The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 35: "Deas of Resentment"

Based on Riley's investigation, the bone army had sprung up from something like an armory near the goblin farm. For the sake of convenience, let's just call it a cemetery.

"All right, I'll go. Sugaru, you stay here. Kerry, why don't you come along too?"

"Yes, Boss."

Rare walked through the caves accompanied by Kerry. When the ants had extended the tunnels to connect the great forest to the prairie, they enlarged them for humanoid races to be able to walk comfortably. These underground routes had handrails installed and, since there were no lights at all, they made traveling along them very safe once you got used to them.

She eventually wanted to install some lights, but right now she didn't know of any light sources that didn't use fire. Since the ants navigated the underground tunnels using their feelers, the only ones who needed light were Rare and the four catkin girls, so she would put off the thought for later.

While proceeding down the tunnel, Rare touched base with Riley, then instructed Sugaru to send infantry to keep the enemy confined to the area around the cemetery.

Their destination wasn't that far away from the queen's chamber. Rare and Kerry would soon arrive beneath it, after which they would head for the door leading to the surface so they could meet up with Riley.

Emerging into the cemetery, there was indeed a large army of bone-type enemies there. However, she couldn't tell skeletons apart from any other kinds of monsters at a glance. Part of the army was outside the cemetery but being harried by ants, while the rest of it inside the cemetery was being constrained by other ants from spreading out.

"How convenient. All right, I'll just go ahead and try it out now. [Necromantic Barrier]."

When Rare activated [Necromantic Barrier], a glistening-black hemispherical magic circle appeared over the area. The arcane construction completely engulfed the entire cemetery, as she wanted. All the skeletons inside the magic circle froze on the spot, then turned as one to face Rare, the caster.

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Necromantic Barrier
Create a barrier at a designated area. All corpses within the barrier are turned into undead under your control. If there are any hostile undead inside the barrier, the barrier casts [Control] on them for no cost. Each undead may individually resist. Your MP is consumed while the barrier is active. If the barrier is canceled or you do not have enough MP to maintain the barrier, any [Control] effects generated by the barrier are canceled.

/X/

This new skill was unlocked after learning [Spatial Awareness] in the [Space Magic] tree. Ignoring the conditions for unlocking [Spatial Awareness], it was essentially an area-of-effect composite of [Necromancy], [Bind Soul], and [Control]. It drained her MP like crazy, but if she wanted to suppress large groups of enemies, this would handle any weak undead. Since the barrier also raised any corpses, other enemy undead wouldn't appear later, and any undead enemies that resisted the [Control] were easy to identify.

Rare ordered the undead under her control line up and leave the cemetery. At the same time, she ordered Sugaru to have her artillery destroy all those undead. It would be faster to burn them all to ashes with flamethrowers, but that wasn't a good idea here in the forest.

The only enemy that remained in the cemetery was a larger skeleton wearing battered decorative armor; it was probably quite extravagant long ago. This was the only monster that couldn't be controlled. Since maintaining the barrier was a waste of MP at this point, after confirming that the controlled undead were mostly destroyed, Rare canceled the [Necromantic Barrier].