The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 62: "Long Time No See. Did You Lose Weight?"

The day slowly faded away. The treants didn't seem to have trouble moving or anything, but Rare still ordered them to become trees and rest while they waited for the undead to appear.

<Princess.>

"Yes, I know. Let's go take a look."

Just then, the scouts had reported back about one place where undead were gathering. As a whole, the undead in this forest hadn't all awoken yet, so if there was already activity at a certain location, that must be the epicenter of undead activity. Even if it wasn't a jackpot, it was still some kind of key location, no doubt.

<I am loath to recommend splitting up our forces, but shall we leave any here?>

"No, everyone will come. While this may be our temporary base, there's nothing of importance here, only the sleeping treants. There's no merit in protecting this specific location."

They knew the distance and topography to their destination from the scouts' report. No undead were active in this area yet, and all the treants were already converted, so there were no enemies. Therefore, they could safely prioritize speed.

Even if they were only going to another location around the central area, this forest was huge. It would still take a decent amount of time to get there. At some point, the sun had completely set, and they began to encounter undead starting to wake up. Since they were crawling up from the depths of the earth, normally they would have suffered from ambushes, but Rare and Deas could both generally tell where they would emerge. This was probably because they both had quite a lot of XP invested into [Necromancy]. They hurried along, trampling over any zombies that rose in their path or inside their formation; it felt a little like whack-a-mole.

"I knew it; skill trees aren't only for learning skills, you can also get some kind of bonus based on how much total XP you've spent in that tree. It's not represented in any way in your stats or anything, though."

She would have liked to study this hidden feature more, but if it only showed up as masked data, it would be very difficult to do any research. Even more so when it was this feeling that acted as an undead sensor earned from [Necromancy]. If, for example, [Fire Magic]'s bonus effect increased firepower, there was a logical way to calculate the difference. However, since Rare hadn't used magic all that much in combat, the only data she currently had was her firepower after having dumped a ton of XP into those trees.

"We did feel like the strength of our magic had gone up, but we thought that was because of our INT..." Kerry remarked.

"You girls had every element of magic maxed out, didn't you. I suppose the only way to test this is to kidnap someone from the human races who hasn't learned any magic at all. Maybe I should ask Remy to get an NPC sellsword to venture into Liebe."

The only people who went to the Great Liebe Forest were more or less players. Players went there because, when all was said and done, there were a lot of things they could obtain there, although if they earned too much XP then they'd be hunted down and lose 10% of it. That was how things went for players, but that wouldn't fly for NPCs. If they got in over their heads, they would definitely die. Without some kind of fallback, such as belonging to a knight order or being someone's follower, your average sellsword would simply perish and that would be the end. They wouldn't want to take that gamble.

However, if it was a request from the young girl who ran the city's famous potion shop, they might be willing to go gather medicinal herbs from the edges of the forest. There weren't many ants to be found along the outskirts, so there wasn't as much risk of death.

"Or, I could work on gathering the materials for the Philosopher's Stone, then try to make homunculi."

Maybe that wasn't such a far-off future. Now that she had a map of this country, they could efficiently go on expeditions just like this one. This area was completely occupied by the forest, but if they found a completely different biome, then they would be able to gather a greater variety of materials both known and unknown.