The guild wars on Gaia fiercely raged on with each passing day as Guild Territories were constantly being attacked by both the players and the monsters from the Guild War and Territory Defense events.
The rewards from just participating in these events, especially the Guild War event, were truly extravagant, so none of the players from the guilds nor those that were hired as mercenaries wanted to pass up on them. Due to the rewards and the contribution points that were offered, Guild Wars had become a daily occurrence on Gaia and intense battles were constantly waged even outside of those wars.
The stars of the Guild Wars had to be the players from the Nemesis Alliance since they were all PKers, so they had a lot of experience fighting against other players. All of the other Alliances had hard times fighting against the Nemesis Alliance, but thankfully, the Nemesis Alliance would always randomly choose their opponents, so it wasn’t like a single Alliance was being pressured by them into destruction.
At some point after the Guild Wars and Territory Defense events started, Gaia finally issued out the final segment of Gaia’s Alternate Main Story Quest line. At the end of this final Main Story Quest for Gaia, the entrance to the next planet would be revealed and players could start migrating to the new planet soon after.
Once everyone knew this, a lot of information brokers began trying to dig up what the next planet would be but there were no leaks of it from the devs. They didn’t even drop any clues about the next planet, but Maria had a strong feeling that it was going to be Vanhal.
It wasn’t until another couple of real-life months had passed by did the players on Gaia finally complete the final Main Story Quest and open up the way to the next planet and, just like Maria predicted, it really was Vanhal.
*DING*
The path to the planet of Sin and Darkness, Vanhal, has been opened! Players will be able to teleport to Vanhal via the Great Teleportation Gate found on Gaia! The Gate will be available in 16 hours 19 minutes 45 seconds! Restriction: Level 200, Combat Power XXXXXX, Gaia’s Final Acknowledgement (Main Story Quest Reward)
Like before, there was a level restriction for those that wanted to teleport to the new planet with the addition of 2 other requirements. Thanks to the constant fighting on Gaia, the level restriction was no longer a problem as the average players on Gaia who were actively participating in the Guild Wars, Territory Defense, and Main Story Quest were at least 1 to 2 levels above it.
The Combat Power requirement was the real restriction, but if a player had enough contribution points and bought out the full equipment set in the Gaia’s Contribution Shop, they’d be able to easily fulfill this requirement. The last condition just required the players to complete the Main Story Quest, which was easy enough, since they just needed to follow what the frontrunners of the quest did.
There were still a few hours until the Gate was ready and, just like with Gaia, there was a release of a preview video of the new Planet and, to everyone’s surprise, there was a familiar face in it.
When the video was released, it first showed a red planet that had two continents. One of them was predominated by werewolves and the other by vampires and other various monsters. The werewolf had a Lycan King that ruled over the continent and they were at war with the vampires and monsters who had an Empress, and this Empress was none other than Maria.
When she appeared in the game's AI, Zeus, generated video, even the devs were surprised, but they just posted it as is, since apparently, one of the players had become a key figure in the upcoming new planet. The preview showed the strength of both the werewolves and their enemies, but most of the people watching were focused on the vampire and monster’s side because of the presence of a player.
The video highlighted a lot of Maria’s exploits on the planet during her quest to become the Blood Empress. It was safe to say that she had impressed a lot of people who watched the video and her friends immediately began asking her about it. Up until now, no one knew about the things that Maria did on Vanhal. Whenever she streamed anything, it would always be a hunting or dungeon diving stream. Very little of what was shown in the video were things she showed on stream.
Naturally, all of that was for good measure, since Maria needed to take precautions about information leaking about her quest and whatnot. Her segment of the video ended with Maria’s grand coronation as the Blood Empress who ruled over the entire Blood Continent.
At the end of the video, it showed the Lycan King on one half of the screen roaring at the sky and on the other half was Maria sitting lazily on her imperial throne with her eyes and halo glowing ominously in the dark as the shadow of some unknown being appeared, looming over each of them and eyeing the two closely with a cold glare.
“Mary, did you see that video? You’re in it! You’re actually in it!” Lizzy cried over the phone.
“The Blood Empress…is that what you’re called on that planet? So you’re the Lord of all the vampires, huh?” Sky, whose name in real life was Aliyah, said as she was genuinely impressed with her friend’s achievement.
“That’s so cool!” Lilith, or Lilia in real life, said as she praised Maria.
“S-Stop it. It’s embarrassing…”
Maria was currently on a group video call with her best friends and a few of her in-game friends. This was after the preview video came out and only a few hours were left for the wait until the Gate was opened.
While everyone was telling Maria how impressed they were with the feats shown in the video, Amanda quickly voiced one of her concerns to her, “I’m a little worried about something, but the two factions that were shown in the video… they were portrayed in almost a similar manner to the two original factions on Gaia, remember?”
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“...Do you think there could be a 3rd hidden faction?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
This certainly was a cause for concern but Maria laughed sheepishly for a bit before answering, “You guys don’t need to worry about a third faction. I have already found them.”
“Oh, really? You already found them, Mary?” Lizzy asked.
“Mhm…"
“Have you dealt with them already?”
Maria shook her head and replied, “No, I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the third faction was me to begin with.”
“Oh?”
“You guys saw only snippets of what happened in the video, but what I actually did was take the title of Blood Empress for myself after defeating and subordinating the previous Vampire Lord.”
“Haha, okay. So we won’t have to worry about anything like what happened on Gaia, huh?”
“...You guys probably don’t have to worry about it, but I do.”
Seeing the odd look on her friend’s face, Lizzy immediately asked, “What do you mean?”
“Once the players start pouring into the planet, a new third faction will appear. That’ll be the player faction.”
“Hm?”
“Think about it. I was able to usurp the Vampire Lord’s Throne as a player. That would mean that another player would have the ability to establish their own faction if they meet the requirements or take over one of the existing ones on the planet.”
“I-I see…”
“Well, I hope you guys will join me though. I don’t want to be your enemy or anything. Just know that if you guys do decide to become my enemy, I’ll crush you all without remorse and send you guys packing back to Gaia~”
“H-How scary…”
“Just a heads up, but I have NPCs that are at level 300 to 400 and an army of NPCs, Monsters, Shadows, and Undead that number in the millions. I won’t hesitate to use them to quash anyone that tries to eye my throne, hehehe~”
During the time while the players were completing the final segment of Gaia’s Main Story Line, Maria and her Dire Empire weren’t just idling around doing nothing. Since a few months in real life had passed, this gave Maria quite a lot of time inside of the game to complete the projects she had in store for her nation.
Maria had finished reconstructing and redeveloping her nation’s capital, Transylvania, and many other cities, towns, and villages within her Empire. Not only that, but she expanded all of her armies and trained them by making them go to war with the werewolves on their home continent, Vanargand.
It had a cool-sounding name and Maria couldn’t help but be disappointed that her continent’s name was only ‘Blood’. However, it soon came to light that her continent’s actual name was ‘Dreyra’, which was directly translated to Blood in the continent's ancient language, so either way, it still meant the same, but Maria felt that Dreyra sounded much better.
Maria had discovered the precise location of Vanargand after one of her flying-type undead had stumbled upon it while it was out on a reconnaissance mission to scout and map out the oceans surrounding Dreyra. It had gotten lost and wandered quite a distance away from the continent and eventually found the werewolves' continent. It was quite hilarious how this undead acted just like its owner and got lost only to stumble upon something fortuitous.
Once Maria found out where the continent was, she immediately issued the order to start invading it. The players were coming and since she had stabilized her nation’s foundations and situation during the time they used to complete the last main story quest on Gaia, there was no better time than right at that moment to start the invasion.
She hadn’t forgotten about her ambition to take over the world, so she wanted to build a foothold in Vanargand before the players arrived. Thankfully, she had been able to conquer a large chunk of land on the werewolf continent and firmly established her dominance in that area long before the players even completed Gaia's last main quest.
None of the werewolves sent to destroy her forces had managed to accomplish their mission even until this day, since her armies were just too powerful. Speaking about power, Maria’s level had jumped past level 150 and was approaching the level 200 mark during this time. With her level increasing, this meant that the level cap of her army's forces had also increased.
Right now, Maria was sitting comfortably at level 188 while the soldiers in all her armies were 100-200 levels above her. Thanks to her becoming the Empress, the level cap of her subordinates and soldiers increased very drastically. This was how her soldiers were able to compete against the werewolves who were at an average level of 250-300.
Despite her stringent EXP requirements for leveling up, Maria was able to increase her level by more than 60 during this time period. This was in part thanks to the EXP buff she gained from staying inside of her Ancient Blood Hall along with the constant flow of EXP coming to her from her soldiers and minions who were always fighting everywhere on the planet.
Maria wasn’t only invading the Vanargand Continent, she had set her eyes onto the oceans as well. Many aquatic monsters could be found in the ocean and Maria had created ships and other ocean vessels to explore it…while also turning anything that was hostile into precious EXP. It was because Maria was expanding on multiple fronts with her vast number of forces that she was able to massively increase the amount of EXP she earned. Without doing this, Maria wouldn’t have been able to achieve her current level in the time she had.
Of course, 8 in-game months weren’t short at all, but for Maria, who had to spend a real life year just to get past level 100, 8 in-game months, which equated to almost 3 real life months, was very short.
Maria did have a lot of things helping her increase her EXP gain this time around, so things were vastly different for her compared to before when she didn’t have them. Her level was catching up with the rest of the player base, but her Combat Power was slowly leaving everyone else behind in the dust.