Maria continued testing her newest servant and the results were quite satisfying. Even though Rudina was still underleveled, the abilities she had were very useful and compensated for her current lack of overall power.
Rudina’s passive skill, [Hymn of the Dead], was useless unless she used her Ultimate skill because no one in Maria’s party had the [Ghost] trait. Only the ghosts summoned by her Ultimate skill possessed that trait, so only they would benefit from the passive ability’s [Traceless] buff.
The [Traceless] buff was quite broken because it made all of the ghosts Rudina summoned immune to all forms of damage. Monsters or players that could deal Pure Damage were very scarce, so it was safe to say that Rudina’s Ultimate skill was ‘unbreakable’.
Rudina herself wouldn’t get the [Traceless] buff because she was the caster. If she could apply that buff onto herself, then she literally would be Maria’s undying servant.
When the party made it back to the castle’s main lobby, Rudina had leveled up to level 127 and all of her skills had leveled up by at least 1 or 2 levels. Maria had plenty of attack type servants in her Shadow and Undead Armies, so a support type like Rudina was something she gladly welcomed into her ranks.
Now, her army finally had a proper support unit who could heal and buff them in battle. Although her armies could replenish their numbers indefinitely as long as Maria had enough Divine Energy and there were plenty of corpses around to use as materials, it was still a complete waste of resources.
Having Rudina around would resolve a little bit of this problem. After all, Maria didn’t want to go around the battlefield post-battle just to find suitable corpses to use as materials to replenish the number of soldiers in her two armies.
This was something she and undead champions did after a battle because a lot of their numbers would’ve diminished after a fight. Enemy players were the main cause of the loss of her shadow puppets and undead soldiers.
Sometimes, they’d even be able to defeat one of her Undead Champions which resulted in the undead that they summoned to be banished back into the undead realm along with their summoner.
It was a good thing that Maria would never permanently lose her undead champions when they were defeated or else she would’ve long since gotten a headache because of them since she would have to find suitable replacements for them whenever this happened. Not only that, but she’d also have to help those replacements level up or else they’d just uselessly die again on the battlefield.
“We’re back where we started…” Cindy said as she gazed at the large, majestic double door nearby that led to the final boss room.
Lizzy nodded while spinning the key in her hand and said, “Yeah, but this time, we have the key to the room. Is everyone ready?”
“Give us a minute. The trek back here was rather taxing on everyone’s stamina. The monsters doubled and although Maria’s army took care of a good portion of them, it was still a little stressful after all.”
“Let’s rest up a bit. Everyone’s free to continue the raid, right?”
“Yeah, no need to worry about that. We’re good. We just have to rest a bit.”
“Mhm.”
The dungeon raid had been going on for over 6 hours now. Normal dungeon raids wouldn’t take so long, but this was a unique dungeon, so the girls expected the raid time to be pretty long, though not this long.
Although it was only 2 hours in the real world, it doesn’t change the fact that 6 hours had gone by for everyone in the game. 6 hours of constant fighting with only short breaks in between to heal themselves and replenish their stamina and mana, it was no wonder that Cindy and the others who weren’t used to doing extremely long raids were mentally exhausted.
Lizzy was only a little tired, but Maria was completely unfazed. She was used to long hours of monster grinding because of her absurd EXP requirement to level up. Lizzy had been subjected to a few of her long grinds and just a while back, she had teamed up with her friend inside of the Underworld. Thanks to her prior experience, Lizzy was able to cope with the long raid.
Everyone was impressed by Maria’s stamina, including those who were watching the dungeon raid stream because she still remained pretty energetic while everyone looked a tad lethargic.
“Are we resting?” Maria suddenly asked. She had been so busy looking at her dark army’s gains that she wasn’t paying attention to the party’s conversation and only took notice after seeing them stop in front of the double doors leading to the boss room.
“Yeah. Everyone’s feeling a little drained right now. Not everyone here is used to long sessions of hunting or raiding.”
“Okay. Just let me know when we’re ready to go. I’ll be going around with Rudina and the others to hunt more of the lycans. The east wing surely still has some monsters around.”
“O-Okay…take your time.”
“Un.”
Maria spread her wings and quickly bolted away with her Undead and Shadow Champions following close behind her. The ordinary soldiers remained in the hall with the party as Maria had ordered them to stand guard while her friends were resting.
Thanks to them being in a party, the girls who were resting would still be able to gain a bit of the EXP from the monsters Maria would be hunting though most of it would still go to her and her underlings.
“And there she goes…that girl. She never tires, does she?” Cindy started with a hint of admiration.
“Oh, she gets tired, but not until 10 or so hours have passed. I’ve tuned into one of her endurance streams and she went on for about 12 hours!”
“S-Seriously?”
“Yeah. I think the VOD is still up, so you can check the time.”
“...Dang…”
“...I bet she only stopped the stream at 12 hours because it is Switch's regulation to not stream for more than 12 hours... she probably continued playing even after that, right?”
“Y-Yeah…the stream popped up again an hour later and she kept going for another 3 hours…”
“S-So 15 hours in total???”
“16 hours if you count the 1 hour delay…”
“I understand that it’s only 7 hours in real life, but doesn’t it strain her mentally to stay playing for so long???”
Lizzy sat down and jumped into the conversation Cindy and Rafflesia were having and she shed some light onto how Maria was able to pull off playing the game for 15 hours straight.
“She’s got the latest high-end gaming capsule so she won’t get sick or feel sick even if she plays for so long.”
“O-Oh, then I guess that makes sense. I’d be seriously worried for her health if otherwise…”
“Yeah, but it’s not like me or her family and friends would just let her be if she was actually doing that knowing that it could harm her body…” Lizzy said this and was reminded of something. She shook her head and sighed after remembering that she had actually let her friend get sick from playing the game before.
It wasn’t her fault because she didn’t know of Maria’s condition, but she still felt guilty for letting her get to that point. Thankfully, it was resolved and Maria was okay now.
“Anyway, let’s just rest until Maria gets back. It’ll take at least an hour or so if she wants to clear everything in the east wing and get back to us…”
“The west wing took a whole lot longer to clear than the east wing, huh?”
“Yeah, and speaking of that, Mary’s back…”
“What? So fast?”
The girls turned their heads and saw their friend who left a moment ago come back into the hall while sporting a look of dissatisfaction.
“Mary? What’s wrong?”
Maria pouted and replied, “Ugh, my dad wants me to stop and take a break for a few hours…”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“O-Oh…well, we have been playing for a while now. I think it’s fine to take a break for now and continue the boss raid later?”
“Yeah…I think that’s for the best. We shouldn’t neglect our own well-being after all.”
“Let’s stop here then. We’ll reconvene tomorrow and proceed with the boss raid then,” Lizzy said decisively.
She didn’t want to insist on continuing with the raid because she too wanted to take a break. Lizzy actually wanted to stop now, but didn’t know how to bring it up to everyone since they were pretty hyped up about the boss fight ahead.
Lizzy had to thank Maria’s dad for stepping in at just the right moment. Since the progress of the unique dungeon wouldn’t reset, it wasn’t a problem if they left the dungeon and paused the raid to rest.
“Alright guys, let’s continue this tomorrow! I think we can all use a break!”
“Mhm.”
“Okay.”
The day quickly passed in real life and everyone took the time to rest. In the game, everyone was waiting with bated breath for when the raid would restart once again. No one knew what would happen and how the planet’s main story would develop after Maria conquered the Lycans. If she completed the dungeon, it would mean that she had successfully taken over the largest power on the Vanargand continent.
In Unitale, when a player took control of the largest power of a certain faction, it would usually mean that the majority–if not all–of the faction that the power was leading would now be under the player or organization who had taken over it.
This meant every asset that the conquered power had would now be in that player’s hands. By asset, it meant land, gold, people, and anything else that the power controlled before it was conquered.
The very proof of this was Maria herself. She had managed to completely conquer the blood faction and cement herself as the leader of the vampires and monsters of the Dreyra continent.
There were some rebellions, but those were quelled very easily once Maria struck the hammer down on them. Previous members and supporters of the blood faction were quick to change sides and this made the succession of power extremely quick and easy.
It was why Maria was able to completely take control of the blood continent, Dreyra, in a relatively short amount of time without meeting or having to deal with too many mishaps.
The players that had arrived on Vanhal had been researching into the past events of the continent and many learned about Maria’s conquest war. This much information was easy to obtain because it wasn’t a secret or anything.
To spread her faith, Maria had to let her missionaries preach to the people about her exploits, so gathering information about her past deeds was really easy. Only some information was kept secret, such as the fact that the former Blood Lord, Elizabeth, was still alive and now working under her.
The general public of the Dire, aka the NPC community, didn’t know about Elizabeth being the true Blood Lord. All they knew was that Siegfried was the previous Blood Lord that Maria had vanquished in order to take control of Dreyra’s Blood faction.
That part of history was going to be kept under wraps because Maria didn’t want to advertise to the people, especially the players, that a formidable NPC like the Blood Lord, was one of her subordinates.
At the moment, the thunder spirit Raiju was her strongest subordinate since she was a half-divine being. Second was Elizabeth, third was Ash, and finally Carmilla. The 4 of them were the protectors of the Dire that Maria entrusted with the security and handling of her Empire.
Of course, the people only knew about Raiju, Ash, and Carmilla. Elizabeth was the only one who remained hidden in the shadows and only appeared publicly as Maria’s personal secretary. Keeping a card hidden under her sleeve was always a good plan and Maria liked having an ace in her deck of cards.
Even though she didn’t want to admit it, Maria had to keep in question Raiju’s loyalty to her. Despite having entrusted the spirit with some responsibilities, she felt that there was some insincerity in the spirit’s actions.
There was no factual basis for her distrust of Raiju. Maria simply had a gut feeling to not trust the lightning spirit even though she was bound to her by a pact. Her gut feeling really rewarded her because it didn’t take too long for her to receive bad news from the people she had ordered to keep a close eye on Raiju’s activities.
Raiju was a weakened divine spirit, but a divine spirit was still a divine spirit. She didn’t know how those in the divine realm conducted their business, so she had to be careful. Even though the pact she had with Raiju let her know whether the spirit was thinking about committing any treachery towards her, it had stopped at some point.
Usually, she would be able to feel a little bit of Raiju’s rebellious nature, but at some point, she stopped feeling anything from the pact. It was still there, but she felt as if there was something lost.
Maria was still only a mortal who had obtained some divinity, so there could be some problem between their pact that she wasn’t aware of. Raiju seemed a little too free to do her own things and this caught Maria’s attention early on after she stopped feeling anything from the pact, which only raised her level of vigilance towards the spirit.
Her scrutiny paid off because the bad news she received from her subordinates was the fact that her ‘trusted’ subordinate seemed to be in contact with the people who were opposing her in her conquest of the Vanargand continent. What more, these weren’t just any ordinary people, but Hecate’s people–the people of the player whom she deeply resented in the game.
Zhuge Lan was the person Raiju had been in contact with and although Maria’s subordinates didn’t recognize the person when the two had their secret meetings, Maria was able to completely catch on to who it was when she heard their description of the man.
After all, he was the audacious person who had managed to trap her in some kind of weird formation and continued to bug her throughout the entire conquest war over Vanargand with some of those formations.
The fact that Raiju was in contact with him just proved to Maria that the lightning spirit really wasn’t up to anything good. It was not a wonder why, despite all this time, Raiju’s character window still displayed her as a ‘Mischievous Lightning Spirit’ and not just ‘Lightning Spirit’. She had her subordinates continue to keep an eye on her and decided not to do anything right away even though she found out about the contact between the two.
Maria wanted to know what was going on. Just knowing that Raiju was in contact with her nemesis’ subordinate wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to know everything and see the big picture that the two were trying to create.
That was why Maria wasn’t surprised when she suddenly received news from her friends that the people guarding the entrance to the Lycanthrope Castle were under attack. By the time she and her friends logged back into the game, it was already too late.
The people guarding the castle dungeon’s entrance had been routed and her party who had just logged back into the game were surrounded by enemies because their login point was being camped by the enemy.
“...Hah…I knew it…”
Lizzy warily looked at the hundreds of people around her and asked her friend, who seemed unsurprised by their current predicament, “M-Mary, what’s happening? I just received news from the team that they were being attacked. What happened to them? There’s no way that they’ve all been killed so quickly, right?”
The house that they had set as their login point had been surrounded and the party were now at the entrance of the house, but surrounded on all sides by hostile enemy players. They were a mix of PKers and players from the various factions that were fighting against Maria in the war.
Maria looked around with a cold look on her face before saying, “...Dead–no, they’ve probably been captured. If they died, they would’ve sent us a message in real life or something…and I bet I know who captured or trapped them…”
She turned her gaze over to the lightning spirit and the effeminate young man that was wearing traditional Chinese garb who were blocking the entrance to the Lycanthrope Castle dungeon with the guild leaders of the enemy player faction.
“T-There are hundreds of players surrounding us! H-How are we gonna get out of here?”
“Dammit, we should’ve been more prepared for this! Fricking Caedes and Eos! They’ve joined hands to sabotage us!” Cindy cried in anger.
Lilith was angry, but she didn’t know what to do right now, there were just too many players surrounding them, “We gotta do something! We can’t just hand over our dungeon to them!”
“O-Our Summons from the 2nd planet! We should use them now!” Rafflesia quickly said, which prompted the rest of the party members to quickly start chanting the summoning incantation for their Summons.
“Oh no you don’t!” Zhuge Lan said as he waved his fan, signaling to the numerous players surrounding Maria and her dungeon raid party.
The party braced themselves for an attack, but the players didn’t jump at them. Instead, they pulled something out of their inventory and began stabbing it into the ground.
“No! A formation–”
Maria was cut off because, all of a sudden, her surroundings began to twist out of shape until, finally, she was stuck in the middle of a barren, foggy field with the rest of her party members.
“Maria, what happened?!” Sky asked.
“We’re stuck inside of a formation…” she replied.
“A formation? Like the ones from the war?”
“Yeah…but this one is much more complex considering that over a hundred players have provided help in creating it…”
“Ugh, so that’s what those iron staves were for earlier?”
“...”
In the next moment, the members of Maria’s party heard a voice booming from all around them.
“I’ll have you girls stay here for now. We can’t have you interrupting OUR dungeon raid now, hehe.”
“Dammit, you despicable thieves!”
“They waited until we cleared all of the secondary bosses and now that we’re at the final boss, they’re trying to steal it!”
“Ugh, don’t these people know any shame?!”
Lizzy calmly walked over to her friend and asked, “Maria, what do we do?”
“Don’t worry. I expected something like this to happen.”
Her friend was the only one who seemed calm while everything transpired chaotically in front of them. Everyone else was flustered because of the sudden development, but she was the only one who was calm…as if she expected something to happen and was just waiting for it.
“You expected this to happen?”
“Yeah, my ‘faithful’ little servant betrayed me. When I catch her, I’m going to eat her divinity and devour her just like I should’ve done back then…”
“...”
Lizzy nearly reeled back in fear when she felt her friend’s sudden burst of bloodlust. Even though she seemed calm, she was actually seething with rage on the inside.
“Don’t worry, this formation will collapse in a while and everyone outside will die. After that, we’ll enter the castle and deal with the thieves…”
“C-Can we do that? There’s an entrance limit to the dungeon…” Rafflesia said as she reminded everyone of the dungeon’s entrance requirement.
“...”
“Oh yeah…we won’t be able to enter the dungeon…”
“Tch, does this mean we can’t do anything but wait until they clear the dungeon?”
“Th-They might fail their run though! If they fail, they’ll naturally get ejected from the dungeon, right?”
The girls in the party were dismayed because even if they got out of the trap formation, there was nothing they could do to the players who had entered the dungeon.
Maria sighed before saying, “...I can’t bring any of you guys with me, but I should be able to enter the dungeon.”
“Huh? How?”
Lizzy thought for a moment before her eyes brightened up and she exclaimed, “Oh!”
Maria smiled at her friend and explained to everyone else, “Remember guys, the entrance requirement is ME plus 5 other players. They can only send in 5 players as the final 6th spot will always be reserved for me.”
“Will you be okay on your own?” Cindy asked.
“Alone? Big Bro’s girlfriend, don’t you remember? I’m never alone,” Maria replied with a cunning smile on her face as her shadow wriggled a little.
“Ah! That’s true…but then, how are we going to get out of this formation though?”
“Don’t worry, I told Ash to take care of everything…”
“Hm?”