Chapter 33: [Arc 1] Chapter 26: Infiltration Route, Secured

I ran over the rocky hills that made up the outer border of the floor, aiming for the Glavras faction's HQ. 

It's been two days after the first battle against the Glavras faction after I joined the Sahuagin team and I'm aiming to reach their lair today. J

I've used these last nights in charting the area, which turned out to be a pain since I couldn't be allowed to be seen by the Glavras monsters without the whole plan going to hell. Not that there's a plan yet, due to a lack of information...

Ah, a rat. I climbed up the rocks and hid in the dark of the night. I then threw a pebble down the path. The rat came looking for the noise, and boom! One Piercing Thread right in the back of its neck!

And I got a title for it as well! I Identified the title, and it seems the lesser versions of the rewards are needed to clear the conditions to obtain the title, so the reward is a straight-out upgrade.

But, assassinate without being discovered? As in killing them before they notice they're being attacked? No wonder I didn't get it before now. All my attacks were a step away from being "insta-kills". Wonder if there's a "trapper" title out there...

No matter, time to clean up. I jumped down to the path again and activated [Necromantic Rite]. A dark magic circle, more complex than the one for [Create Undead], appeared and dragged the rat corpse into itself with many hands made of darkness.

And there came the report.

[Necromantic Rite] does not make use of the corpses directly like [Create Undead] does. Instead, it takes in many different corpses, generating blueprints for both Skeletons and Zombies. 

Ah, there's blood remains. Clean, Clean, the Clean spell from [Magic Ability]~. No evidence left~.

Back to the Rite. After obtaining the blueprints, I can then use [Necromantic Rite] alongside [Create Undead] to make the undead of my choice. And there's no fault for failing! No more splat for me~!

In other words, I've now got the [Necromantic Rite] that allows me to make blueprints for undeads, the [Create Undead] to form them from the materials also stored in [Necromantic Rite], and finally, [Control Undead] to make them do my bidding. The Unholy Trinity of Necromancy!! The beginner level, anyway.

The downside is the costs. A single undead requires "[Racial Rank * 10] * Size" of the Materials stored in [Necromantic Rite], with G-Ranks being 1 and it keeps on increasing from there. Size refers to Mini (0.5), Tiny (1), Small (2), Medium (5), Big (7), and Huge (10).

Mini is the size of an ordinary rat, Tiny is the same as a cat, Small is around a normal human, Medium is to even 3 meters, Big is up to 10, and Huge takes over from there again.

Obtaining Materials is a pain though. I mean, I would need to collect 10 rats to create a single undead one. And to make things worse, even the tortoise, the biggest E-Rank Glavras monster, only gives 1 Material when "converted"! You gotta be...

On the other hand, the undeads created only with [Create Undead] have their weaknesses. Sure, you can obtain one through a single corpse, even if it's a gamble for the higher-ranked creatures, but the created undead is a fake. The Skeleton version of the rat isn't Bone Rat, but Lesser Skeleton Rat. The names of these fake undeads are something my subconsciousness came up with. And since they're fakes, they cannot obtain levels, nor gain proficiency with their skills.

But the undeads made through [Necromantic Rite] can do so. And more even. I can add more body parts to them, for a price, add classes, for a price, and customize their skills, NOT for a price! Can you believe that? Not that all undeads can get a class though.

Even some of my skills can be slapped onto the undead, but only when Rite's skill level reaches 25. When I reach the point of being a novice Necromancer, I can even copy my skill's current skill level.

These Custom Undeads can be stored as templates, and I have access to 1 template for every 10 of Spectermancer's class levels. If I reach Necromancer, it's 5 + 1 for every class level, plus what I had as a Spectermancer.

Ah, and you can suck up items with Rite as well when it reaches a certain level, allowing you to dress up certain undeads with equipment the moment you call them. There will be an additional "Item Capacity" I need to look after, but no biggie. 

The total amount of Materials I can store at once with [Necromantic Rite] is the same as the skill's level times 10... then it gets multiplied by [100 * [Evil Royalty]'s skill level] gets added. So, yeah, I can store up to 3 * 10 * 100 = 3.000 Materials. Woooooow. And I'll regain all the Materials used if I retrieve the undeads I make? Score! You gotta think green these days.

As a final note, the EXP the undeads earn will be saved, allowing you to add that EXP to a new undead after you dismiss the first one. Or I can convert it to my EXP... but only 0.01%. The amount gets better when you obtain Necromancer, but not much. Geez...

With that out of the way, I made some Lesser Skeleton Rats with the 50 Materials I had on hand. 5 rats, adding some search skills... what do you mean I can't add [Magic Sight]? Too low level with Rite? Fine~, then we'll take [Stealth]... no good. Oh, but I can give [Hiding] and/or [Covert Movement] instead? Then let's give both~.

Now, run rats, run! Find me the demon king's castle! Just kiddin'~.

---

Oh my... they found the castle...

A huge, castle-like structure stood before me. It looks like it's grown up from the ground, but the real reason is that they must have carved it out from the bedrock like with the Sahuagin city. Or, is calling it a tower a better way to say it? Yes, let's go with "tower".

Using the rats as scouts turned out to be a good idea. I gave them the order of locating any large numbers of Glavras monsters, then lead me to them. Cut the search time by quite the amount.

I looked down from above on the rocky cliffs and yup. That's a lot of Glavrases. Spider here, spider there, another spider... aren't there too many spiders on patrol? Where are the raptors? Tortoises? Not even some snakes?

I finally found some variety from the spiders in the form of the hydra-tortoise and the T-Rex. They had some subordinates around them, but not many... and why aren't the bosses inside the last-boss tower? Why're they camping right in front of it? Or... are they guarding it?

Seems like this place has a secret more important than two Floor Bosses. Time to go sneaky, sneaky~.

But, how to infiltrate? The tower's positioned so it's enclosed by the Dungeon walls, leaving only one path to it from the outside, which is guarded by the boss monsters. Unfortunately for me, there's quite a distance between the walls and the castle. Way too far for someone to jump across normally. The closest distance should be around 20 meters.

...wait, isn't that too short? Even without [Sky Jump], I could reach that with some threads... ah. People probably don't invest in jumping skills normally. Not with stuff like magic available.

Even so, not thinking that someone with a crossbow and some rope would come by is like asking for someone to break in... is that the reason? Is this a trap!? Naw, I'm overthinking things.

I dismissed the rats, walked some steps away, then ran towards the edge. When I jumped, I felt the now-familiar repulsive force from [Sky Jump] and leaped into the air. The force of the skill had sent me halfway across the gap. I timed it, and activated [Sky Jump] again, allowing me to reach the opening.

And she sticks the landing! All the stealth skills should have kept my entrance a secret for the guards below at least. Those spiders have weak night vision, and then there's the problem with their non-existing necks to see upward.

But what about the inside? I looked around and found... nothing. Seriously nothing. Not even the floor!

The inside of the tower was empty. Faint marks revealed that there had been rooms and stairs before, but they had all been destroyed, leaving a hollow tower behind.

The single "room" was around the same as a baseball stadium in width, but the height was around 40 meters. I'm just below the "top floor", on the remains of one of the rooms that had been there. I looked down from my ledge and saw many remains of the other floors had created fragile bridges across the space. And down below on the ground floor was something that I didn't wanna see.

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The temple was clad in the darkness of the "night", so it was easy to climb down undetected. I've not used the [Climbing] skill lately, but it seems like I still got it.

And yeah, this here's something you don't wanna see.

A spider, bigger than a truck. And I'm talking about those big-ass haul trucks they use for high-production mining. Even if it's only the abdomen part.

The rest of the spider is of the same size as the General spiders, but only the abdomen has grotesquely out of propositions. It makes me think of queen ants. The "front" of the spider is covered in a tar-colored exoskeleton, but the abdomen lacked that, revealing a large slab of pulsating, red meat.

Ugh, disgusting. The only reason I can stomach it is due to my "training" with necromancy and having eaten raw monster flesh all my life. 

Attack Skills: Elements: Monster Skills: Extra Skills:

This is a bad one. And ignore that it has only 12 skills here, cause this is an example of quality winning over quantity.

I mean, it has two stats over 1,000!! And they're both Life Stats! Not to mention the evolved [HP Greater-Recovery] skill. Why did an HP tank suddenly pop up from an army of water-blasting stormtroopers? 

Then it's those Skill Points. How did it get that many? Did the Dungeon give it a Skill Point allowance or something? It can buy any skills it wants to counteract any threats while waiting for reinforcement. And those Life Stat skills make it even worse to kill!

And that's not the worst. It has Extra Skills.

Extra Skills are skills that are not categorized with other skills, either due to their overwhelming powers or due to their strangeness. These skills have only 10 skill levels, but even a single Lv.1 Extra Skill could topple several maxed skills in terms of performance.

This does not extend to all Extra Skills, as some are stronger than others. The risks that come with these skills make some of them pretty much unusable, or they are activated on their own without the user's input. Won't that make them any better than curses then?

But, to my disdain, the Queen's skills are of the "good and easy to use" type.

[Parthenogenesis] is a freak of a skill that lets you mass-produce tons of weaker variants of yourself with barely any costs. You can even temper with their racial levels and stats!

But, these are like the undeads I can create when using [Create Undead] directly on corpses. They're fakes, better described as magic in the shape of monsters. But these "magic spells" have all the functions of the real deal, so it has a status and everything else. The only thing different is that the EXP they give is too minuscule to be worth anything. I mean, they're spells, not monsters, no matter how well made they are.

Add that with the [Kin Sovereignty] skill, which is a flat upgrade of the [Kin Domination] to the roach queen, and you get an army that never goes empty of soldiers.

Then comes the [EXP Robber (Kin)] skill. It's a derivate of the [EXP Robber] skill that Gust mentioned to me when he taught me about Extra Skills.

When a creature dies, the killer gains the aether of the creature in the form of what's called "EXP" by the World System, according to the amount of damage they inflicted on the killed party. But one cannot obtain more EXP than a certain value, as the remaining aether returns to the world. There are exceptions though, such as Dread Spirits.

The [EXP Robber] skill, on the other hand, can steal more of the aether that should be returned to the world, making it an EXP-boosting skill. It could even rob the EXP from prey that others had killed as well, allowing the owner of the skill to simply lay back while others do their dirty work. Skills such as [Tame] that grants EXP to other parties simply divide the EXP obtained rather than snitching the excessive aether.

The (Kin) derivated skill is kinda different. It takes the EXP from the killer of the kin and gives it all to the skill user. Meaning, no matter how many spiders Virt and the rest kill, it all goes to the momma spider instead. The skill even converts the body of the spiders into EXP so the Queen gets an extra treat. Makes you feel like this variant is more specialized than the original, rather than being a weaker version.

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn't do a spider stampede in the beginning. Were the skills too low-leveled to do that then? In that case, I need to throw this Queen off her throne, fast. These things have almost reached the halfway line to being maxed out!

But, how am I supposed to deal with that walking mass of HP? Even if I figured something out, that thing could just through a Resistance Skill to counteract my plan and jack up the skill with the remaining Points. Then it just needs to push on with mass-produced spiders, and if I take too long, the other two bosses could come in those massive front doors and join the scramble.

So yeah, I can only beat the Queen when the other two are on the battlefield. A large number of spiders should leave with them, but the Queen can just generate more if needed. Not that I have to fear the soldiers, but the Generals could be nasty, but not impossible to beat. They're newborns after all. Experience can triumph over stats sometimes. 

But the Queen herself is impossible. 

I've saved all my Skill Points since I started with my necromancy training, save for 1 point for the [Gloom Bullet] skill and 3 for [Light Reinforcement], but I can't imagine any skill I can obtain with the Points I have that can take down that thing. At least, not at Lv.1.

Even if I boosted its skill level, I don't think a single skill would have that power. Not one that you can obtain without any special means.

And I can't bring with me any reinforcements through the way I came in with. Some Sahuagins, maybe, but they would be useless if they enter from the top of the tower. Too big of a group would be spotted before we came close enough.

...Let's return to Gust and the rest. This isn't something I can figure out on my own. Not while I'm hiding in the shadows from a massive spider queen anyway.

Description:

A spider monster that is the primogenitor for the Aquarect species in the "Water-Knot of Glavras" Dungeon.

The Queen acts like an ant queen, birthing workers that do all their work for her who are incapable of moving due to her size. 

Appearance:

The Glavras Queen Aquarect has the appearance of a tar-black General Aquarect, save for her abdomen, which is bigger than a two-story house. The abdomen lacks an exoskeleton, revealing the red flesh of the spider.

Abilities:

The Queen herself lacks in almost any form of battle abilities, mostly due to its disproportionate size. 

Due to that, the Queen has no other choice but to birth warriors to cover for her and hunt food for her. 

On the other hand, the Queen is solid as a fortress and owns several skills to recover from any damage it takes. As the Queen herself cannot move, the army of Aquarects determined the Danger Rank of the Queen.

Garami's comment: A huge pest is the worst pest!

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