Golden Experience

“All right, sorry for waiting.”

“Oh, it was no prob!”

The girl from before said this while touching Yoroizaka all over. From what Rare could with [Demonic Eyes], she had a good amount of MP. Not quite as much as Mental Magic guy, but it was a lot. If the other three women were the crossdressing player’s followers, then she would be at least as strong as four mid-class players. Adding in those red skeletons would bump up her rating even higher. She had quite the formidable force.

“I see you’re interested in Yoroizaka here?”

“So the robot’s named Yoroy the Kahir!”

“Uh, no, everything you just said is wrong. I think there’s a big misunderstanding here.”

Rare explained what Yoroizaka was—how living object-type monsters worked, but glossed over reincarnation. It didn’t seem like that part would be particularly interesting to this girl.

“If that satisfies you, let me introduce myself. My name is Rare. As you can see, I’m a player with a nonhuman avatar. I’m participating in this event on the side attacking humans. How about you?”

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I’m Blanc! I started playing as a skeleton! I picked that name because my bones were really white! I’m not very good, but I did take out two cities too!”

Skeleton. Rare couldn’t see anything that would make her think Blanc was a skeleton. Was she lying…? Well, she seemed like the kind of person who couldn’t lie to save her life.

“…I don’t see how you’re a skeleton, so did you maybe, um, reincarnate into a different race by chance?”

“Ah, yeah, I did! Um, so like, first what happened was…”

The girl—Blanc—recounted her adventures for nearly an hour. She had gone through some pretty wild stuff. It was honestly a really interesting story. At the same time, Rare felt relieved. Considering the way she had come to learn [Subordinate], it was hard to imagine any other players having gone through a similar experience.

“I see, so you’re a vampire… And vampires can reincarnate their followers by feeding them their own blood…”

It was pretty costly, but since LP and MP was easy to recover, she could also see it being very efficient. The downsides, or the limitations, were that it could only be used for one’s own followers, and it probably only worked on undead-type races or races connected to the master. After seeing that these “mormo” vampires could transform into wolves, she speculated that perhaps one could tame wolves and feed them blood to turn them into mormos as well.

“So, Mizz Rare, what race are you? Not the one you started as, I mean.”

Rare had to think hard about how she wanted answer. She didn’t know whether Blanc could be a tight-lipped person, but she at least knew that Blanc rattled on and on to Rare about information that would have been more valuable to hide. The mormos assisting her seemed rather shrewd, but they didn’t make any moves to stop her either. Rather, they spoke up to help Blanc explain some things. Rare couldn’t expect them to help keep a lid on Blanc. With all that in mind, it would frankly be a huge risk to tell her the truth.

On the other hand, if they were to cooperate from here on out, and, completely hypothetically, in the one in a millionth chance that they were to maybe become friends, then it would be unwise to hide things from her at this juncture. Blanc would surely find out one day anyway, and she had also been completely up-front about herself, probably. If Rare didn’t respond in kind, then later, if there were such things as “friendship points,” she would be setting herself up to start in the hole. That wouldn’t be ideal.

“—I’m…”

The four of them were looking straight back at Rare, eyes sparkling with anticipation. She wondered if, no matter how much INT they had, followers tended to take on their master’s personality.

“I’m a demon lord. My current race, that is. I started out as an elf, but…”

In the end, Rare also spent nearly an hour telling her own tale.

＊

“So holy cow! When you made those ants your minions, you totally got revenge for me!”

While it was possible that there was another cave of ants somewhere in this kingdom, in all likelihood the ants who attacked Blanc were probably from Sugaru’s nest. Given the timing with which it had become a private area, it had to have been the same place.

“That wasn’t exactly why I did it, but I suppose that’s how it turned out. Now that they’re my followers, I’m hoping you’ll let it go.”

“Of course! But Mizz Rare, have you been all alone all this time then?”

Wham! A sudden gut punch. Her wings, appendages she had not been blessed with before, were quite hard to hold completely still. However, aside from them, she stopped any other part of her body from moving. She was improving!

“…Yes, I suppose. Well, I’m not really playing the way most people would, but actually I have talked to other players before, you know.”

Although she had killed them all as well.

“I guess so! I also figured the way I was playing was probably not the norm. We’re the same, then! Or are we?”

This was going pretty well. Since the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, that meant that Rare had died the day before. Yesterday was certainly lacking in positive developments. With the date ticking up now, hopefully today would instead be a good day.

“Indeed. I feel like we could get along well, Miss… Blanc.”

“You don’t gotta be so formal! Sho—Should we friend each uver?”

“Sure.”

Rare jumped straight to handing over her friend card. The number of people Rare had friended was obscene, and she wouldn’t allow anyone else to even come close to overtaking her. Not that any of them had been players. She had become so used to the process that she could go through all the steps without even thinking about it.

“Aw, thanks so much! So… what is this for?”

“Ohh, you don’t know how to register friends. Just put it in your inventory to add someone as a friend. Exchanging friend cards is how you become mutuals. Not that there’s any particular meaning to that.”

There was no functional difference between only one person registering another as a friend and two people both registering each other.

“Ah, so that’s how you do it! So then here’s mine… Wait, how do I find it?”

After giving a lecture on how to pull things out of the inventory, Rare and Blanc properly registered each other as friends.

“You’re my first friend!”

“Same here… You’re the first player I’ve friended. Also, you don’t have to be polite around me or anything either.”

“Cool! Let’s get along then, Raerae!”

Wham!

＊

“—So after taking out two towns, you wanted to keep going to your third, which ended up being La Colline, and that’s when you encountered those knights,” Rare summarized.

Having finished friending, since they each now understood the other’s situation, the two were consulting on what to do next.

“Yeah, that’s right… Since we suddenly ran into some strong enemies, I was thinking maybe this zone was too hard for us.”

“This city was originally the second most prosperous in the kingdom after the royal capital. At least until yesterday. From my perspective, the knights were quite powerful, and just before it was destroyed, the kingdom had already mobilized every soldier at its disposal, so there was an entire army gathered here as well.”

“Yikes, why would they do that…?”

“I guess they were supposed to try to take me out. If you go straight east from here, you’ll find a forest where my home base is; this army had marched from the capital and was on its way there, it seems.”

Even if Rare had decided not to participate in the event, she probably would have run across the army once they reached the great forest. She didn’t think she could have lost with her home field advantage, but the prospect of being invaded was horrifying. In light of that, the timing of the beginning of the event was truly fortuitous.

“Wow… When you’re a famous player, they even form armies to take you out… Ah, if that ever happens again, just gimme a call! I’ll do anything I can to help!”

“Thank you. But I’m not exactly a famous player… Ah, right, about that.”

There was one important suggestion Rare had to make.

“Right now, my race is demon lord, but the reason the human side is trying to kill me is because they believe I’m something called a ‘catastrophe,’ which is—”

Rare explained everything she knew about catastrophes to Blanc. Since she hadn’t done a deep dive on the forums yet, she had to speculate about the finer details, but the overall gist of it should have been accurate. After she had gotten the correct information later, Rare promised she would send it over. With her current mental state, she should be able to browse the forums without issue.

“—Given everything, it’s a lot more convenient to let them think I’m a game boss, which will let me efficiently monitor the human side’s movements on the forums.”

“So if it gets out that you’re a player, the human players might stop talking about their strategies out in the open! That makes sense. Anyway, I didn’t know all that catastrophe stuff was about you, Raerae.”

“So, you know, I was wondering what you thought about doing the same and also roleplaying as an NPC boss. If you could do that, then whenever you have to fight against human players, I think we would be able to help each other out more smoothly.”

“Ooohhh!!! That sounds cool! Like a female officer! The demon lord’s hot vampire right hand! Holy shit! That’s super lit!”

“‘L-Lit’…? Anyway, I’m happy you’re on board with the idea. If you ever meet another player, you can go with that.”

“Roger! I gotta think up a cool catchphrase I can use…”

“If it does seem like you have to talk to players, it’s better not to say too much, to lower the risk of giving away important information. Although, it seems I’m the type of person who tends to get overconfident and show my hand about all sorts of stuff.”

Based on the current situation, it could be safe to say that Rare had found the ultimate collaborator. Next time it seemed like a battle might break out with a group of players, she could entice them to attack her then team up with Blanc to beat them down.

“So then, what are you going to do, Blanc? Head back to the last city and go northwest from there to attack whatever city you find on the way?”

“Hmm, lemme think. Past this city is the royal capital? If you’re already taking care of things that way, Raerae, then I should go in a different direction. If we split up the work, then we’ll tear through this kingdom even faster, right?”

It would be a tad, just a teeny bit lonelier, but that approach was indeed much more efficient. She was a little worried about their combined strength, but that wasn’t something Rare could do anything about at the moment.

“In that case, let me give you this.”

She pulled out the map she had gotten as a reward from her inventory and handed it to Blanc.

“Huh? A map? There are maps in this game? Even the count’s library didn’t have one!”

“To be precise, there was a map, it was just too old to be useful,” one of the mormos chimed in. Rare couldn’t tell them apart, so she didn’t know her name.

“I pulled a couple strings to get this. I already have another like it, so I can give this one to you. It’ll help with planning your attacks, right?”

“Is that all right…? Not only did you save us, but you’re even giving away something so valuable…”

“It’s not a big deal, we’re already friends. Oh, and also…”

She pulled Kenzaki Ichirou off Yoroizaka’s waist, sheath and all, and gave him to Blanc.

“You should take this sword with you. He’s also a monster, actually. Even if you can’t equip and wield him, he can attack on his own.”

“Now I really feel like I’m getting too much help…”

“I’m not giving you Kenzaki—this sword—solely out of the goodness of my heart. You’ll find out soon. If you destroy another town, you should let me know via chat.”

“You can count on me! So yeah…”

Rare and Blanc both stood up straight. They could sit here and talk forever, but now wasn’t the best time.

“Yeah. Good luck. I’m hoping for your success.”

“Same to you, Raerae! See you later!”

The mormos transformed into bats, and Blanc got up on the red skeletons, the three spartoi, who carried her away. Rare watched the surreal scene until they fully disappeared from sight.

ARMORED FORTRESS YOROY THE KAHIR!!!

TL Notes: This chapter is why I changed “Yoroisaka” to “Yoroizaka;” it kind of makes more sense to misinterpret “za” as “the” instead of “sa” as “the.” For those who don’t get it from the Japanese chapter title since you’re not familiar with katakana, the title is “YOROI ZA KASAN” since Rare is saying “Yoroizaka-san,” and Blanc is just splitting it up in her head weirdly (Yoroi the Kasan).

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