Universe Tales: Virtual Log of the Fallen One

When Maria logged back into the game, she received a notice in her mailbox regarding a 2-day Candy-hunting event that would take place exactly on Halloween.

She read the in-game notice briefly before dismissing it. Since she only needed to collect the candy by killing monsters, she decided to just leave it to her subordinates to farm the candy for her.

It says the candy will be dropped by every kind of monster whether it was a player or an NPC who killed them. The event even stated that players could buy or trade the event candy with the NPCs who picked them up or even rob them of it.

It was surely an interesting event, but Maria was busy with developing her faction and clearing away lands, and expanding.

She didn't have time to personally participate in the event so she decided to give a city-wide announcement to her citizens that she would be providing rewards for those who give her the event candy.

She wanted every NPC in her city to participate and help her farm the candy, not just her personal army or subordinates. The NPCs didn't need them and since some were idling around and stuff, it was fine if she used her power as a faction leader to 'coerce' her NPC followers to help her out a bit.

Once she gave the order to Ash, the Vampire Duke quickly issued out the statement to the city's Adventurer Guild which was just recently erected. After that was set, Maria went out once again, but this time, with her personal army to clear out a portion of the lands that she had just opened up.

Slowly, she was getting closer and closer to the vampire baron Russo Glemen's former territory. It was hers now, but there was an empty and unclaimed area that separated her main area from the former baron's area.

She wanted to quickly secure this piece of land and build a road that would connect the two territories and start rebuilding the town and villages that she had her subordinates destroy a while back.

The process of conquering this somewhat large piece of land was quite easy since no one owned it in the first place. After they killed a few boss monsters and drove away all of the mobs that heavily populated the area, Maria had her soldiers establish an outpost that would serve as a waypoint.

The distance wasn't actually that large between the two points, but Maria feared the monsters would attack her citizens and any NPCs that would come and go between her city and town. She wanted to station some of her faction's troops here in the outpost and have them patrol the area to keep any monsters from attacking the roads which would be built later in the future.

*****

"My Queen, we have finished establishing the outpost, what are your orders now?" Markus Pelio asked his queen.

The air around him had changed from when Maria had first met him and the vampire was exuding a dignity unique to a vampire baron. This was because, at one point, he got naturally promoted to baron rank after he was appointed as one of Maria's captains.

The others who Maria recruited had experienced similar promotions in rank as well, however, only Markus was a captain of Maria's personal army. The other 4 were relegated over to the faction's army instead.

Maria thought for a moment before answering, "Have the troops do one more patrol around the area. In the meantime, send a runner back to the city and inform Ash or Lilah to send a squadron from the Dire Army to occupy this outpost and start patrolling the area."

"Yes, my Queen. I'll get it done right away."

"Mhm."

With her subordinates getting to work, Maria remained at the outpost and dully looked towards the lands around her. With her people getting to work, Maria found that while on the field, she had less and less to do.

Before, she had to personally take action, but now, she could just leave it all to her subordinates who followed her words to a fault and performed very spectacularly. She observed the status screens of everyone in her personal army and couldn't help but sigh in amazement.

She didn't know where and how Ash did it, but he was able to find the most capable of the people in her city and either coerced them or forced them into her army. The NPCs all had different ranks and most of them in her army were either Bronze or Silver ranked NPCs.

NPCs ranked from Normal, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and God-tier. A majority of NPCs were only Normal ranked. Those with one talent and skill are Bronze-ranked while those with 2 or more are Silver-ranked.

An NPC could only become a Gold-rank if they had a Unique ranked skill. There wasn't any information about any NPCs above Gold-rank yet, but Maria reckoned that NPCs like her vampire subordinate, Ash Garm, was ranked above Gold.

After all, the vampire possessed many powerful abilities. She couldn't tell what kind of rank they were because the only thing she could see was the abilities' names and other details, just not the ranking detail.

She only found about this information while scrolling through the Universe Tales forum. Much information was spread there which the players shared amongst each other and it greatly benefited her since there was much she had to learn about games in general and about UT itself.

Maria was able to rank her NPCs according to this information she had and found that all of the troops within her personal army were within the bronze and silver ranks. She had also found out that NPC ranks could be enhanced as long as they learned new skills and talents.

The process of an NPC learning something wouldn't be immediate. It wasn't like how the players learned skills and talents through leveling up and using skill books. Instead, the NPCs had to manually learn things and have a firm grasp of the skill or talent they were learning before the system inputted the corresponding skill they learned into their status menus.

There was much trial and error that she had to learn about raising an NPC, but from what she had currently found out was that NPCs could evolve and learn skills. Their levels could be raised and so could their ranks.

When an NPC learned a skill from a player or another NPC, the skill that would be generated later would become random, but have a strict tie with the skill which was initially supposed to be learned.

This last piece of information was something Maria found out after Ash had completed her NPC army's initial training. Many of the NPCs had been able to generate a skill called [Basic Combat Mastery].

However, this skill was different from NPC to NPC, some of the more 'talented' and promising NPCs had [Basic Combat Mastery Lv.1] (High) while others would have [Basic Combat Mastery Lv1] (Medium) or [Basic Combat Mastery Lv1] (Low).

It all varied and there were even some that gained a different skill altogether. If Maria had to liken this learning ability of the NPCs, it was similar to those gachapons that she kept hearing from Lizzy.

She could train an NPC, but the skills they generated were all random. It could either be a good skill or a bad skill. Naturally, Ash would kick those NPCs who had generated bad skills and he kept only those who had good skills within Maria's personal army.

This was why it was filled mostly with Bronze and Silver ranked NPCs. Maria could only be impressed with how great her subordinate fulfilled his tasks.

She looked on with an impressed face as she saw the well-organized teams of NPC soldiers systematically sweeping through the plains once again.

"Next time, I'll give Ash a reward for being such a good slav—I mean, subordinate."

Maria quickly corrected her slip of the tongue, but the elite squadron which was tasked with her personal protection—which she honestly didn't need—began to sweat when they heard the Queen call their Commander her slave.

Only the Queen dared to address their frightening commander in such a brazen manner. They all thought that even their commander had those days where he'd be powerless to do anything despite being kicked around.