After Maria and Cindy buffed everyone in the party, they opened the door to the final area of the castle’s West Wing and in the middle of the large hall was a woman sitting on a throne and was surrounded by a slew of Lycans who were bowing to her.
Maria let out a smile and said, “Heh, even I don’t get this kind of procession when I’m just addressing my people. That's so over the top!”
The rest of the girls in the party, particularly Lizzy, looked at her oddly and thought to themselves that her processions and formal gatherings were even more extravagant. Of course, no one needed to bow, but the entire hall would be filled to the brim with people.
Others had only seen it on stream or heard about it, while Lizzy had personally experienced it. She could say for certain that Maria really had no right to say what she just said earlier because she was more over the top than the lady sitting on that throne.
“[Inspect].”
Name: Rudina, the Lycan Queen Level: 450 Rank: Unique Boss HP: ?????/?????
MP: ?????/????? Skills: ???, ???, ??? Description: Queen of the Lycans, Rudina, is Lycan King Beowulf’s first wife and the mother of all lycans. She is a rare Lycan shaman that holds the unique power to create an artificial night and moon. Rudina detests the werewolves and is one of the reasons why they experience quite a lot of discrimination in the Wolf God clan’s modern society. She especially hates her rival in love, Ashina, the Queen of the Werewolves
“Hmmm, so this bitch is the reason why the werewolves decided to side with me. Should I thank her or should I kill her to appease the werewolves? Quite hard to decide~” Maria suddenly said after reading through the Lycan Queen’s status screen.
“H-Hey, don’t say something so scary all of a sudden. Remember that there are other people watching right now…”
“Oh, yeah! I’ll keep that in mind, Liz”
“You had better…”
‘This girl and her mouth…’
Lizzy really wondered when her friend had become such a potty mouth. A year ago, she was really pure and innocent, but nowadays, she’s becoming more and more unhinged.
‘It’s definitely because she’s started streaming! I bet her viewers are the ones who taught her!’
Lizzy was more or less correct about her deduction. Maria’s stream really did teach her a lot of things–mostly bad things. Her unhinged character, however, was not something that could be taught. This was something that slowly began to emerge as Maria played the game and didn’t have to care about other people’s perception of her. As the queen of her own nation, she was entitled to do whatever she wanted and not have to be judged by anyone else around her.
She’s been so out of touch with other players and had only been hanging around NPCs who worshiped whatever she did and didn’t see it as a problem that she did whatever she damn well pleased. Thanks to the way people treated her, Maria's true hidden nature began to slowly emerge.
“Alright guys, it looks like this battle will be a little difficult since we have to deal with some adds along with the boss.”
By adds, Lizzy meant additionals–the lycans who were prostrating and bowing to Rudina, the Lycan Queen.
“Sky, I need you, Lilith, and Raffie to deal with them. Mary and I will keep the boss busy until you guys are finished.”
“Alright.”
“I hear ya.”
“Leave it to us.”
Lizzy then turned to Cindy and winked at her, “I’m sure our healer should know what needs to be done.”
“Yes, yes…man, looks like I’ll finally be able to do some proper supporting for once! Haha!” Cindy replied with a hearty laugh.
This entire dungeon run, Cindy felt like she was useless. In the first boss battle, they didn’t need any support from her and it was better off if they were all just DPS players. The second boss rendered her completely useless because she couldn’t use any of her skills and the party had to swap her out temporarily for another member, so now that this boss didn’t seem to have any weird gimmick like the previous one, Cindy felt grateful that she could finally play her role in this party properly.
“Leave the healing and callouts to me! It’s about damn time I start pulling my own weight around here!”
“Okay, let’s get this done!” Lizzy said to everyone. She gave her best friend, who was raring to go, a nod and said, “Let’s go!”
“Finally!”
Since she didn’t want to leave anything to chance, Maria decided to go all-out right from the beginning. A dark purple aura rose from the ground around her and a glowing crack appeared on her chest. She initiated her [Metamorphosis] skill right away at full power and began her transformation.
While she was undergoing her transformation, the people who were watching the stream for the first time from the 5 different sources all had their eyes opened wide in amazement as they bore witness to her skill. Most of the players in Unitale knew about Maria’s ability to transform, but this was the first time most of the players had seen her change into her ‘final form’. The rest of the party didn’t wait for Maria to complete her transformation. They charged towards the Lycans in the hall and initiated the boss monster’s pre-battle dialogue.
“So the invaders have finally arrived here, huh? I thought that wretched tree spirit would’ve at least put a halt to your advances. What a useless guardian!”
Rudina stood up and materialized a book and a scepter in each hand before commanding her subordinates.
“Rise and kill these invaders–”
“HAHAHAHA!”
Before Rudina could even finish her dialogue, someone's manic laughter suddenly interrupted her. The Lycan Queen’s eyes widened in surprise as she quickly raised her scepter in front of her and barely managed to block the ax that was chopping down on her head.
“Y-You!”
“You’re just as noisy as your husband! Why don’t you just shut up and fight?” Maria said with a sneer on her ashen-colored face.
“You talk big for someone who launches sne–”
Before she could finish her words, Rudina saw that her opponent’s eerie, dark purple eyes started shimmering with an ominous glow and she immediately heard alarms go off in her head.
Rudina twisted her body and threw herself to the side, successfully dodging the purple ray of light that was fired from Maria’s eyes which set everything it touched into a blaze of purple flames.
Maria pointed her demonic ax at Rudina and said, “Hah, nice donkey roll, but like I said, you talk too much!”
“...”
Having to roll away on the floor like a donkey just to dodge her opponent’s attack, Rudina was absolutely livid. Not once in her life did she ever have to do something so embarrassing and be ridiculed for it.
“You’ve done it now, you wench!”
Rudina raised her scepter and conjured numerous phantoms of lycans all around her. These phantoms were the lycan ancestors of the past and Rudina was able to call them forth to fight for her. Maria noticed that each phantom had a name and they were all of various levels, but the one thing in common about those levels was that they were all above level 400.
“Taste the might of my lycan ancestors, you savage brute!”
“Savage brute? Heh, speak for yourself, mutt.”
Seeing that Maria was completely unperturbed despite being surrounded by so many of her phantoms, the smile on Rudina’s face cracked and she roared, “Kill her!”
“Hehehe, since you’re bringing in extra help, two can play at that game~”
-----------------------------------
Rewind time to just a moment before Maria clashed with Rudina and interrupted the latter’s pre-battle dialogue. Lizzy and the rest of the party had charged forward to deal with Rudina’s lycan subordinates. Lizzy was supposed to go help Maria fight Rudina and keep her at bay, but she stuck with her party members instead because it looked like Maria was able to handle the situation on her end.
The moment Maria had attacked their queen, the lycans immediately rushed to attack her, but they couldn’t even get close to her because they were repelled by the dark aura that she was exuding. With no other option, the lycans turned towards the rest of Maria’s party and began attacking them instead.
“Dammit, why did we even stop to listen to the Lycan Queen? We should’ve just attacked!”
“That’s just second nature to us! We aren’t crazy like Maria who completely ignores everything and just attacks!”
“We have to deal with these guys quickly and support her! Maria may be strong, but that’s a level 450 unique boss monster!”
“In her state, she can hold out just fine on her own! Let’s do this properly and make sure not to take too much damage! Don’t use any of your big skills! Save it for the actual boss fight! Maria’s transformation only lasts 1 hour and who knows? We might take longer to defeat Rudina!”
The girls engaged in an intense melee with the lycans. Skills flew left and right while Lilith’s spells blasted the lycans away or froze them in place. The battle on their end was raging fiercely, but it quickly ground to a halt as the entire hall suddenly turned dark.
This immediately stopped the battle between the girls and the lycans. They all turned towards Maria and Rudina to see that the former seemed to be at a disadvantage since she was surrounded by numerous level 400 phantoms.
Despite looking like she was at a disadvantage, Maria looked completely unperturbed. Instead, she seemed excited. Everyone, including the lycans, all soon noticed that the darkness that had descended upon the hall was actually coming out of Maria and the darkness made the hall continue to turn darker and darker until finally, it felt like the day had actually changed into night as their surroundings nearly turned pitch black..
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
The ability to create an artificial night was something that the girls read from Rudina’s status menu description, but this ‘night’ didn’t seem like something Rudina had conjured. Everyone soon noticed that this darkness wasn’t the darkness of the night at all.
Instead, it was like the darkness that came from the abyss–pure and unadulterated. This darkness felt eerie and it induced a sense of dread and horror to everyone present in the hall.
“Hehehehe~”
It was sudden, but from the pitch-black darkness, a small pair of purple flames suddenly appeared. First it was just one pair, but more and more began to appear until the entire hall was practically full of them. They appeared all over the place. On the pillars, the floor, the ceiling, the walls–everywhere.
“Since you’re bringing in extra help, two can play at that game~”
The darkness began to take shape around the numerous pairs of flames and they ‘stood’ up. The scene alone caused Rudina and her lycans along with Lizzy and the rest of Maria’s party members to feel a chill run down their spines as they watched the entire hall suddenly become filled with shadow monsters and undead.
Even the viewers who were watching the party’s stream couldn’t help but feel a chill at what they saw and they weren’t even there to see it in person. The person who caused all this suddenly spoke up amid the creeping silence and said, “I was deliberating on what I should do with you after I’ve defeated you, but now I’ve made up my mind…”
Maria paused and gave Rudina a crazed smile before continuing, “That ghost summoning ability…I want it!”
What happened next was something that came out of a horror movie. The shadows and undead charged at the enemies in front of them from all directions. Maria had completely forgotten that the entire boss raid was being streamed and she went on a completely unhinged battle frenzy.
She ordered her shadow puppets and undead to eradicate Rudina’s lycan subordinates while her Champion-level shadows and undead each picked a lycan phantom and charged at them.
Maria’s shadows and undead were a bit lower in level compared to the lycans and the phantoms, so on paper, they shouldn’t pose a problem to them, but since there were so many of them, the lycans were slowly being overwhelmed.
Maria’s [Metamorphosis] subskill, [Unholy Domain], also helped level the playing field a bit. However, Maria’s ungodly amount of Divine Energy played a bigger part in the lycans’ downfall.
The lycans put in everything they had to try and defend their queen, but no matter what they did, they couldn’t permanently destroy a single one of Maria’s shadow puppets or undead soldiers.
Even after they struck a fatal blow to the shadows or undead, they would just get right back up again like zombies and start clawing, biting, hacking, and chipping away at them and the phantoms.
The people watching along with Maria’s friends also couldn’t help but wonder why this was happening. Normally, the shadows or undead that ‘died’ would disappear right on the spot, but this didn’t happen.
The only explanation they could come to was that it was one of Maria’s skills being put into play. Their deduction was true. It was the [Metamorphosis] skill’s subskill, [Unholy Link].
Using the skill would establish a link between her and her summoned beings. Maria exploited this link and used it in an ingenious way. Maria linked as many of her summons as she could together before linking them with her undead champion Morte and then linking only Morte to herself.
She provided Morte with an abundant amount of Divine Energy, which was then distributed to the rest of Maria’s summoned soldiers. Any damage the shadow and undead sustained would be shared with Morte, but with his link to Maria, who constantly provided him with Divine Energy, his HP and MP would always recover again and again.
Maria wouldn’t lose a single bit of HP as long as she kept providing Morte with her Divine Energy and this allowed her army to become immortal. It would’ve been impossible if Maria used her [Unholy Link] to link herself directly to her entire army. Her shadows and undead would just drain all of her resources in a matter of minutes if she did it that way.
Morte’s [Undead Legion] ability allowed him to summon or re-summon his soldiers and maintain them for as long as his HP and MP could last. After undergoing numerous upgrades, Morte’s [Undead Legion] skill only required him to use 0.1% of his total MP–or HP–to summon and maintain his soldiers. Maria used her resources to supplement Morte’s so he could continue to respawn any of the summons that died in battle.
Compared to Maria’s vast pool of Divine Energy, 100% of Morte’s mana was just a tiny drop in the sea. The Skeleton King was acting like a hub that provided the rest of her army with resources to sustain themselves and prevent them from dying. It was a combination of her and her familiar’s skills that allowed this absurdity to happen.
Unless someone cut off the link between Maria and Morte, the shadows and undead that she summoned would never disappear. Of course, Maria could only maintain this for 20 minutes at most and she couldn’t use ANY of her skills.
If she used a skill, it would decrease the duration of her army’s immortal state because she would be using up her Divine Energy. At the moment, however, Maria didn’t need to use her army’s immortal state for too long, so she quietly began channeling some of her abilities.
‘I’ve always wanted to use this combo at least once!’
There was an extremely excited look on her face which was quite contrary to the look Rudina and her friends had on theirs.
Maria’s friends who were supposed to be participating in the battle had been regulated to the sidelines. Now it was entirely Maria’s show. They didn’t complain, however, because what they were witnessing first hand was something truly incredible.
After this battle, Lizzy needed to ask Maria how she was able to keep her summons from being recalled after they were supposed to die. The rest of the girls in the party were also curious.
It was quite fortunate that their curiosity overwhelmed the dreadful feeling that was crawling up their spines which came from watching Maria’s horrific and gory battle that was unfolding in front of them.
On Rudina’s end, she couldn’t understand what was happening at all. The shadows and undead couldn’t be destroyed no matter what she did. They were always getting back up, even after they were split into pieces.
She felt a creeping sense of dread as she watched her fellow lycans get mutilated by their undying enemies before getting dragged down into the pitch black darkness that shrouded the entire hall.
“AHHH!”
“No! Save me!”
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!!!”
The horrifying screams that came from the lycans just before they were dragged into the darkness was a sight to be feared. Even worse was the process that happened before they were dragged into the abyss.
The lycans did everything in their power to resist the shadows and undead, but their efforts were in vain because their enemies would just get back up over and over again. They slowly lost their footing and with the battle dragging on, the lycans began losing their stamina and focus.
Their struggle caused them to experience the horrors of the shadows and undead even longer. They had to endure the slow mutilation before being killed in the most gruesome manner and seeing it happen live, not many in the stream’s audience were capable of stomaching it. Some even start to feel a little sympathy for the lycans even though they were supposed to be the enemies.
Of course, there were some people who were already used to this. The Blackhand Mercenary Company were all fervent fans of Maria’s, so they were completely unperturbed by the gory scene that was happening on the stream.
In the party, Cindy and Lilith couldn’t hold their stomachs and they began throwing up. They could no longer watch it anymore and had to turn their heads away from it, so that they wouldn’t feel sick. The scene that they saw earlier couldn’t be erased from their minds so quickly, so they had to take some time to calm down their nerves.
Rafflesia was used to this because she was a frequent watcher of Maria’s streams, but she couldn’t help grimacing because watching and actually being in the midst of it all was entirely different. She could smell the appalling stench of blood that spread throughout the entire hall. The screams of the living as they died were also shaking her up real badly and the most unnerving thing was that her idol, Maria, was just watching all of this happen while floating in the air without a single reaction or emotion on her face.
‘M-My idol is a lot more scary than I thought she’d be…’
Lizzy and Sky didn’t react much, but this was because they had experienced something just as gruesome as this. They were always at the frontlines in the war against the Lycans and war was a truly bloody and unpleasant thing. Even though they were somewhat used to this bloody scene, they didn’t like it at all.
“I can tell…Mary isn’t enjoying this.”
“Hm?”
“She’s had her eyes fixed on Rudina and nowhere else. She’s completely blocked out everything else that’s happening.”
“I guess…that's just how she deals with this.”
“Her skills and method are just a little too terrifying. Can’t she just kill her enemies like everyone else?”
“Well, at least her shadows are doing a good job cleaning the battlefield. I’d hate to see what the hall would be like if they didn’t clean things up…”
“Ugh…”
Just like her friends said, Maria was just hovering in the air with her weapons in hand. She was not doing anything and was just eyeing Rudina–and only Rudina–like a juicy piece of meat that she couldn’t wait to get her greedy hands on.
It seemed impossible to convert Rudina into her follower, so Maria was going to do the next best thing, kill her and raise her as one of her undying subjects of darkness and death.
“Hihihi~”
Maria’s bone chilling laughter reached Rudina’s ears and the Lycan Queen immediately knew that she was the biggest problem and not the shadows and undead that were summoned. Rudina readied her scepter and began casting a few spells. She finished chanting her spells quickly and fired them straight at Maria.
‘In order to destroy these wretched beings, I have to kill the summoner!’
In order to deal with any summons, the quickfire way was to kill the summoner. Rudina couldn’t drag the battle out any longer because if she did, her subordinates would surely die and be dragged down into the dark abyss.
Unfortunately for her, Maria was much too skillful to be hit by any of her spells, especially when she was in her [Metamorphosis] skill’s complete state. Maria didn’t even need to dodge the attacks, she directly cut them down. She did receive damage from attacking an incoming spell, but it was negligible and her battle regeneration immediately healed her up to full HP.
Despite seeing that, Rudina didn’t stop her attempts to kill Maria. She chanted spell after spell and fired them all at Maria in desperation.
Maria wasn’t just going to sit around and take those attacks. She used her shadows to throw a few lycans into the air and used them to intercept Rudina’s attacks. Seeing her spells hitting her own allies, Rudina let out a cry of dismay, but couldn’t do anything else.
Rudina paused only for a brief moment before continuing with her attacks. Even if they didn’t work and only hit her allies, Rudina didn’t dare stop because she felt that once she did, her mind would break. She didn’t know that she was being affected by Maria’s [Mark of Lust] and Sin Skill, [Decrepify], which were slowly eroding away at her spirit.
It wasn’t just [Decrepify] that she used on Rudina. Maria was using all of her Sin skills on her and this stacked a lot of status ailments onto the poor Lycan Queen which caused her attacks, defenses, and spirit to falter little by little.
The gradual decline of Rudina’s mental and physical state was caused by Maria’s skills, but it was only a gradual decline because Rudina’s level was so much higher than her level. If they were at the same level, her Sin skills would’ve turned Rudina into an idiot almost immediately.
The only Sin skills Maria didn’t use on Rudina were [Dark Ray] and [Death Sentence]. The former because Maria didn’t want to shock Rudina with the damage her skill would cause which could end up dispelling some of the mind-contamination debuffs she applied to her, and the latter because it couldn’t be used on boss monsters. The fight continued and Rudina saw the last of her Lycan subordinates about to get dragged down into the dark abyss.
“My lady, please help me! Please help! I don’t–I don’t want to die!”
The moment she heard those words, Rudina dashed towards the last lycan who was being dragged into the abyss and swept away the shadows and undead that were trying to pull her subordinate down.
Unfortunately, no matter what she did, the shadows and undead didn’t go away. Rudina dropped her weapons and began trying to pull her subordinate out of the abyss. Over half of her subordinate's body was in the darkness and she desperately tried to save him…but to no avail.
“My lady!”
“No! Please!”
“AAHHH–”
The frightened scream was cut short as the lycan was suddenly dragged into the darkness.
“NO!”
Rudina tried clawing at the ground but nothing happened. She looked around and saw that there was nothing left in the hall besides her…and the numerous number of enemies that were creeping around her. She quickly picked up her scepter and began transforming into her lycan form, but before she could, she saw something erupt from the middle of her chest.
“...!”
A bloody fountain began spewing from the wound on her body and she felt her entire body turn cold as her lifeforce left her body through the blade that had pierced her. It was slowly eating her up.
‘N-No…I…’
“Hahaha…you displayed quite the hilarious performance just now. Did you really think that you could’ve saved your people when you were this powerless?”
“Cough...” Rudina couldn’t say anything and only coughed up blood in response to her enemy’s provocation.
‘Just a little bit more and her mind will be at my mercy!’
“You don’t have anyone else to blame but yourself and remember, you were the one who killed your people.”
“J-Just…kill me…” Rudina managed to barely say as she coughed up even more blood.
She had a massive HP bar, but the undying horde of shadows and undead clawed her HP to critical levels in only a few minutes and with Maria constantly playing with her mind, she didn’t even realize that she was dying until Maria’s scythe pierced her.
At this point, the amount of status ailments that were affecting Rudina was just too much and she didn’t have enough strength left anymore. Since there was nothing left she could do, she just wanted to die now. Maria smiled after she heard the words Rudina had just said and inwardly began to cheer.
‘Got you!’
“It doesn’t work like that, my dear. Once you’ve caught my eye, you don’t get to die~”
Everyone who was watching was confused by what Maria meant when she said that. Previously, she had said that she wanted Rudina’s ghost summoning ability–the ability to summon the lycan phantoms that they all saw earlier, but did this mean Maria was going to spare her?
Of course not. There was more than one way to make the phantom summoning ability hers and Maria thought of the best one. She placed a hand on Rudina’s head and mumbled, “[Soul Drain]...”
The small light of life that was left in Rudina’s eyes faded and she died. However, Maria’s wasn’t done just yet.
“[Unholy Raise].”