Maria and her friends quickly left for Transylvania the moment they returned to the surface after their break. Once they arrived at the Dire's Imperial Palace, Maria quickly instated Emily as a Marchioness and after a short screening test from her brother and her other close subordinates, Emily received her land deed and right after, she, Amanda, and Lizzy quickly left for their newly obtained land, which was actually at a pretty advantageous place on the west side of the continent.
The western frontier of Maria’s nation wasn’t as developed as the eastern frontier because the eastern frontier was where she originally built her nation, the Dire, when she first arrived in Vanhal. Not to mention that the eastern frontier was closer to the Vanargand Continent, so in the past months, that’s where she focused more of her nation’s resources for development because she wanted to conquer Vanargand.
Although the western frontier wasn’t as developed, this gave it a lot of unlocked potential which would definitely attract players who wanted to stably develop their own land from scratch within her nation.
Emily and her friends were ecstatic when they heard that they had been given land on the undeveloped western frontier. It gave them the opportunity to do whatever they wanted because their friend hadn’t touched most of the land over there, so everything was still up for grabs. Maria also didn't give her friends any schematic to follow as they were given free rein to develop the land as they wanted.
Of course, there were some disadvantages and there were definitely going to be some hardships to developing land in such a place, but Amanda, Emily, and Lizzy welcomed the challenge. It would definitely be safer for them if Maria had given them a city or two to manage, but it would limit what they could do–at least that’s what Lizzy said.
Maria happily saw off her friends who entered the teleportation building and teleported to their new land before she returned to her palace and gathered her subordinates along with her two brothers.
“You’ve been gone for days, Mary. Whatever you're doing, it had better be important,” Gerald said after he arrived at the meeting hall.
“Don’t worry, Big Brother. It’s definitely important. I’m still not finished with what I’ve been doing, but I’ll put it aside for now since something interesting is unfolding at the moment.”
“Great, so you already know about the massive war on Vanargand?”
“Yeah,” Maria nodded. “Thankfully, Eldest Brother kindly gave me all the information I needed and brought me up to speed.”
Mikael, who was at the side, only nodded at her words, “Hmm…”
“Anyway, we’re going to secretly make a move on the Lycans and quietly take over some of their land. We sent some people to negotiate a complete surrender with them, but they’re always pushing things back,” Ash reported.
“Tch, so they’re planning to drag things out, huh? I’d rather we conquer them through submission rather than war, but if we have to use force, I won’t hesitate,” Maria declared. “What about our sympathizers within the Lycan’s ranks? Have we heard anything from them yet?
“The sympathizers that we were able to rally within the Lycan's forces are currently facing a few difficulties at the moment, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth reported. “Apparently, those people from the PK Alliance have been messing with them and it’s rumored that the Lycan King’s advisor has his hand in their troubles.”
“The Lycans somehow found out that we can’t attack the players, so they’ve been hiring some fools to cause trouble for us. We’re restricted by what we can do because Your Majesty has strictly ordered us not to touch the players,” Ash said. He turned to look at Elizabeth and the others before clearing his throat and continuing, “Perhaps it’s better if you remove that restriction, Your Majesty? We can easily deal with those players if you give us permission.”
Maria shook her head and replied, “No, we can’t touch the players.”
“Your Majesty?”
“Those are my orders. Just listen to them and don’t question me.”
“...Yes, Your Majesty.”
Maria couldn’t explain to them about the system’s restrictions. The NPCs knew about the players, but they didn’t know about the system. She had tried explaining it to Ash and her other NPC subordinates, but her entire explanation seemed to have been muted by the system so they couldn’t understand her. In the end, she could only exercise her rights as the Empress and force her people to heed her orders and not attack the players–at least, for now.
“Leave the problematic matters of the players to my big brothers. They’ll deal with them.”
“We heed your words, Your Majesty.”
“Good…but this is rather troubling. The Lycans have started employing players to help them…this means that they really won’t settle for a peaceful surrender,” Maria said with a troubled look on her face.
“That’s what we can infer from their actions, little sister,” Mikael spoke up and interjected. “They’ve employed a few other player factions and guilds as well, so they definitely aren’t planning on settling things peacefully with us.”
“...Tch. So it looks like we’ll have to conquer them through war, huh?”
“Yes.”
Maria shook her head before saying, “It’s hard to believe that the Lycan King struck a deal with the very same people that are actively encroaching on their backyard, but I can see that we’re the bigger threat.”
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
“Yes, we’re definitely the bigger threat, and as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. No one in Vanargand sees us as a friendly force. In fact, they all see us as the biggest threat to their plans, so it isn’t too surprising that they’d band together to go against us,” Mikael stated.
“...”
“Also, this war isn’t what it seems, little sister.”
“Hm?”
“I received word that the PK Alliance’s leader, Hecate or whatever her name is, was the one who started it because she wanted to destroy her own faction.”
Maria frowned and thought to herself, ‘I really won’t be able to understand that damned lunatic. She’s powerful, I’ll give her that, but what she’s doing is completely crazy.’
“Have you figured out why?” Maria then asked.
Mikael shook his head as he didn’t have the answer to that, but he did have something else to report.
“We haven’t figured out the real reason behind it, but we did find out about the helpers she employed.”
Mikael handed Maria a report and she quickly read through it. She wasn’t too surprised to read some of the names on the report, like Eos and Caedes, since she knew those two players were incredibly ambitious people.
“Eos and Caedes, I’m not totally surprised that they’re helping. They can’t settle for second place, so they’ll definitely do whatever they can to try and one-up me.”
“It’s going to be hard to deal with them on our own. Our forces are still too small to fight against the forces of the players listed there, so we can only bide our time,” Gerald said. “However, they’re going to be busy fighting their little war which means that their attention won’t be on us for a while, so we have some leeway to do our own things. If you want, Mikael and I can gather our forces and strike them from the back.”
Maria thought about it for a moment before saying, “No, we’ll keep our focus on the Lycans. Caedes, Eos, and Hecate are having their own little war, but we don’t need to get ourselves embroiled in it. Besides, they'll likely be monitoring our forces even closer to prevent any surprises from us.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“At the current stage, the players aren’t that much of a threat to me, but if they manage to usurp the Lycans, then they’ll become a problem. We have to conquer the Lycans before any of the players do, so we’ll continue with our original plan!”
“Yes, Your Majesty!” Ash and Maria’s other subordinates replied in unison after hearing her declaration.
“Ash, go call Raiju and Alexa for me. Tell them that we’re going out to have some fun~”
“...Yes, Your Majesty, but…what about me?”
“Ash, you have your priorities elsewhere, right?”
Ash sighed and then said, “Well, it was worth a shot. I'll inform the two immediately.”
“Thanks, Ash.”
“Anything for you, Your Majesty.”
Ash transformed into a cloud of bats and exited the meeting hall through the windows, while Carmilla followed after him. The meeting was over, so Mikael and Gerard, along with Maria’s other subordinates, excused themselves to go back to their regular duties, while Elizabeth walked over to stand by Maria’s side.
“Is there something else to report, Elizabeth?”
“It’s not related to the situation on Vanargand, but there’s something I think you should look at since it was something important that you tasked me to find last time.”
“Hm?”
Elizabeth handed Maria a picture of a mountaintop that had a deep dark pit in the middle of it. She scrutinized the picture for a moment before looking up at her subordinate and asked, “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It’s a sinkhole that leads to the Underworld,” Elizabeth replied with a nod.
“So we finally found the true entrance to the Underworld, huh?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good, but where is it located? It’s definitely not on Dreyra, that’s for sure…” Maria said as she looked at the other pictures of the mountain and noticed that it was situated in the middle of an island.
“Here are the island’s coordinates, Your Majesty.”
“Wait, what? Isn’t this the island that we normally pass by if we sailed to Vanargand?” Maria exclaimed in shock after inputting the coordinates on her system map.
“Yes, Your Majesty. At the moment, only we know about its whereabouts, but what should we do?”
Maria looked at the picture of the sinkhole while tapping her finger on her armrest. She thought about it for a good while before finally making a decision, “Build a navy base on the island and a tropical resort there.”
“Hm?”
“The island is already under our jurisdiction, so we’ll disguise it. Since it’ll be a tourist spot, no frontline player will visit it.”
“...But Your Majesty, the sinkhole…” Elizabeth paused as she hesitated to say.
“What about it?”
“Well, it constantly spews out monsters at random intervals. I don’t think building a navy base and a resort would be a good idea…”
When Maria heard this, she excitedly asked, “It really does that?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I was personally there to see it.”
“That’s even better!”
“Hm?”
“I’ll have to talk with my older brother to see what’s best to do with that island, but if it does spew out monsters like that…maybe I can–Anyway, we’ll continue this discussion later. For now, let’s deal with the problems we have in Vanargand!”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”