EXP Is Golden: Volume 2

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7183-5654-2
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 250 Seiten

Reihe: EXP Is Golden

Gleefully taking up the mantle of Queen of Destruction, Leah uses her unstoppable army of retainers to invade the Kingdom of Hilith! With the experience points gained from her rampage, she's able to steadily turn her retainers into newly evolved forms worthy of grandiose titles like Harbinger of Destruction. Combined with her powerful new skills like Evil Eye and Sanctum, Leah quickly cements her status as one of the most dangerous creatures in the world.

On one of her campaigns of destruction, Leah happens to save a vampire player from a mob of humans. Taking the vampires under her wing, she embarks on the next stage of her playing career in-game: Multiplayer Mayhem!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harajun

Weitere Mitwirkende

Fixro2n

Akimoto, Noboru

Leseproben

Prologue

The Grand Army of Hilith that gathered to defeat the newly born harbinger had left their camp at dawn to continue their march toward the east. They had been on the road for eight days and soon spotted the walls of Rokillean off in the distance. Thanks to their early departure, they had arrived relatively early in the day.

The summons had come suddenly. Approximately nine days earlier, the kingdom’s government had announced the formation of a new expeditionary army. The government sent out notices that required not only conscription-aged men, but youths who were ordinarily below the kingdom’s conscription age and older reservists who had already served out their time. The expeditionary army’s destination remained a mystery, but clearly the kingdom’s leadership felt that they needed to bolster the ranks of the army ahead of its journey.

It was only after the army had been hurriedly assembled and was about to practically be shoved out the gates of the capital that a member of the royal guard briefed the officers on their mission. The briefing, which was only attended by senior officers of centurion rank or higher, revealed that this was not an expeditionary force, but a grand army gathered for a specific purpose—to kill a newly born enemy of humanity.

Their quarry was a newly spawned Harbinger of Destruction that made its home in the Great Woods of Lieb near the city of Erfahren. It had sinister plans and was a being of evil, according to the Bishop of the Holy Church of Hilith. Although the information they had was from a highly reliable source, unfortunately for the army’s officers, there simply wasn’t very much of it.

All of the army’s officers, including its commander, felt a pang of dread as they were informed of their objective. Harbingers of Destruction weren’t an opponent humans should be fighting. They were more like natural disasters, forces so powerful that simply was a feat in and of itself. Even the angels from the Celestial Citadel that appeared every so often, the mere underlings of a greater power, took at least ten fully trained soldiers to have a shot at killing one.

To kill a harbinger itself... That was , no matter how many soldiers they gathered. The kingdom’s leadership had to know it as well as the assembled officers. Why had they gathered this army to make such a futile attempt?

The royal guard that had briefed the officers had explained that the kingdom’s leadership felt that a newly born harbinger wasn’t nearly as powerful as the ones inhabiting the other continents. Which was why they decided to bet on the possibility that they still had a chance at slaying it.

“The mere possibility... Such a vague hope...” The commander sighed. The royal guard shook his head. “I understand how you feel, however...it’s not something we can simply ignore. Compared to the possibility of having to deal with the harbinger for generations, taking the risk here and gambling that we can slay it is the only option.”

“Yes, I understand that. I understand, but...” The general shook his head and trailed off.

“General, the grand army is assembled and ready to depart. It’s too late to second-guess this decision.” The royal guard had a point. If they were already committed, then the only path forward was to steel themselves and push on ahead. The general and his officers couldn’t afford to show any weakness in front of their men.

The army found no problems or obstacles in its way as it advanced through the kingdom’s main roads, making steady progress as the days passed without incident. Because they needed to get to Erfahren as quickly as possible, the army had taken the shortest route toward it, which meant passing by a few frontier cities that lay near monster-held territory. Ordinarily, this many people passing near monster territory provoked a response from the nearby monsters, who would emerge from their lands to see what the mass of humans were there to do.

Yet there was no sign of that happening during this march. It was as though the monsters were declaring that they had more important things to tend to. All that greeted them from the monster realms they passed by was an ominous silence. The general couldn’t help but consider it a bad omen.

“No, I suppose I should be grateful we’re making good progress,” the general said to himself. “The only thing I should be thinking about is getting to Erfahren and completing the mission.”

At that moment, a stir of panicked activity appeared toward the front of the column. By now, the first units should have made it to the city of Rokillean. After that, the next stop would be at a frontier city by Llyrid. Beyond that lay the city of Erfahren, then finally the Great Woods of Lieb.

Because Rokillean was far from any monster realms and a major transportation hub within the kingdom, the city wasn’t surrounded by a wall, which minimized any disruptions to commerce and allowed the city room to grow. The city itself sprawled out in all its splendor atop a small hill. Rokillean rivaled the capital in terms of size and surpassed the capital in activity.

It was understandable that some of the soldiers who were seeing it for the first time would be abuzz with excitement... The thought was cut short as the general noticed the centurion who was supposed to be in command of the forward units running toward him. A messenger would have sufficed if all he wanted to do was report their arrival.

“What is the meaning of this?!” the general said sternly to the centurion.

The centurion saluted crisply and reported, “We are about to reach Rokillean, sir! However, up in the sky...”

The general, who had spent most of the day atop his mount gazing downward at the column of men in front of him, looked up at the sky. It seemed like dark storm clouds were bearing down upon Rokillean from the east. No, those weren’t clouds. The silhouette was wrong, as though the darkness was created by a collection of something much more sinister than clouds.

“What in the blazes...?” the general said as he strained to get a better look.

The centurion shook his head in response. “I don’t know, sir. What I do know, sir, is that it would be best if we moved the army into Rokillean as quickly as possible.”

If those were monsters related to the harbinger, then the problem went beyond simply the safety of Rokillean. It would be the problem that the grand army had specifically been sent to deal with. Of course, any connection between the monsters and the harbinger meant that the harbinger had already emerged from the Great Woods—meaning their chances of successfully defeating it was now close to zero.

Nonetheless, the general nodded to the centurion. “Agreed. Order all units to make haste and head into the city.”

The usual hustle and bustle of the city was absent, and Rokillean was eerily quiet as the city held its breath. Once inside the city, it was obvious that it wasn’t a storm approaching the city. Instead, it was an army of hornets carrying ants.

The hornets were large enough that, even from this distance, it was possible to make out their shapes in the sky. They were far larger than any hornet the general had ever seen. It seemed the swarm of hornets were hovering in the air, maintaining a certain distance to the city, as though they were waiting for something.

The general issued orders as his forces entered the city. “First, notify His Lordship that the army has arrived. Then, make sure you send out a carrier pigeon with a report for the chancellor. Make sure the report includes the fact that we’ve encountered the enemy—giant hornets carrying giant ants. Then ask His Lordship for further instructions.”

The hornets were hovering to the east of the city—meaning they stood between the army and the road toward Llyrid. The general doubted that the hornets would let his forces pass underneath unmolested. While he had requested further orders from the chancellor in his report, the general knew there was a strong likelihood that the conditions on the ground wouldn’t wait for the chancellor’s orders.

The soldiers looked unnerved at the swarm of giant hornets, but this was an army assembled to fight a harbinger. Since the minions of a harbinger the Kingdom of Hilith had fought for decades were the angels from the Celestial Citadel, these soldiers were trained to fight enemies flying above them and knew how to organize into small units. While the teenagers in the army hadn’t received that training, there were enough veteran reservists coming back out of retirement that, together, they could at least provide useful support as secondary fighters.

“Most of those angels just charge into the fray without any coordination. Our soldiers are trained to work together to deal with them. While we’re facing hornets and ants... Either way, we’ll likely be fighting them in a melee like the angels. With our numbers, we should be able to beat them back,” the general explained. He then ordered the reservists and young conscripts to remain in the city and provide support while deploying an attack formation made up entirely of active duty soldiers on the eastern side of the city. The soldiers were specifically warned not to provoke the enemy and to avoid going too far outside of the city.

The centurions immediately got to work implementing the general’s orders, and he watched before the messenger he had sent to the...