In the next few weeks inside of the game, Maria’s forces continued to have a hard time conquering the Lycan Kingdom’s territory thanks to a certain someone's meddling. They had successfully taken over the outer-mid territories after a lot of painstaking effort and were now working on the middle territories. Unlike in the previous area that didn’t have too much going on for it, the middle territories were where most of the Lycan Kingdom’s population was located.
Many cities, towns, and villages could be found here and since it was in the middle area, the fortifications of these places were obviously much better than the ones from the previous area and the enemy forces were able to mount a more fierce and unyielding resistance than before. If this was in the real world, they wouldn’t have been able to do this after seeing the sheer amount of players and NPCs that Maria’s side was using when they besieged a city or town.
It was usually two to three times larger than the number of players and NPC soldiers that were stationed in the enemy cities or towns. The despairing difference in numbers would've deterred anyone from fighting back if this was a battle in the real world, but since the players couldn't die, they didn't care and just willingly threw themselves towards death for the contribution points they'd get from participating in the war on behalf of the Lycan Kingdom.
Only the NPC soldiers were cowering in fear and feeling completely in despair. This was the normal reaction since they wouldn't be able to respawn like the players as they only had one life. If it wasn’t for their commanders keeping them in line, many would’ve deserted.
The players, on the other hand, only thought that the situation was incredible since they were able to fight an actual battle in a medieval setting though their enemies were using weapons that were anything but medieval.
The enemy players wouldn’t have been that excited and lax if this was not inside of the game. They could die and respawn over and over again, so no one really cared about their life and the death penalty wasn't that severe. For whatever reason, the system had cut down the death penalty for all players participating in the Main Story Quest by over 80% of the usual penalty. This let the players on both sides just rush into battle without caring about the consequences of dying.
Of course, after a certain number of deaths, the logout penalty would still be applied, but even that penalty was greatly reduced to only a few hours from the usual full day penalty. Maria reckoned that this was the system's method of increasing the difficulty on her side while lowering the difficulty of the quest on the enemy side. If it wasn't for this, Maria and the Dire would’ve long since won the war as the enemy side would just cower behind their capital city’s walls instead of rushing out of the gates and engaging in a melee with the Dire’s forces at the front of the town or city gates that they were protecting.
Even Zhuge Lan's tactics would've only delayed her for a little bit, but the bastard had caught onto the system's meddling early on and decided to use the human wave tactic to disrupt and stall Maria's armies from getting an easy win. The siege battles would last for days at a time while some open field skirmishes would last an entire day due to the formations and tactics he devised. The enemy also applied guerilla tactics, but those didn't go so well since they were the ones trying to attack and Maria's forces were like an iron wall.
If they tried to attack, they wouldn't be able to win, so after a few days and seeing no positive results, Zhuge Lan advised the Lycan Commanders and guild leaders to stop the guerilla attacks and instead set up ambushes to kill the enemy commanders during the sieges or skirmishes.
Although the resistance was fierce, Maria and her armies continued to conquer the lands of the Lycan territory. After all, victory was inevitable, it just took a hard and long time for it to be accomplished.
After the last meeting Maria had with her army commanders, everyone became on edge after hearing her demands to show her some positive results and not repeat the same unfavorable ending as the war’s first day where there were a ton of casualties but very little progress. Since none of the commanders wanted to fall out of favor with their Empress, they made sure to do everything diligently, from the planning, all the way to the deployment, and micro-movements of the soldiers that were deployed on the battlefield.
They did this in order to not make any mistakes and blunders like they did on the first day. Giving Maria some subpar results was the last thing they wanted to happen again because their Empress would definitely punish them, and thanks to their overzealous motivation, the generals pushed all of the players and NPCs under their command to the limit. Not a single mistake was allowed to happen and if things developed in a way that became unfavorable to them, the players and NPCs that were deployed for battle had to adapt to the changes very quickly and ensure that the end result wasn’t a defeat or pyrrhic victory.
Due to this, both sides of the spectrum had to deal with the other side’s rabid behavior. Neither side wanted to lose to the other, so the battles were extremely bloody and horrendous. Maria could only commend Zhuge Lan for being able to rally the morale of his soldiers to this degree and have them fight like crazy zealots. Many players were just throwing their lives away on the battlefield, but no one backed down. They instead continued to pour into the battlefield as long as they hadn’t received the [Logout] penalty for dying too frequently.
The battles were extremely fierce and despite seeing all of the casualties happening, Maria didn’t care too much about what was happening during those battles since the players could just respawn when they were killed, so there was no loss of personnel at all from both sides. There were a few times when her NPC soldiers would help out the Dire’s players, but it was never to a point where they would risk their lives for them. Losing an NPC was more devastating than losing a player since it was an eternal loss.
Maria continued to watch the battles with extreme joy in her eyes. Every fight between her forces’ players and the enemy players were always so outstanding and thrilling. Just watching what was happening in the battles through a [Scrying Orb] brought Maria a lot of satisfaction. Her move to not intervene too early in the war and give the others a chance to earn some contribution points and merits was definitely a good call on her part because if she hadn’t done this, then she would’ve missed all of the exciting ‘shows’ she was watching right now.
Naturally, Maria wasn’t only watching what was happening in the battles through the [Scrying Orb] out of pure entertainment. She was carefully analyzing the patterns that the enemy players were following to try and deduce what kind of new strategy Zhuge Lan had prepared for her soldiers. It was because of this that despite already blocking the enemy inside of an impenetrable circle, she still hadn’t mobilized her air force and navy yet. Those were her trump cards to secure the final victory for her nation. She wasn’t going to show them too quickly like she did with the Magitek rifles, tanks, suits, because if she did, the war would likely end too quickly or in the worst case scenario, extend for too long because her opponent would take those hidden cards into account once she's revealed them and adjust their plans accordingly.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Victory was naturally assured. It was inevitable thanks to the large disparity between the two sides, but the time it took would definitely differ depending on how she played her hand and right now, she believed she was definitely playing it well.
“Hmm, I wonder what I should do…everything is proceeding smoothly despite all of the resistance the enemy players and Lycans are putting up. I know for certain now that the Zhuge guy is behind the enemy players,” Maria said to herself as she eyed the table nearby before turning her attention back to the recording she was watching. “Since that Zhuge guy is here, then that means the lunatic woman isn’t too far away.”
Maria was looking forward to her next encounter with Hecate. Although she didn’t like how the latter would sometimes harass her in the most bizarre ways, their fights would always be pretty epic and entertaining. She was itching for a battle and since Hecate might appear, she was anticipating it because that would be her time to go out to battle, but despite her anticipation for the next few days, she was unfortunately made to be disappointed because no matter how long she waited, Hecate didn’t appear.
Zhuge Lan was definitely behind the players’ attacks and strategies, but he too didn’t show his face and remained in the dark. Instead, it was Eos and his guild alliance that appeared and took center stage in the Lycan’s resistance against the Dire. Once Eos and his allies appeared, the Lycan’s fight for survival only became that much fiercer since they were now actively being commanded by him.
Of course, the true mastermind pulling all of the strings was Zhuge Lan. Eos was just a front and Maria finally understood that Hecate and her goons weren’t planning on showing themselves in this war. However, just because they weren’t going to show themselves didn’t mean that they weren’t going to participate.
Zhuge Lan understood that facing against Maria head on was a pretty stupid thing to do because it would end with their loss once they pushed things too far. Her military force that encompassed all 3 types of combat; aerial, ground, and water, was too much to fight against for the current players. Even if he knew about Maria’s plan, there was nothing he could do about it, but he did prepare to do something that was beyond his opponent’s predictions. He was going to try and sink a few of the carrier ships that held the airships.
Zhuge Lan could tell that the airships were crucial to whatever plan Maria had. He only made predictions of what she would do, but in the end, all of it revolved around Maria using those airships for something. It wasn’t like the battleships could move onto the land or anything, so it could only be the airships. Hecate and her true PK Alliance were definitely going to participate in the war, but under the guise of being under someone else’s command.
He was adamant about them participating even to the point where he suggested to Hecate that they should suspend the purging of their alliance for the time being. They’ve already identified all of the rats, so even if they no longer had Eos and his player alliance’s help, they’d still be able to personally deal with the rats in their PK Alliance. It wasn’t like they needed Eos’s help for that. They only used Eos because they needed to determine which groups were the ones using their PK Alliance’s name and dragging their reputation through the dirt.
Of course, they already had an infamous reputation to begin with, but it was limited to only inside of the game and it was further limited to just PKing. It wasn’t like now where there were rumors saying that they were enslaving people and forcing them to farm gold and items. Such a thing was beyond them since all the people who were truly a part of Hecate’s PK Alliance only wanted one thing, which was to PK other players.
Since they no longer needed Eos, Zhuge Lan thought it was best to suspend their battle against the rats and participate in the ever-so-important Main Story Quest. If they missed out on this like they did with the starting planet’s Main Story Quest, their players might get left behind in their value CP. Take for instance the previous Main Story Quest, the quest line of planet Gaia. If they missed out on it, then Hecate and her followers wouldn’t have been able to obtain their Summons.
The usage of the Summons had become limited once the Main Story Quest of Gaia was over, but they still had value in battle even on the Third Planet’s Main Story Quest. No one could summon the true might of their Summons like they did on the previous planet, but the phantoms of the Summons that were being summoned by the players would still empower them and raise their CP by a huge margin for a limited period of time.
Even Maria would still sometimes use her Summon, Bahamut, when she did battle though it was truly overkill on her part. She had yet to meet an adversary where using Bahamut became necessary for her to secure her win.
In the last battle with Hecate, Maria didn’t use Bahamut because Hecate hadn’t used her Chaos. If Hecate had used her Summon then Maria would’ve definitely done the same and this would’ve probably made their fight a whole lot longer and definitely more fiercer. The two of them had definitely thought about it at the time, but Zhuge Lan’s meddling put a stop to that.
Anyway, since the PK Alliance was going to participate in the war in the shadows, Zhuge Lan made sure to prepare thoroughly so that this wasn’t exposed to Maria. The latter, however, had already predicted Hecate and Zhuge Lan’s participation, and it wasn’t like she was stupid enough to not notice the strange tactics the players were using.
Even though Eos had come forward and was acting like the commander and strategist, Maria didn’t believe that he was the true mastermind though it was undeniable that Eos was a pretty great commander and strategist himself. Unfortunately for him, his level of commanding and strategizing just wasn’t enough to cause Maria this degree of trouble, in her opinion. The only person who could cause her this much trouble was definitely Hecate and Zhuge Lan. This was a fact that Maria firmly believed.
Maria thought that the war against the Lycans would be over pretty quickly and her true fight would be against the player factions that were starting to rise up in Vanargand, but unfortunately, she made a miscalculation. It was a good thing, however, that she learned about Zhuge Lan’s existence early on. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to create counter measures against that person’s witty strategies. If his existence was kept in the dark, Maria wouldn’t even know the true reason as to why she suddenly found herself losing the war or won it but with a pyrrhic victory.