NOVEL NEXT Chapter 94: Attention
At one point during the fight, people finally noticed something.
[Look, her equipment changed!]
[Yeah, I just noticed that. Wasn't she wearing a priestess's garb earlier?]
[That's one nice set of armor! What grade is that?!]
Everyone was intrigued by Maria's equipment. It was an entire set of high-end looking armor and it gave her the look of a dark knight when previously she looked like a harmless priestess.
Maria quickly cleared out the area of monsters with a few of her skills and magic spells. Her skills and judgment in combat really astounded many viewers because they honestly didn't think that a young girl like her would be so adept at the game.
Her movement, rotation of skills, and awareness in battle attracted many of the people watching her. It was also unexpected since Maria came off as a delicate young lady whose party looked like they would carry her in battle.
However, throughout the fight, not a single one of her subordinates stepped up to help. Ash and everyone else all knew that their queen was having her fun and naturally, they didn't want to spoil it for her.
Only Lilah helped out by providing Maria some debuffs for her enemies while occasionally striking out and luring more monsters over until the area was completely cleared of them.
"Phew, that was fun~ Now, let's keep going!" Maria said with a refreshed look on her face.
No one could see that face because it was covered by her helmet but one thing was for certain, they'd be charmed by it.
Maria and her party continued walking around the base of the mountains until they found a traversable path up the mountainside. Along the way, every monster they encountered either died by her scythe or was sent to oblivion by her spells.
At this point, no one among the audience could determine exactly what kind of job or class Maria's character was. She used heavy armor like a knight, healing spells like a priestess, and even used a necromancer's scythe. On top of that, she used beginner and intermediate level magic spells.
The beginner magic spells she used also seemed to be an upgraded version of some sort since the damage output and casting time was different. Naturally, everyone who played Unitale knew that magic could be used and learned by everyone in the game.
It's just that this was currently limited to just beginner-level magic spells. The time and effort needed to manually learn intermediate-level magic spells was just unattainable for most people outside of the mage-related classes and quite frankly, most thought that it wasn't worth their effort.
Maria would probably have been categorized in that aspect if she didn't have Paimon's Magical Book. With that book, all she needed to do was meet their requirements to learn the improved beginner-level magic spells that Paimon developed which could then derive themselves into higher-grade magic spells.
It was a cheat-like item and it was worth all the effort, time, and pain she had to go through to get said item. No one, in their right minds would voluntarily let themselves be imprisoned within a magic tower for nearly a month in real life.
Time for leveling, questing, and raiding would be wasted so not many players in the game would do that to themselves. Of course, there was always the exception like Maria and a few others, but they were in the minority who played the game just for the sake of playing and enjoying themselves.
Different from most people who loved to interact with others, form groups, and become more powerful within the game.
Maria just didn't have that ambition. Even now while building her own faction, she was only doing this because she had a quest she needed to finish. The rewards were worth her effort and building her faction was also interesting, except for the desk-related jobs, of course. She despised those to a fault.
However, meeting and interacting with the NPCs of her faction, Maria always found that enjoyable. She found it interesting to see their reactions and unlike people in her school, they didn't avoid her and always greeted her.
She needed those kinds of human interactions and since she couldn't find that in the real world and instead found it in the game, Maria naturally looked forward to talking with the NPCs.
Alexa, Ash, Lilah, Danor, and her other subordinates, Maria loved interacting with everyone from her faction and it put a bright smile on her face. If not, then once she finished her quest with Ash, she probably would drop her faction in a heartbeat and start playing the game as she wanted to once again.
At least, in the near future, Maria wouldn't just abandon her territory in pursuit of something more fun to do.
******
In the chat, people kept on asking if Maria could disclose her class and show them her equipment details.
Of course, no one was expecting her to actually show it and Gerald wasn't contacting her sister to read the chat or anything.
Maria had also forgotten all about her streaming since she was already fully-focused on her hunting session.
"Master, there's a boss monster ahead!" Lilah said as she flew back from scouting ahead.
"A boss? Finally, looks like this trip isn't wasted after all!"
Maria decided to rest for a bit and take a short breather before the battle. The boss monster was a twin-headed mountain ogre. Ogre's had high vitality and strength stat so it was going to be a tough and long battle of endurance.
With high vitality, it also meant that the monster's battle regeneration was going to be high as well and like most field boss monsters, they had an ability that would further boost their HP regeneration in-battle.
It was going to be hard to fight an opponent like this so she needed to rest for a bit before the battle. Making sure her HP and MP were full and her mental state was stable for the upcoming fight which might take a while.
She wanted to try solo-hunting this boss and told Ash, Alexa, and Little Red to guard the perimeter against other monsters. Maria decided to only take Lilah because she was her support-familiar.
While resting, Maria decided to open up her stream's chat since Gerald reminded her that she was still streaming. Maria used the 'change' option on her armor set and changed back to her priestess robes during the break.
She also took out the lunchbox she prepared for herself before coming here. Naturally, she gave Ash, Alexa, Lilah, and Little Red their meals as well.
[Wow, that looks so good!]
[Can we have a bite?]
[Can we have a bite? +1]
[+2]
Maria saw the chat and asked, "You guys want some too?"
[Yes!]
[Yes, ma'am!]
[Please!]
"Too bad, I only made a few," Maria said after a moment and tauntingly took a bite out of the steak she cooked for herself. "Hmmhmm~ so good~"
[ASMR!]
[Woohooo!]
[Hunting to ASMR? Very nice~~~]
[WWWWW]
[Yum yum]
Maria was amused by her chat and just continued eating. Gerald also sent her a screenshot of the chat during the moment when they asked her to disclose her armor set and equipment but obviously, she wasn't so stupid as to show them that. However, she felt like teasing them a bit.
"Earlier in the chat, you guys wanted to see my equipment set?"
[Yes!]
[Show us please!]
[Yes!]
[Yes!]
[All of you saying 'yes', don't be so shameless!]
The majority of people wanted her to show it, but there were actually some who advised her against it explaining all of the disadvantages of doing so. Maria smiled when she saw people doing that.
"Hehe, at least not all of you are shameless~"
[She called us shameless!]
[Oh, my heart...]
[Shameless +1]
[+2]
The members of the chat who were subscribed to her channel began spamming emoticons of herself which had somehow made it on there.
<You don't need to thank me~>
The donations and subscription options Gerald was able to open midst stream and he even added in a few benefits to the people who were subscribed to her.
'Big brother sure knows how to work fast...once I find a method to bring him here. I'll work him to the bone...'
"Ehehehe~" Maria let out a sadistic laugh and smile involuntarily at the thought.
The chat saw this and immediately spams of 'S's and 'Sadists' flooded the chat.
Maria didn't mind this and quickly finished her meal. She took another 5 minutes to prepare herself before she stopped resting once again donning her battle armor.
[That is so cool.]
[How does she do that? Is that a set option or am I just missing a game function?]
[It's definitely an item option. You have to manually equip items here in Unitale.]
[So convenient~]
It was indeed an item option from her Dire Queen Battle Armor Set. The armor set she acquired was the latest set she commissioned from the craftsmen of her faction. It came with a helmet, gauntlets, full-metal body armor, a battle skirt, and war boots all made from high-grade demon materials.
The recipe for the set was something she bought from using her faction's reputation shop. As long as she fulfilled the reputation requirements, she could use her faction currency to buy the items.
Of course, most of the faction currency would be used to maintain her faction's upkeep, but she had a huge excess which Maria used to buy a few things for herself. A majority of the excess currency was used to buy some building blueprints and other upgrades for her faction.
However, Maria did still use her faction currency to buy stuff to decorate her once a bleak-looking castle. At least now, the interior matched the exterior appearance and majesty of her black castle.
Anyway, the armor blueprint she bought was the most expensive piece she could buy in the reputation shop. The faction-benefiting items needed high amounts of reputation points so most of it was still locked while the individual related things didn't need much reputation points to buy so she immediately bought the recipe to the armor set.
The recipe she bought was a legendary-ranked growth set that could only be used by her who was the Queen of the Dire. Also, once it was equipped, it couldn't be unequipped. Since she couldn't unequip the set, Maria wouldn't be able to use items of better stats if she obtained them through boss raids or quest rewards, she would be stuck with the Dire Queen equipment series for the rest of the game.
This also meant she couldn't use any accessories or weapons outside of the Dire Queen series with the exception of a few class and sub-class related items such as her Calamity and Paimon's Magical Book.
Maria didn't mind this so much because the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. It was a growth-type legendary equipment set. From what she knew, there was no such legendary equipment set this early in the game.
She had an early advantage and since the growth of the item set was happening this early on, the stats will be able to keep up with the current and future power level of the player base as long as she continued to diligently fulfill the requirements needed to upgrade the equipment.