Maria and Hecate continued to exchange blows all across the field. Their battle completely destroyed the area around them and they even attracted the attention of a few nearby monsters, but those curious and unfortunate monsters became collateral damage in their intense clash.
Hecate wouldn’t stop laughing like a lunatic throughout the entire battle and Maria only became more and more angry at the sound of her annoying laughter. She eventually lost her patience with the girl and began using a little bit of her mana to enhance her aura.
Maria had done a lot of experimenting with the [Aura Mastery] skill and she learned that she could temporarily increase the effects of her aura by using her mana and, with her vast mana pool, she was able to increase the effects of her aura enhancement by over 200 percent, but that was if she used up all of her Mana at once. The 200 percent increase wasn’t something that could be sustained for long periods of time, since it used up all her Mana, so she could only use the 200 percent enhancement as a last resort burst-type attack.
She could, of course, use it again, but that’s once her mana pool regenerated back to full. Since this battle was definitely going to be drawn out, Maria used only 10 percent of her mana to enhance her aura and although it was small, the increase to her aura’s effects was still a good 20 percent.
Maria naturally didn’t do it all at once. She needed to keep the enhancement hidden so she used her mana in small increments as the fight dragged on. The enhancement was gradual so it remained hidden from her opponent, who continued to maniacally laugh and exchange blows with her. Hecate only began to feel that something was wrong when she slowly felt that she was being overpowered.
Due to a momentary lapse in her concentration after figuring out that something was wrong, Maria was able to slip under her guard and land an extremely effective blow on her.
“DROP DEAD!”
Maria swung her Calamity in its Zantetsu form and with her [Calamity Cleave] skill, she struck Hecate square on her chest and smashed her away with an intense explosion. She then changed Calamity’s form into its spear form and used [Calamity Cleave] once more and flung the spear at her defenseless opponent. The spear struck Hecate and launched her across the battlefield.
She was launched through the field and the forest that was further away before slamming right into a hill, but it didn’t stop there as the momentum from Maria’s attack was enough to pierce Hecate through the hill and push her even further away. The hill that Hecate smashed through even started collapsing and, after seeing the sudden development that put his Master in a dire state, Zhuge Lan immediately shot up from his seat in utter shock as he exclaimed, “Impossible!”
Hecate’s other follower, Damascus, was silent but there was visible shock in his eyes, though it quickly went away just as fast as it appeared. He quickly got up and turned to Zhuge Lan before disappearing from his spot without a word. Alexa was just about to chase after the ninja, thinking that he was trying to do something to interfere with the match, but Raiju stopped her as she got up.
“Let’s go, Alexa. We need to move if we want to continue spectating the fight.”
“Oh, okay, teacher…”
Zhuge Lan smiled and said, “Yes, let us move.”
He quickly took back the items he had brought out earlier before rushing over to the new battlefield along with Alexa and Raiju. His mind was in utter turmoil right now as he couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Maria had somehow increased her power all of a sudden and she was able to pierce through his Master’s guard and land a clean blow on her.
The damage from such an attack was quite devastating and he was worried about his Master. Zhuge Lan looked back at the broken battlefield behind them before turning to look at the slowly collapsing hill that his Master had been smashed into before thinking to himself, ‘If that was me…I would’ve been immediately killed. I’m sure that Master is fine, but the damage she took must be substantial.’
Maria had already turned into a flash of light as she pursued Hecate. When she arrived at the new battlefield, she extended her hand and retrieved her Calamity before looking around. She couldn’t find Hecate, but she suddenly felt a chill rush up her spine and just as she was about to turn around, the enemy she was looking for suddenly appeared behind her all battered and bloodied.
“Hello there, beautiful~”
Hecate quickly grabbed her from behind and locked the arm she was holding Calamity with using one arm while putting her in a chokehold with the other arm. Even with how high her STR stat was, Maria couldn't break free from the lock and found it impossible to even budge her arm that was holding her weapon, but she quickly released it and used her leg to kick it into her other hand.
She didn’t worry about the chokehold that Hecate was slowly tightening and just swung Calamity fearlessly behind her. Even if she were to get injured, she was definitely going to kill Hecate, but the girl let out a maniacal laugh before suddenly twisting in the air and dragging Maria downwards.
“Ugh! What are you doing?!”
“Double suicide~”
“!!!”
Hecate increased her speed and she slammed Maria right into the ground along with herself. She was already pretty injured, but she didn’t hesitate to use such an attack just so she could pay Maria back for her earlier attack.
Maria quickly got up from the ground and shot into the air again as she began coughing. She nearly suffocated earlier thanks to Hecate’s chokehold, but that wasn’t the worst of her injuries. The injury to her pride was even greater because, before slamming into the ground, Hecate had disgustingly licked her right on the cheek before giving her a kiss as a parting gift. Other than sending chills up and down her spine, Maria felt extremely humiliated–not to mention extremely disgusted as well. The attack from earlier had only damaged her total HP by 15 percent, but the wound to her pride because of Hecate's sexually harassing actions were even bigger.
“I’m going to kill you, you disgusting bitch!”
Hecate’s perverse act caused Maria to completely lose it and she no longer cared about the promise she made to herself earlier, which was to defeat her opponent using only her battle techniques. She began using her Mana and started casting a multitude of magic spells. She didn’t immediately release them and kept them suspended in the air as she wiped the wet spot on her cheek that Hecate had licked earlier.
Maria looked down at Hecate apathetically before swinging her hand down and saying, “Die.”
Instead of trembling in fear, Hecate was trembling with excitement, especially after she saw the way Maria looked at her so apathetically like she was an ant.
“Kehahahaha! That’s it! That’s how you should be facing me! I’m not just someone you need to defeat, I’m someone you need to kill!”
Those were the last words Hecate uttered just before she was engulfed by Maria’s merciless magical bombardment. After engulfing Hecate in her attacks, Maria didn’t relent and continued increasing the output of her spells. She had already locked onto Hecate with her aura so she knew exactly where she was despite not being able to visibly see her.
Even though she had done this out of anger, Maria was still cool-headed enough to see that Hecate was handling her attacks rather well, as she didn’t immediately fall from the bombardment.
Hecate continued to weave in between the magic spells that Maria fired and evaded them as best she could. There were some she couldn’t dodge but those were very few in number, so the damage she took was small in comparison to the amount of attacks Maria had fired.
Maria had no choice but to admit that her adversary was extremely powerful this time around because if this was anyone else, they would’ve already been logged out by her. Surviving this long against her when she was going all out and not pulling any of her punches was commendable.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Fine, no more playing around. Let’s see you try escaping this!”
Maria began charging up a few of her combination spells and Hecate immediately sensed that her next attack was going to be something like a finisher move. Instead of trying to interrupt her, Hecate stopped moving and just stared up at her with eyes full of anticipation. When Maria saw this, she was immediately angered because Hecate treated this battle like a game to her.
“Let’s see if you’ll still have that dumb smirk on your face when you’re dead!”
She fired 3 [Greed’s Unholy Eye] at Hecate and when she felt the intensity of those attacks, Hecate finally began to sweat as she dropped her playful attitude.
“This could be bad…”
Indeed, it was bad. When she tried to dodge the incoming attacks, they homed in on her and detonated very close to her. The blast radius of Greed’s Unholy Eye was very large, so even if she could dodge a few meters away, she was still engulfed in the attack’s area of effect. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Maria had fired 3 of those attacks so she wasn’t going to be able to dodge them anyway.
When Hecate narrowly dodged the first attack, she was immediately engulfed in the nuclear-like explosion that ensued and was then hit by the other two attacks soon after. Alexa, Raiju, and Zhuge Lan were still moving towards the new battlefield when, all of a sudden, a tremendous shockwave hit them as a large mushroom cloud appeared in the distance. The 3 of them immediately knew who had launched that attack.
While Alexa and Raiju smiled at what happened when they finally saw that Maria was finally willing to use her magic spells, Zhuge Lan paled at the scene because the intensity of this attack was even bigger than the one that destroyed his formation array. He quickly checked his [Friend’s List] and saw that his master’s name had been grayed out, which could mean that she had been killed.
It was either that or Hecate had used her awakening skill, [Inanimate], a skill that could put her in a state of [Death] for a few minutes. This skill was something she had gained recently after completing her Awakening Quest just before she left for planet Vanhal. Although it sounded pretty amazing, the skill itself was just a concealment-type skill.
Putting the user in a state of [Death] only rendered other players or NPCs' probing and tracking skills useless and the skill would force the user into a [Stealth] state. However, unlike other concealment-type abilities, [Inanimate] also forced the user to not be able to move, use items and skills, or basically anything while they were still in [Stealth].
It wasn't a really good skill because of its obvious demerits, but Hecate learned that she could use the skill as a means to escape a dire situation if she paired it with her cheat-like skill, [Life Share].
Her life-saving skill, [Life Share], made her practically unkillable, so she didn't need to worry about being logged out, but when she paired it with her [Inanimate] skill, she could fake her death. She could then strike again when her opponent lets their guard down or she could simply just escape if her opponent was too powerful for her to defeat.
Zhuge Lan knew about this and believed that his Master was just faking her death instead of actually being dead because of Maria's attacks. His master was like a cockroach–the most resilient of cockroaches–so he didn’t believe that she was dead. He waited for a few minutes and, just like he expected, his Master’s name shone white again.
Back on the battlefield after the explosion subsided and the air cleared, Maria surveyed the area with her eyes, trying to make sure that Hecate was dead. Even though she was confident in her attack, she had this feeling that it just wasn’t enough to kill the perverted woman. Her hunch was correct, but unfortunately, Maria couldn’t find Hecate anywhere on the battlefield, so she thought that she was surely dead.
Her lock on Hecate’s position with her aura had been cut off the moment Hecate used her [Inanimate] skill, so Maria wasn’t able to find her buried deep underneath the earth, silently waiting without moving an inch. She had been pushed pretty far down because her body had been consecutively hit by [Greed’s Unholy Eye].
Hecate was pretty confident in surviving Maria's devastating attack thanks to her [Life Share] skill, but she still couldn't help sweating nervously after seeing that her Primal's HP had been reduced to almost half and this was after her entire HP pool had been depleted along with the HP pool of her [Life Share] skill's other connection target.
Before connecting with her Primal, Chaos, Hecate's primary target for her [Life Share] skill was her PK Alliance's most sturdy warrior, RightGuardian, a female giant race knight-class player who boasted an incredibly large amount of HP because of her class and racial passives, but despite having a ton of HP to spare for her Master's life-saving skill, she had been logged out of the game suddenly because Maria's attack was just that powerful.
Maria had basically gone through 2 people's HP bars and almost killed a powerful Primal with just her slew of combination attacks. If she had fired a few more of those, Hecate would've actually died this time around, but unfortunately, 3 was her current limit.
Since Maria couldn’t find Hecate anywhere even after using [Inspect] while moving around the entire battlefield, she firmly believed that she had won this bout and killed off her opponent like she said she would. She flew towards Alexa and Raiju’s location and regrouped with them with a slight smile on her face. When she saw Zhuge Lan nearby, she scoffed at him before saying, “Alexa, Raiju, let’s go. We’re done here.”
“Okay, Big Sis!”
“Yes, Master.”
Without looking back, the 3 of them left the area while Zhuge Lan just watched them with sweat flowing down his face. When Maria had eyed him earlier, he thought that she was going to attack him, but thankfully, that didn’t happen. He quickly moved to the devastated battle ground and quickly began using his Geomancy skills to dig up the ground where he last saw his Master.
He had deduced that his Master had been forced deep into the earth because of Maria's attacks, and after a bit of calculating, he narrowed down the area where his Master might currently be buried in. Not long later, Damascus appeared next to him. He didn't appear right away just now because he went to make sure that Maria and her fellows had completely left the area. They didn't want her to suddenly come back and figure out their Master's ruse.
Seeing him appear, Zhuge Lan quickly asked, "Are they gone?"
Damascus nodded his head before Zhuge Lan quickly continued urgently, “Then help me! Quick! Dig up the ground! If Master stays buried in the earth, she’ll suffocate and die for real!”
The silent ninja nodded and began using his Ninja Class’s Earth-style ninjutsu to dig up the ground while Zhuge Lan quickly went to go plant a concealment formation array around the broken battlefield to keep others from discovering their location. He didn’t know if there were any other players in the vicinity, but he set up the array just for safe measure since if there were other players, those players would definitely move towards their location to see what was happening because Maria’s attack was incredibly eye-catching even from far away.
“Have you found her yet, Damascus?” Zhuge Lan asked as he began setting up another formation on top of the concealing formation.
Damascus answered by using his ninjutsu to form the word 'No'.
After he made sure the formation array was properly set up, Zhuge Lan returned and started helping again, “Dig deeper. Master was probably forced very deep into the ground.”