Kael left the Land of the Behemoth and headed for Tydrisa's Quarry.
The monsters in the Quarry were roughly the same level as those in the Land of the Behemoth, but the ants here moved in swarms, which made the place better suited to large teams.
With gemstones flooding the market, player attributes had climbed sharply. An ant swarm that once took forty or fifty players to handle now needed only twenty or thirty. Plenty of players above level 35 were still forming teams to grind here.
After the mess in the Land of the Behemoth, Kael had learned his lesson. This time, he found a quiet corner with few players around and started farming ants alone.
The first group he ran into was a swarm of worker ants.
Fifteen worker ants. One captain.
[Worker Ant]: Level 32
HP: 600,000
[Worker Ant Captain]: Level 34
HP: 20,000,000
Worker ants were notorious for their attack speed, and every strike carried an extra 1,500 Holy Damage. Ordinary players didn't dare let themselves get surrounded.
For Kael, none of that mattered.
The moment they clashed, he cast [Phantom Barrage], slowing the worker ants' Movement Speed by 20%. Then he and his four clones focused fire on the Worker Ant Captain.
-47,456 (Main Body Basic Attack)
-149,987 (Main Body Critical Hit)
-40,457 (Clone Basic Attack)
-137,897 (Clone Critical Hit)
...
Thanks to [Leo's Skill Ring], his clones now carried 90% of his attributes. In practice, their damage was nearly equal to his own.
A single volley stripped four to five hundred thousand HP off the Worker Ant Captain. Its 20,000,000 HP couldn't last a full minute against Kael.
Soon, a wave of system notifications rolled in.
System: You have killed a Worker Ant. You gained 800,000 EXP.
System: You have killed a Worker Ant. You gained 800,000 EXP.
System: Lucky Bonus triggered. You gained an additional 800,000 EXP.
...
System: You have killed a Worker Ant Captain. You gained 6,000,000 EXP.
System: Lucky Bonus triggered. You gained an additional 6,000,000 EXP.
One worker ant swarm netted him more than 20,000,000 EXP.
Past level 21, though, each level demanded over 100,000,000 EXP. The days of gaining a dozen levels off a single monster were over.
Kael glanced at the loot on the ground.
One purple item. One gold item.
Far worse than his first visit here.
And his drop quality ran higher than an ordinary player's. If someone else had cleared this swarm, it probably would have dropped one blue and one purple instead.
Only a single gemstone had dropped—a +80 Strength stone. Decent quality, nothing more.
Split among a twenty-player team, this haul wouldn't have amounted to much. Then again, it still beat grinding ordinary monsters outside by a wide margin.
With the swarm cleared, Kael moved on.
Half an hour later, the same problem from the Land of the Behemoth reared its head again.
Kael killed too fast. Team after team found themselves stuck in the awkward position of standing around waiting for respawns.
This time, though, the players in Tydrisa's Quarry had done their homework. World Chat had already told them the reincarnated Kael was out grinding levels, so they steered clear of him. Wherever Kael went, everyone else squeezed off in the opposite direction.
Nothing happened on Kael's end—but the other teams started fighting each other over monsters instead.
Watching that made Kael feel a little guilty, so he took the initiative and moved farther out.
Before long, he spotted an enormous swarm of ants gathered in the distance.
There were a lot of them. Four or five hundred at least.
Strangely, they were all ordinary ants. Not a single captain or elite among them.
Stranger still, there wasn't a player in sight.
It struck Kael as odd, but with that much EXP sitting right in front of him, he saw no reason to be polite.
He cast [Phantom Barrage], then led his clones forward and opened fire like a madman.
Five Kaels. Three [Splintering Arrows] each. Every attack loosed twenty arrows.
Each ant dropped after five or six hits.
Kael didn't even need to move. The ants swarming around him couldn't scratch his defense.
In about three minutes, he wiped out the entire swarm.
System: You have killed a Leafcutter Ant. You gained 800,000 EXP.
System: Lucky Bonus triggered. You gained an additional 800,000 EXP.
System: You have killed...
More than five hundred kill records and over three hundred Lucky Bonus notifications scrolled past his eyes.
All told, more than 600,000,000 EXP.
"Interesting spot," Kael muttered. "Nothing but ordinary ants, no bosses? How has nobody found this grinding spot?"
Just as he was congratulating himself, he realized something.
He'd crossed the boundary line.
This was Thaloria's territory.
At that moment, someone came sprinting his way in the distance—with twenty or thirty ants strung out behind him.
Now it all made sense. That swarm hadn't gathered on its own. Someone had lured it here.
Damn.
He burned all three charges of [Spatial Blink] back to back and fled the scene of the crime.
The player approaching was a rogue, twenty-two ants trailing in his wake.
When he arrived at the designated spot, he froze. Then he opened his map and double-checked the coordinates.
"This is the right place. Better ask Eldric."
The rogue opened a chat with Eldric.
"Eldric, I just brought the monsters to 321, 256. Why are all the ants that were gathered here gone?"
"That's impossible. There should be at least five hundred ants there."
"But there really aren't any left."
"How could that happen? Some kind of bug?"
"Could it be we gathered too many this time, and the ants got wiped by a respawn reset?"
"Hmm... possible. Next time, cap it at five hundred. Once the count looks right, I'll ask Nymeria to come clear them."
"Eldric, about the payment for this run..."
"You still want payment? Thanks to you, Nymeria just lost tens of millions of EXP! Make up for it with your work."
"I'm sorry, Lord Eldric. I'll get right back to it."
The rogue sighed and closed the chat.
Not long ago, he had discovered a quirk of this place: when ants were lured here, the bosses would give chase for a stretch and then turn back, but the ordinary ants kept following.
He'd reported the discovery to Nymeria. She had immediately recognized it as the perfect setup to farm EXP for herself and locked down the surrounding map.
They'd already run tests with swarms of one or two hundred ants and gotten a taste of the profits. This time, she'd told the rogue to gather five or six hundred before she came to clear them.
No one had expected the swarm to vanish into thin air.
Not far away, Kael hadn't actually left. He was hiding nearby under [Soul Cloak].
When he saw the ants stop moving the moment the rogue slipped into stealth, he finally understood where that swarm of five hundred had come from.
Kael grinned.
Then he turned around and went back to leveling.