Chapter 288: The Oath Kingdom (2)
"You have Vision?!" Jake asked in a rush.
Maria nodded with a soft smile. "Yes!"
Knowing how astonishing it was to evolve The Perception Skill to Vision so early, Maria wasn't surprised by Jake's reaction. Anyone who learned about this feat reacted the same, if not louder.
Her Vision enabled her to see the world for the first time in her life.
It was a precious skill for Maria and the main reason she was a powerful mage.
"Wow," Jake whispered, not hiding his shock. His chat also spammed shocked emoticons and Maria's moniker—Lilith— telling Jake how precious and cool she was.
It wasn't a secret that Maria was Lilith, the famous singer.
Many people speculated about it while looking at her real-self appearance. She didn't use cosmetics or change anything in her game character, meaning she was the same as Jake. That said, observant fans noticed a few similarities, connecting the dots and revealing Maria's famous self to the world. Stay updated through мѵʟ
As Lilith, Maria had various hairstyles on the stage, and her hair was never her natural color. In the game world, her hair was black, long and lustrous. Her blind eyes were brown; her constantly activated Vision turned them starry, drawing everyone's attention to her pretty eyes.
If Damien were here, he would say that her eyes could see through people's secrets—an intrusive art.
"How did you—" Jake wanted to ask about her Vision and how exactly she developed it. Alas, a monster ran across the road and abruptly turned upon noticing the team of two players with four pets.
It was a moose-like monster with red skin and wooden-colored antlers. It was even bigger than a moose on Earth, towering above Jake and Maria despite staying at least forty meters away.
The monster howled before rushing at the team.
Unperturbed, Jake raised his bow and nocked eight arrows. He drew the highest anchor in his Formless Soldier Form, waiting for his teammate to start the sequence of actions.
Fixing her staff on the monster, Maria cast a gravity skill on its hind legs, pulling them close. It was enough to topple down the monster whose low intelligence couldn't comprehend what had happened.
It fell onto its side with a loud thud!
Famous whistles boomed on the thoroughfare leading toward The Oath Kingdom. Jake's arrows acted seemingly independently, following eight different trajectories, but all converged on a single point—the moose's head.
[Critical Strike!]
[-5309 HP!]
[You have inflicted severe bleeding on Lv. 35 Redwood Moose.]
[Redwood Moose Lv. 35 HP: 3601/8910 MP: 3000/3000]
"Its hide and flesh are so tough," Jake said as he checked the system notifications. "Want to finish it off?"
Maria smiled, "Sure!"
A black-steel raven perched on her shoulder twitched. It flew straight at the moose before going up to the skies. The raven hung up for a second, then dropped beak-first at the moose's head, popping its head open as though it were a watermelon.
Jake chuckled, "Well done, Maria!"
"Thank you, Jake!" Maria heartily reciprocated. The black-steel raven was a decoration before, but it had changed into a weapon that Maria used frequently now.
She didn't want to use the environment along with the gravity magic. Instead, she received a puppet-like raven that she could control with and without her gravity magic.
It was an expensive item, but both Maria and her older sister were wealthy enough to afford many of them. It was melted and crafted from high-quality steel. So that Maria could use it on her low level, the item's prowess had been sealed.
Nonetheless, it was still a weapon that turned Maria into a single powerhouse.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that there was a chance Maria would be able to control a flock or perhaps an army of those ravens in the future.
She shared this idea with Jake and his chat, which excited them both. Jake imagined his performance against an army of ravens, while the chat grew excited about Maria's second appearance in the tournament!
"The road veers to the right to elude the dense area with forest monsters. It's about time our leveling up's difficulty upped a little!" Jake said.
Maria nodded wholeheartedly.
She wanted more challenges as well. The same applied to Jake's pets, as Jake didn't want them to fight a single monster or two/three, since that put them into a troublesome cooldown. He decided to use their prowess against a mass of monsters that should be up ahead of them!
Jake returned to the previous topic, "How did you develop Vision?"
"I used it for everything," Maria replied. "I spent many months in The Tutorial to get used to The Perception Skill. It was such a fun experience since I could feel how things looked. It wasn't the same as me touching items. I can't explain this feeling with words, but when Vision appeared, I 'saw' an outline of everything around me. I will never forget this feeling!"
Jake smiled. "It's a touching story, to be honest. How did it feel to 'see' your sister?"
Maria tenderly smiled. "I cried on that day."
Despite her artistic nickname, Lilith, Maria appeared like an angel after those words, silencing Jake and his chat. A moment later, an avalanche of angel comments draped Jake's chat.
He was laughing a lot. "Thanks for sharing this with us."
"It's nothing!" Maria replied, slightly embarrassed.
Jake's chat forced him to pass on their words to Maria, so he started reading their comments aloud to her. Maria happily interacted with Jake and his chat as the team headed off the road and deeper into the forest.
'I should use my perception skill and Odin's body language to unlock my Vision!' Jake thought.
-
It was late evening in Europe.
Meredith finished her responsibilities and even played the game for three hours. She had also begun her voyage to the North, though in her case, it was a lone journey.
She didn't have close friends around her level.
The silver lining was that her best friends, Loe Loe and Rae, said they would meet her in one of the cities she should pass in her lone endeavor and help her with the quests and progress there.
"Jake told me he would stream today," Meredith whispered. She had bathed and made light food, as playing the game put a toil on her body no one should ignore.
She was also hungry.
Opening her laptop and going to Jake's social media, Meredith casually reached for the tea and brought it closer to her lips.
That was when Jake's voice resounded in the speakers.
"Keep going, Maria!"
The tea's steam brushed Meredith's lips.
She hadn't drunk it yet, for she froze.
'MAAAAAAAAAAAARIA?!' Meredith inwardly exclaimed. She put down the cup of tea in a flash and brought her face closer to her laptop, staring at Jake's team.
Other than his four companions, there was a woman with a picturesque face and angelic smile. Her body perspired as she engaged in the battle, and her cheeks reddened, but none of it was a flaw. In fact, it made her more dazzling.
She truly enjoyed her team's battle against the army of monsters!
Jake stood beside her, showcasing to his stream his strongest skill—The Eight-Headed Fenrir. His pets were also engaged in the battle, each acting on their own.
That said, their teamwork was at a high level. Odin used his howl whenever Maria's victims stood up. He extended their stun duration! Ender played tricks on their low intelligence by weaving webs of darkness around them.
Medusa slithered across the ground, bitting into their gaping wounds.
Wukong was on Jake's rear, watching potential monsters who could assail them from other angles.
There was a high chance more monsters would come at them soon since Jake and Maria were in a deep and crowded part of the forest, with their prey howling until their last breath.
"One has slipped away!" Jake shouted.
"Yes! I see him!" Maria decisively nodded.
Both used gravity skills to fly up and perch on the tree's branch. Although these two had done this move several times before, their coordination was magically on point.
They looked like cogs of the same machine!
The chat cheered when Jake's arrow and Maria's Raven flew side by side to kill the moose below them! It struck the bark with its antlers and was now a victim of its low intelligence, frozen and liable to any damage.
BANG! BANG!
'WHO IS SHE?!' Meredith inwardly screamed! 'WHY IS SHE SO CUTE AND IN SUCH A GOOD SYNC WITH JAKE?!'
Looking at the chat, Meredith noticed the moniker she wasn't familiar with. She typed it in the search engine. The results shocked her to the core, to say the least.
'SO FAMOUS, TOO?!' Meredith pushed herself away from her desk. Her office chair came in clutch as it smoothly rolled across her room.
She hopped off her chair and jumped into bed, stuffing her face in her pillow. She threw her long legs into a motion, striking her bed with her toes in frustration.
'Ahhhhhh! Why didn't he tell me anything about her?! If you have such a cute and famous female friend, why did you go for me instead?! Ah!' Meredith lifted herself, staring down at her pillow as though she were about to do a push-up. 'If he chose me, then… I'm better than her!'
Meredith's face lit up like a sun, with flowers blossoming in her eyes.
She giggled, snuggling her pillow into her chest.
Landing on her back this time, Meredith rolled back and forth as she imagined the world where she was only with Jake, conquering the new lands and having romantic scenes straight from the movies.
She gasped. "He knew I'd watch! He knew! He must have been waiting for this moment! He's bullying me! I can't be the only one jealous in this relationship!"
Picking her phone, Meredith made a group call with her best friends—Loe Loe and Rae.
"Chloe… Rae… I want your boyfriends," she said. 'WHAT DID I SAY?!'
Chloe asked, "What did Jake do this time?"
Rae yawned, "Yeah?"
"He made me so jealous that I'm no longer hungry!" Meredith replied after sighing with relief. These two understand that she would never want their boyfriends!
"Oh?" Chloe and Rae's eyes lit up mischievously. "Sounds so fun! Girl, we'll prepare so many jealous bullets for you to shoot him with that you will get him on a leash for five years!"
"Eh… What? Really?" Meredith asked.
"There's no need for our useless boyfriends, either!" Rae added.
"Really?!" Meredith asked.
"Really, really!" Chloe reassured her best friend.
And thus, these three started planning how to bully Jake.
In fact, Chloe and Rare did the most work as Meredith just listened to them.
She was getting redder and redder with each jealous bullet these two were coming up with.