Chapter 80: Her Majesty

All told, there weren’t a lot of people involved in the battle. There were tribal skirmishes which boasted larger numbers than this. Nevertheless, the fight between the players and the Society of the Secret Eye was a fierce one.

The Secret Eye’s alchemist proved to be all but worthless, swiftly dispatched by the players. However, with his dying breath he activated some Bone Incense. They weren’t very far from the Valley of the Tragic Dead. Although the royal army regularly patrolled the area, there were always a few undead wandering through the region.

The incense smoke wafted through the air, and skeletons began pouring in.

Skeletons didn’t discriminate between the living, and attacked people on both sides. Nevertheless, they had a larger effect on the players. Comparing their best fighters as well as their average combat strength, the players were at a slight disadvantage, and were relying upon their morale, their numbers, and the element of surprise to gain the upper hand.

Ignoring the question of morale for the time being, as the battle continued to drag on, the shock value from the ambush naturally dissipated. Having to engage the skeletons as well meant they no longer outnumbered the enemy by the same proportion.

Having become more accustomed to leadership, Edward immediately noticed that the enemy seemed to have realized the importance of their support classes, and what might be their version of Rogues were already circling around to flank their formation, hoping to pick off what few Clerics they had.

“Warriors, Taunt the enemy! Protect the Clerics!” Edward hollered at the top of his voice. “Everyone else, get the Bosses!”

In a game, this sort of strategy could easily lead to their downfall, since a Boss would typically be surrounded by elite units. The better way to go about things would be to focus fire on those elite units to efficiently bring them down beforehand, then regroup to attack the Boss.

But this was no game, and they weren’t slaying monsters—they were up against real, live people.

Morale was a very real concern. Edward had infiltrated the Secret Eye’s camp before, where he’d learned that this faction of the Valla Empire was basically united in the fear of their leader, the Black Whip.

In other words, defeating the Black Whip would also extinguish the enemy’s fighting spirit!

It wasn’t mandatory for Warriors to tank up with shields—however, as with Brawling, there were specialized skills involving shields, mainly concerned with improving defense and health, as well as some counter-attack techniques. Among these techniques, the most useful was undoubtedly ‘Taunt’. In situations like these, Shield Warriors truly shone.

“Hey, maggot!”

“Why don’t you run home and cry to your husband?”

“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!”

Using the Taunt skill meant actually using your own voice to draw the enemy’s attention, but there was no practical difference between simply bellowing ‘Taunt!’, or embellishing it with something else, so it was a mystery why Shield Warriors always felt the need to get fancy with it.

Perhaps they built up a lot of resentment from tanking all that damage.

Smack! Leah, going toe-to-toe with the elite enemy troops, let her guard down for an instant, and her banner-adorned spear was knocked out of her hands by a canny foe.

“Haha, you’re finished!”

Brandishing dual scimitars, the Secret Eye fighter ran a tongue over his blades in an obscene gesture, his face alight with wicked delight. He wanted to see this blonde babe cowering in terror and panic before him.

Although he was a fairly high-ranking member within the Society, whenever any of the members committed a serious offence, he always carried out the punishment personally. He took great pleasure in seeing their horror, despair, hatred, and desperation as he carved them up.

This time, however, things didn’t go as he’d expected.

“Oh? I don’t think so.” Leah glanced at her fallen spear with a look of disappointment. It had been her reward for being the event NPC during the raid on the Rotten Bones Church. Xi Wei had bequeathed the weapon upon her personally. It was merely an Elite-tier item with the Indestructible property, which also extended the radius of her Auras by 20%.

As a Warrior Princess, Leah was festooned with Auras. That Aura-expanding banner-spear was the perfect item for her in a team fight.

But the thing was that it was mainly useful only during team fights. That was the only time when using it was worthwhile. In a solo duel, however, it was crap. It only had the stats of an Elite-tier item, and she didn’t have any skills which required it to be equipped.

The truth was that it wasn’t her best weapon, in spite of the way it gleamed with divine radiance. Others might look upon it and imagine it to be an immensely powerful artifact—completely ignoring the longsword sheathed at her hip!

“My god, won’t you avert your eyes from me for a moment…” with a whispered prayer, she drew the blade.

“What’s this? You fancy a sword fight, now? Too bad for you—even more so than spears, I happen to specialize in defeating opponents with swords!”

“Let’s see you defend yourself against me, then!” With a flick of her wrist, the princess’s sword became a bladed whip!

At the same time, something changed in her expression. The cast of her features changed from pious to haughty in the blink of an eye, her lips twisted into a vicious sneer.

Her Viper Blade whirled through the air in a flashing blur, lashing and snapping all about her!

“Kneel before me, uwahahahahaha!”

Every rock and tree within reach of her whip-blade was split and sundered effortlessly, until everything had been shredded into a million fragments.

The Secret Eye swordsman frantically parried a couple of strikes before being consumed by the whirling bladestorm. When the blade fell away at last, his badly lacerated body simply toppled over, barely recognizable as human.

“That’s… not… a sword…” he managed to gasp with his last, dying breath.

The brutality of that display meant that neither friend nor foe dared to get too close to Princess Leah for a while.

“Your-your Highness…” One of her bodyguards squeaked, approaching on tip-toes.

“You will refer to me as Your Majesty!” Leah snapped in cold reply.

“Uh… Your Highness…” he choked at the words, and when he saw the chilling light in her eyes, he stammered, “Your Majesty!”

At this, Leah nodded with satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the bodyguard rolled his eyes, thinking, ‘When you come back to your senses, and remember this moment, don’t go looking for a hole to die in or anything.’