A week later, Maria and her friends were still exploring and mapping out the First Layer of the Underground when they heard the big news from the surface.
“What? An all-out war broke out in Vanargand?” Lizzy exclaimed in surprise after hearing about it from Maria.
Maria nodded at her friend’s surprised question and explained, “Yeah, apparently a massive war broke out between the various factions vying for power in Vanargand and the PK Alliance.”
“The PK Alliance? I’ve been hearing more and more about them lately, but the news about them isn’t anything good,” Amanda said.
Maria continued reading the message her brother sent her and informed her friends, “The war broke out because the various guilds and factions on Vanargand found out that some of the forces of the PK Alliance were doing some really messed up stuff like enslaving other players and holding their accounts hostage, plus some other stuff...here read it yourselves.”
She sent the report that she had obtained from her brother and her friends quickly read through it. They frowned after reading through some of the heinous things the PK Alliance were doing. Not everything on that list was confirmed, but the ones that were involved taking regular players' accounts hostage by spawn-camping them, coercing unfortunate players into signing system-contracts that were practically slave contracts, and even some IRL dealings which was definitely illegal.
The others that weren't confirmed were even more heinous and completely illegal. The forums were blowing up with threads exposing the PK Alliance's crimes and some anonymous user was leaking chat records and some videos documenting the crimes.
Previously, the players that were affected by the PK Alliance's crimes didn't dare to post anything on the forums or write complaints to the game company because they were being threatened, but after the anonymous player aired out the PK Alliance's dirty laundry, those affected players started coming out and exposing even more of their crimes. Some even started calling out the IDs of the specific players that had tyrannized them inside of the game.
Emily was sitting next to Maria and she frowned after reading what her friend gave to her and said, completely appalled, “Woah, all of these allegations are pretty messed up.”
“It sure is… I didn’t think that lunatic woman would be that crazy…” Maria said with a frown.
By lunatic woman, Maria naturally meant Hecate, but what she didn't know was that enemy of hers was actually the one spear-heading the war against the PK Alliance.
“I wonder what the devs will do?” Amanda wondered out loud. “This is definitely going to be a stain on their game’s name and reputation. All of the confirmed things here are really bad. Not to mention that some of the unconfirmed things are completely illegal...”
“It’s not like they can just stop them. The game has an unbelievable degree of freedom and the devs can’t directly interfere with what the players are doing in the game. Only the main AI can, though in this case, it might actually take action,” Lizzy pointed out. "The game's AI is constantly monitoring the players, and the devs confirmed that if anything illegal was done, the AI would boot and ban the player or players that committed the crime. Though that begs the question, how did the players from the PK Alliance manage to circumvent the AI's monitoring?"
"I don't even wanna think about it. I bet if people started investigating things even further, more horrible stuff will just come up."
“...This information will definitely be released to the public so that the guilds on Vanargand can justify their war. Since the devs and AI are useless at the moment, I guess it's up to us players to deal with it.”
"Do you think some kind of player police guild will appear after this event?"
"I don't know...maybe?"
"That sounds annoying...yet interesting at the same time!"
"Just watch, I bet some group of self-righteous people will start one."
While Maria and the others were discussing more about the topic and eventually branching their conversation onto other things, they unanimously decided to stop their exploration and head back to Heltania Undercity, but they didn't go back to the surface just yet. Instead, the girls took a break in the Undercity's cafe that they frequented whenever they returned to the city. They continued their discussion but this time, Maria's brother, Mikael, joined in on voice chat.
“The PK Alliance has been causing a lot of chaos and mischief in Vanargand. I bet the guilds and factions vying for power over there are overly thrilled by this development. They’ll be able to completely eradicate the PKers who have been a thorn in their side,” Maria said. “Too bad. I wanted to fight that girl, Hecate, and settle the score with her. The last time, I lost because I was too weak…”
"In the end, you just wanna fight, huh, Mary?"
"Of course!"
"Forget about fighting for a moment. I wanna know how your information network is so much better and faster than ours!"
Lizzy and the girls wanted to know how Maria was able to receive information regarding the war so quickly because for them, it wasn't until an hour and a half later did they receive messages from their guild members and see the first discussion threads about the war on Vanargand along with the dastardly things the PK Alliance had done.
Maria’s friends couldn’t help but marvel at Maria’s quick and precise information network, but she credited all of that to her extremely reliable eldest brother, Mikael. Since she had already established a pretty solid and unshakeable foundation for her nation, her brother looked into other things he could do for her which would benefit their family as a whole.
The Dire already had a pretty good network of informants that constantly provided Maria and her people with information, and Mikael decided to further develop and modernize it. In the few weeks since he became a Duke, he made a lot of great changes to the Dire's information network and even managed to somehow get positive information from players and NPCs who were their nation's enemies.
There was probably a lot of 'grey' dealings that happened, but Maria wasn't going to question what her brother did just because it might be 'bad'. All of it was done for the betterment of her nation, so she instead decided to provide all of the support he needed to improve things even further.
Maria had a powerful army that only those closest to her were aware of, so to compliment the powerful military strength, she needed an even greater intelligence network and her brother's improvements on it was exactly what her nation needed. After all, for any organization–especially a large nation–information was key.
Thanks to the people their father sent into the game, Mikael was able to quickly make use of them and efficiently improve the information network and expand it across the planet's two continents very quickly. The network was so reliable and fast that he was able to relay the news about the war and the underlying reasons behind it to Maria the moment it broke out, while others needed to wait a while before they obtained the information.
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Receiving that kind of important information quickly was advantageous to Maria since she could prepare for it quicker than others. Long before her friends obtained the information from their own guild, Maria had already relayed her orders and asked her armies to get ready for an attack.
This war which incited a lot more chaos on the continent was exactly what Maria was hoping for. She just didn't believe it was going to happen so soon. Her armies were going to use the cover of the war to attack a few Lycan settlements and conquer them. Even though she wanted to attack the player factions that were vying for power on Vanargand, she unfortunately couldn’t or else a severe penalty would be given to her and her nation by the system.
It was because of this penalty from the system that Maria was restricted in her activities on Vanargand. She could still attack the NPCs, but the system forbade her from messing with the players because, right now, all of the players on Vanargand were considered her ‘allies’, except for the ones that directly tied themselves to the Lycans. The players who aligned themselves with the Lycans were the only ones that the system didn’t restrict Maria from killing, but the ones that didn’t choose a side were off limits and this made Maria a little angry.
“If it wasn’t for the system giving me that 75% stat reduction and 25 level deduction penalty for attacking a non-affiliated player…I would’ve wiped the whole Vanargand continent already…”
“What’s that, Mary?” Lizzy asked.
“I-It’s nothing. Anyway, I think we should halt our exploration of the Underworld for now. We should head topside so that I can instate you guys as Marquises as soon as possible!”
“Sure.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I’ve been wanting to see the sun for a while now~”
Her friends said in agreement. Maria smiled and continued, “Once you all get your land, start building up your own private forces. We’ll start small skirmishes against the Lycans soon and secretly lend our help to the PK Alliance and the Freewill Alliance of Players on the Vanargand continent.”
“...What’s the Freewill Alliance of Players?” Emily asked.
“It’s the corny name of guilds and factions that banded together to fight against the PK Alliance,” Maria replied. “Let’s extend the war. It'd be great if both sides wore each other down so I could take the biggest slice of the cake once everyone is weakened~”
“Sheesh, you sound pretty villainous when you say that, Mary.”
“Hmph, it’s all fair in love and war~”
Maria wasn’t able to directly attack others with her nation’s armies, but the private armies of her player vassals didn’t have any restrictions placed on them. Of course, her vassals would be connected with her, but they weren’t restricted like her. Their forces would be under her nation’s banner, but since they were still private forces, their affiliations would be listed underneath their lord’s name and not Maria's, so her vassals wouldn’t incur the system’s penalties like her.
The premise of the 3rd Main Story planet, Vanhal, revolved around players creating nations and factions of their own before eventually going to war with each other under the banner of one of the planet's existing nations or under their own banner.
Unfortunately for Maria, the system didn't deem her as a player right now, so her nation, the Dire, wasn't coined by the system as a player faction. Instead, she was categorized as a Provisional Main Story Character due to her being one of the rulers of the planet's 2 known existing nations because the system found her to be the new Blood Lord of the Blood Faction, which was now called the Dire. This in turn made her nation a Main Story Faction instead of a player faction.
It was all a bunch of confusing mumbo-jumbo to Maria, so she quickly informed only her older brother Mikael about this penalty and, together with him, the two tested out ways to overcome the system’s restriction that was placed on her.
Mikael was ready to sacrifice his level to help his sister and had his private army go undercover in Vanargand and attack a random player faction. Thankfully, he didn't incur the penalty, which made Maria motivated to find other trustworthy players to become her vassal so they could raise armies of their own and fight her enemies on her behalf.
She just needed more preparations from there and, thankfully, all of those preparations were finished. Right now, she can give titles to 15 players and make them her vassals. They had to be reliable and trustworthy though, because Maria had to distribute some of her nation’s land and wealth to them.
They needed to manage their lands properly and not just sit around like bums because, depending on the rank of their titles, Maria would have to distribute even larger portions of land and wealth to them which in turn increased their responsibilities.
2 Marquis titles, 3 Count titles, 4 Viscount titles, and 6 Baron titles. Those were the titles she could give out to players at the moment. Obviously, she could give an indefinite number if she wanted to, but Ash, Elizabeth, and Mikael suggested that these were the optimal number and Maria could appoint anyone she saw fit, but they would have to go through an extremely strict screening test before they could be officially instated as her vassals.
Maria was prepared to give titles to all 3 of her friends, but after some discussion before they left for the surface, Amanda, Lizzy, and Emily decided that only one of them should get the title and that person was Emily. The land that Emily would receive as a Marchioness was rather large, so the 3 of them would manage the land together and make it their guild’s headquarters.
The 3 of them could have received titles of their own and obtain large pieces of land for themselves and their guild, but after calculating the amount of work they had to do for themselves plus their guild, the girls thought that it wouldn’t be such a good idea. They’d have to dedicate a lot of their guild’s resources and time to the development and management of their territory. Lizzy and the girls didn’t really like the sound of that idea, even if they could delegate most of the work to their guild’s management department.
“Once we get to the surface, I'll appoint you as a Marchioness, Em. You’re gonna have to go through a short screening test that my subordinates have prepared, but it shouldn’t be a problem for you,” Maria said to her friend as they entered the magic elevator to return to the surface.
“It’s fine, but with the outbreak of war on Vanargand, do you think there’s going to be enough time for me to develop the land and raise an army before you make your move, Mary?” Emily asked. “After all, I don’t expect you to wait for me or anything.”
“Only time will tell, but if an opportunity for me to move my forces comes, then I’ll have to leave you guys behind if you guys aren’t ready yet.”
“No problem, as long as you don’t make a move within the next few days, we’ll get things ready on our end!” Lizzy declared before turning to Amanda, “Right, Amanda?”
“Sure…”