For the next period of time, Maria and her most trusted companions went roaming around the Blood Continent. They visited all of the areas they'd never gone to before and the ones that they had already gone through during their conquest of the continent.
They entered various high-leveled hunting grounds and Maria made sure to note down a few important details from each of the places. Information about hunting grounds could be sold on the forum in the future when the players arrived on Vanhal, so she made sure to make a thorough exploration of each of the hunting grounds.
Lilah and Alexa were able to experience another fantastic journey together with Maria, while Ash was reminded of the good old days when it was just him and Lilah that accompanied Maria on her journeys.
Since Ash was feeling a bit sentimental on the journey, Maria immediately questioned why he was distancing himself from her. His answer was the typical ‘I’m nothing more than your subordinate now’ but Maria countered that argument with her own reasoning. Hearing that Maria saw him as a reliable older brother whom she could take out her frustrations on whenever she felt annoyed or wanted to complain, Ash felt somewhat…grateful?
He held a higher and more important position in his Master’s heart compared to everyone else, so this much was something he found grateful to know. Of course, the abuse that came with it was a bit much, but Ash did truly only see it as Maria complaining and venting her emotions when things annoyed and stressed her out. It was much like how a little sister threw a tantrum when they got angry and sometimes would get a little physical without meaning to.
Since Maria was asking Ash to be more casual with her when they weren’t in public, Ash became a little cheeky and asked if Maria could tone down her abusiveness, though it only earned him a punch to the gut. She did at least promise to Ash that she wouldn’t hit him so hard anymore and this was enough to satisfy the vampire. Their journey around the continent lasted 3 whole in-game months, which equated to a month outside of the game.
Many new developments happened on Gaia within this period of time. Most, if not all, of the active player base had arrived on the planet and, with the altered Main Storyline, things developed in a rather interesting way as compared to when the first wave of players arrived on Gaia.
The two major conflicting factions on Gaia soon collapsed thanks to the players in Goddess Gaia's faction and the only faction that remained was the Goddess's faction, but this sort of thing was set to happen by the system ever since Maria stepped in to help Goddess Gaia. The players, under the banner of the Goddess, were able to complete their questline before any of the other two factions and this resulted in their collapses.
The players of the Pantheon and the Celestial Order were by no means slacking in completing their factions' main storyline quests, but due to the system's adjustments thanks to Goddess Gaia's faction technically winning the War of the Realm, their quests became harder and harder as they progressed through the storyline while the Goddess faction's quests only became easier and easier. Of course, this difference wasn't really that pronounced since the quests themselves were still hard in the first place and the system only made it extremely difficult for the Pantheon and Celestial Order players to complete the last bits of their quest objectives.
Thanks to the system already determining the outcome of the storyline, this resulted in the two factions' collapse. Perhaps if one of them had won the War of the Realm, then they would've received the system's assistance and not lose out in the quest race.
Despite having collapsed, the two factions still remained in some form on the planet and players would be able to revive these factions again in the future. The caveat being that a player needed to find the secret hidden questline for either one of them and if they failed, then the factions they represented would be permanently deleted from the planet.
There were very stringent requirements for these hidden questlines and the outcome would be story-changing if they managed to succeed, which was why the consequence of failing the questline would be the faction's complete annihilation from the planet. That's right, only from the planet. They could still exist in some form on other planets within Unitale, but obviously not as powerful as they were on Gaia.
No one knew about this yet because it was a questline left behind by the system without any obvious information about them. The system rarely interfered in a planet's main storyline, but it had to this time because a player had triggered the planet's hidden questline, that player obviously being Maria. If she hadn't interfered, then the system would've kept its hands off and let the players from the Pantheon and the Celestial Order duke it out and whoever won would become the dominant power of the planet.
Naturally, the hidden questlines for the losing faction and Goddess Gaia would still be there for the players to find later on because although the main stories of planets were completed by the players and they were able to move onto the next place, it didn't mean that it was truly over. Stories were still being generated on previous planets and they could connect to the main story line and progress it past the story's supposed ending.
This was the beauty of Unitale. The game let players be the driving force behind the game's main storyline, so the revival of factions and events that could drastically change a planet's settings was still there for players to find even after the main quests were over. A great upheaval could happen if a player managed to complete the revival quests of either the Pantheon or the Celestial Order. The current status quo of the planet would change and another hidden main storyline would appear. For now, however, the two 'dead' factions had to wait for their 'chosen ones' to appear and bring them back to life.
Meanwhile, during the three in-game months that passed by, Gaia had decided to change a few things on her planet. With the energies of the fallen astrals and gods nurturing it, the planet was reborn and was exuberating a dense amount of life energy that nurtured all of the beings on the planet.
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The players received a 100% boost to EXP gain when they hunted and grinding for skill proficiency became easier up until a certain level and rank. However, there also came a few problems with the exuberant life-nurturing energies. All of the monsters on the planet began to evolve and spawn at such a rapid rate that it became overwhelmingly difficult for players to go out hunting without forming proper parties instead of just random hunting parties.
This was due to the addition of the new Lord-rank Boss monsters that had begun to appear as a result of the monsters’ evolutions. The Lord-rank Boss monsters had vastly superior intelligence than the usual monsters and they also possessed the [Leadership] skill that allowed them to actively control monsters that were of the same species as them.
The Lord-rank Boss monsters would claim the hunting ground they spawned in and the surrounding area as their very own domain and, with their [Leadership] skill, they would actively lead their underlings to attack any intruding players or monsters that entered their territories. This led to massive monster versus monster conflicts, but it also prevented players from going out hunting and grinding for EXP because those monster conflicts could lead to player party wipeouts.
Every time any of the players entered a hunting ground that had a Lord-rank Boss monster protecting it, they would be swarmed by numerous monsters as if they were attacked by a monster wave and be wiped out almost immediately. The same went for them when there was a monster conflict happening.
So, despite having the 100% EXP boost, none of the players could effectively put it to good use, especially with all of these Lord-rank monsters roaming around the planet's popular hunting grounds. If they weren’t careful, they’d lose more EXP and items instead of gaining them.
Gaia foresaw this happening so she introduced a new element to the planet. This new element was something that all of the guilds on the planet would benefit from and it was called [Guild Territories]. [Guild Territories] was something that all of the guilds knew about from the starting planet, Eur, and everyone knew how hard it was to obtain them. As of now, only the top-ranking guilds in the game possess a guild territory back on Planet Eur.
Even then, it couldn’t be said to be their territory, since they were just ‘renting’ it from the NPC nobles that were sponsoring them. The [Guild Territories] that Gaia was introducing was better than that and it was easy for the guilds to obtain. All they needed to do was obtain the [Territory Permit] that was now available in the faction contribution shop.
There were a few ranks for these [Territory Permits] but the lowest ranking one cost 100,000 contribution points while the highest ranking one cost 2 million contribution points. Obtaining a [Territory Permit] allowed the guilds to establish any area on the planet that was listed as neutral and not under the control of Gaia’s Faction as their own [Guild Territory], but the ranks of the permits determined the size of the area that a guild could proclaim as their [Guild Territory].
Obviously, the higher the rank, the larger the area size they could proclaim as their own. Most of the guilds that had defected to the Gaia Faction much earlier than the rest who had remained in the Pantheon or Celestial Order, had already amassed a large amount of contribution points. The most prominent guild would naturally be the Fallen Angels guild.
Once again, they became the front runners in this new Territory Proclamation event, but unfortunately for them, they couldn’t monopolize all of the highest-ranking [Territory Permits] since there was a purchase limit of 1 for a single guild. However, they were at least able to snatch up 5 of the second highest-ranking [Territory Permits] for themselves before everyone noticed their intentions and began buying those up before they took all of them away.
There were only 25 of those second highest-ranking permits, so obtaining 5 was pretty good already, since it amounted to a fifth of the available permits. Once the permits were obtained, Lizzy had her guild immediately start proclaiming a few popular hunting grounds and certain strategic areas as their [Guild Territories] before anyone else could snatch them up.
The players from her guild obtained large boosts to their stats when they fought inside of their territories, so after organizing a few hunting parties, she immediately had her guild start clearing out the Lord-rank monsters that were preventing the players from entering the hunting grounds.
After that, she immediately began erecting a fortress city in each of her territories, but such an endeavor required a lot of money. Thankfully, her guild’s sponsors were able to back her up on this extravagant decision because they all learned something extremely horrible after the guild cleared out the Lord-rank monsters dominating their territories.
*DING*
The [Guild War] feature has been activated! Every week, a maximum of 2 Guilds will be allowed to challenge your Guild for your [Guild Territory]! If your Guild loses the [Guild War], then the [Guild Territory] will be forfeited to the winner! Your Guild will be given the option to reject only one of the two [Guild War] challenges for each territory, but if your Guild manages to defeat both of the guilds that requested a challenge and achieve the feat of [Complete Territory Defense], then your Guild will be granted the [Guild War Protection] buff for 2 weeks! The protection buff prevents any guild from issuing a [Guild War] challenge on the territory that managed a [Complete Territory Defense]. Further details can be found on the [Guild War] menu!
*DING*
The [Territory Defense] feature has been activated! Every 2 days, a monster wave that has a Lord-rank Boss Monster leading it will spawn inside of your Guild’s [Guild Territory]. Failing to drive back or defeat the monster wave will result in the destruction of the territory! Each monster wave has 20 phases in total and a minimum of 10 phases is required for the [Territory Defense] event to be proclaimed as a success! Defeating all 20 phases will grant the [Territory Protection] buff that prevents monster waves from spawning in your Guild’s [Guild Territory] for a week! Further details can be found on the [Guild Territory Defense] menu!
After seeing these two features, Lizzy was now glad that she hadn’t taken too many of the [Territory Permits] and even somewhat regretted taking so much due to her greed, but after calculating the numbers, she found that her guild could barely manage all of her 6 [Guild Territories] though she needed to prepare for the worst since one of those territories could be taken away from her.
6 was already the limit, so if she had taken anymore, her guild would really be in trouble as her competitors could overwhelm her in numbers and take away her territories if they initiated a simultaneous attack on all of them at once. When the other guilds unlocked these 2 features, they too realized the potential of it and began eyeing the Fallen Angels Guild as a delicious, juicy steak. The game had now entered the stage of Guild Wars and things became extremely messy for all of the guilds on Gaia.