When Lizzy and the rest arrived at Heltania City and walked through its gates, they were all amazed by the things they saw past the walls of the city. It shouldn’t be anything to be amazed about, since they were used to seeing it all day, but the problem was, they only saw it in real life and not in the game.
“M-Mary, what the heck?! Your city…it’s so…so modern!” Lizzy exclaimed. "I heard on the forums that the guys who came here earlier than the rest after rushing through the village quests saying that it was a modern city, but what the heck! Doesn't this place go beyond just modern?!"
Maria only chuckled and proudly led everyone around. The layout and building design of the city that was named after Maria’s real life family was modern. In fact, it went beyond just modern and into an almost futuristic-like theme thanks to the dwarves also incorporate mana into it. There were a few skyscrapers and extremely large buildings everywhere, but what amazed Lizzy and the rest the most were the floating platforms and walkways that connected the cityscape on the ground with some of the floating buildings that were in the air.
It wasn't a stretch to say that Heltania City had two levels, the ground level and the sky level. Of course, the floating buildings that made up the 'sky level' weren't too far up in the air. None of them went past the skyscrapers and some of the larger buildings in the city. At best, they were only about 50-60 meters up in the air and they were mostly up there to provide cover for the vampires from the sunlight.
Higher-ranked vampires could go about their business normally like any other creature in the sunlight, but that wasn't the same for the normal vampires. They would still be hurt by the sunlight if they weren't within close proximity of a Blood Fountain, but back then, the Blood Fountain in Heltania City, unfortunately, could only cover the area a few hundred meters away from the castle and not the entire city.
To let the ordinary vampires go about their day in the sunlight, Maria had her dwarves and architects build these floating platforms to act as canopies against the sunlight, but those things were continuously upgraded until they became floating buildings, platforms, and walkways. The effects of Heltania City's Blood Fountain could now encompass the entire city, so the vampires no longer needed any cover from the sunlight, but thanks to their needs from way back then, Maria was able to turn her city into a really cool, futuristic modern city.
Maria's city truly didn't fit inside of Unitale as it completely steered away from the heavy fantasy theme aspect of the game, which was why Lizzy, the rest of Maria's friends, and their guild found it really incredible to see such a futuristic city inside of the game.
The players had gotten used to seeing cities, towns, and villages that were from the middle ages or something, but now that they thought about it, even the villages on Maria’s continent had a somewhat modern nature to them.
“No wonder when I entered the village for the first time something felt out of place…”
“Yeah, it was because of the somewhat modern setting of the village. The village was small and underdeveloped so we couldn’t see it entirely, but the city, however…jeez, the guildmaster’s friend sure is incredible.”
“You can see from the citizens’ faces that they’re all incredibly happy living their lives. She's done a great job as her nation's leader!”
Hearing the praises from Lizzy’s elite guild party, Maria smiled as her nose shot towards the sky and said, “Haha, praise me! I’m awesome, aren’t I, Liz?!”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re incredible…”
“Praise me more, hahahaha!”
“Put a lid on it, Mary, and just give us a tour around the place, will you?”
“Fine, fine, but I’m sorry, we’ll have to part ways here for a bit. I’ll tell someone from the castle to send over a guide. I’ve got… business to do,” Maria said with a dejected sigh after Lilah passed her a note that she was needed back at Heltania Castle.
“You’ve got business to do? I’m going with you then. Just send a guide for everyone else!” Amanda quickly said, while Emily added, “I’m joining too. I’ll tour around the city later. What about you, Liz? You coming with us?”
“Obviously,” Lizzy hummed before telling her guild’s elite members to go explore the city and do their own things or just wait for the guide that Maria will send. She then turned to her friends who were waiting for her and said, “Now that we’re together again, we have to stick together! Maria’s the head honcho of this place, so following her around will guarantee us some goodies, right?”
“...Liz, do you really have to say it like that? Can’t you just say you wanna spend time with a friend? Mary’s helped us a lot already and she’s still going to be helping us even more in the future,” Emily said with a palm on her head.
“Oh, come on. We spend time with Mary everyday in real life! Besides, friends are there to help each other!”
“...”
Maria laughed and said, “It’s fine, Em. Just know that you’re going to be disappointed, Liz. I’m really just heading back to do some work…speaking about helping out~”
A few moments later, inside of Heltania Castle, Lizzy was currently sitting down at a desk with a frown on her face as she was reading through a few reports regarding the Dire’s state of affairs.
“...”
“...”
“Mary, is this good right here?”
“Let me see…Hm, yeah, that’ll do.”
“Okay, but what’s this? You’re going to mobilize your soldiers for a simple extermination? Why not turn it into a repeatable quest for the players?”
“I can level up my troops by sending them out. All of my soldiers are at level 200 or higher and that’s because I always send them out to fight. The ones currently at the colony on Vanargand are even above level 250 while some are approaching level 300. The soldiers in my minion armies are barely at level 200, and that's only because they're limited by my own level,” Maria explained. "Also, I don't want to spend too much money on generating quests for the players."
“Hmm, I see…” Amanda said with a thoughtful look on her face.
Currently, Maria and her friends were inside her office in Heltania Castle and were doing a bunch of paperwork that had sensitive information regarding her Dire Nation's state of affairs. She trusted that her friends would keep all of this a secret since some of the things they were dealing with were confidential.
“...”
“Mary, this here–”
“Gah, Amanda! Aren’t you enjoying this a little too much?!” Lizzy stood up from her seat and cried out as she pointed at her friend.
“Eh?”
While Amanda looked back at Lizzy with an odd expression, Emily walked over to Maria before the latter said with a sigh, “She’s finally cracked…”
“Looks like I won, Mary. Hand it over."
“I should have never made that bet with you,” Maria said as she handed over a money pouch that had a few thousand gold in it to Emily.
“You too, Liz. Hand over my winnings. I told you that Mary was being literal when she said that she had ‘work’ to do.”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“Gahh! This is so boring!” Lizzy yelled as she tossed over a gold pouch to Emily. She then turned to Maria and whined, “Mary, you do this every day?!”
Maria had a defeated look on her face and replied, with imaginary tears streaming down her face, “Yes…unfortunately...”
“My god, you have it even worse than me!”
“Obviously,” Amanda quipped. “Being an Empress of a nation is definitely more burdensome and stressful than being a mere guild leader.”
“A mere guild leader, you say? Then take my position, Ama!”
“No thanks. One of the few joys of playing this game is watching you cry and moan over the pile of paperwork you have to do every day AS I hand them to you. Heh, it’s so refreshing~”
“That’s so mean!”
“Then do a better job at it! If you were any good, you’d be able to finish everything easily! The only reason you have to do a lot of work is because you constantly make mistakes! I always have to read over your work to correct any mistakes you make and don’t get me wrong. I correct A LOT of mistakes!”
“Ugh…”
Amanda then turned towards Maria and said, “I’m actually more surprised that Mary can handle all of this since her patience is even worse than yours when it comes to this kind of thing!”
“W-Why am I the one being attacked now?!” Maria exclaimed in shock as she received a right hook to her ego from her friend. "That came out of nowhere, Ama!"
“I know you, Mary. You wouldn’t be doing this if you were given a choice. At least you learned to cope with it and got better with your work so you’re not like that fool over there. She hasn't changed at all!”
“Your words sting, Ama! Cali, look, your auntie is bullying me!” Lizzy turned and said towards Cali who was sitting on a couch by the side and eating some ice cream.
Emily was there as well and she was wiping away the cream that was smeared on her niece's cute and chubby cheeks. There was a blissful look on her face as she took care of Maria's daughter. She couldn't believe that her friend had mothered such a beautiful and cute child.
“...Emily, switch with me. I know you’re better at this than me. Let me babysit Cali!” Lizzy spoke up and said.
Emily didn’t even look at her friend as she replied, “Nope~ I finished my work and helped Mary out already. You gotta do your part now, Liz.”
“Ahhh~~”
“Instead of moaning, why don’t you start working? Mary has 3 times as many things to do, but she’s almost done while you’re still…” Amanda didn’t finish her words as she looked at the tall stack of papers still next to her guild master. From the looks of things, Lizzy hadn’t even made much progress at all in the last hour or so.
“Liz, you’re hopeless…”
Maria chuckled and said, “Lizzy was never good at this kind of thing. Her only redeeming quality is that boundless energy of hers and her charisma.”
“You said it. If it wasn’t because of that, our guild would’ve collapsed already. Luckily, her ‘boundless energy’ lets her power through all of the paperwork that she needs to do when we force her.”
“Well, now you guys can imagine how boring it is for me to run my country. It's great that I'm an Empress and all, but the responsibilities that come with being an Empress make me spend most of my time in the game just working at my desk in my palace… I rarely go out hunting or dungeon diving anymore…”
Hearing her say that, Lizzy curiously asked, “Is that right? Then how do you raise your level, Mary?”
Maria opened up her [Status] screen and opened up the description of her sub-class and shared it with her friends, “Fortunately enough, completing my work rewards me with EXP. It’s thanks to my [Blood Empress] subclass.”
Lizzy read through the description before saying, “I see…Man, I need a [Guild Leader] subclass! If I was rewarded with EXP for doing office work, I’d be doing it willingly! Staying in the guild building isn’t going to help me raise my levels!”
“Who knows, maybe you can get a subclass like that, no?”
“Hopefully! Maybe we should petition the devs to implement something like that… Being a guild leader is still hard work after all!”
"Well, the amount of EXP I get is still pretty little compared to killing monsters, but thankfully, my personal armies are able to go out and kill monsters for me! I literally have an AFK farming tactic, hahaha~"
"What? That's cheating!"
"No, it isn't~"
"How about we get back to work, yeah? Lizzy, you better start now or else you won't be able to go with us later to that place Mary promised to bring us in exchange for helping her," Amanda reminded.
"Ugh...fine..."
It wasn’t until a few hours later that Maria finished up with all of her work and then some with the help of her friends.
“Thanks a lot for today, guys. Usually, it’d take me even longer to complete all that,” Maria said as she thanked her friends while they ate some delicious snacks.
“Don’t mention it. That’s what friends are for,” Lizzy replied while stuffing her face with the snacks. She and Cali were having a competition to see who ate the most.
“Liz, stop influencing Cali with your bad habits. Do you think it’s healthy for a kid her age to be stuffing herself like you?” Emily said as she stopped Cali from going along with Lizzy’s antics.
“W-What? I just wanted to have fun with my little niece!”
“Then do something else!”
Once they had finished eating their snacks, Maria stood up and picked up Cali in her arms before saying to her friends, “Now that work is over, wanna go play around the city? I’ll give you guys a few tips as a reward for helping me out and then, we'll go to that place I said.”
“Finally, the goodies!” Lizzy exclaimed as she shot out of her seat and bolted towards the door.
Maria turned towards Ama and gave her a thick binder and said, “Ama, here’s the information that I was going to give you guys. You can look at it later if you want.”
Amanda opened up the binder and saw in the table of contents that there was information about all of the continent's hunting grounds along with detailed descriptions of the monsters, boss monsters, and available resources that could be found inside of them. They were categorized based on their levels which was a godsend as it would let Amanda plan the hunting and leveling strategy for their elite team.
“Oh, wow! Y-You’re okay with rewarding us with something like this? This information, you could sell it to information brokers for a lot of money!” Amanda exclaimed as she understood the value of the binder that was handed over to her.
“I already told you that I was going to give it to you guys, regardless of whether you helped me out with my work today or not. Just take it and get ahead of all the other guilds and players.”
“Thanks!”
“Anyway, let’s get going. There’s a lot of interesting things I want you guys to see around the city. Also, the place I want to take you guys is Heltania Undercity, which is sort of like a secret, so make sure you guys tell nobody! Even your guildmates!”