The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 38: "Darkness Encroaches on the Underground Water Vein"

To get to the water vein, Blanc went through a hole in a corner of the castle's jail. The count considered this the normal way to get to the underground, but regular people would never consider this a standard doorway. It would be more apt to call it a secret entrance used to invade the castle.

"That guy sure likes his secret loopholes..."

The castle's jail was already pretty deep underground, but from there the path went still further down. Eventually, she heard the sound of running water.

The cave with the water vein felt much cooler than the castle was. She wasn't sure if this was because of the humidity or because the underground water was itself cold. The cave was large enough for a person to walk comfortably, and it followed alongside the vein; it must have been completely filled with water a long time ago.

It was so dark that the water looked pitch black, so much so that there was no way to tell if there was anything in the flowing stream. Even if there were lizardmen in there, trying to fight them here would be pretty dangerous. She needed to be ready to cast magic at the drop of a hat if she didn't want to end up dead.

Blanc cautiously proceeded down the tunnel. As she kept descending further and further underground, she wondered where this water originally came from and where it was going. Since the castle's cellar was already quite deep into the ground, she also wondered how far down she was now. Or maybe the castle was actually built on high ground or something. Since it was surrounded by wilderness, it was hard to imagine that being the case, but it could be similar to the ; with extreme topography like that, anything was possible. It wouldn't be surprising if it were, since the count seemed to like high places.

How far had she gone down into the ground? As per usual, Blanc hadn't been keeping track whatsoever, but anyway, her route led her to a slightly larger cavern. Within was an enormous underground lake or something close to that. Carefully peeking into the room, she saw numerous humanoid shapes around the lake.

Those were probably lizardmen since they had long tails. They must have made a village; there were quite a lot of them.

"Urg, farming XP off them might be a little hard..."

She didn't know how strong lizardmen were, but she was sure they were stronger than zombies and skeletons. Since the bats didn't seem like they would be very useful in combat, Blanc at her current strength really couldn't wipe them all out by herself.

One of the bats on her chest had some kind of plan it wanted to propose.

"Bait? No way... Isn't that risky? Ah, I know you can fly... Hmm, all right, so I'll go somewhere far enough away that the village can't hear; can some of you guys go and lure a couple of them to me?"

Three bats zipped out from under Blanc's cape. After watching them fly off, Blanc retreated all the way into the back of the cave where sound wouldn't travel too far. She waited there a bit before two lizardmen came, chasing after her bats. The lizardmen lost track of the bats in the darkness and steadily got closer to her corner of the cave while looking for them.

"They're making a pretty big deal of just three bats... Maybe they need them as a source of protein or something."

If that was really the case, then she should be able to lure out as many of them as she wanted using bats. Then again, this was their home, so if they were smart enough to get suspicious when their comrades didn't come back, then it would get harder and harder, she imagined.

"In any case, first is to make sure these two don't turn around and head back."

Blanc focused, getting ready to cast magic. Lizardmen were a race that lived in the water, so it would be good to lead off with [Thunderbolt]. Since there were two targets, she'd have to instantly cast a second spell, but she couldn't use the same spell twice in a row. Blanc figured the best option would be a neutral spell like [Air Cutter] to try and mangle one.