NOVEL NEXT Chapter 75: Turmoil
While Maria was elated at her new house, elsewhere in the game of Unitale, the players were all sent into an uproar when they heard the system announcement which was triggered by Maria.
They all thought that the girl had finally stayed silent since she had suddenly disappeared for over a month, but now she suddenly came back with her guns blazing by triggering 2 World Announcements back to back.
First was the World Announcement of her solo killing a world boss. Now, after the update, she came back again with another announcement stating that she had established her own faction.
At the moment, no one really knew the benefits of forming their own faction. To most of the players, Maria's faction establishment was just another grand way to announce that she had created her own guild.
They couldn't be any more wrong at this point because unlike a guild, which only accepts players and provides some services to said players, Maria's faction could accept and take in anyone, both players and NPCs.
Of course, a guild could establish their own NPC army and recruit some lifestyle NPCs for their guild, but to do that, they had to go through a long chain of quests that will unlock that feature. There were even some lifestyle NPCs whose chain quests were so long, it was nearly not worth doing at all. Some of the quests would also prove to be difficult and nigh impossible for the players at the current stage of the game.
Maria's faction however didn't have such limitations or boundaries. She could literally take in all players and NPCs if she chooses to. Whether it is by acceptance, persuasion, or by brazenly forcing them to join, just like how she had done to her 5 new underlings, Maria could do it all since she was the 'Queen' of her faction. She could even accept monster NPCs if she wanted to.
Of course, the little lady didn't know about this so she just stuck with trying to recruit normal NPCs. Maria did however find out that she was able to forcefully convert others into her faction and she planned to do things the forceful way.
The original plan was to overtake Vampire Lord Siegfried through force and with her [Death's Word] quest, she needed to kill and convert some people to Death's faith so her forceful method of recruitment didn't collide with any of her objectives.
Although it didn't collide with any of her objectives, Maria was left with a bad taste in her mouth whenever she saw the 5 idiots greet her in an overly fanatic way after her faction was officially established.
*****
"Jeez, Mary sure is pretty active lately~" Milya, aka Emily, said.
Everyone had been worried about their airheaded friend for the past few hours, but seeing as she seemed to be doing well, Lizzy immediately spoke up.
"We don't know what happened to her after she left and those NPCs gave chase, but we can assume that she's doing pretty well on her own now."
"That's a relief, but unfortunately, her in-game coordinates aren't showing up on any of our maps...did any of you manage to contact her?" Amanda worriedly said while scrolling through all of the known maps.
"No...I can't even call or whisper her..."
Seeing them so worried, Emily furrowed her brows a little and said, "She's probably off leveling in some high-leveled map because she got lost. As for why we can't contact her, this isn't the first time something like this happened, right?"
"..."
"Yeah...but still—"
"Come on, instead of worrying about her, let's just hope she's still enjoying the game. We can just give her a call in real life! It's not like she's disappearing or anything. Besides, we have some other things to worry about in-game."
Lizzy shook her head and sighed, "Emily's right, Amanda. Thanks to Mary's help while she was still in the guild, our low-level rookies were able to power level themselves before the new update kicked in and our guild's average level shot up incredibly!"
"And because of that, some investors are looking to take a slice out of our big pie... other than Uncle Corinthos's company, we should look over the rest and see what they have to offer," Emily continued.
Amanda stopped looking for Maria and immediately took something out of her inventory.
"Here, I already compiled all of the investors into these files. Look them over and pick the ones you find trustworthy. I recommend Gravity Tech Industries and Dagger Gaming Company."
"...why would a rocket company be willing to invest in a game?" Lizzy asked.
"They're the ones who are manufacturing the new capsule model VR gaming equipment that'll be coming out in a month or two. Unitale is basically an open market right now so every kind of company, who are looking to expand and invest in something new, will naturally turn to it now that the Currency Exchange function is online..." Amanda explained.
Lizzy sighed again before saying, "My family owns a large company of our own, but I'm really not into business... Isn't this you're thing, Amanda? Please manage our guild's finances and business relations, okay?"
After giving it some thought, Amanda nodded her head.
"...Fine, but I seriously think we should get or hire someone to overlook our guild's business side. Many of the companies are eyeing our guild not just because we're currently the leading Dark Faction guild, but precisely because the ones managing the guild, that being us, are only high school girls... They only see us as raw fish on the chopping block...we're basically greenhorns in their eyes!"
"Tch... Just because the game is now open to the economic market, it doesn't change the fact that the driving force is still going to be us gamers! Seriously, I wanna play games just to have fun, but Unitale's management just had to fuck us over with this new update and make things so serious," Emily said in annoyance.
"What's wrong, Em? Are you getting flamed by your parents again?" Lizzy teased.
"..."
Seeing her friend remain silent, Amanda smirked and said in a teasing tone, "Well, now that they're precious, youngest daughter, who was notoriously known for being a shut-in gamer, has now finally made it big—"
"Shut it, Amanda! It's not me that they want, it's Mary!"
Amanda grinned before shrugging. She thought for a moment before opening her mouth and saying, "Well, it's probably not just your folks. I'm pretty sure many companies who are looking to invest want to invest in a player like her. Constantly getting world announcements and not to mention that she could be the face and spokesperson of a company because of her unique avatar...anyone would want her, and she could serve as a real-life advertisement as well since Mary made her in-game avatar the same as her real-life self."
Emily nodded at her words before saying, "Did you see the changes to her appearance just recently? She suddenly became a 6-winged fallen archangel!"
"She by far has the coolest and most attractive avatar in the game... Ah, I really envy her~" Lizzy said.
Her two friends looked back at her with a scornful look and inwardly, they both thought, 'Like you're one to talk! You're the only dark Dragonoid in the game!'
"What?"
"...It's nothing..."
"Yup, totally nothing, I mean, Maria sure is cool, huh? Being the ONLY Fallen Angel in the game...us two, we're just an elf and a dwarf!" Emily said with an all too obvious meaning behind her words.
Lizzy looked down at herself before laughing nervously at her friends.
"Eheh...eheheh... guys?"
"Ahhh~ it's so good to know that there's SOMEONE that could take Mary's place now that she's gone."
"Yup, even with Mary gone, we don't need to worry about our guild's face!"
"..."
******
In the company Headquarters of Universe Tales, a small team of their leading developers and monitoring team was taking a look through the AI's log and records.
The game company's personnel weren't actually the ones that could implement any sort of update on the game. Only the game's Main AI, Zeus, could implement any sort of change to the game.
Also, since the developers of the game wanted to make the game super-realistic, they only allowed the AI to make changes and not them because the developers wanted the game's flow and events to be manipulated, controlled, and influenced by the players themselves.
The only time they would directly interfere and have the AI forcefully implement an update was during a patch, like the recent EXP fix, any IRL related changes, like the Currency Exchange System, and if they needed to fix any bugs which were reported by the players. Of course, most of the bugs were already fixed after the beta test so they didn't receive any sort of bug reports and if they did receive, it was mostly just a complaint or someone trolling.
Another time when the developers would directly interfere with the game by using the AI would be during the holidays when they wanted to host an in-game holiday event for the players. The recent boss-hunting event which was coming to an end would be the one-month anniversary event since the game's launch.
Now, this small team of Unitale staff members was sitting together, reviewing and monitoring a certain player who had recently been making huge waves in the game, waves which weren't supposed to happen at this stage of the game.
Leading the discussions was the Leader of the Monitoring Team, Adrian Macintosh. After reading the reports of the player currently under review, he threw the documents back onto the table and said,
"The Player, 'Maria'...just what the hell is she?"
A member of the team quickly stood up and said, "She is the player that has the unique Fallen Angel race which is a race that was originally supposed to appear in the 'Heaven's Collide' patch once the 'World Travelling' system was implemented—"
"I know that! But can any of you tell me WHY she now owns her own faction and is on another planet?!"
"..."
"Not only that, but she also solo-killed the SSS-ranked world boss, Asmodeus, the Devil of Greed, which was supposed to be impossible to face because the damned boss shouldn't even be in the game right now! Also, how in the hell did a player, at this stage of the game, get kicked out of their faction? I've read her PK points and it's not even that high!"
Yula Park, another member of the team, quickly reported, "From the logs, it states that the girl chose to devour Asmodeus's Life Essence instead of turning it into her faction and because of that, she was booted by the system for having a Taint Value of over 50,000 after her partial assimilation. Taint is also an equivalent of the PK points so there's nothing wrong with the system."
"Thank you, Yula. Taint Value... the 'Fallen' races haven't even come into the picture yet... she's a Fallen Angel so I'll overlook that, but how did she even fight Greed? It's not in the game yet, right?"
"Mr. Adrian, please remember that although the monster is not 'in' the game, it's still actually there," One of the developers present said.
"...You devs and your stupid dreams. What's that system called again?"
An old man walked into the room before loudly declaring, "The Universal Code! All beings in the game have their own personalities and they all have a natural lifespan according to their in-game script! Time flows for the NPCs just as it does with the players and thus, there is nothing 'locked' within the game. The players are only limited by their levels so any quest, areas, or features are only considered 'locked' and 'unavailable' because the players can't get to it when in fact, they already have full access if they just chose to take a 'harder' path."
"..."
Everyone in the room quickly stood up and bowed towards the elderly man. The old man quickly took a seat and continued speaking.
"It doesn't matter what 'stage' the players are in. It won't change the fact that everything in the game is already available to them. How they get there is up to them. In my honest opinion, this girlie that was able to jump to another planet and avoid being locked and chained up by the Light and Dark Faction on the starting planet, Eur, is pretty impressive."
After taking his seat, everyone else quickly followed suit and sat back down. Adrian, who was the leader of the team monitoring the player in question, quickly began complaining to the old man.
"Tsk, that's only because you don't have to deal with the massive amount of complaints and inquiries about the player! Some say she's cheating while others want—"
"When did we care about what others want? Let her play the game as she wants just like the others of her peer! We're not restricting or favoring any player in the game so why should we care if people complain about her?" The old man interrupted.
"Ugh...Mr. Lindow—"
Seeing him still trying to voice his complaints, the old man named Lindow, waved his hand in annoyance and said, "Enough, I made this game to give the players a new world, a new universe to enjoy. You nor I, nor anyone for that matter, has the right to restrict any player just because they're 'ahead' of everyone else. It all depends on effort and luck, just like how real life is! And from what I see, this girlie has that luck AND she has that effort!"
"..."