The Villainess That Was Once A VRMMO player

Chapter9，Part1

T/L: Chapter 9 is very long so splitting it into 3 parts. Happy reading.

Ability Verification

My exclusive equipment–[Witch Dress].

This was a product of the management’s outrageous decision to sell personal equipment via microtransactions despite the VRMMORPG having a monthly subscription on top of it.

There were more than a hundred types of armors available in the VRMMO, each with its standards of level requirements and performance output. Every player can also customize the skins for these armors, as well as improve their performance. When it was announced, the hardcore players were ecstatic even if they had to pay for it.

However, only about 10-20% of the players paid to get the gears.

The first reason is that it’s expensive. The gears cost half a year’s worth of monthly subscription fees, which already made it sound ridiculous in the first place.

The second reason was that the max stats of the gear were not very good, and if you wanted to roll for more than one perk, it would still be inferior compared to existing drops.

(Editor’s note: These are all gamer terms, basically=the paid-with-real-money armors don’t perform as well as armors that you can obtain in-game. Specifics at the end.)

The third reason was that it required not only real money but also in-game currency.

It costs 100 in-game credits just to alter the color. By the way, a normal in-game meal costs 5 to 10 credits, so you could already begin to see how expensive it is.

So, even if you paid for the equipment, many people would only make minor cosmetic changes and didn’t bother to min-max the gears.

…As for me? I went all-out with the min-maxing.

The amount of in-game currency I’ve poured into this [Witch Dress] equipment is over 100 million in-game credits. There were a lot of limitations in terms of performance, but still:

Head [25% MP reduction] Reduces MP consumption for magic.

Body [Increased MP recovery 40%] Increases the natural recovery rate of MP.

Hips [30% magic defense] Reduces damage from magic attacks.

Arm [5% increase in status] Increases the ability value by 5%.

Resistance to natural fire, cold, and lightning.

Wand [15% increase in attribute effect] Increases the power of attribute magic and reduces the resist rate of enemies.

This is a magical warfare gear set suitable for solo play. It would have been nice to be able to stack more magic defense and MP recovery, but it was not possible due to the game laws. For example, if you equip gears with 10% and 20% magic defense at the same time, the higher 20% will be the maximum value.

By the way, I have made two other similar “special sets”. Well, they’re all completely hobby-related sets.

I was awake all night for two days customizing them, and I got into a lot of trouble.

Aside from the black roses and thorns embroidered on the dark red velvet, the dress’s mini skirt was a bit too short. No, it goes up to about the middle of the thighs, but I made it so that it flutters softly. Even so, that set I’m wearing comes with over-the-knee boots with heels, I can sometimes see glimpses of my exposed thighs.

What’s with the black garter belt and black patterned stockings on the waist? I don’t know what to say, but I was amid a cooking fever at the time, so I don’t remember much about it.

I don’t know why, but the hidden effects of the set included a +10 to hit against members of the opposite sex packs a +5% increase in attractiveness, but thanks to this appearance-oriented gear, my avatar was often asked [Can I take a picture?] by many…

(Editor: Look at the note at the end of the chapter.)

Well, let’s put that complaint aside for a moment.

Good morning, Carol here.

After that incident with Rolf, I was ‘protected’ by soldiers who rushed in with swords. Their captain was an arrogant prick, but the young soldier, who was a commoner, was surprisingly sympathetic to me.

I thought about the possibility of being killed outright in the worst-case scenario. Yet for better or worse, the captain didn’t seem to have the guts to ignore the frontier count’s wishes and harm me.

My father looked slightly unsure if he was unhappy or happy to have me back, but it was my mother who was the actual problem.

[What happened to Rolf? What happened to Rolf?! You put a curse on him, didn’t you, you filthy blood!]

Because of her half-crazed ranting and raving, my mother had to be sent away to a resort to recuperate for a while.

Thus it is not that I had a problem because of her, but if I had to pick a problem, it would be that even some other servants had become afraid of me.

Words like [I heard you’re a cursed witch.] I can’t deny it.

My brother Dirk glared at me while my mother went a little crazy and got teary-eyed, but Meiya and the others said I shouldn’t worry about it, so I didn’t.

But because of that, my father gave me another sarcastic look, and my moving date has been moved up.

Maybe he heard me once say to him, “Are you that immature to be sarcastic to even a three-year-old?”

My new home is a small house in the forest, about a half-hour walk from the castle. It’s small, but compared to my previous castle, it has 10 rooms.

“…It’s very charming.”

“Ai~”

Meiya-san, you can honestly say that this place is deserted, you know?

This place had been used by the patriarch of the previous generation after he retired, and ever since his death, no maintenance had been conducted.

Editor’s notes:

There’s just too much to explain because there are a lot of punchlines and other things that the author randomly drops that cannot be properly translated as is just like that, else the joke flies way above people’s heads. But here you go. I’m sorry if it feels like I’m holding your hand forcibly like a toddler, but reading the comments from chapter 1-7 made me realize that there are a lot of things that need to be explained properly, but once it’s explained, it won’t be repeated.

[1] These are gamer terms.

Drops = loot obtained from rewards, dungeons, monsters, quests, etc.

Gears = every form of equipment, including “set” gears (a set of equipment that grants either a specific bonus when all / partial matching sets are equipped on players).

Min-max = the act of minimizing bad/unwanted stats & bad debuffs, maximizing good stats/buffs to obtain skewed optimal performance for players. This is normally done for ‘end-game’ content to maximize player performance. In many highly competitive games (which includes MMO), if players do not min-max, they are not performing “at elite standards”. In this case, what the story tried to convey is that our dear MC, ‘Carol’, actually paid subscription fees, and also paid for a “DLC gear set”. The gear set doesn’t perform as well as a god-roll drop, but our MC her has already min-maxed her “DLC gear set” (which is the witch set) to the absolute ridiculous limits, which means she has invested a lot of time and money. In Japan, there’s a description called “counterstop” where players with a combination of stats and gears, min-maxed to the point where the counter is useless. Since “counterstop” (a very common Japanese gaming term) isn’t mentioned here, I would not elaborate on this. However, if you truly make some calculations on MC’s gears, it’s already quite godly as it is, and all she needs to do is to have her stats ‘pumped’ in a certain manner where her mana regeneration would be beyond consumption = infinite mana due to regen buffs. Yes, our MC’s already OP from the get-go, thus breaking every “OMG I’m so weak” perception she has from chapter 1.

[2] On a second note, this epic legendary meme (was an actual song) shows exactly what this chapter’s 1st half was saying. (‘Do you want to date my avatar’: The Guild featuring “Felicia Day”). Enough said. This is an in-joke, but it best represents what is said in this chapter. That said, do not be a child predator/pedophile. Not even “Yes, Lolita! No touch” that this author is making references to “Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku”. Readers can and should think that the start of this webnovel borrow that trope.