Golden Experience

“Yes, Boss.”

Rare walked through the caves accompanied by Kerry. When the ants had extended the tunnels to connect the great forest to the prairie, they enlarged them for humanoid races to be able to walk comfortably. These underground routes had handrails installed and, since there were no lights at all, they made traveling along them very safe once you got used to them.

She eventually wanted to install some lights, but right now she didn’t know of any light sources that didn’t use fire. Since the ants navigated the underground tunnels using their feelers, the only ones who needed light were Rare and the four catkin girls, so she would put off the thought for later.

While proceeding down the tunnel, Rare touched base with Riley, then instructed Sugaru to send infantry to keep the enemy confined to the area around the cemetery.

Their destination wasn’t that far away from the queen’s chamber. Rare and Kerry would soon arrive beneath it, after which they would head for the door leading to the surface so they could meet up with Riley.

Emerging into the cemetery, there was indeed a large army of bone-type enemies there. However, she couldn’t tell skeletons apart from any other kinds of monsters at a glance. Part of the army was outside the cemetery but being harried by ants, while the rest of it inside the cemetery was being constrained by other ants from spreading out.

“How convenient. All right, I’ll just go ahead and try it out now. [Necromantic Barrier].”

When Rare activated [Necromantic Barrier], a glistening-black hemispherical magic circle appeared over the area. The arcane construction completely engulfed the entire cemetery, as she wanted. All the skeletons inside the magic circle froze on the spot, then turned as one to face Rare, the caster.

Necromantic Barrier

Create a barrier at a designated area. All corpses within the barrier are turned into undead under your control. If there are any hostile undead inside the barrier, the barrier casts [Control] on them for no cost. Each undead may individually resist. Your MP is consumed while the barrier is active. If the barrier is canceled or you do not have enough MP to maintain the barrier, any [Control] effects generated by the barrier are canceled.

This new skill was unlocked after learning [Spatial Awareness] in the [Space Magic] tree. Ignoring the conditions for unlocking [Spatial Awareness], it was essentially an area-of-effect composite of [Necromancy], [Bind Soul], and [Control]. It drained her MP like crazy, but if she wanted to suppress large groups of enemies, this would handle any weak undead. Since the barrier also raised any corpses, other enemy undead wouldn’t appear later, and any undead enemies that resisted the [Control] were easy to identify.

Rare ordered the undead under her control line up and leave the cemetery. At the same time, she ordered Sugaru to have her artillery destroy all those undead. It would be faster to burn them all to ashes with flamethrowers, but that wasn’t a good idea here in the forest.

The only enemy that remained in the cemetery was a larger skeleton wearing battered decorative armor; it was probably quite extravagant long ago. This was the only monster that couldn’t be controlled. Since maintaining the barrier was a waste of MP at this point, after confirming that the controlled undead were mostly destroyed, Rare canceled the [Necromantic Barrier].

That last skeleton appeared to be trying to moan something. It wasn’t speaking with human words, but, possibly due to [Necromancy] or some other skill, the system allowed Rare to somehow understand what it was trying to say. About how it would never forgive the country’s founders, who had sent them to this forest to be massacred.

According to the skeleton, they were a country’s knight order. She had no idea which country it meant, but maybe it was whichever country the closest city belonged to, the one Kerry was operating in. Based on what the player Wayne said, that country would be [Hiers].

However, it seemed this guess was incorrect. The skeleton didn’t have a good grasp on time, and it couldn’t tell how long ago it had died, so in all likelihood this country had already perished. It said that there was only one country on the entire continent at the time, so clearly it was not any of the current six countries. In other words, this skeleton was a knight from a lost kingdom, and the entire knight order had perished in this forest.

She had read the simple backstories describing the six countries on the official site, but there was never any mention of there being a single unified nation in the past. If what this skeleton was saying was true, then there was more history here that hadn’t been officially published on the website yet. How interesting…

“So what is your group’s objective? Or I guess you’re the only one left. Ah, my apologies, but your subordinates were just now demolished. I don’t wish to continue hostilities, but your desires may clash with mine. Let me first hear what you want.”

The skeleton appeared to want vengeance for his men, but this wasn’t directed at Rare. The way he saw it, the entire knight order, including he himself, had already been laid to rest in this cemetery. For some unknown reason, they were all reanimated, but this one skeleton was the only one to regain his sense of self, and he wanted to let his comrades sleep peacefully here. Therefore, the targets of his revenge were those who murdered his order, which was tasked with protecting the country; those who let that past country rot; those who divvied up the country among themselves; those shameless, pretentious weasels who sought to rule the continent—in other words, the current rulers of the six kingdoms.

In all likelihood, those specific people had long since passed away, but she wasn’t sure if he understood that since he seemed to jump straight to “their descendants are my enemies.”

Well, if there were someone whose race had long lives like elves, it’s possible they’d know who the backbones of these countries were back then.

“I understand now. I’m… not sure if you can tell from my appearance, but I’m not exactly affiliated with any of the countries. You could consider me as an outlaw of sorts. I’m sort of the leader of a bandit group, and now I’m also sort of the ruler of a kingdom of ants… Well, you could say that I’m kind of in charge of a number of organizations.”

The skeleton didn’t appear hostile to Rare since he just quietly listened to her speak.

“Now, you have a number of choices before you. Let’s see… First, you can face defeat here at the hand of my forces. Next, you can become one of my followers. Last, you can leave this forest and go wherever you wish.”

While she was interested in his story, it wasn’t something she absolutely had to hear from him. And if he became associated with her, she would naturally become an enemy of the human countries. Well, it’s not like she could say her relationship with them was currently positive anyway, so it wouldn’t change much. They did take over that mine, after all.

“How about this? If you choose to be my follower, I could grant you more power. It would be fun to help with your revenge against the human countries as well. In return, I would have you heed my orders in other matters.”

She could have just forcefully used [Subordinate] on him, but it didn’t hurt to occasionally play the part of a villainess and make declarations like this. This was a game, after all. It was important to enjoy yourself.

<<Named Enemy [Deas of Resentment] has been defeated.>>

Deas became Rare’s follower at the same time as she received that system announcement. His race was [Terror Knight]. His stats and skills were very good; he wasn’t a raid boss, but she could probably believe that he was a somewhat strong unique boss. After the [Subordinate] succeeded, Rare did gain a small amount of XP. Considering how she barely got any for destroying all those skeletons in the fight just now, that could imply that Deas was actually pretty powerful.

If Rare had stayed her hand and instead let the ants deal most of the damage, they could have earned a decent amount of XP, but the primary goal was to test out [Necromantic Barrier], so it wasn’t a big deal. With such a niche skill, there were few opportunities to use it in actual combat. Having this incident occur at this timing was quite serendipitous.

Leaving some ants to clean up, everyone else prepared to return to the queen’s chamber. If they loitered too long, the sun would begin to rise. She asked Deas what they should do with the skeletal remains and all the equipment buried in the cemetery, but the souls of his men had long since dispersed, so he said there was no point in holding any ceremonies. She didn’t know what religion he observed, but if that was what he thought, then it was fine to just leave it all there. The goblins were sure to make use of it sooner or later.

If what Deas said was true, then why did only he regain his ego? Why was it only his soul that remained? And if the rest of the knights’ souls had vanished, why did their bodies all of a sudden get reanimated as undead now of all times?

But no matter how many questions she asked, she had no answers for them right now.

Rare instructed Riley to continue searching for an owl-type monster, then had Kerry and Deas escort her back underground.