Raiju was the secret informant that Zhuge Lan had been talking about in all of his meetings with Hecate and the Summits.
Zhuge Lan thought that Raiju would be someone who was extremely loyal to Maria, but from her actions, it didn’t seem that way at all, though she did say that this was all for her master’s sake.
He didn’t understand what Raiju meant when she said that this was all for Maria’s ascension and whatnot, but he wasn’t going to reject the cooperation because it was an opportunity to get revenge on Maria and screw with her plans.
Unfortunately, there was no way that his side would win, so he had come to terms with it and decided to just make sure that Maria’s victory wasn’t a clean one. If she was going to win without a doubt, he wanted the victory to be as costly as possible.
If he was able to complete his goal, it would buy him some time to think up of countermeasures against Maria’s technologically advanced army. Letting her dominate Vanhal would be detrimental to his and his master’s interests, so he needed to secure a haven for the PK Alliance on the planet.
A place that even Maria wouldn’t dare touch because Zhuge Lan was going to make it a place where setting foot on the land would lead to a disastrous outcome. The only thing he needed was time–time to prepare everything.
Zhuge Lan was actually working on many things at once and not just the war against the Dire. That was secondary in his opinion, because he didn’t see a reason why he had to pay too much attention to an event that already had its results predetermined.
Since he couldn’t change the outcome, then he didn’t need to put all of his resources into trying it.
The results of his plans were all good for the following days and Maria was troubled to no end. What’s worse was that it seemed that every one of her actions were being predicted, and although she believed that there was a traitor among her ranks, she just couldn't find out who it was.
Maria never would’ve thought that her opponent’s informant was Raiju, a person who was always around her because she was, quite literally, her servant. Maria had paid less attention to the fact that Raiju was her servant and started to treat her more like a friend now.
If Maria wasn’t so adamant about thinking that the traitor was likely a player because, in her mind, all of the NPCs on her side were extremely loyal to her and none of them would ever betray her, because that’s just how NPCs were.
They weren’t like the players who were humans from the real world that would betray their own friends at a drop of a hat if the price paid for it was worth it.
Maria didn't like it, but she suspected that one of her friends might be the traitor. After secretly investigating to see who betrayed her, she unfortunately–or rather–she fortunately found nothing. None of her friends were secretly contacting anyone and neither did they do anything suspicious when they were and weren’t around her.
The investigation failed to obtain any information that her friends had betrayed her and that was a good thing, but this only caused Maria to become even more confused.
“None of them betrayed me and that’s good, but…who? Who did it then?”
She continued the investigation and this time, she had her people investigate the people around her friends. After a few days, the results came back and still nothing of note was found.
At most, she found a few people who were spies in her friends’ guilds and groups. After informing her friends about them, those players were immediately purged from their respective guilds and groups, but she still couldn’t find the traitor.
“Dammit, there’s no way that our enemy is this smart! The only way they can predict everything I do is if there’s a traitor leaking the information, or if they have a clairvoyant
skill!”
The days continued to pass just like this and despite her forces pushing deeper and deeper into the Lycans' territory, there was never anything to celebrate. All of the victories came at a price–a price that Maria was unwilling to pay though she was forced to.
Thanks to that, none of the victories brought her joy. Instead, it only made her feel more and more bitter as she read through the damage reports that her army and navy had sustained at the end of every battle.
She had to reveal her navy to the world a bit early on because Maria thought that the enemy players had already found out about it, considering that they were always ambushing her battleships along the rivers.
The days weren’t easy because of all this, but thankfully, there were a few things that came up as good news to her. First of all, the investigations of the people around her had finally borne some fruit after all this time.
A few suspicious players had been apprehended and after interrogating them for some answers, she managed to find out that they were people that Zhuge Lan had sent to spy on Maria and her forces.
This was extremely good news because she thought that she had finally gotten rid of a few rats that were around her, but Maria didn’t know that these players had purposefully allowed themselves to be caught in order to act as a scapegoat for Raiju, who was the real culprit.
The scapegoat plan worked perfectly and Maria had her complete attention on those players and didn’t even think about investigating Raiju or any of the other NPCs that she had direct ties to through the game’s system.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Raiju could continue spilling Maria’s plans to Zhuge Lan, who eagerly waited for them almost every single day. Despite losing almost every battle, Zhuge Lan saw those losses as major wins instead, because he read through the reports of his side’s losses and compared them to the losses Maria had to endure.
Obviously, the latter lost more than the former and this put Zhuge Lan’s mind at ease as he continued to adjust his plan according to the new information he acquired from Raiju.
Since he was being fed all of this information directly from its source, it was completely understandable why Maria was extremely annoyed and irritated, because it really was like her opponent had a clairvoyant skill, or was just a god-like strategist who could predict all of her movements.
---------------------------------------------------
The Dire continued to march their forces into the Lycans’ territory and with each passing day, they took over the territory little by little.
It wasn’t smooth sailing at all as the Dire’s forces met with heavy resistance every step of the way and as they continued deeper and deeper into the enemy’s territory, they were met with even fiercer and more desperate resistance.
It was to the point where Maria had to deploy some of her magitek armor onto the battlefield.
Since she thought that the enemy already knew about her battleships, Maria also decided to start using them instead of just having them sit on the banks of the rivers within the Lycans' land.
After being frustrated and annoyed by the fierce resistance and constant ambushes on her supply routes and ships, Maria decided that it was time to play her hand. She unveiled her nation's navy and the battleships that were waiting on standby all along the rivers of the Vanargand continent, began using their ultra-long distance magitek cannons to rain down hell on cities and towns that were within their range of attack.
It didn’t end there because Maria also decided to reveal her military’s air force, which was equipped with various armaments that could decimate anything hostile on the ground.
Maria unleashed the full might of her nation’s military and obtained complete supremacy on land, sea, and air, netting her win after win in every battle her forces participated in.
Even when Raiju was feeding Zhuge Lan the information about all of her master’s movements, no amount of plans and strategies could help Zhuge Lan and his side because the force that was attacking them was just too overwhelming.
It was just impossible even for Zhuge Lan to formulate a plan good enough to defend against the absolute might of the Dire’s military forces. To Zhuge Lan, the current situation was no different to that one time when Maria forcibly broke through his multi-layered formation through sheer strength alone.
Maria thought that what she was doing was overkill, but she didn’t care. She did all of it purely out of annoyance and things developed to the point where the devs had to step in and formally requested her to tone things down a little because they were constantly being showered with complaints from players.
Most of these complaints came from those that were against Maria in the Main Story, but there were also quite a few that came from the players that were on her side. The opposing players complained that Maria was cheating because she was bringing in weapons and technology that shouldn’t be part of the planet’s technology tree, while the allied players were complaining that they wouldn’t be able to rack up achievements because Maria was taking care of all the battles single-handedly.
If they couldn’t rack up achievements, then their contribution points would be low and then they wouldn’t be able to obtain enough points to get the prizes they wanted from the Dire’s Vault.
It was the first time since the game launched that the devs had to actually bow their heads and request someone to stop doing something simply because there were so many complaints about it. If Maria had been cheating or something, then they could ban her from the game, but unfortunately, there was nothing wrong with what she did.
Maria had developed the weapons and technology she was using in the battles painstakingly with the help of her NPC subordinates. There was no cheating involved at all–just pure hard work and effort, nothing more.
All of it was her hard work and now, she was only enjoying the fruits of her labor. There was nothing wrong about it at all, but since so many players were issuing complaints and petitions to the developers, they had to send her a formal request to tell her to stop what she was doing just so they could appease them.
The devs had weighed the costs and benefits of offending either Maria or the rest of the playerbase and, naturally, they chose the latter instead of the former. Offending a single player is better than offending the rest of the people playing their game.
Maria didn’t quite like the way they worded the request, so she took her sweet time responding to it, but in the end, she decided to listen to the devs because they were going to give her quite a lot of compensation and because she didn’t want to offend them and the rest of the players.
This entire situation could’ve been avoided if Maria hadn't been so ambitious. Her ambition to take over the entire planet was what caused this situation.
Originally, she wasn’t even supposed to be part of the Main Story Quest as a key figure, so the devs could never have anticipated such a situation where a player was single-handedly dominating the quest line.
Thankfully, Maria was a reasonable person, so after taking over more than 60 percent of the Lycan’s territory and obtaining her compensation for pulling back her forces from the devs, she stopped her assault for the time being.
The players could now duke it out on the battlefield without worrying about Maria's NPCs and magitek weapons.
Naturally, Maria wasn’t going to let things go too far out of control. She still planned on completing her side of the Main Story Quest, so no matter how much her allied player forces screwed up, she would just clean up after them and take matters into her own hands again.
When that happened, no amount of complaints, pleas, and petitions would deter her from destroying the Lycans and taking over their territory.
For now, she was just entertaining the requests of the player base and the devs. After all, she didn’t want to make herself the enemy of the players and be on the watchlist of the devs–even though in reality she already was, but how would she know?
Another few days passed after that and Maria was now watching the war unfold in the comfort of her own bed inside the newly established operations base in one of the major Lycan cities that she had captured a few days ago.
She was watching everything through a livestream that her friend, Lizzy, had decided to air for her.
Thankfully, even without her help, the players on her side were still able to win their battles and continue advancing deeper into the Lycans' territory. The fighting on both sides was really intense and it was quite entertaining to watch.
Many gallant heroes began emerging from the battles as they distinguished themselves with their heroic feats. These people couldn’t appear sooner because, previously, Maria’s soldiers were hogging everything to themselves, so they didn’t have a chance to perform.
A bunch of discussion threads began appearing on the forums talking about these rising stars and someone even started tracking the contribution rankings from both sides.
Strangely enough, most of those that appeared in those rankings were players that no one knew before. It went without saying, but most of these previously unknown people were those that were from the obscure PK Alliance.