Maria quickly left the temple and flew out of the city with extreme haste. Flying would normally be prohibited for everyone, but Maria was an exception since she was part of Gaia's faction, the faction that owned the city. Also, even if the guards didn’t allow her, they wouldn’t be able to catch her. Using all of her wings along with her [Haste] spell, Maria was able to achieve an incredibly fast flight speed that normal players wouldn't be able to achieve.
Her current flying speed was approaching sub-sonic levels which was incredibly fast. Maintaining that kind of speed used up a lot of her Mana and a bit of her SP. Flying so fast with just her body was incredibly thrilling and Maria hoped that in the future, she could fly even faster than she already was. A supersonic fallen angel, now that would be an awesome title and in her opinion, it sounded really cool.
Maria didn't have to worry about getting lost on her way to the quest objective because after the recent update, there was a nice change to the game's QOL (Quality of Life) that gave players the option of allowing the system to guide them to the location of their quest objective. Of course, the guidance wasn't automatic or anything. The players still had to physically travel to the location themselves, but now they just had to follow the 'guiding sprites' that appeared if they turned this option on in the game's quest menu.
Maria naturally had this option turned on because she didn't want to get lost. She followed the sprites closely and because she was flying, the sprites directed her in a straight line towards the place she needed to go to.
She was lucky that she could fly because if she was traveling on the ground, it was highly likely that she would still get lost despite the system's assistance. Being on the ground meant that she would encounter monsters and maybe even sights or objects that could pique her interest which would naturally make her sidetrack from her quest. Her directionally challenged condition wasn’t something that could go away even with the help of modern technology. It was something she and her late mother shared so she wasn’t ashamed of it but was actually proud of it.
Once she got to her objective in a matter of minutes, Maria quickly touched down gently on the ground and began looking around for the monster that was in possession of the Origin Crystal fragment. She soon found the monster and saw that it was some kind of large orc that seemed to have mutated because the other orcs in the surroundings were green or brown in color while this one was crimson-colored.
Maria observed the monster for a while and noticed that all the other orcs would always move away from it whenever it got too close to them. She wondered why they behaved like that and her question was answered pretty quickly. Whenever the red orc's eyes flashed with an ominous glow, it would suddenly go berserk and indiscriminately attack anything in its surrounding. It was certainly an interesting sight to see the orc go absolutely wild and start attacking its own kind. After a while, however, it would regain its sanity and stop.
She couldn’t see the exact level of the monster because the disparity between her level and the monster's level was too big, but because of how it could easily handle all of the level 120 orcs nearby and completely suppressed them, she judged that it was 50 levels higher than them, which would place the mutated orc at around level 170.
“Level 170...it's going to be tough, but still doable. Comparing my stats to Lizzy and everyone else's, I should be around level 160. Hopefully, this monster won't disappoint me.”
Maria pulled out her Calamity and she immediately flew up right above the orc. However, before she could get right on top of him, the orc seemed to have noticed and it began roaring at her from below.
“Huh?”
The orc pounded the ground and immediately uprooted a tree nearby and threw it straight at Maria like a pike. She frowned and cleaved the tree in two before glaring down at the mutated orc. It roared back at her and this caused Maria to smile a little bit.
“...Heh, looks like this fight will be interesting after all!”
She activated [Calamity Cleave] and enchanted Calamity with a [Fire] spell before raising it high up in the air with two hands and hurling it towards the orc down below.
“RAAAHHHH!!!!”
The orc bellowed at Maria but she wasn’t finished. She had counted that there were around 50 or so normal orcs in the surroundings and she immediately began channeling her [Unholy] skill. When Calamity struck the red orc who tried blocking it with its bare arms, Maria's [Fire] spell activated and the explosion knocked the monster onto its back.
“GROAARR!!”
It roared angrily from being struck by the attack but Maria’s [Unholy] arrived next, causing it to be hurt again by an explosion of dark energy. The orcs that were caught up in her attack were all blasted away and it was only her and the mutated orc left in the area. The normal orcs didn't even try to rush back to attack Maria because the red orc intimidated them from returning.
Maria could have easily chipped away at the monster’s HP from the sky with her spells, but she wasn’t going to do such a boring thing. She loved the thrill of fighting and opted to attack the monster with her ax and getting up close and personal with it. She pulled herself down to her Calamity with her chains and grabbed its hilt. She flipped and dislodged her ax from the ground while cleaving it down on the neck of the orc who was trying to get back up.
She left behind a shallow cut and clicked her tongue, “Tch, it’s got quite the defense…”
She continued her attack and flitted around the monster so quickly with her high agility that it couldn't even lock onto her properly. The monster was quite strong and had very high physical and magical defense, but it was incredibly slow. All it could do was flail around and try to tackle Maria with its body in an effort to pin her down but unfortunately, Maria caught onto its plan and started using her chains to assist her.
Whenever it got too close to her, Maria used her chains to block the monster and pull herself away from its reach. She even used her chains to hinder its movements and used the gap she created to land her strikes onto its body. The fight continued on like this. It was like a game of cat and mouse, but after a while, Maria noticed that the mutated orc seemed to have learned her attack patterns because it started blocking and dodging more and more of her attacks as time passed on until finally, it surprised her with an attack that literally blew her away.
Maria used her chain to stop the monster's fist for a moment and was going to follow up with an attack from her ax. However, the monster had purposefully let itself get caught in her attack because the moment her chains wrapped itself around the monster's wrist, it suddenly jumped back and this caused Maria to be pulled forward along with it.
"Shit!"
The orc gave her an evil smirk as its fist suddenly began to glow with a fiery aura. Maria tried to stop in mid-air by stabbing her chains onto the ground behind her like she would whenever she pulled herself back from the orc's attack range, but her opponent anticipated this and immediately rushed forward, causing her to lose her balance because the tension from the orc pulling her to it was lost and she fell flat on the ground.
"Oof!"
The orc arrived right on top of her with its fist swinging, Maria's eyes widened and she immediately raised her ax to defend herself when suddenly, she felt something wrap around her leg.
"Eh?"
The orc used its other hand and flung her up into the air before, surprisingly, jumping up after her with its large body and striking her square on her defenseless stomach with its aura-charged fist. The attack launched her far away, causing her to hit and break a few trees which only served to lower her HP bar even more.
“GAAHH!!”
She quickly halted her momentum by using her chains and wings, stopping herself from hitting any more trees. She flipped in the air with a flap of her wings and landed gracefully on the ground, tens of meters away. She raised her head but didn’t see the monster anywhere in front of her before immediately sensing danger coming from above, so she pulled herself away from the spot using her chains and managed to dodge the Red Orc’s attack that came from the sky.
“Damn you!”
Maria tossed a [Terra] spell at the orc after pulling herself away and trapping its feet. She then followed it up with [Ruin] and [Gehenna’s Eye]. It was a changeup in her attack pattern where she only attacked using her Calamity and chains, so the orc was successively struck by her 2 spells and skill. Maria immediately rushed forward while the orc was recovering, piercing through the smoke her skills caused and this once more caught the orc off guard as she sent it tumbling in the air with an [Arc Swing], paying it back for what it did to her just before.
“HAHAHAHAHA!”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Maria laughed at the mutated orc as it tumbled in the air and she spread all 8 of her wings behind her and activated [Dark Ray]. The Eyes of Gehenna that had opened on her wings after she used [Gehenna’s Eye] began firing similar [Dark Rays], sending it flying even further and higher into the air. Since [Gehenna's Eye] was a race-exclusive skill, it naturally evolved after Maria herself evolved into a Fallen Ophanim.
Now her Eyes of Gehenna opened on her wings instead of her eyes and she could use other certain skills through them. Since she had 8 wings, this meant she could have 8 Eyes of Gehenna opened at once, but this didn't mean the power of her [Gehenna's Eye] or any other skill used through her Eyes of Gehenna suddenly increased in power or anything. It just allowed her to shoot multiple instances of them.
The total damage of the skills she used through her Eyes of Gehenna would still be the same, the only thing that changed would be the activation rate of the additional effects of the skills, such as [Gehenna's Eye]'s burn effect or [Dark Ray]'s blind effect. Since there were more instances of the attack happening, this gave Maria even more chances to land the debuffs of those skills in case they couldn't land in just one attack due to the target's resistances.
There was always a downside and an upside to her powerups. While it made activating the additional effects of the skills she used much higher, the total damage would sometimes be lower in case she missed one of the attack instances. Skills like [Dark Ray], or the vampire race exclusive skill that she wanted to learn from Ash, [Red Ray], would need to have all 8 of their shots land on the target for the target to experience 100 percent of the skill's damage.
It was both an upgrade and a nerf because now, Maria had to properly set up her attacks and couldn't just use them right away like before. If she missed even one of her shots, it would greatly affect the damage output of her skill.
This would have been a headache for her if the unique ability was active in the Colosseum Arena. Players were different from monsters, they could easily adapt to her attacks and dodge most of her shots, severely dropping the damage dealt she dealt onto her opponents. Thankfully, all racial abilities were suppressed in the arena so she didn't have to worry about this happening and since it was suppressed, no one has ever seen this ability before. The Colosseum Arena suppressed all unique racial abilities because it was necessary to limit the players who selected a race that could fly from exploiting the advantage over other players whose race that couldn't.
The arena's rankings would exclusively be filled with players who were angels, devils, or other races that could fly because having air supremacy was just that broken. A mage player that had the ability to fly could just whittle away their opponents from the air while those that were melee class players, such as knights, warriors, or worst of all, paladins–a knight-branch class that could effectively heal themselves back to full HP give enough time–could use their flight advantage to take to the skies to recuperate without being interrupted before re-engaging their opponent after healing themselves.
On the field, this is what most priests and paladins did, so bringing that kind of thing into the arena was pretty much cheating in the eyes of players who couldn't fly. Hence, the system AI made sure to suppress the ability and all other racial abilities. Thanks to the suppression, players only needed to rely on their class skills and mechanical abilities to win an arena battle. There were a lot of perks to Maria's Fallen Angel race and all of it was suppressed inside of the arena, so when she fought, she won using only her skills and mechanics alone. No one could say that she was using one of her race's abilities to win over another player.
Back to the fight, Maria chased after the orc that was sent flying away from her attacks and quickly caught up to it, she transformed her ax into a scythe and used [Calamity Cleave], sending the orc even higher into the air. She was juggling the orc around with her skills and this was a really tough mechanic to do. After having her fun toying with the monster, she stretched out both her arms and sent her chains at it. The chains quickly wrapped around the monsters body and she waved her hands downwards, throwing the orc back towards the ground.
“FALL!!!”
The orc was in an immobile state because Maria had sent it into the air, so she could use her chains to tie it up and swing it around. The orc was stunned after being smashed into the ground and to make matters worse for it, Maria had flown down with in incredible speed to chase after it and landed right on top of its chest with a resounding stomp. With an enraged look, she stood on top of the orc and imbued her fists with mana before she started smashing its face with her fists like a barbarian.
“How!”
“Dare!”
“You!”
“Hit!”
“ME?!”
She reached out and pulled Calamity back into her hands with her chains and transformed it back into its ax form before activating [Calamity Cleave]. She swung down the glowing red blade of the ax onto the mutated orc’s face repeatedly. What happened right after wasn’t a pretty sight. Her repeated strikes sent blood splashing everywhere and she completely disfigured the monster. However, it still wasn’t dead and it quickly picked itself back up, tossing Maria away as it began scratching at its face in agony and pain.
“Gooahh...rroooahhhh…”
It couldn’t roar properly because Maria had destroyed its mouth and left its jaw hanging off of its face so only a gurgling sound was heard. One of its eyes had been completely ruined while the other one was still intact somehow. The Red Orc glared right at Maria with its remaining eye before it roared–or more like gurgled–at Maria and began charging at her. Maria was sporting her battle-crazed look and charged at the orc. She wasn’t going to shy away from an amazing, head-on battle with this powerful creature that had somehow been able to survive from her onslaught of attacks. This time, however, Maria used everything at her disposal and went all out fighting one versus one against this mutated boss monster.
She dodged and parried the attacks she could while taking the ones she couldn’t, but used [Cure] to replenish her HP or used her chain to pull herself towards one of the orcs she had blasted away earlier with her [Unholy], just so she could use her [Fallen’s Cruelty] on it to heal herself before sending it into the air with an [Arc Swing] and throwing it at the Red Orc with her chains who, without mercy, ripped apart its compatriot before continuing to chase after Maria who had momentarily slipped away.
Maria was practically unkillable at this point. She used all of her abilities to keep herself healthy while she recklessly fought head to head with the monster. It didn’t take much before the Red Orc’s HP fell below 10 percent and it entered its rage mode while Maria’s HP was still close to full. The only difference was that she looked a little worse for wear from the battle due to her equipment losing their durability, but the excited expression on her face showed that she wasn’t at all exhausted.
“HAHAHAHA, BRING IT!!!” Maria cried before rushing at the monster despite seeing that it had entered its rage mode.
Unbeknownst to her, a group of devil race players had appeared close to their battlefield. They had been hunting peacefully earlier in the orc's hunting area when they heard the loud commotion Maria and the Red Orc's battle was causing and quickly made their way over to see what was happening. This group of devils was actually the main assault team of the Nine Hells Guild that included the guild's guild master. They didn't interfere with the battle and kept themselves hidden, intently watching the fight between Maria and the Red Orc.
The Red Orc was a monster that the assault team had previously encountered, but steered clear from because it was too powerful for them. They could've attacked and tried to raid it, but there were too many orcs in the surroundings and the guild master was worried that those orcs would participate in the battle. The Red Orc alone was already a threat to them, so before they tried attacking it, he ordered his team to clear away those additional orcs from the area first.
While they had been doing this, they heard a commotion from the direction where the Red Orc was roaming and to their surprise, saw a player provoking it. At first, they thought that the player was just being crazy because who would solo a field boss that powerful, right? However, that perception completely changed after an intense battle which ended with the Red Orc kneeling in front of the crazy player, all broken and dismembered. All the player had to do now was finish it off and end the battle.
The Guild Leader of Nine Hells was quite shocked to see the person fighting the boss monster that they had planned to hunt was actually the person that he had longed to meet, but was never able to get in contact with. There was only one player in the game that played as a female angel with black wings and it was Maria. He was quite shocked to find her soloing the level 176 field boss he had planned to hunt with his team of level 150-160 players.
It wasn't just him who was shocked at Maria's incredible feat. The players in his party were also quite astonished to see her triumph over the powerful monster all by herself.
“Hey, Satania...do you think you’d be able to do that?”
Satania was one of the few female players in the guild that was worthy enough to be placed in the guild’s main party along with him, Eos, the guild leader, and she replied to him with a shake of her head.
“I’ve never tried, but I probably could if I was at the same level as that orc.”
“Okay…”
“But that girl over there is only level 100…” Satania added as she gave out this observation of hers.
Since Maria was much lower leveled than the players present, they were able to use [Inspect] and look at her status screen though all they saw was her name and level. Since she was an Awakened Player while they weren't, they couldn't see her stats and other details.
Satania’s first act when she saw the girl was to appraise her with the skill and she quickly found out Maria’s player name and level. When the [Inspect] was used, Maria noticed it immediately but she didn’t look around to see if any players were in the area. Instead, she quickly sliced the Red Orc’s neck with a wave of her ax and plunged her hand straight into the monster’s heart, and pulled it out along with the Origin Crystal fragment that was imbedded inside of it.
“Hmm...the orc was also an awakened creature...no wonder it was stronger than the rest and the battle was hard…”
Maria said it was hard but her HP was around 80 percent while her MP was at 50 percent and recovering. This battle was really difficult for her compared to her usual ones and she could confidently say that she had a lot of fun this time.
However, it was pretty dangerous. While she was fighting, she hadn't noticed that any players had snuck up on her and were observing her fight against the Red Orc. If it had taken any longer, they might've jumped in and interfered, jeopardizing her quest. With her objective complete, Maria decided that it was about time to leave. She didn't want to wait around for the players that were nearby to ambush her. She quickly picked up the items the Red Orc dropped and after taking another look at the monster's corpse, she thought that it would be a waste to leave such a thing behind.
She extended her hand and her shadow immediately moved over to the orc’s carcass before black tendrils began extending out of her shadow. It took a moment, but Maria was able to use Envy's Umbra's skill, [Shadow Weave] and absorbed the corpse into her shadow. The space in her shadow was quite limited at the moment, so after storing the corpse, it was completely filled to the brim.
Skill Name: Shadow Weave Rank: B Description: Allows the user to manipulate their shadow freely. Effects will have to be discovered manually by the user, however, all attacks using the shadows will have randomized effects and damage. Effect 1: Shadow Armor
Coats the user in their own shadow, mitigating all incoming damage by 20%. Shadow Armor's durability is 35% of user's max HP. Once the durability is depleted, the user must go out of combat to reform the armor.
Effect 2: Shadow Enhance
Enhances the user's attacks with their shadow, increasing damage dealt by 1 to 20% with a small chance to inflict a random debuff on the target.
Effect 3: Shadow Vault
Gives the user extra inventory space (5 cubic meters). Upgradeable.
After storing the corpse and making sure that it was in her inventory menu, Maria eyed the direction where she felt the [Inspect] come from before smirking and shooting into the air with a flap of her 8 wings. She looked for her next target on the map, activated the guidance feature and shot away at high speeds. By the time Eos and his party of devil players flew into the air after seeing Maria fly up, they were only able to see her figure already disappearing into the distance.
“Damn...her speed is amazing!”
The other powerful and notable player from the Colosseum rankings, Mach, exclaimed in surprise after seeing her disappear into the distance.
“She’s enemies with those white-winged fools so we might be able to pull her into our guild…” Eos said.
“I doubt that…” Satania said in reply to his words.
“And why do you say that, Sata?”
“...have you ever watched any of her streams? She’s the queen of a nation on another planet. I doubt that she’d be willing to serve as a member of our guild. Also, did you forget that we’re a devil-exclusive guild? Though, I wouldn’t mind if it was her since it’s always good to have another strong female player in our ranks.”
“She’s bound to have some kind of interest. If our guild can provide that…”
“I’d still doubt that…”
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
“Let’s get back to hunting. I wanna try my hand at soloing a boss sometime soon so let’s get this session over with so I can have my free time,” Satania said before she landed back down on the ground.
Mach shrugged at his guild leader before following after Satania and began attacking the orcs in the area. Eos clicked his tongue before turning to look in the direction that Maria had disappeared in. He then returned to the ground to regroup with his guild members and continued their hunting session.