Golden Experience

“Master, it appears the guards have mostly been handled.”

The spartoi who had entered the city still hadn’t returned, but the sounds of battle had died down. The roars and screams that had constantly filled the air also became much more sporadic.

“Then next, I want you to go searching each house one by one and kill anyone who’s hiding! I wanna make more skeletons using [Necromantic Arts] on the bodies, so if there’s a wide open space somewhere, have the others bring ’em all there.”

The spartoi commander at her side, Vermillion, clacked his teeth to call for other nearby spartoi. The spartoi who responded got the gist of Blanc’s wishes, then ran off to disseminate the order.

“It’d be nice if there were like, radios, or some kind of skill where I could give orders over a long distance…”

“What fantastical thing are you envisioning… If something like that existed, messengers would no longer be necessary, and letters and carrier pigeons would lose all value.”

“They sure would. Right, that’s where civilization is at here… Is there some kind of magical, fantasy way to do it then?”

There was no point in lamenting what didn’t exist. If messengers were necessary right now, then it would be more constructive to think about making a specialized follower for the role.

“Since I’m making more skeletons from this city, I should make ones especially for carrying messages.”

“That is a good idea. Human-base skeletons should already have higher intelligence, so it would be ideal to prioritize increasing their agility if they are to act as messengers.”

“I should remark, there could be problems when they need to interact with other forces. If they cannot speak, then they cannot relay orders.”

As far as that went, it was hard to imagine that Blanc would ever cooperate with wild monsters, and other players could be registered as friends like in other games, so Blanc didn’t think that was a very important thing to consider.

“In those cases, one of us can just transform into bats and fly off carrying our master’s words,” Magenta offered.

“Ahh, and when you get close to the recipient, you can turn back into a mormo to talk!”

“Quite so.”

While Blanc chatted idly with the mormos, the spartoi messengers carried out their tasks, and they started hearing periodic screams again, just like before. They had begun breaking into homes and slaughtering the inhabitants. As Blanc had ordered, the corpses of the city’s residents were being gathered near the center of the city, where there was a large open space.

“These people are worth a lot less XP than the guards were. But at least they give something. I guess humans are pretty high up the food chain.”

Character creation was fair for players; when choosing to be a monster, the differences in environment and ability were compensated with XP. But NPCs didn’t get any such consideration. Whether they were born as a weak monster or a privileged human, there and then, the difficulty for their entire lives was set in stone.

“Well, that’s true for players too; as soon as they log out of a VR module and go outside, then they’re also in that same boat.”

Once the spartoi finished sweeping for leftover residents, there was probably very little reason to be cautious anymore. Blanc, accompanied by her retinue of mormos and Vermillion, set foot into the city. In her head, she was imagining houses burning with a single hand sticking up out of the rubble, or bodies littered everywhere that they had to step over, but there was none of that.

“We, the invaders, did not use any fire, after all.”

“The guards may have had torches, but most of the houses were made of stone, which don’t burn very well.”

“And you told the spartoi to clean up the dead bodies, too.”

Azalea, Magenta, and Carmine explained away all of Blanc’s confusion for her. It was super convenient. It was, but…

They walked through the city without another soul in sight, without any other sounds to be heard.

“By the way, where’s this clearing exactly?”

“Have you been walking all this time without knowing?!”

“So, do you know where it is, Magenta?”

“…Azalea? Would you be so kind as to provide the answer?”

“…Carmine. I shall leave it to you.”

“Ahem. Uhh, Scarlet, why don’t you take the lead.”

“Are y’all daft?”

After Scarlet began leading the way, the clearing quickly came into view. There, the spartoi who had finished their duties gathered together, and at the center there was a towering pile of corpses of the city’s residents.

“Wooow, what a crazy sight. And the stench is intense… but it doesn’t really bother me all that much. Is it because I became a vampire? Is this really okay? I wonder if I’ll be all right around the smell of blood in real life too.”

She was fine when she smelled her own blood, but if it was anyone else’s then Blanc would immediately feel sick. It’s true that with VR medical support, it was possible to treat trauma-induced health complications using manufactured experiences. However, that kind of service required mountains of paperwork in order to deliver all the waiver information and obtain the necessary consent. That said, Blanc couldn’t say that the super-long terms of service didn’t contain all that legal language, either, since she just barely skimmed through it herself.

“Ah, whatever. Anyway, can I assume that all the people here were killed in the last hour? It’ll be an hour soon? Then I better hurry. First off, [Mist].”

[Mist] was a spell that vampires learned in the [Vampiric Magic] tree. It had been strengthened by the skill that was unlocked after it, [Death Mist], which improved the success rate and effectiveness of [Necromancy]-type skills cast in the mist.

Continuing on, Blanc cast the [Necromancy] skill. This was something she had also heard from the count, but the soul of a person remained with the body for an hour after they died. If she used [Necromancy] on them during this time, the soul would remain attached to the body, and it would turn into a new undead monster. Once an hour had passed, the soul would leave the body, and using [Necromancy] on it would only give her a weak undead that would die a short time after.

Normally, a soul could resist [Necromancy], meaning trying to turn a corpse into an undead while the soul remained wasn’t very likely to succeed. However, Blanc had the [Necromancy] tree’s [Bind Soul] skill, as well as [Death Mist], which boosted the success rate. For the NPCs of this town, this meant that she was basically guaranteed to get undead from them.

“Alrighty, I wonder if I’ll get ’em all. But then again, they’ll turn into zombies, won’t they… Man, I’d rather have skeletons. Zombies are always really slow, aren’t they?”

“How about just leaving them here? There’s no need to force them to come along with us.”

“Hmm, maybe. Zombies get a big penalty in the sun, so if we bring them along then they might just die on the way.”

“If that happens, then they would just be resurrected back in this city, so there isn’t much difference between bringing them or leaving them.”

“That makes sense. Okay, I’ll use [Subordinate] on them all, then leave them here. I’ll have them go into their houses when the sun’s out so that they don’t just die for no reason.”

Blanc spent quite a lot of time casting [Subordinate] on all the undead. Since they were already zombies anyway, she just let them reincarnate into squire zombies too.