Golden Experience

Chapter 38: “Darkness Encroaches on the Underground Water Vein”

To get to the water vein, Blanc went through a hole in a corner of the castle’s jail. The count considered this the normal way to get to the underground, but regular people would never consider this a standard doorway. It would be more apt to call it a secret entrance used to invade the castle.

“That guy sure likes his secret loopholes…”

The castle’s jail was already pretty deep underground, but from there the path went still further down. Eventually, she heard the sound of running water.

The cave with the water vein felt much cooler than the castle was. She wasn’t sure if this was because of the humidity or because the underground water was itself cold. The cave was large enough for a person to walk comfortably, and it followed alongside the vein; it must have been completely filled with water a long time ago.

It was so dark that the water looked pitch black, so much so that there was no way to tell if there was anything in the flowing stream. Even if there were lizardmen in there, trying to fight them here would be pretty dangerous. She needed to be ready to cast magic at the drop of a hat if she didn’t want to end up dead.

Blanc cautiously proceeded down the tunnel. As she kept descending further and further underground, she wondered where this water originally came from and where it was going. Since the castle’s cellar was already quite deep into the ground, she also wondered how far down she was now. Or maybe the castle was actually built on high ground or something. Since it was surrounded by wilderness, it was hard to imagine that being the case, but it could be similar to the Guiana Highlands; with extreme topography like that, anything was possible. It wouldn’t be surprising if it were, since the count seemed to like high places.

How far had she gone down into the ground? As per usual, Blanc hadn’t been keeping track whatsoever, but anyway, her route led her to a slightly larger cavern. Within was an enormous underground lake or something close to that. Carefully peeking into the room, she saw numerous humanoid shapes around the lake.

Those were probably lizardmen since they had long tails. They must have made a village; there were quite a lot of them.

“Urg, farming XP off them might be a little hard…”

She didn’t know how strong lizardmen were, but she was sure they were stronger than zombies and skeletons. Since the bats didn’t seem like they would be very useful in combat, Blanc at her current strength really couldn’t wipe them all out by herself.

One of the bats on her chest had some kind of plan it wanted to propose.

“Bait? No way… Isn’t that risky? Ah, I know you can fly… Hmm, all right, so I’ll go somewhere far enough away that the village can’t hear; can some of you guys go and lure a couple of them to me?”

Three bats zipped out from under Blanc’s cape. After watching them fly off, Blanc retreated all the way into the back of the cave where sound wouldn’t travel too far. She waited there a bit before two lizardmen came, chasing after her bats. The lizardmen lost track of the bats in the darkness and steadily got closer to her corner of the cave while looking for them.

“They’re making a pretty big deal of just three bats… Maybe they need them as a source of protein or something.”

If that was really the case, then she should be able to lure out as many of them as she wanted using bats. Then again, this was their home, so if they were smart enough to get suspicious when their comrades didn’t come back, then it would get harder and harder, she imagined.

“In any case, first is to make sure these two don’t turn around and head back.”

Blanc focused, getting ready to cast magic. Lizardmen were a race that lived in the water, so it would be good to lead off with [Thunderbolt]. Since there were two targets, she’d have to instantly cast a second spell, but she couldn’t use the same spell twice in a row. Blanc figured the best option would be a neutral spell like [Air Cutter] to try and mangle one.

“Alrighty… A little closer… Just a tiny bit closer… Perfect! [Thunderbolt]! [Air Cutter]!”

The lightning left an afterimage in the air as it instantly struck one of the lizardmen; a second after, an invisible slash tore into the other lizardman. The electrocuted one died instantly, but the other one that had been sliced by [Air Cutter] was still alive. It tried to crawl away.

“Hmm? Can I not kill it for sure if I’m not using an element it’s weak to? [Ice Bullet].”

After the pebble of ice pierced its body, the lizardman collapsed, its remaining lifeforce gone. Blanc checked her status; these guys really were worth a decent amount of XP.

“They’re not really that efficient, though. Set bait, go hide, blast them with magic; that’s a lot of work… Is there any way to blow them all up as a group?”

Blanc checked the screen where she could learn skills. There was a new tree called [Vampiric Magic]. Obviously, this wasn’t available back when she was a skeleton; it must have been unlocked when she became a vampire. Opening it, the first skill she saw was [Mist].

“It’s a skill that creates a bunch of mist over a wide area, huh… It allows any [Vampiric Magic] and [Mental Magic] I use to affect everything in that area… Oh right, I’ve only ever used Mental Magic on bats before.”

In addition, inside the mist, one’s field of vision would be diminished, and detection effects would be obstructed as well. After casting [Mist], she could use [Fear] to handicap, then defeat enemies one by one with magic; that seemed workable, but it’d be a pain if [Fear] got resisted. She didn’t think it’d be a good idea to test the strategy in a real battle.

“It would’ve been nice to test on the two lizardmen just now… Hmm.”

After thinking it over for a bit, she decided to have her bats lure some lizardmen over one more time. She first had to learn the skill; she got [Mist] as well as [Lightning Magic]’s AOE spell [Lightning Shower]. It cost a lot of MP, but the fact that it could hit many enemies at once was huge. The firepower from a single cast was also lower, but she could use [Mental Magic] in advance to cover for that. She had to spend XP again, but considering how much XP she just got, she would still end up earning more XP overall than she had yesterday from those zombies.

This time, she added in a little trick by sending only two bats out to the lake. The idea was that the lizardmen would see them, then assume the first two guys hadn’t come back yet because they caught one of the bats and were eating it. Basically, she wanted to minimize how suspicious they might get.

She didn’t know how the lizardmen decided what to do, but this time three of them came out. After the three were guided to the kill zone, her first step was to create [Mist]. Because of how dark and humid it was, it didn’t feel like the lizardmen paid any attention to the fog. The next step was to activate [Fear]. The three lizardmen all stopped in place and their tails began to quiver.

“That worked. Great, [Lightning Shower]!”

Countless bolts of lightning arced from the ceiling of the cave to the floor. Many of them struck the lizardmen who were within the designated area. The electricity made them convulse, their spines warping backward violently. The spasming lizardmen fell to the ground, unable to move. However, they weren’t dead yet. She didn’t know if it was from the lightning damage or the effects of [Fear], but either way it was convenient for her. Blanc approached each one in turn and stabbed them in the head with her stick.

“Now if I go to that lakeside village, I just have to hit ’em with a [Fear] first and things should work out. Sweet!”

Blanc went back to the cavern to observe the underground lake. Spying at it, she saw that a number of the lizardmen would glance in her general direction periodically, as though curious whether the bat hunt was successful. She shouldn’t dawdle much longer or they might realize she was there.

“[Mist].”

She wasn’t sure if it would reach from here, but she doubted they would notice, so if she did need to get closer, she could just wait until the spell cooled down and try again.

“The description wasn’t kidding when it said ‘wide area’… This could easily cover a small town. But the range of [Mental Magic] isn’t all that large, which is a problem.”

Since [Mist] lasted until it was canceled, it sucked up MP for as long as it was active. As soon as she cast [Mist], she needed to take care of things as quickly as possible. Blanc slipped into the mist and followed the wall toward the village. To Blanc, the mist didn’t hinder her vision at all; while she was aware of the fact that there was a thick fog, she could still see everything around her the same as usual. If any of the lizardmen acted like they noticed her, she was ready to blast [Fear] at them, but since they seemed to have no idea that she was there, she was able to get pretty close before running into one.

“Well, getting in this close is totally cool. Here’s a [Fear] for you!”

Beginning with the lizardman closest to Blanc, all the lizardmen in range froze in place, shivering. It was certainly not powerful enough to affect the entire village, but it was easily able to cover anything close enough to reach Blanc.

“And for my next act, [Lightning Shower]!”

The ceiling in here was much higher than it was in the previous area, but lightning still filled the air between the ground and the ceiling. She was curious how it would work outside, in the open air, but she would have to shelve that thought for now since she had to go around finishing off all the fallen lizardmen. Even though her attack just now was really flashy and should have been bright enough to completely light up this corner of the cavern, there were a lot fewer lizardmen coming to attack Blanc than she was expecting.

“Is it because of the mist? If so, it’s crazy powerful for a race-limited skill. The ‘limited’ part does make it sound pretty strong, though.”

She shot the lizardmen that got close to her with a single [Flare Arrow] and [Ice Bullet] each, then delivered the finishing blow with her stick. It would usually be better to finish them all off with another area-of-effect attack, but it would be bad if she were unexpectedly attacked by a big group of enemies, so she just settled for finishing them off one at a time.

Finally, she couldn’t see any more lizardmen alive near her. All that was left was to check those embankment-looking structures around the lake, which were probably houses.

“Are those doors facing the lake already open? If so, it would probably be dangerous to poke my head in.”

Blanc thought about demolishing the structures with magic, but on second thought she just decided to cancel [Mist]. There might be children or eggs inside— Well, she didn’t know if these things laid eggs, but anyway, there might be something like that inside, so if she left them alone, she could come back later to grind more XP. She also didn’t know if the corpses had anything useful on them, but she decided to go around storing them in her inventory as a way to wrap up her excursion.

“Allll right, let’s head back. For the time being, I shouldn’t use XP on myself anymore or it’ll make farming lizardmen less efficient, so after I get back I’ll look at buffing my bats.”

Blanc started on her way back to the castle in high spirits.