After resting for a few hours, Ophelia logged back into the game and Hecate took over their body. As usual, it was like she was just spectating from a first-person perspective as her body moved and talked on its own. When this happened during her starting days playing Unitale, Ophelia was really frightened at first, but after a while, she got used to it.
There were times when her persona would manifest and take control over her virtual body, so she could have a bit of fun once in a while. It was still mostly Hecate who was in control and although Ophelia didn’t approve of her actions at times, she did find watching whatever her other self did to be quite interesting.
The way her personality swaps when she’s inside and outside of the game was rather peculiar, though she never thought too much about it. Speaking about her personality, no one in the game knew about her mental condition. Most people only thought that she was actually crazy and bipolar, which further pushed the narrative that she was the game’s 'Main Villain'.
After logging back into the game, Hecate immediately returned to conducting her war. From the outside, the PK Alliance was losing battle after battle and having all of their important bases attacked and razed to the ground. Most of these bases belonged to those dark organizations that weren’t part of Hecate’s circle. They didn’t even know that the person who orchestrated the entire war was actually their supposed leader. Not only that, but they also didn’t know that Hecate was the one who was leaking all of their plans to their enemies, which caused many of their battles to end in defeat.
Of course, Hecate didn’t leak everything. To make the war be a bit more realistic and not just a one-sided beatdown of her alliance, she had to make sure that they at least won a few battles. She even participated in a few of the really important battles and put in her best effort to repel the enemies to make sure that those ‘underlings’ of hers didn’t lose faith in her or feel betrayed when she didn’t take any action.
She had to play her part as the PK Alliance's leader or else the other people in her alliance that weren’t part of her circle would catch on to the ruse and feel that something wasn’t right.
Thanks to that, the PK Alliance would sometimes win a few of the battles, but the results were inconsequential to Hecate as everything was going according to her plan. Everybody would cheer happily when they won a battle, but whenever they lost a battle, that’s when things would take a turn for the worse, especially for the players who weren’t part of her circle.
Hecate would go ‘crazy’ over the loss and take it out on her alliance members who she needed to punish for allowing the loss to happen. She had a legitimate reason to punish them and, naturally, the punishment was to be thrown into a place that they had recently discovered called the 'Underworld'. In this place, the punished players would spend their sentence confined in its darkness and kept there for an unknown period of time.
A part of Hecate’s plan was to get rid of the dark organizations in her alliance by banishing those organizations’ higher-ups or important people into the Underworld, so it wasn’t a stretch to say that these people were never going to see the light of day inside of Unitale anymore. If they were able to escape, then it was their fortune, but it was highly unlikely that they’d be able to find a way out when they would be constantly dying from the Underworld’s powerful monsters that even Hecate found difficult to deal with because she didn’t have the Underworld’s blessing like Maria and her friends had.
If Maria hadn’t informed her friends about the reward they would get for enduring the Underworld’s unique environmental effects, they would’ve logged out of the game once things got a little too rough and unbearable. No one knew if someone would be crazy enough to endure everything like Maria did, but there might be a few of them within the people Hecate had practically jailed inside the Underworld.
The punishment was in no way light because once Hecate dealt with them, no one heard from those people again, since the system’s messaging feature was blocked in the Underworld.
Hecate didn’t care when her alliance members started complaining to her. She simply shut them up with a glare before chasing them away with her crazed aura. No one could say anything about what she did, because if they tried protesting, Hecate would dole out the same punishment to them that she did to those that failed her in the war. However, they weren’t only afraid of what Hecate would do to them. They were also afraid of the people within Hecate’s close circle of followers.
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Her circle, despite being relatively small in comparison to the rest of the PK Alliance, actually had–hands down–the most skillful and powerful players in all of the alliance. If they were to fight against the rest of the alliance, Hecate’s group would absolutely decimate those that weren’t a part of her group. They were just that much stronger and more capable. The reason why other players feared the PK Alliance was mostly because of the infamy of Hecate’s circle of followers, who were crazy battle fanatics.
While a lot of Hecate’s people were still working with her within the PK Alliance, a select few of her followers worked directly with the player alliance, such as Zhuge Lan and Damascus, while a few others had hidden themselves within various guilds and powers on Vanargand–that naturally included the only native power left on Vanargand, the Lycans.
All of the players that were moving separately from Hecate were given the same task, which was to gather information from Vanargand’s other factions and report it back to her or to her assistant, Zhuge Lan. Information is really quite important during a war as it could decide the outcome of a battle. Hecate knew this already and she thought to establish an information network much early on and not just now when she finally needed it.
Zhuge Lan wanted the same thing, but unfortunately, for their gathering of players, no one was willing to do such tedious work and just constantly be moving around just to record information. They’d rather be on the battlefield and fight to their heart’s degree. They were, after all, battle fanatics for a reason. They still managed to set up the network, but it did take them a long time to do it.
“Zhuge, how are things over at Maria’s end? Anything new to report about her?” Hecate quickly asked through her message window.
[I just found out that she’s boarded a ship back to the Dreyra continent. I don’t know what her plan is for doing this, but let’s assume that she’s gone back to prepare her troops?]
“...Is it not possible to attach one of your dolls to her so that we can continue monitoring her and figure out what she really is doing?”
[Unfortunately, I can’t. The distance between the two continents is way too far, so my connection with my mechanical dolls will be severed the moment they get out of my range.]
“Tsk, just start keeping an eye out for any movements from the Dire. We don’t want to be caught off guard another time,” Hecate messaged with a dissatisfied frown on her face.
Naturally, what Hecate meant was this recent incident where they didn't even know that the Dire's Empress, Maria, had snuck her way into Vanargand and secretly took control of a large portion of the Lycan's outlier territories right underneath everyone's noses...
[Yes, Master. I'll make sure nothing like that happens again!]
“Good," Hecate replied with a nod after hearing his words. "Anyway, the preparations have been completed already, right?”
Over on the other side, Zhuge Lan nodded at his Master's words and swiftly replied, [Affirmative, Master. We can proceed any time you’re ready, so just give the word.]
“Then start the second phase of our plan immediately. We have to take advantage of this time when Maria isn’t here and is preoccupied with something else!”
Hecate was currently at her PK Alliance's headquarters that only she and her circle of followers knew about. She was in the war room and was quietly observing the table in the middle that had a large map spread open on it. She began moving, placing, and rearranging some of the pieces on the map before backing away and observing the net-like formation that the Player Alliance's forces had around her PK Alliance's forces.
"With this, the stage is set. All of those fools from Eos's side will only have to fully commit to Zhuge's plan and we can crush a significant portion of those bastards who were using me. Once we round them all up, we'll exodus them into the pit, then they'll know what it's like to have their lives fucked! Hehahaha–" Hecate abruptly stopped laughing and contineud, "I just hope that nothing will fuck up this plan. If that damned Eos and his goons–tch, nevermind. Let's just hope for the best~ If all else fails, I'll take matters into my own hands!"