Chapter 50

"Come back here in a week. I'll show you the real infinite grinding."

"…The time has come."

A week had passed since the conquest of the Valley of Farewells, which had become a bittersweet memory. This time, I summoned Rad and the others, fully prepared to complete the infinite grinding.

For this long-term battle, I prepared a large amount of items, including HP and MP potions, regeneration potions, and holy ash to momentarily stun undeads. I also specially prepared equipment and headed to the dungeon with high spirits.

"Hey, old man! This place…?"

I started moving without telling them our destination, but Rad and the others finally noticed as we approached the dungeon entrance.

"Yeah, it's the Valley of Farewells."

I nodded, confirming their question, and moved forward, leaving the surprised Rad and the others behind.

The destination, of course, was the hidden room where the Knight of Regret waited. I turned the cross, descended the stairs, and rushed to the back.

"Wait up! You said this place was impossible to grind before… huh?"

Rad's protest stopped as he peered into the knight's room.

"What the…!"

Because the room, where the knight once stood alone in a vast space, had completely changed. Now, over a hundred and fifty subordinate knights writhed around, turning it into a hellish attraction.

* * *

"What the hell is going on?"

To the bewildered Rad, I pointed to the writhing subordinate knights and said, "Look."

"That's… Rex?"

As Plana muttered, a white figure resembling me sprouted upside down from the ceiling of the hidden room.

"Could it be…?"

Noticing something, Nuek looked at me, and I showed them the decoy gun in my hand.

"Yeah. That's the 'Decoy' I set up a week ago."

The setup was simple.

The knight summons by maintaining a "combat state" for an hour. The condition for the knight to enter combat is that there is an attack target in the room, which can be satisfied by a decoy.

In the game, setting a decoy didn't mean much because it could only be placed where the character could move, and the knight would quickly destroy it. But in this world, I could launch a decoy onto walls or the ceiling.

"The knights are completely melee-focused and have no ranged attack. So…"

"They can't attack the decoy on the ceiling?"

I nodded at Rad's dazed mutter. Looking back at the room, I could see the subordinate knights swinging their swords at the decoy on the ceiling, which they couldn't reach.

"I wasn't sure if the ceiling counted as part of the room, but…"

In the end, the decoy on the ceiling was also recognized as an attack target.

The decoy remains until destroyed by an attack, so that knight will continue to summon non-stop, even while eating or sleeping, as long as we don't return.

I clasped my hands together in a salute to the Knight of Regret, now an infinite summoning machine, buried in the center of the circle.

"Wait a minute! If that's the case, shouldn't you have just shot the decoy from the start without entering the room?"

"The decoy gun only works when the enemy hasn't detected you. I could only shoot it when the knight was in summoning mode and its detection ability was lowered."

Pushing back at Ressilia's question,

"Is that so? Sorry, I didn't realize you had thought that far…"

My surprisingly honest sister hung her head.

…Well, if the decoy gun hadn't worked, I was planning to keep running from the knight, but I'll keep that to myself.

"Anyway, the real show is about to start."

As I said this, Rad and the others, who were still staring at the room in shock, all looked at me.

"The goal this time is to level up. We're not just going to collect and leave, right?"

"You can't be serious…"

I grinned at the trembling Rad and announced,

"---There are about 160 knights over there. We're going to take them all down today!!"

* * *

The battle that followed was brutal for Rad and the others.

Defeating 160 high-level monsters is normally impossible, but fortunately, the knights focused on the decoy and wouldn't change targets unless attacked. So, we lured each knight one by one, drew them close, and then beat them together.

We repeated this 160 times.

We struggled with the unfamiliar formation, the battle lines were nearly broken by new knights being summoned during fights, and there were moments when the endless battle seemed to break our spirits. But Rad and the others ultimately pushed through to the end.

Finally, when the last subordinate knight fell and disappeared from the room, Rad and the others had reached level 28.

I need to summarize their stats again (Author's death flag).