Universe Tales: Virtual Log of the Fallen One

With her exams over, winter break had officially started. Now, Maria could play all day if she wanted.

She planned a few streams over the break and posted the schedule on her official SNS page. Many of her fans were anticipating her streams and apparently, many other people besides her fans were now paying attention to her.

Whether this was a good or a bad thing remained unknown because right now, Maria's impact on the game's current state of affairs was minimal. Most of the people watching and paying attention to her had long since noticed and confirmed that she was indeed on a different planet.

The flora, fauna, and the environment were all different compared to Planet Eur so this was conclusive evidence that Maria, due to some luck, had escaped from the starting planet.

Most of her fans watched her because they were interested in whatever she did, but there were those people who paid attention to her actions so that they could find out her motives and for who she was working for.

They wanted to dig out the mysterious power backing her up since many believed that a girl who seemed pretty much like a simpleton that only focused on playing the game for what it was couldn't have the resources and the wits to develop her faction to the extent that was shown on her streams.

It was a bias against her female gender and because of her young age. They couldn't dig up much info about her since everything in her bio was set to private and investigating a person's IRL identity through the game went against Universe Game's Private Policy.

No one dared to investigate her IRL circumstances by hacking the game's network since it was unhackable in the first place with the AI, Zeus, overseeing everything. The consequences for attempting to hack the game's mainframe and secondary networks were the immediate deletion and ban of all related in-game subjects that were tied to the player's account and the IP address.

Even if one tried to mask their IP, Zeus would still be able to track it down and permanently ban it. There have been multiple attempts of hacking already and all attempts were easily taken care of by Zeus.

The system was impenetrable so Maria and every player in the game didn't need to worry about their IRL identities being leaked. Of course, Maria had stupidly used her IRL name but no one would know that except for those very close to her.

The only problem would be that her in-game appearance closely resembled her IRL appearance so if people ran a face matching program they might find her. Of course, even if they did find her, most people would be too afraid to do anything once they found out about her background.

The young miss of the Heltania Group which was a multi-national business group that had a sizable amount of shares in the Universe Gaming Company and many other large corporations around the world on top of running and backing a few large businesses themselves.

Touching her would be touching upon the interests of many groups especially since the Heltania Group's partners knew how doting the girl's father was. Corinthus Heltania may seem like a mild and friendly middle-aged man, but he was a ruthless wolf underneath who wouldn't hesitate to lash out at his enemies' necks if the opportunity presented itself.

Well, even if people found out who she was, Maria's background would deter anyone from trying anything funny with her. However, although they might not be able to do anything IRL, in-game was a different matter.

Many factions had been digging up her in-game information and were trying to find ways to get to her planet. Some groups wanted to form alliances with her while others wanted her to submit to them.

From the information they could gather from her in-game activities, well first of all, Maria was only a high school student and second, she was definitely from a rich family. Only those in the upper class had the power that could support the young lady's extravagant spending for the in-game materials that were needed to expand her faction.

Owning 1 city, currently developing 1 town, 2 fortresses, and other numerous villages, there was no way anyone in the game could accumulate so much gold and materials without having their pockets bleed from buying them at the auction houses and trading with the NPCs.

Another thing they knew about Maria was that she didn't seem to be too interested in the economic and political value of the game. She played UT only to entertain herself and the people that she surrounded herself with were all NPCs.

There wasn't a single player other than herself present in her faction. At least, this is what everyone else could see. Not once had there been another player appearing in her streams and it was like she never paid attention to any of the other streamers on the platform.

Many have already tried to reach out to her via live announcements or private chats but she never responded to any of them. It wasn't that she didn't want to or anything, but her SNS accounts for her in-game character, Maria, were all managed by her butler, David.

The only time she would open those accounts would be when she wanted to post an announcement or her streaming schedule. Most of the time, she would leave it inactive or in David's reliable hands.

Naturally, her image to the other people on the platform that tried to reach out to her for collaborations or interviews was rather bad since she was allegedly ignoring them.

If Maria knew what everyone thought about her, she would find it all but amusing. She was never one to care about how other people viewed her and now she was hiding behind her in-game character.

She could give a rat's ass about what other people thought. Her friends had trouble dealing with the Freedom-something people that were messing with their guild and ruining their guildmates' gaming experience, but she wouldn't.

The Fallen Angels had to maintain their public image as an upright guild so they had some problems dealing with those people but Maria could care less of what others thought of her faction. She wouldn't need to manipulate public opinion like what she suggested to her friends since she could just outright PK anyone who offended her.

She didn't know when people would begin appearing on her planet, but Maria swore that she'd at least have already taken over the Blood Faction and the Blood Continent of Vanhal before any player came.

Once people began appearing on her planet and they did anything out of line, Maria wouldn't hesitate to lock them out of the game by killing them repeatedly whenever they respawned.

Seeing all the conflict that was happening on the starting planet, Maria wanted to hasten the expansion of her faction and strengthen her power so that she wouldn't be caught up and tossed around by the various player factions.

******

Inside the game, Maria had just logged in and immediately, she was swamped with work. Just seeing the piles of documents that were waiting for her approval nearly caused Maria to curse out in anger.

"...Ash."

Maria didn't scream or anything. All she did was call out the name calmly and after waiting only a few seconds, Ash suddenly appeared inside her chambers.

"Yes, my Lady?"

"What the hell is all this?"

"...Documents, my Lady. We need your stamp and signature for―"

"Shush."

"..."

Maria immediately silenced Ash before taking her seat. She closed her eyes and said, "I'm going to count to 5 and then I'll open my eyes. When I open my eyes, I want every document in front of me to magically be finished and disappear from my sight."

"M-My Lady!"

"ONE!"

"!"

Ash, using his inhuman speed immediately began working, he skimmed through every document, marked what was wrong and stamped the ones that were correct while carefully taking Maria's hand and stamping her fingerprint on each document.

"TWO!"

Maria was deliberately counting slowly. She knew that Ash needed about a minute or so if he worked at his quickest.

"THREE!"

There were only 2 stacks of documents placed on her table and one of them had disappeared. Ash had gone in and out of the room for a brief moment and gave it to the vampire scholar that was waiting outside.

"FOUR!"

The other stack of documents quickly disappeared as well and only one small envelope was left. Ash placed it on the center of her desk because this was a document that he didn't have the authority to read or approve.

"FIVE!"

Maria opened her eyes, looked left and right before a smile bloomed on her face.

"Yay~ I'm done~"

"Good work, my Lady. But there is still just one document left that you must read," Ash spoke up and directed her attention to the remaining piece of article on her table, the sealed envelope.

Maria's face immediately changed from her bright and happy look to an expression of pure disgust as she eyed Ash with complete and utter disdain for not being able to finish HER job.

Ash had a smile on his face but inwardly, he was coughing up blood after being subjected to the awful look from his most beloved Queen.

Ash cleared his throat and explained, "It came from Duchess Bathory… the letter that I sent finally received a reply and it's imperative that you, my Lady, should personally read it."

"Oh, it's from the Duchess, huh?" Maria's face reverted back to normal as she picked up the envelope.

[Quest Item:

Duchess Carmilla Bathory's Letter of Invitation

Use: 1

Description: Upon use, starts the Quest: The Duchess's Ball]

"A quest item―wait, a ball?"

Maria's eyes began sparkling when she saw the quest's name. She immediately opened the envelope and the quest was immediately initiated.

[Quest Prompt

The Duchess's Ball has been initiated!]