Golden Experience

There were 32 monitors. There were also 32 players in the championship. Which meant it was possible for each monitor to focus on a different player. If that were turned out to be the case, then it would be way too embarrassing for every spectator to see her change, hide herself, and possess her armor. She had been far too naïve during the prelims. If she happened to get caught on camera, then she would have been in a whole lot of trouble.

Rare had no choice other than to compete in the championship as-is with Yoroizaka and the Kenzaki brothers. She would have to give up on the “final boss’s second transformation” act. There probably wouldn’t be any players who could push Rare that far anyway.

This was the perfect chance to let Yoroizaka take control and see if she could still use her own skills. If she could, then there would be almost no reason for Rare to learn any weapon skills, which would be super convenient. But even if Yoroizaka could use her skills, if the person inside, Rare, had to be careful of the drastic movements or risk injury, then it wasn’t very practical anyway. This was something that needed to be tested.

Of course, she had her cloak covering her. Since there weren’t any other players who had completely hidden their faces with a cloak, the spectators already knew that Yoroizaka was underneath, but Rare had the fastest clear time in the prelims, so none of the other contestants knew who was under the cloak.

Her transfer destination was next to a stream. A forest was behind her, and across the stream there was a meadow, a sea of grass undulating from the strong wind. Rare used [Summon Vision], [Summon Hearing], and [Summon Smell]. Since she was now jacked into Yoroizaka, she could survey the meadow without problem.

Rare looked around. She thought she saw something moving in the forest. She crouched down and focused on her ears. There was a noise. It was probably a player. Still crouched, she slowly and quietly approached them. They still hadn’t noticed her. Rare decided to try giving Yoroizaka the reins here. After conveying instructions to her, Rare stopped moving. If she didn’t let her body go completely slack, she could be hurt, so this was a moderately nerve-wracking situation. Everything would be fine once she got used to going along with Yoroizaka’s movements, though; this would work.

They closed the gap to get Yoroizaka into range including [Flash Step]. As soon as they did, she activated [Flash Step]. It was important not to reveal their skills as much as possible, but it was even more important to perform the necessary tests. [Flash Step] brought along Rare who was inside. Above all, she didn’t feel as though her limbs were moved in any strange ways. This [Flash Step] felt exactly the same now as when she had done it while possessing Yoroizaka. Which meant that she only needed to be careful of Yoroizaka’s own considerable athletic prowess. Surprisingly, other players probably always felt this way when using these physical-type skills. Furthermore, from a system perspective, her stats were all higher than Yoroizaka’s. So theoretically, there was no logic behind the idea that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with Yoroizaka’s movements.

“Gotcha! [Flar—”

The player they were stalking had apparently realized that Rare was aiming for them. They were completely ready to shoot off a spell. However, she wasn’t sure if they didn’t know about the [Flash Step] skill, or maybe they didn’t think she could use it. Either way, she probably came much more quickly than they were expecting, so before they could finish calling out the spell’s keyword, their body’s left half had already been parted from its right.

The overwhelming difference in power turned this into a straight-up murder, but it also reminded Rare of something that had slipped her mind. Yoroizaka’s endurance had never been tested. This was also true for the Kenzaki brothers, and for Rare herself. Given their current stats and equipment, she wasn’t sure how many attacks or how much damage they each could take.

If possible, it would be convenient to investigate that here. Since she didn’t plan to reveal herself in most cases, her own endurance wasn’t as important. Actually, ever since she added [Summon Caster: Mind] and Yoroizaka to her arsenal, if it weren’t for this event, she would never purposely go out herself, not that she really cared about it this time. In any case, Yoroizaka would probably find herself in the line of fire a lot in the future. Fortunately, iron arrows couldn’t even leave a scratch on her, they were basically as harmless as toys, so she needed to investigate the effects of swords, axes, maces or other blunt weapons, and also magic to see how well she held up against them.

It might have been better to have been hit by that spell just now. Even if she had gotten hurt from it, she had potions in her inventory. The potions were made from [Alchemy], and she could make as many as she wanted; she currently had enough on her to fill an entire bathtub. They were cultivating the necessary medicinal herbs and mushroom ingredients in one part of the great forest. The engineer ants switched off harvesting the materials then using [Alchemy] to mix low-quality potions, which were subsequently stored in the transporter ants’ inventories. At first, Rare didn’t have much use for the transporter ants, but without specific work for them to do, they had settled in as housekeepers and mobile warehouses.

Now, Rare wanted to find a new target with an additional goal of taking one attack. Which meant that rather than hunting in a place with lots of hiding spots, she should find somewhere where she would stand out. She left the forest and headed for the open field. As soon as she set foot in the meadow, she spied some players off in the distance. It was something she wished she hadn’t seen, but, unfortunately, Yoroizaka’s eyesight was too good.

There was some kind of pervert wearing a nurse outfit, with his hairy legs proudly sticking out from the skirt, and said pervert was chatting with someone else in full-body black tights.

Even with enhanced hearing, she couldn’t tell what they were saying, but she immediately knew as soon as she saw them that they needed to be erased from existence as soon as humanly possible. She absolutely did not want to be attacked by them. Especially not the nurse guy; he was holding a bow anyway, so there was no real need to get data on it. Kenzaki Saburou and Shirou flew up high into the sky, then dropped straight down, skewering them both.

Now there were 28 players remaining. That many should be a sufficient sample size. Before she crushed them, she would try to take at least one hit. Rare traveled through the meadow along the edge of the forest. This way, she would be able to keep an eye on both the forest and the meadow.

Just as she hoped, she kept being attacked by spells and arrows flying out from the forest. A lot of them were [Thunderbolt], seeking to take advantage of the inherent weakness of metal armor. However, none of them were able to overcome Yoroizaka’s defensive might and reach Rare within. The arrows weren’t even worth sparing a thought. Yoroizaka’s LP never went down at all. She wasn’t sure whether that was because it was immediately recovered from natural regen or because she literally never took any damage, but either way, Yoroizaka’s toughness had been confirmed. These were wonderful results. The players who attacked them were immediately cut down by Saburou and Shirou. After dealing with the two degenerates, she asked them to just monitor things from the sky. If they spotted any players, they were to wait until Rare had gotten attacked, then, no matter the results of that attack, promptly dispose of them.

Since arrowheads always broke against Yoroizaka, no matter how powerful the bow or how skillful the player, whether the arrow with the busted point bumped her a little bit harder or not made no difference. But magic was different. If someone was specialized in magic, then there was a real possibility that they could injure Rare. That said, “could” was the operative word here. In reality, Rare had sunk an order of magnitude more XP into every one of her stats such that she still surpassed a regular player who dumped everything they earned into a single stat. Due to that, even if she took a direct, full-powered attack to the face, at best it would only shave off a couple percent of LP. The question here was Yoroizaka. She still seriously had no idea what kind of metal she was made out of it, but it seemed that magic had little effect on her.

After eating attacks from around five players, Rare started thinking that there was no point in continuing this experiment. At this early stage in the game’s life, there was probably no player who could present a legitimate threat to her. In that case, she could just hole up in her territory and experiment her heart away for the time being. So even though she had gone out of her way to make some connections, Wayne probably wouldn’t have any use anymore after this event. But neither did he need them. In any case, at his level, there was no way he could have made it to the championship, so he had no further reference value.

Since it didn’t seem like she could expect to take any real damage, she didn’t need to aimlessly wander around anymore either. This forest was just in the way, obstructing her field of view. She was pretty sure they had created it specifically for this event; after today, it shouldn’t be used for anything else. So they shouldn’t really care if it got burned to the ground.

“[Hellflame].”

This was a high-rank AOE spell in the [Fire Magic] tree. She was sure that some other magic spells were required before being able to learn it, but since she went and invested in all the magic trees equally, she wasn’t sure what they were. Then there was her high INT stat, as well as [Magical Affinity: Fire] and [Elemental Ruler: Fire]; these all further augmented a spell that was already powerful.

In the blink of an eye, a great conflagration flared up, quickly rampaging across the forest, swallowing it up. Trees were incinerated in an instant, nearly evaporating, leaving not even charcoal behind. The spell was a lot more powerful than she expected. This was her first time casting it, so she was astonished. Now she knew that this spell was 100% forbidden in the great forest and the caves.

One of her reasons was certainly “the forest is irritating,” but a bigger reason was her desire to try using this spell to clear out the trees. She didn’t exactly have anything against greenery, but there was also a primal appeal to doing something she absolutely wasn’t supposed to ever do. People always encountered moments where they couldn’t help but feel that urge.

Rare felt enormously satisfied. The forest was all gone. Literally. This zone was made for only 32 people to begin with, so it wasn’t nearly as large as the blocks used for the prelims, and the forest was comparatively small too.

There were no players in the empty lot that used to be the forest. All that were left were the stream and the meadow, but the stream had been brought to a boil and was even now still steaming. There most likely weren’t any players hiding in there.

Rare turned to look at the meadow, wondering now how she should deal with it.

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