her gut feeling but instead, she chose the system’s recommended selection. It was somewhat uncharacteristic of her to do this, but Maria’s gut feeling also wanted her to select the recommended option as well.
However, she didn’t choose the Path of Sin just because it was recommended and because of her gut feeling. She chose it because, from her understanding, the other two paths of the neutral alignment didn’t seem in line with her character.
Chaos looked fun but she didn't understand what part of her was so chaotic. If Maria had her stream on and she asked her viewers if she was chaotic or not, they’d definitely answer with a resounding ‘Yes’.
To Maria, her actions probably didn’t seem chaotic at all, but to anyone else, they were the epitome of chaos and if her viewers were to list what about her actions were chaotic, the list would be way too long. If she asked her viewers if she was balanced, then they’d similarly say ‘Yes’ though it was debatable what about her was balanced.
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Maria was chaotic most of the time and her actions spoke for themselves, but at other times, her actions had a purpose behind them and this would surprise her stream’s viewers when they saw it unfold in front of their eyes. Also, since her race was a Nephalem, a being that was considered both good and evil, the system would definitely list Balance as one of her options. Maria didn’t see herself as balanced or chaotic at all, but that was because she obviously couldn’t make an objective introspection about herself.
With those reasons out of the way, Maria concluded that the best decision here was to choose Sin because she thought that it was the most logical choice since her entire character had been developed and shaped using the 7 Sins she had collected from absorbing the 7 Sin Devils’ powers.
*DING*
You have selected the Path of Sin! Please confirm your decision! Y/N
“Yes.”
With a look of determination in her eyes, Maria tapped on the [YES] button as Death watched on quietly.
You have successfully become a Divine Vessel of Sin! Congratulations on completing your Class Advancement!
Divine Vessel → Divine Vessel of Sin Recalibrating stats… 3… 2… 1… Calibration completed! Status Window has been updated!
Maria held off on checking her [Status] because Death seemed to have something to say to her.
“What do you want, Death? With this decision, you and I no longer have anything to do with each other, right?”
“...Yes, and no.”
“What do you mean? Don’t make me come over there and punch you!”
“...”
“You put me on a goddamn beginner planet and have me massacre those people. It wouldn’t hurt me if I was dealing with enemies of my level, but you gave me weaklings to kill? That’s so shameless!” Maria wasn’t done complaining as she continued rambling on and on about all the unreasonable missions Death had given to her.
They were easy at times, but why did most of them have to involve her massacring people? Death hardly ever gave her a normal quest that needed her to retrieve an important item or kill a certain beast. Instead, all of them were about annexing or destroying civilizations, wiping out planets, decimating powers, and other things along those lines.
At first, Maria didn’t mind it and she thought that it was only natural since her patron God was Death itself, but after the previous mission, she didn’t want to do that again as she grew sick of it. Her actions and morals as a person were conflicting inside of her and her morals won at the end of the day. It wasn’t like she was going to stop killing anything in Unitale and she’d still do it if she needed to, but Maria didn’t want to massacre any more NPCs, just like she did during her class advancement quest’s second phase, as it left an extremely horrible taste in her mouth.
Maria noticed that most, if not all of the time, Death would always give her the quests that required her to kill somebody, particularly an NPC. There was never a time when the target was only a monster and, after the last quest, this fact began bothering her.
It wasn’t like Maria resolved not to kill any NPCs or anything. If they tried to antagonize her or something, then she wouldn't hesitate to punish or even kill them. What she wanted to avoid was being something like a genocider or contract killer that moved according to Death’s wishes to kill a person, group, or even a planet. She had already experienced each of those instances before where she had to kill a person, exterminate a group, and even bring about a planet’s apocalypse.
“Well, are you going to explain to me what you meant by that earlier?”
“I was the one who pushed you onto this path so, to others, you will always be affiliated with me. Regardless of whether you’ve become a goddess of a different alignment than I.”
“Well, that figures…but I couldn’t care less about what others think. Just know that I won’t be following your orders or doing any of your quests anymore. This is the last one and you should know why I’m fed up with it.”
“...You are too kind for your own good, Child…but I will respect your decision. The Path of Sin was always the path that you had to take since the moment you became eligible for the Divine Path was the very moment you absorbed Greed.”
“Hmph!”
“I have watched over you since the beginning. It certainly will be lonely now that you will no longer be my Champion.”
“...Since I’m no longer your Champion, does that mean I’ll have to return Calamity?”
“That is up for you to decide, but do remember that once my next Champion is chosen, Calamity will be compelled to serve them and not you anymore.”
Maria frowned when she heard this, so she declared, “Calamity is mine! I won’t let another idiot take my precious partner away from me!”
Death didn’t say anything but Maria had this crazy feeling that he was smiling at her when she said that. Another portal opened up next to Death and he said, “This is the portal to Vanhal. I’m sure that you’ll forge a better path for yourself in the future.”
Maria immediately began walking towards the portal and just before she stepped through, she turned around to look at Death before saying, “...Thanks for everything.”
Before she could hear Death’s reply, if he had one, Maria stepped through the portal. She soon arrived back at Vanhal only to see an awkward confrontation take place in front of her.
“Undead, state your business! If you have come here to invade our lands, then know that you will suffer the consequences of annihilation!”
“Our Master is the master of death and she has chosen this planet as the next target for annihilation. Be grateful, lowly vampire, for our Master will soon grant you all an eternal death!”
"Hah?"
Maria let out an extremely dumb sound when she saw her vampire and undead subordinates arguing with each other. She noticed that she was at the heart of Transylvania and a few of her larger undead had accidentally dropped on top of a few buildings that were under reconstruction. Her dark army of shadows and undead was surrounded by numerous vampires from her nation's army and this caused her head to throb as a growing headache began to emerge.
"Dammit, Death...couldn't you have sent us somewhere else?!"