The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 56: "An Army Corps of Living Objects"

First was to make another living something with the usual metal and Knight's Grudge. She had already made a ton of armor and swords, so now she'd try with bones. It was full-blown blasphemy, but sacrifices were necessary for the sake of technological advancement; Rare did not fear criticism. From a certain viewpoint, bones should house far more resentment than armor or swords did. She had a feeling that she would end up producing undead from this, but even if she did, it would be a brand new discovery in the field of alchemy. Based on Rare's sensibilities, "living mail" and such already qualified as undead, but the system didn't classify them that way; it grouped them together with homunculi and golems.

"Time to get started. [Philosopher's Egg]."

The crystalline egg that appeared swallowed up the lump of metal and the knights' remains. She decided to splurge and threw in more metal than usual; she found this out when making the Kenzakis, but when too many materials were put in, any excess would be left over. She originally tried putting in a bit more than she needed, but, while the egg accepted the extra, activating it would only use what was necessary. Incidentally, if there weren't enough materials, the skill would fail, and while the ingredients wouldn't be consumed, the egg would break and her MP would be used up. Since it would be difficult to procure more remains, Rare only put in a single rib in order to preserve as much of them as she could.

After she activated [Athanor], the inside of the egg turned a marbled rainbow as usual. Which meant that some kind of monster would be born from this.

"Next, activate [Magnum Opus]."

That reminded her, in one of the announcements, there was something about being able to change the activation keyword for skills. Maybe she should change it to something cooler. Right now, there was no need to change the name of any of these production skills, but there was strategic value in changing the names of spells cast in battle. When enemies were in hearing range, if they could guess the type of spell from the activation keyword, they would have a chance to prepare a defense.

As she thought about all that, the light coming from the egg faded. Inside the egg stood a black skeleton wearing armor of the same color.

"Is this a... skeletal knight, perhaps?"

It was really black. Since bones had such a strong association with the color white, the sight of black bones caused a sense of wrongness that was hard to articulate. When the skeleton broke open the egg to emerge, Rare immediately cast [Subordinate] on it. She had gotten used to this process and knew that monsters she produced would never resist her [Subordinate]. It was probably similar to how Sugaru could immediately command any ants that she birthed.

"Its race is... adamanknight?"

It was a horrible pun, but she unexpectedly knew the name of this metal: a well-known fictional metal, adamantite. She didn't know if the full name in this game was adamantite, or adamantium, or something else, but it was probably adaman-something. In most games, it was known for its hardness; it was true, Yoroizaka and the Kenzaki brothers were indeed extremely hard.

But that said, the skeleton part of this adamanknight also appeared to be made of adamantite; that's probably why it was the same color as its armor. And just like with the living mail, it wasn't undead, but it was some kind of monster similar to homunculi or golems.

Its weight seemed to match that of all the materials used in its creation, but only a single bone from the knight remains was needed for this adamanknight. She might not be able to get her hands on more remains that housed this much Knight's Grudge, but right now she could use up only a portion of what she had to create a new knight order of adamantite constructs that far surpassed the size of the order that had been abandoned here.

They would be a tremendously powerful unit. They'd be made out of the same metal as Yoroizaka with about the same stats. Yoroizaka had a bit more STR and VIT, but their INT was higher instead. They basically had the same stat distribution as humans, except they were many times more powerful.

Rare requisitioned MP potions from the transporter ants, then single-mindedly chugged them down while producing more adamanknights.

As a result of doing the same thing over and over again until she ran out of knight remains, she made some discoveries:

Bones from the torso would produce an adamanknight.

Bones from legs would produce an adamanscout.

Bones from arms would produce an adamanmage.

Bones from the head would produce an adamanleader.

Bones that were too small, like ones from fingers, were insufficient and the skill would fail. In those cases, she could get it to work by putting in lots of little bones, but even if there weren't any torso bones included in the bunch, it would always produce an adamanknight.

Because of that, the adamanknights were the most plentiful. She did her best in identifying bones to use, so there were a sizable number of adamanscouts and adamanmages, but she couldn't do much about the adamanleaders, who ended up the least plentiful.

However, after coming under her command, the adamanleaders were already about as powerful as Deas was. Considering his combat experience, though, they were still inferior to him, but the same was not true for players. No matter what players they faced, they would emerge victorious, hands down.

Unfortunately, near the end, all she had left were unidentifiable bones, and all the raw adamantite had been used up, so Rare ended up using other metals that were more plentiful. What she ended up creating were "carknights." For a second, she wasn't sure what they were made of, but then she thought of "carbide"—an ultra-hard carbon alloy. It wasn't a magic metal at all, and how could it have already been an alloy when it was just a lump of metal that came from ore? They certainly produced a lot of it, but they didn't know which stratum the ore vein under the forest was in. Rare had never heard of a stratum where both coal and rare metals could be found, but maybe there was some kind of magical reason for it.

In any case, these carknights had a hardness that rivaled the adamanknights. However, they had lower VIT, so maybe they were more brittle. They did have about the same amount of STR, so their offensive capabilities were unusually high—perhaps due to their weight. That might also be why they had lower AGI.

She ended up using up all the remaining materials on carknights, so there were quite a lot of them. By the time she finished, they outnumbered the adamanknights. The fact that they were weaker and more brittle was only when compared strictly to adamanknights; when struck by iron swords, the shock would still be returned to the wielder, and they would ruin those blades' sharpness too. They were only susceptible to mace attacks, so you could say they were weak to blunt damage.

They seemed to be strong against heat due to their ultra-hardness, so most [Fire Magic] spells didn't work on them. [Water Magic] fared no better, but if they took alternating hits from [Fire Magic] and [Ice Magic] spells, that would cause a lot of damage. They also didn't have any particular defense against [Lightning Magic], so that was still effective against them. Due to their simple hardness, [Earth Magic] essentially had no effect, and their high weight similarly granted them a natural resistance to [Wind Magic].

Since they were metal monsters, it would be correct to attack using [Lightning Magic], but players who saw them for the first time wouldn't necessarily identify them as being made out of metal. They would most likely see them as undead and attempt to fight them with [Fire Magic] instead. Since they were weak to blunt attacks just like normal skeletons were, it would be easy to conclude that warriors with blunt weapons would have an advantage, but that was only as far as pure compatibility went. Rare didn't think there were many players at a level where compatibility would be relevant in a fight against them yet.

Anyway, she needed to see them in action; just like what she had done during the event, she had to run performance tests. Even if the adamantite series passed for cheaper versions of Yoroizaka, she really wanted to see the carknights in combat. To that end, Rare had a carknight go after one group of players.

Well, putting it more simply, she just wanted to send her new toy on a test run.