After a few more hours, Zhuge Lan and Damascus were finally able to dig out their master, Hecate, from underneath the ground. Hecate started coughing the moment she was unearthed by her underlings and began taking huge gasps of air because she had been using her aura to supplement her lack of air underground.
Aura had a diverse range of uses that Maria still hadn’t explored. If she knew that Hecate could use it to survive her attack from earlier despite being buried alive underground, she would’ve unearthed the entire battlefield and dug her out to personally end her life with her own hands.
“Where…Where’s Maria?” Hecate asked the moment she could finally say something.
“She has left, Master, thinking that you had died in the earlier attack,” Zhuge Lan answered.
“Figures…since you 2 are both alive and I can’t sense her anywhere around us…”
“...”
“Looks like this time’s my loss, huh?”
“Well, you didn’t actually lose, Master…”
“I might as well have, but it was beyond my expectations that her skill could’ve pushed me deep into the earth like that,” Hecate said with a little bit of surprise tinged in her voice. “If I hadn’t been buried in the ground, I was hoping that Maria would try to check my ‘corpse’ once her attack’s effects had subsided then I could’ve jumped on her in that moment.”
There was a sickening smile on her face as she blushed at the thought, “I would’ve strangled her for a bit before killing her right on the spot, but what a shame that I couldn’t~”
This was the only thing about his Master that Zhuge Lan found a little bit uncomfortable with. He didn’t know what she was like in the real world and he didn’t want to find out. If Hecate was this frightening in the game, then he could only imagine how she was in real life.
“Anyway, Master, what will we do now? Are we going to chase after Maria or…”
Hecate’s odd expression immediately disappeared after hearing his question and she quickly replied in a laid back tone, “No, we’ll head back for today.”
She began dusting herself off and used an ability that immediately cleaned up her entire avatar before she opened her inventory and pulled out a [Return Scroll]–an item that was said to not be available in Unitale–and quickly tore it apart.
After she tore the scroll, Hecate immediately disappeared in a flash. Zhuge Lan and Damascus took out a similar scroll before doing the same thing as their Master and similarly disappearing from the spot. High up in the air, Maria was observing everything that happened with a cold look, but after seeing the item that the people from the PK Alliance had pulled out, her apathetic face quickly turned into a curious one.
Next to her, Raiju was looking down at the scene with a smile and said, “Heh, it looks like you were right, Master. That girl still had a trick up her sleeve and actually managed to survive your attack! How interesting!”
“Big sis, why didn’t you make a move? We should’ve just killed all 3 of them!” Alexa chimed in.
Maria shook her head and said, “We’ll let them escape for now. In return, however, I saw something rather interesting.”
Raiju looked at her Master before asking, “Was it the scrolls that they pulled out, Master?”
“Yes, that’s an item many players have wanted for themselves for the longest time, but could never get,” Maria said before pausing for a moment and then continuing, “Unlike me, most players don’t have a skill that they can use to quickly teleport back to a city or some place they’ve visited before. They either have to walk, go by carriage, or take a teleportation gate to reach their destination, and with that being said, I wonder how Hecate and her ilk managed to get their hands on them and, from the looks of it, it is probably safe to say that they have a large supply of those scrolls.”
“The [Return Scrolls], huh… They must’ve gotten lucky and obtained them from a dungeon or they have someone manufacturing those. The production method is pretty widespread within the Divine Realm, so if they have a connection with a divine entity, the latter option is plausible,” Raiju said.
When Raiju saw Maria’s expression that demanded her to explain, she immediately went on to describe a bit of the details regarding the scroll’s rather difficult manufacturing method. After listening to her explanation, Maria began rubbing her chin before mumbling to herself, “So, we need a high-ranking [Magus], a [Magic Engineer], and a [Scroll Printing Machine]?”
“Yes, Master,” Raiju replied after hearing Maria’s mumbling.
Maria deduced that Hecate probably had all 3 of those and the manufacturing method as well, since they used the scrolls as easily as they did earlier. She looked up at Raiju before asking, “You’re not pulling my leg are you? The requirements seem a little too easy…I’m a [Magus] and we can probably find some [Magic Engineer] among the lifestyle class players or NPCs, and as for the [Scroll Printing Machine], I have a ton of blueprints for it stored in the Empire’s vault along with an ample amount of the resources needed to create the [Return Scroll]’s magic circle and the [Return Crystal].”
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“I wouldn’t lie to you, Master, the requirements are indeed that simple, but the hard part is the learning process. The amount of effort, focus, and time a [Magus] needs to dedicate themselves to learn how to create a stable and functional magic circle for the [Return Scroll] is something I can’t describe with words!” Raiju said while shaking her head. “Even harder and more complex than that would be the creation of a powerful [Return Crystal].”
“The [Return Crystal] needs to have magic circuits that won’t collapse even after multiple [Return Scrolls] are used at the same time! Believe me Master when I say that it’s all really complicated and hard! It requires so much time and effort that most Divinities don’t even try attempting it themselves! If they wanted to create those, they’d order their subordinates to do it for them…either that or they make a trade with another divinity, and if they’re desperate enough, they would steal it…”
Hoping that her Master had finally gotten the picture, Raiju steered the conversation back to Hecate, “Master, those people from earlier, they must’ve gotten lucky and obtained a fully functional [Return Crystal] along with a [Scroll Printing Machine] that already has a completed magic circle in its setting, but if they managed to manufacture the scrolls themselves–following everything I’ve described earlier–then the only thing I can say is that they have a good slave or they have a lunatic on their side.”
Maria crossed her arms on her chest and started tapping her chin before finally making up her mind, “Let’s return. If Hecate and her lot succeeded in manufacturing those [Return Scrolls], then I don’t see how the Dire and I can’t do the same.”
“...”
“Of course, they might have gotten lucky like you’ve said, Raiju, but I’m more inclined to believe the latter or else they wouldn’t have used the scrolls as easily as they did.”
After telling Alexa to lead the way, Maria made her way back to the Dire colonies. She no longer had any motivation to mess with Eos and his war, since she had just found another great way to earn some money.
If she could manufacture those [Return Scrolls] and sell them to the players, Maria was certain that she’d be able to rake in a lot of gold just from their sales and could turn it into one of the Dire’s most reliable sources of income, but first of all, she needed reliable and trustworthy people to learn the production method from Raiju, who had knowledge of it.
The only problem was that Maria wasn’t willing to trust any player with the knowledge because they could betray her and sell the production method to someone else, so she could only turn to her NPCs. The problem with the NPCs, however, was the time it took for them to learn a skill and obtain a class. It was probably easier to look for a player who had the [Magus] subclass and a player who had the [Magic Engineer] subclass than raising or finding a few NPCs with said classes.
Maria was torn between picking one of those two choices, but then she had a rather brilliant idea instead. She decided that she was going to use the players since it would be easier while she trained her own team of NPCs that would completely take over the entire production process once they were ready.
Maria was going to use those that had connections with her friends, preferably the players from her elder brothers’ guilds and her friends’ guild. It was dangerous to give any single player the complete production method of those [Return Scrolls] since they could be tempted into selling the method to someone else, so Maria decided to go with a different approach.
She was going to divide the [Return Scroll]’s magic circle into small portions and have different sets of players work on a specific portion of the magic circle before gathering the completed portions together and assembling them into the full magic circle. This way, she could keep the entire production method a secret so she could use the players with an ease of mind.
Essentially, Maria was trying to create the game’s first industrial production line. Of course, she still needed to discuss this matter with her brothers and her friends, who needed to be aware of what she was using their guild members for.
“I’m sure they’ll be on board with the idea since they’ll be receiving a slice of the pie as well.”