Today, Maria was back at Transylvania inspecting the changes that have been done since the past few days where she was absent as she and her friends were exploring the Underworld. As mentioned before, her father had sent people into the game a while back and they had more or less taken over the finer management of the Dire.
Naturally, they didn’t take over everything as Maria’s NPC subordinates were still the ones running things as a whole. They just helped them out and relieved Maria of all the tedious things she had to do on her end so she had time to spend doing things elsewhere. She would come back from time to time like today to inspect how things were going. Even though it was the people her father had sent, Maria still liked to keep an eye on how things progressed because seeing all the progress that was being made gave her a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
The players in her nation had all settled down and the ruckus from the initial phase of them arriving on Vanhal had passed. They were all just playing the game as they usually would–hunting, gathering, raiding dungeons, and so on.
Vanhal’s Main Story Quest would be brought up from time to time, but unlike on the other planets, the Main Story Quest on Vanhal still hadn’t moved past its first stage which most people thought was quite unusual.
Normally, the Main Story Quest would have progressed to its next stage by now, but ever since the players had arrived, the Main Story Quest remained stuck in its first stage–the stage where the players were still going around trying to find the quest giver from the hints they received upon arriving on the planet. Up until now, no one had found the quest giver that would initiate the next phase of the Main Story Quest, so many pioneering players began to grow impatient.
Many players revisited the planet’s introductory videos and the initial description the system gave when they first arrived on the planet. The only method that was left to the players was to directly go to the 2 Main Characters of the planet, the Lycan King of Vanargand and the Dire Empress of Dreyra.
In the past few days, many pioneers–as the regular players would call them–began posting on the game’s forums demanding that Maria step out and give them the quest to start the second phase of the Main Story Quest. Obviously, Maria had no obligation to do any of this, but with the players’ impatience running thin, their demands became more and more unreasonable by the day. A few of them wanted to start a motion of boycotting Maria’s Empire, but that would be pretty stupid of them.
The various services the Dire provided for the vast majority of the players was too good for anyone to pass up. Move to Vanargand? That was even more unlikely since the conditions on Vanargand were so much worse than on Dreyra.
Dreyra was practically heaven as compared to Vanargand which was, in this case, hell. If players wanted quality items, EXP-boosting services, and a safe place to level up, farm gold, and acquire equipment from the field, Dreyra was the best place because Vanargand was full of conflict. Players, monsters, and NPCs all hounded each other on the streets and fields while PK was very common there since the PK Alliance had set up their base there to fight for hegemony over the continent.
Boycotting Maria’s Empire was like telling the players to leave heaven and go struggle in hell, clearly not something any player would be willing to do. As for threatening the Dire’s Empress, that was even more stupid. Maria could tolerate insults and the like, but if someone began threatening her or those around her…well, that was just a terrible mistake on the offender’s part.
As the Queen of an entire continent, she could have that player hunted down and ‘deleted’ from the game as threats were her absolute bottom line. Maria was the type to exercise all of her power and throw her weight around if she could, so telling her that using her Empire’s power was unfair was probably not going to make her stop. Instead, it would only fuel her unreasonableness and make her do it even more while laughing at her enemy’s misfortune.
There were a few foolish and unfortunate souls that had threatened her on the forums and had been hunted down by her Shadow Army to the point where they had brought Maria’s tyranny on the forums. It didn’t faze her in any way and she continued to make those people’s lives difficult by making sure to lock them out of the game and not let them play. The game's Player Management team had to get involved but they couldn’t stop Maria from doing what she did.
She continued to have her Shadow Army do this to the marked players until they sent out a public apology to her. She readily accepted the apology, not caring if it was sincere or not. If they tried to take revenge against Maria by ambushing her when she was out on the field, that was even dumber than the threats they previously did.
Only a person living under a rock wouldn’t know that Maria was among the strongest of the hidden rankers in the game. No ordinary riff-raff could possibly threaten her and most of the powerful players wouldn’t even try to offend her by taking up bounties because that would be pretty stupid of them since she was the one providing the most help for most of the playerbase on Vanhal.
Maria’s cities and towns’ various facilities that helped players level up and hunt easily was something that couldn’t be ignored. Just the thought of not being able to use those anymore because they had offended her was something no one wanted to even think about. In the end, that small conflict ended there and no such revenge was carried out after the apologies were issued and Maria stopped her tyrannical act.
When the whole ordeal was over, only the players who started the ruckus incurred a loss while the rest of the world learned that even a cute girl like Maria had a dark side that she had no hesitation in showing.
Although Maria did gain some unwarranted hate and infamy from the whole ordeal, it couldn’t be helped because even if she could do something to help the players out with progressing the Main Story Quest, she unfortunately couldn’t. She had wanted to give her friends and family a head start on the Main Story’s second stage, but unfortunately, not even completing any of the quests she designated as side quests for the Main Story Quest was enough to trigger the system into giving them the next quest for the Main Story.
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Lizzy wanted to take advantage of her friend being one of the planet’s Main Characters to get ahead of the rest of the player base, but the system prevented that from happening. Since the nepotism wasn’t working, Maria and her friends pretty much figured out that she had no way of triggering the Main Story Quest on her own. Otherwise, she could’ve hogged all of the quest rewards.
Of course, since she was the planet’s Main Character, the Main Story Quest still revolved around her, but she just couldn’t participate in it as a normal player would. The player base was still dissatisfied but thankfully, the game’s upper management clarified things for Maria and released a statement that confirmed her friends’ findings. Although she was one of the planet’s Main Characters, she couldn’t manually trigger the planet’s Main Story Quest.
Only the system could trigger the Main Story Quest and since the quest still hadn’t progressed to the 2nd stage, it only meant that the players still hadn’t fulfilled the system’s criteria for triggering the next stage.
Maria didn’t release any kind of statement before because she couldn’t confirm those things on her end. She may or may not have that kind of power and even if she tried to tell the truth, the players probably still wouldn’t believe her and think otherwise.
Fortunately the game’s management stepped in, but honestly, even they were having headaches on their end and all of it was because of Maria. A player shouldn’t even be involved in the set up of the game’s Main Story, but because of her fortuitous opportunity in the early stages of the game, she was able to somehow become deeply involved.
These events happened a few days ago and now things have settled down for the better. Maria went back to doing whatever she wanted to do while the players continued to complete any quests they found on both Dreyra and Vanargand in hopes of finding or even triggering the Main Story Quest’s next stage.
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“Well, that concludes my inspection. I’ll be leaving for the Undercity now. Make sure you keep an eye on things for me here, Ash.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Ash replied with a bow.
Lately, he hasn’t been able to move around much with his beloved Empress as he was relegated to doing desk work for the Dire. Ash missed the good old days when he was always by Maria’s side, adventuring and fighting alongside her, but times have changed and he has other duties to fulfill now.
Seeing that his Empress was about to leave again, Ash whistled and called out his vampire familiar, which was, unsurprisingly, a vampiric bat whose name was Va’an. Va’an was a rather peculiar vampire familiar as he wasn’t a battle familiar. Instead, he was a support type but this was reasonable since Ash didn’t need a battle familiar. He contracted with Va’an because the familiar had a unique doppelganger and shapeshift ability that made him pretty handy in different kinds of ways.
Ash snapped his fingers and changed his familiar into a beautiful, red-colored bat-shaped hairpin which he placed on Maria’s head. Usually, Maria would’ve smacked his hand away, but she allowed him to do this every time they parted ways.
“As usual, I’ve attached one of my familiar’s clones to you, Your Majesty. I’ll let you know immediately if there’s anything that comes up which needs your attention.”
The hairpin-shaped familiar clone acted as a communication device. Normally, she didn’t need a communication device if she wanted to talk to one of her direct subordinates, but since she was going to the Underworld where any form of direct mental communication was disabled, she needed one. The familiar worked only because it was a clone of a different familiar and they shared their senses with each other, so it was possible to communicate through them even in the Underworld.
Maria didn’t know this, but on top of being a handy communication device, Va’an also acted as a tracking device. Of course, Ash didn’t tell her about the latter function because he didn’t want to be beaten.
Ash placed a tracking device on his Empress because it was something Mikael had instructed him to do. The Underworld was a dangerous place and after hearing that she had been trapped there 2 times already, Mikael wanted to put some measures to keep something like that from happening again.
An external communication device and a tracker was just the thing. Ash didn’t see any reason to refute his Master’s brother, so he readily went along with it since it was a really good suggestion. This way, if Maria was to ever get lost again in the Underworld, they’d be able to find her location immediately and rush down to rescue her, and with Maria being none the wiser, she didn’t mind keeping Ash’s gift with her. It was nice too since she could complain to him whenever she wanted if she felt frustrated inside of the Underworld.
“Mhm, I’m leaving then.”
“May fortune favor your adventure, Your Majesty.”
Maria nodded before spreading her wings for takeoff. Just before she left, she turned to Ash and said, “Things have become a bit boring lately. I hope something interesting happens soon.”
Ash began to sweat when he heard that and replied frantically, “L-Let’s not hope for that just yet, Your Majesty. A calm environment is always better for the development of your nation!”
“But I'm kinda bored…”
“Please just be patient for now. I’m sure more fun things will happen in the future, but not any time too soon. The Dire’s development has been smooth sailing until now and it’s best if we keep it that way.”
“Ugh, fine. Then how about this, instead of something interesting happening on our continent, I’ll hope for something interesting to happen on Vanargand!”
“That…well, I guess that’s fine.”
“Make sure to tell me if anything does happen! I want to get in on the action!”
“...Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Okay, bye now!”
Leaving behind those words, Maria took off and left her Imperial Palace. Ash had a bad feeling after hearing her words so he quickly rushed out of Maria’s office and began telling his underlings to prepare. Usually, whenever his Empress wished for something to happen, something would definitely happen. He needed to make sure his people were well-prepared for when it comes.