After a few more hours, Maria was able to force Zhuge Lan to use his final formation array, the Nine Gates Formation, because she had nearly dismantled the Stone Sentinels Array. It became clear to Zhuge Lan that Maria’s weakness was in her sense of direction, since when she wandered inside of his formation array, it was completely without any purpose, as she decided on the direction that she walked towards using her ‘gut’ feeling.

He found it incredible that, despite being such a powerful person, Maria had one of the dumbest weaknesses a person could possess and that was having a zero sense of direction. However, the luck that Maria possessed was even more incredible. Since she trusted her gut feeling, Maria was able to always coincidentally find a formation array key hidden in the ground, in a stone wall, or within a random object like a rock, tree branch, etc.

Zhuge Lan had painstakingly hid those items in the most obscure places possible, but Maria was able to unwittingly stumble upon them. Also, the girl was a complete maniac as she destroyed any object that she found ‘suspicious’, even though they were the most ordinary of things and didn’t even stand out to their surroundings.

He really couldn’t comprehend Maria’s luck at all. Everything she did seemed to be with and without a purpose. She was actively trying to find the formation key arrays, but she didn’t use any kind of logic to find them. Instead, she used her incredible luck and womanly intuition. It was both stupid and scary at the same time, because Zhuge Lan couldn’t comprehend it.

Anything that he didn’t understand Zhuge Lan treated with either curiosity or wariness. In the case of his Master, he treated her with curiosity, which led to him serving under her, but as for Maria, it was wariness since she was technically his Master’s enemy.

Due to that, Zhuge Lan activated his final formation array, the Nine Gates Formation. This was an array that was designed to kill anyone that was trapped inside of it and was supposed to be unbreakable. However, what happened in the array once it was activated went contrary to Zhuge Lan’s vision. He was hoping to see Maria struggle to deal with the array and the elements she would be facing inside of it that could kill her, but instead, he saw Maria blaze through everything that was thrown at her with complete ease.

When the Nine Gates Formation was activated, the scenery had changed and the fog around Maria had completely dissipated. The high stone walls also began to change again and this time, buildings began to rise from the earth.

Once the change was over, Maria noticed that she was now in the middle of a grand city. The stone soldiers from before appeared again and they began attacking her. Unlike the ones from before, the new stone soldiers were actually pretty powerful and they didn’t fall to her attacks in just one or two hits. Not only that, but the exploding dolls that had been buried underneath the earth all rose up and began charging at her along with the stone soldiers. There were a few other things that appeared, such as arrow formation traps, fire array traps, and other such things.

Now there were numerous traps that appeared within the trap and this caused Maria to be amazed at the elaborate set up.

“I knew this was going to be fun!”

That was the only thing Maria said when she was faced with all of the Nine Gates Formation’s traps and deadly gimmicks. There was no distress in her voice or on her face and Zhuge Lan could see that she was enjoying the experience.

“How? Just how is she doing this? Not even Master Hecate can leisurely fight inside of the Nine Gates Formation like her!”

From the glass ball he was using to control his formation arrays and observe Maria, Zhuge Lan witnessed the girl easily cut down the stone soldiers, safely dealt with the exploding dolls, and smoothly avoided any of the traps that stood in her way. It was an incredulous sight. Maria’s usage of her battle mechanics, movement mechanics, and magic spells were all at an extremely high level.

Zhuge Lan had met many different experts in the game, but Maria was unique. She was able to use a variety of weapons expertly and adeptly use a wide range of skills and spells to her advantage without any of her actions being wasteful when she executed them.

Maria may be directionally challenged, but when she was fighting, she truly showed where her genius laid. Nothing inside of his formation array worked and when he was growing more and more frustrated by the second, he suddenly felt someone looming over him, so Zhuge Lan quickly lunged forward before looking back with his weapon raised and, to his surprise, he saw someone familiar.

“M-Master!”

“Yo, Zhuge!”

Hecate was standing there and she greeted Zhuge Lan with a smile. Zhuge Lan couldn’t believe that his Master had arrived so quickly but he was immediately overjoyed that she had.

“Master, you’re finally here!”

“Did you expect me to take longer to arrive?”

“Ashamed as I am to say it, but yes, I did expect you to take longer, which was why I set up a few formation arrays to buy some time for you,” Zhuge Lan answered.

Hecate shrugged before saying, “Well, it’s to be expected. This location was really far away from where I was after all. Anyway, what’s this interesting thing you wanted to show me?”

Stolen story; please report.

Zhuge Lan cleaned the glass ball that he was holding before walking over to Hecate and showing her what was happening inside of the formation array. Hecate’s eyes immediately widened when she saw Maria, the person whom she had recently taken a special interest in, being displayed in the glass ball.

“I-Is that really, Maria? Dire’s Empress, Maria?” Hecate quickly asked.

“Yes, Master. I trapped her a few hours ago inside of my formation array, but as you can see, she’s really powerful and already forced me to use my final formation array, the Nine Gates Formation…”

“The Nine Gates Formation…you’ve only used that killing array a few times and the traps inside were all extremely dangerous, right?”

“Yes, Master…but that girl is dealing with all of the things I prepared for her so easily. I wouldn’t have been able to fulfill my promise to you, Master, if you hadn’t arrived as quickly as you did.”

Hecate raised her hand and stopped Zhuge Lan from talking and only said, “Forget the ‘ifs’ and everything! The fact that you managed to hold her down here for me is already something I can’t thank you enough for! I didn’t think I’d be able to meet her so soon, but this is extremely great! Now I can fight her!”

Even though his plans didn’t go according to what he planned from the start, Zhuge Lan was glad that everything worked out in the end.

“Shall I collapse the formation array now, Master?” Zhuge Lan asked.

Hecate shook her head at his words and replied, “I don’t think you’ll need to do that~”

“Huh?”

In the next instant, a loud explosion was heard which was followed up with an intense shockwave as a mushroom cloud appeared in the distance.

“W-What?!”

After the shockwaves dissipated, Zhuge Lan took a look into the distance and bore witness to a scene that he could only describe as an atom bomb going off. He quickly turned his attention back to his glass ball and saw that it was completely filled with smoke before it suddenly cut off its feed just as Hecate and Zhuge Lan caught a glimpse of Maria’s silhouette.

“What happened? Did she just–”

“Yes, Zhuge, that girl just blew up your entire formation array and completely obliterated it!”

Hecate had a crazed smile on her face as she turned to look at the mushroom cloud in the distance. All of the trees in the area where the mushroom cloud was located had either been destroyed or had toppled over from the massive shockwave that ensued.

“S-She could’ve just done this from the beginning! W-Why did she allow herself to be trapped–Ah!” Zhuge Lan exclaimed before he realized something after quickly thinking back to Maria’s behavior while she was stuck inside of his formation array.

For someone who had been trapped inside of a formation array for the first time, Maria had been oddly laidback about it. There was no urgency in her movements and she didn’t try to get out by forcing her way through like normal players would have normally done instead of trying to figure out how to dismantle the formation like she did.

When he thought deeply about it, he finally deduced that Maria had allowed herself to be captured and was roaming around the inside of his formation array to study it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to remain inside of it when she could have just broken through it with sheer force, just like she did now.

“Master, I think we should–”

Zhuge Lan was about to suggest something to his Master, but his Master cut him off before he could finish speaking, “No more thinking, Zhuge! It’s about time we introduced ourselves to our extremely special guest!”

“Master, isn’t that too reckless? That girl is extremely dangerous! I don’t think that even Master would be able to–”

Zhuge Lan paused right there and stopped saying anything before he looked up at his Master with an apologetic look on his face and said, “Master, I will follow your orders.”

He wanted to say something else, but he couldn’t after seeing the dangerous look that was in Hecate’s eyes as she stared back at him. He didn’t want to admit it, but he believed that Maria was probably stronger than his Master, so going to meet her right now in their current state was complete suicide. A battle was definitely going to ensue and he was worried that his Master was going to lose though he couldn’t bring himself to say that, so he shut himself up and just waited for Hecate’s orders.

After he stopped talking, a smile bloomed on Hecate’s face, quickly replacing the murderous one from before and she said, “That’s good to hear, Zhuge. I was a little worried that I might have had to rip out your tongue for talking way too much~”

“My apologies, Master.”

“Don’t worry about it, but try not to let it happen again in the future, yeah?”

“Understood.”

“Alright, now let us stop dilly-dallying here and go greet our extremely important guest. We must have her thank you, Zhuge, since you’ve provided her with such good accommodations, entertainment, and reception before I arrived!”

Despite being not too agreeable with it, Zhuge Lan followed after Hecate, who started flying towards the location of the mushroom cloud. She was eager to meet with Maria, so no matter what Zhuge Lan said, nothing would have dissuaded her from her current