The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 32: "The Ants of the Forest"

"Makes sense; if my followers kill Sugaru's, they get nothing, even if they should've normally gotten XP from it. Looks like we really can't break the game that way," Rare muttered to herself while watching Kerry fight an Engineer Ant.

Next to her, Sugaru nodded, noting that she'd never tried having her followers attack each other. As a result of reconstructing the ant caverns, they had made a new [Queen's Chambers], which was where Rare observed Kerry's battle.

Not counting the day of maintenance, it had been about one week in the real world. During that time, Rare had expanded her territory to include nearly all of the great forest that was considered monster territory, which surrounded the cave. Aside from some groups of monsters set aside for supplies and provisions and a goblin village that was left alone to be used to farm XP, nothing that lived in the forest dared defy the rule of Rare's group. After conquering the great forest, Rare had set her home base to an area near its center. While it was all under her control, it seemed she couldn't set the entire cavern system as her home, so only the queen's chamber and the rooms around it were considered her private area.

In the process of expanding the underground ant nest to encompass the entire area of the forest, they accidentally stumbled onto a mine that was on the edge of monster territory, where they ran into human NPCs. Since it was so close to their territory and gave them access to mineral resources, they went ahead and conquered it anyway.

In addition, around the underground edges of the forest, they were producing peat alongside a water vein, and they had also found coal. The ants were able to easily procure underground resources without needing to perform open-pit mining, and if they could use the coal to refine iron ore, then their supply of metals would improve dramatically.

Rare had Remy learn [Blacksmith] skills, and right now a forge was being constructed in one corner of the nest in order to start producing metal equipment. A number of the Engineer Ants, who wouldn't see much combat, were taught the [Blacksmith], [Leathercraft], and [Clothcraft] skills, then assigned under Remy's command with the ultimate goal of mass production.

With the great forest under their control, they started eyeing the prairie. Ant tunnels extended deep underneath the area, and exit holes were dug for the ants to observe the zone. Using these, they could spy on the people there. The ants were under strict order not to let anyone catch sight of them, but they were allowed to hunt rabbits as long as they stayed within a certain limited range of the exits. If the human side were to consider them a threat, the country could decide to invade the prairie and the great forest, which would not be good at all.

On the few occasions when they were accidentally seen, the witnesses were unable to defeat a group of five ants working together, so they were quickly turned into XP for Rare. It seemed that humanoids were worth a bit more XP than monsters of the same level; this was the same as in the closed beta. It was probably because their items and equipment counted toward their combat capability. Thinking only in terms of XP efficiency, they made for wonderful prey.

The most efficient course of action would be to farm players, who come back to life, but they hadn't found any yet in the area they monitored. If the number of players increased with the official launch, she would have to keep tabs on the changes in their population while they regularly farmed those players.

If a squad were unable to defeat someone, then, while that squad's ants were being killed, things were arranged so that other nearby squads could come and continue the fight. Even if they could manage to beat a single squad, apparently no one could possibly beat a full platoon consisting of several squads. Since this was a starting town, that much was obvious.

On another note, they found out the reason ant corpses would disappear. Apparently, they automatically respawned after about an hour. Sugaru wasn't interested in keeping track of all her ants so she never noticed, but once Rare started managing them she instantly noticed it. At the time, she wasn't sure if this was a special ant trait or what, but the official news the other day revealed all the details about how [Subordinated] followers worked. She thought that in the worst case, she would have to use [Summon] to facilitate an escape, but apparently even that wasn't necessary.