The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 34: "How to Prove You Aren't Just Warming That Seat"[1]

While Kerry scouted out the city, Riley patrolled the great forest. There shouldn't be any monster in the forest that Rare's group wasn't aware of, so while they had their pick of owl monsters, Riley was told that if she saw any other flying monster that seemed strong, she should bring it back unharmed. Whenever it didn't seem necessary to jack into Kerry's vision, Rare would instead jack into Riley's to observe what was going on in the forest.

Rare used the queen's chambers to do this, where she, naturally, sat on a throne. After having the engineers process a rock into the vague shape of a throne, she spread a bunch of pelts from large monsters they'd hunted over it until it wasn't uncomfortable to sit on anymore. The seat portion was rounded while the back portion leaned back slightly, which helped distribute body weight since there was more contact with the throne's surface area. It was modeled after the driver's seat in a car from yesteryear to be comfortable even when used for long periods of time.

Recently, she had even been simply sleeping on the throne whenever she logged out.

Right next to the throne was Sugaru's bed, which was basically where she produced ants. As soon as they were born, they were taught how to access their inventories, as well as friend chat if they were commanders, then assigned to squads.

In general, as ant nests grew, they would expand their living areas. That meant they had to obtain more supplies in order to support all the ants in the nest. As far as Rare's group went, since they didn't have any larvae or pupae, it was easier to manage than real ants would be, but that also meant that as the scale of their operations increased, they had to turn the entire area of the great forest into their hunting grounds in order to keep up with the number of mouths to feed. That was why they had aggressively taken over the forest.

Since they were managing it like a giant farm, some of the monsters and wild animals were actually more populous than before. Then again, those monsters probably didn't realize that they were being raised in that manner.

<Boss, I'm back.>

While she was jacked into Riley's vision and hearing and vicariously enjoying her exploration of the forest, Kerry contacted her via friend chat. After her normal vision and hearing returned, she saw that Kerry was back in the queen's chamber. She was wearing a full set of Rabbit Leather Armor.

"Haha, what's with that armor? Nah, it doesn't look weird. You do look like a proper sellsword, at least."

"I'm so sorry. I used our funds to buy this crummy armor..."

"Well, you earned the money yourself while blending in, didn't you? You say 'our funds,' but I don't really mind at all. In the first place, we don't really need that much money anyway. As long as we have one high-quality sample, we can now use it to produce our own better version."

Rare's group had taken over the mine that supplied the city's metal stores; the same was true for fuel and raw materials like coal and lumber. The great forest was also the only place where monsters could be hunted for high-quality pelts, and silk from caterpillar-type monsters could be gathered. With a sample in hand, it was actually harder for them to produce an inferior copy compared to what was sold in the city.

They did allow the city's lumberjacks to cut down trees on the edge of the forest. Due to that, Rare's subordinates and the monsters being raised never appeared there, so the citizens probably considered that area the edge of monster territory. In any case, trees with lower-quality wood grew dense all around the edges, and even if they chopped down enough wood to supply the entire city, all the trees would grow back in about ten days. Because of this irregular growth cycle, the city could never process all the felled trees fast enough, which might explain the formation of peat and coal layers underground.