Maria was looming in the air above the destroyed area where she had previously been trapped by Zhuge Lan’s formation array. After destroying everything around her, the scenery returned to normal as the formation array was broken, so she was now back in the middle of a field or, more precisely, hovering above the large crater she had created with the skill she used just earlier.

She had just used one of her newest combination attacks, something she called [Greed’s Unholy Eye] because it was a combination of her Sin skill, [Greed], Class skill, [Unholy], and her Race skill [Nephalem's Eye]. It blew up a large portion of the land around her, allowing her to immediately escape from the trap that she was stuck in for the past half hour or so.

Maria had seen enough of the formation array so she quickly dealt with it, especially after things got annoying once the formation array’s monsters appeared. Thankfully, however, Maria was able to learn a lot of things about the formation array before she destroyed it out of annoyance.

The formation array heavily relied on the broken items that were currently in her hand–the formation array keys. If every single one of the keys were destroyed, then the formation array would collapse though it was tedious work to find and destroy all of them while being stuck in the array. She didn’t know anything too specific, but she at least knew that the array keys were needed to create, sustain, and control the formation array.

Of course, another method to destroy the formation array was to hit it with an attack of overwhelming force like she did just now. With this rather unorthodox method, Maria didn't need to find and destroy every single key one by one because they'd all break simultaneously from having their durability values reduced to zero from her powerful attack.

A formation array's durability was directly influenced by the quality of the formation array keys that were used, so if players struck the formation array enough times from the outside, it would collapse on its own. A rather critical weakness though players would have to be careful to not actually enter the formation array or else they'd be trapped in it and have no way of attacking the formation from the inside.

Zhuge Lan already knew about his formation array's weakness, so he made up for it by becoming a Geomancer. His Main class was a Formation Master while his sub-class was a Geomancer and as a Geomancer, he was able to actively change the terrain where his formation arrays were set up in, allowing him to expand and contract the size of his arrays by manipulating the land where he installed his formation array keys.

Since he was able to expand or contract the size of his formation arrays, if people found out about his weakness, he would manipulate them into thinking that his formation array had a certain size, lure them in, before suddenly expanding the size of his formation array and trapping them inside. Once they were inside, their only option was to find the formation array keys that he's hidden and destroy them to escape the formation.

All of the players that Zhuge Lan's managed to trap inside of his formation in the past all died and no one was ever able to escape from his formation array. At least, that was until now. He's just never met a player like Maria that directly blew up his formation array while she was still inside of it, so he didn't know about this other weakness until now.

Only Maria was capable of doing this because of her wide-area annihilation type skills and perhaps some of the top-ranked Mage class players that have learned a wide-area destructive magic spell though they wouldn't be able to do it in one-go like Maria did unless they had another similar spell and combined them to form an even more powerful and destructive spell.

Zhuge Lan was completely dumbfounded with the way Maria 'solved' his formation array and couldn't help just staring stupidly at the crystal ball in his hand that showed the smug woman just hovering there in the air with a hint of arrogance in her eyes. After snapping out of it, he immediately began shouting, "D-Dammit! How is this even possible?! What is she? A walking disaster or something?!! Just how powerful was the skill she used just now?! I prepared so much for this! Stacking a few major Formation Arrays on top of each other and even using all of my top quality formation array keys! Damn!"

"Kyahahahaha~!"

While Zhuge Lan was cursing out in frustration, Hecate was laughing in complete excitement. She too was a little shocked by how Maria escaped Zhuge Lan's formation array, but it only made her competitive spirit flare up even more and she wanted nothing more than to rush down there and start fighting Maria right on the spot.

The girl in question, however, was looking down at the broken formation array keys in her hand before dropping them onto the ground with a scoff. At first, she couldn’t understand why the formation array continued to function even after she destroyed the formation array keys and thought that she might have come to the wrong conclusion earlier.

However, she realized that the Formation Master might have stacked multiple formations on top of each other and, because she had destroyed a few of them, new formations had to be activated in order to keep the other formation arrays maintained to contain her. Since the Formation Master was doing something like that, Maria decided to just blow everything away since the formations would just keep on coming if she dealt with them by destroying the array keys one by one.

From this encounter alone, Maria deduced that the class, Formation Master, was pretty overpowered. If it was someone else other than her that was trapped inside of the formation array, their likely option was to just die in order to escape from the array because the traps inside of it were extremely deadly.

If she didn’t have such a powerful large-scale attack skill, finding and destroying the formation array keys to collapse the entire formation array would be extremely hard to do, since the keys could be found in the most random of places and the formation array’s bewildering properties would prevent most players without a high enough detection skill from finding them.

It was quite interesting at first because it required a player to maximize their brain’s potential to figure a way out, but when the monsters started appearing near the end, Maria felt a little disappointed.

“Monsters? Really? Why can’t they be more creative and send something else?!”

When the Nine Gates Formation was activated, Maria’s interesting experience was reduced to a monster slaughter and that was dull. She could do that in a dungeon or out on the field, so once it became like that, she decided to just blow away the entire formation array. She only decided to refrain from using such a brutish method at the start because the formation array was something new and the methods the Formation Master used to bewilder her were interesting and refreshing.

Although it vexed her to no end, Maria was still feeling a little bit appreciative of the experience, though it wasn’t going to change her mind from killing the guy who had the audacity to trap her inside of their formation array, even if it was only for a prank or if she got unlucky and happened to stumble inside of the array without knowing it.

They needed to pay for meddling with her, but it was still a fun experience. Maria wanted to try cracking the formation array using her brains, but when it turned into a monster fest, that notion was immediately thrown out the window.

“And here I thought I found something fun to do… I guess I was wrong,” Maria mumbled to herself before landing back on the ground.

She looked around and saw both Alexa and Raiju not too far away from her location. They seemed to have been stuck outside of the formation because once Maria entered, a barrier had appeared and blocked them from entering. The barrier was gone now, since Maria had destroyed it along with the formation array, so the two quickly ran over to her side.

The Iron Curtain Formation was another one of the counter measures that Zhuge Lan had created to cover up the weakness of his formation arrays. Overlapping the Iron Curtain Formation that created a powerful barrier in the area that the formation was set up in on top of his other formations wasn't a really smart thing to do because it was a dead give away to the size and scale of his array, but he only ever used it if he wanted to trap just one specific person or group and deal with them personally without any outside interference, which in this case, was Maria.

Also, he stacked another formation array on top of the barrier formation, the Myriad Demons Formation, as a protective measure. The formation would conjure numerous monsters of varying strength to attack anything inside and outside of the formation array. These monsters could also regenerate indefinitely as long as the formation array's keys were still intact and each time they regenerated, they'd get stronger and stronger. The durability of the keys would slowly reduce each time a monster was regenerated, so eventually, the formation array would collapse if the monsters were killed enough times, but this was almost impossible because at some point, the monsters would grow to be too strong for them to be killed.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

This was the exact dilemma Alexa and Raiju were faced against since they had killed the monsters over and over again to the point where they became a little too strong for the two of them to deal with on their own. Maybe if they had an extra hand or two then they'd be able to break through the formation after another half hour or so of fighting by completely depleting the formation's durability, but at the pace they were going at previously, they'd likely need a couple more hours.

The monsters did grow very powerful, but it wasn't enough to threaten the two's lives or anything. It only just made them harder to deal with which was a little frustrating for the lightning spirit and vampire.

After arriving next to Maria, Alexa and Raiju quickly asked respectively, “Big Sis, are you okay?” “Master, what happened?”

Maria looked at them and smiled before replying, “Someone trapped me inside an interesting thing. It got a little boring though, so I destroyed it.”

“Oh?”

“Anyway, how long was I trapped?”

“Around an hour or two, I think,” Alexa replied.

“You think?”

Raiju immediately interjected and explained, “We lost count because we had a few problems on our end.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Alexa nodded and said. “We wanted to break the barrier, but before we could, monsters suddenly began to appear in front of us from thin air the moment you disappeared, Big Sis.”

“We tried killing them, but they wouldn’t die. They’d just disperse into mist after receiving a fatal blow from our attacks before reforming again, but with more power. It became a big headache after the monsters grew to the size of a small house, so we had to stop killing them in case they became too powerful for even us to deal with…”

The formation array likely would've been destroyed long before it got to that point, but Alexa and Raiju didn't know that for certain and decided to approach the matter cautiously.

"Monsters, huh? Hmph, how boring. Anyway, it felt like I was only trapped for half an hour or so, but was I having too much fun or something?" Maria replied with a frown when she heard what the two had been facing before she started complaining, “But unkillable monsters that grow stronger after you kill them? What the heck, that sounds more interesting than the exploding dolls and stone dolls that I had to deal with!”

Alexa and Raiju smiled at Maria awkwardly before the former spoke up and asked, “Anyway, we’re glad that you’re okay, Big Sis. Should we keep going?”

“There might be something like this obstructing our path again. From what I can tell, I think someone knows about us and they’re preventing us from going any further,” Raiju stated.

Maria wasn’t sure what to do next. What Raiju said was probably true and if they kept on going, they might face even bigger resistance. Of course, it wouldn’t cause any harm to her, but once more and more players knew about her existence on Vanargand, they would start paying even closer attention to the Dire’s movements and find out what she did in the Lycan territories sooner or later

Things weren’t ready just yet, and Maria would rather not have any of the players disrupting her plans. Just as she was thinking about going back, Maria felt the energy of a very powerful person heading towards her location and she couldn’t help smiling.

“Master?”

“Let’s get out of this pit first.”

“Okay, but what will we do, Master? What’s our next course of action?” Raiju asked.

“We don't need to go any further. Our entertainment is coming straight to us,” Maria replied with an excited look on her face.

A powerful opponent was coming her way and Maria couldn’t wait. She wanted to fight, so anyone was fine as long as they were powerful enough to keep up with her. If they were too weak, Maria planned on handing them over to Alexa or Raiju to deal with.

“I can feel them now. They’re pretty powerful, how exciting!” Raiju said once she was able to detect the two powerful energy signatures coming their way.

Normally, players wouldn’t radiate their power so blatantly like this. Instead, it was kept hidden by default unless a player used a skill or a spell, but Maria could feel that the two players that were rushing to her location were doing it purposefully to get her attention.

“Hmmm, there’s actually 3 people. One of them is concealing their strength. This is perfect, we’ll each get an opponent!” Raiju exclaimed with a smile.

After waiting for a bit, 2 players appeared and entered into the airspace above Maria, Alexa, and Raiju’s location. The 3 of them looked up at the 2 new arrivals, and Maria immediately started to smile uncontrollably, “Hehe, to think I’d meet you again so soon!”

Hecate stared down at Maria and their gazes clashed. As the two silently challenged each other with only their eyes, the people hovering and standing next to them, Zhuge Lan, Alexa, and Raiju, could feel the atmosphere palpitate as neither of the two were willing to back down.

Hecate floated down to the ground with Zhuge Lan while maintaining her challenging gaze on Maria and the latter did the same until they were finally at eye level. The silence continued for a little while before Maria finally opened her mouth, “That’s pretty audacious of you, to make an Empress like me look up.”

Hecate jeered at Maria before replying with a mocking bow, “Heh? Isn’t that how you should be looking at me, Your~ Highness~?”

“It’s 'Your Majesty', get it right, and naturally, you should be looking at me from the ground…while groveling at my feet, of course.”

“...what a clever mouth. Are you bitter that you lost against me previously?”

“Lost to you? I didn’t lose to anyone.”

“Oh yeah? The last time I checked, you were the one who died, no?”

“No thanks to you, I just killed myself while you did nothing and got credit for it. You were only lucky to have survived, but it’s something I expected from a cockroach!”

“Hmph! At least I wasn’t a sore loser who shamelessly killed herself after being cornered by me! What you did was cowardly! You should've just accepted your loss graciously like a proper loser!”

“Cowardly? Loser? Why don’t you look in a mirror? You’ll find the true face of a coward and a loser immediately!”

“Ooohhh, I’m the little girl who couldn’t accept her defeat, so I killed myself instead! How pathetic!”

“Pathetic? Say that again you wench! I’ll burn that annoying smile right off your ugly face!”

“Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try, you little loser bitch!”

"Say that again?! I dare you!"

"You heard me! Or what? Are you growing deaf now too?!"

"How about I pluck those ears out and then we'll see who's truly deaf!"

"Yeah? Try me then! I'm right here!"

"Hohohoho, you just wait! Anger me further and it won't just be your ears! I'll take your eyes out as well!"

"Try it! You couldn't even keep up with me last time and had to run away with your tail between your legs! Like. A little. Bitch!"

"I hate you!"

"I hate you more!"

The two continued to throw childish provocations and insults at each other for a while until it ended with them just growling at each other because neither side was willing to stop, but had run out of ideas and insults to throw out. This exchange greatly surprised Zhuge Lan and Raiju who had never seen this side of their masters. Alexa’s relationship was closer in comparison to the other two since she was a 'little sister', so she had seen Maria’s somewhat childish side already.

She wasn’t even that surprised by Hecate’s childish side, since Alexa felt that her big sister Maria was somewhat similar to the bipolar-looking lady who she was exchanging crass words with. Of course, it wasn’t a similarity between their characters and natures, but their auras. Alexa felt that the aura the two of them were radiating was similar, so she just watched as the two of them clashed with their words.

Normally, she would’ve already gotten angry at Hecate for insulting Maria, but for some reason, she couldn’t. In her eyes, Alexa thought that Maria was actually enjoying this like she had found a long-lost friend or something, but it was quite obvious that the two young ladies were enemies.

Zhuge Lan watched on in utter shock as his Master continued with her childish clash against Maria. He had never seen this side of his Master before, so he couldn’t say anything. He had only seen Hecate’s serious and dangerous side, so he was unsure of what to do. He didn’t even notice when Raiju had suddenly appeared next to him until she spoke up.

“So, you’re that one’s guardian?”

“Huh?!” Zhuge Lan stumbled a few steps back before asking, “What did you say?”

“Hey, I won’t eat you or anything,” Raiju said with a dull look on her face. “I was just wondering, are you that one’s guardian or what?”

“...No, that’s my Master…”

“Ahh, I see… so we’re the same, huh? You must have had a rough time dealing with such a person. I can feel your pain, friend,” Raiju said with a sympathetic look in her eyes.

“???”

Zhuge Lan couldn’t understand what Raiju was saying, but it was too late to ask her to clarify what she meant, since Raiju had quickly returned to Alexa’s side after saying her piece.

“What the hell was that?”