Golden Experience

“I thought I saw too many military uniforms in there; I wonder if they were reinforcements from the capital? Looks like capital soldiers can respond to saturation attacks and even protect themselves from headshots. But hm, ‘reinforcements’ seems wrong when I only took down Erfahren yesterday. They couldn’t have responded this quickly. So then why would they have sent an army out here?”

The surviving knights and soldiers took in the devastation and moaned in anguish. But then they also looked up into the sky and glared at the wasps with hate-filled eyes.

“Since they didn’t die from any of the stuff before, if I have the vespoids take them cordless bungee jumping, it’s possible one of the soldiers could defeat a vespoid in the air. And if they could survive bombing and sniping, then they might even be able to survive a fall from a great height. They could be too much for the ants to handle.”

The only ones in this city right now were Rare and the aerial squads; they were the only ones who could make it from Erfahren to La Colline in a day. Rare could just take care of the soldiers herself, but she still had forces who hadn’t had a chance to shine in real combat yet: the adamantite series. The only thing they had gotten to do so far was be lumberjacks.

After this, she planned to head straight for the capital while ignoring the smaller towns, but since she wanted the capital to become a ruins-type territory, she couldn’t just carpet bomb the place. So that meant she could have the aerial forces rest for now.

“Good work. Bring them back into the forest,” Rare instructed Sugaru, who used [Summon] on all the ants. “So now… let’s see, three platoons should be good.”

Still floating in the sky, she [Summoned] three groups of adamantite soldiers at the same time. Since Rare was using the [Light Magic] spell [Camouflage] to hide herself, it would have appeared as though they suddenly materialized in midair. There was no real point to the theatrics, but it was certainly very eye-catching. This was an event, after all, so it was worth putting on a show.

The [Summoned] adamantite platoons fell to the ground, causing the earth to shake and kicking up great plumes of dust as they planted themselves in the tilled land. After recovering from the shock of landing, one by one they crawled up out of the ground and ran to engage with the human soldiers.

What surprised Rare the most was that the soldiers were able to evade the adamanknights’ slashes. The players who came to have fun in the great forest would have died from the first attack. After dodging, the soldiers swung their weapons at the adamaknights; these attacks didn’t seem hard to avoid, but somehow they ended up finding their marks anyway. The adamanknights were sturdier than the soldiers’ weapons, so they got away unharmed, but if their opponents had better equipment, the living mail probably wouldn’t have been able to win. The soldiers were steadily culled mainly due to an overwhelming difference in pure specs, not from any lack of ability. They had honed their martial skills to this degree only to die because their equipment was so poor… Rare lamented that it was truly a waste.

On the other hand, she had nothing but praise for these soldiers; first they survived the bombardment unhurt, then they immediately faced off against the adamantite soldiers, trying to stop them from advancing. They were essentially on par with adamanleaders; they were marvellously talented. This also meant that they were about as strong as Yoroizaka was back during the first event. Since there were only three platoons, that meant there were only three adamanleaders as well, each in charge of the adamanknights and adamanscouts in their respective platoons; the adamanmages were providing cover and keeping the battlefield under control.

While there weren’t that many of them, with these knights protecting it, this city would have been much more difficult to conquer using ground forces. It was the right decision to have deployed her aerial forces. But the knights truly were both strong and scarce. Perhaps they were actually formal knights. In which case, if Rare’s forces didn’t kill their master first, then they couldn’t truly be killed.

If that master was in this city, that would mean they had also survived the bombings. Anyone who had risen out of the rubble was already in combat with the adamantite soldiers. If their master still lived, then they were still buried within the wreckage. Or, perhaps they were already among the knights in battle. The fact that the knights didn’t try to find their master and instead dove into battle without hesitation meant that they had absolute confidence in their master’s survival. She didn’t see any of them awkwardly try to cover any of their comrades, so she didn’t think the master had disguised themself among the knights. So, maybe they weren’t actually in this city.

Rare didn’t think they would respawn in a destroyed city even if they died here. Just like players, followers would respawn in the last place they had slept, but for NPCs, she wasn’t sure what would happen if that place was no longer available..

While Rare idly searched for more survivors from the sky, enough human soldiers died to break the fragile equilibrium, and control of the battlefield fell entirely into Rare’s hands. Once she returned to the ground, the soldiers’ and knights’ bodies had all been lined up. They could wait here for an hour to verify what happened to the knight corpses, but there wasn’t much point in that. The master wasn’t here, and if the knights respawned somewhere really far away from here, then it would have been a waste of time. She had the adamantite soldiers store the bodies in case they had anything useful on them, then began to think of her next move.

“I don’t have any way to carry you adamandudes, so… All you can do is stay here. I’ll fly by myself to the capital, then summon you once I get there. [Flight] is really convenient.”

She took her map out of her inventory to check. It appeared that she could reach the capital by going more or less west from here. She could fly in that direction, look for the road once she got pretty close, then just follow that the rest of the way. It was far enough away that it would take a number of days to walk there, but it would barely take any time by air.

＊

The wind felt great. Or that’s what she’d have wanted to say, but Rare couldn’t tell at all from inside Yoroizaka. Her field of vision did let her see everything around her at once, which was wonderful. She didn’t want to cause some kind of freak accident by looking down, though. That said, there weren’t exactly obstacles up here in the sky. Very rarely she would spot birds, but birds didn’t spend every second of their lives in the air, and they had their own habitats which they didn’t stray far from.

But, one bird did catch her eye. It flew quite far below Rare, but she saw it coming from quite far away. Even after passing Rare, it kept flying straight ahead without wavering. It was a small bird. Probably a pigeon.

A lone pigeon flying through the sky like this.

It wasn’t an impossible sight. Most wild pigeons formed flocks and lived together, but that wasn’t necessarily the case in this world. Pigeons that flew long distances… Well, they could exist. Maybe it had been driven from its home.

However, what was more likely was that someone owned this pigeon, and it was being used to deliver messages.

In which case it must have a specific destination. And the only thing in its path would be a mountain of rubble. That rubble used to be a city, which meant there was a person there that was using this pigeon to communicate. Curious, Rare decided to catch it.

But, sure enough, she used too much power and crushed it. Maybe it would be better to call Ominous here to deal with any more of them. As she examined the corpse in her hand, she saw something attached to one of its legs. So it really was a messenger pigeon. She wanted to take time to read the letter, but she also wanted to avoid wasting time. After coming up with an idea, Rare [Summoned] Ominous and had him fly toward the capital in her place.

For now, she dropped to the ground, then came out from Yoroizaka in the shade of a tree. Then she carefully pulled the tube off the pigeon’s leg so that she wouldn’t get blood on herself. Some kind of cloth was stuffed into the tube; after opening it up, it turned out to be larger than she was expecting.

What was written on it slightly surprised Rare. But she was also convinced of its veracity.

According to the message, the unusual number of soldiers at the last city had been apparently assembled to take out Rare. It said that they were to subjugate a catastrophe, and their ultimate destination was the Great Liebe Forest. Based on a clue she had, the catastrophe had to refer to Rare herself. That clue was the system message from before, when she had reincarnated into a demon lord. One of the kingdom’s higher-up NPCs must have also gotten that message. The person who sent this letter was Hiers’s prime minister, and that wasn’t someone that just anyone could meet. Unless the person who received the system message was directly involved in the country’s management, the prime minister would never have heard about Rare.

This letter was being sent to a commander, probably the person in charge of that army. Since messenger pigeons could be intercepted by tamed birds of prey, it was foolish to include specifics without encoding the message. That said, this was being delivered within the kingdom, and they weren’t at war with another country right now. While it could be said that they were at war with Rare, normally they wouldn’t have to worry about a monster army having spies.

Now she knew why there was such a large army in that city. They had been dispatched to fight Rare, and they just happened to stop by. But since they were met by a huge swarm of wasps, they must have requested new orders. According to the letter, they were supposed to overlook the destruction of La Colline and prioritize taking out the catastrophe. They weren’t able to defeat Rare, but La Colline did get destroyed, so they were able to follow half of the order, maybe.

—But they actually sent an army to vanquish me…

She wasn’t sure how they even knew that the Great Liebe Forest was her home, but clearly Rare’s mere existence was a scourge on the kingdom. And they even thought it would be possible to beat her with only an army of that size. They were completely underestimating her.

She really wanted to retaliate. She hadn’t actually been attacked yet, but her enemy did in fact raise their fist. Whether or not they decided to follow through and take a swing was up to them, but as far as Rare was concerned, as soon as they threatened to punch, they could no longer complain about being punched first.

She didn’t actually spend that much time reading and thinking about the letter, but since she had this chance, she wanted to test a skill while also regaining that time anyway. Rare once again donned Yoroizaka, then activated her skill.

“[Castling: Ominous].”

After a second of feeling like she was floating, Rare found herself back in the sky. Rare had exchanged her body with Ominous’s, who had flown ahead. She activated [Flight] in a fluster to avoid falling back down to the ground.

“So that’s how it works. Before using [Castling], I should use [Summon Vision] to check where I’m swapping to first. But if I’m going to do that, then I might as well just use [Summon Caster]. I bet it was designed as an emergency escape-type skill, but I won’t have a chance to use it that way.”

Rare directed Ominous to return to base however he saw fit. If that ended up being too difficult, then he could entertain himself while she finished her errands, then she would [Summon] him to her.

She had intended to find the road once she got close to the capital, but it was in clear sight without even having to start looking. Being the center of the kingdom, there were many roads that led out of the city. Rare didn’t know if the road directly beneath her was the one that went to La Colline or not, since it twisted and turned all over the place. That was unavoidable, though, since it had to circumvent forests, hills, and traverse rivers.

In any case, if they followed the road, they should end up at their destination. She would have to reactivate [Camouflage] soon.

Time to conquer the capital and turn it into a city of death.