The Golden Experience Point

Chapter 85: "The Desolation of La Colline"

After desolating the city of La Colline, Rare had the flying and artillery troops descend. She put the flying/sniper pairs on clean up duty, ordering them to take care of any survivors with headshots.

Amazingly, there were a number of soldiers who were able to defend against the sniping. Since they all wore proper armor, she presumed they were knights. Their helmets were effective, too. Not many players they had disposed of in the forest wore helmets.

"I thought I saw too many military uniforms in there; I wonder if they were reinforcements from the capital? Looks like capital soldiers can respond to saturation attacks and even protect themselves from headshots. But hm, 'reinforcements' seems wrong when I only took down Erfahren yesterday. They couldn't have responded this quickly. So then why would they have sent an army out here?"

The surviving knights and soldiers took in the devastation and moaned in anguish. But then they also looked up into the sky and glared at the wasps with hate-filled eyes.

"Since they didn't die from any of the stuff before, if I have the vespoids take them cordless bungee jumping, it's possible one of the soldiers could defeat a vespoid in the air. And if they could survive bombing and sniping, then they might even be able to survive a fall from a great height. They could be too much for the ants to handle."

The only ones in this city right now were Rare and the aerial squads; they were the only ones who could make it from Erfahren to La Colline in a day. Rare could just take care of the soldiers herself, but she still had forces who hadn't had a chance to shine in real combat yet: the adamantite series. The only thing they had gotten to do so far was be lumberjacks.

After this, she planned to head straight for the capital while ignoring the smaller towns, but since she wanted the capital to become a ruins-type territory, she couldn't just carpet bomb the place. So that meant she could have the aerial forces rest for now.

"Good work. Bring them back into the forest," Rare instructed Sugaru, who used [Summon] on all the ants. "So now... let's see, three platoons should be good."

Still floating in the sky, she [Summoned] three groups of adamantite soldiers at the same time. Since Rare was using the [Light Magic] spell [Camouflage] to hide herself, it would have appeared as though they suddenly materialized in midair. There was no real point to the theatrics, but it was certainly very eye-catching. This was an event, after all, so it was worth putting on a show.

The [Summoned] adamantite platoons fell to the ground, causing the earth to shake and kicking up great plumes of dust as they planted themselves in the tilled land. After recovering from the shock of landing, one by one they crawled up out of the ground and ran to engage with the human soldiers.

What surprised Rare the most was that the soldiers were able to evade the adamanknights' slashes. The players who came to have fun in the great forest would have died from the first attack. After dodging, the soldiers swung their weapons at the adamaknights; these attacks didn't seem hard to avoid, but somehow they ended up finding their marks anyway. The adamanknights were sturdier than the soldiers' weapons, so they got away unharmed, but if their opponents had better equipment, the living mail probably wouldn't have been able to win. The soldiers were steadily culled mainly due to an overwhelming difference in pure specs, not from any lack of ability. They had honed their martial skills to this degree only to die because their equipment was so poor... Rare lamented that it was truly a waste.

On the other hand, she had nothing but praise for these soldiers; first they survived the bombardment unhurt, then they immediately faced off against the adamantite soldiers, trying to stop them from advancing. They were essentially on par with adamanleaders; they were marvellously talented. This also meant that they were about as strong as Yoroizaka was back during the first event. Since there were only three platoons, that meant there were only three adamanleaders as well, each in charge of the adamanknights and adamanscouts in their respective platoons; the adamanmages were providing cover and keeping the battlefield under control.