Zythos winning was without a doubt quite the shocker. It was a simple rush attack and at the same time most needed. Their opponents weren’t like the skilled Succubus assassins but were students who were still top of their division, and their combat levels did display that difference as they were equal in strength once Zythos and the others equipped their NG-Arms. Only their tactics and experience were heavily restricted to the encounters they had at school; they hadn’t expected that Zythos would pull that kind of maneuver, in fact, no one did.
The very fact that he had the moonstone was the real shocker. In fact, this item was quite rare and had no practical purpose other than to cover a small region in darkness.
What Luon didn’t know was that the reason Zythos had it in the first place was that one of the servants in his clan had given it to him and said it was from his mother who died when he was born. Zythos treasured this artifact dearly, and only today did he considered using it.
To others, it was just a useless luxury item, but for him, it was something special.
Zythos returned to the room met his eyes with a large group of shocked people. Most of them thought that he was just going to toss away the victory because of the map choice, and yet here Zythos was coming up with a complete victory.
Arisa who had said mean things to Zythos earlier was speechless, she didn’t know how to congratulate him nor did she apologize, she merely sat dumbstruck in her corner and acted as she usually did. Seeing her lackluster response, Zythos gave a slight nod and sat down to watch the next match.
He knew that the enemy line up he fought was nothing special, but it was still very important to accomplish. Luon, on the other hand, had to fight someone who was many times stronger, faster, and better than he was. His opponent’s combat level was 82 after all, it was like fighting a slightly stronger Clamaris.
Luon felt this match to be troublesome, the real reason why nobody believed that Luon could win was that the gap between someone who is level 70 compared to someone who’s at level 80 was too high to deal with. Although there were people who can fight against foes stronger than themselves, realistically without a technique that transcends the very concept of levels or an item to precisely do the same, he was bound to lose if they had fought fair and square.
Luon needed to apply a different tactic this time around, his opponent wouldn’t just stand around and receive a beating after all, and he might have more tricks up his sleeves like how the Succubus was able to teleport into Arisa’s base.
Luon grouped up his gang and said, “For this match… I’m changing our tactics.”
Everyone nodded, it was something that Luon often said during their matches online. Whenever Luon did something different, all they could do was adapt to the situation. Sometimes the changes were good, sometimes it made things worse. But for this match, they trusted Luon since this battle was literally determining the outcome.
The five of them were teleported into the preparations lounge where Luon locked in a different map choice than usual. He chose a forest type map that had many cliffs, tunnels, and oddly shaped terrain that made it difficult to travel in. The rest of his team members started to wonder what was on his mind as he chose the map, they soon found out as soon as the match began.
Before their eyes was a larva, and it wasn’t just a normal larva that you see small bugs have, it was rather large and about the size of several human beings toppled on top of one another. This was an Inzektor Queen that specialized in developing workers that specialized in food production.
After feeding it food that he summoned from the Crypt of Heroes did it grow into a state where it was operable. The larva began to spew out workers, half the size of human beings and they started to cut down the forest and deliver the materials as nutrients. Dumbstruck by how the Inzektors priorities Luon reminded them of their own duties. He sent Tyron to scout out their opponents, Gizmo and Bendan to intercept and defend against attackers, and as for Thomas, he had something special in store for him. After all, they weren’t using humanoids nor were they using robots.
Unlike the robot army, it was easier to set up the Inzektor army, only there were many disadvantages to using them. In fact, their chain of commands was a mess, they could only communicate using the word of mouth or signals they receive from local Inzektors, and without an authoritative figure, the less intelligent ones often are left to their own devices. Also, because of their messy commands, Luon was restricted to controlling them within a fixed region before they become wanderers and can only slowly expand their influence. Luon once saw a match where someone left his Inzektors to become wanderers while engaging his opponent, the wanderers soon became a third-party force and decimated both teams.
Luon was already having trouble with one opponent, and at this point in time, he didn’t want another.
After summoning a few different Inzektor Queens, based off of the knowledge he studied personally and from what his father handbook had explained, and now he had the basic Inzektor ecosystem become self-supportive.
During this time their opponents didn’t make a move as the 5-minute restriction hadn’t been lifted yet. The demonic beings from Lemegeton were strong, but he didn’t expect an early attack like Zythos had done with an army of wolves since it was pointless without having a soldier as the vanguard.
It was at this moment Tyron had reported his findings.
“They are truly demonic beings to the bones…” Luon muttered as he pondered on the intel.
There were three prominent ways to summon units, the original approach was to use the Crypt of Heroes to summon any kind of unit they wanted using the point system. Another way was to literally spawn them out of reproductive and creative methods like using Inzektors, goblins or robots. The third and final way was for it to spawn using mana.
Just like the school named Daemon’s Gate, this was a portal that led to the underworld known as a demonic portal that would transport random demons to the battleground. The only downside to using the demonic portal was that the entire command table was disabled upon summoning it. Instead, the Crypt of Heroes was transformed into a giant gateway with a swirling green mysterious force in the center of it.
The longer the portal lasts, the more demons continuously spawn at a random pace. This kind of setup was considered the ultimate type of random. If one was lucky, they might only get super strong demons and if they were having a lousy day… well, they might end up with a little army of weak imps.
The world was indeed fifty percent fair, and fifty percent unfair. Among the demons summoned so far there was an army of weak, stupid imps and an intelligent dark knight overseeing them. His overbearing black armor scared the wits of these imps, and they were forced to listen to his commands, according to Tyron’s estimates he was another level 80.
Deminier laughs out loud as he exclaimed, “Hahaha, with you on our side there’s no way we can lose! Come let’s go and destroy them now!”
“Are you sure we should advance recklessly like this? Surely we need to defend our base as well, what if they decided to attack us?” said one of his subordinates.
“Hmph, if you’re that worried then why not the rest of you lot defend the base? Secure the perimeter, my buddy, and I will take the offense,” said Deminier.
“Yes my lord,” echoed the four of them.
The army of imps, Deminier and the dark knight advanced towards the border to wait for when the restriction goes down. The Dark Knight and the imps could have made it over by themselves, but Deminier had them wait as he personally wanted to witness Luon’s team demise.
Tyron who had overseen all of this reported to Luon who thought up a strategy in response to their enemies maneuver.
He gathered up the army of Inzektors and divided the groups into two, one was set to defense while the other, led by Gizmo, Tyron and Bendan were sent to take out their opponents base using a different route.
Taking advantage of the five-minute gap both teams had reached the border without encountering each other, and when the time was up, the match had started. It was a base race.
…
“Darn Inzektors, to think they would consider using them,” cursed Deminier as he swung his blade.
“…” The dark knight didn’t respond as if he was only there for decoration causing Deminier to be even more disappointed. He thought this trip to their opponents base was easy, but not only did he get lost in the complex terrain, every other corner he would be ambushed by Inzektors, losing his sense of direction.
For these kinds of matches, the BMPU did not display a map, it was crucial that the one operating the command table dictate the direction where his teammates would go. However, right now Deminier felt like he was blindfolded and spun around unable to find his target.
And to make things worse, their enemies started to attack their base as they advanced on, completely distracting the one at the commander table to help him determine which direction to take.
“Dark Knight do you have any idea where we’re going?” said Deminier who became frustrated. The latter shook his head from side to side. Deminier gave a sigh, he knew it was pointless to ask and yet he did so anyway.
Deminier felt extremely stressed at the fact that their base was being attacked by their enemies, and although their newly spawned forces and subordinates were keeping them at bay, it can’t last for long.
It was at this time the Dark Knight rose his blade and readied his stance, Deminier sighed, he may have seen this action nearly a hundred times. A swarm of quick Inzektors raided their group as they charged from multiple directions and left the same way. The hit and run tactics were too weak for the two, but it couldn’t be said for the imps who bore the brunt of the attack.
These attacks dropped their initial forces down to half and caused Deminier to be confused in which way to go. Footprints were being spammed everywhere as his own had vanished from sight.
“My lord!” screamed one of his subordinates over the team voice chat group.
“What is it? Don’t tell me you’ve lost already…” said Deminier as he struggles with which direction to take.
“We got an overseer! We’ll send it over to you right away!” the subordinate energetically replied.
“What?! That’s truly some luck! Hahaha, the gods are on my side! Hurry it over, I can’t wait until I receive my rewards” said Deminier.
Deminier sent his gaze towards a direction which he thinks is his base and smiled, once it arrives the tides would turn, although they were on defensive, there was still a chance for him to catch up. Deminier toys around with a little device as he anticipates the arrival of the match changing moment.
