The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 19: "The Strongest Monster: The Ant"

Before Blanc went back out into the cavern, she wanted to make sure she knew how to cast magic. She wanted to be ready to fire some off at a moment's notice, so she would be a lot more cautious while walking around this time. She couldn't tell the difference between the walls, so she just picked one and followed it. Blanc wanted to go in the opposite direction from the first time, but all she did was go in the opposite direction of where she was looking when she respawned, so she didn't actually know if this was the way she really wanted to go or not.

She progressed a lot more slowly, taking much more time than before. When she finally hit a fork in the road—

"The tunnel from before— Ah, wait, last time the tunnel was on the left, but this time it's on the right..."

If she had accidentally ended up going the same way as last time, then the tunnel should be on the same side as it was before. But if she had gone in the opposite direction, and the tunnel was on the opposite side, that would mean that based on the way she was facing now, the ant colony should be on the right half of the cave.

"...So I should keep going into the left half."

Doing her best not to look into the side tunnel, Blanc chose the left fork. But as soon as she got close to the tunnel, a familiar foul smell tickled her nose.

"Ah."

Acid poured over her from the side. She lost all feeling in her body, and, unable to stay standing, she clattered down into a sitting position. Even more acid rained down on her head, and Blanc's vision went dark.

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

"For real...?"

Even though she did her best to avoid the ant nest, if she were to encounter an ant, she had been prepared to blast it instantly. She never imagined that she could die immediately from a surprise attack, though.

"Those ants are really bloodthirsty, huh..."

Now that it had come to this, she should just aggressively dive into their nest and kill them all, otherwise she'd never get out of here. Having made that determination, Blanc psyched herself up as she accepted the system respawn.

"...Huh?"

There was an ant right in front of her. A monster was suddenly at her original spawn point. Apparently that could happen. However, Blanc was done being caught off guard. She instantly switched gears and cast her first magic spell.

"It's just an ant...! All right, [Flare Arrow]!"

Right after she shouted the activation keyword, an arrow made of fire materialized right before her eyes and flew straight at the ant she targeted. The arrow pierced through the ant's head, then conflagrated its entire body. Once the fire burned itself out, only the ant's abdomen remained.

"Magic... is hella awesome... I burned one of those super strong ants to cinders with just one attack..."

The ashes smelled kind of weird, but Blanc approached them to survey the remains.

"I thought there would be uh... 'drops'?... or whatever, monster materials, but maybe that spell was overkill... But wow, this smell. It's the same as the smell as from grilling dried squid. Man, there might be no pain in this game, but it sure just shits out trauma..."

For the time being, Blanc decided to just store the ant's abdomen in her inventory. The acid that had melted her twice should be in that part. No reason to throw it away if it could turn out to be useful later.

In any case, she discovered an effective method of fighting ants. Shoot [Flare Arrows] from outside the range of their acid. As long as she had MP, it should work. "Kill them before they kill me" was the attitude she adopted.