Maria was standing at the bow of a large boat and staring off into the distance. She was currently looking at her status screen and contemplating something.
Name: Maria Level: 205 CP: 5,545,828
HP: 1,015,680/846,400
DE: 3,072,960/2,560,800
NE: 3938
SP: 134,020/111,683
EXP: 12,293,025/20,500,000
REP: 205,800
Divinity: 1300
Race: Nephalem - Liberated
Class: Divine Vessel of Sin - Second Circle
Sub-Class 1: Magus
Sub-Class 2: Blood Empress
Titles: Mother of Monsters, Species Eradicator EX, Liberated Angel of Sin, Vessel of the Apocalypse, The Liberated One, Liberated Priestess, Liberated Saintess, Harbinger of the Apocalypse, Empress of the Dire, Undead Ruler, Shadow Ruler, Blood Ruler, Progenitor, Conqueror
ATK: 168,720 (+6000~7000)
DEF: 88,524 (+3000)
M.ATK: 306,576 (+6000~7000)
M.DEF: 133,890 (+3000)
STR: 21,460
AGI: 17,645
VIT: 29,508
INT: 44,630
LCK: 43
SIN: 394
Free Stat Points: 0
Universal Currency: 1,560,260,412 Gold 86 Silver 99 Copper
Vanhal Currency: 1,058,245,089 Blood Gold
Faction Currency: 69,420,000 Universe Gold
She hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to her [Status Menu] as of late and it was only after she exited the Underworld did she even think about opening it. She already distributed all of her FSPs to the stats she wanted, but when she looked at her stats again, she noticed that there were a lot of drastic changes to it, especially to her M.ATK stat.
After reaching level 200 in the Underworld, a few notifications had appeared but it wasn’t anything related to her Third Class Advancement. Normally, when players got to level 200, they would be eligible to get their Third Class Advancement, but Maria didn’t receive a notification about it nor did a quest appear for it like it did when she previously got to level 100.
Instead, the notification that popped up only showed that her Class had developed into its ‘Second Circle’. This Second Circle wasn’t something that Maria understood, but it was shown on her status screen. She had been meaning to find out what it meant, but she put it off in favor of exploring the Underworld so she was only able to get to it now. The notification about her class wasn’t the only thing. A few other notifications had appeared as well and they were regarding her race and titles.
Maria had apparently evolved from being a Fallen creature to a ‘Liberated’ one now. She didn’t know what this meant, but after searching for a few things online and coming up with nothing, she turned to filing a report to the devs in hopes of getting answers. She thought that her stats were bugging out because the absurd number that her M.ATK stat had reached was very worrying. If she didn’t report it and it turned out to be a bug, the devs would penalize her gravely and she didn’t want that.
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When she obtained a reply from the devs, it turned out that, fortunately, it wasn’t a bug at all. If she wanted more information, the devs told her to find a book in her own Imperial Palace’s library about the high-level creatures of Unitale. The book was simply called the Beastuary and Maria had spent her time on the boat to Vanargand reading this book and she only finished it recently.
The book informed her about many different races and creatures of Unitale. She wondered how she hadn’t read this book in her time in the great library in Eur’s Dark Faction city of Enoch. The Beastuary was a high-ranking book, so she didn’t have access to it at the time, but since she was the Empress of her nation, she had access to a lot of previously restricted books about Unitale.
When she found this out, Maria made sure to scour her own Imperial Library and began taking out a few books from it to read in her spare time. In the Beastuary, Maria found out more about her race, the Fallen. Any kind of creature could turn into a Fallen creature if certain requirements were met. Becoming a Fallen was hard for some creatures, but extremely easy for others–Angels being one of them.
However, despite it being easy for the Angel race, no one in recent times–until Maria that is–had managed to become a Fallen Angel. Even players who just started playing the game wanted to try and follow in Maria's footsteps and become a Fallen Angel since it was a really beautiful and cool-looking race, but none could find any information regarding race changing into one.
Maria wasn’t the type to divulge information, so no one was able to get information directly from her mouth. She was still a student after all and with her family protecting her, no one tried approaching her in real life. It was even more impossible to approach her in the game. Due to these facts, no one was able to find the method to become a Fallen Angel.
There were pros and cons to becoming a Fallen creature. One of the pros was obtaining twice as much FSPs as a regular race player and the other one was increased stat scaling to one’s physical-related stats like P.ATK and P.DEF, while the cons were the severe penalties to the total amount of EXP required for leveling up, the EXP gain, and lastly, the Fallen’s magic-related stats.
Maria only knew about the penalty to her levels and EXP gain, but she didn’t know about the penalty to her magic-related stats. Her M.ATK, M.DEF, and INT were actually under a large penalty all this time–especially her M.ATK stat–but she simply didn’t know it and kept on pouring all of her FSPs into her INT stat.
Fallen races were supposed to be geared towards physical stats and classes, which was why Death granted Maria the Dark Priestess class and gave her a form-changing physical-type weapon that she could use in fights instead of a staff or something, because the god knew about this.
Maria didn’t know that, so after she learned magic from Paimon and found that it was much more interesting to use than her melee weapon, she opted to increase her magic-related stats more than her physical stats instead. She actually would’ve had an easier time leveling up and playing the game if she continued down the path that her character's race had set her up for.
The game’s race selector had the role of setting up the type of playstyle that a player wanted to play in the game which was why it was there in the Character Creation. Players selected the race they wanted not only for aesthetic purposes but to also set themselves up for whichever playstyle they wanted. If you wanted a more magical playstyle that involved using spells and the like, then you would choose to be a demon, an elf, or any other magic-related species.
If you wanted to be sturdy and good with your hands, then one would choose a dwarf or a giant. If you wanted to have more than one specialization then play as a human, angel, were-man, or any other well-rounded race. Basically, the races were there for a reason and not just for cosmetic purposes.
Maria went directly against that reason and instead of playing properly as a Fallen race, she played as she wanted and became a Fallen that was well-versed in magic when her race actually penalized her magic-related stats. For playing that eccentrically, she finally obtained her just rewards and became 'Liberated' from her Fallen status.
The Beastuary stated that the Fallen Race was a race that one could easily obtain and easily lose. If a Fallen Race achieved the threshold for race evolution without any [Taint Value] on them, they would automatically evolve into a race known as the Liberated. The Liberated wasn’t anything fanciful. It was just a race that ‘graduated’ from being a Fallen as they no longer possessed the [Taint Value] after reaching the required level for race evolution.
When Maria evolved into a Nephalem, her [Taint Value] had been used up in her evolution. Her [Angel’s Rage] skill was no longer available to her and since she already consumed all of the 7 Sin Devils, Maria could no longer accumulate any [Taint Value].
When she crossed the level 200 threshold, she automatically ‘graduated’ from being a Fallen as her [Taint Value] was completely 0. Her race didn’t change or anything as she was still a Nephalem, but there was the added [Liberated] behind her race in her status menu and all of her [Fallen] related titles had changed into [Liberated] titles.
The title [Fallen Priestess] and [Fallen Saintess] had now become [Liberated Priestess] and [Liberated Saintess], but thankfully, there wasn’t much change to their title effects. Maria rather liked the effects of the two titles so when she saw that they had been changed, she was relieved that their effects remained the same.
Since she was no longer a Fallen, all of her previous race’s penalties had been lifted so her M.ATK stat shot through the roof, which worried her since she thought it was a bug at first. However, even after she got all of her answers, Maria was still a little skeptical.
“I was already pretty powerful when I was under the Fallen penalty…but my 100,000 M.ATK has become 300,000…” Maria felt worried, but not for herself. She was worried for all of her enemies instead because her stat had tripled in number.
She snapped her fingers and conjured her usual [Fire] spell, but unlike how it was before, the [Fire] spell blazing in her hand was 10 times larger and 100 times hotter.
“...Hehehehe…”
Raiju, Alexa, and a few others who were on the same ship as Maria quickly moved onto the deck when they felt the large spike of mana, and when they saw Maria holding a small blazing sun in her hand, they thought that an enemy was nearby.
“Big sis, what’s wrong? Is there an enemy?!” Alexa asked from afar.
She couldn’t approach her big sister because the miniature ‘sun’ in her hand made the area around her extremely hot. The best Alexa could do was get within 20-meters of Maria before it felt like her skin was melting off.
Maria quickly dispelled her [Fire] spell and turned around, “Sorry, I was just testing something out. There are no enemies nearby…”
“O-Oh…”
With the ‘sun’ disappearing, Alexa comfortably approached her sister and asked, “I only noticed it now, but has something changed, big sis?”
Maria smiled at her and replied, “There was something. You’ll get to see it later though.”
“Okay~”
“Where’s Cali?”
“She’s sleeping in the cabin. Should I wake her?”
“Yeah…because we’re finally here,” Maria said as she looked back into the distance and saw the edge of the Vanargand Continent finally appear in the horizon.
‘Looks like I’ll be able to test my new abilities soon~'