After capturing the walls, Maria quickly received a notification window.
*DING*
[You have captured Lycanthrope Castle. The unique dungeon: Lycanthrope Castle, has been unlocked.
Rank: S
Type: Instance
Participant limit: 6 units
The Lycanthrope Castle was erected by the Wolf God, Vanagandr, and from this castle, the lycan and werewolf society was started. It is a unique relic of the past that holds significant value to the lycans and werewolves. If you are not of the Wolf God’s descendents, be prepared to face heavy resistance, for the Lycanthropes do not welcome intruders inside of their home.]
Maria dismissed the system window as she stepped through the opened castle gates. She looked ahead and a translucent portal appeared in front of her. She turned to her friends and subordinates before asking, “Who wants to go in with me? I can only take 5 people though.”
“Your Majesty, I will–”
Maria quickly interrupted Ash and said, “Not you Ash. You have to keep things in order while I storm the castle. Elizabeth and Carmilla will help you. I’ll bring only players this time around.”
“Y-Yes, Your Majesty.”
Ash sulked a little, but since he was entrusted with an important task by his Empress, he quickly collected himself and stepped back.
“Mary, you have a few allied guilds under your control. How about picking the 5 guild leaders of the guilds who have contributed the most,” Lizzy spoke up and said.
Maria thought about it for a moment and nodded, “Hmm, I guess we can do that.”
It was the first time that Maria had enlisted players within her ranks. They had contributed a lot to the victory of this war, so they needed to be rewarded. It was a shame that only 5 people could enter the dungeon or else Maria would’ve wanted to bring a lot more people.
Treating the dungeon as a reward was actually a pretty good idea. This would show others that Maria cared for her allies.
Maria pulled up the war contribution list and noted the 5 player groups that had the highest contributions.
“The 5 groups are the Fallen Angels Guild, Citadel Guild, Siren Adventurer Party, Blackhand Mercenaries, and the Full Moon Tea Party.”
After reading the list, Lizzy nodded and said, “Ah, so it’s my guild and your brother’s guild, Sky’s party, that merc party slash fan club of yours, and… Hm, I’ve never heard of the last group’s name.”
“Ah, that’s my friend Lilith’s party. You remember her, right? She was part of our treasure island expedition,” Maria replied.
“Oh! That’s her party? The name’s quite…unique!”
“Haha, it sure is. Anyway, Liz, can you send someone to call the leaders of those groups? We’ll gather here first and discuss who’ll be going inside. Once the party has been established, then we’ll proceed.”
“Sure, I’ll just send a message to everyone in the alliance chat room we made. Can you give me a screenshot of the contribution ranking list first? I’ll post that in the chatroom, then tell them about the dungeon before asking the leaders to gather here with us.”
“Alright, you do that then. Also, here’s some of the details of the dungeon we’ll be entering.”
“Sweet!”
Lizzy entered the alliance chat room that she made with all of the executive-level leaders of the groups, guilds, and parties that were under Maria’s banner. She quickly told them that the war was almost about to end and all they needed to do next was storm the castle, which was in the form of a dungeon.
Only 6 players can go in–5 if you discounted Maria since she was required to enter. The players in the alliance chat room all know the significance of a unique dungeon like the Lycanthrope Castle. When they saw the details of the dungeon, it was hard for any of them to contain their greed.
An S-rank unique dungeon. Unique dungeons are dungeons that can only be entered once and, after completing or failing them, they will disappear. With the rank being S, this meant that the yield coming from the dungeon would be game-changing for many of the players.
Maria was willing to share the benefits of this dungeon with the 5 highest contributing groups of the alliance. There were many player factions, both big and small, that had enlisted under the Dire’s banner in the war. However, only 18 of those factions actually stood out and had placements within the contribution rankings list.
There was actually a very strict requirement list to make it onto the contribution rankings and Maria was the one who set this list. Out of the over 50 player factions, only 18 of them made it into the rankings and these factions all worked hard for it.
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Unfortunately, only the top 5 groups were chosen, so the other 13 groups were a little dismayed by it. Thankfully, Maria was reading through the chat since she was by Lizzy’s side and she told them that those who had made it into the rankings would be able to attend a special event that she had prepared at the end of the war.
This event encompassed a few auctions and some other things that were still being planned out by her subordinates to appease the players that had joined their side in the war.
Maria told Lizzy to tell the players in the chatroom that she would be hosting an auction for those within the contribution rankings that weren’t able to enter the dungeon after the war was over.
The auction would have some rare armor and weapons sets along with some of the items found in the Lycanthrope Castle that no one in the raid party wanted to keep.
With that promise, the 13 player factions that couldn’t go to the dungeon were appeased and they wished the other 5 groups good luck with the dungeon raid. Maria didn’t need to gather everyone to discuss who would go into the dungeon because all of the leaders did it directly in the chatroom.
Maria thought that the leaders of the 5 factions would attend, but there were some who delegated the spot to a member of their faction instead. Lizzy was obviously going to go, but to Maria’s surprise, Gerald actually declined and said that Cindy–his self-proclaimed girlfriend–would be the one to go in his stead.
This was because they had to decide on a proper party composition and Gerald’s ‘girlfriend’ was the only one among the candidates who was a high-leveled priest.
Maria could fill the role of the support-healer, but who in their right mind would let her do that? She was much better off as the main damage dealer than a supporter. Lizzy was going to be the tank while Lilith, who was a mage, was to be the secondary damage dealer.
Normally, mages would be the main damage dealer, but everyone in the chat room knew that even if Maria’s class was completely ambiguous, it was undeniable that she likely had the highest attack power in the game’s entire player base.
Sky was going to be the second tank as well as the player in charge of crowd control, since she had a lot of status-effect related skills and a thief-class player from the Blackhand Mercenary group was going to be the party’s scout.
The Blackhand Mercenary group was a mercenary group, but just as Lizzy said previously, it was also Maria’s fanclub. It had such a badass-sounding name despite only being a fanclub.
The mercenary group consisted of many high-level players who were Maria’s fans from her livestreams and videos. All of the players within the group were powerful in their own right, but they were all…eccentric.
The group was completely composed of fanboys and fangirls of Maria. They only leveled up and became as powerful as they were just because they were hoping to ‘luckily’ stumble into Maria on the field.
In order to ‘luckily’ do that, they would have to be powerful and qualify as frontier-level players since Maria was on that level.
Their hard work and dedication was actually pretty well-known, though most never thought that the group was actually just a fan club because of its name. Things actually only came to light during the war.
If it wasn’t for the war, no one would’ve known that the Blackhand Mercenary group was actually only a fanclub.
The rogue who was from the Blackhand Mercenary group was a girl who immediately asked for Maria’s autograph and picture when she finally met up with her at the meeting spot in front of the Lycanthrope Castle dungeon portal.
“C-C-C-Can I-I-I ha-have your a-a-autograph?!?!?” The thief girl asked while comically stuttering as she did an almost 90 degree bow to Maria, holding out a small board and marker in her hands.
“S-Sure…no need to be so nervous, I don’t bite,” Maria replied with a smile as she took the board and marker. “What’s your name?”
“I-It’s Rafflesia201!”
“Uhhh…is it okay if I sign it under your username and not your real name?”
“T-That’s fine! A-And if possible, p-please sign it to the Blackhand Mercenaries!”
“Okay~”
Maria quickly signed the board and added a short message along with her signature addressed to the Blackhand Mercenaries. She handed the board and marker back to the female thief and she immediately started squealing and hopping in place.
“And the picture?” Maria asked.
“O-Oh! That’s right! P-Please excuse me…”
The girl didn’t cling to Maria for the picture. She made sure that there was a handspan distance between her and her idol before she snapped the photo with a goofy, yet extremely happy smile on her face.
Maria only had a casual smile on her face as she made a peace sign with her hand and, since they were already taking photos, the rest of the members of the dungeon raid team–which were all coincidentally girls–quickly gathered together and took a few more photos.
“Alright guys, that’s enough! It’s about time we headed into the dungeon! Let’s go!” Lizzy quickly said as she brought everyone’s attention back to their objective.
Maria was having a little too much fun with the photo session that their main objective, the dungeon, had slipped her mind for a moment.
“Haha, okay, let’s get going. Let me invite everyone to the party first!’
Maria sent everyone an invite and they quickly accepted it. Once they were in the party, the girls noticed that they had suddenly received a significant boost to their stats and turned to look at Maria, who had transformed into her full battle form and unleashing her Nephalem's [Unholy Domain].
Lizzy whistled and said, “I still get excited when I see you transform, Mary. Let’s do this then. I’ll head in first! Everyone else should follow behind me in order!”
“Got it!”
“We’re ready.”
Even though Maria was the party leader, she let her friend Lizzy do the leading instead. Maria was used to only partying with just her familiars and champions, so she had extremely little experience with players.
Since she wasn’t all that experienced leading other players, she let the expert do it instead. Lizzy had already prepared herself to lead the party. While everyone was still making their way over to the meeting point, she had been reading through the list of skills and talents that the party members had sent to her.
As the leader, she needed to be familiar with all of her party members’ skills, so she could give them effective commands while in the dungeon. Everyone understood this, so the other members had given her a complete list of their skills along with their descriptions.
Maria was the last to enter the dungeon and just before she stepped through the portal, she turned to Ash and gave him a nod.
“I’m leaving this place to you, Ash.”
“Yes, Your Majesty! Have a fun trip inside the dungeon!”
“Heh.”
Instead of a safe trip, Ash bid Maria a fun trip which earned him a smirk from her. He was confident that nothing inside the dungeon would pose a threat to her, so he said this purposefully.
After stepping through the portal, Maria and her party found themselves inside the castle’s beautiful interior and in front of them, was a throng of animorphed lycans baring their claws and fangs at them.
“Battle formation!”