88 FAILURE

"Bran, what's your opinion on Boda family's motive?"- Hrungnir

The only reason Bran became Hrungnir's closest aide is because of his loyalty and deduction abilities. His family has been serving the Farhelm family for generations. If it wasn't for him filtering the numerous reports, his table would have been already covered by mountains of paperwork.

"Your majesty, something big is definitely going on. Victor Boda is a cautious and calculative person. He will never make a move, unless he has high gains from it.

The losses Boda family suffered on that unknown world is not even a speck of dirt, comparing to their full military strength. They already suffered enough casualties worth capturing a small higher state world. So let's assume they are hell bent on taking revenge for their failure.

Even then, it does not make sense.If they only want revenge, then they can just simply destroy the whole world by sending in a squad of mid to high level sovereign soldiers. There is no need to gather such a massive army. It's like they are trying to smash an egg with a mountain.

Then there is only one possibility behind their motive. They are looking for something on that Unknown world, that is totally worth their efforts. They must have some serious resistance from the locals, so they are trying to finish this time invasion in a swift move, before the other sovereign rulers are aware of their movements"- Bran

Hrungnir has to agree with Bran's deductions, as he also came to the same conclusion. Many ruler's doesn't even put something like higher state world's in their eye. So why is Boda family going crazy? What are they trying to hide from other sovereign rulers? Unless?

"Bran, could it be about the Rasia core? If it is Rasia core we are talking about, then it totally matches Boda family behavior"- Hrungnir

Bran was shocked by Hrungnir's thoughts. But Rasia core is a huge taboo among all sovereign rulers. He has to tread carefully regarding this matter or he may lose his life at Hrungnir's hands.

"Your majesty, there is a high possibility of your assumptions being correct. If it is really Rasia core, then we must not let it fall into Boda family hands. At the same time we can use this opportunity to follow the Boda family from the shadows and get our hands on the Rasia core."- Bran

"Bran, order all of our elite soldiers to gather here in 10 day's time. You will personally lead these soldiers into the unknown world, while I be waiting for you outside that world in the space, as I will be rejected by the principles of that world. "- Hrungnir

Bran was surprised at the sudden decision of Hrungnir to let him lead his forces. With such a powerful force, his chances of victory are more than 90%. If he was successful, he would definitely earn valuable rewards from the Farhelm family.

"Your majesty, I will definitely lead our forces to victory"- Bran

Bran quickly felt the office in a flash in order to personally gather some of the elite soldiers, who will be his trump cards.

Sadly, Hrungnir wasn't the only one with spies. The other sovereign rulers also have some reliable spies everywhere. These spies were also alarmed by the huge movement of the Boda family and reported to their respective sovereign rulers. Soon the news reached the ears of all the 11 sovereign rulers and each of them started to make their own preparations, in order to get their hands on Rasia core. This is the first time all of them are making a move together, after injuring Arthur King.

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Monster World

5th Floor, Virtual Simulation center, Desert terrain.

Ichika gripped the mace tightly as the bandits started to get closer. During this time, she observed the flow of sand particles and understood to some extent to follow the path of heat waves. This helped her to save even more energy and move a bit faster.

The bandits stopped in front of Ichika, feeling the battle intent from her, the bandit leader asked one of his minions to test her strength.

The minion took out his sword and rushed at Ichika and when he got close, he swung his sword in a vertical chop intending to slice her in two. Ichika just took a side step, before giving a strong kick towards the bandit's neck, who was still following the motion of his attack. The bandit lost his consciousness and collapsed on the desert surface face first.

This time the bandit leader ordered 3 of his minions to attack Ichika.

Minion1 used spear to stab at her from a distance, while minion2 started to circle around Ichika with daggers in hand and Minion3 is waiting to shoot arrows at Ichika, when he finds an opening.

Ichika didn't want to waste even one bit of her energy in these energy draining conditions, so she started to run in a straight path towards Minion1. Minion2 was caught off guard by Ichika's move as he can no longer circle her around and started to run towards her from behind.

Ichika easily dodged the arrows of Minion3 and arrived close to Minion1, who started to stab at her with his spear. Using the heavier part of the mace, she deflected the spear and landed a strong right leg kick in his stomach, bringing him to his knees and swung her mace at his head, killing him. She followed the momentum of her mace downward swing and rolled forward to dodge Minion 2 dagger attacks and minion3 arrows.

She quickly stood up and picked up the spear of Minion1 and threw it at Minion3 with her left hand, impaling him straight in his heart. She turned towards Minion2 and swung her mace in a horizontal motion, which minion 2 dodged at the last second, but his joy was short lived, as Ichika used the momentum of the horizontal motion and circled the mace into a vertical smash on Minion2 pulverizing his body.

Then she picked up the daggers of Minion2 and threw them at closely grouped bandits, killing 2 more of them. The bandit leader was completely enraged by her actions, as she killed 6 of his subordinates in a short time.

With a order from him, more than ten bandits started to run towards her with their sword and blades. This time Ichika just hefted the mace onto her right shoulder and started to dodge the wild swings of the bandits. She wanted to deal maximum damage with a single swing, as she won't have much time to attack a single bandit and dodge the attacks of 9 more bandits.

After 2 more minutes of dodging she found a good opportunity and swung the mace in a whirlwind manner, breaking the bones of 5 poor bandits, who were caught in her attack. Before the other bandits could react, she used her fingers to pierce the throats of 3 more bandits.

This time the bandit leader also joined the fight together with his remaining minions. Now the total number of her attackers reached 16 bandits. This time she not only had to dodge their attacks and but had to block several of their critical attacks with her mace. But fighting so many of them at once in this desert, with a heavy weapon like mace, started to make her tired.

Slowly wounds started to accumulate on her body because of the continuous attacks. She started to swing her mace now and then, in order to break the momentum of the bandits and separate them into small groups.Whenever she found an opportunity she crushed 2 or 3 bandits with each attack, slowly reducing their numbers.

The bandits also started to get tired because of their wild rushed attacks and so she started to pick them up one by one. In the end only her and the bandit leader remained.

The bandit leader swung his sword in a vertical chop, which she easily blocked with her mace and gave him a Kick towards his shin, making him lose his balance. But just when Ichika felt, he was going to collapse, he lunged at her with his full strength, tackling her hard in her stomach. Because of the strong tackle, Ichika had to let to go of her mace and they both started to roll down a desert dune.

The wounds, her tiredness and couple with the strong heat on the desert surface, Ichika started to feel like she is on a hot pan. Her whole body was completely singed by the desert heat , while the bandit leader was also in similar condition.

Even rolling down the desert dune, he still didn't let go of her and started to rain punches at her head. Ichika had a lot of trouble blocking them and had to use her legs to coil around his neck and wanted to push him away. But the bandit just ignored his choking and started to bite into her leg causing her immense pain. Because of the pain and fury at the bandit's actions, she gather the last bit of her energy and used her thumbs to completely destroy his eyes, which forced the bandit away from her and started to wail in pain. But her success was short lived as a large desert scorpion stabbed her from the back, ending her first desert simulation battle in a complete failure.

She did a lot of mistakes during the battle. But her primary mistake is her weapon mastery of Mace. She was not able to bring out the complete destructive capabilities of it.

She found little opportunities to attack during the fight, but whenever she attacked, the mace easily broke the weapons and defences of the bandits. Using mace to fight a single opponent is ok for full powered smash attacks. But when fighting a crowd, the smash attacks are a big no, as you will become vulnerable to other enemies attacks.

So she had to learn how to swing the mace in precise manner without wasting much of her energy and how to gather enough momentum with each swing in a continuous flow and generate more packing power with her swings.

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Authors Note: final chapter of the week. This week is a hectic one as I had to write 10 chapters this week. 8 regular chapters, one bonus review chapter and the last week missing chapter.

There is also something I started to notice since last week. The previous week the story ended up ranked 27, while it ended up at rank 34 this week. But we ended up this week at close to 1600 votes compared to last weeks 1500. I also started to observe there is an average of 8000 views per day. Compared to other original stories on this site, this figure is a bit low. But I am really happy for another reason. Despite very low views, I had a steady flow of average votes per day, which means there is a small community of readers strongly supporting my story on a daily basis with their votes. To all this readers, I have nothing but to give my heartfelt thanks.

I know, I slowed down the pace of the story in the last 10 to 15 chapters. But since the volume 2 is a original version of mine, I decided to spend more time in exploring the full potential of the story. But the pace will pick up speed starting from sovereign arc.

Again a big thanks to all the readers for their huge support with various comments and votes. Please keep continuing to support me in the future.