NOVEL WEB Chapter 113: To The Bathory Dukedom
A few in-game days later, Maria was now on her way to Duchess Bathory's territory. The grand ball wouldn't take place until another week later, but the time it would take for Maria to get to the Duchess's lands would be a while.
Right now, Maria was only halfway through the journey but she streamed the entire process. Everything was rather uneventful since Maria had taken half of her personal army with her as an escort.
A few of her important officials were coming with her because they had won the competition so this was their reward. There were already replacements ready to take on their duties so Maria could afford to have these officials come with her.
Due to this, their entourage was rather big even after most of her officials were sharing carriages and wagons. Only Maria had her own personal carriage which was lavishly decorated and enchanted with various defensive spells and spells of convenience.
If it wasn't because of her viewers that were keeping her entertained, the journey would have been so boring for Maria.
The realistic feature of this game was sometimes just a little too much especially since the players needed to spend a lot of their time on the road getting from one point to another.
However, this feature had its own appeal since it made the journey all the more memorable when traveling in groups. Making memories of their adventures and the trials they had gone through together, was what made Unitale so appealing to many people.
It let them live fantastical second lives that normally, they wouldn't have been able to live. This attracted the attention of people from various age groups. The middle-aged and elderly also began playing Unitale to experience what it was like to start a second life.
It was great and all since the game was getting more exposure which resulted in its market value increasing both in-game and IRL, but Maria couldn't feel this appeal at all at this moment.
She didn't have any friends with her and her NPCs weren't exactly that relatable so picking up a conversation with them was sometimes rather monotonous and uninteresting.
Maria only felt this way because her journey was long and boring. Talking with Lilah and Alexa somewhat relieved her boredom but she really wished she had one of her friends with her right now to talk to.
The stream acted as a replacement but sometimes, the chat would experience a lull in conversation because after talking with Maria about various things, it wouldn't be surprising that they couldn't find anything to talk about.
The journey was around 4-5 days long and Maria was only halfway through. She couldn't push her people to go any faster because unlike her, who could just continue playing even when the day turned into night in the game, the NPCs needed to rest.
During these times, Maria would either log out or go around hunting for monsters. The monsters were stronger as they got closer and closer to Duchess Bathory's lands so she was able to experience a good fight and gain quite a bit of experience.
Just yesterday, Maria had leveled up and she was getting closer and closer to level 70 now. This was pretty high-leveled in her opinion, but the rest of the player base had long since surpassed her and the average level of the frontrunners was 90.
Even her best friends had already leveled past level 100. The first ranked player on the level leaderboard was 143. That person was twice Maria's level already, however, if they were to fight, the outcome couldn't be determined by just comparing their levels.
Maria had a large repertoire of skills and spells in addition to having powerful subordinates. Her stats were well above her level and the power she displayed in her streams was overwhelming.
Many people had already taken notice that Maria's level was rather low but the monsters she fought were high above her level and yet, she took them down easily.
They could only speculate what kind of stats and titles she possessed but the only thing Maria revealed was her level and many thought this was fabricated. Of course, the level indicator hovering next to her name in the game said otherwise.
<It's probably an item that can conceal her level. Otherwise, there's no way this girl could go toe-to-toe with these level 100 monsters!>
<Well, that could be true.>
<There's plenty of leveling and stat concealing items out there. This is not a surprise.>
<It's obvious that our little angel wants to keep her stats and level hidden. Who knows if someone wants to try stream-sniping her when they get to her planet.>
<She's thought this far ahead.>
Maria was reading through the chat and only smiled lightly when they saw them speculating about her level. She didn't deny nor confirm this because her stats were just abnormal and her friends kept on telling her not to reveal anything.
She decided to reveal only her level the other day because everyone was curious. That was the limit that she'd go to though but even after being honest about her level, many people didn't believe it and thought that she was concealing her true level.
She left it be and continued on to kill some more monsters. The night was still young and Maria was bored out of her mind.
Thankfully, Lilah was with her so no matter how far Maria ventured out to kill monsters, she was always able to make it back to their camp before the sun rose above the horizon.
*DING*
[Level Up! 68 → 69]
"One more level and I reach 70…"
Maria was elated to see this but she noticed that her viewers were spamming 69 in the chat. She didn't understand what this meant so she left it be.
"Master, the sun's about to come up. Should we head back now?"
Maria looked around for a moment before nodding. She had completely destroyed this patch of forest and land using her weapon and skills. She thought that it was enough damage for one day so it was time to head back and continue their journey.
"Let's go… I don't want to keep everyone waiting and the quicker we depart, the quicker we'll arrive at Duchess Bathory's lands."
"Mhm, there are only 5 days left until the banquet begins so we'll have around 2-3 days to look around the area," Lilah said.
"Yeah, and since she's been ruling over her lands for quite a long time now, I'm sure I can learn a thing or two about governing from just looking at how she distributes her people and authority."
Lilah nodded at her master's words. It was nice to follow someone who was always willing to improve. She couldn't help but feel prideful of her master.
"Once I've learned everything I can from her, I'll 'politely' take it all away if she doesn't agree to join our faction."
Her next words caused Lilah's smile to crack but then again, their original objective in reaching out to Duchess Bathory was to get her to join their faction.
"Might I suggest we take things slowly, Master?"
"We're already taking things slowly as it is! It's only because I'm limited by my level that we can hasten things up!"
"..."
Take and take, that was Maria's motto in the game. She would take whatever she wanted from her friends and enemies before plundering them of everything soon after. Of course, she would only do this to NPCs and people she didn't know IRL.
Maria wasn't that cruel as to take from her best friends. Naturally, Lilah thought that it was rather worrying but there was nothing in this game that could stop Maria from acting like so.