The Golden Experience Point

Chapter 60: "Camouflage"

If they were once Deas's brothers-in-arms, that meant that this forest, just like the Great Liebe Forest, was also the site of a mass raising of undead of an unknown source. The obvious conclusion was that someone had cast these spells on purpose, but in the great forest, outside of the undead that suddenly appeared, there were no other oddities.

The undead that had appeared back then weren't very strong, with one exception: Deas. In the end, Rare eliminated all of the other undead, and Deas, the only one with a sense of self left, swore to avenge his fallen kingdom and surrendered to Rare.

She wondered if there was another special undead like Deas here. If there were, she would really like to add them to her forces. It would be nice for Deas to have a colleague to work with, but mostly she wanted another sample of an undead that retained its ego to study.

<Say, Deas...>

<You are far too kind, Princess. It would certainly be ideal if the leader here would peacefully pledge loyalty to us, but it is otherwise unnecessary to be considerate of my station.>

<Eeeeeeehh, well, looking only at the end result, that may be true, but that wasn't exactly where I was going with that. I still want to build up my army, and since there are rumors spreading that our forest might have an undead boss, it would be nice if I had some weaker undead soldiers at my disposal.>

It was a little awkward that obtaining more Knight's Grudges was inversely related to her desired outcome. If she was unable to get an undead army but instead refilled her stock of Knight's Grudges, then she could still create more skeletal soldiers with iron or something. However, the thought of having to pull more overtime chugging MP potions to do it really put a damper on Rare's spirits. Plus she wouldn't even be purely strengthening her troops, but purposely making weak ones. It would be a waste, in various ways.

<So basically, I'd really like to have this undead army if at all possible. Deas, would you get it for me?>

<...As you wish.>

After that, Deas's troops switched from marching in a straight line to a much more strangely meandering route. Apparently they now avoided the enemy's patrol lines. Any lookouts that couldn't be evaded were quietly eliminated by the scouts. It would have been nice if Rare could have used [Necromantic Barrier] to put them all under her control, but if these undead were already under the control of another character, then they were not susceptible to either [Control] or [Subordinate]. Deas and the undead who appeared with him were considered "wild" undead, but Deas started with skills from the [Necromancy] tree as well as [Subordinate], so if left alone he would have taken control of all those undead and conquered the entire forest. She had been wondering why the Great Liebe Forest, the cradle for a raid boss, housed the two separate forces of Sugaru and Deas, but maybe one of them was supposed to end up as fodder for the other.

If that was what had happened in this forest, then the undead had won the power struggle. That meant that the leader had successfully become a full-fledged raid boss.

"Oh, this will be fun..."

This forest was quite expansive as well. It would take a fair amount of time to reach the center. Deas and the adamantite series wouldn't get fatigued because of their races, but that didn't hold true for Rare, Kerry, Marion, and Ginka. They would need to find a place to camp. Since they would stop earning XP as soon as Rare went to sleep (read: logged out), she wanted everyone else to avoid combat during that time as much as possible, but it could be unavoidable if her timing was bad. That said, the Great Liebe Forest was also constantly under assault by players, so there would naturally be squandered XP either way. Even though they had XP income from their farms, it was hard not to consider all that loss as a waste.