Zhuge Lan was definitely really smart considering he was able to accurately determine a small portion of Maria’s scheme against the lycans with what little information that was available to him.
He believed that Maria would attack the lycans and that much was correct, but he didn’t know when and where they would attack. The only way for them to find out is if his people continued to monitor the movements on the Dire’s side. The plan to clean-up his master’s PK Alliance was going rather smoothly so he didn’t have to worry too much about things on that end, but the Dire’s movements made him worry.
He wasn’t going to delude himself into thinking that the Dire was a force that was on par or just a little bit stronger than a few of the prominent player factions or guilds. They were definitely much stronger, otherwise, there was no way that Maria could’ve taken over an entire continent with such a paltry force and continue on to try conquering another.
A person wouldn’t be this ambitious unless they were a fool or were confident in themselves and had the power to fully back their ambition. Zhuge Lan knew that Maria wasn’t the former, so she was definitely the latter. She had the power to back up her ambition so he treated any information about her and the Dire with utmost attention.
A few days have passed since then. Zhuge Lan was able to confirm that his ‘former’ colleagues had received the information he passed to them and were keeping a close watch on the activities of their lycan lords.
They were able to confirm one of Zhuge Lan’s suspicions and that was Maria having a bunch of lycan sympathizers within the lycan’s high-ranking positions who wanted to surrender and integrate with the Dire.
There would definitely be some cons to surrendering, but after the two perspectives were weighed, the lycans found out that it was actually better to surrender. They heard that Maria treated her people with utmost care and dignity, putting their well-being above all else and never slighting them one bit–except for the time when Maria kicked out a bunch of vampire nobles from their homes just because she wanted to remodel the city to fit her style.
That was the only act of cruelty she did AFTER she took the Blood Lord’s throne and became the Dire Empress, or as her subclass called it–the Blood Empress. Since the lycans knew that Maria was actually pretty benevolent and worked hard for her people’s welfare, many ‘peace-loving’ lycans thought that it wouldn’t be too bad to surrender to her.
They didn’t want to shed blood when it could be avoided, but unfortunately, their king was hesitant in making his decision because he wasn’t too fond of the surrender. He kept delaying his replies to the sympathizers’ pleas and any request for an audience from the Dire’s people so talks about the surrender and merger were slowly growing sour.
This, however, worked in Zhuge Lan’s favor since he didn’t want to see that happening. The Dire and the lycans weren’t allowed to merge because it was going to be detrimental to his master’s plans. He wanted to exacerbate the situation between the Dire and the lycans so he tried many different things to secretly aggravate the lycans.
However, he slowly began to grow very suspicious at the lack of movement on the Dire’s end after so many days had passed since their ships had docked at their coastal colonies. Absolutely nothing was happening and the colleagues he tasked with keeping a close eye on the lycans, reported that nothing special or suspicious was happening on their end.
“This doesn’t make any sense…why aren’t they moving? Or am I missing something from the equation?” Zhuge Lan questioned himself.
So much time had passed but no movements… he slowly began to believe that those ships were only there just to act as a bluff from Maria’s end and she wasn’t really going to do anything.
If it really was just a bluff then it wasn’t working. The war between the PK Alliance and the Freewill Alliance was already pretty heated with no signs of either side willing to call a truce and put an end to the war. If Maria was going to take advantage of the chaos which was diverting most of the players’ attention away from her nation, then starting a few days ago until now was definitely the best time to start kicking stuff up. However, nothing continued to happen which caused Zhuge Lan to be confused, suspicious, and doubtful.
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Unfortunately for Zhuge Lan, Maria had already started with her plan long before he deduced it, so he was too late to read her next move since she was already a few steps ahead of him and will likely remain that way because Zhuge Lan didn’t suspect that the Dire Empress herself would be the one spearheading the entire operation. That very same person was currently resting in one of the outlier territories that previously belonged to the lycans though had now been taken over by the Dire.
It was near a beach so Maria was sunbathing in a bikini and relaxing alongside Alexa, Raiju, Lilah, and a new face who was representing the lycan sympathizers. She was a werewolf whom Maria met after rendezvousing with Orh’bankhur at the friendly lycan territory.
Her name was Lucille and she was acting as Maria’s guide around the lycan territories. Thanks to her expert guidance, Maria and her group were able to avoid detection from any lycan scout so no one on the lycan’s side knew that they had already been going around the outer lycan territories and slowly taking them over one by one.
Maria and her group had been pretty busy for the past few days and they had been moving non stop, so upon seeing the beach territory, Maria decided that they should take a break–only for the day, however. Once the day was over, it was back to slowly conquering the lycan territories so Maria made sure that she got her fill of fun and relaxation on the beach.
As she was sunbathing with her eyes closed, Maria suddenly felt a shadow cast down over her so she opened up her eyes to see who it was. When she saw that it was Lucille, her newest subordinate, Maria asked, “You’re blocking the sun. What’s wrong?”
“Your Majesty, is it alright for us to be doing this? Aren’t we pressed for time?” Lucille nervously asked. She was a werewolf so she had the ability to convert and revert between her werewolf form and her human form.
Right now she was in her human form so she didn’t look as intimidating as she was in her werewolf form, though the bulging muscles on her arms, legs, and abdomen, which were visible thanks to the bikini she was wearing at Maria’s behest in the name of relaxing and having fun, said otherwise.
Lucille was what one would call a muscle lady. Her extremely well-built body could put many professional bodybuilders to shame. Maria thought that she was a very interesting character, but her body and demeanor sort of matched each other.
The werewolf was extremely uptight and extremely bold. Most of Maria’s newest subordinates wouldn’t even have the gall to come up and talk to her when she was relaxing by herself fearing that they would be disturbing her. Not Lucille, however. She boldly approached Maria and befriended in her own way. She wasn’t hesitant in asking her questions and at every opportunity, would always try to strike up a conversation.
Lucille was not originally part of the lycan sympathizers, but after seeing and experiencing a few things, she decided to side with them. When Maria heard Lucille’s question of whether this break was alright or not, she shook her head and replied, “Don’t worry about anything, Lucille, and just relax. Everyone needs a little break sometimes.”
“...If you say so, Your Highness.”
“It’s just for today. I don’t want to push my people to the brink of absolute exhaustion just for the sake of my ambition. If my people collapsed, then they’d become useless to me and when the time came for them to act, they wouldn’t be able to perform their duties due to exhaustion. Isn’t that bad?”
“Yes, Your Highness…”
“Taking a break is extremely important so do well to remember that, Lucille.”
“I will, Your Highness. Thank you,” Lucille responded before she moved to the side and sat down on one of the lounge chairs nearby.
“She’s pretty uptight, right Lilah?” Maria asked after seeing the woman off.
Lilah turned to look at Lucille before nodding, “Yeah, she is…kind of reminds me of me to be honest.”
“Right~?”
“Genuine question though, Master. Should we really be doing this right now? Taking a break?”
“...zzz.”
“Oi, don’t just suddenly fall asleep!”
“Zzzz…”
“...”