The Golden Experience Point

Chapter 99: "That Time I Got Trained on After Running a Marathon"

After running for a while longer, Blanc's group could finally see the mountain of rubble that Magenta had described. It seemed that the city originally sat on raised land, but now the entire hill seemed to be made out of dirt and wreckage.

"Whoa... This is... super crazy..."

Blanc had kind of been looking forward to seeing it, but her excitement had been completely wiped away upon taking in the scene. She couldn't even imagine how powerful someone needed to be in order to do something like this. It had to have been a player, but if hypothetically it wasn't, then Blanc and her followers couldn't possibly beat it.

"If it were a monster that was specifically good at destroying rocks or buildings or something, then we could maybe do something about it, but..."

"Even if that were true, that doesn't change the fact that it killed off all the defenders and citizens of a city of this size before it even got to that part..."

No joke. This was a city the size of this gigantic hill. It was probably the heart of this entire region. Blanc couldn't even begin to imagine how large its standing army had been.

"...Those people from the last city, I wonder why they didn't come here looking for help."

"It's possible that... they already knew what had happened here, but I think it was simply a matter of distance. There was probably some place that wasn't as far away to the northwest of the city."

That was the obvious explanation. It made more sense to look for help from a smaller but closer town rather than a larger city that was further away.

"Considering how bad things look, there probably aren't any people here, but we should still be caref—"

"Master!!!"

Azalea suddenly pulled on her arm, toppling her on top of Crimson and the other spartoi.

"Ow... What are you—"

There was a light thump in front of Blanc as she crawled on the ground; right before her eyes, there was an arrow sticking out of the dirt. It seemed someone had shot an arrow at her, and she had narrowly avoided being hit.

"Waah... Th-Thanks, Azalea..."

"Please don't get up yet... There's a band of people targeting us."

Looking up through a spartoi's legs, she could make out a group of lightly armored people in the distance. They were probably bandits or something.

"...No, they're too experienced. You may have forgotten, but it's night right now. They were able to accurately shoot an arrow from all the way over there when they can only see by moonlight. Their archer is extremely skilled."

Despite that, they clearly looked really down on their luck. Everyone was dirty, almost like they had just dug up the armor they were wearing from out of the rubble. After that, arrows kept coming at them periodically, but they were all swatted aside after Crimson and the other spartoi had dumped on the ground Blanc like a piece of luggage.

Eventually, maybe because they realized arrows were having no effect, the men formed ranks and slowly began to push their way closer. By that point, Blanc had finally gotten permission to stand back up from Azalea and the others.

"Who the hell are you?! Are you the catastrophe's minions?!"

A well-dressed man yelled this, probably the bandit leader. Despite his fancier clothing, he still looked just as dirty and exhausted as the rest of them.

"What does he mean by 'catastrophe'...?"

"Given the situation, wouldn't that probably be whatever demolished this city...? Those men are probably the survivors of the city's defenses... or something like that, maybe?"