Golden Experience

After running for a while longer, Blanc’s group could finally see the mountain of rubble that Magenta had described. It seemed that the city originally sat on raised land, but now the entire hill seemed to be made out of dirt and wreckage.

“Whoa… This is… super crazy…”

Blanc had kind of been looking forward to seeing it, but her excitement had been completely wiped away upon taking in the scene. She couldn’t even imagine how powerful someone needed to be in order to do something like this. It had to have been a player, but if hypothetically it wasn’t, then Blanc and her followers couldn’t possibly beat it.

“If it were a monster that was specifically good at destroying rocks or buildings or something, then we could maybe do something about it, but…”

“Even if that were true, that doesn’t change the fact that it killed off all the defenders and citizens of a city of this size before it even got to that part…”

No joke. This was a city the size of this gigantic hill. It was probably the heart of this entire region. Blanc couldn’t even begin to imagine how large its standing army had been.

“…Those people from the last city, I wonder why they didn’t come here looking for help.”

“It’s possible that… they already knew what had happened here, but I think it was simply a matter of distance. There was probably some place that wasn’t as far away to the northwest of the city.”

That was the obvious explanation. It made more sense to look for help from a smaller but closer town rather than a larger city that was further away.

“Considering how bad things look, there probably aren’t any people here, but we should still be caref—”

“Master!!!”

Azalea suddenly pulled on her arm, toppling her on top of Crimson and the other spartoi.

“Ow… What are you—”

There was a light thump in front of Blanc as she crawled on the ground; right before her eyes, there was an arrow sticking out of the dirt. It seemed someone had shot an arrow at her, and she had narrowly avoided being hit.

“Waah… Th-Thanks, Azalea…”

“Please don’t get up yet… There’s a band of people targeting us.”

Looking up through a spartoi’s legs, she could make out a group of lightly armored people in the distance. They were probably bandits or something.

“…No, they’re too experienced. You may have forgotten, but it’s night right now. They were able to accurately shoot an arrow from all the way over there when they can only see by moonlight. Their archer is extremely skilled.”

Despite that, they clearly looked really down on their luck. Everyone was dirty, almost like they had just dug up the armor they were wearing from out of the rubble. After that, arrows kept coming at them periodically, but they were all swatted aside after Crimson and the other spartoi had dumped on the ground Blanc like a piece of luggage.

Eventually, maybe because they realized arrows were having no effect, the men formed ranks and slowly began to push their way closer. By that point, Blanc had finally gotten permission to stand back up from Azalea and the others.

“Who the hell are you?! Are you the catastrophe’s minions?!”

A well-dressed man yelled this, probably the bandit leader. Despite his fancier clothing, he still looked just as dirty and exhausted as the rest of them.

“What does he mean by ‘catastrophe’…?”

“Given the situation, wouldn’t that probably be whatever demolished this city…? Those men are probably the survivors of the city’s defenses… or something like that, maybe?”

“In other words, they’re trying to pin it on us…”

“Yup…”

That said, Blanc’s group did in fact come this way intending to attack any city they came across. Even though they were beaten to the punch and now had all these enemies trained onto them, they didn’t exactly have any standing to complain about it.

“Well… putting the city aside, if we think of it like there still being some prey around…”

“Not that we can say which side is the prey here…”

“Huh? Are they really that strong?”

Blanc thought her side had more numbers. From her experience taking down cities with her small force, she didn’t think she would lose.

“From the strength of the archer, if the rest of them have comparable melee combat strength, it’ll be tough with thirty spartoi.”

So they were shabby-looking but high-leveled enemies.

“That said, if we try to run then we’ll have to defend against arrowfire, so withdrawing would be difficult as well…”

“If we’ve gotta fight either way, then we want the initiative, right…?”

While Blanc and her mormos were having whispered conversations, those men also appeared to be discussing something. A number of them had hands tightly gripping the swords at their waists, ready to pull them out to attack at a moment’s notice.

“They’re totally ready to rumble…”

If they couldn’t avoid battle, then it was better to make the first move.

“Let’s do it then. [Mist].”

Within the darkness, Blanc’s range of influence expanded soundlessly. Soon after, the enemy camp started making noise. It seemed they couldn’t detect the mist itself, but they were able to sense a change right before the mist enveloped them. They were indeed on a different level compared to the guards for those small towns.

“Damn you! What is this strange sorcery?! Everyone pay close attention! You have permission to attack!”

At the leader guy’s orders, they started firing arrows at Blanc again. However, they couldn’t get past the spartoi’s defense. At the same time, a number of men unsheathed their swords and charged forward. Then the ones shooting arrows also threw aside their bows and readied their swords. The reason they had stopped shooting earlier may have just been because they were running low on arrows, not because they had decided it was futile.

“Spartoi! Intercept them! But don’t leave the mist!”

While shouting that, Blanc prepared her magic. They were just barely out of range, but since they were coming toward her, that wouldn’t be true for long.

“[Hellflame]!”

“[Hellflame].”

Just as Blanc’s spell activated, Azalea, Carmine, and Magenta also fired their own spells. There wasn’t any particular advantage to casting multiples of the same spell at the same time, but it at least wouldn’t cause any interference compared to if, for example, they had cast ice and water spells at simultaneously. This was the same as canceling out. When canceling the same element, there was a burst of energy at the point of contact, then whatever of each spell was left would continue on its original course. With targeted detonation-type AOE spells, though, they would explode at either their destination, or on contact—that burst of energy was essentially the same as the resulting explosion.

The cancellation of the four [Hellflames] exploded violently, dealing heavy damage to the enemy group. However, it didn’t incapacitate very many of them. While the men did falter momentarily, most of them were able to regroup and continue charging.

“Are you serious?! These guys are bad news!”

“That’s what I was saying!”

Blanc could follow up with a different spell, but they were about to reach the spartoi, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep using AOE spells.

“[Air Cutter]!”

Single-target spells wouldn’t deal as much damage, but in this darkness they should be nearly impossible to avoid. It was a good way to harass the enemy. The mormos also switched to shooting single-target spells at various targets, but just like Blanc, they were unable to deal any significant damage.

Soon after, the enemies reached the spartoi and engaged them in close combat. Since they had taken quite a beating from magic already, any proper attack would have easily caused them to crumple, which should have made it easy to defeat them. However, the spartoi just couldn’t land a hit.

“It’s because the spartoi don’t have reach… We should have taken weapons from the guards in those two cities before…”

She couldn’t have known in advance that there would be such a skilled force here, though.

“Man, if this place still has enemies like this here even after getting blown up, I guess it’s too high-leveled for us…”

The spartoi were being defeated faster than the bandits were. The battle was steadily getting worse.

“Maybe if we just risked friendly fire and kept firing AOE spells, we could’ve maybe…”

“But then we’d still have to deal with their rear, where the leader is. If we left them all alone, could we even beat them?”

The leader guy had two knight-looking warriors with him. Those two even wore proper knight armor. They were clearly much stronger than the other men.

The number of spartoi had declined drastically. Aside from Crimson and the other named ones, only a few remained. The enemy’s forces had also been diminished, but they would soon outnumber Blanc’s side. Since her side had been relying on numbers to maintain a balance, losing that sole advantage meant that the scales of battle would starting tilting against them. Or actually, since both sides only had so many fighters left, the victor could be decided very soon.

“Oh, that’s right! [Fear]!”

Unfortunately, this didn’t appear to have any effect on the enemy. They probably resisted it.

With the tides turning in their favor, Blanc thought the other side’s leader might get overconfident and try to rush at her, but it didn’t seem like they were planning to do that. If they had gotten closer, then they might have been within range of Blanc’s AOE spells, so maybe it was obvious that they wouldn’t want to try it. They were surely hellbent on killing her, though.

“Putting us aside… Given how many pawns they’ve lost, our enemy could be considered effectively wiped out, yet they unhesitatingly continue their assault. Their morale is oddly high. I would conclude that they are unafraid of death.”

“Why are you putting us aside?” Blanc asked.

“Since the spartoi are Master’s followers, even if they’re destroyed here, they will revive back in the town where they last rested.”

“Ohh, right. Then, maybe that’s the same for these guys?”

“That’s… an astute observation. So their leader could be something like a ruler of humanity.”

While they were talking, the only remaining spartoi were down to the three red ones.

“Oh, we are in deep shit.”

She suddenly remembered the ants. Just like back then, she could feel her impending death.

A single man slipped past Crimson after missing an attack and starting running toward them.

“Whoa, [Thunderbolt]!”

A direct hit; while he staggered back from it for a second, he immediately resumed his charge forward. However, Blanc could see that all the damage had taken a toll on him. She just needed one last push.

“[Ice Bullet]!”

The man dodged the spell that Azalea fired.

“[Flare Arrow]!”

Carmine’s magic also missed. However, he tripped on a piece of rubble, falling flat on his face. That was when Magenta, who had transformed into a wolf at some point, bounded over to him and tore out his windpipe.

“Master!!!”

At Azalea’s scream, Blanc turned to look forward just in time to see the enemy leader nock an arrow.

—That old man can use a bow?! And he still had arrows left?!

She watched the arrow’s release in slow motion.

—Ah, this one is gonna hurt.

Based on its trajectory, it was going to hit her. Blanc reflexively squeezed her eyes shut, to prepare for that nostalgic system message to appear.

However, what she heard was not a poignantly mundane message notification, but a thunderous crash.

“—Eh…?”

When she unconsciously opened her eyes, her field of view was completely obscured by a pitch-black wall.

The city of La Colline, stained with gunpowder, has attracted a number of dangerous groups.

Next time, “A Chance Meeting.”

Wait, aren’t you the one who lit that gunpowder?

TL note: “Train” in the MMO sense, where a player purposely attacks a large group of enemies in order to pass them onto another player as a form of harassment/griefing/indirect PvP. I changed one translated line in the chapter to more clearly reference the title, but nevertheless I thought this explanation would be necessary.