Maria walked out of the hall with a skip in her step before realizing that she had to reward Elizabeth for delivering to her this great news.
“Elizabeth, I’ll need to reward you for this. The true entrance to the Underworld on the surface was something very important that we needed to find, so you can ask for anything you want!”
The entrance to the Underworld was extremely important to her and her nation. If it was found by other players, a lot of the interest they had on the surface world would be drawn away and although it did sound contradicting for her to want the players to be focused on the surface instead of the Underworld since she could use the lapse in attention to quickly conquer the Vanargand continent, she wanted to keep the Underworld a secret because she still hadn't even explored too much of it to gain an advantage over the other players just yet.
The Underworld was just that vast and she could confidently say that she had only explored a small fraction of the place. There was still many other places to explore and she needed to firmly secure the region around her city and also expand her area of influence before others discovered the place.
Maria also had this feeling that there was something else in the Underworld other than the monsters and indigenous people. It was just a feeling, but there hasn't been a time where her 'feeling' was wrong, so she was going to trust it and find out what was causing her to have this feeling and if the thing causing it was beneficial to her or not.
Elizabeth had done good by finding the true entrance of the Underworld, so Maria was willing to reward her with anything she wanted as long as it was within her power and means to grant.
Elizabeth shook her head before saying, “Your Majesty, I dare not ask for a reward. If you’d like to reward me, anything you give is enough for me.”
When Maria heard Elizabeth’s words, she somewhat expected it. She knew that this particular subordinate of hers didn’t want anything from her as a reward. The only thing Elizabeth wanted from Maria was her good grace and acceptance since that’s all that mattered for her. Maria had saved her from the long nightmare of her body and mind being dominated by the evil sword that had possessed her. The possession had lasted an untold amount of centuries, so Elizabeth was truly grateful to Maria for having ended it.
Elizabeth wanted to repay Maria for saving her, so she was willing to dedicate her life to serving her without any form of reciprocation. Maria somewhat understood why Elizabeth was doing this, but despite knowing that, she still wanted to reward this splendid subordinate of hers. After all, she needed to set an example for the rest of her people.
‘Those that worked hard and accomplished something should naturally receive their due rewards.’
“This is troubling…you need to properly be rewarded so I can set an example for the others,” Maria said. “If I let your accomplishment slide without rewarding you, how would the others see this?”
“Eh?”
“They’ll think that I’m a tyrant that doesn’t reward the good deeds that my people do for me…Wouldn’t that be bad for my image?”
“...I-I didn’t mean for that, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth said after some thought.
“I know you mean well, but I just want to reward you for my own selfishness.”
“...”
Maria eyed Elizabeth with a smile before saying, “Think about what kind of reward you want. If it’s within my power, I’ll grant it to you.”
She said no more than this and left to go find her brother who had returned earlier. Elizabeth stared at the back of her Empress for a moment before quickly chasing after her. The two of them found Mikael in his office inside of the palace and began discussing what they would do with the island Elizabeth found. Naturally, Maria had to finally inform her brother about the Underworld and this surprised him a bit.
“This planet has an underground world? That’s pretty incredible–so that’s what you’ve been doing all this time? You’ve been exploring the underground world?” Mikael asked after realizing the exact reason why his sister would always be gone for days and weeks.
“Yeah, me and the girls were exploring the Underworld. We’ve been able to map out a significant portion of the First Layer around the city I built underground along with a bit of the Second Layer,” Maria replied.
“There are layers?”
“Yup!”
“H-How many have you found?”
“Only 2 for now, but we suspect that there are more layers.”
“...Does anyone else know about this information besides your friends?”
“No, only me, Lizzy and the others, my most trusted subordinates, the vampire dwarves working on Heltania Undercity, and now you, big brother. A vast majority of the people in my nation don't even know the existence of the Underworld and not to mention the players. I'm sure no one else knows about the Underworld.”
“Let’s keep it that way then.”
“Alright.”
“About that island…give it to me and let me manage it. I have the perfect idea for it,” Mikael said with a serious look on his face.
Since her brother was so willing to take on the responsibility of managing the island, Maria gave it to him without thinking too much about it.
“Alright, but if you’re going to use people to help you with the management, use only our nation’s NPCs.”
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“Yeah, that’s the plan. Although we have very trustworthy people on our side, players are still ‘players’ after all. There’s a bigger chance for them to be bribed while the NPCs are absolutely loyal to you, Mary.”
“Mhm. We’ll have no worries about them leaking any information.”
Mikael put away all of the information related to the sinkhole island and the Underworld before turning to his sister and asking, “About your friends, Lizzy and the others, they’re busy with their territory development, right?”
“They should be.”
“Are they going to be able to participate in the upcoming operation?”
“Not sure, but they told me that as long as it isn’t any time soon, they’ll be able to,” Maria replied.
Mikael nodded and said, “We should strike soon and not wait until the war on Vanargand escalates.”
Maria was confused by this. She thought that it would be better if the war did escalate so they could use the chaos of it all to cover their operations so she questioned her brother’s logic.
“...Why not wait? Wouldn’t it be good for us if the war did escalate?”
“It would be good, but not necessarily. If we strike early, we’ll be able to catch our enemies by surprise with a preemptive attack while their attentions are focused on something else and they’re still in the preparation phase.”
“Hm?”
“If the war has already broken out entirely and things are at a boiling point, our enemies’ forces will have completely assembled and if we did try attacking, they’ll be ready to quickly respond to us,” Mikael explained. “Also, since you want us to move and secretly take over our enemies’ lands, we shouldn’t be making any big and noticeable moves, right?”
“I guess, I haven’t thought that far yet. I was just thinking that we should just go and attack the lycans while the players fought against each other.”
“...That could work too, but we’ll attract a lot of attention if we do that–not that I mind–though our ‘secret’ operation won’t be so secret anymore.”
“You got a point…Let’s just do it your way then,” Maria responded. “The faster we attack and get things over with, the quicker we can turn our attention to something else.”
“Precisely,” Mikael crossed his arms before continuing, “One of your subordinates had a pretty good idea earlier. I think we should follow it.”
“Oh? What was it?” Maria asked.
“He suggested that after we secretly attack the areas we’re targeting, we should assign our Lycan sympathizers to those areas while we step back and remain in the shadows.”
“Hmmm, that does sound like a really good idea…”
“Right? Anyway, I think we should do that. First, we’ll round up our sympathizers on Vanargand, and then we’ll attack.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll have to be fast, however. Once we attack, we have to destroy everyone, quickly replace them, and retreat immediately. We can’t leave behind any traces of our forces so by the time they find out that something was wrong, it’ll already be way too late,” Mikael explained.
Maria began smiling and said, “It really does look like I’ll be able to do something again. Alexa and Raiju will be very pleased to know what we’re going to be doing.”
When Mikael heard her sister’s words, he quickly stopped her and said, “Mary, wait.”
“Hm?”
“Are you going to personally be participating in this?”
“Yeah, of course! What else did you expect I’ll do now that I’ve come back from the Underworld? Wait around for the ‘good news’ to come? Hell no! I want in on the action!”
“...I’ll have to adjust a few things, but since you’ll be participating, this operation will be much easier than I thought,” Mikael said after pondering for a moment.
“Right? It’ll definitely be much easier with me, Alexa, and Raiju on the case! After all, you’ll be having the strongest individuals that the Dire has to offer at your disposal, big brother!” Maria exclaimed excitedly.
“I’m curious, but what’s your level now, Mary?|
“205.”
When Mikael heard his sister’s level, he frowned a bit before saying “Only 205? Isn’t that a bit low?”
“For others it is, but for me, that’s pretty high. It’s equivalent to being around level 300 if I was a ‘normal’ player.”
“Oh?”
“I have a penalty for leveling up because of my race that’s categorized as a ‘Fallen’. However, the merit of being a Fallen is that I receive twice as more FSP than normal players so the trade-off, in my opinion, is good.”
“I see…then what about your friends, Alexa and Raiju? What levels are they?”
“Alexa is level 265 while Raiju is level 301 now,” Maria answered.
“Wow? That high, huh? Since they’re NPCs, I’m sure their stats are definitely much higher than a player of the same level right?”
“Yup~”
“Heh, this upcoming operation really will be easy then. Once we’ve finished with our preparations, I’ll hand you the plans so you can directly lead the operation when you get to Vanargand.”
“What about you, big brother? Are you not coming?”
“No, I’ll go to that island with the Underworld entrance and start my preparations there.”
“Alright.”
It didn’t take too long for Maria and her subordinates to finish their preparations so 5 in-game days later, Maria was on a battleship with a small team of her elite warriors bound for Vanargand. Meanwhile, the war between the PK Alliance and Eos’s Alliance of guilds and factions began to slowly heat up.