Maria quickly activated her [Metamorphosis] and transformed. She pulled out her Calamity and Zantetsu-R but didn’t stop there. She left them floating behind her telekinetically while she pulled out her Sekhem Scepter and Necronomicon.
“Ash, you take point! I’ll support you from behind as best I can!”
“Yes, my Queen!”
Since she started playing Unitale, this was the first time that Maria didn’t feel confident in soloing a boss monster. The aura Elizabeth Bathory exuded was extremely dangerous and Maria felt a sense of dread coming from her. It was the first time she felt threatened by a monster. Not even Thor was able to make her feel this way or the half-angel, half-demon player she lost to.
If she approached this the wrong way, she might lose this battle and fail her quest. She couldn’t afford that because there was so much she would lose and her grand design of taking over the Blood Continent would be up in flames at that point.
Maria started buffing Ash while she also erected her [Unholy Domain], which buffed him even further. Unfortunately, the domain’s debuff effect didn’t apply to Elizabeth Bathory because she resisted it. It didn’t matter because, with this, Ash’s power was at least on par with the demon-possessed Blood Queen.
“Go!”
“Yes, my Queen!”
“KIIEEEHAAHAHAA!!!”
Ash quickly charged towards the maddened Blood Queen as he swung his aura-infused blood sword at her. There was no hesitation in his swing despite knowing that he was attacking his wife. The woman in front of him wasn’t his significant other but the demonic sword, Garm, the evil spirit of the blade that had bewitched her. In order to force it out, he couldn’t hesitate in his attack, or else he and his Queen could be the ones that died in this battle.
Maria was inwardly happy that there was no hesitation in Ash’s attack. She was already prepared to switch with him if she detected even a hint of hesitation, but luckily, there wasn’t.
“[Fire], [Blizzard], [Terra], [Aero], [Thunder]!”
Since Ash wasn’t hesitating, Maria went all out. She multicasted 5 of her spells and immediately launched all 45 instances of them–10 for each basic elemental spell and 5 for her [Thunder] spell–straight at Elizabeth Bathory.
The Blood Queen crazily responded by launching a blade aura at Maria’s spells and managed to destroy at least half of them. The remaining half continued on and landed right on Elizabeth Bathory but she only cackled like a maniac even as she got hit by them. Her HP bar only fell by a single percent and this caused Maria’s eyes to widen.
“Damn, she was hit with at least 20 of those and only 1% of her HP fell?”
Maria wasn’t pulling her punches. She launched all of those spells at maximum power and even added a little bit more of her Divine Energy to enhance them, but the outcome was her enemy losing only 1% of their HP. That 1% was nothing either, as it was immediately healed back up by the boss’s unique battle regeneration skill. She knew that the battle ahead of her was going to be tough but she didn’t expect it to be THIS tough.
“Dammit, I’ll have to rely on Ash to be the main damage dealer.”
Ash quickly arrived in front of Elizabeth and began attacking her. They exchanged numerous blows with their swords, but every time Ash attacked, his blood sword would always break. Thankfully, he was very skilled with his blood arts and probably expected this to happen, so he consistently conjured a new blood sword right after every clash. The demonic sword, Garm, was enhancing Elizabeth’s swordsmanship because Ash knew for a fact that his wife wasn’t a swordswoman. She had more talent as a magician than a sword user, so it was definitely the sword that was aiding her.
‘If I can separate her from the sword…maybe something will happen!’
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Ash continued his attack with that in mind and he quickly relayed his thoughts to Maria via [Telepathy]. She quickly got the picture and began focusing her attacks on crowd control. She would occasionally use her telekinetic connection with her Calamity and Zantetsu-R to send her two swords to attack Elizabeth Bathory. Unfortunately, she couldn’t lend any of her weapons to Ash, who was struggling to even keep hold of a single sword in the melee exchange. If it wasn’t for the high-level mastery of his Blood Arts and skillful swordsmanship, Ash would’ve lost the battle very early on.
Maria was able to create an opening for Ash and he quickly used that chance to knock Garm away from his wife’s hands.
“Did it do anything?” Maria yelled.
[Hahaha, it is futile! Do you think something as simple as that can break my control over her?!]
The demonic blade cackled before telekinetically moving back towards Elizabeth’s body. Ash frowned when he saw that his plan didn’t work but Maria saw something he didn’t, so she quickly lept forward and intercepted Garm, who was still moving back towards Elizabeth.
“Ash, wake up! Look at Elizabeth, she’s standing around without moving!”
“!”
“You deal with her! I’ll keep this pesky thing away!”
“Yes!”
Maria noticed that Elizabeth Bathory was standing still like a statue after Ash had knocked away the sword she was wielding. Maria didn’t know if it was all an act, but if Elizabeth’s body became frozen after Garm was knocked out of her hand, then this was something they could exploit.
[You imbecile!]
Hearing the demon sword’s insulting words, Maria smirked as she figured out this boss’s weakness.
“So you can’t control her when you’re not touching her! Isn’t this something?!” Maria said with a cynical laugh before she focused all of her efforts on keeping Garm away from Elizabeth.
[Damn you!]
Ash had already grabbed his wife and moved her far away from Maria and Garm. He noticed that she was completely unresponsive even after he had pulled her away.
“I’ve secured her, my Queen!”
“Good! Keep her away! I’ll deal with this!” Maria yelled back as she continued to attack Garm.
[GAAAAHHHH!!!]
The sword was acting very distressed as it desperately tried to get back to Elizabeth. Ash was holding Elizabeth under his arm so he couldn’t see the red glint that sparked in Elizabeth’s previously dead eyes. She raised her hand and shaped it into a knife before wrapping a bloody aura around it. Ash quickly reacted to the aura but it was a little too late.
“Ugh!”
Elizabeth intended to stab Ash on his flank but only managed to cut off his left arm just before he flung her away. His quick reaction saved his life, but since Elizabeth was acting like this, it meant that she was still under the demonic sword’s influence, so separating her from it didn’t do any good.
Maria saw this from the corner of her eyes and turned around to fire a [Sin of Greed] at Elizabeth Bathory, who was just about to charge right towards Ash again. Her weapons were keeping Garm at bay, so she was able to spare some of her attention and energy to help Ash.
“Dammit, so it didn’t work after all.”
Maria stopped her attack and allowed Garm to return to Elizabeth. The strength of her opponent didn’t seem to diminish even after they were separated, so she judged that it was better to allow them to reunite so she would only face one powerful enemy instead of two. She returned to Ash’s side before grabbing his dismembered arm and reattaching it to his severed limb and healing it with a [Hi-Cure].
“Thank you, my Queen. I was careless earlier, I’m sorry,” Ash apologized after getting his arm fixed.
“Never mind. This thing knows how to play tricks, so we had best be careful.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still on point, Ash. My damage isn’t enough, so I can only support you from behind.”
“Don’t worry, my Queen. Just leave it to me.”
“Mhm.”
Maria and Ash restarted their attack and this time, they didn’t try anything funny. They might be tricked again by Garm, so instead, they did things straightforwardly and began whittling down Elizabeth Bathory’s HP bar the old-fashioned way. The hall they were fighting in was built from something very sturdy because no matter how harsh and vigorous they fought, nothing was being destroyed. At most, they created cracks in the floor, but that was it.
Ash was using his swordsmanship and Blood Arts to fight with Elizabeth, while Maria continued to support him with her ranged attacks and spells. [Magic Missile] really shined in this battle as she would sometimes land a few of her spell’s mini-stun effects which completely threw off their enemy’s attack patterns and even interrupted a few of her Blood Arts’ incantations.
No matter how powerful and high-leveled she was, Elizabeth Bathory didn’t seem to be as skillful at her Blood Arts as Ash was with his. Ash was able to completely omit most of his Blood Arts incantations while Elizabeth wasn’t able to.
She was supposed to be better at that than Ash, but from the looks of things, the many years of her soul being under Garm’s demonic possession, seemed to have caused Elizabeth’s skills to deteriorate. This was good news because if this was a battle between two powerful Blood Arts users, Ash believed that he would be the one losing out in this battle if his wife was as skillful as she was before, due to the simple fact that his wife was just that much better than him when it came to using the vampires’ unique Blood Arts.
One of the reasons Ash chose Elizabeth to be his bride and courted her way back was because he had been mesmerized by her strength and was deeply attracted to it. Her skills had fallen because of the demonic blade’s mind corrosion that was constantly eroding her consciousness, thus weakening her innate vampire ability, and although it was a bit regrettable, the situation was working in their favor, so that was a good thing.
If they kept this up, Maria and Ash would become the victors at the end of this extremely long and hard-fought battle, but they didn’t let this relief sink in because anything could happen before then. They didn’t relax at all, since the only time they could relax was after confirming that they had truly won the battle.