Maria led her team through the buffer zone of the island and killed every monster that got in her way. Her level was similar to the rest of her party members, being around 200-210, but her stats were definitely leagues above theirs.
Although she didn’t take to the frontlines and charged into the hordes of monsters swinging her Calamity around, Maria was able to sufficiently deal with the monsters using her abilities as a spellcaster. She let the group’s tanks do their jobs while she bombarded the monsters from behind with her spells.
She's been using her spells more often lately because she felt a little conflicted using her legacy weapon, Calamity. Calamity was the weapon form of her daughter, Cali, so technically, it was like she was swinging her daughter around in battle whenever she used the weapon. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem for her, but unfortunately, someone pointed this out in her stream one time and she slowly began getting a little too conscious about it.
Of course, she would still use her Calamity when she fought against a boss monster, but to deal with the scrubs in front of her? Her spells were more than enough to handle them. If she wanted to use a melee weapon, then her Zantetsu-R was enough. It could copy all of Calamity’s attributes and skills–besides the form changing one–so it was like she was still using her legacy weapon anyway.
Naturally, she did have to abandon her dual-wielding style, but if there came a time where she absolutely needed to use Calamity, Maria wasn’t going to shy away from it just because of her sentiments. Calamity had been regulated to the role of one of her trump cards, so if she didn’t have to use it, then she wasn’t going to use it.
So, at the moment, Cali was just sitting on Maria’s shoulders and watching her mother and the other party members clean up the monsters rushing towards them. Most of the damage was dealt by Maria’s magic spells from afar, so all the others needed to do was finish the monsters off when they got within range of their attacks.
Mikael and his friends were able to receive copious amounts of EXP every single time they killed a monster and with Maria killing so many of them at a time, the increase to their EXP bars was extremely fast. Seeing the bar jump so fast after every kill, Mikael was really surprised while his friends were extremely excited because leveling up and grinding for EXP had never been so easy for them.
They certainly were riding a train right now, but it wasn’t like they were just sitting around doing nothing. Everyone played their roles perfectly and didn’t just let Maria do all of the work.
The mage-class players in the party made sure that they helped Maria by throwing out a few of their spells at the monsters while the archer-class players shot their arrows and used their sniping skills to at least do some damage to the monsters. The tanks made sure that none of the monsters penetrated into the backlines of their party while the melee DPS players took care of the monsters that got within range of the party’s tankers.
Nothing needed to be said about the party's priests. They naturally did their jobs, providing buffs and healing whenever necessary. Their main focus, however, was keeping the tanks healthy and curing anyone of any negative status effects. The status effects the island monsters inflicted were pretty nasty, so the party's priests had to split their jobs from those restoring the party members' HP and those curing status effects to better manage their MPs.
Since the priests were preoccupied with those 2 things, Mikael had to play as the party's main buffer and he did so rather exceptionally. He became the team’s main source of buffs and the many buffs he provided were no joke. ATK buffs, DEF buffs, M.SPD and A.SPD buffs, Mikael was able to provide all of them and their effects were amazing.
One thing that really surprised Maria was the buff Mikael gave her that increased her M.ATK and reduced her spell’s casting time. A lot of her spells had pretty short casting times and all she needed to do was wave her staff or hand to cast them almost instantly, but for her high-grade spells that had a rather long casting time, Maria found that those spells had their cast time reduced by a third just because of the buff her brother gave her.
This was a really big deal for Maria because she was able to spam her [Fire] and [Blizzard] variations of the [Flare Bomb] and [Ice Explosion] spells which made their journey from the buffer zone to the island’s Outer Layer area really fast and easy.
Maria’s party was the first one to arrive at the Outer Layer area and just as Elizabeth informed them, the entire party received the island's EXP gain buff.
*DING*
You have gained the special buff: Treasure Island’s Fortune!
Name: Treasure Island’s Fortune Description: You will receive a 200% increase to EXP gain! Killing [Cursed] monsters will double this buff’s effects!
“This is the buff that Maria’s subordinate must be talking about!” One of the party members exclaimed.
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“Yes, but there’s an additional effect. Killing a [Cursed] monster, whatever that is, will double the percentage! I wonder what a [Cursed] monster is…I don’t think Maria’s subordinate explained that to us…”
The party members quickly turned to Maria to see if she knew something, but they all saw that she too had a contemplative expression on her face as she read the notification window.
“Mary, I guess you also didn’t know, huh?” Mikael asked after seeing her expression.
“No, I didn’t. Elizabeth didn’t know about this as well…Like I said previously, there’s a lot of things that my subordinates and I don’t know about this island since we’ve only discovered it recently and haven’t properly explored it yet… I guess this is one of those things that we just didn’t know. Let's inform everyone else about it,” Maria replied before she opened her friend's list menu and sent a message to Lizzy and Gerald. "Okay, I sent them the message and a screen shot of the buff."
“Okay. Shall we keep going then?”
“Yeah, and everyone, keep your eyes on your surroundings. The island’s normal monsters probably aren’t a threat to us, but we don’t know what these [Cursed] monsters are.”
Everyone in the party nodded and agreed with Maria’s words because they all came to the conclusion that the [Cursed] monsters were likely stronger than the island’s regular monsters, considering that killing one of them would double the [Treasure Island’s Fortune]’s buff effects.
“Okay, let’s keep moving. We’ll kill every monster we find and level up as fast as we can!” Maria declared as she pulled out Zantetsu-R and took to the frontlines.
She decided to be a little bit more serious now that they were in a more dangerous area. However, she still had her staff and magic tome out, so she could swap to them any time she wanted. The rest of her party found it quite intriguing that Maria’s weapons were floating behind her and following her as she moved around. They all wondered if it was some kind of rare passive skill that allowed her to do that.
If they asked her about it, Maria would’ve had a hard time explaining because it was not a skill, but technically was a skill. She simply used her [Energy Manipulation]–previously [Mana Manipulation] before it evolved–to keep her weapons suspended behind her as she dragged them around using her Divine Energy. This telekinesis-like ability was a trick she learned a long time ago from Paimon, but before the skill's evolution, all she was able to do was retrieve her weapons back into her hands after she launched or threw them at her opponents.
Since the skill's evolution, however, she was able to do more than just retrieve her weapons from far away. After much experimentation and testing, Maria figured out that she could use her Divine Energy to move objects with her will using [Energy Manipulation]. Unitale had a high degree of freedom, so if players experimented enough with their skills, they could unlock some neat functions that aren't even in the skill's description.
The party members who were curious had to keep their curiosities to themselves for the moment because they soon encountered the monsters in the island's Outer Layer. The monsters they encountered were really pretty powerful, so they had to put their game faces on and go about the hunt seriously.
Even Maria couldn’t move around recklessly like she did before in the island’s buffer zone because she recognized how troublesome the monsters were and if she did try pulling the usual stunts she did, it might put her other party members in danger. Just one monster was pretty tough to deal with, so the party needed to quickly kill the monsters they encountered as quickly as they could before their fight attracted too much attention from the surrounding area. If more monsters came pouring in, they would eventually be overwhelmed and their lives could be in jeopardy.
Maria would be able to cope even if she was besieged by the island’s monsters from all sides, but it wasn’t the same for the rest of her party members. They would definitely die and if they died, all of the EXP and levels they gained today would reset back to 0. Since Maria didn’t want that, she made sure to kite the monsters in the outer layer to a safe place where she and her party could kill them one by one.
The plan wouldn't always work out because sometimes they would encounter monsters moving together and the fight would drag out until another monster or two joined in. When more monsters suddenly jumped into the fray, it would cause some chaos, but thankfully, the party had quite the experienced players, so no one did anything rash and they eventually managed to defeat all the monsters before more started flooding in.
If too many monsters appeared at once, Maria would summon her Undead and Shadow army soldiers to block a few of them, so the party never really was in danger even after they had attracted a group of monsters that numbered nearly 20 in total. Thanks to the party's experience and Maria's minion support, things were proceeding really smoothly, at least, until they finally encountered their first [Cursed] monster.