Golden Experience

After teaching Kerry and the other girls magic and raising their INT high enough for them to access their inventories, right now Rare only had 144 XP left. [Enchantment Magic] took 20, the cheapest elemental magic would cost another 20, [Enhancement Magic] was yet another 20, and finally [Enhance Follower] was the sole 40. If these calculations were correct, then she’d only be able to learn one type of enhancement for now.

In order to raise the group’s safety margins, she wanted to boost VIT. However, considering all the battles she’d seen so far, the catkin girls had never taken a serious hit. Well, technically, there was that ambush where she had established first contact, but that had nothing to do with stats, Rare had used her family’s secret techniques, so it didn’t count. Or like, she had already decided to erase that ambush from the chronicles of their first meeting anyway.

That meant the next best stat to improve would certainly be AGI. It provided the most synergy for both the catkin girls and the ice wolves. The problem was the ants, but, strictly speaking, they were Sugaru’s followers, so they shouldn’t be eligible for Rare’s [Enhance Follower] skills. All she had to do was use the remaining 44 XP to have Sugaru take [Enhance Follower], though, then the ants would also have a buff available to them.

On the other hand, another approach was to go offensive; depleting more of an enemy’s forces in an initial attack was a viable strategy. Since Rare’s forces were numerous, they simply had more hands to play. If those hands were powerful enough, then most opponents could simply be crushed with brute force.

The best candidates for that strategy were STR and INT, now that everyone had both magical and physical attacks at their disposal. To take someone by surprise, or to knock an opponent off balance, it might be better to focus more on magical attacks. After all, their side consisted of beastkin, wolves, and ants; they’d never expect magic to suddenly be flung in their faces.

Yet another approach would be to learn an element of magic that no one else could currently use, so that the diversity of attacks at their disposal increased. The options here would be [Earth Magic] or [Wind Magic], which meant VIT or AGI.

After mulling it over, since never being hit meant taking no damage, and not being able to hit was useless too, the choice was clear—Rare went for AGI. She picked up [Wind Magic]’s [Air Cutter]. She also considered [Desiccate], but she felt that wouldn’t contribute to the team’s variety.

Next she learned [Enchantment Magic] and [Enhancement Magic: AGI]. And in the all-important [Discipline] skill tree…

As predicted, [Enhance Follower: AGI] was unlocked.

In order to master the entire category, they would need to farm up another 300 XP. Rare grimaced at the thought.

“And now to check the all-important [Enhance Follower: AGI]’s effects…”

The skill read [Increases the AGI of all your followers by 10% of your own AGI].

“Holy cow! It’s a passive skill! That means it should stack with [Enhancement Magic]! Wait, huh? That also means…”

If that was the case, then if Sugaru also learned [Enhance Follower: AGI], 10% of Rare’s AGI would count toward Sugaru’s AGI which would trickle down to all the other ants. Hot damn.

It was probably incredibly unlikely for a character with [Subordinate] to control someone else with [Subordinate]. However, once both Rare and Sugaru had all the [Enhance Follower] skills, depending on Rare’s own stats, it was becoming more and more likely that the ants would end up becoming the primary attack force.

“But first, I haven’t actually verified if I even get XP when the ants beat something. Most of them are still frozen, though. Crap.”

Thinking logically, any XP the ants earned would go to the queen, and any XP the queen received would go to Rare, so as far as XP was concerned they should count like any other follower.

In any case, the ants were all thawing out right now. For the time being, Sugaru should also get [Enhance Follower: AGI]. She had been messing around with her inventory, but paused to look over at Rare and nod.

Now the group only had 4 XP left.

They really needed to go out and earn more, but it was also important to shore up the base. She wanted to thaw out all the ants first, but there was something else that had to be done before that.

“Kerry, Riley, Remy, Marion. You’ve truly done good work today. I think it’s time you had some rest. None of you have had an opportunity to sleep for very long, have you?”

“No, we’re…”

“It’s important to get real sleep. You won’t be able to operate at your best otherwise. Don’t worry, I’ll work you hard when you wake up, so just rest for now.”

For now, she’d have the mountain cat girls rest up. Fortunately, they had the hide that Remy had tanned here. After half-forcing them to go to sleep, Rare took Sugaru into the next room.

This room was still full of frozen ants, but it looked like about half of them had thawed out. The ones closest to the entrance seemed like they were nearly back to normal, even. With the queen’s guidance, these ants were moved over to a room that hadn’t been frozen. One of the ones that Rare’s group hadn’t gone through in their raid.

In that room, all the ants turned at that same time to stare at Rare.

“Wah…”

As one, the ants then all looked down. While they weren’t Rare’s direct followers, it seemed they would faithfully abide by her will and follow her orders.

“Ah, my apologies, I didn’t mean it. I don’t mind if you look at me. I’m the boss now. I’ll be relying on you.”

Rare looked back over at all the ants. She didn’t observe them closely during the raid since her group had just used [Charm] and [Freeze] to wipe them all out en masse, but now that she was reevaluating them, she noticed that there were lots of different types of ants. There weren’t all Infantry Ants.

Rare couldn’t check the ants’ statuses, so she had Sugaru do it. While she could somehow communicate with them as Sugaru’s followers, she was unable to see anything specific, like names or titles. According to the queen, she could see this information on her own skill window, so Rare open Sugaru’s skills up again to check.

The most likely candidate was [Haplodiploidy]. This wasn’t a skill in another tree, but the name of a skill tree itself. [Haplodiploidy] was a skill exclusive to Vespoid Queens, and listed underneath it were options like [Infantry]. It seemed the skills here corresponded to the types of ants that the queen could produce. In other words, the ants were born as that type to begin with. This would explain why the nest didn’t have any eggs or ant larvae.

The other available types aside from [Infantry] were [Combat Engineer] and [Cavalry]. The [Combat Engineer] skill created an ant of a different color than the infantry ants called [Engineer Ant], but Rare wondered what [Cavalry] did. Maybe ants riding on something else? It was an amusing thought, but apparently it just referred to a higher rank of ant above infantry. In terms of fighting ability, though, it seemed the difference in strength was equivalent to how much stronger a mounted knight was over a foot soldier. However, it cost quite a lot of LP and MP to produce one as well.

In any case, what interested Rare right now was the Engineer Ant. If they were really combat engineers, then it followed that this nest was probably constructed by them. The tunnels with the smooth walls must have been the result of some kind of skill.

She wanted to see how they dug tunnels. The Engineer Ant bent its body, stuck the end of its abdomen out, and sprayed out some kind of foul-smelling liquid. Ants in real life did the same thing. Real ants sprayed venom or formic acid, but the stuff the Engineer Ants sprayed began to melt the solid rock wall. With such a deadly solution in their bodies, even able to melt stone, predators must think twice about eating them. They appeared to have much more firepower than one would expect from combat engineers.

But no, apparently, the liquid had no effect on anything but rock. She had them spray some of the other ants nearby, but their exoskeletons were just fine. Rare gingerly touched the liquid herself, but it didn’t do anything to her aside from producing a sensation of stinging pain. This sure was some magical acid.

The queen explained that it wasn’t that it could only melt stone, but, to put it in game terms, it was dependent on the type of mineral, or more specifically the rarity of the mineral. So stuff like calcium could also be melted, which includes human bones.

“But I touched it just now and my nails are fine.”

Rare was too high-leveled, so it wouldn’t affect her. Apparently. Having XP invested seemed to determine a living thing’s rank.

To put it another way, a player who had just started the game could have their nails and equipment melted.

Maybe to a beginner skeleton player, they might find this acid to be their worst nightmare. Considering how many starting cave areas there were, though, if someone did spawn in one with ants, they must have the worst of luck.