The Necromancer Who Was Despised - The Necromancer Who Was Despised chapter 54

If only the queen and her guards were left, we could recover sufficiently inside and then go.

Once we came to a conclusion, we moved to a slightly better location and took a break.

In the meantime, I ordered Specter to go check if there was anything else.

I didn’t know the scale or level, but I figured that he would at least be able to find out if there was anything or not.

Meanwhile, Athena was clinging to Kayla, bombarding her with questions, and Kayla didn’t seem to mind Athena’s presence as she answered her questions and helped Athena properly internalize the combat experience she had been through.

Around the time my mana had recovered, Specter returned and reported his findings.

“There don’t seem to be any giant ents in the vicinity. If there are, they don’t seem to have any intention of coming here.”

“Then we’ll have to go look for them.”

“That’s right. And the queen will probably still be in the deepest room.”

After deciding to move, we went past the field of giant corpses with the group and explored the interior of the cave.

“… Ugh, there are so many bugs.”

Like a food storage, there were many rooms in the ant cave for various purposes.

There were rooms full of bugs, rooms full of eggs, rooms full of pupae in the middle of metamorphosis, and there were even garbage cans where the dead giant ents or leftover scraps were discarded.

“Hm? Are there ones with wings too?”

“… Those are the males. They don’t have much fighting power.”

We also found a room where male giant ents were playing, and we killed them all.

Despite having gone quite deep, we hadn’t seen anything else except for the males.

There were a few more food storage rooms, but we didn’t see any other giant ents there either.

‘There aren’t as many as I thought. I thought there would be a few more.’

Even so, it didn’t matter. Kayla had performed like a monster, but even if she had only shown the level of movement she had shown at first, we would eventually have killed everything that had swarmed us, even if it had taken us some time.

Even if there had been more, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I hadn’t brought my auxiliary weapons for nothing.

If I had joined the battle while recovering my mana and then supported them again after recovering, it wouldn’t have been a problem even if there had been more.

‘It’s not like we came here for nothing.’

Of course, the difficulty level had plummeted after Kayla had awakened.

Of course, the number we had dealt with wasn’t small.

Even if I roughly counted, it was over 300.

‘That should be enough to feed the entire territory for a month.’

The entire territory’s population was less than 2,000.

There were also bugs, eggs, and pupae. I was confident that it would be enough to eat for a month.

After going down like that for a long time, we finally arrived at what seemed to be the queen’s room.

“… The guards don’t look ordinary?”

Every single one of them seemed to be twice the size of the ones we had fought, and their exoskeletons were noticeably darker in color.

‘Did they eat some kind of mineral?’

But there shouldn’t be any mines around here… .

They must have also noticed us, because they were glaring at us with menacing looks.

The funny thing was that he didn’t rush in like the others.

“Surrender?”

He seemed to be thinking of watching us ransack the inside.

It seemed like he had no intention of moving if we didn’t touch the queen.

To be honest, we could just retreat from here. If we just guarded this vicinity and prevented the bastards from coming out, and took everything we secured above, the commission would be achieved.

Whether the bastards gave birth to more young here and rebuilt their den was none of my business.

“Still, it’s better to be sure.”

Anyway, Kyla had awakened and secured a high level of force.

The bastards guarding the door seemed strong, and the ones inside wouldn’t be ordinary either, but I wasn’t too worried.

“Since this is the last room, there’s no need to conserve strength.”

Sheathed in the sword she had received from my instructions.

It wasn’t the faint aura from before, but a rather thick color and a fairly clear shape, but it didn’t seem to be of the upper level.

‘Do you still think it’s too much?’

She might have thought that was enough.

The guards seemed to have noticed that we would fight to the end and began to scratch their bodies, making strange noises.

Groaning.

However, Kyla didn’t wait for that.

Creak, creak.

In an instant, Kyla kicked the floor and arrived in front of her opponent’s nose at high speed, severing the connection between their head and chest before they could react.

Thud, thump.

Similar to the bastards, soldier ants that seemed to have been waiting inside rushed out, but Kyla occupied the passage and shook their heads off as they came out.

The quality seemed high, but the number didn’t seem to be that large, and since it was more convenient for Kyla, she was showing even cleaner movements than before.

Before long, no more bastards crawled out from inside.

“All disposed of.”

After complimenting Kyla, I entered the queen ant’s room and saw something quite surprising there.

“Whew…”

As if the rooms I’d seen so far were a joke, a huge space at least three times the size was revealed, and inside there were about ten worker ants that seemed to be taking care of the queen, and a queen with a huge belly.

“Is she… laying eggs?”

The ones taking care of the queen looked like they were threatening us, but of course, none of us were scared.

“Should I take care of it?”

Kyla asked differently.

“No, wait a minute.”

I stopped her.

Athena asked as if she was curious.

“I think someone else wants that.”

I pointed my finger into the air, and there, Specter was glaring at the queen as if he wanted her.

The queen seemed to be full of vitality, befitting a queen whose purpose was to lay eggs and increase her population, and Specter’s gaze wouldn’t leave her.

“Anyway, it doesn’t seem to have any attack abilities…”

Well, even if it did, these guys wouldn’t be able to hit Specter without mana.

Until now, I had only fed him low-level monsters, but the queen’s vitality was too high to be considered low-level, so I thought it would be good to give it to Specter if I could.

“Eat.”

-Kyaah!

As soon as my command fell, Specter dashed towards the queen.

Thwack! Thwack!

Perhaps because she had the role of laying eggs, the queen quickly noticed the leak of life force and twisted her body to shake off Specter. The other giant ents, realizing that we were the attackers, charged at us.

Athena rushed out in Kayla’s place and cut them down. When the queen was left alone, Specter laughed in delight and began to extract the queen’s energy in earnest.

I gave Kayla and Athena a break and watched the situation until the moment the queen became a mummy.

Defense

“My word, what is this…”

“It’s horrible. The knight is certainly different.”

“Isn’t that… Cartson? My goodness, he was reported missing… He was killed by the giant ents.”

“Horrible… He must have suffered greatly…”

“But didn’t the knight avenge him?”

After Specter turned the queen ant into a mummy, we returned to Green Forest Village and mobilized the villagers.

Aside from the children and the elderly, we mobilized all the villagers and all sorts of tools, including wagons, so we looked like a fairly large group.

On the way, the monsters whose territory we had invaded grew tense and there were several skirmishes.

They weren’t very strong, so we were able to handle them sufficiently.

However, Kayla and I found it very annoying because I couldn’t use magic or the undead in front of the villagers and Kayla had to pretend to have an injured leg.

So we arrived at the anthill together and instructed the people to collect the corpses of the giant ents.

Kayla, Athena, and I guarded the surroundings and went inside to check the situation in case of an emergency.

“It’s a shame we don’t have any decent equipment.”

“It can’t be helped. And even if we did, they’d probably all be used by them. Did you see the queen’s last guards?”

“They were certainly unusual. Even their shells seemed to be mixed with metal.”

“Perhaps they ate all that equipment and that’s why they look like that.”

“I heard that the baron is taking all their shells?”

“He says he’ll pay for it, but it’s mostly on credit. If we can’t break through the Merchant Alliance, we won’t get it all.”

“That’s very unfair. They shouldn’t be taking the mercenaries’ money.”

“We’re not official mercenaries, and we’re backed into a corner, so what can we do?”

Officially, I’m just a squire, an honorary position.

I do have various privileges, but from the baron’s point of view, I’m someone who can be easily used.

Of course, it’s true that I intentionally put myself in that position.

In fact, I took advantage of it too.

I just didn’t know that the territory would end up like this.

‘I didn’t know the butterfly effect could be so strong.’

Still, I’ve never lost anything major, so it’s just funny.

“But do we have to move all of this to Kaibec?”

“Probably? It will be unfair to the people of Green Forest Village, but if the lord orders it, there’s nothing they can do. But I plan to feed them some of it first.”

I plan to release food to Green Forest Village at my discretion first.

Even if the lord finds fault with it, I’ll just say that they were so poor that they had to eat in order to work.

The lord has no right to say anything to me in the first place.

It will be known that I risked my life to save the village along with my companions, and that should be enough. There is no one foolish enough to find fault with me there.

If I did, I could lose the support of the people in the lead-up to the war.

It took two days to clear away all the remains of the Giant Ent.

Naturally, I thoroughly erased all traces of the Queen Ant.

Additionally, I reluctantly hunt down some beasts to be delivered exclusively to the Lord.

Thanks to Kayla, Athena, and me thoroughly guarding the perimeter and ordering the villagers to proceed with the utmost caution, there were no clashes with monsters after our initial entry, so there were no casualties.

The villagers followed our instructions to the letter, seemingly too terrified by the horrific carnage we three had wrought within the ant’s nest to recklessly disregard our orders, even more so than by the food we had provided.

Given the gap in status and strength, they had no choice but to comply completely.

I arranged for the report to reach Pioneer’s Keep a day late, and in the meantime, I released some of the food to the people of Verdantwood, effectively throwing a small festival.

The villagers were no fools and knew that if they did not consume it now, most of the food would be taken from them, so the so-called festival felt more like an outdoor buffet.

Of course, there were bound to be some among them who would secretly pilfer some of the food.

No, in fact, most of them would do so, knowingly or not. However, I had no intention of preventing that.

“Thank you for keeping your promise, Sir Knight.”

“…You have suffered as well, so you deserve to eat.”

Although there were no actual casualties, I could have easily met an untimely end.

‘There are also Orc tribes in the vicinity.’

If they had been attacked, even we would not have been able to protect all the villagers.

Furthermore, since there were hardly any young men in the village, their fighting force was weak despite their numbers.

Even if there had been, they would have been no match for the Orcs, but they could have reduced the damage somewhat.

“Thanks to you, the village is lively again for the first time in ages.”

The village elder said, watching the villagers eating and drinking merrily.

“I pray that the young men who went out to eradicate the bandits return safely.”

Since it was awkward to explain the details, the mercenaries were being introduced as bandits.

To be precise, the Lord was the one who treated them as bandits, so that was how they became known.

“Let us hope so.”

From noble mtl dot com

I muttered insincere words.

As the day turned, the Lord, having heard the news, sent someone.

“My word, all this…”

The person the Lord sent was someone I knew well.

“Dissan, Danian. Fancy seeing you here.”

“As I expected of Lord Jimnis. To think you wiped out such creatures… With this much, we won’t have to worry about food for some time.”

From what I gathered from their conversation, they were also to participate in this war.

“Well, from what I hear, Lord Kuman has been dragged into it… It was no secret that Lord Kuman and Baron Ovalan had a close relationship. It was obvious.”

Still, as people involved, they seemed to have a rough idea of the situation.

In fact, all the mercenaries I had a connection with, the war slaves who were to be sold, and even Pipis, who I was not particularly close to, were said to be mobilizing all of Kuman’s forces for this war.

Was Baldur the only exception?

He said to be the only exception because he had to manage the slaves and act as Kuman’s escort.

Incidentally, Baldur was one of Kayla’s disciples.

It was a priestly relationship enforced by an oath.

Listening to various news, I had the villagers of Verdantwood transport most of the food they had brought to the estate.

And there I had to hear another absurd thing.

“… Are you saying that I should take all this to other villages as well?”

“Yes. I heard that the number of defense troops has decreased and the monsters are running wild. I would also like to ask you to subjugate the monsters there.”

His face was almost as hard as adamantium.