Maria’s plan was pretty solid, but she needed a little bit more help with dividing the production of the [Return Crystal] into smaller parts. The [Return Crystal] required a [Magic Engineer] to carve the specific magic circuits into a large [Mana Crystal] and this was something a bit more complicated than creating magic circles.
From what she understood, trying to fragment the magic circuits into different parts and assembling them together into the [Mana Crystal] would be hard to do, since normally, [Magic Engineers] would carve a magic circuit in one-go when crafting a magic item. Since Raiju knew about the magic circles for the scrolls and the magic circuits for the [Mana Crystal], she was going to leave it to her to figure things out.
Raiju somewhat regretted informing Maria that she knew about the [Return Scrolls] that Hecate and her underlings had used earlier because now, she was going to be put to work and, likely, without any rest time. Knowing her Master, Raiju expected to spend the next few days–weeks even–on the bench just working all day long.
Luckily, she was a Lightning Spirit, so her stamina would be able to hold up, though her mind would likely take a toll. However, it was much better than if she was a human or any other race that required rest and sustenance to keep their bodies in optimal condition.
“Master, are we heading back to the palace now? Are we not going to that war you wanted to dip your hands in?” Raiju asked, hoping that she could divert Maria’s attention to someplace else.
Unfortunately for her, Maria had a one-track mind, so she immediately shook her head and said, “No, we're going back to the Empire. I need you to transcribe your knowledge of the magic circle and magic circuit for the [Return Scroll] and [Return Crystal]. I want to start training our people as soon as possible.”
“Oh…okay…”
Maria quickly arrived back in one of her colonies on Vanargand, but anyone she passed by didn’t give her a second glance. She was currently in her ‘normal’ form, so she didn’t have her trademark blackwings, which made her stand out and easily recognizable. She passed through the streets of her colony with ease and quickly made her way to the colony mayor’s house.
Naturally, when she arrived, the mayor greeted her fervently and asked why she had suddenly returned from the new colonies she had conquered from the lycans. When she stated that she wanted to sail back to Dreyra as soon as possible, the mayor quickly contacted the colony’s harbor master to see if any of their ships were available.
“Your Majesty, we have one ship that’s available, but it’s a commercial ship. The large ships that Your Majesty arrived with are still unloading their cargo. The sheer amount of items that the ships have brought and the limited space we have in the colonies’ warehouses have made the unloading process rather slow…”
“It doesn’t matter, we’ll take the commercial ship. My presence in Vanargand is still a secret, so it’s good that I’ll be riding a commercial ship. However, you and the other colony mayors have to do something about the limited warehouse spaces if it’s taking the unloading process this long…”
“Yes, Your Majesty, we’re currently working on that. We’re building more warehouses as we speak right now!” The colony's mayor quickly said.
“Those ships have been here for some time… I know the timing was rather abrupt, but–Ah, nevermind,” Maria was a little disappointed about the colony’s situation, but she couldn’t get mad as her voyage to Vanargand was rather abrupt.
Her subordinates didn’t have enough time to prepare for the large amount of cargo that her ships were bringing, so it was inevitable that the unloading process was proceeding rather slowly.
Maria wasn’t going to blame anyone and just told the colony mayor to prepare the ship tickets for her and her group, “I’m returning only temporarily since something urgent came up. I’ll be returning and by the time I do, the situation here had better be resolved.”
“Yes, Your Majesty! Thank you for your understanding!”
“Anyway, go prepare the tickets for me, Alexa, and Raiju. Also, if you can, tell the captain that we need to depart as soon as possible, I’ll even pay extra if he can set sail later today!”
“I’ll get to it right away, Your Majesty!”
While Maria was getting ready to head back to her Empire, Hecate had just arrived back at her alliance’s secret base. This base was naturally the true base of her alliance that she had established, which was known only to the members of her alliance who were loyal to her. The rest of the alliance only knew about the ‘mock’ secret base that was created just so that others wouldn’t figure out this true base.
Just like Raiju had predicted, Hecate did have a fully functioning [Return Crystal] that she had actually acquired as a quest reward from a sub planet’s sub-scenario quest. After the Fallen Angels guild had obtained the teleportation device from the very first Main Scenario Quest rewards, other factions, guilds, and player groups had obtained a few such devices for themselves after seeing the benefits the Fallen Angels guild were able to obtain from monopolizing the resources and quests of their sub planet.
Some sub-planets held secret treasures and quests, literally becoming what was known to the player base as ‘treasure planets’, while other planets were barren wastelands that had absolutely nothing in them.
Hecate had obtained a teleportation device that led her to one of those so-called treasure planets that led to her acquiring a fully functional [Return Crystal] as well as the complementary [Scroll Printing Machine] that could print out the [Return Scrolls] for the [Return Crystal]. It was quite challenging to move the [Return Crystal] when Hecate first found it on the planet, but after a few experiments, she and her underlings were able to turn it into a mobile return beacon.
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The teleportation device for discovering sub-planets truly was something like a roulette system for the players, as they didn’t know beforehand whether the planet they would be teleporting to would be a barren planet or a treasure planet. If one was lucky, they’d obtain a teleportation device that led to a treasure planet that hid extraordinary secrets that players needed to invest their time and effort into exploring, but on most occasions, the planets would be barren planets or ordinary planets that had ordinary opportunities for the players.
Of course, ordinary planets were much better than barren planets. That much was certain. At least on ordinary planets, the players can still gather the planet’s resources and obtain some quests from the locals. The barren planets were just like their names–completely barren–but at the very least, they still had some life on them, though insignificant as they were since the planet they were on wasn't really hospitable. There was nothing on these planets and some of them were even on the verge of becoming void planets–planets that were on the path to extinction or destruction.
Maria had been to many void planets in the past as she was previously Death’s Champion. Her duty was naturally to destroy these planets and harvest the lives of the planet’s organisms that were about to die. Only Death’s Champion would have this opportunity since the system wouldn't let regular players go to such a planet even with the teleportation device.
As Death’s Champion, Maria was limited to only being able to enter void planets to harvest lives, so she had missed the opportunity to go to a treasure planet or a barren planet using one of those inter-planet teleportation devices. It was the price she had to pay for obtaining a god's legacy and acquiring such an overpowered class from the start.
It didn't really matter much though because she had obtained a bigger opportunity in the form of the Main Story Planet, Vanhal. Who would even go to a sub-planet when they were already on a Main Story Planet which held even greater opportunities? In the end, things balanced out for her without her even knowing.
Maria certainly wasn’t that stupid and she invested all of her time on Vanhal, which led her to becoming the Dire Empress and she now had a big role to play in the planet’s Main Scenario Quest.
Now back to Hecate. After returning to her PK Alliance’s true base, she quickly called for a meeting to check up on the progress of the player's war against the ‘fake’ members of her alliance.
“So, how is the war progressing? Are the fake bastards being thoroughly destroyed yet?”
“From recent developments, Master, it seems that those bastards are losing,” Zhuge Lan reported. "While they haven't suffered any major damage, all of their operations have been put on hold as they're focusing all their resources on the war."
“Did you obtain this information from Eos and his morons?”
“Well, I’m practically there at the frontline so, yes, I did obtain it from them, Master.”
“The frontlines, huh? And yet you had time to track down Maria and toy around with her, hmm?”
“I-I was simply stalling for time. I learned from Crow and Devin that she had suddenly appeared on Vanargand and that her target after conquering the Lycan’s outlier territories was to interfere with war between the players and the fakers…I naturally had to try and stop her or else, with her as a variable, it could ruin our plans,” Zhuge Lan said as he hastily explained himself.
The other members of Hecate’s alliance that were in the room naturally started asking about what happened, so Zhuge Lan had to give a recount of everything that occurred as well as share the video recording he had taken that showed both Maria being trapped inside of his formation array before destroying it and her battle against their alliance master, Hecate.
Although she had lost, Hecate wasn’t unwilling to let everybody watch the video of her ‘disgrace’. She even thought that the video was interesting because it showcased just how broken the Dire’s Empress was when compared to other players, including herself, and she was overpowered in her underlings’ eyes.
“Damn…to think that a player could wield such destructive power…”
“Yes, but although her magical abilities are astonishing, I can’t say the same thing about her martial arts though…”
“She doesn’t have a style or a form, so she’s similar to our Master, but if you were to compare Master and her, Master is obviously superior, but Maria makes up for that superiority with her superior stats and equipment…just what level is this woman at right now?”
“It’s truly baffling that there’s another ‘anomaly’ player like our Master, but does this mean that Maria and her Dire are finally going to start interfering with Vanargand’s situation?”
Zhuge Lan shook his head at that statement and said, “I had one of my tracker robots follow her after we left. It was hard for my robot to keep up with her flying speed but, thankfully, it managed to determine where she was going next.”
“And where will that be?” Hecate quickly asked.
“Well, Master, it’s quite fortunate that for the time being she’s not going to be interfering with the war. Right now, she should be back at one of her colonies, probably planning her next move maybe.”
“...It’s hard to keep proper tabs on a person like her. Zhuge, do anything you can to keep up with anything that she’s doing. For now, I don’t want her to interfere with our plans since we need to get rid of our alliance’s cancer.”
“Yes, Master.”
“If she tries to interfere again, the two of us will stop her like before.”
After she said this, Hecate quickly ended the meeting before logging off as she was about to hit the maximum amount of play time that she had set for herself. Due to her body’s real-life condition, she couldn’t play the game for very long and needed to rest for a few hours so that her condition doesn’t deteriorate.