The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 103: "The Seventh Catastrophe"

Rare ordered Sugaru to make preparations for airlifting infantry and engineer ants to La Colline. She had them scour the underground tunnels as well to make sure nothing got left behind. This would finally close the curtain on the entire La Colline situation.

Using [Summon Caster] to return to the capital, it was finally time to check out the forums.

"Hm, so there are six other known catastrophes aside from me."

Since most of the information came from legends passed down within various NPC countries, she didn't know how reliable it was. She wasn't sure how trustworthy these lore players' fact-gathering skills were, but it didn't really matter either way. All Rare wanted right now was to confirm what information was being shared between the player and NPC sides, not determine the absolute truth.

And as she suspected, the number of catastrophes that the NPCs had identified was inaccurate.

This wasn't based on anything in the game, but it would be natural to presume that an archdemon was diametrically opposed to an archangel. Similarly, the relationship between a demon lord and a spirit lord could also be antagonistic. Regardless of the truth, the leaders of the kingdom of Hiers believed that the spirit king favored them, which meant that it was possible that the spirit lord was assessed as a force that posed no threat to humanity.

In which case, Rare didn't think a spirit king would trigger that "special being of calamity" or whatever system announcement.

"The developers probably made that decision—or rather, that setting. They surely didn't consider how the NPCs felt about it..."

When considering Rare as the leader of a faction, the developers probably assumed that "the demon lord was antagonistic to the human faction." This was obvious from the fact that her birth as a demon lord was announced via system message. So it was hard to believe that her own nemesis, the spirit lord, would have also merited an announcement as an enemy of humanity. Along the same lines, based on the prime minister's description of the artifact's effects, she could infer that the spirit lord and the archangel weren't opposed to one another in the natural order. Which meant that when the archangel was born, it was possible that the human faction didn't get an announcement about it.

This conclusion was ultimately an assumption or hypothesis based on a thought experiment, but if she happened to be right...

"That special skill that lets you receive world announcements—I think they called it an 'oracle' or something. The designation of catastrophes seems to be independent of it, though."

Information sent via oracle is by and large about catastrophes, and probably only catastrophes that are considered to be forces working against the human faction. If that's the way it was programmed, then she could understand the thinking behind it.

"I'd really like to somehow get my hands on a skill that lets me hear those oracles. If there's a monster version of it, I want that too. If I could keep tabs on both sides, then it would be possible to monitor any future threats that could be a danger to me."

If it were possible to get her hands on the skill in the capital, then she should have tried to find it; now, she regretted how things had turned out. She had learned about oracles from the forums, but by then most of the residents in the capital had already been killed. But speaking of oracles, they were typically related to religion. Since Rare wasn't concerned about them at the time, she hadn't paid any special attention to any temples or churches. Their members had probably been turned into undead already, and while their stats were probably about the same as when they had been alive, the same couldn't be said for their skills.

"Well crap... From now on, if we find find anyone who seems religious, I should try to brainwash them instead of killing them. Once I've identified one of the two skills I want, that should help in the investigation of the other one."