Golden Experience
Chapter 20: “Lesson”

Before just now, she should have been able to respawn without problem. There had been ants everywhere, though, so she wasn’t actually respawning completely problem-free.

“But still, now it’s someone’s private area so I can’t respawn anymore. I had only been looking at the message board for like twenty minutes, and in that time, someone… did they buy a whole plot of land, including that cave? Or like, can you buy land? Once I get better at this game, I totally want to buy a house for me to rest my bones.”

But that first cave should have had a ton of ants in it. Can you buy land even when there’s still monsters there? If so, then as long as you had enough money, you could beat all those monsters without fighting. If you had the budget of a country at your disposal, then you could just buy up all the land in order to get rid of monster territory. However, the human countries and the monster territories were constantly fighting for land.

“Normally you’d think that if someone were already there, then you can’t just become the owner of that area. That means that in the however long I was dead, someone was able to kill off all the ants?”

Was something like that even possible? Even if there were players who had started the instant the game became available, the game had only been out for about half a day. She didn’t think anyone could possibly get strong enough to farm those super-strong ants in such a short amount of time.

“Ahh, I get it. There might be people who’ve been living in this world all along who are that strong. I just assumed it was a player, but I guess NPCs can also have personal areas. Or like, if NPCs can do it, then monsters should be able to do it too; maybe the ants themselves were the ones who had owned the place first.”

If they were like regular ants, then it wouldn’t be strange for there to be a queen ant. The ants could have been in the process of taking control of the cave at the queen’s orders. Blanc could have been an intruder that happened to suddenly appear out of nowhere. Then, while she was dead, their extermination force could have eliminated all other remaining enemies, turning the cave into the ant’s territory and thus rendering Blanc unable to spawn.

“That seems like the most likely explanation. But this happened while I was trying to accept the rez, meaning my corpse should have been there. I wonder what would happen if someone rezzed me after the ants had taken control of the zone…”

Blanc tried to look it up in the Help documentation, but she couldn’t figure out which section might have the answer. The Help console’s suggested questions spanned too many different categories, and her vague search terms weren’t enough to lead her to an appropriate Help topic.

“Let’s just try ‘conditions for resurrection’ first. Go.”

The conditions to resurrect were:

1. The target must have died within the last hour.
2. The target has not been rezzed too many times.
3. There must be at least 50% of the corpse remaining.
4. The resurrection cannot take place in a no-rez area.

“I’m curious about the third and fourth conditions…”

She wasn’t sure if there was more than 50% of her corpse remaining. Blanc couldn’t remember which attack ended up being the fatal one, but since she died almost instantly, she doubted it had been a biting attack. If it was acid, then depending on how many ants had done the deed, it was possible for less than half of her body to be left after a number of seconds had passed.

She didn’t know how to tell if an area didn’t allow resurrection, but it was possible that after the ants conquered the cave, it turned into a no-rez area. Blanc had killed two ants, though, and she was pretty sure they couldn’t respawn without limit. However, the zone declaration only specified resurrections, so enemy respawns were probably unaffected.

But then yeah, over half of Blanc’s corpse was missing, so the system identification should have updated the classification from “Blanc’s Corpse” to “Blanc’s Drops.” The system message said “One hour until automatic resurrection,” but if someone tried to rez her, they’d probably get some kind of error. It was possible for her to receive a rez, but she wasn’t necessarily eligible to be rezzed.

Since Blanc didn’t leave any items behind, the ants’ conquest conditions were met, and the cleared cave became their territory.

“Something like that probably happened… Dammit, I swear I’ll go clean out that ant nest once I get stronger.”

That said, she had no idea how far away her current cave was from the ant nest. Before she powered up, she needed to get the basics of the game down first. Lacking that foundation was one of the reasons she kept dying to ants, you could say.

Blanc’s only weapon was magic. She thought that using [Fire Magic] on the ants had been overkill, and maybe early enemies had a weakness that let her take them down in one attack. But she had to avoid letting her guard down. She couldn’t forget this lesson she had learned from the ants.

“I’ve already gotten in the habit, so I should be ready to instantly cast [Flare Arrow]. All right then, first it was ants, what’s next?”

Regaining her focus, Blanc started cautiously exploring this cave. It was more expansive and well-lit than the ant’s nest. Just like before, though, her Night Vision was doing a lot of work, so it was probably actually rather dark.

“If I conquer this place, I wonder if I can make it my own base? It’s nice and bright here, so it’d be neat if I could.”

Her current goal was to take over this cave. As long as there were no other players competing for it, it shouldn’t be impossible for her. Also, as long as the monsters weren’t ants.

As Blanc walked through the cave, the decor suddenly changed. In particular, the walls changed from bare, natural rock face to something man-made. Looking at it, the stone structure seemed very old, since it was full of holes and gaps and covered in moss here and there.

“This feels… like some kind of ruin. I’m glad it’s not another ant nest, but… I wonder what kind of animals live in ruins.”

Even though this was a starting area, it’s not like the possible enemies were limited only to wild animals, but the ants left such a strong impression that Blanc could now only imagine monsters based on real animals. Plus she got freaked out, screamed at them, couldn’t react in time, and ended up dead. She felt so immature.

“Ah, something’s here… Uwah! Bodies?! Are these zombies?! Gyah! Gross! Stop making me fight shit that bites!!!”

<<One hour until automatic resurrection. Would you like to respawn immediately?>>