Volvoss was surprised by Maria’s strength that launched him away from his spot. Her speed also wasn’t something to scoff at and he had to reevaluate his opponent. Maria waited for her opponent to get up and stabbed her ax into the ground before saying, “What I hate the most is people underestimating me. I’m going to humiliate you today.”
She put up her fist and taunted Volvoss to charge at her.
“You’re going to regret this, heathen!”
Volvoss stabbed his weapon towards Maria and thought that he had stabbed through her forehead only to see the image in front of him disappear in a puff of smoke.
“I’m right here, stupid!”
Maria had sidestepped the attack and slammed her fist right into Volvoss’s flank, smashing him into the tower’s wall. His soldiers were about to make a move but Maria quickly used her [Nightmare] and summoned her puppets as well as spawn her 4 elemental golems.
“You think you’re the only one who got underlings?” Maria glared at Volvoss before saying, “Slaughter all of them.”
She continued toying around with Volvoss as she used only her fists and feet to smash the poor fellow around without letting him retaliate. She didn’t do a lot of damage because she didn’t have the [Hand-to-Hand Combat] skill, but it was never Maria’s intention to kill Volvoss with only this. She planned to thoroughly humiliate this person and shatter his confidence.
Maria was going to turn this so-called Undefeated into her personal punching bag. She wanted to learn how to fight with just her hands since Odin did say it was a good way to help her train her fighting techniques so this was a good opportunity since she also happened to be a little pissed off that a mere weakling like Volvoss was undermining her. If this was back on Vanhal, this fool would have been instantly killed by Ash who didn’t tolerate any form of insult towards his Queen.
At the top of the tower, Paimon was excitedly cheering his disciple on as he watched her beating the living daylights out of Volvoss with her bare hands.
“Ohoho, right there! Give it to him! One-two! Ooohhh, that’s gonna leave a mark!”
He accidentally said this while his [Telepathy] was activated so Maria heard his words.
“Hey, Paipai! What the hell are you doing?!”
“Ahem, nothing…”
“Stop fooling around and hurry up with your spell!”
“I know, I know. You don’t need to rush me! The mana’s already been gathered and all that’s left is for the Tower Spirit to complete all of the necessary calculation!”
“Huh?”
“You need to buy a bit more time for this…”
“...How much longer?”
“A few hours, give or take.”
“A few hours? This tower will crumble before that!”
“Don’t worry about the tower. It has a self-restoration function so its structural integrity will never fail!”
“Dammit, tell me that sooner!”
Maria stopped beating up Volvoss and tossed him into the group of soldiers that were currently being cornered by all of her minions.
“Take this and get out of our tower!”
She activated her [Dark Ray] and used around 50,000 MP to strengthen the skill and created a large black beam that blasted the soldiers out the side of the tower.
“Hmph!”
Maria returned to her normal form before sitting down on a chair nearby as she waited for the next wave of soldiers to arrive.
[Kid, you did it again.]
“Paipai? Oh yeah, it’s the 50th wave...Gimme my reward.”
[Don’t be so impatient. Here, I’ll give you a strong AOE spell to deal with the upcoming waves. As long as the soldiers aren’t level 200, I think we’ll be alright. Just make sure you don’t kill too many of them or else the factions might send their elites to deal with us.]
“I know, I know. Just gimme my reward already, Paipai!”
[Jeez, so impatient. Here.]
*DING*
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Archmage Paimon would like to teach you his spell [Hellflare]. Do you accept? Y/N
“Oh!”
Maria immediately tapped the [YES] button when she saw that. The [Hellflare] spell's name gave her a ‘strong spell’ vibe, so she immediately opened up the spell window without caring for the next wave of soldiers that had just appeared on her floor and examined the spell's details. Her golems and shadow puppets were still out so they automatically began attacking the soldiers that had appeared and the Mage Tower’s defenses were also there to help, so at the moment, Maria didn't need to deal with the enemies personally.
Spell Name: Hellflare Rank: A Description: Conjure flames from hell to decimate your opponents, dealing 10,000 + (INT*1.1) in a designated 5-meter area. Enemies caught within the AOE are subjected to [Burn] and [Silence] debuffs. Debuffs last 5 seconds Mana Cost: 10,000 MP Note: [Hellflare] is added to the sub-spells of your [Fire] spell so it will share a universal cooldown, level, and rank with the [Fire Golem] spell!
“Hmmm…”
Maria wanted to test it out but with her [Fire Golem] still in use, she couldn’t use it because her [Fire] spell’s sub-spells shared a cooldown. She’d have to wait until her [Fire Golem]’s duration and cooldown was over before she could use the new sub-spell. Of course, [Fire], the base spell, wouldn’t be affected by this shared cooldown. Only her sub-spells. The same applied to all her other spells which she learned from Paimon. It could be considered a minor setback because compared to the other mage-class players in the game, Maria’s spells were practically a cheat.
In fact, her very existence as the only sub-class Magus player in the game was a cheat. She could use all 4 of the basic elements in the game, fire, water, earth, and air, while the other mage-class players had to specialize in what element they used due to the limited skill and spell slots they had. Not only that, but her Magus sub-class unique skill [Elemental Mastery], allowed her to use all four elements without experiencing any usage penalties. Other mage players had to learn the specific element mastery skill to learn and use certain elemental spells so due to this, they could only specialize in one or two elements at most due to the slot limitations.
There were definitely some unique mage players that succeeded in learning some hidden elemental mastery skills that allowed them to use 3 elements or some extra elements, but still, the limited skill and spell slots were a big problem for them. As a hidden legacy-class player with 2 subclasses, Maria had 30 main skill slots, 20 sub-skill slots, and 10 spell slots which were already a great advantage and she’d gain more once she advanced her class.
However, even with so many skill slots, Maria hadn’t been able to fill it all up yet even after playing the game for almost a year. She had a total of 23 main class skills and spells, 11 subclass-skills and only 4 sub-class spells. The other spells she learned that fell into her sub-class spell category like [Earth Shock] were integrated into the earth type spell she learned from Paimon's Spellbook, [Terra]. Any elemental spell she learned would be integrated into her 4 basic elements spell and either be strong enough to be listed as a sub-spell, or deleted because the base elemental spells she had could already encompass the effects of those spells.
After all, all the spells that came after the 4 basic elemental spells were either just enhanced versions of them that were given different forms that also changed their effects to a degree or a combination of 2 or more of those basic elements to form a variant spell that had the properties and effects of the combined elements which varied depending on the form that was given to the resultant spell. This was a topic that Paimon had taught Maria back when she was still actively learning from him.
Maria had once asked him why he was only teaching her the basic fire element spell, [Fire], and not anything else during her 'confinement' and Paimon explained that learning anything beyond [Fire] was completely pointless and redundant because at its base, the spell [Fire] was the foundation of all the proceeding fire-type spells like [Flame Lance], [Flare Bomb], [Flame Shield], etc.
He explained to his student that if she mastered the use of her [Fire] spell to even just 1% of his mastery, he guaranteed her that she would be able to perform all those other 'higher tiered' spells by just using the enhanced [Fire] spell that she learned from him. Not even half a year later, and he was absolutely right. Maria was able to use those higher tier spells as long as she gave her [Fire] spell the same form as them, adjusted her mana output, and visualized the intent she had during the conjuration process.
The system helped with the correction so she was able to conjure [Flame Lance] by using her enhanced [Fire] spell and this was the same with all her other basic element spells. Naturally, the success of all this depended on the level and rank of Maria's [Elemental Mastery] and [Mana Manipulation] skills. If she tried conjuring a spell that outclassed the levels and ranks of her two skills, then the spell would fail and she'd suffer from the backlash of her spell failing.
Anyway, thanks to her enhanced 4 basic elements spells, Maria was able to free up a lot of spell slots that would otherwise be filled with various elemental spells of the intermediate or advanced grade. Only spells with extra attributes or elements like [Blink] would be listed in the sub-class spell slots. The racial skills she and all other players obtained from their race and Ascensions were excluded from this since these racial skills had separate skill slots under the category of Race Talents.
Some of the 23 main skills that Maria had were those that she no longer even used anymore so she could easily delete them and replace them with more suitable ones if she found anymore to her liking, but did she even need to delete them when she still had extra space? There was also the problem of not having a class instructor around to teach her any additional main class skills, so she was literally just stuck with those 23 skills that she learned from the skill and spell books which she bought a long time ago from her priestess instructor, Hella, or the ones she learned after obtaining them through her legacy class exclusive quests.
She was still undecided by what to do with those skills as she still didn't know of a way to get any class-related skill books from her class instructor who was, at the present, hostile to her just like every other NPC on planet Eur. With that in mind, she didn't touch her main class skills just yet and just kept them though she barely used them.
Maria could learn a few more sub-skills but the ones she needed were already in her possession while the other sub-class skills weren’t too appealing to learn and were pretty much just for filling in the extra slots she had. Once her ordeal in Eur was over, she wanted to see if Paimon had anything new to teach her as a Magus. Seeing those empty skill slots, Maria thought they were such a waste since it felt like she wasn’t using her character to its utmost potential.
However, Maria only wanted to learn the best skills and spells that would help enhance her combat prowess. If it wasn’t needed, then she wouldn’t learn it. Part of the reason why Maria didn’t have too many skills and had this sort of elitist mindset was due to the fact that she wasn’t playing the game like all the other players. She didn’t go to any class instructor to learn class skills and the like, nor did she actively seek to learn those skills.
She only learned her unique skills by coincidentally and luckily completing challenges, quests, and learning from other NPCs that were willing to teach her. A few examples would be her NPC teachers like Odin and Paimon. Odin taught her sword arts while Paimon taught her magic spells.
There were still a few forms from her [Odin’s Sword Style] that she still needed to unlock and master, so there were still a few skills that she could learn from it to fill up her subskill slots. There were still 6 spell slots free for her to use, but it wasn't like she needed to fill them all up in the first place. Just the 4 spells she had learned from Paimon, [Fire], [Blizzard], [Terra], and [Aero] were already good enough.
These 4 spells were easy to control, much stronger, and more versatile since they were directly enhanced and modified by Paimon. Maria could also form higher tier spells of the same elements as her 4 basic spells as long as her [Elemental Mastery] and [Mana Manipulation] had the corresponding levels and ranks that allowed her to complete them. Plus, there was now the added bonus of having some unique sub-spell options that she could choose from which she directly learned from Paimon.
In a sense, she could learn and use an almost infinite amount of spells while only using up 4 spell slots as long as she acquired them from Paimon since they would be listed as her 4 basic spells’ sub-spells. It didn’t come without a price though because all of her sub-spells could only be used one at a time as they shared a universal cooldown.
“Well, it can’t be helped. Paimon’s spells are already practically a cheat so it should come with a few setbacks. I should be happy already since I’m practically playing the game as if I’m using 2 classes.”
Maria was wrong to think she was playing only 2 classes. With her unique skill [Odin’s Sword Style] and [Gaia’s Force], she was practically 4 classes put together in one character. She had the strength and finesse of a Swordsman due to Odin’s teachings and thanks to Gaia’s blessing, she was a Druid as well. Then came her Magus subclass which practically made her a Mage, and her original class which was a Priestess…a Dark Priestess
If she wasn’t able to get ahead of everyone in the game due to all of these advantages, then there was something wrong with her as a player. Thankfully, however, Maria wasn’t stupid so she didn’t waste any of her characters’ advantages. No matter what the leaderboards said, she believed that she was undoubtedly the game’s current number one player.
Maria felt pretty confident in herself and believed that she would be able to thoroughly complete the tower defense quest that she was currently doing and obtain the maximum amount of rewards possible from Paimon, but kept herself levelheaded, so that she wouldn't let her guard down. Unfortunately for her, she just had to raise a flag that she shouldn't have...
“I still need to deal with these monster waves for another 5 hours so let’s just earn as much as I can before the duration of this quest is over, but this quest...isn’t it a bit too easy?”