After Zhuge Lan explained his plan to Hecate and the rest of the 5 Summits, they were all quite surprised that he managed to obtain the necessary intel to formulate this extremely wicked and intricate plan to completely screw over the Dire.
“This plan…if we weren’t the ones doing it, our reputation would fall into infamy…”
“Yeah, but since our reputation is already pretty infamous, I thought that it’d be fine if we did something so unscrupulous,” Zhuge Lan said as he replied to Rose’s statement.
“Kekekeke, since when have we cared about something as trivial as reputation? I like this plan a lot!”
“Belphegor, we need you to prepare as many corpses as you can, so you can head out earlier. You’re the most essential component in this plan because only you have the means to create a lot of explosives within a short amount of time…”
“Heheh, I’ll get right to it then, but don’t complain about the smell later. As you know, the smell of corpses isn’t so pleasant~” Belphegor said with a laugh before leaving the room.
Once he left, Flare clicked her tongue and glared at Zhuge Lan before saying, “We’re going to be playing with corpses again? The last time that bastard used his [Corpse Explosion] skill, he nearly blew half of our forces sky high! Are you really putting your faith in that backstabber’s hands again, Zhuge?”
“Don’t worry. This time around, it won’t be our forces that’ll be doing the heavy lifting. It’ll be the rats instead.”
“Oh?”
“We’ll take care of 2 birds with one stone in this operation. None of the rats knows yet that they’re being targeted by us, so we’ll purge them together. I’ve already placed our elites at the spawn areas that I’ve told them to set up beforehand. There will be a lot of surprises waiting for them once they respawn.”
“Those spawn areas…aren’t they the places you’re going to rig with explosives as well?” Lamia asked.
“Belphegor’s [Corpse Explosion] is an enhanced one. Using only 5 to 6 corpses will easily erase those rats and, since he’s going to rig plenty of them around the area, we can at least kill them until they drop 10 or more levels.”
“...Then you’re going to place the blame all on the Dire, huh?”
“Yes. So those fools won’t be none the wiser that we’re the ones targeting them. I’ve already prepared a team to hunt down their factions’ executives. They aren’t affiliated with anyone and are people that I recruited by chance. They’re powerful and should be capable of handling those bastards,” Zhuge Lan said as he unfolded his feather fan. “We’re going to keep on killing those rat bastards until they voluntarily leave the game.”
Zhuge Lan turned to Hecate and said with a smile, “As for Maria, this plan will make sure that her forces suffer the most damage possible even though our side will still inevitably lose. I’m sure this plan is to your liking, Master?”
Stolen story; please report.
“Hm, I do like it, but is it necessary to pin all the blame for killing those rat bastards repeatedly on Maria?” Hecate asked.
“She needs to become our scapegoat. Besides, with her ‘stellar’ reputation, some people might not even care that she did that. After all, she’s already massacred a few planets before, so what’s a few additional players?”
“...We’ll proceed with your plan. Just make sure we don’t get caught or else that girl will turn all of her forces on us and chase us until the end. I know this because she’s really similar to me and won't forget a grudge~”
“Yes, Master,” Zhuge Lan nodded at her words before turning to the others. “I’ll continue to explain a bit more of the specifics now. Please pay attention since each of you have your own roles to play later.”
“Just get on with it.”
“Mhm.”
Zhuge Lan’s plan was simple and complicated at the same time. First of all, he was going to target the Dire’s aircraft carriers and sink them along with the airships they were carrying.
After that, he was going to bomb a few of the Dire’s ordinance and supply bases that he managed to find through his intelligence network and make sure that Maria would be cut off from any supplies for a good while.
Taking that opportunity when the Dire’s backline was in disarray, Belphegor would kill the PK Alliance’s rats after luring them to the location Zhuge Lan had specified and repeatedly kill them once they respawned until they dropped a few levels and were forced to log out of the game due to the accumulated death penalty.
Pinning the blame on Maria would be easy because everyone knew that only her forces could use advanced weaponry such as landmines. Belphegor would disguise his [Corpse Explosion] skill as a landmine and, since the skill wouldn’t leave behind any remains of the corpse he used for it, no one would be able to connect it to him or anyone else who possessed the skill.
Unlike the regular [Corpse Explosion] skill, Belphegor’s was a little unique because he had a unique skill that belonged to the necromancer class called [Grace of the Nether]. It had the unique effect of enhancing all of a necromancer’s skills by two folds, so the resulting blast from the skill [Corpse Explosion], would make it appear as if a bomb had been set off and not a magic spell.
The only known player who had the means to produce something like that was Maria. Of course, mage class players could probably produce a similar effect with one of their large-scale magic spells, but Zhuge Lan had already told Belphegor what he needed to do to make it look like they were caused by mines.
Zhuge Lan already knew that Maria had magitek mines, so obtaining a replica of what it looked like from the pictures he obtained, it was easy for him to create the evidence by having his PK Alliance’s blacksmiths create it for him.
It just had to appear like the mines he obtained from his informants. He didn’t need them to actually work, since they were just going to be destroyed anyway once Belphegor used his skill.
Even if Maria were to investigate the area where it all happened to try and clear her name, which Zhuge Lan doubted she would do, all Maria would find were traces of her own explosive mines scattered throughout the place.
Of course, this would alert Maria that there were moles in her faction, so she probably would start a cleansing and find Zhuge Lan’s spies, but once this mission was complete, he was going to recall them anyway, so in the end, Maria still wouldn’t be able to obtain anything.
The only thing she would get was a large amount of frustration and this was exactly what Zhuge Lan wanted. He couldn’t win against Maria in a head-on fight, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to achieve victory in another way.
Just being able to frustrate and cause problems for Maria was enough for Zhuge Lan to see it as his victory. What more if he upset all of her plans after only destroying a few things.
No matter how cautious Maria was, the next few days for her were going to be the most frustrating time that she had spent playing the game, second only to the times where she had been forcibly trapped in an area by some NPCs.