As the fight continued to rage onward, the extremely sturdy Ancient Blood Hall had to bear the intense impacts from Ash and Elizabeth’s melee exchange and eventually, the sturdy material began to crack and break apart.
Their aura-infused attacks caused the ground to break and crack apart, while Maria’s supportive ranged attacks also contributed to the hall’s destruction even further. Many of the supporting beams in the hall were thoroughly broken as the pillars gave way due to the intense impacts of Ash, Elizabeth, or Maria's attacks that struck and obliterated a large chunk of their mass.
It was a mystery how the hall's ceiling was still in the air and not crumbling down just yet but thankfully, the floor was extremely sturdy so the foundations they were fighting on didn't break apart too badly like the pillars.
An hour had gone by since the start of the battle and the 3 combatants were still going strong as the two sides continued to lash at each other. Ash’s HP bar was constantly around 70% while Maria was always at 100% though her DE bar was consistently around the 40% range.
No matter how fast she could replenish her energy, the consumption was just too overwhelming since Maria had to attack, support, and heal all at the same time. She was playing out multiple roles that she normally shouldn't be filling in but due to her lack of a proper party, she had to compensate for what she and Ash lacked at the moment.
Ash was acting as the tank and DPS but even with Maria’s support, he was having a hard time keeping up with his evil spirit-possessed wife. Stats-wise they were about even and in terms of skills, Ash obviously had the advantage, but the worrying part was Elizabeth’s overwhelming vitality.
Maria and Ash had been grinding away at her HP but after an hour, they had only been able to deplete 30% of it. She was keeping up with Ash’s HP even though he had Maria’s healing spells as support which was saying a lot about her monstrous vitality stat.
The only few methods Elizabeth was able to regain HP was through her battle recovery passive that was unique to all boss-level monsters and NPCs, her vampire racial skill: [Blood Drain], and Demonic Sword Garm’s unique soul-siphoning attribute that allowed her to drain HP, MP, and SP from her targets if she successfully connected a hit.
Maria was able to stop her from successfully hitting Ash with her ranged support that constantly disrupted Elizabeth’s sword trajectory away from her target so she couldn't get much out of the soul-siphoning effect. If Maria hadn’t been able to do this, it was quite likely that Elizabeth’s HP would’ve only depleted by 20 percent–or even worse, only 15 or 10 percent. There was no plausible target around her to use her racial skill [Blood Drain] so Elizabeth was only relying on her passive battle recovery to replenish her HP but even then, the recovered amount was overwhelming.
Although their plan was to continue grinding away at Elizabeth’s HP, the time it took just to deplete 30% of her HP was quite long. Maria didn’t know if her SP could last that long or even her mental stamina for that matter.
The longest she’s been active while in a high-strung state because of a battle was an hour and a half but after she was finished, Maria immediately had to log out right after because she was feeling so dizzy from being in such a high-strung state for so long due to the boss monster she was solo-hunting that one time during a stream. Most of her streaming content was soloing high-leveled bosses that usually required a large party to defeat but it was because of these nigh-impossible challenges that she completed that made her extremely popular even before her debut in the IGC.
Now, she was even more well-known because more people were tuning into her streams but after that hour-and-a-half-long boss battle, she had to promptly end the stream, logout, and post a message on her Stargram that notified everyone she was feeling sick and didn’t want to stream for a few days.
That’s what happened previously and yet this time a full hour had passed but she’s only been able to deplete Elizabeth Bathory’s HP bar by 30% and that was with Ash’s help. She wasn’t soloing the boss monster this time around and had help but she was only able to do this much.
If the progress of the battle continued in such a linear fashion–which it likely wouldn’t since many unknowns could affect the progress–but in the case it did, Maria would have to spend around 3 to 4 hours just grinding away at the boss’s HP until it finally fell.
Thinking about doing such a thing greatly appalled Maria but then again, doing this meant she would finally finish up all of her currently set goals on Vanhal. Defeating Elizabeth Bathory, or rather, the Demonic Sword that was possessing her, Garm, was also tied to her Path of the Divine class advancement path so failing wasn't an option for her.
If she could persevere and prevail over this, Maria could then take a long break because everything that needed to be done up until this point would have been completed. Her next set of goals would be determined after she did her class advancement. With that in mind, Maria kept her focus on the battle and tuned out everything else. Whenever her expression changed into the serious one she was sporting right now, all of her viewers, especially the regulars that tuned into her streams repeatedly, would understand that she was about to go all out and focus on the fight, halting any interactions she would have with them.
They could still send chats and donations but no one expected her to pay any attention to them. Crunch time had just started and Maria wasn’t going to be distracted by anything else other than the fight in front of her. Whenever she was in this state of mind, she would always pull off something that surprised her audience and she didn’t fail to deliver.
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After another half hour had passed since going into her high-strung focused-state, Maria began multi-casting all of her spells together and formed a stellar field of orbiting magic spells around her before launching them at Elizabeth Bathory like a Gatling gun.
“TAKE THIS!!!” Maria roared as she waved her scepter and pointed the tip at Elizabeth Bathory.
The spells began firing and they brutally struck Elizabeth Bathory away from Ash and it didn't stop there as more spells right after, blasting the boss monster into the ground and further in as her barrage of spells cracked apart the sturdy floor and created a crater around the impacted area.
Whenever her spells regained a charge, she immediately used it and continued the long stream of magic attacks on her opponent, and seeing that Elizabeth Bathory's HP bar was steadily declining, she kept it up. Ash had to fall back because he didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire and returned to Maria's side as he began channeling a bit of his Blood Energy into her.
Maria's DE was depleting very rapidly so she quickly drank down an MP potion that restored her Divine Energy. Thankfully, the regular MP potions were able to replenish her DE, or else she’d have a tough time trying to secure items that could restore her DE.
Of course, the efficacy was cut by half since the energy she was trying to restore was different but at least it had an effect. It was thanks to these potions that she obtained from dungeon runs and extra rewards from quests along with Ash's Blood Energy sharing that her DE was able to last for another few minutes despite her wanton use of it. She only stopped her barrage of spells because all of her spells went on cooldown and no longer had any charges left.
Maria knew that she should be more frugal with her MP but there was no way she would be able to stand going another hour or two in the state she was in while battling Elizabeth Bathory and Garm. She might collapse even before the battle was over and that would spell her quest’s doom and thinking about all the penalties that she would suffer…Maria didn’t want any of that at all so she did everything she could to speed up the battle.
“Ash go back in! She’s right there in the crater! I’m going to replenish my DE!” Maria ordered as she granted him what little DE she had left before falling back and using [Meditate] to replenish her Divine Energy.
‘1 minute, that’s all I need to get my DE back to around 30 percent.’
Ash had to fight Elizabeth on his own for that entire minute but it wasn’t like he was too incompetent to hold his own for that long. He managed to buy enough time for Maria to replenish a bit of her DE before she began helping him again.
Maria only supported Ash in moderation this time around while keeping her DE in check. Once it reached 60 percent, she would use that magical Gatling barrage on Elizabeth again before repeating the energy replenishment steps and supporting Ash.
This was the most optimum attack cycle Maria could come up with to speed up the battle but during her 5th cycle, Elizabeth seemed to have wizened up and began aiming for her the moment she began multicasting her spells.
Thanks to this, Maria was forced into a melee until Ash came over to take control of Elizabeth’s aggro again. This change, however, caused Maria to miss her cycle which interrupted her spell casting. She couldn't do this attack again because of Elizabeth's constant interruptions so she had to give up on it.
‘Dammit, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy!’
Since it was like this, Maria decided to just use pinpoint magic spells to attack Elizabeth. The versatility in her attacks greatly fascinated her viewers and they continued to cheer her on.
“Ash heads up! I’m taking point!”
“Yes, my Queen!”
Maria got sick of using only her spells to attack her opponent after another hour had passed so she began fighting Elizabeth with her Calamity and Zantetsu-R. Using [Zantetsuken] used up a lot of her SP so she didn’t use it too often and decided to rely on her normal attacks and weapon skills to do battle. She constantly swapped between her Calamity’s weapon forms and thanks to the upgrade stones that she had already applied on it, the base attack and stat increase of her weapon–along with Zantetsu-R that perfectly imitated her Calamity’s attributes–ramped up her damage and stats as two new forms were made available for her Calamity as well.
The new forms let her use Calamity as a spear and a bow. During her long grinding session in Castle Bran’s previous floors, she had become somewhat adept at using the two new weapon forms but she still wasn’t as skillful with them as she was with her Calamity in its other 3 forms. The best thing though was that her [Calamity Cleave] now had 5 different forms and she could use all of them as long as she swapped her weapon into its different forms.
During the past few days, her viewers had only been able to watch as Maria slowly got used to her new weapon forms and grind her skill ranks but never actually use them in a fight. They were all surprised to see Maria constantly swap between weapon forms and dish out a continuous stream of [Calamity Cleaves] that overwhelmed her opponent so skillfully despite occasionally making a mistake, but everyone could see that as the battle progressed, Maria’s genius-level battle instincts were kicking in and she was learning as she fought, making her attacks connect more fluidly as she made fewer and fewer mistakes.
“Ash take over for a bit! I’m going to recover my stamina!” Maria ordered after noticing her SP was nearly depleted.
“At once, my Queen!”
Ash and Maria quickly swapped positions for a moment while she took a short break to drink an HP, MP, and SP potion before summoning Raijuu back onto the field.
“Eh? Master?” The bewildered Raijuu started as she puzzledly looked around the destroyed hall.
“You don’t need to do anything, just stay still. I’m sending you out after I use this,” Maria said as she used her [Soul Drain] on her lightning spirit and siphoned 50% of Raijuu’s HP, MP, and SP which she then used to replenish herself.
The excess resources she sent to Ash before turning around to dismiss a collapsed Raijuu who had half of her soul energy drained from her own Master’s ruthless skill.
“I’ll make it up to you when we get back!”
“Y-You better, M-Master…”
Maria dismissed Raijuu and turned her attention back to Elizabeth Bathory whose HP was now down to the last remaining bar which indicated she still had around 25 percent left. She didn’t know how much time had passed but all she knew was that she was still as pumped up as ever so perhaps not too much time had gone by. She wasn’t going to let go of this momentum so she grabbed hold of her two weapons and prepared for the final leg of her battle with this insanely powerful boss monster.
“I nearly died a few times because of you but you’re going down, Elizabeth!” There was a wicked smile on her face as she said this.
Maria could finally see the end of the very long road she and Ash were walking on but just as she was about to dash back into the fight, Elizabeth Bathory suddenly let out a terrifying screech as she bizarrely stabbed the demonic sword straight into her chest.
“W-What the? Is she committing suicide?” Maria exclaimed in shock as a mixture of blood and black liquid gushed out of her impaled chest.
Ash quickly returned to her side and said with a grave expression, “Be careful, my Queen! The demon blade is about to show its true form!”
“!!!”
“KIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”