In the boss cave, Misha held the quest item, [Unidentified Memory Fragment, No. 2], in her hands. By taking this little orb at the size of her palm from Lucien, who was willing to hand this over to Misha, everyone in the party received the quest notification that they had completed it, netting them 20 million EXP.

They also received the new subcla.s.s, Soul Hunter, to their status. However, it increased their penalty EXP by another 10,000 EXP per level in exchange for their new perks.

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Soul Hunters are the guardians of all races, protecting them from the threatening race of Fairy Dragons, which constantly attempts to convert every race into fairies by corrupting their souls.

These hunters gain bonuses when they fight against soul-related monsters, such as black slimes, overminds, overlords, fairy overlords, and fairy dragons. They are also invulnerable against mind-control abilities. Combined with other combat cla.s.ses and their power of imagination, they can dominate any soul s.p.a.ce battle.

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- Unlock abilities to use your skills of other combat cla.s.ses in soul battles.

- Normal attacks deal an additional 50% damage against black slimes.

- Increase WIS permanently by 5 upon each level up.

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Aside from the additional 5 status points in WIS for each level up, this cla.s.s looked lackl.u.s.ter at a glance since it did not give a special skill to the players. However, Misha, Sasha, and Natalie knew that the ability to use game skills in their mind s.p.a.ce was a significant boost to their survival in soul fights as they had experience fighting black slimes in there. 

Moreover, bonus attack power to black slimes was already good for the starting "Apprentice" cla.s.s. Misha and others were positive that these bonuses would extend to other races, such as overminds and fairy overlords later on.

After getting all the rewards, Misha's level rose to 308, and her overall stats became 13,245.

With the available free points, she put all of it into her LEA, which was at the lowest.

She had done this for a reason.

Misha looked at her guild menu. Among the domestic affair tabs, a list of mercenaries showed Misha how many soldiers the guild could employ.

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Guild Leader's Leaders.h.i.+p: 606

Vice Guild Leader's Leaders.h.i.+p: 929

Members' Total Leaders.h.i.+p: 1,709

Total Mercenary Points: 2,012

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- 1,500 Black Slime Kobolds (20,000)

- 500 Black Slime Mage Kobolds (20,000)

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- Slicky, Misha's Slave (18,500) [[Cost 18,500]]

- Lucien, the Slime Knight (15,000) [[Cost 15,000]]

- 600 Roper Trees (3,000)

- 400 Jellyfish Ropers (5,000)

- 1,000 Roper Soldier (10,000)

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The mercenary system depended heavily on players' LEA status points. Both guild leader and vice guild leader's LEA added the mercenary caps directly by 1:1 ratio. However, all combined points from guild members were converted to the MP with a 10:1 rate.

The combined value of MP, mercenary points, would be used to determine if the guild could recruit NPCs, monsters, or various ent.i.ties that the game allowed to join the guild aside from the players.

For the sake of enlisting Lucien's kobolds to Wet Banana Guild, Misha and Sasha distributed all free points into LEA, so they could hire them, changing their name color into green. After this, they would follow the guild executives and Misha's every command.

But Sasha and others did not look satisfied with having two thousand of 20,000-power kobolds as their guild's private army.

Normally, one point should be able to enlist one mercenary. However, Lucien was a field-boss cla.s.s monster, which he could not be hired by paying only a single LEA point.

If they want to get Lucien to join their Wet Banana Guild, they required MP of Lucien's total strength, which was 15,000.

The game system also hinted that once they hired Lucien, he could generate kobold soldiers, mages, and other kinds of officers in the future, becoming a pa.s.sive production line for the guild. This perks became everyone's goal for recruiting Lucien.

However, they did not have enough points for hiring Lucien, so they only enlisted his best soldiers. In the future, when they had enough points, Misha and others would come back here for him. 

It was a tough challenge since they required cooperation from their guild members to increase their leaders.h.i.+p status, and they could not use it to hire private mercenaries for themselves.

Still, there were also alternate ways to get Lucien to their guild.

Once the cooldown timer of Misha's skills, [Bewitch], was over, she could always come back here to charm him, making him her slave.

Moreover, without the enslave skill, Lucien seemed to loyal to Misha, so they did not need to worry about recruiting Lucien as an official mercenary of the guild for now.

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Misha put the orb, [Unidentified Memory Fragment, No. 2], in her inventory for now. She had the urge to use it and obtain more power, but her instinct cried that her current conscience might be devoured by her old personality, which she never wanted to return to the old person.

As she was sorting her inventory, the several game announcement arrived.

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"Ah, Lilith is doing it again," Misha complained.

As usual, Lilith was manipulating the game events, which made it unpredictable.

Meanwhile, Sasha did not like this notification. It signified that all casual servers could be converted into a hardcore server at any moment.

"We might not be able to reach our goal, Misha. I think we'll be sent to Mia's server pretty soon if we continue to interfere with game events."

Misha sighed, "I kind of expect this. At first, I just want to increase my strength and jump into the hardcore server to help Mia. But it seems that it got us into trouble instead."

"It doesn't matter. Lilith has the power to influence even our real dimension, so even if we do nothing, she would have dragged us into this mess sooner or later. At least, we can get stronger with what we're doing."

Natalie was the only one being optimistic about their choice as she could feel that her psychic power had improved from when she had yet to play the game.

Seeing their cheerful sister smiling, Misha and Sasha abandoned the dark thoughts.

Soon, Moo, Non, and Shurka arrived.

"What happened, Mia!? How did you kill the boss-…NYA!?"

All of them stopped their feet when they saw the army of black slime kobolds and Lucien. They took their fighting stance without hesitation even though they did not have a weapon.

"Chill, guys. Look at their name color first," warned Misha.

The trio looked above the kobolds and saw the green names. They widened their eyes in confusion.

"What? How!?"

"Check your guild menu. Look at the mercenary tab."

Moo rechecked his guild menu and found the answer.

"Nyahaha! Wow! You've recruited all of them, nya?"

Misha shrugged and patted Lucien, "The credit goes to him. He persuaded his men for us."

Lucien bowed to Misha, "It's my duty, your majesty."

"Well, for now," Misha stared at Moo, "What's with your quest? Can you tell me more about your quest background?"

Misha referred to the strangeness of Moo's quest, which marked Misha as an objective.

Moo took time and explained everything, including the log conversation between his mentor and himself.

The quest seemed odd from Misha's point of view.

Moo's mentor, the perverted sculptor, was actually a hero that defeated a fairy overlord in the past. Because of the experience, he dreaded this race. Fearing that more fairy overlords or fairy dragons would come to seek revenge, he pursued the origin of fairy overlord's conscience and planned to defeat her.

After he had investigated and researched into soul s.p.a.ce and fairy's souls, he identified that the origin conscience was using the name, Misha Bloominglily, as her current ident.i.ty.

Unfortunately, the origin conscience was not on this planet, so he did his best to kill all converted fairy overlords in this world for years, hoping that they would not come back again.

Then, one day, Lilim appeared and took him to this weird sanctuary. She told her that the fairy overlord's real body was residing in this world. However, her memory had been shattered into 7 pieces throughout this planet.

Lilim tempted Moo's mentor that if he could gather all 7 pieces, she could seal the origin of fairy overlord race for good. However, Moo's mentor was too old for the task, so he entrusted this task to his new disciple, Moo.

Then, Moo managed to get 1 memory piece from the slime soldier, but it was consumed by Misha in the process, which caused the chain quest to change.

"So, pretty much we're collecting dragon b.a.l.l.s. And then, because I ate one of the b.a.l.l.s, the game wants you to kill me and get that memory fragment back. Is that right?"

"I don't think so, nya."

"Why?"

Moo coughed, "Don't you remember the game notification, nya?"

He flashed the game log, which had screen-captured several days ago.

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Moo looked at Misha, "I don't think there is only one [Misha Bloominglily], nya! I think this is a test of misconception or a distraction."

Sasha nodded, "True. The game said [Her Vessel]. Judging from the hint, this Misha should be another boss of the game made by Lilith."

Misha frowned, "But Lucien's testimony about this Misha is odd. Don't you think? He said that he was looking for me, but this Misha sent him…"

Sasha shook her head, "This may be another misdirection by Lilith. The two messages are together, but it doesn't say that Lucien is sent by Misha."

"But if he doesn't have the connection with my other self, why does he have this memory fragment?"

"…"

Many things did not make sense, so they met with a dead end.

Without a conclusion, they glanced at Lucien again.

"Is there a chance that NPC can lie?"

"Possible. It's Lilith's game after all."

Since Lucien did not know anything about Misha Bloominglily, the fairy overlord that they suspected to be a character in the game, the party could not find any more clue about this second Misha.

"Misha," Sasha grabbed her shoulders.

"Yeah?"

"Let me appraise that quest item. I have an appraisal skill. Maybe we can learn something from it."

"Oh, okay!"

Misha handed over the quest item to Sasha.

The latter took the orb and appraised it with her skill.

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One of 7 shattered memory fragments of Misha Bloominglily, the fairy overlord. Not only this fragment contains her memory, but it also contains her power. By allowing the fairy overlord to consume this...o...b.. she will recover her past skills.

However, an imposter is claiming to be Misha Bloominglily. Do not hand over this...o...b..to the imposter, or the world will be engulfed in chaos.

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