Maria lightly smiled at the players surrounding her. She readied her ax and waited for any one of them to charge at her, but she started frowning after seeing their lack of response.
"...not coming?"
Her words startled the players. They had been regarding her too lightly and now that they were trying to take her more seriously, they tensed up at her words and waited for the girl to make her move.
"Hmm... guess I'll come to you."
After saying that, Maria quickly darted towards the closest player near her. The other long-ranged players quickly responded by backing away and aiming at the girl.
2 archers readied their bows and the single mage in the aerial party immediately began chanting a spell.
Maria smirked seeing this. Her charge was only a feint. She immediately activated [Calamity Cleave] and threw her ax straight at the mage.
Whether it was because of baseless confidence or just that Maria didn't care, she immediately backed away and begun chanting the [Fire] spell without confirming whether or not her attack had successfully hit her target.
A large sonic boom was all that she needed to confirm whether or not her attack had struck. Unlike on the ground where a large shockwave would be the resultant outcome of her skill activating its AOE stun effect, in the air, a large sonic boom would replace that.
Once she finished casting [Fire], she sent the spell flying towards the mage who was stunned by her skill.
A warrior player saw that Maria was trying to snipe their mage so he quickly began yelling towards the player closest to the mage.
"BLOCK THE SPELL! BLOCK THE SPELL! WE CAN'T HAVE OUR MAGE DY—"
Maria let out another 'evil' smirk and sent an [Angel's Rage] flying into the ball of flames currently heading towards the mage.
One of the players closer to the mage, who was Knight, flew forward to tank her spell, but that was a miscalculation on their part.
They underestimated the large difference between her [M.ATK] and their tanks' [M.DEF]. Not to mention that Maria's high INT stat directly affected the damage of her [Fire] spell, so they weren't prepared for what was coming.
Once the [Fire] struck the shield of the Eclipse player who was going to tank the spell in the mage's stead, it immediately exploded magnificently and raised a large number value on top of the player's head which was followed up by a long string of numbers that dropped the player's HP bar.
-13,560 -980 -980 -980 -980 ... ... ...
Maria's spell depleted over two-thirds of the player's health bar and it quickly depleted to nil after being struck by multitudes of Maria's flaming black feathers.
After the tank fell, the flaming feathers continued on and quickly struck down the mage hiding behind the tank. Once again, Maria had quickly dispatched 2 players from the opposing team.
Seeing another 2 of their teammates quickly falling to the angel in front of them, they couldn't help, but think that this task was a little too big for them. They still had 11 players, but their earlier confidence was shattered at how easily Maria was able to quickly take care of them.
The girl didn't even look strained or troubled. Instead, she had a wide smile on her face as she looked around at them who were surrounding her. It was like they were the ones being surrounded instead of her.
"Sh-shit...tell the captain, no—tell the guild leader that we need back up! We're going to be wiped out by her!"
"D-damn...I'm still not used to fighting in mid-air so I can't even dodge properly!" One of the 2 archer class players in the party said in the chat and the other couldn't help but agree in silence.
Maria's quick transition from a charge to a throw was too sudden. It left them with little time to respond and by the time they knew it, her skill had already struck and successfully stunned them. If this was on the ground, then maybe those two wouldn't have been caught in Maria's AOE stun which caused them to fail in activating their skills and interrupting Maria's chant.
These players finally had their wings, but they didn't have them since the start of the game. Naturally, Maria who had been using them from the start was much more adept at aerial combat than them.
"Hihihi~ this is fun~ well, there's still 11 of you left, so let's dance?"
Maria's ax flew back into her hand. She smiled happily and once more readied it. Letting loose after being confined for so long totally felt good. Whether it was on monster mobs or players, she didn't want to miss this chance!
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Eclipse guild's ground players were supposed to be providing the aerial unit with long-ranged attacks as backup, but unfortunately for them, Maria was too high up in the sky for their spells or projectiles to reach her. She had experience dealing with spell casting and long-ranged ground monsters so she knew how to keep herself safe.
"Hihihi~ let's dance, shall we?"
Her words caused the players around her to pale in fright. Just how could this cute girl say such a cute thing in a terrifying manner? The sounds of Maria singing her incantations and explosions rang out in the air far above the ground where the Eclipse and Fallen Angels were currently fighting their all-out war.
*******
Back on the ground, the Abyssal golem continued to wreak havoc in the battle lines of the Eclipse Guild. It would also occasionally look up at the sky and send a large boulder or a chunk of the earth at the little angel who still had its aggro.
Eventually, however, its aggro was snatched away from Maria by the Eclipse guild. The guild leader had received news that the aerial team was being massacred and that his vice-guild leader had plummeted to his death.
He was revived by one of the guild's priests, but things weren't looking good for the rest of the party members. Even now, his subordinates were receiving the aerial party's death notifications.
Not much time had passed since Eclipses' guild master had dispatched the aerial unit to tie down Maria, but already, more than half of the party had been killed.
"Shit, she has more experience than us, but how is it that 15 players can't even beat one?! Surely, numbers can trump experience in this regard!"
A guild member approached the brooding guild master and reported, "Leader, we've successfully taken the aggro of the boss, should we proceed as planned?"
Hearing this, Eclipse Guild Master, BlackMoon, could only respond with an affirmative despite being somewhat vexed at the thought that his aerial unit, composed of his guild's elite players, couldn't even handle one girl. They already completed their objective to steal the boss' aggro, so in a way, it was their win.
"...Yes. Lure the monster away from the battle. Have division 2 set up the blockade and keep the Fallen Angels at bay. Also, send more of our aerial units to support Aerial Team 1! We can't have that girl getting in our way!"
"But sir...what about the Fallen Angels' aerial players?"
BlackMoon had already understood why his players were losing to only one girl. It was the disparity of their experience. Other than the Angel Race and Devil Race players who could already fly from the start, the rest of the player base was probably in a similar situation.
Only Maria was most likely an exception because unlike the 2 flying races, who were still cordoned in Unitale's Higher Planes, Heaven and Hell, she was roaming free on the planet.
They did have more numbers, and higher levels, and he first thought that this would more than make up their lack of experience, but for some reason, this wasn't the case. Maria's level was only 25 from what the players reported, but her stats were way too high.
He deduced that probably because of her unique race, the girl had a hard time leveling up, but he understood that each level up would boost her stats much higher than a normal player of the same level. He had to treat that level 25 girl on the same measure as those at level 50...or maybe even higher.
As for Fallen Angels' other aerial players...
"They're in a similar situation as us. They've only just begun learning how to fly! Only that Fallen Angel girl is a real threat! We have to hold her down UNTIL we can kill the boss!"
"Yessir!"
Having received the order, BlackMoon's subordinate quickly relayed his orders to DarkSun and had him rally more flight-capable players to go gang up and tie-down Maria.
******
In the air, Maria was having the time of her life. She had forgotten about her earlier objective to lead the boss around and had begun smashing her way through the flying players who were constantly coming at her.
"MARIA!!!"
Just as another victim was added to Maria's PK list, she heard Lizzy calling out to her from behind. She turned around and saw her friend flying towards her with some other players following behind
"Hm? Something wrong Liz?"
"...Mary...you lost the aggro..."
"...Eh?"
Maria flinched and quickly looked around. She saw the golem being led far away by the Eclipse Guild players.
"AHHH!!! THIEVES! COME BACK HERE!"
"W-wait, Mary—"
Before Lizzy could get another word in, her friend had already abandoned all combat notions and made a hasty pursuit of the runaway golem.
"..."
"..."
Seeing how fast she was flying, everyone in the sky was a little dumbfounded. Didn't they all have wings, so how come she was flying like a rocket while they were flying like a pigeon?
"Uhm...so like...we're here to like...stall that girl...since she's not here...we're going to take our leave," DarkSun said while slowly backing away from Lizzy and the other Fallen Angels. He was quickly telling everyone in the chat to hurry up and chase after Maria who had escaped, but from behind him, Lizzy immediately spoke up.
"Oi...where do you think ya'll going? Hah?"
"..."
"Ya'll staying here, we won't let you get in the way of our trump card~"
DarkSun who was busy relaying the orders in the chat saw that there was no way they'd be getting out of this fight.
"...shit, all hands prepare to engage. We'll take care of them first before we head back to back up the Guild Master."
"Take care of us? Hahaha, I think you've got it wrong, buddy. We'll be taking care of you!"
Lizzy said as she rushed straight for DarkSun with her sword raised.
"Take this!"
******
Over at Maria's side, she had let out a sigh of relief after she noticed that Lizzy didn't chase after her and was instead keeping the players who were besieging her earlier at bay.
"Phew...I knew I made a blunder, but I did NOT want to get scolded by Lizzy again!"
"Master, next time, let's not get sidetracked when you're fighting? We had one job, just one job, and we actually failed it. Not just once, but twice." Lilah said while sitting on top of Maria's shoulder.
"Ughh...I'm sowwy..."
When Lizzy had called out to her earlier and reminded her of their objective, she had immediately snapped out of her battle frenzy and immediately knew that she had messed up.
When she saw the boss already in the distance and Lizzy's face that looked like it was about to explode, she decided to play her 'airhead' card and chased after the golem, quickly escaping from her punishment.
"Uuuhhhh...let's steal the monster back from them...actually wait, it was ours, to begin with so we're just taking it back!"
"Master, let's just wait for them to lower the boss' HP while in the air. We'll hide in the clouds and when it reaches low HP, you send a [Ruin] at it and we'll swoop down and take the loot later!"
Hearing Lilah's 'evil' plan, Maria immediately nodded in excitement and agreed. "Yes, yes! We'll do exactly that!"
"Master, look, there's a cloud ahead, head in and let me do the scouting! Since I'm small, they probably won't be able to see me from so high up, I'll tell when to move and which cloud to head into next! We can't let ourselves be spotted by those people or our plan will be ruined!"
"Okay~ okay~!" Maria excitedly cheered. She resolved not to mess this one up because if she did, she'll definitely be scolded by a very scary Lizzy later today.
Maria quickly went into the cloud and prayed that no Iron Hawks were hiding inside. She didn't want a repeat of what happened to her the first time she encountered them.