"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.
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.