Bahamut continued to unleash devastating attack after devastating attack. The power and might of Maria’s summoned Primal were completely unrivaled on this battlefield that not even the 2 factions’ strongest leaders’ Summons could match.
The battlefield where the numerous faction players were fighting on had been completely decimated as Bahamut’s high-ranking spells incinerated, froze, or overturned the land completely. It was a battle on proportions with a World Boss battle. The players couldn’t believe that all of this was caused by just one player who was standing pretty on the summoned Primal’s shoulder, freely launching spells at them from above.
All of the enemy players could see the 5 bars that represented Bahamut’s HP and after a few minutes, they had only managed to deplete one of those bars by half. One of the players calculated that they had done roughly 5 million damage so that meant that each bar represented 10 million HP so, in total, Bahamut had a despairing 50,000,000 HP.
“Goddamn, just where did she obtain such a powerful Summon? This is unfair!”
“Are all the Goddess Faction players like this? Their Summons are obviously not Astrals or Gods but something much stronger!”
“Dammit, we have to get rid of the summoner! Once we do, the Summon will disappear!”
It was a great idea, however, none of their attacks could reach Maria since she was hiding behind her incredibly large Summon. Damage was still being dished out but sometimes, Bahamut would recast a [Mega-Barrier] which dragged things out even longer.
They’d be able to eventually destroy the Summon, but it would take far too long for them to do so. They just didn’t have the time considering that Lizzy and the rest of the Goddess Faction players were already on their way here to save Maria and the rest of their surviving allies. The leaders of the Celestial Order and the Pantheon knew that if the enemy faction manages to regroup with Maria and Bahamut, their own factions would sustain heavy losses if they continued to be stubborn and fight with them.
They had only brought a few of their forces here since the rest had to remain stationed in the factions’ fortresses just in case their opponent decides to backstab them and strike at one of their bases. Losing just one base was a huge upset because the bases acted as respawn points for the players that are returning to the realm after being ejected and the bases acted like a population limiter for all 3 of the factions.
The number of players each faction could have at one time inside of the Realm of War was dependant on how many bases they held. Right now, the Celestial Order and Pantheon each had 10 bases each and each base allowed 10,000 players to enter the Realm of War. Since each side possessed 10 bases, this meant that the Celestial Order and Pantheon had a total of 100,000 players each in the Realm of War.
If they conquered more land inside of the Realm of War, more bases could be erected which would let more players be able to enter the Realm of War. Losing one base would mean losing a large number of players so they needed to have people guarding them. The Celestial Order and Pantheon only sent around 5,000 players to deal with Maria and her stray group. They thought that this number would be enough since the enemy numbers were only so little. They never thought that just a single player could cause them so much trouble like this.
“Eos, what are we going to do? With her Summon protecting her, we can’t defeat her. I received word that the Goddess Faction reinforcements are just a few kilometers away. If we don’t take action now, we’ll just be embroiled in an even larger and more chaotic battle once they arrive…I don’t think it’ll be worth it since most of our elite teams are present,” Gerald said.
“Dammit, we underestimated the Goddess Faction. To think that their Summons are so much more powerful than ours… We’ll stick around for a little longer, maybe some miracle will happen but the moment our scouts see their backup arriving, immediately have everyone retreat!”
Eos completely agreed with Gerald’s words. Getting into a fight with the Goddess Faction while they only had a fraction of their forces present was stupid. If he knew that Maria would’ve been so tough to kill, he might have brought even more players with him this time.
5,000 elite players from both the Celestial Order and the Pantheon weren’t enough to kill her. Eos couldn’t imagine such a thing could happen in this kind of game. Just how powerful were her stats and how lucky was she to obtain such a powerful Summon? There were many hidden players out there that had similar lucky chances like Maria. Eos had encountered a few and every time he did, he’d always fail to recruit them into his guild.
It was quite unfortunate but these players loved playing by themselves or were already in other guilds, adventurer parties, and even NPC factions. It was hard to poach them and even if he could, they wouldn’t join since they’d be under somebody.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He tried threatening them but the end result was always bad since they had power that was similar to what Maria was showing to everyone right now. It was lucky that these players didn’t actively participate in the game’s Main Story Quests or they would dominate all of the rewards and quests. Only Maria was the one who was participating in a Main Story Quest and Eos couldn’t understand why but thinking about it wouldn’t solve anything. They’d just have to deal with her and hope for the best.
The powerful faction NPCs were going to enter the realm in a few days and those NPCs were much stronger than the players, they were like Maria so he could rest easy once they appeared. However, the only problem right now would be if they could last until that day arrived. It seemed impossible since if the Goddess Faction were to start their attack, they’d likely be able to destroy a lot of their bases with Maria’s Bahamut, and who knows if any more of their players had powerful Summons like her.
Lizzy and the others arrived half an hour later once Bahamut’s HP had fallen to around half. He could use [Mega-Restore] to heal 10,000,000 HP and MP in an instant which made it nearly impossible to defeat him but the summoning only lasted an hour. During the period that it took for Maria’s reinforcements to arrive, she and Bahamut had devastated the enemy players and ejected over half of them out of the realm. This was a huge blow to the two factions since these were their elite players.
Just like Eos had planned earlier, he and his faction immediately retreated the moment they saw Lizzy and the other Goddess Faction players. Arthur and Caedes had no choice but to do the same since their temporary allies had begun retreating.
“Dammit, what a waste of players and resources! That goddamned bitch is still alive even after we sent this many players to attack her!” Arthur cursed as he glared at Maria who was confidently standing on her Summon’s shoulder with her arm’s crossed, looking pretty condescending at the moment.
Caedes only sighed since their raid was a failure. He couldn’t believe what was happening as well but this was the beauty of Unitale since it allowed people to achieve the impossible.
“She’s tough, but remember that the summoning only lasts 1 hour. Her Summon is indeed very powerful but if she didn’t have any reinforcements and we continued attacking her, she would eventually fall once that hour was over as her Summon would be sent back to the Void Sea Realm, leaving her vulnerable to our attacks.”
This was indeed true, but Arthur couldn’t completely accept their current situation.
“Tsk, it still pisses me off!”
“Just be patient. We may have failed this time but we’ll definitely succeed next time!”
“We need to put her in a situation where she can’t call upon reinforcements!” Arthur suggested.
Caedes nodded but wasn’t optimistic about that plan, “It’ll be hard. If we mobilize our entire faction, then maybe we could do that. Isolate her in one place and wait out the one-hour duration before killing her while our other forces stall the Goddess Faction players, however…”
“...The Celestial Order.”
“Yes, exactly. We can’t fully trust them even if we make a truce since they could backstab us at any time. Our true objectives are each other while the Goddess Faction is inconsequential. They’re only just a thorn on our sides…”
“Tsk, that Eos. I can’t sense anything good about him. Even though he acts so upright even as a devil-race player, he’ll betray us with a smile on his face if he ever gets the chance.”
Caedes had to agree with Arthur on that. His Angel-race had been in constant conflict with Eos’s united Devil-race during the first phase of the game where the Light and Dark Faction players still hadn’t completed their Starting Planet’s Main Story Quest. It was because of Eos that Caedes couldn’t unite the Angel-faction under one banner thanks to his rival’s scheming. The guy was cunning and wicked so the possibility of him taking advantage of their faction’s attention and resources being drawn to somewhere else was pretty high.
“We’ll have to think of something else. For now, let’s just make sure that the Goddess Faction can’t interfere with our war. We still outnumber them 10 to 1 since they only have one base at the moment,” Caedes said.
“We have to prevent them from acquiring any more bases since they still probably don’t know about this population limit. While we stop them we should also try whittling down their number of players.”
“Good idea. I’m sure Eos has already thought about this as well so he’s bound to make a move soon.”
While the enemy faction players retreated, Maria tiredly sat down on Bahamut’s shoulder as she was extremely exhausted. Her HP and MP were constantly being restored thanks to Bahamut’s [Mega-Restore], but her mental capacity couldn’t be restored with a skill or spell.
“Ugh…t-thanks, Bahamut.”
“Is everything fine now? I’ll be returning if it is,” Bahamut asked after seeing all hostile forces slowly retreating from the devastated battlefield.
Maria nodded and replied, “Yeah, thank you. I’ll call you again next time.”
“Alright. I will see you again, Contractor.”
Bahamut’s body began to dissipate into particles of light and Maria had to land on the ground before he completely disappeared. She looked around and saw the completely ruined battlefield and couldn’t help but marvel again at Bahamut’s might. He had only used magic spells to cause all of this. [Flare], [White Flare Array], [Inferno], [Dragon Storm], [Quake], [Comet], and a lot more after that.
Maria recalled that Bahamut only used a few spells repeatedly while everything after that was a new one. She lost count and didn’t even bother remembering some of their names but her Summon had so many powerful abilities. It was no wonder why she could only summon Bahamut once every 24 hours after meeting certain conditions. One of the conditions was that she needed to be at a numbers disadvantage to summon Bahamut.
If she could summon it any time she wanted, Maria would be unstoppable in the game with a power like that at her disposal. Bahamut’s HP when summoned would be proportional to the number of enemies that were around Maria, so the 5,000 players on the battlefield was why Bahamut had 50,000,000 HP. If there were more players, then her Summon's HP bar would be even bigger!
Such a thought made Maria smirk, but she had to quickly get down from Bahamut's shoulder and descend to the ground to greet the reinforcements that had come to her rescue. It was only after Bahamut had completely disappeared did the Goddess Faction players that were with Maria’s group who had survived the deadly ambush reunite with her and not a moment later, their large rescue party had arrived.