Everyone watching was cheering as Maria decimated her opponent with her magic spells but they also took note never to look down on her as she seemed like quite the prideful person. Thor hadn’t even done anything but she became offended precisely because of that since it did appear that the boss monster was looking down and underestimating her from its lack of action in stopping her from completing her preparations.
It received a huge ‘gift’ from Maria but the battle was far from over and everyone knew that. The boss’s HP had only gone down by a few percent so this wasn’t Maria’s victory just yet. Although she had bombarded her opponent with an array of [Fire] spells and it seemed as if Thor was helpless to do anything, Maria didn’t let her guard down and it was right of her to do so as Thor burst through the flames and flew straight into the air and arrived right in front of Maria in almost an instant.
Maria had already gauged the Primal’s stats and she knew that her AGI stat was much higher so she calmly raised her Calamity to block Thor’s hammer and used her Zantetsu-R to block his ax. What happened next caught everyone off guard as Maria pulled her head and bashed Thor in the face with her skull. It was such a crude technique but it did manage to push Thor back, disengaging the short deadlock they were in and giving Maria enough room to start swinging her weapons at the Primal.
Maria activated [Arc Swing] while Thor activated a skill that electrified his ax once he saw his opponent finally using her skills. They swung their weapons at each other and their two skills collided, nullifying each other but Maria was pushed back as her STR stat was lower than Thor’s. This didn’t stop Maria from continuing her attack as she used [Rekka-Zantetsuken] with her Zantetsu-R. Her sword’s blade began lighting up with a unique glow as she began executing the technique.
She had spent so much time trying to master the technique that she could execute the skill in the blink of an eye without any charge up.
“Odin’s skill!”
“?”
Maria was surprised that the monster was able to talk but it didn’t stop her from executing her skill. Thor tried parrying it with its hammer but all of the Zantetsuken-series skills had defense penetrating effects and dealt Pure Damage so blocking it wasn’t a smart idea.
“I thought you were Odin’s son but you don’t even know Zantetsuken’s effects! Try blocking it again, bastard!”
Maria involuntarily cursed at the monster before she chained 3 [Rekka-Zantetsuken] slashes together and dealt a sizable amount of damage to Thor’s HP though he was continuously healing himself using his passive battle regen which had nullified a lot of the damage Maria was doing.
Her continuous chain of sword slashes resulted in a short blade storm that dealt additional damage to Thor and Maria didn’t stop there, she ended her combo with a point-blank [Dark Ray] that struck Thor square in the chest and blasted the Primal away.
“Hahaha!”
Maria cackled evilly before she immediately gave chase and suddenly appeared behind Thor. She swung her ax but to her surprise, the Primal had managed to twist his body in midair and block her attack with his own ax before using the hammer in his other hand to smash Maria in the chest and send her flying away.
“Ugh…”
She felt like she had been struck by a car square in the chest but she quickly recovered and used [Calamity Cleave]. She threw her ax at Thor who promptly blocked it but was then surprised to see Maria suddenly appear in front of him holding her ax. Not only that, but she also had a [Fire] spell in her hand which she unhesitantly slammed into Thor’s face.
Thor was knocked a few steps back but he raised his hammer into the air angrily before yelling, “[Thunderstrike]!”
“!”
Maria quickly used [Terra] and tried to form an earth shield above her head but it was a split second too late as she was struck by the lightning strike and inflicted with the [Shock] debuff.
“[Heal]!”
She quickly cleansed the debuff and defended herself from Thor’s attacks that quickly came right after. Maria used her wings to propel her backward every time she was struck by Thor’s hammer and ax to mitigate the damage done to her since her STR was lower than the Primal.
“Tsk.”
After she was pushed back by a heavy attack, Maria quickly took to the skies and Thor followed after her where they started exchanging blows and magic spells while chasing each other in a furious dogfight. Whenever their attacks connected, a booming shockwave would erupt and shake the air. It was to the point that the ground below began to quake and slowly crack apart from the resulting shockwaves of their blows.
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This was the first genuine battle that Maria had experienced from the moment she started the game where she was truly pushed to her limits. It was hard for her to gain any ground at all and while it seemed even at a glance, she could tell that she was slowly losing ground. Her HP couldn’t keep up and she always needed to use [Cure] every once in a while which put holes in her attack chains that gave Thor an opening to exploit.
She didn’t have the Primal’s battle regen passive which gave it the edge in the HP department.
“Urgh…”
Maria was struggling but her face showed the exact opposite of her inner thoughts. She had a wide smile on her face that showed everyone in the audience that she was enjoying the fight. Speaking of the audience, they were all slack-jawed and in awe while watching this immensely cinematic and intense battle that shook the air and quaked the ground. Every moment was just so exciting to watch that people didn’t dare to blink fearing that if they did, they’d miss something very important which could become the tipping point of the battle.
Right now, everyone saw that the battle was just about even as Maria and her opponent duked it out without either of them giving away ground to their adversary but the more knowledgeable players knew that Maria was struggling to keep up due to Thor’s HP regenerating passive skill.
However, they were still impressed at how she was able to keep up with the monster for so long. They did see her use [Cure] and [Hi-Cure] a few times during the battle but they saw the same problem that Maria had long since noticed which was the split-second opening she gave to Thor whenever she healed herself.
Of course, most people still didn’t know about Calamity's passive lifesteal but it wasn’t helping all that much since most of the attacks that directly struck Thor was from her magic spells and not from her weapons skills or normal attacks. Most of those attacks were blocked or parried so Maria couldn’t properly use her weapon’s lifesteal effect which bugged her. However, Maria did notice that Thor was seemingly vulnerable to all of her Zantetsu-R attacks. This included the normal attacks and skills she executed with the weapon. Knowing this, she started to use it more often than Calamity and even switched it to her main hand.
People began to notice this as Maria started using Calamity more like a projectile as she threw it at Thor and teleported right to it and began attacking the Primal with her large blade. Maria wanted to dual wield the weapon but she wasn’t proficient in that kind of swordplay just yet. Rather than trying it out and looking like a fool, she stuck to the sword techniques that she learned from Odin. Her sword skills surprised a few of the well-trained people in the audience who were and weren’t Unitale players. Her swordplay was exquisite and in the middle of battle, the sword dance she performed with Zantetsu-R which she seamlessly chained all of her attacks and spells with actually made people believe she was a real-life swordmaster.
“Everyone, can you see this? Player Maria has switched up her game and began using her sword to fight Thor!”
“Her swordplay looks so well-refined even to my untrained eyes...does she perhaps do this in real life too?”
“It could be a real-life skill. This is quite the surprise!”
Up at the VIP booth where all of Maria’s friends were watching her battle, they too were surprised─especially her brothers─since they didn’t know when she had ever taken the time out of her busy schedule to begin practicing fencing and swordplay.
“Uh...did she ever tell anyone that she started learning how to use the sword?” Lizzy asked abruptly but her eyes were still glued to the screen, watching Maria’s battle.
“Shhhh, not now…”
“I...I don’t know what to say but the way she handles that sword...it’s quite beautiful.”
“Shut it, Liz!”
“Okay...maybe I should ask her to teach me.”
Emily smacked her hand on top of Lizzy’s mouth in the next instant and held her mouth shut. Everyone was too busy watching the intense battle as they all hoped that their friend and sister would win the battle. They didn’t need some fool to start commentating on something that could take away their attention on the screen right now since things began to reach a boiling point on the battlefield.
Back on the now ruined battlefield that was the result of Maria and Thor’s intense exchange of skills and spells, the two combatants had just exchanged two heavy blows that struck each of their bodies cleanly which sent them both propelling away from each other. Maria stabbed Calamity into the ground to stop her backward momentum but she didn’t immediately launch herself back into the fight. She stayed put as everyone could see that she was visibly exhausted.
Her armor was torn apart and her clothes were damaged here and there. Luckily, her Valhalla’s Raiment had a self-mend effect so it was recovering its damaged parts and slowly covering up her body again. Maria breathed heavily and tried stabilizing herself as she took one deep breath before standing up straight with her Zantetsu-R in hand.
“Hah...this is tough…” Maria said with a smile. “Now this is how you do it...but it’s kinda funny...to think that you devs actually used myself to power Thor’s AI. I don't know if I should feel pissed or proud right now!”
Despite the different battle skills and spells the Primal used, Maria had long since noticed that the player-AI behind Thor was modeled from herself. Thor used two weapons and lightning bolts to attack, and he also had an array of powerful magic spells which he used in tandem with his weapon skills. Not to mention that he also had the haughty attitude to match hers.
“Although it's infuriating, but I guess the only person that could look down on myself is... myself…Haha.”
She shook her head and smiled a little helplessly at how shameless the devs were being since they copied her instead of some other ranker. When the devs outside heard what Maria said, they smirked triumphantly to themselves and even began congratulating one another. The only person that could beat you was either you yourself, or a much stronger person.
Since they couldn’t fill in the latter while keeping things constrained to a ‘fair’ environment, they decided to go with the former so they began developing an AI that copied and learned from Maria’s battle style within the few days after the test run and just pulled a random boss monster from the game which would have an advantage fighting against Maria and had the AI pilot the monster.
Thor had the [Vigilance] battle skill that provided him a large boost in stats when faced against an enemy that was under the category of [Odin’s Disciple] which Maria perfectly fit since she was the Primal Allfather’s newest disciple.
“Well, looks like I’ll just have to break my limits and push myself even harder.”
Maria didn’t want to use it since she still hadn’t completely mastered the style, but she pulled Calamity into her hand and transformed it into its new third form. This was going to be the first time she used her weapon in battle in front of other people. A few people–mostly those that regularly tuned into her streams–had noticed that during the obstacle course event, her weapon had a sword form, but ever since she got the new weapon form, Maria never used it in front of others in battle. Not even her stream's regular audience have seen her use the new weapon form in battle.
Her Calamity was lit ablaze with hellfire as the weapon began to transmogrify within her grasp. A sharp, crystal-like red blade burst out of the flames in her hand and Maria waved her sword in the air, flinging the flames off which shot into the distance and exploded. Maria then got into the sword stance that Odin showed her just after she received the Zantetsu-R. She closed her eyes as she tried to remember and emulate the dual-wielding sword style that Odin had passed down to her.
Once she composed herself and leveled her breathing, Maria’s eyes shot open. With her Calamity in one hand and the Zantetsu-R in the other, Maria glared fiercely at Thor who was arrogantly waiting for her as the flames of battle burned brightly in her eyes once again.
“I probably won’t win but I’m going to tear off a limb or two and gouge out a few of your organs before I go down...you arrogant prick.”