Golden Experience

“Anyway, what shall we do?”

Carmine always lashed out in anger to any hint of the butler, but Azalea could at least stay relatively calm about it. Blanc didn’t know how Magenta felt exactly, but at least whenever they all sulked in her bed, she just copied what the other two did.

“Right, so it’s gonna be morning soon. I don’t think we’ll be able to do the same thing we did before…”

“What if you use the XP we earned from wiping out the last town to strengthen yourself, Master? If you can obtain some kind of resistance or countermeasure against sunlight, then a city like that should not be any threat.”

“Oh, good idea, Magenta. I’ll do just that!”

Blanc told the spartoi to keep an eye on the city from a distance, then opened up her skill window. Since she didn’t know what exactly gave resistance to sunlight, she would look for that later and find ways to improve her force’s performance while exposed to the sun for now. In any case, since Blanc mostly fired magic from far away, strengthening the close-combat spartoi made more strategic sense.

“All that in mind, maybe a buff with a wide area of effect? Is there something like that?”

“In that case, I believe you want to improve your [Vampiric Magic] skills. [Mist] is quite useful, is it not?”

“Ooh. It’s got a huge range, and it gives a bonus to undead. Right, since we only have undead on our side, that might be amazing.”

She went into the tree to take a look and saw that she could learn [Magic Mist] and [Mistform]. [Magic Mist] modified [Mist] by increasing the damage of offensive magic cast into the mist. It was basically the attack spell version of [Death Mist]. [Mistform] would let Blanc turn her body into mist once per day. It went on cooldown as soon as it was cast, and it required twenty-four hours in-game before it could be used again. While it was in effect, her physical body would completely turn into mist, and she would be immune to all physical damage. However, the downsides were that this form took significant extra damage from fire and lightning elemental attacks, and it couldn’t resist any wind-type effects that interfered with movement. The effect lasted until it was canceled, but she couldn’t perform physical attacks or cast offensive magic while transformed, so she needed to have a firm grasp on the state of battle to determine when to keep it active or when to cancel it.

“Isn’t this super great as, like, an emergency way to avoid getting hit? Unless the attack they’re using is something like a Lightning Slash or something, then I’d just get instakilled.”

But since Blanc mainly had magical attacks, [Magic Mist] was perfect for her. She decided to learn both skills.

“Hmm, nothing new is showing up…”

“Maybe different skills had something useful show up, or maybe if you learn other skills then more will be unlocked here.”

“Oh right… Hm… Ah, I have a new one called [Dark Magic]!”

Blanc had focused almost entirely on earning XP and strengthening her followers, so she had barely checked her own skill window. She had no idea when this might have been added to her available list.

“There must have been some kind of trigger, right? Ah, whatever. I bet this would probably have [Light Resistance] in it.”

The different magic elements had various resistance skills for other elements in their skill trees. For instance, [Fire Magic] contained the [Ice Resistance] skill. The rest of the elements were as follows:

• [Earth Magic] had [Lightning Resistance]
• [Water Magic] had [Fire Resistance]
• [Ice Magic] had [Earth Resistance]
• [Lightning Magic] had [Wind Resistance]
• [Wind Magic] had [Water Resistance]

After taking four skills in [Dark Magic], Blanc finally got her hands on the [Light Resistance] skill she wanted.

“Aren’t there, like, a lot of support effects? Like this [Dark Curtain], it makes it darker around you, what’s the point of that…?”

“If you use it during the day, I think it would probably reduce the effect of sunlight.”

“Ohh, I see. And if I use it together with [Mist], maybe I can make conditions better for myself whenever I want.”

In other words, she was now perfectly equipped for midday battles. The early morning sun shone from far off in the distance, and a gentle wind blew by. However, with the [Light Resistance] skill, Blanc was taking no damage. She had a feeling that it was difficult for her to gather her strength, but that wasn’t something she could do anything about right now. Looking at the spartoi, despite not having [Light Resistance] themselves, it didn’t seem like they were taking any damage from sunlight either. Considering the idea that as her status increased, she would reduce the negative effects related to any character demerits, Blanc thought that maybe she could get complete resistance to sunlight if she kept strengthening herself.

“I wonder if I’m becoming more like that ‘daymonger’ thing that the count mentioned?”

“I think you mean ‘Daywalker.’ Vampires that can walk around in the day.”

“A ‘daymonger’ would be someone who loves the sun so much they went crazy, and now they run around preaching about it. I don’t think you would come to like daytime that much just from getting a little resistance to sunlight, would you?”

“‘Excess hatred begets love a hundredfold,’^[1] was it? Although the saying I’ve heard is the opposite.”

“Stop teaming up to make fun of me! I just misspoke a little bit!”

Somehow or another, she now had the choice of operating during the day. However, nothing had changed about the fact that her minions were much weaker compared to at night.

“Anyway, moving on. Last time, the spartoi wiped out the city all by themselves, but now it’s daytime and they already know we’re here, so I don’t think things will go quite as smoothly as before.”

The people in the city warily observed Blanc’s group, but since she was keeping her distance, it didn’t seem like they were planning to take any particular action yet. However, the sun was still rising, so it was possible that once the sun was at its peak, they would launch an offensive while her side was at its weakest. Whatever the case, it was unlikely that they would just aimlessly wait like this until night fell.

“Okey doke, let’s get just a little bit closer, then I’ll use [Dark Curtain] and [Magic Mist] to blast them with a bunch of spells! Once I break their formation, the spartoi will charge!”

“Be careful not to get hurt as we approach them, otherwise it seems a good plan.”

“As far as I can see, they don’t seem to have a way to attack us at range.”

“If they fire magic back in response, the three of us shall endeavor to cancel out their spells, so please rest easy. None of the soldiers seem to have any bows either.”

If they didn’t have any bows and arrows, then perhaps none of the residents in that city were hunters. But this area didn’t seem to have any animals other than coyotes and rats, so maybe it just wasn’t suitable for hunting. Which meant that they must mainly get fish from the river. Other than that, she also saw fields of corn or wheat, as well as rows of palm trees.

“Well, none of us need their food anyway, so it doesn’t really matter I guess. It would kind of annoy me if they’re just gonna rebuild again later, like they’re gonna undo all of our hard work, so let’s just burn those palm tree things and their fields and everything!”

“I believe those are date palms and barley, for the record.”

“You’re so smart, Magenta!”

“There is a library in the count’s castle. They only resemble the pictures I had seen, but given the local climate and their present living conditions, I believe I am correct.”

“Well done, Magenta. Master, that means that we can assume those fields are the city’s lifeline. Therefore, if you were to use magic to set them on fire, wouldn’t the humans come out, desperate to put it out?”

“Just the kind of thing I’d expect from nasty queen Carmine! Let’s do that!”

“Oh no, I do not particularly enjoy being cruel… I just determined it to be the most rational course of action.”

“All right, let’s keep going toward the city, but casually inch toward the fields so that they don’t notice. Once we’re close enough to the fields, umm, [Hellflame] should be fine, right?”

Even as Blanc’s forces crept closer, the city’s guards didn’t react in any substantive way. The spartoi walked straight toward the city, but Blanc and the three mormos nonchalantly shifted within the formation so that they would be closer to the fields.

After getting a little closer, she could see that the front line of soldiers, the ones watching Blanc’s group, was restless and fidgeting nervously.

^[1]: 憎さ余って可愛さ百倍. The commonly known phrase is its reverse, as mentioned in the chapter, 可愛さ余って憎さ百倍. This phrase means roughly “the greatest love can turn into the deepest hate.”