While Maria and her friends were exploring the Underworld in secret, the rest of the player base was still on the surface tackling the quests and monsters of the third main story planet, Vanhal. The players on Maria’s continent were having a blast at the moment. They had moved on from the villages after completing the quests and were now in the towns and cities.
Most of the players had moved to Heltania City because that was the first city they had seen after arriving on Vanhal, while others ventured elsewhere to see if they could find opportunities in the Dire’s other large settlements. They eventually found out about the Inns and Hotels’ EXP buff, which was pretty crazy in their opinion. They can just log out from the game and leave their in-game bodies resting inside of an inn and accumulate the buff before logging back in and immediately go grinding for EXP in the high-leveled areas.
The EXP rate booster card depreciated in value somewhat thanks to this feature, but the Item Drop rate booster card increased in value by a large degree because no one could find something that could grant the buff.
Despite the slight depreciation in value for the EXP rate booster card, the prices in the auction houses continued to rise because the players that had appeared on the Vanargand Continent weren’t able to obtain the buff normally by any means unless they went to the Dreyra Continent and completed the quests in the villages or rested in the inns and hotels of the cities and towns. Also, there were players still on the other worlds that wanted the item.
The Item Drop rate booster card blew up in the auction houses because it was a unique item that provided a unique buff that couldn’t be obtained by any method other than using the booster card itself.
If Maria could see just how much revenue her auction houses were obtaining from just the auctioning of these items, she’d be laughing and smiling in glee at all the gold that was pouring into her nation’s treasury, but it wasn’t only the auction houses that were generating an absurd amount of money for her. The inns and hotels were doing the same since business was currently booming after players found out about their effects, so she made the right move to hike up the prices of the hotels and inns before the players discovered them, so now, everyone thought the absurd price of 2,000 gold per hotel room and 1,000 gold per inn room was normal.
The prices were extremely high, but if players stayed together and split the price between them, it would be ‘cheap’ for everyone. An inn's room could hold 4 people while a hotel's room could hold 6 people. If they split the room's price, then it wouldn't be too harsh on their individual finances. Of course, no one would ever know that Maria–with Lilah's advice–had purposefully made the rooms so expensive because of her greed. She was indeed the Fallen Angel of Sin, but she was playing her role a little too perfectly, especially in this case.
Despite seeing that the prices for the rooms were really absurd, no one paid it any mind since the buffs were necessary and could be accumulated even when the players were logged out as long as they were staying inside of the room. This 'offline' benefit alone made many people on the forums recommend other players staying and logging out in a hotel or inn room even though they were extremely expensive.
The expensive part didn't really matter once players slowly got accustomed to things on the new planet. The Dire’s NPCs handed out highly rewarding quests and the monsters on Vanhal rewarded quite a bit of gold as well, so the players could always earn back the gold they expended from paying for a hotel room or inn room to accumulate the EXP buff. The real worry players had at first was leaving behind their game avatars in a room with other players.
Normally, when a player logged out, they could either do it inside or outside of a safe zone. Logging out inside a safe zone would make their virtual avatars disappear from the game and return to the virtual space's waiting room, essentially protecting it from any external harm since it would just be the avatar in there. However, logging out outside of a safe zone would expose a player's game avatar to harm since they wouldn't disappear from the game world.
Their avatars would enter an idle state and since they were still inside of the game, NPCs, monsters, and even players could do practicaly anything to them. NPCs would normally not do anything unless they were hostile, while monsters would normally just kill them, however, what they did wasn't really all that bad compared to what other players would do. There were already instances of other players stealing or even entrapping idling avatars that they found on the field.
At first, it was only done to troll other players for their stupid act of logging out in an unsafe zone, but after a short while, it became pretty much a career for some players to go around hunting for these idle avatars. These kinds of players were known as Crows and there was even an organization inside and outside of the game managing them.
The players were worried that some Crows might slip into their group or party when they checked into a hotel room or inn because in order to accumulate the EXP buff, the game charater's avatar had to be in the room, so players couldn't logout normally. The skepticism continued until finally, a player found out about the protection feature of the rooms.
Maria had already planned ahead and made every hotel and inn room inside of her Empire protected, so there was no need for any of the players to be wary when leaving behind their avatars in the game because if another player tried to steal or do anything untoward to their avatar's body while it was in idle mode and resting inside of the room, the system would immediately send her city or town guards to apprehend the perpetrator and send them into the slammer for a few days depending on the severity of the crime committed once it was confirmed by the system.
The players on Dreyra were prospering and having a blast with all of the highly rewarding quests and the great features that the Dire provided for them, but the players on Vanargand, however, were quite the opposite.
The Dire’s rival nation, the Vanargand continent's Lycan Kingdom, had rewards that were of much lower grade than what they were putting out and because of this, no one saw the appeal of joining the kingdom and completing their quest. Only those that knew that they didn’t have a future or weren’t willing to join the Dire because it was run by a player, stayed on the Vanargand Continent and joined the werewolves.
The players that saw an opportunity and knew about the better treatment the players were getting in the Dire wanted to move over to the Dreyra Continent, so they set their sights on clearing quests in the Dire colonies on Vanargand in hopes of getting a ticket and jumping on one of the ships that was bound for the Dire’s mainland. To name a few, Maria’s brothers, Gerard and Mikael, were one of them while the rest of Gerard’s guild, the Citadel, were also part of those that had stationed themselves in the Dire colonies on Vanargand and were giving their all to earn enough reputation in the Dire so that they could buy a ticket to Dreyra.
Speaking about Mikael, he was actually playing the game now and to Maria's surprise, he was able to venture to the planet she was on, Vanhal, the game's current frontline planet. Mikael's race was human and there wasn’t anything special about his character. If there was something that stood out, then it was definitely his character’s class, a Bard. It was a hybrid class that could work as a combat class and a lifestyle class.
Thanks to it being a hybrid class, Mikael was able to get to level 200 pretty quickly and meet the benchmark that allowed him to move to Vanhal along with the rest of the frontline players. Since he was in his Third Class Advancement of his bard class, he had become a Minstrel–more specifically, a battle-oriented Minstrel.
Most players that played hybrid classes tended to only dabble in the combat side of the class and mostly leaned on the lifestyle side. Mikael, however, was balancing it out, though he generally preferred fighting than to compose or sing poetry and songs in bars, inns, or on the street for some gold and skill proficiency. His weapon of choice for battling was a rapier, besides his unique weapon, the [Phantom Piano], which he could summon anytime he wanted. This was another unique thing about Mikael’s Minstrel character.
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Instead of choosing an instrument that was easy to bring around the battlefield, like a guitar, violin, a lute, or something similar to those, he instead chose the instrument he was extremely familiar with in real life, the piano. It wasn’t easy to bring such an instrument around on the battlefield, so when he started out, he brought his second instrument of choice, a violin. It was only after he achieved his Second Class Advancement and became an Elite Bard did he obtain a skill called [Musical Space] and was able to start bringing around a piano to the battlefield.
This was great and all, but with there being such a large instrument on the battlefield, he generally became the target of enemies–players and monsters alike–because he provided extremely powerful buffs thanks to his real-life skills that complimented and enhanced his class skills.
Since he always became a target, it was inevitable that sometimes his precious piano would be damaged. This always angered him, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Of course, he could always change to a different instrument, but he didn’t want to do that.
Due to his stubbornness, Mikael had to frequent the instrument repairing workshop back on planet Eur. There, he became very well-acquainted with the storekeeper and it was to the point where he even received a recommendation letter that let him enjoy discounts for repairing and tuning his instruments from any other instrument repairing workshop, be they on planet Eur or on any other Main Story planet.
On Gaia, he triggered an event that gave him a unique quest that eventually rewarded him with the unique ability [Phantom Projection] that allowed him to project one of his instruments as a phantom onto the material plane without physically bringing it with him. That’s where his unique instrument, the [Phantom Piano], came from. Thanks to the [Phantom Piano], Mikael no longer had to worry about his precious instrument being broken or damaged in battle, so he could use it with ease of mind.
His rather unique way of playing the game earned him a small following in Unitale because people thought he was a real-life celebrity playing the game in secret because of how he was incorporating his real-life musical talents in the game.
At the moment, Mikael and his brother, Gerard, had just completed a quest together when an NPC suddenly approached them.
“Excuse me, sirs.”
Mikael turned around to look at the NPC and noticed that the person seemed to be someone of great importance, judging from their attire. Gerard realized this too and quickly replied to the NPC, “Do you need something from us, mister?”
“You can call me Lyle. I am the administrator of this colony.”
“The administrator?”
“Yes.”
The colony’s administrator was surely someone who was extremely important and such an important figure had approached them without any rhyme or reason, so Gerard had two thoughts in his mind; this was either a good thing or a bad thing.
They triggered a hidden event that could help them or they did something bad without being aware of it and the administrator had personally come there to apprehend them. With that thought in mind, Gerard warily and carefully asked, “Sir Lyle–”
“Sir, you can just call me Lyle.”
“...Okay, Mr. Lyle. I’d like to know, but what could the administrator of the colony want with 2 adventurers like us?”
“Please wait a moment, sir. I will answer your question after I’ve confirmed something.”
Lyle took out a device from his coat pocket and turned it on. A magic projection of Gerard and Mikael’s faces was on it and this caused Gerard and Mikael to frown for a moment, but the frowns didn't last long. After confirming that the magic projections were indeed the two players in front of him, he then asked, “Are you two sirs perhaps, Gerard and Mikael?”
“..Yes, but did we do something wrong?”
Lyle’s eyes brightened as he said, “At long last we’ve found you both!”
He then quickly knelt down and took out a scroll from his bag and presented it to the two of them. Gerard’s guild members and the players around had been eavesdropping on the conversation when they heard that Lyle was the colony’s administrator. They were all shocked to see that that very administrator was kneeling before two players and presenting something to them.
“My Lords, this is a Royal Invitation from Her Majesty, the Empress. We hope that you will quickly accept it and board a ship to the mainland as soon as possible. Her Majesty is waiting for you both at the capital, Transylvania,” Lyle announced.
“Oh…okay?”
Gerard was shocked, but he took the scroll and once he did...
*DING*
You have acquired the Quest Item: The Blood Empress’s Invitation Letter
*DING*
Custom Quest: The Royal Invitation, has been generated!
Gerard and Mikael both received the quest and they skimmed through it before dismissing the quest window and opening up the invitation letter that their sister sent to them.
Hey Big Brothers, this letter is from your one and only, cute and beautiful, extremely amazing and awesome little sister–who is now an Empress by the way–Maria~
Reading the first line of the letter caused Gerard’s face to warp with an appalled look. There was no way this was a Royal Invitation, not with that cheesy and narcissistic opening line.
“...Do you think we raised her wrong?” Gerard said as he turned to his brother, who looked back at him with a confused face.
“What are you talking about? Is she not cute and amazing?”
“...”
“What?”
“You dote on her way too much.”
Gerald rolled his eyes and continued reading the letter.
I hope you both receive this invitation at the earliest date possible! The letter should give you both quick and easy access to one of the ships that’s heading back to Dreyra and, from there, you can take a carriage to Transylvania. The letter will let you each bring 10 people with you and…
…
…
…
His sister wrote quite a long letter, but the only important piece of information was their travel route and how many people they could bring with them using the invitation. The rest was all just hubris that Maria wrote which highly commended herself and all of her efforts in creating her Empire inside of the game. In short, it was just a long rant about Maria’s various exploits which Gerald only saw as her being very narcissistic.
The entire letter was a few pages long and it looked like it would take a while to read through it all, so they relocated to a private area at Lyle’s behest where Mikael read the entire thing on his own. Gerald, on the other hand, had long since given up on reading it after he found the most important points of the letter. This was just Maria’s way of trolling her older brothers, but Mikael didn’t get the intention behind it and just seriously read through every passage and quietly nodded at every one of Maria’s grand exploits.
“Our baby sister really is amazing,” Mikael said after reading all of the letter’s contents.
“Please don’t tell her that you’ve read everything in the letter. You’ll only encourage and entertain her!”