“The Overture to Ruin”

In contrast to the previous event, this event was supposed to follow the theme of "an extension of everyday life," or at least that was how the admins described it. Therefore, there was no formal kickoff to the event.

The NPCs must not have had any idea what was happening. The townspeople were just going about their normal, everyday lives. On the other hand, some sellswords were frantically racing in and out of the city, and the residents just watched them with bemusement. Those ones must have been players.

Rare was currently high up in the sky, looking down on Erfahren. She wasn't watching through Ominous or a Kenzaki—she was up there herself. Of course, she was wearing Yoroizaka.

After reincarnating, Yoroizaka's race became "Divine Fortress." She had gone from Living Mail to Divine Mail to Divine Fortress. Not that Rare knew what exactly was "divine" about the latter two. She still had the slender build of a female body, but the most dramatic change was her size; she was now about three meters tall, almost twice as tall as Rare was. To explain how Rare could wear her now… well, strictly speaking, she wasn't.

There was a kind of door in Yoroizaka's lower back, and Rare could enter her from there. Going inside was like being transported to an extra-dimensional space that was about 4.5 square meters large. If Rare moved her own body in the space, Yoroizaka would perform the same movements. Inside this little room, what went on outside was projected all around her except behind her, where the entrance to the room was. This meant she had no blind spots except that one spot behind her; the only way to check that spot was for Yoroizaka to turn, but that was true for normal armor too. Rather, since there was no visor limiting her field of view, and she had a wider range of view than a normal human's, it was easier to see things in here than with her own eyes. Since Yoroizaka had learned [Enhanced Vision] and [Enhanced Hearing], both of which were replicated in this space, Rare had an extraordinarily complete grasp on what was happening outside.

As for her battle effectiveness, the "fortress" part was right on the money. When they set up a sparring match between Yoroizaka and the adamantite series, none of the adamantite soldiers' attacks had any effect on her. As a last resort, one of the adamanleaders abandoned its sword and just tried to punch her directly—the most powerful attack they could perform—but even that didn't leave a scratch on her; in fact, the adamanleader's fist ended up breaking apart first.

Magic was the same. No matter the element of spell the adamanmages tried to shoot at her, she took no damage. Even when they tried again using treant staves, there was no appreciable difference. With world tree staves, only [Lightning Magic] was able to inflict damage, but even that was quickly recovered with her natural regen.

Then there were her attacks. With a single swing of her arm, she could lay out several adamanknights. With Kenzaki Ichirou in hand, there didn't seem to be anything she couldn't split in half.

Speaking of the Kenzakis, all five brothers, Ichirou through Gorou, became just as big as Yoroizaka did. The choices available when the Kenzakis evolved were longsword and greatsword, so Rare chose greatsword. Realistically thinking, as greatswords they were just too big for a human to lift, but with enough STR it wouldn't be a problem to swing them around. But with Yoroizaka as she was now, their proportions to one another were preserved, so it still appeared as though she was wielding a normal one-handed sword. The Kenzakis' current race was "Divine Arm." A weapon of the gods. Since everyone had already been exposed to Yoroizaka's new size first, their gigantic evolution wasn't as surprising.

Yoroizaka still equipped all five Kenzakis, the same as before, but their positions had changed; in order to leave the back open for Rare to enter and leave, the three swords on her back and one on the right side of her waist were changed to two on each shoulder. In order to accommodate that, Yoroizaka's epaulets had been reforged to hold two swords each.

Even though she had the full arsenal equipped, Rare's [Flight] skill allowed her to easily ascend high up in the sky. Rather than "wearing" Yoroizaka, it would be more accurate to say that Rare was piloting from her cockpit instead, but either way the game still considered Yoroizaka to be "equipped," so Rare's skills could still be used on the outside just as normal. When she wanted to use magic, she could also use Yoroizaka's field of vision when activating [Designate Coordinates]. She even learned the [Aerial Maneuvering] and [High-Speed Flight] skills, so Yoroizaka was currently able to fly freely through the air. However, Rare usually did the piloting, since it was extremely difficult to share control of Yoroizaka's body with her. If they ever had a midair battle, Rare needed to be in full control or they wouldn't be able to fight properly.

From here, if she were to use [Designate Coordinates] to fire off a bunch of huge spells at the city, Rare could easily claim victory for this region's invasion event. She would have been fine with doing that, but in her mind, "Rare" as an entity extended beyond her power as an individual being. Like a proper demon lord, she would order her troops to capture the city, but if they seemed likely to take too many losses, she wouldn't hesitate to blast everything to smithereens instead.

There was also going to be a siege. The enemy didn't exactly have a castle, but there were city walls. Rare could finally conduct large-scale tests with the artillery ants. Plus, since this would be their first offensive campaign outside of a forest, she would be able to see for herself how powerful the assault ants' flamethrowers were in actual combat. Today, they would be able to go all out and show off the full extent of their abilities.

She closed her eyes and jacked into Ominous's eyes far away in the skies high above Treu Forest, where she watched a grove of treants also leaving the forest. It had been one week since receiving the event notice, and any leftover XP she spent on making more treants. The [Root Division] skill, in simple terms, allowed the treants to spend XP in order to clone themselves. Since treant followers didn't have their own XP, Rare just had to give it to them and they could use it to replicate. The rows of treants rustled noisily as they emerged from the treeline; it almost looked like the forest was expanding by itself. It didn't seem like any of the townspeople in Lourdes had noticed what was happening in the direction of the forest yet. There must not have been many players there; unlike in Erfahren, there were no fidgety sellswords to be found anywhere. Since there was so much distance between the city and the forest, this could hardly be called a surprise attack, but with that many treants, she didn't think the city wall would hold for very long. World Tree could take care of things without any need for concern.

Rare opened her eyes back at Erfahren then looked down at the city below her once more. Ants were skittering out of the nearby Great Liebe Forest in droves. Soldier vespoids took flight from the middle of the forest in orderly formations and headed toward the city. Since they didn't have any way of performing long-range attacks, they would ultimately just serve as insurance in case there were any aerial battles. Since the enemy didn't seem to have any air forces, though, they would probably just spectate.

"Ah, that's right. Between [Enhance Follower] and [Enhance Subordinate], their STR has gone up a fair amount, so I wonder if they could fly while carrying artillery ants. If they can, then I could use them like bombers, or with sniper ants they could allow for high-altitude sniping."

Rare's dreams just kept getting grander and grander.

"But it's too late to change anything for this battle. I'll try it out when we go to La Colline. Now that I think about it, though, I don't need to preserve any buildings for prisoners or anything like that, so I really just want bombers."

Just kill everyone and blow everything up. When humans found monsters, they did the same, so it's just deserts. Plus, a trade center would probably have a lot of knights [Subordinated] by nobles, so she would have an opportunity to observe how NPCs with lots of invested XP and stat growth dealt with aerial attacks and sniping. It was hard to believe that anyone, players or NPCs, really had any effective antiair countermeasures to deal with Rare as she was now. However, if someone like that did exist, she might be able to force them out into the open.

"Now then, I see that players and other parties are starting to come out from the city, so it's time to get this show on the road. This is gonna be good."