The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 110: "Double Biceps, For Example"

After leaving the tasks of reinforcing the royal capital and La Colline to her subordinates, Rare used [Camouflage] to go invisible then flew over to where Kerry's group was staying.

Regardless of Rare's presence, her people could still proceed with defense improvements and general oversight. Even if players came to attack like last time, if the entire city turned out, even without Rare they should be able to repel many times that number of players. Things could get dicey if any particularly powerful players came, but from a perspective of overall safety, then Sieg and the maids had declared that it would actually be better for Rare to not be there.

"So the attackers are undead... What kind of monster is leading them? You went and found out, right?"

Riley had gone scouting per Kerry's orders. These girls had truly become reliable.

"Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what race it is, but it was a skeleton that seemed completely different from Deas or Sieg. If I had to guess, it was something good with magic. It had a twisted staff and a dirty robe."

The popular fantasy monster types that came to mind were liches and wights. Rare already had wights in her army, but she had never seen one in the wild. A magic-specced one would probably have high INT, and if it also survived from that ancient kingdom, then it might be willing to negotiate.

"Nah, it doesn't seem that smart... Every night, it just has all the skeleton minions charge straight at the town, so it's probably not thinking anything at all. Although, sometimes there are some skeletons mixed into the charge that seem weirdly good at fighting, so maybe it's more clever than we think."

"Weirdly good?"

"Yeah. Ones that specifically target the guards from this town and not the sellswords who are 'players.' There are a bunch of them, but whenever our group or the players try to fight them, they run away first, so none of them have been killed yet."

That wasn't something a commander who only ever ordered their troops to charge would come up with. Nor are some mindless NPCs going to deviate from their directives for no reason. In which case, they were probably monster players. She hadn't met any other than Blanc yet, but if there were more than a few of them, then they were probably working together for the event.

Rare could probably get them to cooperate with her, but the more she expanded her network the higher the risk of information leaks. Blanc knew about her being the demon lord, but she had promised not to tell anyone. Plus, she still didn't know the one piece of information Rare was most afraid of revealing: the fact that NPCs could learn to access their inventories. Compared to that revelation, how to get the [Subordinate] skill was worth nothing.

"Well, as our story goes, the only people here in this town are four beastkin players with no connection to the catastrophe, so you don't need to make contact with them. I'm not uninterested in those players who are efficiently earning XP here, but that's what this event was meant for in the first place. Riley, would you be able to defeat the monster leader by yourself?"

"Should be no problem with a surprise attack. During the day, its minions are mostly all underground, and the leader just rests in the shade of some trees, it doesn't go hide in a cave or anything."

Rare was almost certain that this undead mage wasn't a player. If they were, then they should have been logging out in a safe zone. Even someone with too much time on their hands wouldn't spend an entire day just sitting under a tree in a game.

"In the meantime, I'm curious where those undead players go. If you just search blindly for them, though, they might catch on to you first. So yeah, near the end of the event, in about five days, go take out the undead leader during the day. You don't have to stay in this town anymore after that, so you can take Kerry and the others with you too. Once that's settled... Hakuma and Ginka are already heading to the volcano, so you guys can go back to the great forest for a bit."