Everyone logged off of the game and went about to do their things in the real world.

Once the agreed time was close, Maria logged back into the game. She took a look around the village and didn’t see any of her friends around yet.

She sat around the village entrance and decided to open the spellbook that she obtained earlier.

“Uwahh...I really can’t read a single character from this book!”

She flipped through the book and it was all indescribable gibberish with some otherworldly illustrations.

“Th-this might be harder than I thought...”

While Maria was having a glaring contest with the book in her hands, her friends began to materialize behind her one by one. Maria was so focused on the book in hand that she didn’t notice.

“Hey, guys...watch this~” Lizzy crept up behind Maria. When she got close she immediately lunged forward and grabbed onto Maria’s sides.

“KYAAAAHHHH!!!”

And up she went. Maria was so surprised that she shot straight up into the air.

“Wh-wh-wh-what was that?!”

She turned around and saw her friends beaming at her from the ground.

“Oh! Everyone’s here~”

She quickly landed and smiled at her friends.

“Alright, let’s go?” Lizzy brushed off her earlier prank and addressed the team.

“Yeah! I’ll lead the way so follow me!” Milly offered.

With Milly leading the way, the party made their way northeast of Almester Village, the direction which Milly, Amanda, and Zack had come from while being chased by the PK party.

They traveled for about an hour or so before they saw some smoke rising in the sky. When Milly noticed this, she immediately pointed at the direction of the smoke and yelled.

“That’s them!”

“You sure?” Lizzy asked.

“Yup! The captain said they were going to be camping out in the neutral territory for about a week to meet up with someone before setting off again.”

“Alright, let’s go then! The difficulty might increase if we wait for them to meet up with whoever they’re waiting for. Hurry, hurry!”

The party quickly rushed forwards and got within the vicinity of the campsite. Maria rose into the air from a distance and observed the NPCs moving around the camp. She quickly spotted her main quest targets, the guard captain and the priest candidate sitting together at the center of the camp.

She continued observing them and suddenly noticed that the two getting up and moving towards the largest tent. When they disappeared inside the tent, Maria quickly swooped back down and reported it to her friends.

“Now’s the time to strike!” Milly and Lizzy said in unison.

“...”

“...”

“Oi...stop copying me,” Lizzy demanded, to which Milly countered with, “Why don’t you stop copying me?”

“Alright, that’s enough you two...anyways, what you both said were correct. With the 2 bosses gone, we can quickly take care of the small fry.” Amanda quipped.

“Let’s go!”

“First targets are obviously...”

“The Priests!”

Once the party made their decision, they had Maria scout the campsite again for the location where the priests were most concentrated.

“It’s on the western side of the camp! About 60-80 meters from where you guys are standing!”

The party quickly adjusted their positions and snuck to the west side of the camp. Along the way, they were able to avoid some of the patrol squads situated around the camp thanks to Maria’s heads up.

“Alright, we’re in position. Maria, you open things up as usual and we’ll rush ahead once they’ve got their attention on you!” Lizzy said.

“Yes, sa~”

Maria once again rose into the air and opened up the party’s assault with her usual dive plus [Calamity Cleave] which sent the priests into disarray once they saw the Fallen Angel appear in their midst.

“It’s a monster!!”

“Kill it! Hurry up and get into position!”

“Oh no, you don’t! HIYAH” Maria quickly dashed towards the Priest who was giving out orders and sent him flying into the air with an [Arc Swing] and slammed him back into the ground and burning him with [Gehenna’s Eye].

“It’s the flames of hell!”

“Hurry up and put it out! Put it out!!!”

“AAAHHHHH!!!”

The chaos and panicked cries surprised Maria. She continued to cleave down with her ax and attacked anyone near her, but she began to falter when she saw the NPCs' pained and frightened faces.

“Ah...but...”

“Mary, don’t falter!! Remember this is only a game!” Maria immediately heard her friend’s voice resounding from behind her.

Lizzy was slashing the NPCs that were creeping up behind Maria who had paused her attack after faltering a little.

“Eh...but...”

“This is why quests that target NPCs are the hardest to do! Forget about looking at them as humans, but as monsters instead!”

“...”

“We’re going to fail the quest if you act like this Maria!”

“Yeah...but...”

“It’ll only be this once! Next time, just don’t take quests with NPC targets alright?!”

“O-okay...”

“Now, let’s get to it! The faster we finish this, the quicker we can get out of this hell!”

Maria’s eyes hardened and she steeled herself. When she was cutting down the NPC Priests earlier, the screams and roars were all too real for her. She actually felt like she was cutting down an actual human, not some computer character.

The worst part of it all was that with every swing of her demonic ax, blood would fly through the air and it was dying her ax red.

“Okay...they’re just monsters...just monsters...like...those wolves...” Maria rose into the air again and cleaved down on a Priest.

[40,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

[Slay Novice Priests (1/50)]

Maria tried very hard to imagine that the priests were all wolves instead. With this, she was able to cope with the killing somewhat and it didn’t take long before she reached half of her quota before the NPC guards arrived to back up the priests who were causing a commotion from earlier.

[Slay Novice Priests (30/50)]

[40,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

[Level Up! Lv.12 → Lv.13! Acquired 20 Free Stat Points]

[Skill Level up! [Arc Swing] Lv.1 → Lv.2 & [Angel’s Rage] Lv.2 → Lv.3]

Maria quickly dismissed the message windows and continued slaughtering the NPCs.

“Guys! The Guards are here! Let’s hurry and wrap things up! The bosses might already be on their way!” Amanda yelled.

“Shit! If only we had a mage! This would be much easier!” Milly complained.

The party continued slaying the priests until they quickly finished the quest objective.

[[Slay Novice Priests (50/50)]

[40,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

[Objective Complete!]

The priests were a little bit time consuming because they were constantly healing one another, but the party didn’t find the job any difficult because the priests all had very low attack power and couldn’t deal too much damage to the party.

It was the Guards that were hard to face against. Although they didn’t have any healers to support them anymore since the party was able to finish off the last of the priests, the guards were well coordinated with one another and were pushing the party back a little.

[Slay Guards (1/50)]

[50,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

“Woah! These guys give lots of exp!”

“I’ve leveled up at least a couple of times just from slaying the priests! Man, Maria’s quest is a literal exp bomb!”

“Let’s go, let’s go! Take me out before the bosses reach us!”

The party had leveled up quite a bit from slaying the NPCs. Experience points gained from slaying monsters and NPCs were vastly different. NPCs naturally gave out more experience points than monsters and right now, Maria’s party was leveling up like a rocket.

When the 10 NPC guard was felled, Maria leveled up once again.

[Slay Guards (10/50)]

[50,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

[Level Up! Lv.13 → Lv.14! Acquired 20 Free Stat Points]

[Skill Level up! [Arc Swing] Lv.2 → Lv.3 & [Angel’s Rage] Lv.3 → Lv.4]

Maria was constantly using her skills as well and with the experience gained from using them on NPCs they were leveling up pretty quickly as well. This was the same for the rest of her party members.

However, with each guard that Maria felled, the expression on her face continued to crumple and darken. With each swing of her ax, she felt pained when she heard the words of the NPC guards that were calling out to their fallen comrades, comrades who fell under the blade of her ax.

“MONSTER!”

“KILL HER! KILL HER!!”

“HERMES! DAMN YOU! I’LL AVENGE YOU, BUDDY!”

“FCK! FCK! KILL THIS BITCH! KILL HER! SHE GOT MILES!”

Maria would have long since fled if it wasn’t because of her friends telling her to push on and ignore the NPCs. They were just computer data and they were her quest objectives.

“Phew...I hate this...”

[Slay Guards (38/50)]

[50,000 exp gained! (x4 multiplier)]

[Level Up! Lv.14 → Lv.15! Acquired 20 Free Stat Points]

When Maria slew the 40th guard, the 2 bosses, Guard Captain Heather and Priest Candidate Joseph quickly came back to support the remaining 10 guards.

“Sniff...I hate this...”

“Mary...there’re only 12 left...we’ll get out of here after we quickly finish them off...”

“Mhm...” Maria nodded. Tears were already brimming in her eyes and were threatening to fall.

[Requirement Achieved! Skill: [Angel’s Compassion Lv. 1] acquired]