“Guild Leader, I have something to report!”
Over at the other end of the Vanargand Continent in the areas that were still being explored by the frontier players, Eos was currently listening to a report from one of his subordinates inside a tent. The report came from a player who he had entrusted to keep an eye on things in the Dire nation’s colonies just in case Maria decided to make a move.
“Multiple large ships have docked at the harbors and the colonies have been put under lockdown–and more precisely–information lockdown?” Eos asked his subordinate again.
“Yes sir. Any player that the NPCs suspected of espionage or was just wandering around the harbor’s area was detained or immediately killed.”
“Hmmm…”
One of the players at the meeting table quickly spoke up and said, “If the lockdown on the harbor is that strict, it could only mean that Maria and her Dire are up to something…maybe they’re planning on restarting their war against the lycans?”
“That much is obvious, but why now?”
“Isn’t it because of the war we started against the PK Alliance? Maria is taking advantage of the turmoil between us players to restart her war because this way, we’ll have less of an impact on the outcome!”
“...From the start, she was worried about us players interfering so before we even arrived on the planet, she stopped her conquest mid-way. Now that we’re causing problems on our own between ourselves, she’s decided to make her move!”
“It can’t be that easy, however! The lycans aren’t one to go down without a fight!”
“Yeah, but there’s a rumor out there that Maria’s got some sympathizers on the lycan’s side. If her objective this time isn’t to wage an all-out war against the lycans, but to absorb them into her nation…that would be an even bigger problem.”
The one who said this was someone that Eos had recently just recruited. The young man’s name was Zhuge Lan, a person who proclaimed himself to be a descendent from a legendary tactician in real-life and previously served under Hecate as her right-hand man. This person was the true brain behind the PK Alliance and he worked together with the lunatic PK Leader and caused a whole bunch of problems for the players back when everyone was still on Gaia, the second Main Planet.
Eos didn’t know why this Zhuge Lan character was willing to work under a lunatic woman, but he was grateful now to have him as a part of his guild even though he wasn’t a devil-race player like the rest of his guild.
Back at the first stage where it was only the devils against the angels, it was hard for Eos to recruit players of a different race since those were the only 2 races present, but after rejoining the rest of the player base on Gaia, the Nine Hells Guild began opening its doors to other race players though it was only open to the ones who were extremely powerful in their own right.
Not just any scrub could be taken into the guild, so the Nine Hells Guild–despite its immense size–was actually a guild that was filled only with very elite and talented players. If Maria was extremely good at attracting and recruiting powerful NPCs, then Eos was good at attracting powerful players to his side and even players with latent abilities and talents since he had, what ordinary people say, an extremely keen eye.
Even Eos’s rivals begrudgingly had to admit that he was extremely good at recruiting powerful players on top of being powerful himself. It was why his previous rival from the first stage, Caedes, was willing to put aside past grudges and work together with him because he knew that if they were to clash head-on, his guild would be on the back foot from the get-go.
When Eos heard Zhuge Lan’s theory, he turned towards the young man and asked, “Where did you get this information?”
“From a grapevine. Just know that the source is reliable.”
“...I’ll take your word for it then.”
Eos could see that Zhuge Lan still didn’t trust him yet, but that was understandable because until recently, Zhuge Lan had been serving under a different master before he was ‘disowned’. They still needed to build some trust between them so given time, Eos believed that once he saw his brilliance, only then would he whole-heartedly serve him as his new master.
“We’ll have to do something about this if Mr. Lan’s words are true,” Eos said before turning to the other people in the tent. “If the lycans are absorbed, Maria’s faction would only become an even bigger threat for all of us.”
Another player spoke up and said, “Yeah…and once she’s absorbed the lycans, she’ll turn her attention towards us and the rest of the Vanargand Continent.”
“This may sound like I’m praising our enemy, but that girl…she sure has incredible drive and ambition. To think that a single player wants and is trying to take over an entire planet…”
“You said it. Even though she’s our enemy, she does deserve praise…though her ambition will become her undoing.”
“Agreed. It was easy for her to fight against NPCs, but let’s see how she’ll fare against the full might of us players!”
Eos quickly stopped everyone’s discussion by raising his hand and said, “That’s enough praising our enemy. We should start thinking about our next steps. Mr. Lan, if you will.”
Zhuge Lan closed his eyes and inwardly sighed in exhaustion.
‘These bunch of fools…if words were enough to defeat a person then you all would’ve won ages ago. Just why did our Leader put me up to this when instead, I could be by her side helping her eliminate the bugs that’s been tarnishing our reputation?’
After his inner monologue, Zhuge Lan stood up and began proposing a few extremely brilliant ideas that the group of fools that were surrounding him could commit to next. Of course, the people in the tent were all brilliant in their own right, but to Zhuge Lan, all he saw were a bunch of bumbling morons that only knew how to talk big.
Even Eos was but a slightly brighter moron compared to the others in Zhuge Lan’s mind. The person he extremely admired was his beloved leaders, Hecate and Ophelia. If it wasn’t because of her command, he wouldn’t be here helping the fools with whatever crooked plan they were concocting.
‘Instead of openly opposing the Dire like this, they instead should’ve just moved to Dreyra and took advantage of the Dire’s facilities to grow their power. These idiots just don’t know the full military might that the Dire’s been hiding…’
Zhuge Lan didn’t know just how powerful the Dire truly was, but he believed that it was more powerful than what most of the players on Vanargand predicted because of the Empress who was leading it.
Maria gave Zhuge Lan the same feeling as his master, Hecate, did. It was the auspicious feeling of someone who was ‘great’, someone who was 'chosen' by the heavens. He didn’t know how to describe it accurately with words, but he knew that the people who possessed this aura would always turn out to be people who did extremely incredible things–both in real life and in the virtual world of Unitale.
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After Zhuge Lan gave Eos a plan that he was satisfied with, the young man quickly dismissed himself from the meeting as he no longer had any reason to be there anymore. Even though he viewed Eos and the other leaders inside of the tent as fools, Zhuge Lan still had to give them a little bit of credit. The forces they gathered were certainly top-notch, especially if it was in comparison with the rag-tag group that had gathered under the banner of his Master, Hecate, and the PK Alliance.
There were definitely more normal players than there were PKers, so it was natural that in terms of quantity, the PK Alliance did fall drastically behind the guilds and player factions. One aspect the PK Alliance did beat the guilds was in the quality of their players’ combat prowess. As PKers, the members of the PK Alliance were highly skilled in battle–against both players and monsters–though their overall equipment quality may be a little lacking in comparison.
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The only reason why Zhuge Lan called Eos and the other leaders fools was because they were trying to go against Maria while being so ill-prepared. They didn't have a permanent, well-established base yet. There were no NPCs on their side, and most importantly, they lacked a proper, military force. Sure, the players could be counted as their military force, but it wasn't organized like the Dire's forces.
There was another thing that greatly worried Zhuge Lan and he couldn't believe that Eos and the other guild leaders in his coalition weren't even seeing it and that was the fact that the NPCs that were stationed throughout the Dire colonies that were spread throughout some of the important areas on Vanargand being rather 'low-leveled'. The NPCs were only around the average level of the game's current player base and this raised an alarm in Zhuge Lan's mind.
He didn't believe for a second that Maria could’ve conquered an entire continent and was waging war against the natives of another continent with NPC soldiers who were only around the average level of Unitale’s current player base. He deduced that the Dire was cleverly concealing the true power of their armies because Maria didn't want to expose just how powerful she truly was.
The biggest indicator to this was the fact that Maria had summoned some of her subordinates during the IGC and accidentally leaked how powerful they were. Although Ash hadn’t fully displayed it, he had given the world a sneak peak of his true power when he protected his master from Thor. Since one of her direct subordinates was that powerful, then it just made no sense that the rest of her soldiers would be so...mediocre.
The Dire was definitely much more powerful than they let on and if Eos and his goons were to continue their course without worrying too much about Maria’s forces, then they were bound for failure. The only thing he couldn't understand was why Maria was ‘letting’ them go about their activities freely when it was clear to everyone that the longer she allowed them to build and develop their forces, the harder things will become for her in the future when she has to clash with them.
Zhuge Lan couldn’t understand this, but his thoughts never strayed towards the most obvious reason–Maria simply couldn’t. He thought that just like his Master, Hecate, Maria was also one of those incomprehensible people that did things only for the sole purpose of their own entertainment. In his mind, he actually thought that Maria was purposefully letting the players develop and strengthen their factions on Vanargand just so they could put up a better fight with her so that when she attacks them, she’ll at least be able to amuse herself with their resistance.
Hecate was always going around trying to find stronger opponents or people who proclaimed themselves to be strong players just so she could duel them and see who was stronger. Even though that kind of path was thorny and it was inevitable that you’d make enemies along the way, Hecate just didn’t care. She only wanted to fight stronger opponents and didn’t care about anything else.
Her reputation was in shambles and questionable people gathered under her, but Hecate continued to not care and only focused on finding her next target–whether they be a monster, NPC, or a player.
Thanks to that, everyone in the game only referred to her as the Murderous Witch or the Lunatic, for leading an alliance of player killers that did extremely abhorrent things to the regular players in the game. It was only recently that Hecate seemed to care a little bit about her reputation so she decided to do something about those disgusting bugs that were hitching a ride on her coattails and tarnishing the image of her group.
“This only happened because one of those idiots touched one of our people. If they kept their heads down and didn’t do anything arrogant and stupid, Master wouldn’t have decided to eradicate them all…”
There were plenty of scums inside of the PK Alliance and Zhuge Lan was aware of it, but it wasn’t like they could’ve done anything about them at the time. Even if they killed those players repeatedly or warned them, they would just come back since they could respawn.
However, they finally found a proper way to decimate them and stop their actions once and for all after arriving on Vanhal. Whether it was fate or just pure luck, Hecate had stumbled upon a hidden place known as the Underworld. That’s right, she had discovered one of the entrances to the secret underground world that Maria and her friends were currently exploring.
In the Underworld, she learned that it was a place where one’s vision was completely cut off while their other senses would continue to slightly deteriorate over time. If you died, you would face a slightly deteriorated logout penalty and when you respawned, you wouldn’t respawn back at your last respawn checkpoint, but in a random location inside the Underworld.
Hecate thought that it was the perfect place to send and punish those bastards. All she needed to do was slowly round them up and toss them into the Underworld until every last one of them was down there. It was indeed a cruel fate to condemn someone to, but after hearing from Zhuge Lan about what those people did by enslaving other players with system contracts, she thought that the punishment was more than enough.
She had spent a few days in the Underworld before going about with her plan so she knew just how harsh the place was. Only an absolute lunatic would be able to survive there, and luckily, she was one of them. Hecate just didn’t know that there were actually other players who were practically thriving in the Underworld because they were following a lunatic who was similar to her.
“The Underworld is likely the key to the next Main Story Quest stage…instead of the frontline players, will it be our turn to finally take the spotlight?” Zhuge Lan thought.
He believed that his master wasn’t any lesser than Maria who was supposedly his master’s rival as well as her current target of interest. Since his Master was finally showing a bit of clarity and ambition, he thought that it was finally time for him to put Hecate on a bigger playing field and the Main Story Quest was exactly that place.
He just had to get rid of some obstacles and the first on the list were the rotten innards of their PK Alliance. The second was Eos and the other player guilds, then lastly, it was Maria and the Dire.
“It’s going to be hard to fight against an entire nation when we’re just a small group of people in comparison,” Zhuge Lan mumbled to himself. “This will be fun though. I like the thrill of a challenge so let’s take this seriously.”
He covered his mouth with his sleeve as he couldn’t hold back his smile.
“I’m starting to understand why my Master loves challenging herself. Anyway, I better hurry. The Dire are definitely going to make a move soon, so I better warn that dumb bear and monkey…”
Naturally, Zhuge Lan was referring to his 2 comrades that his Master had planted within the ranks of the lycans. These two were always arguing with each other about who was Hecate’s right-hand, and this time, their argument got pretty heated so their Master sent them away because they were being annoying.
“With their abilities, they should’ve made a name for themselves by now and at the very least, be put in high ranking positions within the Lycan forces or else I’d be pretty disappointed in them,” Zhuge Lan said as he opened his [Friend List]. “The Dire’s target is definitely the Lycans so I should warn them to keep their eyes peeled…”