Maria quickly got Emily’s message and informed the rest of her group. She turned to her brother and asked, "Big brother, you guys are okay staying here by yourselves, right?"
Mikael responded with a nod before saying, “If they need help, then go, we can manage here on our own.” He then turned to the rest of his party and asked, “Right?”
“Yeah, you can leave us here in the outer layer. Thanks to you, Maria, we gained quite a bit of levels and we’re more confident about killing those monsters on our own now. Don’t worry about us, we won’t over extend ourselves! If the situation isn't favorable, we'll retreat right away!”
Maria nodded and was about to take off, but Mikael quickly stopped her for a moment, “Mary! Stop!”
“Eh?”
She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to her brother and asked, “What’s up, big brother?”
“Ask Emily where her coordinates are and let me put them on your map. Honestly, where are you going to go without knowing where they are?"
"Ehehe, I planned to just fly around the forest until I found them~"
“...”
Mikael knew his sister very well. No matter how much time had passed and how older she got, she still remained directionally challenged and it would be a crime if he let her leave without doing anything and knowing that she would likely get lost.
Once she got the coordinates, Mikael helped Maria input it into her map before he allowed her to take off. With the visual aid, Maria was able to quickly arrive at her friend’s location without much trouble and saw the ridiculous state that they were in.
“What the heck happened here?”
She noticed that it wasn’t just Emily and Lizzy’s group that was being surrounded by a bunch of the island’s monsters, but Gerald’s group as well.
“Gerald too?”
Maria wondered what had happened and she quickly noticed the [Cursed] monster corpse that was nearby and immediately understood what had happened.
“A [Cursed] monster! I see, so it tried running away before they could finish it off.”
After she completed her analysis of the situation her friends and brother were in, Maria quickly swooped down and yelled, “Guys, I’m here!”
She sent down a large wave of [Fire] spells as she moved and struck the monsters that were attacking her friends, resulting in multiple explosions that spread throughout the battlefield. This gave Lizzy and the others a bit of respite as they quickly pulled back a bit to heal their injuries before once more rushing towards the monsters and attacking them again.
A few of the monsters had been struck in the back of the head–literally, and not just figuratively–and were put into a stunned state for a few seconds by Maria, so this gave everyone the perfect opportunity to mount a counter attack.
They were all experienced players, so obviously, they didn’t let this chance slip away as they quickly struck the monsters closest to them with their attacks and spells. Lizzy was used to fighting these chaotic battles and didn’t forget to command her party members.
“Focus your attacks on the ones in front of you that have the least HP and don’t let them escape!” Lizzy cried out.
Lizzy’s party members, including Gerald’s party members, quickly listened to her commands and started to methodically attack the monsters in front of them with the lowest HP bars. Unlike in other games where their HUD would display their enemies' HP bars, Unitale didn't have that feature as they wanted to emulate reality as close as possible, so everyone had to constantly use [Inspect] on the monsters around them to see their statuses.
This allowed a few of the monsters to recover from their stunned state, but Maria just sent another [Fire] spell to the back of their heads and reapplied the debuff. This wasn't the first time that Maria's spells could do such a thing. She had already experimented with her spells plenty of times and found out everything that they were capable of and the precise conditions required to activate certain extra effects, such as the stun.
The activation requirement for the stun was actually pretty logical, just apply as much damage or trauma to the back of a monster's head using a blunt object or an explosion. In this case, Maria used the latter condition to trigger the effect. By exploding her modified [Fire] spells just as they struck the monsters' heads, she could send the monsters into the debuff state any time she wanted.
Naturally, the more she did this, the more likely the effect wouldn't trigger because the monsters would gain a resistance towards it and some that had a more advanced AI might adapt to it by simply dodging the spells or twisting their bodies, so the back of their heads don't get hit. Maria's already seen monsters do this before when she was experimenting with her spells and it could affect the outcome of the battle, but all Gerald and Lizzy's parties had to do was end the battle before the monsters developed the resistance.
“Thanks Mary! If you can, just keep on stunning them like that! We’ll deal with the monsters ourselves, but if you want, take the ones at the back!” Emily yelled to her.
“Yes sa~”
Maria happily agreed to Emily’s suggestion and summoned a portion of her Dark Army that she hadn’t left behind with Mikael and his group at the back of the monster horde that was attacking her friends and brother.
“Take care of the ones at the back, but don’t push them. I’ll let Lizzy, Em, and Big Brother deal with the monsters since they need the EXP.”
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Even though they had asked her for help, Maria wasn’t going to overextend her help by wiping out the monsters on her own. It would defeat the purpose of bringing them to the island if all she was going to do was steal their EXP.
Maria knew that Lizzy, Emily, and Gerald didn’t actually need her help to take care of this monster horde. They only asked for her help because they weren’t willing to have their party take on any casualties. If any of the players in their groups died, then all the effort that they had made in the last few hours would’ve been for nothing, since the island’s death penalty was much harsher than the normal death penalty.
Your character resetting to the state it was in prior to the island’s daily ‘save-point’ and losing all of the hard work and progress that was done during the time until death was just a slap in the face and a kick to the groin. To make matters worse, the items and skills that you gained would’ve been permanently lost as well and, despite it being a total ‘reset’, the consumable items you used and the durability of your weapons and equipment didn’t reset as well.
It was a really harsh penalty, especially for those like them who were currently trying to power level. At least the normal penalty allowed you to keep the items that you obtained if you didn’t drop them upon death and you would, at best, lose a small percentage of the EXP you gained if you had been hunting and killing monsters for a good few hours.
Emily, Gerald, and Lizzy didn’t want themselves or any of their party members to experience such a harsh death penalty, so they asked for Maria’s help immediately. If they didn’t ask for her help, it was inevitable that they’d lose a few players to the monster horde.
With Maria’s help, everyone in their 2 groups were able to safely survive against the monsters although there had been a few close calls. They invited Maria to the group and she had been keeping an eye on all of the players’ HP bars and, thanks to her, a few of them had been saved by her quick healing spells and barrier spells that were cast right on time before they died.
After the battle was over, Lizzy and Gerald had their party members clean up the battlefield while they moved over to Maria, who was ordering her Dark Army to butcher the ones she caught.
Lizzy threw herself on Maria and exclaimed, “Oh, my hero~”
“Yeah, yeah…anyway, mind telling me what happened? I got the gist of things from the stuff I observed while in the air, but I’d like to hear your recount of the events.”
“I’ll explain,” Gerald stepped up and said. He gave his sister a full recount of what happened to their two groups and, just like what Maria had already deduced from her observations, they were mostly correct.
“Yeah, I think it was a somewhat smart move to chase after the [Cursed] monster. I faced one earlier and it was extremely smart. If you let it go, it will likely come back with a monster horde to kill you–Of course, that’s just my speculation, since it seemed that way judging by how the monster glared at me when it tried running away like a third-rate villain,” Maria said with a laugh.
“Oh? You also encountered one in the outer layer? How did you kill it?” Lizzy asked.
“Well…”
Maria recounted to them what happened to her earlier and they were shocked to hear that she had soloed the monster.
“You actually fought it by yourself? Didn’t Mikael and his friends offer to help you?”
“They did help me by providing me with some buffs, but they didn’t actively take part in the battle, which is probably a good thing considering what you guys told me of your experience fighting your [Cursed] monster…”
Lizzy silently began comparing the two [Cursed] monsters that they had encountered before coming to the conclusion that those monsters were actually better off being soloed, just like what Maria had done.
“I think Maria’s approach is the best solution to those monsters. We were put in a tough spot because it kept on switching targets. Aggro control was practically impossible when facing that thing and its unpredictability ruined our groups’ synergy,” Lizzy remarked before turning to ask Gerald his opinion, “What do you think, Big Brother Gerald?”
Gerald contemplated it a bit further before he too came to the same conclusion as Lizzy did, “There’s no fault in what you said, Lizzy. Maybe these [Cursed] monsters are like the opposite of boss monsters and they’re meant to be soloed.”
“...Would the devs actually do something like this?”
“Knowing them and their track record for the unpredictable and unprecedented, then yeah, it’s highly possible they put in this gimmick.”
“Then if we see one, we should have our mechanically skilled players test out the waters.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
"If our deductions are true, then these monsters will help us hone our mechanical skills. If you look at it like that, then they're a blessing to us players..."
"Mmmh...yeah, I guess. If you put it that way, at least."
Maria was just smiling at the side as she had no idea what they were talking about. Too many gaming terms were being thrown out and she understood very little of what they were saying.
However, she did understand that they were devising a plan to deal with the [Cursed] monsters, so that in their next encounter with one of them, they wouldn’t be put in such a miserable spot like today. She decided to leave them to their planning as she went to greet Emily and the rest of the players.