Golden Experience

Chapter 87: “The Familiar Taste of Rain”

She died.

She never could have imagined that she would die there. This was her first ever death since the official launch. It was a good experience. She could test out some things she had never been able to before.

“…………”

Apparently when Rare died, all her followers would also die at the same time. And all those followers would respawn after an hour. In other words, she would have to spend the next hour all alone in this huge cave. Since Sugaru had also died, there weren’t even any ants around.

“………”

She was worried about the farm. With the ants monitoring it gone, she wouldn’t know if something were to happen to it. Since there wasn’t as much livestock anymore, nothing that crazy could happen, probably. It was only for an hour. It should be fine for that long.

“……”

Hm, maybe that was incorrect. The only one respawning after an hour would be Sugaru. If the ants’ timer only began once Sugaru was respawned, then it would actually be a total of two hours before they all revived. That kind of felt like a long time. And it was the same with Sieg’s undead.

“…”

She should really go check on the farm, but she didn’t really feel like doing it at the moment. Same with Treu Forest. The only ones there had been treants. In other words, it was completely unattended right now. She also needed to check how far Kerry and the other girls had traveled. She wondered where they would respawn. All she knew was that it wouldn’t be here.

“…Well, I could say that it was a good thing this happened. Mm. I was really getting ahead of myself. I’m glad it was during this event, since I won’t lose any XP. Since I spent a ton of XP on reincarnating myself and World Tree, if I were to lose ten percent now, I don’t know what would happen to us. How lucky. Right, I’m actually quite fortunate.”

She could tell her voice was trembling.

“This was a good lesson, I always need to leave ten percent of my XP fluid. Mm, yeah. Knowing how to hedge risks is essential. Anyway, I’m no expert in investing, so I couldn’t have really known in advance. As long as I pay attention from now on—…!”

Her voice caught on the lump in her throat. This was amazing. Her game avatar could even replicate this feeling. Technology had advanced so far.

“Nnngh…! Uuu…kghhh…”

It was frustrating. So frustrating that it felt as though her stomach had tied itself into knots. Her emotions were running so raw that she couldn’t stop the tears. Her throat was so constricted that she could barely even cry out.

She wanted to look presentable and wash her face before her followers respawned in an hour, but was that even possible? If this were the real world, her eyes and face would remain red and swollen until the next day. She didn’t have a mirror, so she had no idea how she looked. No, maybe it was better that there wasn’t one. If she saw herself now, her miserable crying face would be forever burned into the back of her eyes, an eternal reminder of her failure.

???

Surveying the capital from the sky, what stole her attention from the magnificence of the city walls was the beautiful townscape. Ruining this city meant defiling that beauty. She absolutely couldn’t wait.

Rare was wondering where would be good to drop off the adamantite soldiers when suddenly Yoroizaka unsheathed the Kenzaki at her waist, the sound of metal on metal ringing out. An arrow had come flying at her. Something like this had happened before, but how did Yoroizaka notice while Rare was oblivious? They should both be sharing the same field of vision. Was it because Rare’s attention was primarily on the city, or was there some kind of hidden stat outside of vision and hearing?

She was also concerned about the attack just now. Rare had hidden herself with [Camouflage] and was hovering in the sky above the capital. In this state, it was nearly impossible for anyone to see her. How were they even able to shoot an arrow at her?

When she looked down, a bunch of humans were gathered outside of the city wall. Every single one of them was looking right at Rare. While her eyes did meet with a few of them, oddly enough, most of them felt like they were looking past her. It seemed that some of them definitely could perceive her, but the rest were just copying them and looking up at the sky.

This was about the same number of people that she had smacked around in the first event. They must have gotten stronger since then, but that applied to Rare as well. Things were probably going to turn out the same way as they had before. Time to turn them all into XP.

But she couldn’t forget her objective here, which was to get her hands on the capital. First, she should [Summon] a bunch of adamantite soldiers here in the air and let them fall down into the city. Since Rare could cast [Summon] while flying, no matter how sturdy the city wall was, it would be useless against her. She had also learned how to “unleash” the [Summon] skill, allowing her to use it on a ton of followers at once. There was a way to select multiple targets to [Summon], but Rare was able to mentally “drag” the selection box to reach the maximum number of targets. Using it in this way caused all [Summon] skills to be unusable for a period of time, but since she probably wouldn’t need to use it again today, she wasn’t concerned about the drawback.

Rare ordered the adamantite soldiers to take care of the soldiers and knights while doing their best not to destroy any buildings. Thinking of the powerful knights who had been in La Colline, she also gave a strict order to only engage individual knights in groups.

After she finished with that, next was to take care of the group outside the city wall. Given the motley arrangement of gear, they must have been a group of sellswords. She saw some who looked like players, but if they were, she didn’t know why they were here in the peaceful capital while there was an event going on.

Since they already knew where Rare was, she deactivated [Camouflage] to save MP, then descended down to the ground right in front of all the players. She wondered why no more arrows had been shot at her. That meant she couldn’t determine who had fired the first arrow. The group of players before her were reminiscent of the group she had pulverised in the last event. While their equipment was indeed far superior, she couldn’t imagine they had any metal gear that surpassed adamantite. Even if they did have adamantite weapons, they wouldn’t be effective against Yoroizaka as she was now.

Compared to before, it seemed that there were only the bare minimum of heavy-armored players, so-called tanks, which worried her, but, well, she may have just been paranoid.

“So this’s the ‘catastrophe.’ I can’t believe it’s already invading the capital on the second day of the event… Are the admins trying to overthrow the country or something?”

“I can’t believe it actually came… but maybe this was worth gambling on! If we take out the catastrophe, we’ll get MVP for sure!”

“Well, the NPCs wouldn’t lie to us about this, and considering we’re in the middle of an event, I think it was a pretty good bet, personally. That’s how we got here, with all the top players on the server to boot.”

“And just now, it dropped a ton of undead from above, so it’s gotta be the undead boss for this invasion.”

“Do we need to worry about those undead?”

“Lawson’s group should be in the city, ready to engage them. Just gotta trust they’ll be all right.”

“But man, this thing is huge! What is it, exactly?”

“It’s an undead, right? Maybe a dullahan or something?”

While the players chatted, about ten of them stayed there while the rest, who looked like support, fell back. It was a trivial distance, so Rare didn’t worry about it. All they probably had were arrows and magic, so as long as she had Yoroizaka on they weren’t worth worrying about. After she took care of the ten people right in front of her, she could kill the rest at her leisure.

“It sucks that we couldn’t get in touch with Rare, the champion from last time, but whatever. We’ve leveled up a ton, so even if a bunch of Rares came at us, we would wipe the floor with them, so even an event boss should be easy with this group.”

Surprised, Rare’s eyebrows shot up. Even if a bunch of her came at them, they could win? She wondered if they were saying that seriously. In that case, she would have to correct their misunderstanding.

It was time to recreate that exhibition match.

Yoroizaka soundlessly approached the man in front with [Flash Step], then unleashed a [Slash] while pulling back. The only one who could defend against this attack to date was Sieg. Plus, Yoroizaka had gone through two reincarnations, so her stats were incomparable to what they had been before. Even if he could repel it, his shield would end up sliced in half.

“Ahhhhholy crap! If I wasn’t paying attention I woulda been offed!”

But he dodged it.

—Impossible!

If she had been on the defending side, even Rare herself wasn’t confident she would’ve been able to dodge it her first time seeing it. Although since it was simply an attack straight from the front, as long as you knew that in advance, it wouldn’t be impossible to avoid. That meant that it wasn’t the first time for this man. He had seen it somewhere before.

“It’s the same move the champion used! Best to assume this thing can use player skills too!”

From the previous event. During the battle royale, she did in fact use this combo many times. It was so convenient that she probably overused it, and now it had become ingrained in Yoroizaka. What an unfortunate habit. Next time, she would have to have Deas and Sieg help her practice some kind of non-skill-based technique.

However, both last time and this time, since she left everything to Yoroizaka, there was no verbal component that went along with the skill activation. Because of that, apparently the player thought that the entire series of actions was a single skill. In which case, if she used [Flash Step] to connect with a different skill or a normal attack, they might not be able to avoid it.

Rare conveyed this to Yoroizaka via friend chat. Just as directed, she used [Flash Step] to close in on a different swordsman, then swept sideways without using a skill. Because of the extreme difference in height, Yoroizaka’s horizontal sweep must have felt like a three-dimensional diagonal slash to her target. As expected, he couldn’t dodge it, and while he was able to thrust his shield up in time, he was sent flying by the attack. It was like a batter hitting a baseball, but while she was able to cut through it, there was quite a lot of resistance, and the cut was deflected. That shield wasn’t made of iron.

“Gil!”

“I’m fine! I ain’t dead! Dammit, I spent a fortune on a magic iron shield, and it got pulverized in one attack!”

Because the shield was too sturdy to slice through cleanly, apparently the only thing that got cut off was that swordsman’s left arm.

Things weren’t going smoothly at all this time. When Yoroizaka had those practice battles with the adamantite soldiers, she was able to move more nimbly. While she was indeed moving better than she had during the first event, was this really all she was capable of in the wake of two reincarnations?

“Leave it to me! [Medium Heal]! [Regeneration]!”

Some kind of spell came flying in from a mage in the rearguard. It hit the swordsman who had just lost his left arm and covered him in light. The light expanded to include the shape of his left arm, then, when the light disappeared, the arm was back, just as it was before. The gauntlet that went flying with the arm didn’t come back, but all the damage to the player had been neutralized.

—Healing magic! I’ve never seen it before!

Since this was a fundamentally multiplayer skill, there was no point in hiding information about it. If Rare had checked the message boards, she should have probably been able to get it as well.

It was pure hubris. Since she earned the most XP, she already knew about the most skills. But that wasn’t true at all. Rare purposely avoided learning a lot of skills, such as melee attack skills. Thus, there must have been countless players who experimented with all the skills Rare had passed up. Rare wasn’t the only person playing this game, after all.

—After this event is over, I’m gonna have to explore skill usage again for the first time in a long time. But even before that, I’ll need to hit the forums, check up on all the information that’s been making the rounds, and after looking at all of that…

“[Lightning]!”

With a boom, she felt her field of view rock. This was no time to be thinking about the future. Apparently she had gotten hit by a magic attack. Yoroizaka had taken damage. But that wouldn’t be a problem. If it was just this much damage, she should naturally regenerate it momentarily.

Wait, the problem wasn’t the amount of damage, it was the fact that Yoroizaka had even taken damage at all.

In all Rare’s testing, the only thing capable of dealing damage to Yoroizaka was an adamanmage equipped with a World Tree staff. Considering how strong adamanknights were, adamanmages should be as strong as high-leveled mage players. Those same adamanmages needed to have the best equipment available to Rare in order to inflict damage to Yoroizaka, and that player had just done it. She couldn’t say that it was absolutely impossible, but it was truly hard to imagine happening.

But no, she needed to save her analytical disbelief for later. Right now, she had to deal with these enemies capable of damaging her. That meant she needed to prioritize killing them first. Yoroizaka was already looking at the player who had cast that spell just now, and she used [Flash Step] to get right next to them.

However, just before that, suddenly she was submerged in darkness.

—What the hell?! I can’t see!

“Awright! It worked! It’s blinded! Now!”

She didn’t know what was going to happen “now,” but she had an extremely bad feeling about whatever it was. Rare promptly cast a spell.

“[Hellflame]!”

This wasn’t the time to be concerned about people hearing her voice.

“What was that just now?! Who did that?!”

Generally, AOE magic required visual confirmation of the target area in order to activate. However, there were exceptions. Such as when you yourself were the center of the spell. Every AOE spell allowed only that one exception to successfully cast without seeing. It was kind of inane to have to look at yourself every time you wanted to cast strengthening-type magic, after all. You are casting magic at yourself, so the fact that you know where you are without having to look is a matter of course.

“Agh! It’s fire!”

“Shit! Who cast that?! That wasn’t part of the plan!”

“No! It was the catastrophe! It cast the spell on itself!”

“It can do that?!”

This should burn up everyone within range.

However, her vision didn’t return. And since she didn’t know whether this effect was from a spell, a skill, or an item, she couldn’t counteract it either.

“H-Hey, is everyone all right?! [Area Minor Heal]!”

She heard the voice of the healer from before, and she also heard words of thanks from all around. That meant that none of the players around her had died.

Impossible… Rare’s [Hellflame] was powerful enough to melt adamantite. She had cast that spell knowing that it would deal quite a lot of damage to Yoroizaka. For players with shields that could be cut off with one swing of a Kenzaki, none of them should have been able to withstand it.

—Actually, why is Yoroizaka mostly fine?

She did in fact take damage, but it was a lot less than expected.

“—field debuff saved our asses. It was a pain to set up, but the effect is legit.”

“Good thing we all set up this area in advance and lured the boss here. If we had to fight it normally, this would’ve been totally impossible.”

“Shut up! Don’t talk about that! The event boss might have a super intelligent AI! What’ll we do if it comes up with a countermeasure?!”

—A field debuff…?

That sounded like the [Miasma] skill that Sieg and Deas had. No, this was even stronger than their skills. They said it was a pain to set up. In other words, they had prepared in advance for it to activate in this area. And Rare walked right into it.

This was no longer something on the level of “letting her guard down” or “being arrogant.” She had been convinced that no one could possibly defeat her either way. She looked down on these players, condescendingly hoping that maybe someone could put up a good fight against her. She was full of herself.

And this was the result of that.

If it had been a normal fight, then like before, it probably would have been her overwhelming victory. But she had been baited into a field debuff, forced to fight while weakened, allowed all her attacks to be healed, had her sight stolen, and been reduced to this pathetic mess.

She was infuriated at her own foolishness. She couldn’t forgive herself; it was easy to forgive others, but it was much harder to forgive herself.

No, it wasn’t actually that easy to forgive others either. She wouldn’t let these guys off the hook. She absolutely did not want to lose to them. Rare was an extremely sore loser.

If she couldn’t see herself, then she just had to let the Kenzakis run wild. They each could see on their own.

“Its vision shouldn’t have recovered yet! And the spell it just cast should still be cooling down! Now’s the time!”

“Leave it to me! [Fear]!”

<<Resistance has succeeded.>>

However, right then, Yoroizaka stopped moving. Rare tried to control her, but she wouldn’t move at all. By the looks of it, it would be reasonable to assume she had been afflicted by the status effect [Fear]. However, that only applied to Yoroizaka—it wasn’t true for Rare. That was clear from the system message. Even if she was weakened by a debuff, it was inconceivable for the horned Rare to fail to resist [Mental Magic] from a human.

However, in reality, she was currently stuck in place. Why was that?

In all likelihood, it was because Yoroizaka was her armor, and while Rare had her equipped, she was still a monster at the same time. Therefore, even if she counted as equipment, if either of them failed to resist a status effect, both would suffer the consequences. Considering that even when equipped, Yoroizaka was still able to move independently, this certainly made sense from a gameplay standpoint. In other words, right now Yoroizaka was paralyzed with fear and unable to move as an independent action.

—I never even considered that! I can’t believe there was a drawback like this! But Yoroizaka was supposed to be immune to all [Mental Magic] spells!

“The catastrophe is stopped in its tracks! [Fear] worked!”

“Even though it’s been debuffed, how much min-maxing did you do to bust through an event boss’s resistance?!”

“It’s because of Blind! Targets affected that can’t see have lowered resistance to [Fear]! Plus, I used one of my soul stones! I knew this thing was undead!”

This was news to her. So [Fear] had a modifier like that. But this wasn’t something she would have ever realized on her own, since Rare had never gone out into any bright places. She always used [Fear] when it was already dark. She knew that her [Beauty] characteristic boosted [Charm]’s effects, but apparently [Fear] had also always been buffed by the environment. Although, since each of them were buffed by different things, there was no point in comparing them to each other.

She didn’t know what a “soul stone” was either, but from the name it seemed to have a similar effect to [Necromancy]’s [Bind Soul]. [Bind Soul] lets the caster store souls for later use, but that item might function as an expendable replacement for a soul.

Yoroizaka wasn’t undead but closer to a homunculus or a golem. Both of those beings required the consumption of another soul in order for [Mental Magic] to affect them. Since Yoroizaka and the Kenzakis were immune to [Mental Magic] and couldn’t cast magic, Rare hadn’t spent any XP on raising their MND stats. All they had was the boost granted by Rare’s skills. Since they had been further debilitated by the field debuff, of course they would fail a resist roll. The Kenzakis similarly weren’t responsive; if Yoroizaka failed to resist the [Fear], then it was unthinkable for any of the Kenzakis to resist it either, meaning they were all paralyzed by fear too.

“Now! All-out DPS!”

Magic came flying at her from every which way. However, Yoroizaka only took chip damage from it. If they just tanked all the spells and waited for [Fear] to wear off, Yoroizaka probably wouldn’t die, but Rare didn’t want to do something lame like that. She had decided that these people were all going to die, after all.

With both her vision and movement sealed, there was nothing Rare could do from inside Yoroizaka. Considering that they were only blasting her with magic right now, that meant that there should be no one right near her. She assumed no one was in range of the self-destructive spell she had cast at herself earlier. This was no longer a situation where she could be concerned about letting herself be seen. She wanted to crush them with all her might. See them with her own eyes, then rip them apart with her high-level magic.

“[Whiteout].”

“Whoa! What the heck?!”

“What’s that light?! I can’t see!!!”

This [Light Magic] spell blinded everyone in an area, although it didn’t last very long. Rare used this opening to come out from inside Yoroizaka.

She opened the hatch in the back, quickly emerged, then put a hand on Yoroizaka’s shoulder and crawled up. She used the wings on her back for balance and propped herself up with one foot in Yoroizaka’s hatch.

“Something came out!”

“So someone was inside it?!”

“Calm down! This is just the boss’s second form!”

The players had already recovered from [Whiteout]’s effects. Its duration was extremely short. This debuff thing was sure putting in some work. If possible, she would’ve liked to have taken care of some people before it wore off, but the spell had actually affected Rare as well.

The sun was dazzling. She couldn’t open her eyes without squinting, which made it hard to survey her surroundings.

Come to think of it, how long had it been since she had been outside with her real avatar? Last time had to have been in the forest, where the trees shaded her from the sunlight, so it hadn’t been as radiant. But now, there were no obstacles in the way. Even though the sun had fallen somewhat from its zenith, that didn’t change how much she suffered from direct exposure. The only penalty to her vision should have been [Poor Eyesight], but maybe it interacted with [Albinism] to unlock some kind of additional special effect.

“Wait, that’s…”

“Sweet Jesus, now that’s what I call a queen…”

“What is it?”

“There was a boss kinda like that in a really old game. It was the ant queen. Well, that boss looked like an ant except for its wings.”

“More like, isn’t that just an angel? So what was behind all the undead outbreaks was an angel all along?”

“I see, so it was an angel… It really is too beautiful for words. You can’t even say its beauty was sculpted; it’s so overwhelmingly gorgeous that I can feel it in my soul.”

“It’s so lovely that I can’t even be jealous…”

“Actually, isn’t this really bad? If it’s an angel… it won’t work on it…”

“No, it’s clearly working.”

“It may look like an angel, but we already know that it’s undead! It’s probably some kind of angel zombie, I bet!”

Even though this was a battle, they were just happily chatting away. They must have thought they could afford to do that since Rare hadn’t done anything yet. But that wouldn’t be true for much longer.

The sun was still way too bright, but since the players spent so much time talking her eyes had been able to adjust to it. She could at least open her eyes a little bit now. Enough to make out where her targets were. Their front liners weren’t as far away as she thought they’d be. They must’ve thought it would be fine to be this close since their target had been both blinded and paralyzed.

—They’ll regret letting their guards down.

Because Rare originally had [Poor Eyesight], it was hard for her to properly attack enemies who were at mid-range or further away from her. Plus, with her vision further impaired right now, it was much harder for her to aim her magic than she expected. So, she would just have to get up close and beat the shit out of them.

Rare swiftly jumped down from Yoroizaka, darted to the closest melee-looking player, and aimed a roundhouse kick right at her neck. Even though she was weakened by that debuff, as long as her opponent was humanoid, the methods for incapacitating a body had been ingrained into her muscles.

Actually, speaking of the weakening debuff, Rare’s regular stats were too high, so it was difficult to control her avatar since it was too responsive. Due to all the long years of training she had gone through, she felt most comfortable moving her body when it hadn’t been strengthened with any stats whatsoever.

However, even though an avatar closer to her real body would allow her to perform at her peak, this was the game world. A regular person could never compete against a monster whose specs were multiplied by their STR and AGI stats. Most in-game attacks were impossible for an average human to avoid, and given the difference in raw power, even if it seemed possible to turn one aside, a glancing blow would still result in a broken limb.

Suppressing her sense of disorientation, her reckless kick was meant to rob her target of consciousness, but instead it robbed the woman’s spine of its vertical integrity. The unfortunate player crumpled on the spot. She would probably disappear shortly after in order to respawn, but Rare didn’t have the luxury of watching the show.

Grabbing the fallen player’s arm before she hit the ground, Rare haphazardly tossed her in the direction of the mages in the rearguard. The flying corpse, thrown with her ridiculous STR stat, spun wildly in the air; after it had gone far enough to turn blurry in her eyes, it turned into light and disappeared. The system must have respawned them.

“Tch!”

“This thing is way stronger than she looks!”

“I thought she’d be a mage-type!”

“What kind of angel bludgeons people to death?!”^[1]

“Did the Fear already wear off?!”

“Her status effects probably cleared when she came out of the armor! Anyway, front liners, get as close as you can! Don’t let her move around so much!”

Rare dashed toward the voice who shouted just then, cracking open her eyelids just a bit when she got near to check their position. She dropped her hips, then drove her palm right into the center of her target’s trunk. In the real world, she would’ve broken her hand with this move, but the Rare here with her ludicrous stats would never lose a joust like this. However, the place her palm strike hit was much softer than she anticipated and her hand pierced right into the player’s body, momentarily stopping her in place.

The other players weren’t about to let that opening slip them by.

Something came flying at the side of her face, but because of her nearsightedness, Rare couldn’t tell exactly which direction it had come from. She twisted instantly with her arm still inside the other player, pivoting him to be used as a shield against the projectile.

“[Fear]!”

<<Resistance has succeeded.>>

It was no use. [Mental Magic] wouldn’t work on a demon lord.

“It didn’t work!”

“God dammit, but the leader…!”

“Shit, she blocked the Squid Ink Ball! But now we know for sure! We need both Blind and the field debuff in order for [Fear] to land!”

“No, wait! I used six soul stones on that first cast, but I’ve only got four left now! They might not be enough!”

They were wildly off base, but she had no obligation to correct them. The six soul stones must have been used for each of Yoroizaka and the five Kenzakis. But she did learn something useful just now. The thing that was thrown at her was the same thing that had blinded Yoroizaka. They called it a “Squid Ink Ball.” It must have come from the ocean. Once this was all over, maybe she should head there herself.

“[Lightning Shower].”

As thanks for the information, Rare glared in the direction of the voice who had cast [Fear] and unleashed some AOE magic in recompense. Since her accuracy would tank when she couldn’t see her target clearly, it was next to impossible for her to hit someone at mid-range with magic. However, AOE spells could somewhat cover for that in exchange for larger MP costs. Since the range of her vision stopped a bit before being able to see the source of the voice, that was where she was forced to cast her spell. Because of that, she couldn’t hit them directly, but based on the cries she heard, it seemed she had barely caught them inside the area of the magic.

“Gaaah…”

“She got MentaiList!”

“Even weakened, she can still one-shot the rearguard…”

“She ain’t a warrior-type or a mage-type! She’s stupid strong enough to be either! Rearguard, you guys back up even more!”

“[Area Minor Heal]!”

Apparently other players also got caught in her spell, so someone had cast AOE heals within that area. However, that was a bad move. From the start, Rare had only heard one voice casting healing magic. In other words, they probably didn’t have another healer. In which case…

“[Snowstorm]! [Prominence]! [Earthquake]! [Hurricane]!”

Before their AOE heal cooled down, kill them all by piling on spells. Rare was prepared to hit herself by casting them with her own position as the nexus. It was the quickest way to cast them consecutively. This way she didn’t have to squint to designate a position in order to cast the spell each time. Aside from the damage from her own spells, her skin had been feeling prickly for a while now. That must be due to her weakness to sunlight. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time; she needed to finish this up quickly. Unless they had somehow managed to slip in a heal between one of her attacks, all the players near her should have been wiped out.

She could have perhaps cast an even more powerful spell instead, but since she herself would be at the center of it, she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to withstand it.

Plus, she still hadn’t taken any real damage from an enemy yet. After getting rid of all the front liners, the rearguard would probably start pelting her with magic, but she really couldn’t imagine such a barrage doing more damage than she had already done to herself with her own spell. She could ride it out.

Between all the offensive spells, the healer did cast some heals, but their AOE heal must have been on cooldown. Even if they were able to heal, it would only affect one or two people at a time. If that was all, then she could leave them alive and not run into any problems.

However… Rare wondered why this player she gutted hadn’t respawned yet. He was convenient as a shield, and even after she switched to mainly casting magic she had just kept him around, but she wondered exactly how long he intended to decorate her arm. Just as she thought it was about time to pull out her arm and throw him aside, she felt someone else cling to her waist. If she remembered correctly, this was the guy whose arm she had cut off, a player named Gil. He had taken on the rare tank role in this raid. Just as a tank should, he must have had a lot of stamina in order to stay alive for this long. Well, no, even putting the weakening effect aside, Rare’s magic was powerful. Which meant that between Rare’s casts, the healer was deliberately healing this guy… But why…?

“Now! Break it!!!” he suddenly yelled.

With Rare’s vision, she couldn’t really tell, but the rearguard players were doing something quite far away. Then she heard what sounded like a crystal shattering, and suddenly her body became a lot heavier. She knew exactly what this was: the field debuff. But why did it get stronger all of a sudden? At the same time, it felt like strength was being drained from her body. She almost couldn’t stay standing. The man holding onto Rare’s waist came loose and his feet began to drag on the ground. He was probably dying. This wasn’t just a debuff; it probably also drained LP. And unlike before, it also affected the other players now. That was why this Gil person also died. And this dead body hanging onto her arm was heavy; Rare was forced onto one knee. This was why he didn’t respawn. She had to escape from this field as soon as possible. It wasn’t dealing damage, but it was reducing her maximum LP instead. And the damage she had already taken before this new effect wasn’t being maintained as a percentage of her current LP, it was a fixed value of LP lost. That was probably the primary reason for Gil’s death.

And Rare had taken a huge amount of damage from her own spells. Furthermore, she had been also been debilitated by that powerful weakening effect. Her LP was already in the red zone, and she only had a sliver left. To make things worse, the [Light Burns] from her Albinism were starting to gradually shave even more LP off. This… was bad. But the man at her feet was in her way, and she couldn’t even take a single step.

—God, his armor’s so heavy. But in the worst case, I can just use [Castling]…

No, wait, she couldn’t. Before she got here, she had frivolously used it up, and it had a 24-hour timer. She also couldn’t use [Summon Caster] to escape. There was still more time before she could use any [Summon]-type skills. Plus, with all these corpses coiled around her, she didn’t even know if she would be able to activate it.

Everything she had done today ended up backfiring on her. This was all because of her arrogance, because she didn’t consider the consequences of her actions.

It was galling, but she had to run away. She could just cast high-level magic from the sky to carpet-bomb the entire area.

She used [Flight] to float up in the air and used all her strength to shake off the corpse on her arm. At that moment, her eyes swept across his face. She knew him. He was—

Suddenly, she felt the sharp tang of bloodlust. She spun around reflexively. Right before her eyes, there was an arrow.

—Oh right, someone fired an arrow at me right at the start…

It would probably pierce her right between the eyebrows. A headshot.

<<One hour until automatic resurrection. Would you like to respawn immediately?>>

<<During this event, there is no XP penalty.>>

Author’s notes

The only thing I had decided before I started writing this chapter was that Rare would die. If that hurts your impression of this chapter, I think that’s a fair response. Thank you very much for reading.

The ones who benefit the most from the reduced death penalty are the ones at the top. This is a game where the more experience you gain, the greater the cost of dying becomes, so since the top players can’t afford to die, as they get stronger, they also become more careful. At least, the players who have experienced death do. The admins would never directly interfere in the game, but if they ever felt that progression was stagnating, they could use these kinds of bonus weeks to help stimulate things. They’ll record the data on the reduced death penalty during this event and probably refer to it in the future.

Tomorrow’s chapter will be even longer than today’s, which I am very sorry about, but it’ll be another single story. For the most part, it’ll be the events that led to today’s story in a Pythagosomething Switch^[2] type of thing, it won’t be the next part of the story.

TL notes

The name of this chapter is ???????. The first part, ?????, is an old poetic rendition for “tears;” from what I understand, it’s kind of archaic Japanese, i.e. the construction doesn’t make sense in modern Japanese, but it roughly translates to “the rain from one’s own body.” So all together it would be either “the taste of tears” or “the taste of rain from one’s own body;” as an English title, though, the first one is boring, and the second makes no sense. I decided to go with a more abstract English title to try to retain that feeling of poetry.

^[1]: ??????????????; not sure if this was supposed to be a reference, but ???? pretty clearly brings to mind Dokuro-chan…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bludgeoning_Angel_Dokuro-Chan

^[2]: Pythagora Switch is a Japanese educational TV program that features “Pythagorean devices” throughout the show, which are more commonly known as “Rube Goldberg machines” in American English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PythagoraSwitch

Wow, so how about this chapter? The person who recommended this series to me said this was the chapter that made him change his evaluation of this series; “That’s when it finally kicked in for me. After building up her invincibility, it felt like it broke my expectations in a good way.” I have to agree; based on how everything leading up to this chapter was going, there might have been little hints, but I never thought it was going to lead off this way, with her respawning in medias res, then flashing back to the actual battle. I’m excited to find out how the author is going to explain how this happened.

Next chapter is the 19k monster, so I’ll be taking a full week to work on it as well. See you on Wednesday the 11th!