Universe Tales: Virtual Log of the Fallen One

Chapter 109: Overhyped Competition

With the start of the new quest, Maria was immediately prompted that a new location on her map had opened up.

When she opened her in-game map, a vast area on the map was suddenly unveiled as a quest marker was created over a grayed area. The map area that was unveiled only showed the terrain and certain landmarks such as major cities and places but not specific markers like towns, villages, mines, dungeons, etc.

The quest marker was hovering over a city called Ecsed, the Sanguine City. Since the quest clearly indicated that there was going to be a ball, Maria quickly ordered Ash to bring over her faction's best tailors and weavers to create several dresses for her.

Maria had never been to a social gathering like a ball before. She was also never asked out to her school's prom despite already being a second-year student. All her friends had been asked out before but only she wasn't.

She felt a little excluded but who could blame her. Also, it wasn't like the boys in her school could be blamed especially since 2 certain students had prohibited anyone of the opposite sex that were unrelated from approaching her. As for who these two people were, Maria would never know.

Anyway, since this was going to be her first-ever social gathering event despite it being inside a game, Maria was greatly looking forward to it so she wanted to do her utmost in preparing for Duchess Bathory's grand ball.

The start of the quest, [The Duchess's Ball], would only begin 1 week from now so there was still plenty of time for her to get ready. One of the things she needed was naturally some pleasant-looking attire so Maria wanted the best tailors and weavers of her faction to create the best looking dresses that they could before the ball started.

Naturally, Maria needed around 2 in-game days to travel to Ecsed so that gave her subordinates just 5 days to complete their tasks. She wanted to pick the best one out of the assortment that her subordinates could provide her so she issued out a faction-wide competition in the form of a quest.

The competition was restricted to those that possessed weaving and tailoring skills but if anyone who wasn't of that class possessed the ability and confidence to enter, they could participate.

However, the consequences of putting out a sub-par dress that didn't match the standards of the competition would be imprisonment and incarceration for an indefinite amount of time.

This dissuaded those that didn't have the confidence and skill from participating so only the best of the best entered the competition.

In the throne room of the Heltania Castle, Maria was sitting dignified on the throne with a wine glass in her hand as she addressed the officials who had gathered in her presence to mesh out the finer details of the competition.

"I'm not that picky so I don't have any preferences. It doesn't have to stand out or anything, it just has to be elegant and pleasing to my eyes!"

Ash bowed and replied, "I'll make sure to issue the notice of the competition details at once but, my Lady, is a dress all you need?"

"Hm? What more is there?"

"Judging from my Lady's age, is this perhaps your first ball?" He carefully asked. Ash didn't want to offend her and make it seem that she was inexperienced but this was a crucial question.

Maria didn't think anything of it and answered honestly, "Yeah, why?"

"!"

"!"

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"Oh!"

"This is!"

Maria was looking at her subordinates who all started creating a slight ruckus from her words. Now, it annoyed her. However, before she could speak up and let out her annoyance, one of her officials quickly stepped forward and said, "Your Majesty, since this is your first time then this is naturally your debut into High Society!"

"Eh?"

"This is a grand, grand, grand occasion! We must do this perfectly! Make sure you put that into the competition details! This is Her Majesty's so it has to be PERFECT!"

Another official stood up and echoed, "Yes, I agree!"

"We must make this perfect! No mistakes! We must not let our Queen get embarrassed at the ball because of subpar preparations!"

"But we only have 5 days!"

"Then we'll make do with 5 days!" Ash said.

"Yes my Lord, naturally, we'll make it work!"

"Other than the dresses, the jewels, her crown, carriage, crown, guards, and her crown!"

"Sir, you've said crown 3 times now."

"I know what I said!"

The throne room fell into a state where all the officials began throwing out suggestions and began discussing what was needed for her first-ever ball. Maria didn't think it was so important that this was her first time, in fact, she felt that it was a hindrance that it was her first time.

She was afraid that she would make a fool out of herself in front of the Duchess who she wanted to rope into her faction.

Duchess Carmilla Bathory was the only remaining Vampire Duke of Ash's time and was the strongest Vampire Duke of the current age.

There have already been 4 other Vampires that's been promoted to Vampire Duke since Ash was defeated at the hands of his archenemy so 5 vampire dukes existed in this age and that was the largest amount in all of the vampire's known recorded history.

3 to 4 would be the max for each generation but this time there were 5 because Duchess Carmilla Bathory, despite having lost the power struggle for the Vampire Lord's seat, was able to remain alive because the current Vampire Lord wasn't able to defeat her powerful faction.

Normally, as the only remaining Vampire Duchess in her generation, she should have been wed to the current Vampire Lord the moment she lost the struggle for the seat. However, she didn't like the current Vampire Lord who she deemed as a weakling for winning the struggle using underhanded methods against the strongest Vampire Duke of their time, Ash Garm.

She could have taken the throne after her strongest rival had disappeared but unfortunately, there was a bitch who aided the weakling and prevented her faction from making their move.

Naturally, all of this was unrecorded history so Maria nor Ash could know of what truly happened. However, Maria didn't need to know about her background to develop a sense of admiration for the woman for being such a powerful character. Since they were both female leaders of their faction, Maria also felt a certain sense of camaraderie with her and didn't want to embarrass herself in front of the Duchess.

Maria needed to leave a long-lasting positive impression of herself to the Duchess so the next time they met, her intentions of roping the Duchess into her faction wouldn't be met with derision but instead deliberation.

Her subordinates were now all gung-ho about the preparations that Maria didn't need to do anything else but wait.

The competition officially started the next day with only 3 days given to the competitors to finish their works. The competition had expanded to not only dresses but also jewelry and other types of clothing and add-ons that could be used.

It was such good content so after Maria released a small promotion video of the competition before she would stream the results on the day the competition ended. However, she didn't think that there would be some other hype due to her competition.

Her viewers and fans thought that she was advertising a competition she was holding for everyone so her email and DMs began flooding with applications and designs.

This was another amusing development so Maria extended the competition to the real world and even put out a monetary prize and an in-game epic-to-rare ranked random box for the top 3 winners.

Naturally, it was David who had to get busy with the arrangements but since her family's young lady was planning to make things bigger, David immediately hired a team of people that would take care of her streams, video editings, and offline events that she would conduct in the future.

Before it was just him doing everything but it was getting hard for him to do his actual job which was to be her butler so he needed this team to help her out.

The Heltania family's young lady always did things spontaneously so it was a smart move on David's part that he hired a team of professionals to help her. He was a competent butler that possessed many skills but they were half-baked compared to those of a professional.

Naturally, the people he hired were those within the Heltania family's business and social circle so there was no need to worry that they would leak her identity to the public.

It was just a surprise to them that the Heltania family's young lady had turned out to be one of the recent popular streamers of Unitale that were currently on the rise. Many people streamed or made gameplay videos of this VRMMO game but while others succeeded, most of them failed or their popularity would be in the middling class since they couldn't get enough viewers on their videos or streams because there were simply those that were providing better content than them.

However, Maria, or rather, Dire Queen Maria was one of the few content creators of Unitale that succeeded who didn't have any previous background as a streamer or content creator. She just popped out of nowhere when the game was exploding in popularity and just happened to attract many viewers into watching her.

Right now, Maria's popularity on the Unitale streamer ranking had reached within the top 50 and this move of hers pushed her up into the top 20. Most of the top streamers of this game were from large guilds or had previous experience as a streamer and already had a fanbase.

She was the black sheep that popped out of nowhere and was popular. Naturally, it wasn't just Maria who was fortunate enough to become like this. There were others as well but Maria never really paid attention to them.

In fact, Maria didn't pay attention to anything at all regarding UT outside of the game. This was the first time she was interacting with her community but even that was just by mistake.

The real competition was something that was being held in-game but since she was able to extend it out of the game, all the better since she would be receiving plenty of beautiful clothes that she would be personally judging and wearing later to her debut ball.

The duration of the competition was short, but many entries both in and outside of the game were able to complete their projects on time. As for how Maria would judge the out-of-game entries, it was pretty easy.

Unitale had taken notice of this competition that Maria was holding since it was garnering so much attention and before her competition ended, they somehow developed an in-game program that let people convert model data files into rendered in-game decorations.

The things created out of the game wouldn't be able to be used as a normal item but they could be used as decorations or costume-type items. Maria had just inadvertently opened up a new market for the game but this was something the developers had already been planning to release, however, just not right now.

They pushed this project forward precisely because Maria was inadvertently advertising the creation of player-made skins and cosmetics. There were already many in-game purchasable and craftable costumes and cosmetics but it was limited and monotone.

For now, tailors and blacksmiths could only make armor and clothing using a preset design that couldn't be changed, however, with the new feature that the Unitale developers put out, the players could make their own costumes and cosmetics at a cost that they could use personally or put on sale.

The players with the ability to create such things could make an income from creating costumes and cosmetics and Unitale would take a small cut from the transactions like they normally do. It was all just pure profit for them and they really had to thank Maria for promoting it.

With the competition coming to a close, it was time for Maria to judge the entries and pick the top 3 who will become the winners.

Naturally, Maria released another video that stated the competition was only meant to be for the in-game NPCs of her faction but she was delighted that many people in her community had reached out to her and made the competition grow as big as it was.

Maria streamed the competition's judging and her viewership peaked at an all-time highest for the year. Her castle's vast halls were decorated with mannequins that had full sets of beautiful clothing on them.

The stream started with an overview of all the outfits she would be judging and her chat was moving at an incredible speed she couldn't keep up with. The camera panned in to show Maria sitting on her throne and she stood up since it was her cue.

"Welcome everyone. As you all know, today I will be judging the outfits of all the participants that made it to the preliminary inspection done by my faction's officials!"

Maria began walking through the throne hall on top of the royal red-colored carpet and continued her intro.

"Out of the thousands of entries, we were able to narrow it down to just the top 50 from both the NPC entries and the real-life entries! Since it was my team of people that decided which were the top 50 entries, I thought it would be nice if I let you guys, my audience, decide which will belong to the top 3!"

<We get to pick?>

<I wonder why our little angel even hosted this competition?>

<Perhaps she's being sponsored?>

<I don't see any ads though>

The chat was moving too fast so Maria only bothered answering the questions she by chance happened to read.

"The reason why I hosted this competition isn't because of a sponsor or anything. I received a quest called [The Duchess's Ball] and to be frank, it is my first social gathering event. Both in-game and IRL!"

Maria walked to the end of the hall where the last set of clothing was displayed and turned to the camera before saying, "What you will be voting for is not only the top 3 winners but also the clothes that I will be wearing to this ball! In other words, you, the audience, get to dress me up for my debut ball!"

Her words caused her fans to grow excited as they began spamming the chat. It was moving way too fast that Maria just decided not to look at it. She only bothered responding to the donation messages that popped out and remained on the top half of her stream's chat window but even these were moving a bit too fast that she couldn't answer every one that had a question on it.

"We'll be going through each and every one of the outfits first with the real-life entries taking priority. Everyone was even kind enough to provide an explanation video of the outfits they made so I'll be playing those videos as we go along!

As for the in-game outfits designed by my faction's people, the designers themselves will take turns explaining the motive behind their design!

After all the designs have been displayed, my mods will then release a form that everyone can fill. You may pick only 3 of your favorites and you may only fill in this form once, okay?"

Maria then pulled out her scythe-form Calamity and turned to the camera.

"If I find out that there are people who are cheating the system and submitting more than one form...you'll know what'll happen, right?" She raised her scythe to the camera and said with a scary face and tone.

"But I know all of you are honest people so I don't have to worry!"

Maria lowered her scythe and giggled. She was dragging things out a little but this only hyped up the audience even more. With her viewer count still climbing and her chat window moving at the speed of light, Maria finally decided to deliver the final nail, "Now that the explanations are out of the way, let the judging begin!"