The first thing Maria thought of was merging her Soul Weapon, Syn, with her Calamity. The Soul Weapon had the ability to absorb another weapon into itself and take on its characteristics. This idea of hers was the one Maria was banking on the most because it seemed to be a sure-fire way of keeping Calamity for herself if it succeeded. Her other ideas required quite a lot of effort to complete and it was grueling work that she didn’t want to do.
One of her other ideas was even pretty extreme and it entailed killing her successor when Death finally found one. She wasn’t going to morally limit herself when it came down to keeping her long-time partner, Calamity, especially after all the painstaking effort she had to put in to upgrade it. She wasn’t planning on handing it over to anyone, so if it meant killing them, she would unhesitatingly do it.
If the successor was an NPC, it would make her life a whole lot easier, since after killing the NPC, it would result in an eternal death, but if it was a player, then things might become a little tricky because she’d have to repeatedly kill the person and force them to relinquish their position as Death’s Envoy.
The latter was obviously more tedious than the former, but what was more tedious was actually finding her successor. She didn’t know if Calamity would just up and disappear from her side or if it would physically move towards the new envoy. If it was the former, Maria would have to start paying attention to any news regarding her weapon’s sightings and travel around everywhere until she found them, but if it was the latter, then she could use Calamity as a homing device that zeroed in on her successor’s position, making her work easier to some degree.
However, this wasn’t a definite solution, because after killing the successor or having them relinquish their position, Death could just select another one and she’d have to repeat the troublesome process all over again. In the end, even after she parted ways with Death, the bastard-like God was still giving her problems, but regardless of who the next envoy was, she was going to kill them without hesitation and reclaim her weapon.
Maria wasn’t the type to just willingly hand over something that belonged to her to anyone, regardless of whether it was something of significance or not. This was the same mindset she had when she first absorbed Greed’s Soul back then.
When Maria heard she had to give the soul away to some random people, she immediately thought that there was no way that was happening. She had just gone through a grueling battle with the sin devil and managed to barely scrape out a win, but then she had to give her reward away to someone else? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t going to happen. In the end, rather ironically, due to her greed, she absorbed Greed's soul and began walking down the Path of Sin, which practically made her public enemy number one to all of the gods and goddesses of the starting planet, Eur.
She had no regrets whatsoever, since it was because of that event she had decided to leave Eur and go to Vanhal much earlier than anyone else. If she wasn’t forced to leave, Maria would be progressing through the game just like everyone else and, from her current point of view, that didn’t seem too fun, as she wouldn’t have become the Empress of the Dire.
The events of what happened back then with Greed could be applied here with her Calamity. In Maria’s mind, Calamity was rightfully hers because she had spent all of the time and effort on upgrading it to its current state, so giving it to someone else and forfeiting all of that was just impossible.
If her successor wanted to keep it, then they’d have to fight for it–tooth and nail–to keep it from her because she would never give up until she reclaimed Calamity. They shouldn’t expect her to be some kind of ‘trial’ or test from Death, because if they thought of it like that and took her lightly, they’d die without even knowing how they died. Other than Maria’s first idea, the rest of her ideas were extremely toilsome, so she hoped that her first idea of using her Soul Weapon on her Calamity worked.
“Syn, come out.”
From Maria’s chest, a phantom of a broadsword’s handle emerged and she grabbed it before pulling the rest of the sword out. The phantom sword began to materialize until it took the shape of the evil spirit sword, Garm. She then pulled out her Calamity from her inventory and had them float together side by side.
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Maria wasn't sure if this method would even work but she hoped it did. She had her doubts because, unlike any ordinary weapon, Calamity was a legacy class Mythic-rank weapon that belonged to a god and it wasn’t just any ordinary god, it was Death who was one of the Old Ancient Gods that Raiju had told her about. These Old Gods were extremely powerful and Raiju said that they had been in existence since the beginning of time.
Maria reckoned that Death had applied some enchantments or some other thing that would prevent anyone from wresting away control of his weapon, but Maria had to at least try it. If things actually worked out, then Calamity would become hers and only hers. She wouldn’t have to worry about anyone, including Death, taking it away from her.
“Gosh, I hope this works…Syn, absorb Calamity!”
Her Soul Weapon immediately began using its [Devour] skill as it began to absorb Calamity into its being. Maria expected Calamity to resist in some way but nothing happened at all. Calamity was quietly being deconstructed by Syn’s [Devour] skill as bits and pieces of it continued to flow into the Soul Weapon.
“Uhh…Huh?”
Maria had prepared herself for Death’s retribution or something, but nothing happened all the way until she received the notification window that indicated the absorption had been completed.
*DING*
Soul Weapon Syn has successfully absorbed Calamity! Recalibrating parameters…Complete! Soul Weapon Syn is undergoing evolution!
“Oh!”
Maria’s Soul Weapon was suddenly encased in a cocoon of red light as a progress bar and timer appeared above it.
“That went…a bit too smoothly,” Maria said warily as she looked around her Ancient Blood Hall.
She pulled out her Zantetsu-R and silently waited. What did she wait for? Well, obviously, she was waiting for Death. She had just literally stolen away his legacy weapon. The consequences of doing such a thing would surely be dire.
Maria believed that either Death himself, or at least his avatar of some kind, would descend and fight her to punish her for stealing from him. Stealing from a god was pretty foolhardy, and Maria didn't know if she would even be able to make it out alive if she were to fight him, but she was, nevertheless, ready to fight him. That was how determined Maria was in keeping Calamity for herself. If she had to fight a god, she would definitely fight that god. Regardless if she won or lost, she’d go down fighting but nothing actually came.
“No way, right? It can’t be this smooth, right? Shouldn’t Death be angered by my actions?”
The progress bar for her Soul Weapon’s evolution was moving along slowly, but when she tapped on the cocoon, a description window came out and it said that she could speed up the progress by feeding the evolutionary cocoon with high-grade items.
When she saw that, Maria immediately opened up her inventory and palace treasury, started picking out the high-grade weapons that she wouldn't be able to use, and began tossing them towards the cocoon, feeding it and hastening the progression of its evolutionary completion. These items were things she obtained on the numerous battlefields she's decimated and although she couldn't use most of them, she still kept them in her inventory and palace treasury because they were high-grade items. It would be a waste if she didn't pick them up and left them to de-spawn, or worse, have other people take it.
It wasn't until recently that she found a use for those items and that was to equip her dark army with better gear than the ones they were spawned with. Despite taking out a bunch of them, there were still a ton left over, so this was the perfect time to use these leftover items that she deemed rather useless. If she couldn't use them, then they were useless, that was Maria's logic. So instead of keeping those useless things, she began dumping all of the leftover high-grade weapons onto her Soul Weapon’s evolutionary cocoon without any hesitation.
The progress bar increased slowly with increments of 0.001 to 0.1 percent with every item Maria fed it. She wondered just how long it would’ve taken for it to be completed naturally, but she wasn’t willing to wait around for it. She continued to feed high-grade item after high-grade to the cocoon not knowing that she was literally just burning away money. If any other player saw this, they'd be crying tears of blood from her reckless actions. All those high-grade items could've been put on the game's market or auction and sold for a lot of money, but here she was just throwing it all away.
The progress bar eventually hit 100% percent and a grandiose notification rang in Maria’s ear as the system announced that her Soul Weapon had completed its evolution. The evolutionary cocoon began to slowly crack apart and, to Maria’s genuine surprise, a little girl emerged from it. The girl had long white hair that was similar to hers and she had 6 raven-colored wings on her back and a body full of strange red markings. Maria quickly rushed forwards and caught the small child just before she landed on the ground.
“Wow…what the heck are you?”
The little girl was the spitting image of herself and this further surprised Maria. It was like she was holding and looking at a miniature version of herself. Maria was a little mesmerized when the little girl opened her eyes to reveal a wonderful pair of ruby-like pupils that stared into her own curiously. What shocked her was when the girl’s mouth opened and she innocently asked, “Mama?”
“?!?!?!??!?!!?!?”