During the period of time since the introduction of the [Guild War] and [Territory Defense] features on Gaia, many Alliances were formed and many [Guild Wars] were initiated. By the end of the 3rd in-game month, only 5 Guild Alliances were left standing after the others were rooted out.
At the start of the [Guild War] phase, Lizzy’s Fallen Angels Guild were attacked by so many other guilds that they actually lost 2 of their territories. Thankfully, they didn’t lose the territory where they had to use the highest-ranking [Territory Permit].
Lizzy had poured a lot of resources into developing this one and of the 2 she lost, both of them were the ones she had poured in the least amount of resources, so her Guild didn’t lose too much from it. However, after experiencing such a loss, she quickly began gathering allies that she could trust and formed the Fallen Citadel Alliance. The name obviously came from the two founding alliance members, the Fallen Angels, which was Lizzy’s guild and Gerald's guild, the Citadel.
There were 3 other guilds in this alliance and, with their territories combined, they had 5 of the highest-ranking territories, 8 second-highest-ranking territories, and 15 lower-ranking territories.
The total number of [Territory Permits] on Gaia was 100 and there were only 10 that were of the highest-ranking permits. With Lizzy’s Alliance owning 28 territories with 5 of those territories possessing the highest-rank and 8 possessing the second highest-rank, they effectively owned 40 to 50% of all the territories–at least in terms of size, not quantity.
The other 4 Alliances always eyed the Fallen Citadel Alliance’s high-ranking territories, but with their powerful union, no one was able to touch those territories. The alliance would sometimes lose a few of the lower-ranked ones, but that was a normal occurrence and those territories were inconsequential since they could just be taken back later when a [Guild War] was won.
3 of the 4 enemy Alliances were headed by Lizzy’s longtime rivals, Eos of the Nine Hells Guild, who led the Nine Hells Alliance, Caedes of the Testament Guild, who led the Sacred Oath Alliance, and Arthur of the Camelot Guild, who led the Holy Sword Alliance.
The last Alliance was led by someone everyone in the player base only recently got to know of because of her stunt in the recent events inside of the Realm of War where she attacked Maria, the poster girl of Unitale.
It was none other than Hecate and Ophelia of the PK Guild Union. She had gathered up all of the PK Guilds and a few others to form the rabid Nemesis Alliance. Her only goal was to cause as much chaos as possible among the other Alliances and, despite possessing the least number of territories, her Alliance did possess 2 of the highest-ranking territories on Gaia.
The way she obtained both of these territories was extremely well-known to the community. Her Nemesis Alliance just appeared out of nowhere and directly attacked the Nine Hells Alliance and the Sacred Oath Alliance, who were the former owners of these two territories, and wrested them away from their grasp.
It was quite literally a legendary moment because it was the first time anyone was able to make effective use of the [Territory Defense] feature and the [Guild War] feature at the same time. Many have tried doing this in the past, but unfortunately, they failed to do what the Nemesis Alliance had accomplished, which was taking away not one, but 2 of the highest-rank territories on Gaia from 2 different alliances.
Aligning the timing between a [Territory Defense] event and a [Guild War] event was a strategy that the Alliances used against each other frequently, but none of them could accomplish what the Nemesis Alliance did.
Taking away 2 highest-rank territories from two separate alliances was a remarkable feat. In fact, it would have been 3 if Lizzy hadn't taken extra precautions for all of her 5 highest-rank territories.
A lot of rare building blueprints were invested in those highest-ranking [Guild Territories] so Lizzy made sure to assign as many of her Alliance’s members to safeguard them. Her extra precautionary actions ended up saving one of her territories from being stolen away by Hecate and her Nemesis Alliance.
Of course, after taking over the two [Guild Territories] from the Nine Hells and Sacred Oath Alliances, Hecate quickly moved the territories away and settled in a remote corner of the planet that held very unpopular hunting grounds, so barely any people would go there.
If the two alliances wanted to take back their [Territory Permits] from Hecate and the Nemesis Alliance, they would need to expend a lot of resources on it, so until now, they’ve decided to leave it be and focus more on developing their current territories while fighting against the other alliances.
Rather than trying to go for the more difficult route, the other 3 Alliances decided to just attack Lizzy and her Alliance since they were much closer to them than Hecate’s Alliance. They still needed to watch their backs, however, so none of the alliances had ever done a full-scaled assault on anyone in fear that someone might stab them in the back.
Gaia had managed to stop one war but ended up having to deal with another. This time, however, Gaia wasn’t going to do anything and let things play out instead because, unlike the previous war which was between the Astrals and the Gods, this war was only between the players.
Obviously, the players’ war wasn’t going to be world-ending like the Astrals and Gods’ war, so Gaia let them do as they pleased. Her planet was safe and it was thanks to the players, so she decided to stop meddling with the mundane things that happened on the planet. She focused her efforts on expanding her religion and increasing her followers among both the NPCs and players.
Most of the NPCs on planet Gaia were already following the Goddess's religion. The ones that weren't were just the remnants of the Celestial Order and Pantheon who had hidden themselves away in some corner of the planet. Despite being the planet itself, Gaia couldn't detect where these remnants were hiding themselves because the Astrals and Gods were using what little power they had left to keep their dwindling followers safe and hidden from her eyes.
The guilds and players that were previously a part of the Celestial Order and Pantheon slowly began switching sides to the Goddess's Factions after the collapse of the 2. One by one, those guilds and players joined her faction and this caused a large increase in her own power due to the large amount of faith she had been able to gather from the new players who were constantly completing missions and trading in their contribution points for rewards.
The contribution points that players earned from the daily missions the Goddess Faction would give them could be traded for various rewards and these points were something that Gaia used to generate more faith and increase her power.
The influx of new players was great and all, but along with them came quite a bit of chaos. The new players who had lost their Summoning Pacts because of the collapse of their factions were given a second opportunity to make new pacts inside the Void Sea Realm and the targets of their pacts were the Primals.
Since the players who had lost their Summoning Pacts due to the collapse of their respective factions, the Guild Territory Wars that happened between the guilds were tame at first, but after more and more players began obtaining their new Summoning Pacts, the wars became more and more vicious.
Players wouldn't be able to threaten her planet with destruction, but Primals could. This was why whenever Primals were involved in a battle, Gaia would sometimes intervene. If the players were fighting against each other were summoning Primals on a large scale and severely decimating the land, Gaia and her forces would have no choice but to step in and stop the fights thus interrupting the Guild Wars
This earned the ire of many players, but there was nothing they could do to Gaia since she was the planet's strongest entity. The only thing the players could do was to complain to the devs and file tickets about the problem. The devs naturally had to do something about this because they couldn't have an NPC directly interfering with the players' gameplay.
Luckily, the game's AI, Zeus, was being cooperative with them and it had created a solution that would completely prevent any interventions from Gaia and appease the players. After another major update, the Guild Territory Wars were now held within separate space instances once the war started. These instances mimicked the land that the battle would otherwise be fought in, but since it was in a separate space, whatever the players did there in that instance would have zero effect on the planet, Gaia.
Thanks to this, Gaia no longer interfered in the Guild Wars even when players started to use Primals wantonly against each other. Only the Territory Defense had no changes since it was between players and monsters. Of course, unrelated parties could interfere in the defense, but even if the players fought and summoned their Primals and had Gaia interrupt their battle, Gaia's interference would only serve to help the defending guild because once Gaia and her followers appeared, they would stop the players from fighting along with eliminating any hostile entities nearby.
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A few small guilds found out about this and it became a topic of discussion for some time on the forums, but no one really cared about it since the important topic was still the Guild Wars. Guilds were constantly having conflicts with each other because of the wars even outside of the Guild Territory War. The players who were in rival guilds would always pick fights with each other when they meet and this resulted in formal and non-formal guild wars always breaking out.
Battles were happening between the players almost every single day. Whether it be against the monsters or their fellow players, everyone was literally always fighting on Gaia. Just like the devs had wanted and intended, Gaia had become a never-ending battlefield that weeded out the players that couldn’t mechanically keep up with the game’s current stage.
All of the monsters were too difficult to defeat, so the players had to adapt or be left behind. The guild wars also contributed to the need for the players, whether they be combat or lifestyle players, to improve their mechanics both inside and outside of battle.
Maria was constantly keeping an eye on any developments so the guild wars didn’t escape her notice. She thought that it was interesting but she noticed that it was as if the system was training all of the players for large-scale battles and wars.
Vanhal would soon become a place of conflict once the players arrived and Maria knew that her nation, the Dire Empire, was going to be embroiled in all of the fighting and perhaps even be at the center of it. The Blood Continent belonged to her, but if she didn’t do her job properly as the Dire’s Empress, it could all be taken away from her by her enemies.
After finishing her trip around the continent and returning to Transylvania, Maria quickly got to work without a moment’s rest. She wanted to play a bit more with Cali and everyone, but unfortunately, her duties took precedence, especially since there were tell-tale signs that showed the path to Vanhal was about to open up for the entire playerbase.
Everyone in Maria’s Empire began to get busy and the work that she had her subordinates do increased drastically. Luckily, with her nation being the size of a large continent, she had a lot of manpower available. The expenses she had to make for all of the projects did punch a hole in her personal pockets and in her Empire’s finances, but it was all necessary.
A few of the projects involved opening up the various mines she found on her journey across the continent. Once those mines became operable, Maria would be able to obtain more resources from them and earn back the wealth she spent on her projects.
Since she was able to recruit monsters into her nation, Maria had done exactly this during her journey. Any intelligent monster species that had the ability to communicate with her was recruited into her nation.
If they didn’t want to join her, Maria didn’t mind it, but after a few days, the Dire Empire’s Army would come knocking on their front door. If they were still going to act stubborn, Maria planned on erasing them from existence since they could become a potential hazard for her nation.
It wasn’t like she was going to enslave them or anything. All Maria requested was that, since they were living on her continent, they should conform to her laws and become official citizens of her nation. All forms of labor were voluntary, not mandatory, and they would be paid for their work. Not only that, but she would help them build up their settlement’s infrastructure and connect roads from their homes to the rest of her Empire’s large cities to allow trade to happen.
At first, the new monster citizens were skeptical since Maria did technically threaten them into joining her, but after some time, they eventually came around and saw that there were more benefits to be had from joining the Dire Empire. If they didn't join, then there was the threat that their enemies would overtake them and once war was waged, they'd be annihilated in the end.
Maria was taking in the monster tribes indiscriminately into her nation without caring about the intricate relationships they had with each other. Some of the monster tribes she took in were enemies with one another. Seeing that they were now on the same side, the monster tribes that were enemies with each other couldn't stand for it. When this was brought up to Maria herself, she simply decreed that she didn't care about what they did to resolve their disputes, they could go to war and annihilate each other and she wouldn't bat an eye.
This came as a surprise to every one of the monster tribe leaders that had joined Maria since they didn't think she'd allow such a thing, but when she told them that if the conflict escalated to a scale that was enough to threaten the integrity of the Dire, she would intervene immediately and put a stop to all the conflict by completely eradicating the parties that were directly involved, making them serve as an example and a warning to the others.
Once they heard this, the various monster tribe leaders immediately started thinking about different ways to resolve the hatred that they had with each other. They naturally turned to Maria for advice and she offhandedly suggested that they host a tournament between all the monster tribes to fight for each tribes' honor. The winner of the tournament would be given the highest of honors and even be rewarded by Maria herself.
Maria didn't know that her offhanded suggestion, which she just said in passing in order to quell the monster tribe chiefs because she was getting bored of their hubris, would one day turn into a very important event on planet Vanhal known as 'The Strongest In The World Tournament' and it would involve both NPCs and players alike.
Funnily enough, because she had gone recruiting various intelligent species of the continent into her nation, her nation of vampires soon became a nation of monsters. When her trip was over, Maria gathered all of the various monster tribe chiefs that she had recruited into her nation and formally inducted them into her nation’s council in a grand ceremony.
This council would help Maria manage the various monster tribes that she had inducted into her nation and the representatives who were part of the council could even participate in her nation's politics. They not only kept their positions as leaders within their tribe, their statuses were even elevated now that they were playing on a wider field which was the large nation of the Dire. It could be said it was an upgrade from their previous positions even.
This 'upgrade' actually produced a tangible result that not even Maria could predict. When she formally welcomed those monster tribe chiefs into her nation and appointed them all to her nation's council, they actually evolved right on the spot to Maria's surprise. These monster leaders all evolved into Named Monsters and literally became the Kings of their respective races.
It was incredible to watch so many monsters evolve together in one space. Although it was incredible, Maria didn't plan for it to happen and was rather worried that something bad might happen. After all, these monsters had become stronger in just an instant and posed a slight threat to her safety.
However, after they had completed their evolutions, all of the Named Monsters, who could now be more or less be coined as 'Monster Kings', grew to respect Maria immensely and a deep sense of loyalty welled up in all of them. She was the cause of their evolutions and so as if it was only natural, they became extremely loyal to her as they somehow misunderstood her as the Mother of the Monsters since she had the power to bring about their evolutions.
This was a very pleasant surprise to Maria because she had suddenly gained some very capable sla–subordinates. She was extremely delighted because these Monster Kings were going to be extremely great additions to her nation's military power and the best part, she could boss them around as she pleased since they saw her as some sort of Mother Goddess or something.
They all started calling her Mother for some odd reason and were bowing to her after the ceremony and their evolution was completed. She didn't know what was happening and just took it all in stride since this was only good for her.
A total of 36 monster tribes were recruited into Maria’s nation during her journey and 13 more tribes voluntarily requested to join her after her journey, this meant that she had gained a total of 49 Monster Kings from out of nowhere. Things were proceeding extremely smoothly for Maria’s nation and the developments of various areas and sectors of importance were moving along swimmingly.
Now, Maria could only pray for time, time for her newly recruited monster tribes to fully integrate themselves with their new nation before the players arrived and brought chaos to the realm.