Golden Experience

Chapter 74: “Remote Devastation”

Since they had come this far through the assault ants’ hard work, Rare kind of wanted to let them just burn everything down, but the soldier vespoids had only been observing all this time and didn’t have any other tasks. If the kingdom didn’t have any air forces, then the soldier vespoids would primarily be fighting ground forces from here on out, so she wanted to let them take care of these foes, which would also double as practice.

“That’s why I’m leaving this to them. They are free to decide how they want to handle it. Have the assault and infantry forces fall back to where the artillery are.”

<I understand.>

At the same time as Sugaru responded, the soldier vespoids, who had been monitoring the progress of the invasion from high up in the air, suddenly dropped into nosedives.

“Waaah!!!”

“There are more enemies aside from just ants! Fuck, how come we didn’t know about this?!”

“Those sellsword shits! Why didn’t they report about them to us?!”

The knights laid all the blame at the sellswords’ feet, but in this situation no one could have been expected to do any better. The soldier vespoids skimmed the ground as they pulled out of their dives, then picked up the knights one after the other and climbed back up into the air.

“Dammit! Stop! Let me go!!!”

After flying up about fifty meters, they simply tossed the knights to the side.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…!!!”

The armor they wore was much more lavish than what the sellswords had, but it did nothing to reduce fall damage. When they collided with the ground, they sunk into it about halfway due to the weight of the armor, but that did nothing to mitigate the lethality of the impact, thus none of the fallen knights got back up.

Most of the knights got a free bungee jump, without a cord, by way of the swarm of soldier vespoids, and as a result the city lord’s knight order was decimated. If any of the knights had been officially [Subordinated], then they should eventually respawn if left alone, but NPCs would only automatically respawn after one hour. Players were able to respawn immediately, but NPCs didn’t receive system messages, so they had to wait out the full timer. This was why spawn camping NPCs was inefficient.

“That means we don’t really need the lord’s mansion for anything. Let’s just crush it and move on to the next target.”

She ordered the artillery ants to rain fire on the mansion. In the blink of an eye, it had become a mess of flames and rubble. She didn’t know if the lord had been in there or not, but if they were, then surely all that remained would be a corpse by now. If they were still alive, then Rare would like to get rid of them for the XP, but stacked up against the value of destroying the city, the amount earned probably wouldn’t be any more than a rounding error.

“Just in case, have the infantry look for someone who looks like they could be a lord. All other forces will continue the invasion. This city is so close to the forest that there’s no real meaning in taking it for ourselves, so I don’t mind if it turns into an empty plot of land.”

Rare did want to create a new ruins-type monster territory. However, she wanted to find a place with more impact, in a position of power. The most suitable place would definitely be the royal capital, the symbol of the kingdom. She would purge it and turn it into an undead-infested wasteland.

“Well, I should save that for after Erfahren and Lourdes have been subjugated… or actually demolished… and after La Colline’s been handled. Can we do all that within ten days? We’re basically done here, but I wonder how things are going over in Lourdes…”

Rare was still piloting Yoroizaka in the air, and it was dangerous to look away from the road while driving, so she descended to the ground first. After landing, she could give control back to Yoroizaka. After all that was done, she closed her eyes in order to sync with Ominous the owl.

?

The city of Lourdes was surrounded by a number of giant treants, and the excessively tall city walls were covered in some kind of ivy. Since she saw it from so far away, what she thought was ivy was actually tree branches and roots. The inside of the city also overflowed with greenery—an extension of the Treu Forest. From her bird’s eye perspective, it looked as though the forest was swallowing up everything.

Considering that Rare’s World Tree was at the center of that forest, and its trees all comprised Rare’s treant forces, that wasn’t actually a metaphor; the city really was being consumed by the forest. As she watched, branches grew from inside houses, breaking through their roofs. The houses were then subsumed by the rapidly growing tree trunks. Treant seeds were scattered all over the place, sprouting and quickly maturing into trees.

The treants’ [Overgrowth] skill tree had a skill called [Scatter Seeds] used to spread seeds around, as the name implied, but the skill didn’t cause these seeds to grow more quickly or anything. The abnormal growth was due to the grains of light all around the city. These lights floated down like pollen from the treants encircling the city, the giant treants that looked very different from other treants.

These were elder camphor treants produced using World Tree’s [Root Division] skill. Normal treants used [Root Division] to convert XP into exact copies of themselves. However, world trees weren’t allowed to create endless copies of themselves, so they made copies of the race they were previously. In World Tree’s case, they was camphor treants. Monsters produced through skills were weak, but they didn’t cost XP to create, they used LP and MP instead. However, these camphor treants could also act as skill relay points for their parent, World Tree. For example, when World Tree wants to use a seed dispersal-type skill, or a buff or debuff skill that has an area of effect, these treants can act as its terminals, and the effect then originates from their locations.

Right now, those flickering lights that filled the city of Lourdes were produced from World Tree’s skill [Magnum Beneficium]. Its effect is to induce accelerated growth to all plants within the area of effect. The normal plants that were already growing in the city also began to grow abnormally fast, but without pollination their flowers quickly withered away, and most of them began rotting without bearing any fruit. Meanwhile, treants were not given extended lifespans in this game. It took them about one year to reach the size of a normal tree, then they would continue to slowly grow over decades and centuries, eventually becoming elder treants. However, [Magnum Beneficium] caused the scattered seeds to mature immediately, becoming gigantic in a matter of minutes. The camphor treants who initially surrounded the city wall had already grown into elder camphor treants due to the [Magnum Beneficium] they themselves were producing as World Tree’s terminals.

Here in Lourdes, there weren’t many treants who were proactively attacking people. There just wasn’t a need. The ground was already completely covered with rampantly growing tree roots, and not a single house was spared from the violent overgrowth. Anyone who had been in those houses, or walking around outside, was instantaneously crushed by the trees or trapped between them, unable to move a muscle. Even the sellswords and knights who had been able to initially escape such a fate couldn’t do so forever since they couldn’t predict which branch or root would experience explosive growth next.

<Holy cow. I felt pretty bad for Erfahren getting trampled by ants, but Lourdes didn’t really get off any easier. There aren’t any survivors here, right? Or like, you can stop spamming [Magnum Beneficium] now, can’t you? You don’t really need it anymore with what’s going on.>

<You are correct. My MP is nearly exhausted. I shall cease.>

After World Tree gave that reply to Rare, the specks of light began to fade away. At the same time, the trees stopped growing, and a silence settled into the city, as though time had stopped.

<Even though what happened here was horrific, there’s also a kind of profound beauty in this scene… I could even call it moving. Magnificent.>

<To receive such an evaluation from the most sublime and beatific demon lord is a superlative honor.>

Rare knew that it was saying that with complete earnestness, but coming from a follower who had already sworn devotion to her, she felt uncomfortable since it was hard not to interpret it as over-the-top flattery. For now, she would pretend as though she hadn’t heard anything and instead confirm the status of the city.

<I don’t see anything moving at all. Were all the townspeople eliminated, then?>

Normally, players were able to respawn immediately, but if the place they designated as their base had been conquered by monsters, then they wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.

<You are correct. What shall be done with this city?>

<Just let it be assimilated into the forest like this. Take the roads as well as you expand our territory out to here.>

<It shall be done.>

There was a bit of a ruckus from Treu Forest as treants flowed out to reclaim the land up to the highway. That road had originally detoured all the way around the forest, and the city had been built quite a distance from it as well. After absorbing all that land, the Treu Forest had massively grown in size.

<All right, I think everything’s settled here. I’m heading back to take care of things on the other side.>

<Godspeed.>

That said, there wasn’t really that much to do back at Erfahren. After it had been leveled, the infantry would be left here to take care of any loose ends while Rare took the flying and artillery troops to La Colline for a little picnic.

TL Note: The first chapter of this web novel was originally posted on October 1, 2019, and this extra story was included with chapter 74, which was posted on November 1, 2019.

To commemorate my first month, I wanted to share a little something that probably won’t be included in the main story, but shouldn’t spoil anything either.

I started posting this series exactly one month ago, but right at the start of the second chapter, there was the line “The tutorial could not be skipped.” After the open beta began, the reason for this was never explained, so I would like to give you that explanation now. Although readers with good intuition may have already figured this out.

The first thing the game explains in the tutorial is that “the only difference between PCs and NPCs is whether or not they can receive system messages.”

You may have thought that not being able to skip it was because it was important for the game characters to hear the full explanation, or to discourage people from resetting their accounts and starting over, but actually neither of those are the main reason why.

In chapter 22, NPCs learned to access their inventories for the first time. Rare hit upon this by remembering what the tutorial AI had told her. This chapter posited that the reason the tutorial could not be skipped was to make sure the importance of those words was imprinted not only on the players, but also on the readers, which was a bit of a misdirect.

In the research that Rare conducts afterward, she concludes that the conditions for using the inventory are “must have at least a certain amount of INT” and “must see the inventory in use themselves.” Actually, “must have a certain amount of INT” isn’t strictly necessary, only “must see the inventory in use themselves” is the correct answer.

To explain, why is it that PCs, who shouldn’t be any different from NPCs within the system, are able to access the inventory right off the bat?

Right before they log in for the first time, they have to go through the tutorial, and that’s where the support AI lectures them on how to use the inventory. In other words, after seeing a tutorial on how to use it, players are able to use it as well.

When the game was in closed beta, the old tutorial could be skipped and testers would submit reports that “the inventory is inaccessible.” So, for the official release, the tutorial was changed so that it could not be skipped, and that is the explanation.

Thank you for reading.