Back in the game on Vanhal, Maria was looking over the progress of the Vanargand invasion and the expedition forces she had sent out to the oceans. Those she had sent for the ocean expeditions were her shadow and undead minions. She specifically chose them because they had infinite stamina and due to their racial characteristics that kept them safe from any environmental disadvantages.
They could easily explore and fight underwater thanks to this racial advantage and, since they didn’t need to breathe air, they could fight for as long as they wanted, as long as they were still alive, in and under the water.
Maria had to monitor their conditions because she needed to constantly supply them with Divine Energy so they could continue regenerating no matter how hard of a beating they took from their hunts and explorations. Usually, Maria needed to be close to her minions in order to supply them with Mana, but her dwarven craftsmen were able to develop a device called an Amplification Tower, which they had built in secret locations all across the continent, that helped Maria amplify the range of her Divine Presence.
With the numerous Amplification Towers built all over the continent and in the nearby oceans, Maria was able to spread her power across areas hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from her location as long as she was on Dreyra. The towers amplified her abilities and quite literally made her invincible on Dreyra. This was a project Maria had invested in very early on when she had obtained the blueprints for the Amplification Tower and heard about the dwarves’ ability to build and further develop said building.
All of this was to act as a safeguard for Maria so that she wouldn’t lose to anyone as long as she was on her continent. She wasn’t going to underestimate the player base because the last time she was complacent, Maria had to sacrifice herself to defeat someone and, in the end, she found out that person didn’t even die, so her effort was all in vain.
“I have to be careful of that crazy girl, Hecate or whatever. I won’t make the same mistake as last time…my Aura skill has improved by a lot since then and I’m sure my fighting capabilities should be able to triumph over her, but I should still take some extra precautions since I’m going to be one of the figureheads of the next Main Quest Scenario. It's not just her I have to worry, but every player that isn't friendly to me.”
The Amplification Towers were a godsend for Maria in her time of need. She didn’t trust any of the players outside of those that she was personally acquainted with and viewed as her friends. The towers did aid Maria to a large extent, but this didn’t mean that she had become omnipotent and could cast magic on a continental-scale or even global-scale whenever she wanted. All the towers did was amplify her stats and abilities, turning every place on Dreyra environmentally advantageous for her.
Also, as long as she was in the range of her Amplification Towers’ effects, she could easily connect her Divine Energy with any of her minions as long as they too were in range of a tower. She could accurately control all of their movements and give them precise orders thanks to this, which was definitely a large advantage compared to the minions’ AIs doing the thinking for themselves.
These towers were incredibly important, so they were placed in hidden areas around the continent and they were heavily guarded by soldiers, fortresses, and various other defensive mechanisms that Maria and her Empire had developed over the lengthy course of time they had to prepare for the players’ forthcoming arrival.
“Hmm, just another hour until the players arrive. I’ve informed Ash and everyone already, so they’re keeping a close watch on the possible areas and places the players could arrive. Even the spies I placed on Vanargand are keeping an eye out…”
Maria was still feeling a bit nervous despite all of the preparations she had made, but this was understandable since the players were such a chaotic factor that could make just about anything happen.
Since her faction was technically a player faction, Maria reckoned that a lot of the players would side against her in the upcoming Main Story Quest. This speculation was backed by the fact that Maria was trying to take over the entire world and invade the Vanargand Continent. People always loved opposing the 'oppressors' and instead side with the underdogs, who were, in this case, the Lycan King and the werewolves that Maria and her ilk were at war with.
Compared to Maria’s nation, the werewolf nation’s civilization level was extremely behind in almost all sectors. The only thing they had that was better was their population along with the number and quality of military personnel they had. The werewolves had a high level of fertility, matching that of orcs and goblin’s to some degree, since a female werewolf could give birth to an entire litter of children.
While Maria's nation was no longer limited to just the vampires as she had taken in various other races on the continent along with a good amount of intelligent monster tribes, the population number was just about the same as the werewolves. However, not all of the people she took in were able to fight. There were some races and monster tribes that weren't even fit for battle and were better at contributing to a different aspect for her nation like agriculture or something.
Meanwhile, the werewolves were a battle race. This meant that almost every werewolf could be drafted into the Lycan Kingdom's army and fight. The men, women, elderly, and even adolescent could fight. The only ones that couldn't would be the children. This meant that around 70% of the werewolf population could go straight into battle. It was because of this ridiculous number of combatants that the werewolves had that made Maria's advance on the Vanargand continent rather slow.
Her enemies could literally just throw bodies at her armies to halt their advance and she wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Not to mention that the werewolves had enslaved various monster tribes and other races on the continent, so things really weren't easy for Maria.
At the moment, Maria’s Empire had more intelligent monsters than it had vampires and this was because vampires were hard to create and it was extremely hard for them to procreate naturally like normal creatures. They could procreate naturally, but a female vampire's fertility was abysmally low. It was why despite having lived for hundreds or even thousands of years, Ash and Elizabeth only had one child in their long lifetime.
The easiest way for a vampire to be created was when another vampire, specifically one that was Count-rank and above, ‘turned’ an ordinary creature into one. Naturally, the process of being turned into a vampire was known to most people and it was simply just the injection of a vampire’s pure blood into a regular creature and there was even a restriction to that.
Vampires can only inject their pure blood into a creature once every year, at most. If they didn’t use their pure blood to turn a creature, then it would only become a low-ranking vampyrling or worse, a mindless blood ghoul. It was thanks to Maria’s early insight into this disadvantage that she purposefully went around and actively recruited intelligent monster tribes and other races on the continent into her Empire’s ranks.
If she hadn’t done this, the size of her Empire–despite spanning an entire continent–would actually be really small, at least, population-wise. Only the land's area was large, while the people that were living in it were very small in number. With the population being small, the size of her army would similarly be small as well.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case at present, but instead of an empire of vampires, it was better to say that Maria’s Empire was an empire of various races and monsters. A few minutes before the countdown was over, Maria looked at her status screen.
"[Status]."
Name: Maria Level: 188 CP: 4,806,382
HP: 1,357,020/753,900
DE: 2,871,120/2,392,600
NE: 3612
SP: 126,215/105,179
EXP: 12,829,655/37,600,000
REP: 140,090
Divinity: 1294
Race: Nephalem
Class: Divine Vessel of Sin
Sub-Class 1: Magus
Sub-Class 2: Blood Empress
Titles: Mother of Monsters, Species Eradicator EX, Fallen Angel of Sin, Angel of the Apocalypse, The Sinful One, Fallen Priestess, Fallen Saintess, Harbinger of the World’s End, Empress of the Dire, Undead Ruler, Shadow Ruler, Blood Ruler
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
ATK: 159,100 (+6000~7000)
DEF: 81,864 (+3000)
M.ATK: 114,557 (+6000~7000)
M.DEF: 123,798 (+3000)
STR: 21,460
AGI: 16,645
VIT: 19,148
INT: 41,266
LCK: 43
SIN: 361
Free Stat Points: 0
Universal Currency: 10,780,690 Gold, 11 Silver, 9 Copper
Vanhal Currency: 3,281,905 Blood Gold
Faction Currency: 2,704,130 Universe Gold
After taking another look at her [Status Menu], Maria smiled happily to herself. The past couple of months' efforts were reflected in her character's status menu and it was gratifying to look at. She had gained a ton of status points and with the amplification of her various skills and high-end equipment, it boosted her CP stat by quite a lot. Her CP value was now displayed in her [Status Menu] after an update that happened a month or so ago.
She knew for a fact that her CP value was incredibly high especially after looking at the public CP rankings. The number one ranker on the leaderboard only had a CP value of around 2.8 million. This meant that Maria had nearly twice as much CP as the regular player base. She knew that the number one ranker on the CP leaderboard was only an ordinary player. This was something she could check because the player's profile and information were made public since he was on the leaderboard.
The pioneering and frontline players definitely had much more CP than this player, but they kept themselves hidden and didn't put their names on the leaderboard even though there was a reward for it. With so many threats in the game, especially from other players, the ones at the frontline thought that it was better to keep their Combat Power hidden, so no one could estimate how strong they were.
Due to this, the CP leaderboard ranking was only between the ordinary players. The leaderboard became the place where people could see the standard of the ordinary players and it served as a good benchmark for the various guilds that wanted to recruit players that were above the average.
Another thing to take note of on Maria's [Status Menu] was her newly acquired title, [Mother of Monsters]. After the whole fiasco with the monster tribe chiefs that she took in evolving into Monster Kings, she gained this title a few weeks later after the Monster Kings returned to their various tribes and spread word that she was the [Mother of Monsters], the being that they all had to worship because she was the key to their evolutionary advancement.
The system rewarded her with a fitting title that had a rather strange effect.
Title: Mother of Monsters Rank: EX Description: The Mother of Monsters is equivalent to a divine being among the various intelligent monster tribes. You, who the Monster Kings have declared as such to their tribes, have unintentionally taken up this mantle due to the Divinity that you possess combined along with the Power of Faith from the numerous monsters that now worship you! Equipped Effect 1: Increases Affinity with intelligent monsters upon first encounter while regular monsters won't be immediately hostile to you
Equipped Effect 2: Increases the abilities and stats of monsters that you have subdued or tamed by 100%
Passive Effect 1: Passively increases all attributes of monsters under your command by 50% and increases their damage by 80%
Passive Effect 2: Unlocks the evolutionary path of monsters that you have tamed. Monsters that have fully evolved may receive a very small chance of evolving even further depending on their stats and species.
Passive Effect 3: Increases Divinity by 10%
This was a title that she had accidentally gained only because the Monster Kings that had evolved thanks to her began spreading the word that she was the 'Mother of Monsters' to all the individuals in their respective tribes. This caused a lot of monsters to start worshipping her and since she was already a being with a small amount of Divinity, this let her absorb the [Power of Faith] that the monsters inadvertently gave to her because of their faith in her being the Mother of Monsters.
Regardless of how she became the Mother of Monsters, Maria was happy with it because the title itself had really incredible effects. All of the monsters that worshipped her received an upgrade to their stats and damage while the monsters she has tamed, like Red for example, experienced an evolution the moment she obtained the title.
Red was the blood wolf that Maria tamed not long after she arrived on Vanhal a long while back. Due to its species, it was able to evolve into a twin-headed blood wolf during her conquest war against the Blood Faction and it served as both Maria's pet and mount. Unfortunately, it was limited to a single evolution and was stuck as a twin-headed blood wolf, but after she gained the Mother of Monsters title, Red immediately evolved into a Cerberus, a monster that was said to be the guardian of the gates of hell.
This alone was already incredible, but when Maria checked Red's [Status Menu], it stated that her mount could evolve even further into a Cerberus King. Although the requirements for this evolution was very stringent and very, very difficult, Maria was still delighted because this meant her mount could become a legendary monster in the future.
This evolution was rather timely because Maria recently assigned Red to guard an important place for her. What better individual to stand as a guardian than the very guardian of hell's gate itself?
The final minute on the countdown to the players' arrival finally arrived and when the timer began counting down from 10 seconds, Maria ordered all of her soldiers and minions to be alert.
*DING*
3... 2... 1... The gate to the Planet of Sin and Darkness, Vanhal, has been opened! Players who have met the requirements may now head to the new planet!
*DING*
The Gate to Vanhal has been opened! The next Main Story Quest has begun!
While every player currently in the game saw only those notification windows, Maria saw those on top of a few other system messages.
*DING*
The Main Story Quest of Vanhal has been initialized! As the Blood Empress, you are able to hand out the story quest when a player has fulfilled the required conditions to accept the quest!
Vanhal’s Main Story has been divided into 3 routes according to player Maria’s past actions! 1. A United World
2. Rise of a Revolution
3. Apocalyptic Battlefront Players can receive the Main Story Quest from the following key figures:
1. [A United World] from [Blood Empress Maria]
2. [Rise of a Revolution] from [Lycan King Lucius]
3. [Apocalyptic Battlefront] from [XXXXXX] Vanhal’s story progression will be determined by the players’ progression other than player Maria who will not be regarded as a player during the duration of this particular Main Story Quest
“[A United World], huh? Well, the system does seem to know what I want, so I guess it’s fitting…the second Main Quest’s name is quite concerning, but even more concerning than that is the last one…[Apocalyptic Battlefront]? Does that mean the planet will experience an apocalyptic event? And who’s the person that’ll issue this quest? I had better find them first and kill them before anyone can take the quest…”
The last Main Story Quest option was ominous since it had apocalyptic in its name. That didn’t sit well with Maria, since she wanted to conquer the world, but what world would there be left to conquer if it was all destroyed by some apocalypse.
Usually, she was the one who brought apocalypses to other planets, but she was never on the receiving end and she never wanted to be on that end. Up until now, Maria had never thought that a Main Planet could experience an apocalypse, but Gaia had been close to experiencing one if not for Maria’s interference, so she deduced that it was definitely possible for a Main Planet to experience one as long as the Main Story Quest wanted it.
“Whoever the NPC is, I have to find them before anyone else and kill them. I won’t let anyone bring an apocalypse on my planet!”
Maria walked out of her grand palace and looked up at the sky that was filled with a lot of shooting stars. These stars represented the numerous players that were teleporting to the planet from Gaia. The number was in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. It was to the point that the light coming from the skies was brightening up the day rather abnormally.
Maria watched as the stars landed on the planet and mumbled with her arms crossed in front of her chest, "They are here..."