After their break, Maria and her friends resumed their exploration of the Underworld. This time around, they had Morte and Calen accompanying them and, from his earlier scouting mission that Maria sent him on, Calen was able to confirm that there were no threats in the area around them. With no threats in the area, Maria decided that they should head deeper into the Underworld.
The [Tenebrious Embrace] blessing helped Maria out a lot in the perpetually dark environment of the Underworld. Whenever she moved into action, her friends would notice that a dark aura would always accompany her every movement and action.
The same went for the actions of her summoned beings, Calen and Morte. Maria could’ve made the exploration a whole lot easier if she just summoned her entire shadow puppet army, but her friends were against that because it would take away all of the fun from their adventure.
Due to that reasoning, Maria refrained from taking the easy way out and just went along with her friends’ whims. The Underworld did prevent her from summoning anyone to her side, but that was only if she had to summon them from a dimension or location that wasn’t physically attached to her body. Her shadow puppet army was always lying in wait inside of her shadow and, normally, her undead army was as well. However, at the moment, Maria’s undead army was stationed in the northern area of her continent along with half of her shadow army
The other half was inside of her shadow while Morte and Calen were inside of her necklace, the [Twilight Necklace], that allowed the storage of two undead familiars as one of its item effects.
Maria thought that their exploration past the 10-kilometer mark was rather uneventful. This was only because Maria had experienced hell the first time she went exploring on her own, so compared to that time, it really was ‘uneventful’.
They still faced a lot of underground monsters and sometimes ran into a few small groups of the Underworld’s humanoid species, but with her [Tenebrious Embrace] blessing, Maria was able to face them all pretty easily.
The buffs she gained from the blessing helped her immensely, as they made the high defense stats, resistance stats, and health bar of the Underworld’s creatures that normally made them very difficult to deal with, seem rather insignificant. Her friends wanted to acquire the blessing, but from what Maria experienced, they needed to endure the [Paranoia] debuff for a very long time before they could receive it.
She thought that it was risky and unreasonable to make her friends go through the kind of suffering she did, but Lizzy and the other 2 reasoned that if they didn’t acquire the blessing soon, then it would be really impossible for them to explore any deeper into the Underworld.
Maria had it easy with the blessing, but they struggled to keep up with her. Most of their attacks dealt very little damage to the Underworld’s creatures and the bulk of the damage was done by Maria. It was nice being carried and all, but they didn’t want to be a burden to her, so the only way they could properly help her was if they too acquired the blessing.
Since they wanted to get the blessing, they told Maria that it was best if they didn’t take a rest in a safe zone and let the environmental debuff stack until they were all afflicted with [Paranoia].
Maria was worried that if a monster horde came around and they were afflicted with numerous stacks of the [Paranoia] debuff, they could be wiped out. However, her friends believed that since she was around, they would definitely be safe from any harm.
In the worst case scenario, Maria could just summon her shadow army to help out. With that as insurance, Maria followed through with her friends’ plan and allowed them to be afflicted with [Paranoia].
Since she had been alone when she was afflicted with this debuff, Maria wasn’t able to see or feel how truly terrifying the debuff was. Her 3 friends all began to act psychotic and she was actually forced to summon her shadow army early on to prevent the 3 from scattering away.
They acted in a frenzy manner and began attacking everything around them, including their allies. It wasn’t until they got used to the effects and began to calm their minds to endure the stacking debuffs that were piling up on them did things begin to cool down a bit.
“Jeez, I didn’t think it was this bad…Was I like this as well?” Maria wondered.
If she had recorded herself back then, she would’ve found that her actions when the debuff first began to act were even worse than her 3 friends combined.
“Hey, you guys okay?”
Lizzy, Amanda, and Emily looked up at Maria with their eyes completely covered in some kind of murky shadow and respectively said with a lot of effort, “I-I think we’re…okay…now.”
“We can endure…t-the hallucinations…”
“Y-Yeah…eek!”
Seeing their bodies suddenly convulse and spasm, Maria thought that they were anything but okay right now.
“It doesn’t seem like it…”
“M-Mary…you endured t-this…d-don’t underestimate us…ugh…”
“W-We’ll get through this…as well…”
“Just…trust us…and wait…patiently.”
Maria scratched her head and nodded, “Okay…but just in case, I’m keeping you guys tied up. I don’t want any of you accidentally running away or anything…”
“T-That’s fine…”
She didn’t know how long they had to continue suffering before they obtained the blessing, but she remembered that there were more fearsome tribulations that were to come after the hallucinations and psychotic visions. While keeping a look out for her friends, Maria took care of any monsters that came their way.
“Strange, why the sudden increase in monsters rushing at us?” Maria wondered as she cut down a monster.
She turned to look at her friends whom she had tied up and saw that they were still enduring and shook her head, “Great. Why of all times did these monsters decide to show up?”
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Maria didn’t know this, but in the Underworld, there was a ‘wipe-out’ mechanism set in place that would be triggered when a player or NPC was afflicted with the [Paranoia] debuff. She didn’t notice this mechanism the first time around and she thought that she was just unlucky to constantly run into monsters as she was running around and enduring the effects of the [Paranoia] debuff.
This was one of the system’s designs to make obtaining the [Tenebrious Embrace] extremely hard or even nigh impossible for the players. Only the very lucky could get the blessing and Maria was one of those people.
With more and more monsters appearing in the area, Maria began to frown when she saw that her shadow army was slowly being pushed back. She didn’t know this, but the number of monsters that appeared scaled with the number of people that were afflicted with the [Paranoia] debuff.
If Maria knew about this, she wouldn’t have let her 3 friends simultaneously be afflicted with the debuff. Instead, she would’ve made them do it one by one so the number of monsters that appeared was on the lower side.
With there being 3 people suffering from the debuff huddled together in a single place, a lot of monsters were spawning in the area and rushing towards their direction. Maria had her work cut out for her this time around and she had to expend a lot of effort to keep all of the monsters at bay. Even though it was a lot of work, Maria welcomed it because now, things were interesting.
“This is more like it! Bring it on!”
Maria was flitting around the area with the weapon-transformed Cali in hand and supporting her shadow puppets who were acting as her meatshields. She obliterated any enemy that appeared as quickly as possible because more would soon replace them. With so many monsters being killed by her, Maria saw her EXP bar visibly begin to fill up. The EXP buff she had on her doubled the amount of EXP she would normally gain, so it wasn’t too long before her level rose.
*DING*
You have leveled up! 188 → 189! +25 Free Stat Points!
“Oh, yeah!!! This is great! Keep them coming!”
The monsters in the Underworld were a few tiers above the monsters on the surface, so they naturally rewarded a lot more EXP. Maria had forgotten her original intent on helping her friends obtain the [Tenebrious Embrace] blessing and just focused entirely on hunting the monsters that were rushing towards her.
*DING*
You have leveled up! 189 → 190! +25 Free Stat Points!
When the monsters stopped appearing, Maria had gained another level and reached level 190. She only needed another 10 levels before she reached level 200, which was going to be another milestone for her since her Third Class Advancement would be made available.
Once she obtained her Third Class Advancement, she’d be on the same level as the normal player base that had arrived on Vanhal who were on average above level 200 and had already gone through their Third Class Advancement.
Right now, she was currently walking the Path of the Divine and was a [Divine Vessel]. The Third Class Advancement would turn her into a Demi-God or something along those lines. Maria thought that it was a pity that the monsters had stopped appearing because if they kept on coming, she could’ve tried shooting for another level or two.
“I gained two levels, so this is fine…”
After checking her [Status] menu, Maria remembered that she was guarding her friends so she quickly turned around while saying, “I wonder if they’re done?”
She had strayed away from her original spot while fighting the monsters and when she arrived back where she was before, Maria saw that her friends were releasing themselves from the bonds that she had tied them up with as a black aura radiated from their bodies.
“You guys did it!” Maria exclaimed as she arrived next to them.
“Thankfully, we did. Where were you, Mary?” Lizzy quickly questioned.
Amanda similarly turned to her friend and chimed in, “We became deaf and blind from the debuff so we couldn’t hear or see anything. Did something come up?”
“No, not really. A monster horde appeared and I just went to take care of them.”
Emily noticed that her friend’s level had risen by two and she said, “Were there a lot? You raised your level from 188 to 190. That’s two levels!”
Her friends knew just how absurd the number of EXP she needed to gain a single level, so obtaining 2 levels in the ‘short’ time they had been under the effects of the [Paranoia] debuff was extremely surprising.
“There were definitely a lot, but I somehow managed to kill all of them with my shadow army. As you guys already know, the underground monsters give a lot more EXP than the surface monsters, so multiply it with my EXP buff, I gained a ton of EXP!”
“Nice, I guess you weren’t just idling around while waiting for us.”
“Yup. So, you guys got the blessing now, right? Shall we continue our adventure?”
“Yeah, let’s do it!”
“Alright, let’s go! But first,” Maria turned to her rather battered shadow army and raised her hand. “Come back.”
All of her shadow puppets began walking towards her and they merged back into her shadow. Once she put them all away, Maria and her friends rested for a while before continuing with their exploration of the Underworld. With their entire party having the [Tenebrious Embrace] blessing, they would surely have a better time exploring the Underworld together.