To make their exploration easier, Maria summoned her Shadow Army to her side and before parting ways with Lizzy and Emily, she attached her Undead Army to them. Since the Underworld barred any communication through the system’s chat in long ranges, they needed a better way to talk to each other and know of each other’s location.
Thankfully, Maria was able to handle that problem because she could see whatever her minions saw and relay messages through them. With this, they didn’t need to worry about communication. What they did have to worry about was that Lizzy was easily spooked by the Undead. She may be reckless and courageous, but whenever it came to things regarding horror, Lizzy was a scaredy-cat.
Emily was there and she wasn’t too bothered by Maria’s Undead. Of course, she was far removed from Maria who thought of her Undead minions as cute, but at the very least, it was better for them to have the Undead than her Shadows. Her Shadow Puppets were like ghosts and they creeped Lizzy out even more. The compromise was to have the Undead stick with them. Of course, other than just for communication, Maria wanted to raise her minions’ levels.
She couldn’t do it before because they were exploring the Second Layer, but since they would be only exploring the First Layer from here on out, it was the perfect time to train her minions. Plus, they no longer had to patrol around her nation anymore thanks to Gerald and Lizzy's guild helping out.
Maria’s strength wasn’t just based on her own character. Her armies were also part of her strength and if her minions became more powerful, then she would as well. It was a pity that she couldn’t bring her Imperial Army here. Unlike her minion army, her Imperial Army was made up of NPCs that could suffer permanent death if they were to fall in battle. It was too much of a risk to train them in the Underworld, so she left them behind at her Palace and handed them to Ash for training.
At least with him, their lives wouldn’t be in danger and they’d still get stronger. Maria wasn’t the type to treat the lives of the game's NPCs as trivial even though she didn’t hesitate in killing them despite treating them like normal humans if they weren't on her side.
“Lizzy’s always spooking herself out at the sight of my Undead minions…she even attacked one of them unintentionally…” Maria grumbled.
“Well, you can’t blame her. She isn’t good with those kinds of things after all,” Amanda replied.
“But my Undead aren’t as scary as the ones on TV! Besides, most of them are pale-looking humans or skeletons rather than grotesque zombies or anything…”
“Tell that to Lizzy, hehe.”
“Hnnngghh…”
Amanda patted her friend on the back and said, “It’d be worse if she was with your Shadow minions. You saw how she freaked out when they suddenly emerged from your shadow the last time…”
Recalling what happened a few days earlier when she first summoned her minions, Maria had a dark look on her face.
“She immediately attacked them with one of her most powerful skills out of fear, thinking that they were Underworld monsters…”
“...Yup.”
“...”
Maria sighed and scratched her head, “Well, I hope Lizzy gets used to them soon. She’ll be with them for as long as she explores the Underworld.”
“Yeah…but your army…they sure are handy,” Amanda said as she stared off into the pitch black.
Thanks to the Underworld’s blessing, she had obtained [Nightvision] and was able to see Maria’s Shadow Puppets slowly overwhelm an Underworld monster all by themselves. Even when one of them died, another would take its place as they slowly decimated a large beetle-like monster with their skills and magic spells.
“Can they infinitely respawn?” Amanda asked out of curiosity.
Maria nodded at her friend's question before clarifying, “As long as I have mana–or in my case, Divine Energy–they can respawn and regenerate indefinitely.”
“...Since your stats are so high and with those unique titles that make your battle regen very fast, it’s such a cheat. A lot of people would be pretty envious of your luck, Mary!”
“Compared to my luck, I’ve had way more unlucky encounters…”
Seeing her friend’s darkened face, Amanda could only imagine what kind of unlucky things she had to go through. It was definitely not easy for her friend to obtain the cheat-like strength she had now, so Amanda wasn’t going to demean her efforts.
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“Well, all the hardships and suffering you went through brought you to where you are now, Mary. There’s plenty of people out there who’d be jealous of your current power, but they wouldn’t know just how you got it…”
“Ugh, don’t even get me started. Although I may seem lucky, it was mostly because I was unlucky that I got all of this… No lady in their right mind would choose to have ghostly Shadow Puppets and gruesome Undead as their minions, right?”
“...Yeah, that’s true…but in your case, you find these scary beings ‘cute’...”
Maria shrugged and they continued on with their journey while making small talk like this. With the Shadow Army doing most of the work, exploring ahead and defeating monsters, Maria and Amanda didn’t have much to do except for constantly opening up their map and mapping out the area they passed through.
“One of my puppets found another chamber with an ore vein inside of it. Make sure to mark it on the map,” Maria said.
“Got it.”
Maria looked at her system window that showed her minions’ status and smiled happily when she saw that they were all growing rapidly. Their levels had increased and so did their stat limit. Their stats would be reflected off of Maria’s stats to a certain percentage, but there was a limit. In order to increase this limit, they needed to continue leveling up so they could make full use of Maria’s overpowered stats.
Thanks to her INT stat being the highest, the Shadow Puppets that were able to use mana in Maria’s Shadow Army were the deadliest–whether they be warriors or mages. Since mana was directly connected with aura, these Shadow Puppets had the potential to copy Maria’s [Aura Mastery] skill and use aura for themselves, greatly enhancing their overall destructive capabilities.
Only a few of Maria’s Shadow Puppets had displayed this potential, one of them being the Black Orc which was Maria’s first Shadow Puppet. Right now, that Shadow Puppet of hers was fighting against an Underworld monster alone by just relying on the [Aura Mastery] skill it had copied from its master.
Maria was keeping an eye on her Black Orc puppet because unlike her other puppets, this one was extremely hard to regenerate if it was destroyed. It would lose a lot of experience points when it died, so she needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
Her habit of speaking out loud to herself since she was always playing alone reared its head as she suddenly spoke up and asked to no one in particular, “Isn’t it fun watching your minions get stronger?”
Thinking that Maria was asking the question to her, Amanda replied, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have an army of minions at my beck and call.”
“Eh?”
At the unexpected answer, Maria turned her head to Amanda. She then held her chin while deep in thought.
“Hmmm…”
“What’s up, Mary?”
“I was just thinking, shouldn’t you and Lizzy raise an army?”
Amanda tilted her head at the question before replying, “Why would we need to do that?”
“I mean, it doesn’t have to be for yourself but for your guild, y’know?”
“Hmm,” Amanda thought that Maria made a good point, but she didn’t know if they filled the criteria to even establish one. “I don’t think we’ve met any of the conditions to establish an army of our own just yet.”
Maria knew about those conditions so she decided to lend them a helping hand, “When we get back, I’ll give Lizzy a peerage. I’ve already used up all my Duke slots, but I can give her a Marquis title and some land. Once you have those, you should be able to raise an army immediately!”
“You’ll do that for us? Thanks, Mary.”
“Of course! We’re friends so why wouldn’t I? Besides, you guys are already helping me out by sending some players to patrol the areas that my minion armies used to patrol. It's the least I could do.”
“...You say that but you obviously have something you want in return, right?” Amanda said as she stared at her friend’s dubious smile.
“E-Eh??? I was caught, huh?” Maria said as she stuck her tongue out.
“Please, you weren’t even trying to hide that you had an ulterior motive.”
She shrugged at her friend’s response before giving a bit of clarity, “I’m trying to expand my army, but I can’t do it alone. I need other people to help me out since there’s a limit to how much I can recruit.”
“Hm?”
“Big brother and Gerard are already helping out. Once they’re ready and the time is right, I’ll be launching a full-scale assault on Vanargand and completely conquer it!”