Maria’s brothers took a few days to get used to their new jobs, but the one who made the greatest strides was definitely Gerald. When his guild learned that he had been granted a dukedom from his sister, they went all out in developing their new territory.
Mikael lagged behind because he had no one to help him manage his territory, but when their father, Corinthos, heard about Maria becoming an Empress and being the only player to currently possess land that was quite literally a continent, he couldn’t help but see this as an opportunity to extend his business’s reach and influence into the game.
Recently, Corinthos had been paying more attention to the virtual world and the business aspects that could be developed in it as many of his rival companies and corporations were trying to extend their reach and influence into Unitale whose economy was slowly affecting the real world’s economy because many people's perception of it being a second-life and not just a game. The game has been out for almost 2 years now and the amount of players that played the game only continued to rise to the point where new servers had to be made and old ones had to be drastically improved to accommodate for them.
After all, what moved the world was the people itself and with so many people playing the game, it was no wonder why it started to have some degree of influence over the real world. Speaking about people, Corinthos knew his daughter very well and deduced that she was probably in need of more people to help her manage her large country since she played the game only to have fun and didn’t like all of that management business.
As to how she was able to suddenly own a country and become the only player in the game to currently be a nation's ruler was something he attributed to his daughter’s luck and diligence. Corinthos didn’t know that Maria was planning on taking over the entire planet of Vanhal, but if he did, he would definitely provide her with the necessary manpower from the real world to help her out because whatever Maria did in the game was going to be a good thing for her family in the real world.
This was very true considering that in their current day and age where the virtual world was slowly influencing the real world, anything that happened in the game could become a windfall for someone if they were lucky enough or if they were unlucky, plunge them into a crisis.
Thanks to the currency exchange system in Unitale, some countries around the world began treating Unitale’s Gold as real currency. Right now, the exchange rate for Unitale's Gold to the universally used real-world currency, the Dollar, was 10:1 and the value of the game's currency didn't show any signs of depreciating from its current standard. At first, it started out at an exchange rate of 100:1, but the game's currency value continued to increase until it stabilized at the current rate because players started buying in-game items and other in-game services using real-world currency at some point.
It was because of this that Unitale was slowly affecting the real world and why more people who weren’t even playing the game were paying more and more attention to it, with some taking the chance to dive into the game to check things out for themselves and inevitably being completely hooked by it.
With his daughter’s permission, Corinthos was able to tell his son, Mikael, to start preparing his land for their family’s business. Mikael had no other use for the land he obtained, so he didn’t mind handing it to his father’s people to manage. Unlike Gerard, he didn’t have a guild and was essentially a solo player. He was going to hand the management of his land to Gerard’s guild if necessary, but his father got to him first.
It would take a while for the people Corinthos sent into the game to arrive at Vanhal since they needed to start on Eur and work their way through the game’s storyline before arriving on Vanhal. Since he was a shareholder of the gaming company behind Unitale, he could've pulled some strings and gotten leveled accounts for his people, but Maria and Gerald both objected to that. If they used their connections like that, it could affect Maria's image if people found out and most importantly, pulling something like that would take out the fun from the game.
Sure, the people that Corinthos sent were there for business, but Unitale was still, in the end, a game–and a game was made with the intention for people to have fun. Maria believed that it was best if the people that her father sent went through the normal procedure like other players so that they could enjoy the game and not just go online thinking that it was just another day at work or something.
She wanted the people working under her to enjoy their work and not think that it was some kind of tedious activity and this earned her her father's approval. The process was going to be rather lengthy, but Gerald promised that he was going to have his guild help the people their father sent into the game with the leveling and quest-clearing to speed things up, so it wouldn't take them long to reach Vanhal and start working.
Maria never thought that her entire family would get involved with the development and management of her country, but she welcomed it because now, she had more time to play the game as she wanted instead of being holed up in her office looking through files and reports all day long.
The player situation on Dreyra had stabilized after a few weeks once the Dire's NPCs got used to them. The only place that hadn’t stabilized was the Vanargand Continent, which was now being contested by many player factions. The Lycan Kingdom had their hands full dealing with Maria’s invasion and now, on top of that, were the player factions that were encroaching their authority.
When she became aware of the situation on Vanargand, Maria saw it all as an opportunity. Some of the players wanted to try and copy her by building their own nation seeing that she was able to do it as a solo player. Many organizations that were backing these players thought that it wouldn’t be hard since there was a precedent in Maria, but they didn’t know that things wouldn’t go so smoothly for them.
Maria was lucky that her opposition on the Dreyra Continent had some internal problems and with her enemy’s own people helping her out, she was able to usurp the Blood Faction’s authority and take over the continent, establishing the Dire as the one sole power on it.
Her grip over Dreyra was so strong that no player faction could establish themselves on it, so they turned to Vanargand. Of course, the less ambitious player factions–mostly guilds and merchant organizations–decided to try and contact Maria to see if they could establish a deal with her so they could set up their bases and businesses on her continent. It was definitely better for them to strike a deal with Maria than to compete for power and land on Vanargand which had become a cesspool of conflict and schemes at this point.
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Thankfully, Maria was really open-minded about this and with Mikael's help, they were able to take in a few more guilds and some other trustworthy organizations into their fold by striking up some decent deals with them that benefited both parties. Since Maria was rather amiable and open-minded when it came to the players–despite still being extremely cautious when dealing with them–things on her continent proceeded rather smoothly and there were hardly any conflicts between the players and her NPCs.
Things were going well for her on Dreyra and as for things on Vanargand, she was currently waiting for the situation over there to become even more chaotic than it already was. Since so many players wanted to emulate her and try to establish their own power over there, the situation was extremely chaotic with players and NPCs not getting along so well, except for those that willingly chose to join the Lycan Kingdom, but even those players weren't really satisfied with their choice of a faction.
The players on Dreyra were going on about how great the Dire was on the game's forums that it made all the players that were on Vanargand and had chosen to side with the lycans and werewolves regret their choices. Some players wanted to switch sides and the only way to do that was through defection. In order to achieve that, they needed to lower their Reputation with the Lycan Kingdom until they were kicked out of the nation by the NPCs, so one could imagine what those regretful players were all doing right now.
Thanks to the players trying to switch sides and those that were ambitious enough to try and oppose the Lycan Kingdom by establishing their own powers like Maria, the situation on Vanargand was really chaotic and the chaos was only increasing as the days went by. However, while everyone was busy trying to do their own thing, the Dire was also eyeing things very closely and waiting for their opportunity.
If they hadn’t forgotten, Maria was already invading Vanargand. This was something everyone should know from the planet’s storyline notification when they arrived on Vanhal, but from the looks of things, a lot of people on Vanargand had forgotten about it or just ignored it.
Maria thought that they were being quite arrogant. The Dire wasn’t to be messed with and since she had already eyed Vanargand first, she wasn’t going to let anyone steal it from under her nose. For now, however, she was going to leave Vanargand alone for a while. Once the continent was thrown into even more chaos, only then would she act.
She also changed her plans a bit and instead of utterly destroying the Lycans, she was going to do something else by using the players that were wreaking havoc all over their continent.
“Hehehe, push the little doggies to the wall and after that, I’ll offer them my help in exchange for their servitude. If that doesn't work...well, it's never too late to restart the war, right? Hmhmhm~”
Serving as Maria’s subjects was definitely much better than being annihilated. It was likely that a few of the players who were trying to establish themselves on Vanargand had the same idea, but they didn’t know that Maria already had this idea from the start though she never acted upon it since the Lycans were so stubborn.
It was only recently that she revived this plan because of Vanargand’s current situation and the fact that a Lycan envoy had visited one of her Dire colonies and asked for a ceasefire, to which Maria readily agreed as long as her people were allowed to do business in their territories. She was going to show the lycans just how much better life would be for them if they decided to submit to her rule rather than be conquered by her or any other player faction.
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A few in-game months later inside of an office in the Heltania Imperial Palace, Maria was listening to a report from Ash updating her about the recent developments to the situation on Vanhal.
“The Lycans have allowed our people to enter their territories and the soldiers we disguised as adventurers and mercenaries are actively taking part in any territorial conflicts between them and the other players.”
“Good, so everything’s going as planned?”
“Yes.”
“How’s the Lycan King’s sentiment towards the Dire?”
“He sent his nephew here last time, so I’m sure he’s no longer as hostile as before. He still refuses to come here himself with the excuse that the continent’s current situation is too volatile for him to leave his post as King.”
Maria shrugged and said, “It’s to be expected. I don’t want to insist because he might think that we’re trying to lure him out of his home and blindside him later.”
“...Are we not going to do that, Your Majesty?” Ash asked.
When Maria heard Ash’s question, she frowned and glared at him before saying, “Are you an idiot, Ash?”
“Eh?”
“He’s going to become one of my subjects soon. How will I gain his absolute loyalty if I backstab him like that?”
“Oh…I assumed that Your Majesty would just subdue him in a battle of strength and force him to be loyal to you…”
Maria shook her head before replying, “That’s too much of a hassle. Besides, I’m busy exploring the Underworld, why would I waste my time on a meaningless fight like that?”
“I see. How goes the exploration anyway, Your Majesty?”
“Not too well. We’re still stuck on the Second Layer since we can’t find the Third Layer’s entrance.”
“Hmmm…”
“One thing’s for sure, the Underworld is connected to that hidden power that’s going to threaten us sooner or later. I won’t sit back and wait for it to come to us though.”
“Please rest assured, Your Majesty, the Dire is in good hands especially with the addition of those extremely competent people that Your Majesty has brought in, so please continue exploring the Underworld as you please.”
Thanks to the people that her father sent into the game to help her out, Maria was able to do as she pleased now since her hands were free. She had spent a majority of her time exploring the Underworld along with her friends and they discovered that the 3rd hidden power from Vanhal’s storyline quest had something to do with the Underworld. They were concealing themselves in the Underworld and since they could become a threat to Maria and her nation, she wasn’t going to just leave them be.