For the next few days, Maria continuously received word that the battleships she had deployed along the wide rivers of the Vanargand Continent that ran along the borders and through the middle of the Lycan territories were constantly being under attack while a few of them had even been sunk and plundered.
The first time a ship was attacked, Maria didn’t pay too much attention to it because the ship hadn’t been destroyed. At most, it received quite a bit of damage, so it had to retreat and dock back in one of the Dire colonies’ harbors for repairs.
There were no worries at first and Maria retaliated by annihilating the players. She also put some more guards on the battleships, but unfortunately, this didn’t deter those players from coming back and attacking her ships again.
The next time around, they dealt even more damage as they started using some kind of explosives. Maria and her people couldn’t figure out what kind of explosive device they used, but what they did know was that it wasn’t magic.
There was evidence left behind that suggested it to be some kind of device similar to their land mines.
This caused Maria to grow a little bit suspicious and she couldn’t help but think that this was some kind of ploy.
The locations of her battleships should be confidential information and even if people managed to spot them in the middle of the river, most would ignore them thinking that they were only transporting supplies to the Dire’s battlefront.
Maria had also secured the rivers beforehand, so if the enemy players or NPCs wanted to attack her ships, they needed to delve deep into enemy territory to do that. Another thing that they needed to worry about was being spotted from afar by the NPCs on the ships.
However, to Maria’s surprise, the NPCs that were attacked but managed to survive all reported that the attacks were preemptive, as if those players had been waiting for them to pass by.
Since all the attacks were ambushes, Maria deduced that the enemy already knew that her ships were going to pass through there and had been lying in wait for them.
This meant that her plans had been leaked by someone, but who? That question was something that Maria had to find out on a later date because after the second day where her ships had been constantly under attack, the third day became even worse as reports of her battleships retreating or having been sunk rolled onto her desk.
“Who’s doing this?! Who’s the one destroying my ships?!”
Maria didn’t believe for a second that Eos or anyone for that matter could’ve figured out her plans and was trying to foil them. The numerous attacks on her ships caused her schedule to be delayed and thus the attacks on the areas she had designated in her previous plans had to be postponed because her ships weren’t in place.
She thought long and hard about why the enemy seemed to know her every move and the only conclusion she made was that there was a spy amidst her ranks. Someone was actively supplying information to her enemies and they were taking advantage of said information to constantly hinder her plans.
“Find them! Find the traitor!” Maria barked from her tent which caused all of her subordinates present to scramble outside in fear of facing her wrath.
She calmed down after a while and began to think. ‘Who could be the traitor?’ Maria began thinking back to the people that she had brought along, but couldn’t pinpoint any suspects.
All of the NPCs that she had brought with her were completely loyal to her while the players were those that she regarded as friends and family. She knew the character of the people close to her and believed that they were all trustworthy.
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Maria had very few people she could call friends and family, so she was sure that none of them would betray her like this.
“Their interests lie with mine, so if they do this to me then they’re only sabotaging themselves…in the first place none of my friends are like that, so who could it be?” Even after thinking for so long and going through the list of people that she informed about her plan and those that formulated it for her, there really was no one she could suspect.
“Tsk, since I can’t find anyone then I’ll have to investigate all of them…”
Maria didn’t want to do this, but unfortunately, she needed to find the rat within her circle of trust and quickly do away with them. It would definitely bring a lot of pain to her if she discovered that the person who betrayed her was someone close, but Maria decided that she would have to push that person away, regardless of her feelings.
“Please…don’t let it be anybody close to me…” Maria pleaded in her heart.
Let’s take things a week back, prior to Zhuge Lan formulating his battle plan to screw over Maria and the Dire. This was a few days before Maria and the Dire attacked the Lycans.
Maria’s servant, Raiju, had found Zhuge Lan at a location the man specified after making an agreement with the Lightning Spirit to meet again.
“You’re here…I thought you were just joking about meeting with me secretly like this. What do you want?” Zhuge Lan asked as he sized up Raiju again.
Now that he was looking at her closely, Raiju was a giant of a woman who towered over him in stature. Not only that, but there was a menacing and somewhat evil aura that was exuding from her very being.
Even as a person who wasn’t really on the ‘right’ side of the spectrum, Zhuge Lan never felt someone exude such an unpleasant aura before.
Raiju looked at the man and scoffed, “Hmph, you look scared. Don’t worry, I won’t bite.”
“Tell me what you want. You said that you have something important for me,” Zhuge Lan quipped back.
“From the timing of my visit, I’m sure a smart man such as you should already know what I want, right?”
“...You want me to pull my Master and her faction into this upcoming war?”
“Yes! As expected of a wiseman!”
“This is betrayal to your master, the Blood Empress, you know? Why are you doing this?”
“What I want from you and your Master is simple. I want you guys to mess things up for my Master in the upcoming war. You guys won’t win, but you need to make the war a little bit difficult for my Master.”
“What?”
“Did I stutter? I want you to make things hard for my Master!”
“I heard you the first time…but for what reason are you doing this? If your master, Maria, were to find out what you requested of me today, she won’t spare you…”
“What I’m doing is for her own good! At the rate she’s developing, she won’t be able to ascend into the kind of goddess that’s expected of a person like her!”
“Huh?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but I’ll have you cooperate with me whether you like it or not,” Raiju declared. “There are no demerits for you in cooperating with me. In fact, you’ll want to cooperate! I’m sure you want to avenge yourself from your previous loss against my master and show your master just how capable you are, right?”
“...”
“Anyway, I’ll be providing you with the information, so all you need to do is plan things out accordingly since you’re a strategist, are you not?”
“I am…”
“Good! Then here’s the information I’ll pass onto you for now,” Raiju said as she took something out of her bag and placed it into Zhuge Lan’s hand. “I need you to give me some expendables to act as my scapegoats and make it look like you managed to have some of your people infiltrate into the Dire. I still value my own life and despite doing all of this for my Master, she probably won’t understand and view it as a betrayal. She’ll have my head for that, but you guys can just revive, so give me a few people to use.”
“Wait.”
Zhuge Lan opened the item in his hand and a screen appeared in front of him with a very detailed description of the Dire’s forces. He widened his eyes in surprise and turned to Raiju.
“If we somehow win because you’ve been leaking information to us…what will you do? Will you regret this?”
Raiju laughed and said, “Hardly, but it would be great if my master does lose this time around though it’s highly unlikely. Empress Maria is too smart and powerful to lose to someone like you or your master.”
“...Hmph, whatever. Anyway, since you’re being really sincere, I’ll do the same too then. Follow me and I’ll give you some of my people to command. None of them are important, but they’re pretty capable people.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re capable or not. I just need somebody to be my scapegoat. Make things quick because if my master notices that I’ve been gone for too long, she’ll start questioning it.”
“Yes, yes…”
The secret informant that Zhuge Lan had been talking about in his meeting with Hecate and the 5 Summits, was none other than Raiju, the evil lightning spirit that Maria had subordinated to herself.