Maria whistled as she began happily picking up the loot that the two players had dropped. It was such an easy fight because their levels were low. Emily and Lizzy didn’t even have to use their skills to defeat them while she only had to use her [Calamity Cleave]. The girls only used their regular attacks to clear the HP bars of the two players that were stunned by Maria’s skill and since no one was aware about her AOE-stun, Maria was able to catch the grouped-up players by surprise.
“Hehe, we’re like fishermen waiting for the fishies~” Maria hummed as she waited for the next squad or squads to come out.
“The zones are the rods and their closings are the bait…” Lizzy added.
“Yup~ I wonder why people don’t just do this?”
“Because most people would play smart and wait out the match until only a few teams remained while others would go on a wild goose chase and actively hunt the other squads,” Emily said.
“The first one isn’t smart, it’s cowardly. The second one is stupid and tedious,” Maria said.
“We were just about to do the stupid and tedious method…”
“Well, let’s not do that next time. This is much easier since we can set our playing field up. Next time, I’ll pick a skill that’ll help us with that.”
“You have something like that?” Lizzy interjected and asked.
“Yes, and no. Paimon’s magic allows me to do that but only for a short period of time. I can set up the trap-type and delayed magic spells right before a zone closes. We’ll turn the border area into our playing field!” Maria explained.
“Paimon’s magic, you meant the [Fire], [Blizzard], [Terra], and [Aero] that you use? The Archmage’s magic spells? But selecting just one when we can only select 3 skills is a bit...wasteful? I mean, you could become the mage of our team but I think your current loadout is probably your strongest, yes?”
“It won’t be a waste, all four of those spells are just one skill so if I pick one, I can probably use the rest as well.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not like the [Terra Lance] spell, [Torrent] spell or whatever that are separated into individual spells. Mine are collectively called [Paimon’s Enhanced Spells].”
“...That sounds like a cheat!”
“It does, but it was hard to learn. I had to be locked up and reading books after books, learning ancient languages and spell formulas! If I wasn’t good at math and loved to read, I would have given up!”
“True, so I guess you’ll be our mage-warrior in the next match,” Lizzy said.
“Sounds good. Although I’m a priestess, I'm not much of a healer.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Doesn’t matter, you were always our Damage Dealer back when you were in the guild anyway,” Emily spoke up and said. “Oh, look. Two squads are coming out.”
“Two? Well, I hope they make it a bit more challenging for us,” Maria whirled her Calamity and changed it into its scythe form and readied her [Calamity Cleave]. “Round up as many of them together so my AOE skills can hit all of them properly.”
“Easy.”
“Leave it to us.”
Emily and Lizzy did as Maria requested by firing off their skills at the approaching enemies once they got in range. They forced them closer to each other but they thought it wasn’t close enough, however, Maria immediately launched her [Calamity Cleave] at them. Once the attack struck the center-most player of the two squads’ formation, the energy wave immediately split apart and struck a few others. Maria launched her remaining energy wave charges at them and dealt a massive amount of damage to almost all of the 6 enemy players. After activating the skill, Maria then propelled herself to one of the players closest to her with her chains and stabbed her wings into the unfortunate player, killing them off before quickly backing away with her movement technique.
“Hehehe~”
“Y-You!” The player she had just killed was an Angel race player and they immediately took notice of the bounty on her head. Before they could say anything, however, they disappeared from the area and was ejected into the lobby with the option of being a spectator or leaving the game.
“Lil bro! Dammit!”
“You’re all going to die~”
A moment later, just like Maria said, all of the enemy players died. Maria unloaded all of her skills on them and so did her two friends. They had to retreat but Maria continued fighting the remaining players without care. Emily and Lizzy eliminated 3 of the 6 enemy players. 2 of them were devils and one was an angel. Their HP bars fell too low and they had to retreat. They weren’t like Maria who was proficient in fighting against multiple enemies at the same time.
Against 3 players whose HP bars were only around half and their armors already destroyed with most of their skills still on cooldown, Maria wasn’t at a disadvantage despite having used up all her skills. Her wings, Calamity, and chains were all flourishing around her and attacking her enemies as she flitted around agilely between the 3 enemy players to minimize the attacks that landed on her as she restored the health she lost using Calamity’s Lifesteal effect.
By the time it was over, the 2 angel players and the single devil player were exhausted from watching Maria dance all around them and they resigned to their fate as they were toyed to death by Maria who finally ended their lives with a [Calamity Cleave] after the skill had gone off cooldown.
“Good work, Mary...that was really, really awesome!”
“With everyone here being limited in their stats and skills, my unique items and movement capabilities will definitely be an advantage. It’s a shame that I feel like I’m cheating a little with all the advantages I’m getting,” Maria said as she sat down and recuperated.
Her name was announced a few times in the last several minutes since she and her squad took down 8 players all at once. This caused the other teams camping out in the remaining zones to grow wary of these predators who were lying in wait for them.
At this point, Maria and her friends were at max level. They only needed to max out their armor and weapon upgrades but unfortunately, in the plains zones, there was no merchant shop after the first 5 minutes. This mechanic was supposed to prevent anyone from camping out in the plains but Maria and her squad didn’t need to care about the weapon and armor upgrades if they could just plunder it from other squads.
“Welp, I guess we’ll sweep the other teams out of this match now that we’re at max level. It was exciting at the start but now we’ll only massacre them,” Lizzy said as they waited in the middle of the plains zone.
“This method is so easy, right? All we have to do is wait for them!” Maria said as she hopped around the area while practicing her movement burst technique and combining it with her chain movements. “On the battlefields back on Vanhal, Ash and I frequently use this war tactic to lure others into our kill zone and eliminate them. We haven’t used it on the intelligent vampires yet, but all the surrounding monster tribes fell for our tactic and eventually died or submitted to me~”
“Unlike this Battle Royale mode, there are no ‘zones’ on an actual battlefield...how do you wait things out when they could do the same?” Emily asked.
“Simple. We siege them, block every possible escape route, and starve them. Once they’re hungry enough, it’ll be just like the zones here in the Battle Royale that ‘close off’. They’ll be forced to get out of their little rabbit holes and that’s when we strike.”
“Mary, that’s a little cruel, don’t you think?” Lizzy said.
“Nah, what’s cruel would be poisoning the air and water. At least I let them fight for their lives and as for the women, children, and elderly monsters, I allow them to surrender and we immediately feed them once they’ve sworn loyalty to me.”
“...”
“Spoken like a true ty–I mean, ruler.”
“What I do probably does come off as cruel so I don’t stream it, but for the wars to come, I must expand my land and forces.”
Lizzy chuckled before getting up and saying, “Enough talk about that. The next zone is about to close off so let’s get ready!”
“Right.”
“Un!”