Name: Tenebrious Embrace Rank: A Type: Passive Effect 1: In the dark, all stats increase by 20% and you become immune to all mental-poisoning effects and debuffs. Any debuff will have its effectiveness and duration cut in half the moment you step into the darkness.

Effect 2: All spells and abilities that use the Dark-Element increase in effectiveness and strength by 50% while in the dark.

Effect 3: All stealth-type abilities will increase by 100% in effectiveness while in the dark. DMG dealt from the first strike after breaking out of stealth is increased by 200%.

Effect 4: Any entity that you summon which is of the Dark-Element will have its stats increased by 50% and the other effects of the blessing will be shared with your summoned entities. Description: You are a child that is loved by the darkness. Tenebrae, the Goddess of Eternal Darkness, has granted you her blessing after witnessing your struggles to adapt and become one with the darkness.

After reading through the description, Lizzy’s eyes widened in surprise after seeing all of the effects the blessing gave as she exclaimed, “What the heck? This is such an overpowered blessing!”

“I know, right? It only activates when I’m in the dark though,” Maria said.

“That doesn’t matter, because while we’re in the Underworld, we’re practically in perpetual darkness anyway. It’s too bad that you’re not an assassin, thief, or rogue class player. Otherwise, you’d be completely overpowered while in the dark,” Emily replied to her friend’s statement.

Lizzy nodded and quickly chimed in, “Right? Thankfully, Maria isn’t one or else she’d practically break the balance of the game!”

“Not like she already hasn’t,” Amanda said with a wry smile before adding, “Take a look at the last effect. It increases the stats of summoned entities by 50% and shares the blessing’s other effects. We all know that Maria has an army of shadows so…”

“Ah, that’s right!”

Maria smiled and summoned her strongest shadow puppet, the Black Orc. The empty darkness behind Maria began to smolder like a flame as the shadow puppet materialized into existence. It looked much more menacing and the presence it released was much more powerful than normal.

“...Dang. I’m glad that you’re on our side, Mary. I don’t think I’d want to fight that…”

“Or any other one of her shadow puppets that can benefit from the [Tenebrious Embrace] buff.”

Emily nodded at Amanda’s words and said, “If Mary summons a shadow puppet that has an assassin or rogue class, she might as well be enjoying the blessing’s third effect, even if it’s only second-hand.”

Maria scratched her cheek before saying, “Well, my shadow puppets can’t use any abilities, so they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the third effect.”

“Oh…”

“What a pity…”

“But my rogue-class undead can!”

All 3 of Maria’s friends stopped for a moment as they began to process her words. Lizzy was the first one to speak up and voice her confusion.

“Excuse me, Mary. What did you say? Your undead?”

“Yeah! Here’s my strongest undead that fits into the rogue-class category. Come, Calen.”

The necklace around Maria’s neck began to shine and a dark portal opened up behind her and from it, a gray-skinned man with disheveled hair and red eyes walked out. He immediately kneeled behind Maria and asked, “You called for me, Master?”

“Wait there for now.”

“Yes, Master.”

Calen replied as such and simply remained as he was, kneeling on the ground behind her without moving a single inch from his spot like a stone statue. Maria’s friends couldn’t believe what they saw. They all knew about her ability to summon shadow puppets, but they never knew about her being able to use a Necromancer’s abilities.

The aura that Calen was exuding was undoubtedly that of a high-ranking undead and they couldn't understand how Maria was able to summon and control such a being. Then they remembered that she was previously the God of Death’s champion.

“Was it because you were previously the God of Death’s champion that you’re able to use a Necromancer’s abilities?” Amanda asked.

“Something like that. I was given a unique ability after completing the first half of my class advancement quest. It’s only natural that I can utilize the dead since I was Death’s champion after all,” Maria said before adding, “Remember that it was because of me that the necromancer class became available in the first place.”

“That’s true…Knowing you, I bet you extorted this ability from Death before you kicked him to the curb,” Emily said with a knowing smile.

“N-No, I didn’t! He just gave it to me! What are you talking about?!”

From her reaction, her friends could see that she was guilty. Maria did in fact receive the reward not by her own request, but what she did afterwards once she had built up her undead army on that unnamed planet made the latter part of Emily’s statement undeniably true.

Lizzy patted Maria on the shoulder and raised a thumb at her before saying, “Good job, Mary.”

Her other friends quickly began reprimanding Lizzy because they didn’t want her encouraging Maria’s bad behavior. Everything was fine and all because they understood where Maria was coming from and why she decided to abandon Death after taking away all of the benefits she could get before leaving. If an outsider heard about this, they’d only see it as Maria exploiting the poor god and kicking him to the curb after she had finished using him. They’d view Maria in a bad light and that was something her friends didn’t want.

“I-I’m sorry…stop bashing me already, jeez,” Lizzy complained to her two friends.

“Tsk, don’t encourage Mary, alright? We 3 can understand why she did it, but others can’t. We don’t want our friend to have a bad reputation. She’s also an Empress now, so she has to have a squeaky clean image,” Amanda said. “We have to think about the future. Mary’s bound to start recruiting players into her Empire, so we need to keep that kind of information hidden. Besides, it’s not like you’ll do it again, right Mary?”

“Eh? No, of course not. I’ve always wanted to release myself from Death’s influence, ever since he started giving me all of those unreasonable quests. The matter of exploiting him only came through chance and it wasn’t like I had planned any of it,” Maria explained.

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After talking for a bit longer, the dwarves that had come as part of the expedition team informed Maria that they had finished creating her and her friends’ temporary quarters, so they moved over there.

Maria ordered Calen to scout the area around them as she summoned Morte from her necklace to go on patrol. Her friends were quite surprised when they saw the large Skeleton King appear. It was the first time they ever saw such an undead because, from their knowledge, the strongest necromancer didn’t even have anything like Morte. They realized quite late the fact that the two undead Maria summoned were named undead and this shocked them even more.

She explained to the 3 that Morte was a Skeleton King while Calen was a Lifestealer. Both of them were undead that no one in the game knew about at the moment. The currently known strongest undead that was controlled by a Necromancer player was a Lich, but Maria told her friends that she had a Nether Lich, the evolved version of a normal Lich.

The girls were going to take a break for now to stave off the accumulated debuffs from the Underworld, so they were in their normal clothes inside of their temporary lodgings.

Curious as she was, Emily naturally wanted to know about the information regarding the new undead that Maria introduced to them, so she asked, “Can you tell me about your new undead, Mary? I wanna start with the Nether Lich because I can kind of guess what the other two are from just their names.”

“It’s an evolved Lich. It’s much more powerful than a normal Lich and, instead of being a bag of bones, it takes on a practically human appearance, except that it’s dead and all,” Maria explained before going into the details. She then started talking about her Skeleton King and Lifestealer.

After the lengthy explanation that went into the details of her two undead, Maria stretched her body and laid down on her bed while saying, “I only brought Morte and Calen with me today, while Velinda, my Nether Lich, is currently in charge of my undead legion that’s patrolling the northern parts of the continent.”

“All 3 of them are named undead, huh? That’s pretty surprising.”

“I also have a normal Lich. He is a named undead as well, but I kind of got lucky with him. During my last quest involving Death, I accidentally stumbled on an old tomb that had a crazy mage buried in it. The mage's name was Kel’thuras and when I decided to raise his corpse into one of my undead mages after Velinda advised me to, he actually became a lich instead of an ordinary undead mage.”

"Seems like your Nether Lich knew that something like that would happen," Lizzy said as she moved next to her friend, wrapped her arms around her waist and hugged her before continuing, “Has it become a habit for you to surprise us, Mary?”

“I just like keeping a few things a secret. Besides, it’s not like you guys are with me every day, so it’s natural that you wouldn’t know about everything I do.”

“True~”

Amanda finished writing something in a thick magical tome and asked, “When can we start exploring again?”

“The debuffs stack every hour. If you get around 5 or 6 stacks without resting in a proper haven, the [Fear] debuff will start to become a bit unbearable and after 15 stacks, [Fear] will upgrade to [Paranoia]. That’s when things truly begin to suck…”

“Ah, speaking about that. I’ve been meaning to ask, but how did you get the [Tenebrious Embrace] blessing?”

Maria’s face turned a bit dark as she remained silent, “...”

“Ah…”

“Oh…”

“...”

Amanda and the others didn’t need a verbal explanation from her. They already got their answer just from Maria’s silence. Lizzy, who was hugging Maria, immediately began patting her friend’s head as she said, “You suffered quite a lot, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“Look on the bright side though, you got the blessing AND you fixed your disability to read maps!”

"Is that even a disability?" Emily wondered, while Maria dejectedly sighed.

“I had to suffer before learning how to read a map…”

“I know, but cheer up~”

Lizzy’s hands began to wander and they eventually reached her friend's abundant chest. Still feeling a bit down, Maria didn’t realize that Lizzy was groping them until she began feeling uncomfortable. When she looked down and saw what was happening, she mechanically turned towards her friend and asked, “Hey, Liz. I thought you were comforting me, but how come you’re sexually harassing me now?”

“What? No, I’m not~”

“Then what the heck is this?!” Maria pointed to her friend’s two hands that were fondling her boobs. Even after being called out, Lizzy continued to shamelessly grope her.

“Isn’t this a good time for us to bond? I’m just giving you a little bit of skinship~”

Emily shook her head before turning away and saying, “Idiot.”

“That’s definitely sexual harassment. You have our permission to hit her if you want, Mary,” Amanda only gave the two a fleeting glance before turning back to her book after telling Maria to punish Lizzy.

“I definitely will!”

Lizzy quickly retrieved her hands as she raised them in surrender and tried to apologize, “W-Wait, please forgi–”

“Nope!”

Lizzy raised a horrible cry which echoed loudly through the Underworld. In a newly established settlement of an underground humanoid race a kilometer away from Maria’s base, all of the inhabitants turned towards the direction where the cry originated from and the chieftain of the settlement began speaking to his people in grunts and growls.

All of the people in the settlement began packing up their belongings as they began moving away from their current location after their chieftain spoke. All of the humanoid races of the Underworld were actually nomadic, so they constantly moved their homes in accordance to the movement cycles of the Underworld’s terrifying monsters.

The chieftain thought that Lizzy’s horrific cry had come from one of their scouts, so thinking that one of their own had been killed by a monster, the chieftain decisively chose to relocate their settlement. Back at Maria’s base, Lizzy was on her knees and repenting for her actions.

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

"Hmph! You stay like that through this entire break!"

"You had this one coming, Liz."

"...Idiot."

"I'm sorry..."

None of them knew that her horrific cry had actually saved their exploration team the trouble of confronting one of the humanoid tribes of the underworld.