"Hehe!" Kristina giggles to herself, lying on her bed and kicking her feet in the air as she looks at her Stats screen. I got a title!

  "Rank: Lady of the Manor" is what now reads between her species and her level on her Stats screen.

  A "Lord of the Manor" was the landholder of a rural estate, it's debated weather it could classified as a noble title. In the kingdom of Stark, a Lord of the Manor is above a normal commoner, but still a commoner nonetheless and thus lower than even the lowest of nobles.

  "My lady," Rose enters the room. "Oh, you seem pretty happy!" She observes with a smile.

  "I was never was a Lady of the Manor," the lowest landed rank you could have in Vera was of a baron. "I'm excited to find out what it entails!" She continues to kick her feet in the air.

  "My goodness, my lady is so cute!" Rose thinks. Why is she looking at me as if I were some sort of cute kitty?

  "Anyways, no time to waste," Kristina gets up from her bed. "Let's get started making this estate worthy of me!"

  Message, a circle made of light appears in front of her. This is very different from the game, but somehow I just intuitively know what to do.

  She speaks into the circle: "Ernst, please gather the guards in the entrance hall. I'll head there as soon as I'm ready." As she finishes speaking the circle disappears.

  In the game a menu would have appeared, with the options to either send a voice or a text message, the option to select which people to send the message to and, of course, a "Send" button. All I had to do is think I wanted Ernst to receive the message, spells here are definitely more convenient, but... What would happen if I had intrusive thoughts?

  Kristina arrives at the entrance hall, accompanied by Rose. There she finds her guards and her head butler waiting for her.

  Turning to her servants, she declares: "All the land in radius of 3 kilometers from this manor is now considered part of my estate," it's basically a circle with my manor in the middle. "However, before we can develop the land, it needs to be cleared."

  Inventory, she gets 4 axes from her inventory and drops them on the floor. Inventory.

  "I want 4 of you to work on cutting down the trees in our land, while the other 4 keep guarding the mansion. I don't care who does what, you can also rotate the tasks if you wish, decide among yourselves."

  "Yes, ma'am!" They answer in unison.

  "And don't throw away the cut trees, we may be able to sell the wood later!"

  "Understood!"

  As the guards leave, all that remain with Kristina are Rose and Ernst.

  "There are matters we must discuss," Kristina starts walking as she speaks. "Let's head to the dining room." She gestures for Rose and Ernst to follow her.

  A maid comes bringing food soon after they sat at the dining table.

  Rose is served a well-balanced meal, while the meals Kristina and Ernst receive are just focused on being tasty. That's because Rose actually gets and needs nutrition from food, while the two vampires don't.

  "Normally, I would eat in the kitchen with the other servants, this feels a bit weird..." The lady's maid thinks.

  Hmm, I haven't drank any blood since the game became real, I'm actually starting to feel a bit hungry. Inventory, Kristina drops some blood from her inventory into a wine glass by her plate. She brings it to her lips and takes the first sip, in that moment, a vision comes to her.

  Kristina floats in the night sky, above her are only the clouds, the stars and the moon. On the ground, many hundreds of meters below her, lies a familiar sight, a town that's her duchy's capital and home to tens of thousands. On the distance, she sees an enemy army approaching, just as her Map had showed. They appear to be 20,000 strong and the white cloth they wear over their armors make their allegiances clear.

  "Attacking a big town in the rear while most of our army is concentrated on the frontlines? I have to admit that, although risky, it's is a clever move," she ponders. "However, they have made one major mistake..."

  "Soldiers of Daemonia, know that you stand no chance against us! Surrender now and your lives shall be spared! Otherwise, prepare to be vanquished by the Republic of Light!" A voice echoes through the city, as if the words were being spoken through a very powerful megaphone.

  "...out of all towns, they chose to attack mine, truly the most foolish of decisions, Warp!" Kristina appears floating behind a man in a horse.

  He holds a voice amplifying magical device in his hand, his voice was likely the one that was heard earlier. Based on his attire, he's likely to be the commander of this army.

  She taps him on the shoulder. "Tell me, how did you manage to sneak such a large army through the frontlines?" There are many army detecting devices set up through the frontline, of course they don't cover the entirety of it, but without knowing their positions it should be practically impossible to avoid detection. Could there be an information leak?

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  "Soldiers!" The commander screams, turning to face Kristina, he points his sword towards her.

  "Equip," a short sword appear in her hand and, in a single fell swoop, the man's head is sent flying. "Store," the man's magical device is stored in her inventory, since it could be useful later.

  Most ruler players didn't spend much time adventuring before becoming rulers, it wasn't even uncommon for player rulers to immediately give land to friends who had just joined the game for the first time. Meanwhile, Kristina spent months grinding as an adventurer to max out her stats before even beginning to look for land. This lead to Kristina being quite overpowered over most other rulers.

  "Target - Army - Republic of Light: Multi - 10 - Spread Out: Explosion," in a single instant, 10 explosions go off along the army's formation, reducing their forces by half. Before Kristina even finishes turning her head to see the enemy, she can already hear the sound of soldiers starting to run away.

  However, as she finishes turning, she sees a blond man running towards her at a superhuman speed. "Fly!" He screams, going from running to flying at an even greater speed. Almost instantaneously he's right in front her, in the last second she blocks his sword with her own.

  He's clearly not wearing any sort of military uniform. Oh, they hired an adventurer? This is getting interesting now. "You seem powerful, tell me, who are you?" Kristina asks, before quietly whispering: "Appraise: Stats..."

  "Marcel is my name! I'm the one that shall defeat you, Kristina Sanguis!" He screams his answer.

  "Oh, was targeting my town your idea then?" She asks as she blocks another one of his attack, before quietly whispering: "Appraise: Spells..."

  He doesn't answer her question, opting to just keep attacking. They fight in the air, moving all over the place as they do so. Neither of them actually lands any hits, just being constantly blocked by the other.

  Hmm, he managed to position us just above the city with his attack pattern, probably so I would avoid using my most destructive spells... In her moment of distraction as she was pondering his strategy, he hits with full force, sending her zooming towards the ground.

  Kristina falls in the middle of one of the city's main roads, forming a small crater with her impact. That actually did some damage, I can't afford to be distracted in this fight!

  Marcel dashes towards her. "Multi - 20: Create Golem," she casts right before he reaches her. As she continuously blocks his attacks, many spots of the street pavement start floating in the air and forming humanoid shapes.

  "My golems, kill Marcel!" She commands, still on the defensive.

  He now pays attention to the rocky beings surrounding him, doing his best to dodge their attacks, but they are simply too many. One of them hits

  "Your stats might be maxed out like mine, but you are quite lacking on the spell department. No Create Golem, nor any other sort of summon spell that would get you someone to deal with the golems in your stead!"

  Regaining his composure, he quickly flies up to avoid the golems. Cute, thinking you can escape that easily...

  "Target - Summon - Golem: Multi - All Targets: Fly Ally! Multi - All Targets: Boost Speed!" Her golems fly rapidly and, within moments, reach him.

  Marcel tries to dodge, but it is impossible with so many enemies attacking at the same time. He is hit repeatedly, until eventually he has taken simply too much damage and drops dead.

  Kristina grabs his body in midair, before it could hit the ground, and bites his neck, but she doesn't drink his blood... yet. She retracts, leaving him with two bleeding holes in his neck. "Blood Drain," from those holes, all of his blood flows out of his body and converges into a single point above Kristina's open palm, forming a floating sphere made of blood. "Store," and it disappears, having been added to her inventory.

  She approaches her mouth to the corpse's ear and whispers: "You were an worthy opponent, if you knew more spells you might have stood a chance..." Before letting go of his body, allowing it to fall on the street below.

  That memory, I remember doing that in the game, but in the way that I saw it now... It felt real, it looked real... Am I remembering Kristina's memories...? And "Equip"? That wasn't a command in the game, in Emilia's- I mean, in my memory I had used "Inventory" and picked the sword from the favorites tab.

  This "Equip", it seems more convenient to just have to think about what I want to equip for it to happen, it might be useful if I can use it in this world.

  She takes another sip. Anyways, this blood is really tasty, is that because I'm a vampire? It's very salty, but in a good way. It doesn't take long for her to finish the glass of blood.

  Now, for the regular food, she looks at her plate which is full with many of a Brazilian snack called "pastel". It's a fried pastry with a thin crust, which can have many different fillings. It can have either the shape of a rectangular or of a half-circle, in this case it's the later.

  Kristina takes a bit off one. Cheese filling! My favorite! Well, chocolate is actually my favorite, but out of the savory fillings cheese is definitely the best. Then another one. Here's the chocolate, yum! Another. Oh, chocolate AND cheese, this is certainly interesting...

  "My lady?" Ernst calls her attention.

  "Yes?"

  "What's the matter you wanted to discuss with us?"

  "Ah... Yes, yes, of course. I would actually like to talk about some food related matters."

  "I see," he nods, already imagining what the matters to be discussed might be.

  "Before we start, Rose, I just want you to know that if at any point during our conversation you have any ideas to contribute, you should say them." I don't think she will participate in the discussion unless I tell her this...

  "Yes, my lady..." The lady's maid answer shyly.

  "Ernst, how much food do we have stored for the living?" In this context, Kristina is using 'living' to refer to non-undead.

  "Two weeks at most, I'm afraid," he answers.

  "I see... That's to be expected since we weren't ever in a situation were we would be needing to stockpile food before."

  "We should probably buy food from others until we can grow it ourselves, I mean... That's what I think..." Rose contributes.

  "Money is not something I lack, we could definitely do that," I actually was already planning to do what she just said, but I didn't say that as I didn't want her to feel like her contribution didn't matter and be less likely to contribute in the future.

  "As we buy food, we could analyze the market prices of different crops to better assess which one we should grow," Ernst suggests.

  "That would be good, but just the price of finished product wouldn't be enough to decide what to grow, we need to learn the cultivation costs as well."

  "Of course," he responds.

  "So," Kristina gets up from her chair. "Let's go shopping!" Then she notices Rose still hasn't finished eating and that her own plate is still mostly full. "As soon as we finish eating! We're in no position to waste!"