With Maria’s letter, Gerald and Mikael could now move to the Dreyra Continent without the need to continue doing quests to raise their favorability and reputation with the Dire’s NPCs. They weren’t the only ones who received the letter as Maria had sent a summons to Sky and her friends along with Lilith and her party, but the Dire’s NPCs were still looking for them at the moment.
Once they had gathered everyone, only then would the private ship Maria had chartered for them head towards Dreyra. Despite receiving a summons from Maria, only Gerald and Mikael had received a royal summons to Transylvania. The others only had summons that permitted them immediate access to Heltania City. If they wanted to get to Transylvania, they needed to raise their favorability and reputation with the Dire just like all the other players.
Gerald and Mikael received a shortcut but they didn’t know this. Maria was giving her brothers the benefit of being a royal member of the DIre’s Imperial Family, but it came at a cost. She specifically asked for them because she wanted to put their abilities to use. She didn’t know what to do with Gerald, but she certainly knew what to do with Mikael’s abilities. She planned on exploiting her brother’s real-life abilities and putting him to work in her country.
Exploitation was a harsh word, but Maria was going to butter up to her big brother and ask him to help her out. She wasn’t going to force him if he didn’t want to, however, Maria knew that her eldest brother had a soft spot for her, so if she begged and acted spoiled for a little bit in front of him, he would definitely cave into her demands. Naturally, she was going to reward her brother for his work. Maria wasn’t going to turn him into some kind of slave or anything. It wouldn’t be very nice of her if she did that to her favorite big brother who constantly spoiled her at home.
Since they still needed to wait for the others that Maria had summoned to gather, Gerald and Mikael decided to spend the rest of their time on the Vanargand Continent hunting monsters. Gerald had already selected which people he would be bringing over with him from the quota that Maria had provided for him and Mikael did the same as well. He had his own small party of people that he normally played with and they were surprised when they saw him being escorted away by the Dire colony’s guards.
Mikael’s friends thought the worst at first, but when they found out that their friend was actually the older brother of the Dire’s famous Empress, they were all quite surprised. Mikael had kept it a secret and he rarely talked about himself, so he was a very mysterious character in their group. It was quite a pleasant surprise and, after hearing that they could relocate to the Dreyra Continent immediately, everyone welcomed it since they had been playing in the Dire Colony for the specific reason of moving to the Dire’s mainland.
They believed that it was easier to develop over there than on the Vanargand Continent. This belief was strengthened even more so after hearing that the famous Blood Empress was Mikael’s little sister. The Vanargand Continent was already being contested by various large player organizations who didn’t want to be entangled with the behemoth known as the Dire, so a small group like theirs would be better off in a more stable and less turbulent land.
The Vanargand Continent was going to be embroiled in a bigger conflict soon once the player organizations completely established themselves, whether it was independently or with the Lycan Kingdom. The Dire was already meddling with the Vanargand Continent as well, and a large majority of the regular player base believed that the Dire would become the winner by the end of it all, since the introductory description of Vanhal pointed towards them winning.
A player was also in control of the Dire, so the story progression was definitely going to be unpredictable. If the Blood Empress was an NPC that followed a script, then the players could somewhat predict the direction of how Vanhal’s story would progress and influence it with their actions, moving events toward a direction that would benefit them, but since the Blood Empress was Maria–a player–everything was up in the air at this point. She had a history of derailing many people’s plans in the past, so most of the very well-known and ambitious players, like Eos, Arthur, and the others, were extremely wary of her.
On planet Gaia, she had screwed practically everyone over when she pushed forward the Goddess Faction and dismantled the other two factions, the Celestial Order and the Pantheon. With a person like her at the helm of the Dire, there was just no space for ambitious players like Eos and the others on the Dreyra Continent. Things were different for them in Vanargand, so they believed that they had a chance to establish themselves there.
The Lycan King had already made himself and his actions known the moment the players arrived on Vanargand, and he wanted to repel the continent’s invaders, which were naturally Maria’s forces. Since they shared a common enemy, the players that weren’t too keen on siding with Maria and her Dire decided to test their luck on the werewolves’ continent. The Lycan Kingdom had only a few settlements in its territory and the capital city was made accessible to all of the players the moment they arrived and completed a simple introductory quest.
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The Dire had something similar, with the only difference being that the Dire’s capital city, Transylvania, was inaccessible to the players at the moment because their contribution, favorability with the NPCs, and faction reputation weren’t high enough to meet the requirement to enter the city. None of the players had ever gone there and that was where the Blood Empress resided, so no one among the players based on Vanhal had seen Maria, the Dire’s ruler.
Everyone knew of Maria’s identity as the famous Switch Streamer and the reputably powerful player she was due to her IGC debut, but her identity as the Dire’s Blood Empress remained shrouded in mystery. With her acting so mysteriously, no one could predict her actions, but what everyone did know was that Maria had the intention of taking over the Vanargand Continent.
The Vanargand Continent wasn’t united like the Dreyra Continent, so Eos, Arthur, Caedes, and the other more ambitious guild leaders wanted to take a slice of the continent and call it their own faction. It was pretty ambitious of them to do that instead of allying and working under the Lycan King, but they had their own plans. However, it was foolish of them to believe that their plans could stop Maria, who had been anticipating their arrival since the first day she had established her nation.
The Lycan King also wasn’t going to let some random faction threatening his hegemony over the continent develop in his backyard. He’d likely make a move even before Maria did anything, so for now, Maria and her people were more focused on stabilizing the players’ situations. Once the players were settled, only then would Maria turn her nation’s sights back to conquering Vanargand.
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A few in-game days later, inside a pub in the Dire’s colony on Vanargand, Mikael and his party members had gathered together and were talking about Mikael’s status as the older brother of the Dire’s Blood Empress.
“So, Mikael, when were you going to tell us that you were the Blood Empress’s older brother?” The leader of Mikael’s party asked.
The leader was actually a young lady whose in-game name was Saratasha. Her character’s race was a High Elf and she played as a ranged damage dealer, the Sniper, which was the Third Class Advancement for the Archer class. Mikael’s party was just a party of casual players who happened to be pretty high-leveled and, since they were just casuals, none of them had any hidden or rare classes.
Mikael looked at his leader and replied, “If one of you asked if I was Maria’s older brother, then I would’ve answered truthfully. It’s just that no one’s ever asked me that question until it was revealed a few days ago. Also, why did it take so long for you to even ask?”
“Well, it’s not like any of us would’ve just randomly come up to you and asked such a question. No one in their right mind would!”
“Right? So if that day's events didn’t happen, then I would’ve kept silent about it because nobody asked.”
“Fine. That’s fair enough.”
After the leader, the others began their inquiries. Mikael answered them all as best he could, as long as the answers weren’t anything too sensitive and remained within the confines of the game. Any IRL-related questions were ignored.
“So, you never knew about what your sister was doing until you saw the third planet’s promotional video?”
“Yeah, I’m a rather busy person IRL and over dinner, my sister rarely shares anything she does in the game, so I’ve been kept in the dark. Perhaps my younger brother knows something about it, but I highly doubt it since Maria confides with me more than she does with him.”
“And that brother of yours is Gerald, the Guildmaster of the Citadel Guild. All your siblings are pretty famous people!”
“Mhm, that they are.”
“Don’t you feel a little jealous?”
“Jealous? Heavens no. I only feel extremely proud of them. I’m just glad that they’re having fun.”
Mikael and his group continued to chit-chat in the bar until Gerald finally gave Mikael a call and told him that the rest of Maria’s friends had finally gathered and they could set off for the Dreyra Continent any time they were ready. It took a while for the Dire’s NPCs to track down Maria’s friends, since they had to carefully search the continent for their whereabouts and confirm whether the people they found were really Maria’s friends or not.
Once they found them and made sure that they were indeed the people that Maria referred to as her friends, they gathered them at the colony where their private ship was waiting for them so now, they could depart for the Dreyra Continent. Not everyone in Gerald’s guild was able to follow him to the Dreyra Continent at the moment, so they needed to continue completing quests and raising their contribution, favorability, and reputation levels with the Dire to earn the ticket for their trip to the country’s mainland.
It was a bummer for Gerald and his guildies, but he was going to ask Maria if she could do something about it once he got to the Dreyra Continent and met up with her. The person in question, however, was still busy exploring the Underworld with her friends. Maria and her expedition group had finally crossed the 20-kilometer mark and things had taken quite an interesting twist for them.