When Maria uttered those words, Gerald and Mikael along with the others in the room who were listening to their conversation immediately gaped at Maria in surprise, though her brothers were also glaring.

“Is she really your child, Mary?” Mikael asked with a rather peculiar look on his face.

“Answer us honestly, Mary. You’re a bad liar so we’ll know if you lie about it,” Gerald quipped angrily.

Gerald and Mikael squinted their eyes almost at the same time as they scrutinized Cali who was in Maria’s embrace. The resemblance was extremely uncanny and, as Maria’s brothers, both Gerald and Mikael could confirm that Cali looked exactly like their sister when she was still a child. Maria and Cali had just returned from the Underworld, so Cali was really tired at the moment and was falling in and out of sleep.

If she was awake, Cali would’ve started tearing up at her uncles’ scrutinizing glares and if that happened, Maria would’ve gotten extremely angry. If she went off on her angry fit, she might cause an accident if she were to hit her brothers.

Gerald might still be able to handle one of her punches, but Mikael’s odds were definitely iffy. As a hybrid class that leaned more towards the lifestyle side, he did have a large amount of VIT stats so that put his HP above most players, but just because he had a lot of HP didn’t mean he could tank one of Maria’s angry blows.

Maria would definitely try to control her strength, but who knows what could happen. In the worst case scenario, she might actually send her brother to the grave. Thankfully, Cali was asleep so her brothers avoided this scenario. She was a little confused by her brothers’ reactions, so she tilted her head and replied to their question, “Of course she’s my daughter. Can’t you two see that we look alike?”

“...” Mikael turned silent as his face darkened a little while Gerald’s eyes popped as he stuttered in reply, “I…I thought she was just a clone or something… She’s actually your kid?!”

“Duh? Why would I go around with a clone that looks like the child version of me?”

After replying to her brothers, Maria quickly shushed them because she didn’t want to wake Cali up.

“Wait here for a bit. I’m gonna go and tuck Cali in bed~”

“...So her name’s Cali, huh?”

“Yup!”

“Hold on.”

Before Maria could go, Mikael grabbed her shoulder and with some kind of otherworldly strength, managed to hold Maria in place.

“B-Brother?”

“Explanation. Now.”

“Eh?? Can’t we do it later?”

“No. Now.”

“Let me put Cali in bed first!”

“Now.”

“...Why are you being so stubborn?”

“...Now."

“...”

“...”

Maria and Mikael had a staring contest until finally, she gave up after seeing that her brother wasn’t going to relent any time soon. She walked over to the throne at the end of the hall and sat down on it before she began explaining to her two big brothers about Cali’s origins.

“So, she’s your weapon?” Gerald asked after the long explanation.

“Yeah.”

“That big demonic ax that you always carry around?”

“Yup.”

“...A weapon that can change into a humanoid form…neat! Looks like I’m an uncle now!”

After hearing the explanation, Gerald quickly gave in and accepted Cali as Maria’s child and his new status as an uncle. Mikael wasn’t any different. He only nodded in satisfaction after hearing Maria’s explanation and after knowing that she hadn’t done anything odd inside of the game, quickly accepted Cali as his niece.

“Jeez, you both are so weird. If Cali was awake, she’d be frightened by her uncles’ scary faces! What will you do if she starts hating you? Hmm?” Maria said with a pensive look.

Mikael cleared his throat and replied, “Well, if she really is your daughter, then we’ll know what to do if she was frightened by us.”

“Oh?”

“Anyway, why did you call for us? I’m sure you had a reason, right?”

“Of course, but first let me go put Cali in bed. I don’t want our discussion to wake her up.”

After Maria did that, she quickly returned to the Throne Hall and began her long explanation on why she wanted to quickly bring her brothers over to her nation.

“...So basically, you’re going to put us into high-ranking positions in your Empire and make us work, right?” Gerald said with a dull look on his face.

“Yup!”

“So, we’re just going to be free labor, huh?”

Mikael chopped his brother on the head and said, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Gerald. Maria said that she was going to employ us so that means she’s naturally going to give us some kind of payment or salary. Right, Mary?”

Maria looked away as she tried avoiding her eldest brother’s pressuring gaze until finally, she relented and said, “Fine, fine, I give! Tch, I was hoping you guys would work for free…”

The latter half of her words were nigh indiscernible as she said it in a whisper, but Gerald caught what she said and cried out, “See, what did I tell you, big bro?! She was going to make us work for free!”

“No she wasn’t. Isn’t that right, Mary?” Mikael replied to his brother before glaring at Maria who nodded reluctantly in response.

“Yeah, yeah…”

“She only changed her mind because you pressured her.”

“Ahem, I was only trying my luck. Who knows, maybe you guys would do it for me since I’m your little sis~”

“Even if you are, I wouldn’t work for you for free considering that you have an entire Empire backing you up!”

“Whatever! Anyway, here’s the employment contract that my subordinate drafted up for you guys,” Maria said as she sent her brothers a trade request to give them the physical contracts.

After receiving them, Mikael scrutinized every detail before nodding in satisfaction that it was extremely well thought out and actually pretty generous.

“Woah! You’re giving me and big bro Duke peerages?” Gerald asked.

Maria shrugged and replied, “Isn’t that a given? You’re my brothers after all, so you’ll naturally be treated as Dukes in my nation.”

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“...Then what about Father?”

“Huh? Papa plays too?” Maria asked in shock.

Mikael nodded and replied, “Just a little bit. He’s still on Eur though because he still hasn’t completed Eur’s Main Quest.”

“Oh…good. I don’t want Papa to come here.”

A mischievous look appeared on Gerald’s face after he saw the relieved look on his sister’s face after hearing that their father was still on the first planet. He began poking at her face as he asked, “What? You don’t want dad to see how much of a tyrant you’ve become? Hm?”

“What? No! It’s nothing like that!”

“Sure~”

“Tsk, enough about that! Are you going to accept the contract or not?”

Gerald stopped teasing her and replied, “Well, I’ll become a Duke in exchange for me and my guild’s services, so I don’t see what’s the problem. I accept.”

Mikael similarly nodded and said, “Me too.”

“Nice!”

Before the two signed the contracts, Mikael pointed to one specific clause and asked his sister, “It says we’re becoming Dukes so we'll be receiving our own plot of land, right? Can we do whatever we want in it?”

“Yeah, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t conflict with the Dire’s interests!” Maria answered.

“Okay, that sounds great, but what about the location?” Gerald quickly asked.

Maria turned to him and replied, “Since you’re my brothers, I’ll let you pick the land you guys want. There will be a few places that are restricted though. For further details, you can consult with my subordinate, Ash, at the capital.”

Mikael and Gerald knew who Ash was. He was the vampire that their sister would occasionally bring with her on her adventures. They also saw him appear in the IGC to save their sister when she was about to be done in by the boss monster she was fighting. Since his appearance, many people began paying attention to the NPCs in the game because from Maria’s example, they could be recruited.

Having a powerful NPC subordinate like Ash was something that made everyone in the game envious of Maria. It wasn’t easy for anyone to recruit a powerful NPC such as Ash as their subordinate so they wondered just how Maria did it. They wouldn’t be getting any answers from her though because Maria knew information such as that was extremely valuable and it was one of her advantages in the game other than the overpowered class, skills, and stats she had.

If this was Maria from before playing Unitale, she would’ve shared her knowledge if anyone asked, but over the course of playing the game, she learned how to be more prudent and thoughtful when making decisions. Withholding information such as this until someone eventually found out how she did it and the tricks behind it would work to her advantage in the long run because until they figured it out, she would be the only person with powerful subordinates such as Alexa, Ash, Carmilla, Elizabeth, and Raijuu.

She needed to keep this advantage to herself so that no one would be able to catch up to her. Once the players eventually found out how they were able to recruit powerful NPCs like Maria did, it wouldn’t be too late to sell the information that she had at a high price.

After Gerald and Mikael signed the contracts that Maria presented to them, she quickly clapped her hands to get their attention and said, “Alright, since we’re done here and you two have officially become Dukes of my nation, let’s head to the capital!”

“We’re going right now?” Gerald asked.

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, we just got here.”

“Big brothers can go sight-seeing next time. Going to the capital is more important!” Maria said with emphasis.

“No use arguing with her, Gerald. Let’s just go,” Mikael joined in on the conversation and said.

“Fine, but what about my friends?”

Maria looked at Gerald’s guildmates and tilted her head in wonder before saying, “What about them? They’re coming along as well, of course.”

“Eh? Oh…Okay.”

This was the capital of Maria’s nation so Gerald didn’t think that he’d be able to invite his friends so easily, but his sister already had this planned from the start.

“We’ll be taking the teleportation gate. Although it’d be cool to just ride a carriage over, but it takes way too long!”

Mikael, Gerald, and his guildmates followed after Maria out of the hall. Just before they left, Maria went and picked up Cali before they all moved together to the building that housed the teleportation gates. In order to use the gates, ordinary players needed to show a badge that they would get from the city’s adventurer guild that certifies their contributions to the nation before being allowed to use the gates.

Maria didn’t need it as the guards bowed to her and one of them showed her the way inside. The NPC showing the way, along with the ones they passed by, were extremely respectful to her and everyone following behind thought that it was a really strange sight even though they understood that such treatment was a given since she was the nation's Empress. They only thought that it was strange because they've never seen any NPC act so respectful–subservient even–to another player until now.

After all, it was usually the other way around. Normally, players were the ones trying to curry favor with the NPCs because they either wanted to recruit them into their service, get a random quest from them, or obtain some information about the area.

Once the group arrived at the large portal inside of the building that was shining with a pulsating blue light, Maria stopped and turned to her brothers along with the rest of the group before saying, “If you guys are wondering, Transylvania is a bit modern just like Heltania City, so don’t be too surprised~”

"At this point, I think there's nothing left for us to be surprised about!" Gerald shot back.

Mikael and the rest of the group nodded in agreement with his statement, but Maria only smirked in response before saying, "Well, we'll see about that! Anyway, let's go!"