Golden Experience

Rare wasn’t sure if the nobles would be inside the castle. However, even nobles wouldn’t stay in the capital for no reason. If they lived here, then they should have some sort of work they needed to do here. Normally speaking, that would be running the kingdom, especially now during a crisis; it would be natural to assume they were probably all crammed together in some kind of centralized location. It was possible for some of them to hole up in their mansions, but those ones would be easy to spot by checking how tight their defenses were, so she could go around finding them later.

The castle gate was shut tight, but in a flash, Deas diced it up into tiny pieces and it crumbled apart. It didn’t matter if those doors were made out of wood or any other material; while it looked rather solid, it was nowhere as sturdy as a treant.

<I must say, Your Majesty…>

“What is it?”

<You have taken yet another step toward divinity.>

Ah, that’s right; her followers hadn’t yet seen her after learning all those skills.

“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? I have to admit I quite like the look.”

<Is there something the matter with your eyes? You have had them closed since earlier.>

“Hehehe. It’s because I can still sense what’s going on around me even with my eyes closed now. I only need to open them in times of need.”

They chatted casually while forcing their way into the royal castle. Just as Rare had seen from above earlier, there were barely any knights within. Some were coming toward them, while others rushed further into the castle. Probably to report on the situation.

“Well, if they’re coming for us, then let them. I’m sure they’re currently shorthanded on all fronts. Try to kill them as cleanly as possible; that’ll help when we turn them into undead.”

However, they were probably already [Subordinated] by a noble. If so, then even if the corpses were zombified with [Necromancy], their souls wouldn’t be bound. Without an accompanying soul, they could only create weak undead.

“Do we make up for it with numbers…? If we’re just going to raise all of them as undead, maybe we’ll get lucky and a few of them won’t be under the effects of [Subordinate].”

After that, Rare and her generals continued raiding the castle, cutting down any knights and maids they encountered. Since they were unable to bind the knights’ souls with [Necromancy], they could only be turned into weak undead monsters (which they called “lesser zombies” for the sake of convenience). That wasn’t the case for the maids, though; between the effects of Rare’s [Necromantic Barrier] and Deas and Sieg’s [Miasma], they had been reborn as rather strong undead.

“Maids and civil servants are much more useful.”

Regardless of what the body originally was, the type of resulting undead didn’t really vary all that much. Both knights and maids alike turned into zombies. However, whether it was because they had higher INT in life, or because maids and civil servants just had higher INT in general, the way they walked was just as refined as when they were alive. If they were killed cleanly, ignoring the change in skin color, other people may not even be able to tell they had been zombified.

“But what the hell, what is up with these hallways?!”

They had already gotten lost and had to retrace their steps countless times. There weren’t many windows so they couldn’t see what was going on outside, but since there was no light coming in from them at all, the sun must have long set. That said, Rare’s forces were stronger at night, so this was a welcome development.

With a sudden epiphany, Rare taught the maids beside her [Fire Magic]. Since the knights who had become lesser zombies couldn’t learn it, there must have been some kind of condition for zombies to learn magic.

“Maids, light the candles on the walls with fire.”

As one, the maid zombies all cast a spell to light every candle within range.

“Splendid… I wonder if we could make something like this for our cave.”

<I am sure it is possible, but… there are no windows underground, so starting fires could make it much more difficult to breathe.>

He was absolutely right. And not only that, there weren’t even that many people in their group who needed light to see. The most affected person had been Rare herself, but now she could navigate literally with her eyes closed.

“Let’s not then. Ah, what if we keep building the nest up and up like an anthill? Think we could make it look like a castle?”

<…Why not discuss the matter with Queen Sugaru? We are not the ones who will be performing the labor.>

Since Erfahren was destroyed, the number of visitors to the great forest would surely decrease. The ants would have the free time to work on it. Rare also wanted them to work on the farms again, but if it seemed like the engineers could handle another project on top of that, then she wanted to propose it.

<In any case—Your Majesty.>

“Yeah, I can tell. There are a lot of people up ahead.”

After turning the next corner, the hallway would open into a wider space. Up ahead, Rare could see an excessively ornate door. Beyond it was probably an audience chamber of some sort.

“I wonder if normal people also have to go through this meandering hallway to seek an audience. Or maybe there’s a shortcut somewhere.”

The maids had split up to search for people hiding in other rooms, but reported that they found none. Rare ordered them to form teams of at least five and released them into the castle; if they encountered an enemy they didn’t think they could defeat, they were to flee.

“[Discerning Feather Barrier]. All right, open the door.”

“Now! Fire!!!”

The instant the door opened, countless attack spells came flying out. There seemed to be some [Holy Magic] spells mixed in. Most likely it was because they believed Rare’s group to consist of undead. Two of them in fact were, but Rare herself was not.

Using [Demonic Eyes] to single them out, she specifically canceled out only those spells. Since she erred on the safe side and used stronger magic to accomplish this, a number of other spells also got canceled out in the process. For any spells that weren’t [Holy Magic], they were weakened by both Deas and Sieg’s [Miasma] auras, so barely any damage would get through, and that damage was promptly healed up via [Treatment].

[Treatment] could only be used on a single target within arm’s reach, and it didn’t heal for much. However, it had two points in its favor: It cost very little MP, and it had an extremely short cooldown. [Healing Magic] was the exact opposite; it healed for a lot and had a long range, but its MP cost was high and its cooldown was rather long as well. And since it was one of the types of magic, it was also included in the global spell cooldown, which made it a huge hassle. This was why it was so hard to build an all-purpose caster. Maybe. She had only discovered [Healing Magic] very recently, so this was just her guess.

In this game, healing skills didn’t damage undead. Rather than restoring life force, they just mended wounds. The silver bullet to use against undead was [Holy Magic]. When unaffected by exceptional skills like [Miasma], [Holy Magic] spells dealt 150% damage to undead targets. As far as Rare could tell when using [Demonic Eyes] to see how powerful the spell barrage was, Deas and Sieg wouldn’t take any fatal damage, but there was no reason to purposely take any hits either. The reason she had sent the maid zombies off somewhere else was to avoid losing any of them to this attack. After all, Rare could tell that they were casting spells long before the door was opened.

For the most part, they just waited until the enemy’s magic assault was over. Rare’s job was pretty simple; aside from monitoring for more [Holy Magic] spells, she simply ignored all other spells and occasionally used healing skills. There were knights huddled against the wall to avoid being hit by magic who tried to slowly approach the doorway, but since they were within [Discerning Feather Barrier]’s area of effect, they were unable to conceal themselves from Rare. Whenever they popped into view, she used [Feather Gatling] to beat them back.

“Ah—I know I was playing things safe, but when I cast spells that are too strong, I guess that must be because of [Discerning Feather Barrier].”

Rare’s magic did get a bonus when being cast within her barrier, after all.

A short time later, there was a lull in the enemy’s magic barrage, and now knights holding up shields charged out.

“First I’ll blast them with magic, then I guess I’ll stop them after they lose their formation.”

Not a bad plan. However, her necromantic knights wouldn’t let things get even that far. They cut down or blew back swaths of charging knights at once, not allowing a single one to get close to Rare.

“I was going to try out [Wing Attack]… Well, whatever.”

Since more magic came flying out whenever someone’s cooldown finished, the two sides repeated this exchange for quite some time, but knights were being killed each time so their numbers slowly dwindled. Soon, everything was over.

“Now then! Are you all quite finished?”

“So you must be… the ‘Catastrophe’ who attacked the capital.”

The one who replied to Rare was a well-built older man. The fierce look in his eyes indicated that he was different from these other corpulent nobles.

“When inquiring about someone’s identity, you’re supposed to introduce yourself first. Aren’t you being quite impolite?”

“I return your statement right back at you: If you want to visit someone’s home, make an appointment first! Have you no manners?!”

Well damn. He certainly had a point. This was no ordinary person.

“It is as you say. I am what you people call a ‘Catastrophe.’ Probably. Since I don’t call myself that, I wouldn’t know.”