Firstly, let’s strategise. There are two distinct groups of harpies, the solos and the flockers. Sure, I could probably just go for whatever’s the closest and hope to get them all eventually, but that won’t work in the long run. The harpies will in time, as a collective, realise not to be close to me.

It would have been good if I could somehow lure them to myself, but that runs the risk of getting flocked by too many harpies to be able to defeat without getting killed first. No, if I want to do this, I need to avoid large group battles as much as possible. Fighting a lot of enemies is currently my biggest weakness. If I can just surprise them on their own or in smaller groups, I can take care of them pretty well.

But that still leaves me with the same question.

To return to the basis of the question, the flocks move about quite a bit, while the solos are on their own. Even if I kill an entire nearby flock, it's unlikely that a solo will leave. Meanwhile, the flocks have no attachment to the trees—I think—so they will just leave and go whenever and wherever they want to. They’ll be harder to kill, even if I get them in smaller chunks.

In that case, since my time is limited, my best bet is simply to go for the flocks and take the solos as I find them. There’s also a chance that even if the forest starts burning, the solos won’t try to escape, so, yeah.

The flocks it is.

I look out over the forest. I don’t like how exposed everything is. No matter where I am, I’m visible. There are no leaves, and it’s kind of bugging me. Then again, this does give me a chance to train my fetal rolling.

Getting down on the ground, I get going.

I wish I could say that during the approximately 27 days that followed that I somehow learned a few tricks and cheats that made the whole harpy-catching thing easier, but that would, frankly speaking, be a lie. I didn’t learn shit.

Listen, I’d love to say that the harpies were easy pickings, but that was absolutely not the case. I thought I could do like I did with the shades on floor seven and easily split up these flocks, but that was disproven within days. Unlike the solos, the flocks were as tight-knit as a rat king. Every night and every day was spent so close together they looked like one big pile of feathers. And, for the record, yes, there was a difference between day and night. During the night, the sky was dark grey. During the day, it was light grey. Wonderful.

The only time they were even slightly distracted from preening and gossiping amongst each other was when they were trying to either kill or extort one of the solos, or while fighting with another flock.

As far as I can understand, every harpy in this forest has two choices ahead of them. Either they drink the blood sap from one of the warm trees, or they eat the flesh of other harpies. That’s all the choice they have. The choice they make seems to depend mainly on whether they have a tree available or not.

The harpies that lose their tree, or who killed it themselves, or the extremely few who chose to abandon it, join one of the many flocks. Some flocks scavenge old, dead bodies and half-eaten trees. Others extort harpies for their trees, and yet others just attack the second they find them.

The obvious result of all of this is that many of the flocks find themselves fighting each other over discovered trees and solos. It was actually pretty interesting to follow, and in the aftermath of the larger and more equilateral battles, there are a lot of half-dead harpies to pick off as easy prey.

Because of the whole gang war situation, a lot of the harpies have no one else to rely on but their comrades. This means that it’s actually very rare to see harpies turn on each other, even during starvation. They are incredibly close to each other, only comparable to soldiers in time of war. Because of this, it is incredibly unusual for harpies to go off on their own, or even in smaller groups.

The second I realised that this whole forest was filled with a bunch of warring harpy gangs, my first thought was obviously that I should try to create an all-out, massive gang war between the largest groups available.

This didn’t happen.

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I tried—that I promise you—but I just couldn’t make it happen.

Firstly, I took out all the smaller groups of less than ten members, just to simplify things. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had hoped that this would have kind of pushed the larger groups closer to conflict. If they couldn’t quarrel with smaller groups, they would just quarrel with bigger ones, right? Simple. Also absolutely not what happened.

As I took out more and more harpies, the conflicts drastically decreased.

In hindsight, the reason was obvious, but it still confused me. Less harpies meant less clashes over food and territory, which in turn meant less fights in general. Food became slightly more abundant as the competition decreased. Groups could eat more, more harpies could be fed better, more solos were able to avoid harassment…

The whole situation felt like introducing a wolf to a previously herbivore-eaten wasteland. Suddenly, everything just works better, even though it feels like it should have worsened things.

Did I do something wrong? I have no idea.

It’s not like I left the harpy bodies lying around for anyone to eat, either. I disassembled them and put them into my inventory as usual, and still, for some mysterious reason, the larger harpy groups prospered.

My personal theory is that since they weren’t exactly procreating, if left alone, they wouldn’t reproduce at a rate that generated conflict on its own. If everyone was fed, then that was all that mattered. Useless conflict would only kill more. And, sure, that’s nice for them, but I’d like them to die, so I’m quite unhappy.

The only time when I can pick them off one by one is at night, when most of them are asleep, or during daytime when they’re distracted. In those situations, I’ll just randomly grab someone, use Touch of Reverse Tolerance to almost instantly kill them, and then drag them off before anyone can react. As far as I can see, this does have a slight psychological effect on the other harpies, but it’s not even close to what I was able to achieve on the seventh floor. Very upsetting.

Even worse, even if one of them does spot me in the daytime, their usual reaction is always to either beg for a piece of my flesh, or to just attack on the spot. No fear whatsoever. In desperation, I once tried wearing a harpy disguise, but that literally changed nothing.

After about two weeks, I had eradicated every group with less than a dozen members, leaving me with only a few select larger groups left to go, but these would be the crux of it all.

I wish I could say that I formulated some sort of clever strategy to do this, but I really didn’t. I just attacked at night, tried to take out as many as I could before everyone woke up, and then I rolled away and repeated the whole thing next night until they were all dead. This strategy sucked. Every morning they’d have more bodies and therefore more food, which they ate mournfully after offering several prayers. This meant that the next time I attacked, they would be more healthy than the last time. Sure, many would have had a few tired, sleepless nights, but that didn’t make as grave of a difference as the lack of starvation did.

Still, in the end, after doing this sort of stuff to several different groups every single night, I was able to whittle down their numbers enough for a full-on raid to be possible. One by one, I took down the groups. Funny thing was, at some point, the remaining groups actually formed into a single big group. Maybe it’s just human instinct to do so, but—

Wait, sorry, goblin instinct. My mistake.

Anyway, since they were so kind as to form into a single group, I was able to take them on all at once. Since they weren’t soldiers or anything, they never pulled any strategies more complicated than having guards sit up at night, and making some sort of buddy system, not that it helped.

By the final week, all flocks of harpies had been taken out. That left me with just the solos to take care of, which took a fair bit more time than I had expected. This was mainly because I had to actually go from harpy to harpy. My main mode of getting there quickly turned to my four-legged running, which was very effective.

One by one, I took them out with the greatest efficiency possible, without sleep and without food or anything else most people would usually need. I didn’t even stop to disassemble the bodies, but rather left them where they were. For some reason, this always made the tree they were clutching like a life raft drip clear sap from their hollows. Weird.

But even after all that, right now, with two days left of the attempt, there are still a pretty significant amount of solos hanging around. So, what’s my plan? As I said before, I have no idea how to set up a fire. But now, finally, I have a solution.

Finally, after almost a month of grinding, I’ve gained the much-awaited Touch of Reverse Resistance.

<[Touch of Reversed Resistance (Lv.1)]

Any [Resistance] skill can be used in

the reverse to cause the effect that it

protects from, to the strength of the skill.

The resistance level that may be reversed

depends on the skill level. The touch may only be

used once per resistance level.

Current power: Level 1.>

Neat, huh? Also, as I had hoped, I still have Touch of Reverse Tolerance! This means that I am now unstoppable. Well, not exactly, but it certainly feels like it.

Why is this important? You mean aside from the fact that I can now make people delusional and unconscious at the same time, while also giving them an ulcer the size of a small nation? Oh, because now, I can actually set a fire.

See, all I need to do is grab this handy-dandy harpy…

“P—please,” she pleads for some reason, “I don’t care if you kill me, just spare Riet—”

Put a few fingers to her forehead…

“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to—”

<[Touch of Reversed Dehydration Resistance (Lv.1)]>

<[Touch of Reversed Heat Resistance (Lv.1)]>

<[Touch of Reversed Burn Resistance (Lv.1)]>

The dehydration makes them better kindling, the heat forms a teeny tiny little spark, and the burn ignites that little spark into an actual fire. And all of a sudden I’m holding a beautiful, lovely fire. Isn’t that just wonderful? The feathers are wonderfully burnable, and once she’s properly alight, I toss her at one of the nearby dead trees, which easily catches the flames.

And in only three steps, you’ve got yourself an adorable little forest fire.