The swamp was like every swamp. A few rocks here and there. Admittedly, they were very nice rocks, but it was mostly damp ground, fallen trees, and other natural detritus while towering trees blocked the light and cast shadows over everything. The shadows did what they did best and concealed all manner of beasts and monsters from sight, allowing them to ambush Sam and his team.
Thankfully, they were high-level enough that as long as they watched out for the non-stop stream of poison that the demons and monsters were throwing at them; they were golden. Even then, thanks to their adventure in the far-off mountains and the skills Clarissa learned, the poison that did get on them was quickly purged and healed by their steadfast and rather talented healer.
Not that that stopped her from grumbling about the work they were giving her.
The monsters were either half-feral demons - hiding in the bushes or under the murky swamp water, waiting to ambush them - or all manner of snakes. Which, unfortunately for the squeamish were hiding next to the demons in the bushes, or dropping on them from the top of the trees.
They even found one demon that had a sack with him and when it spotted Sam and his team, it threw the almost disintegrated sack, which to their surprise contained a bunch of angry snakes.
Clarissa was not happy…
The drops were rather varied. They found a bunch of alchemy ingredients, on the ground, growing in the water or on the barks of the trees or, in the case of snakes; their venom, skin, and fangs. It made a certain amount of sense why the Abyss Vipers made Marshgate their headquarters.
The demons themselves only dropped half-processed alchemy ingredients. Good for practicing alchemists and for those who were making things in big batches, but otherwise uninteresting for them. Clarissa pocketed a few to provide some samples to the Healing Guild, but even she only took the raw stuff.
“Do you really think we should simply pocket the drops, Sam?” she asked, a little worried.
Sam just smiled at her sardonically. “What makes you think those idiots won’t try to gank us as soon as we leave the fracture?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it, unable to refute Sam’s statement, while Katie giggled and Dan smiled.
“And we all agree it was not my fault, right?” Katie asked after a second.
Sam just sighed. “Yes, Katie. It was not your fault…”
She did a fist pump, but before the conversation could continue, another half-crazed demon jumped down from the treetops, shaking its spear at them.
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As they went deeper, the solid ground widened and more and smaller trees showed up, which sometimes began to hide small make-shift towers from where the demons tried to snipe them with either bows or magic.
Their shield spells and skills got a pretty nice workout. Except for Katie, who simply laughed, echoed weirdly by Puffball and simply smashed into the make-shift constructions head first. As it wasn’t a dangerous fracture, Sam just let the younger girl have her fun.
And tried to ignore the screams from the demons as they were devoured by Puffball…
The other two familiars simply absorbed the experience points and continued to grow. The murderous swan was already the size of two swans and four times as murderous. According to Clarissa, after one of the level-ups, the swan gained the Knife Beak skill, which allowed Melody to use her beak as a knife.
Sam was totally not worried…
The Searing Hawk simply followed along with Dan, placidly attacking whatever his owner was targeting, otherwise, it was content to stay silent and observe. Just like his owner.
Sam forcibly didn’t think what this said about Clarissa…
In the end, they found themselves in a huge glade, bordered by enough small trees that breaking through them would be a hard task, even with magic. Inside, covered by the ever-present shadows was a makeshift fort, covered in moss and murky detritus while all sorts of symbols resembling runes were painted everywhere in suspiciously looking black paint. This look was compounded by all sorts of hair, skin, and bones hanging from thread everywhere.
“That’s blood, right?” Dan asked.
“Better than faces…” Sam answered glibly while focusing his considerable mana sense on the area. Sadly, all he could sense was a thick, swirling demonic miasma, tainted by a small amount of blood magic.
The others just grimaced and readied themselves for a fight.
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Once again, they walked into the ‘fortification’ without anyone bothering them.
Around the edge were various storage ‘buildings’, mostly four stakes, with a few harshly worked planks acting as roofs.
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The things in the middle were more interesting. There was a stereotypical hut that one would find in a fantasy swamp and next to it a giant bubbling cauldron full of frothing and swirling blackish red liquid. Standing on a small stool next to it, stirring it with a giant ladle, was a hag. Hunched over, wearing several layers of ragged clothing, alchemical and magical ingredients hung from any free space, and wearing a pointed hat.
It was softly murmuring some kind of incantation, but as soon as they stepped over an imaginary line, its head snapped up and stared unnervingly at Sam and his team.
“Hihihihihi! Hahahaha! New meat for my pot! My pot! Fresh meat to feed my pot!” it half screeched and sang while doing a very little dance with her foot clad in pointed boots that looked like they had several inches of layers of dried blood and mud on them. “Come! Come! I invite you to supper!”
The liquid in the pot began to bubble and within two blinks, it surged up like a geyser and fell on the ground in front of them, forming half a dozen blobs with three arms – the third growing for their ‘head’ – and standing as tall as the tallest of humans.
Sam calmly stepped forward and cast one simple spell.
“Mana Disruption!”
He had to focus and force his mana to invade the newly constructed blood magic elementals, but thankfully, the hag wasn’t that powerful. There was a blink of delay and the blobs simply collapsed, tainting the ground with the foul liquid.
“Noooo! My precious soup!” came the desperate cry from the hag. Instantly, her eyes zeroed in on Sam. “My dear boy, come here so that I can punish you properly! Hihihihihi!”
Their response was to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the hag.
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“Anything good dropped?”
“A few recipes. Most of them need freshly harvested human blood. Should I burn them?”
“Nah, keep them. They could come in handy…”
“We also got a few bottles of hag poison, a ton of ingredients, a small amount of gold, and the Black Blood skill book.”
Sam never heard of that skill. “What does it do?” he asked curiously, going over to Katie, who was holding the skill book, his boots treading over a fine layer of ash.
The berserker girl simply handed the book over.
[Black Blood: Level 0/100 (0%) (Passive) Your blood is turned black, giving you resistance against most common poisons, as well as turning the blood into poison. Letting anyone ingest the blood will cause them to get poisoned. If you drink advanced or higher-leveled poison, there is a 1% chance per skill level that the poison will be added to your blood, strengthening it. Drinking any kind of antidote or healing potion will hurt you.]
He stared at it for a while, then snorted. “Only an idiot would use this…”
They looked at each other and nodded, coming to the same conclusion.
“They probably farmed this fracture to death until all of them had it.”
“Yep…” Sam agreed while taking out his bottomless flask filled with health potion and raising it to show to the others. With a grin on their faces, they did the same.
“Well, we have a beginning of a plan,” he stated, then began walking out of the ruins of the hag’s place where he could find some drier ground. Finding a small patch, he took out his trusty poking stick from his inventory and began drawing a crude map of the infrastructure that the Vipers built up around the fracture.
“So, we are here, and they will be probably there…” he started explaining, pointing at the specific points. “I think we should do the following…”
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After the dizzying array of colors that happened when one left a fracture, they found themselves in the exit area of the fracture. The smarmy and greedy guy who charged them the inflated entrance price was there, grinning at the sight of them appearing.
Sam just sighed internally.
“Greetings, my friends!” the man called out. It appeared he was aiming at a jovial tone, but all Sam could hear was greed. “I hope the run was successful?”
“Indeed, it was,” he replied and held out their loot bag, holding a token amount of materials.
The man stepped forward and gently pushed Sam’s hand down. “Oh, my friend, it appears there was a mistake.”
“Oh?” Sam asked with an arched eyebrow while the guy from the Vipers guild grinned.
“Yes! There was a new tax created just as you guys went in. My apologies, friend.”
“What is this tax?” Sam asked, stone-faced.
The man’s grin widened even more and he stepped into Sam’s personal space.
“As you may know, our guild, the Abyss Vipers, work extremely hard to maintain this facility and allow adventurers like you and your lovely lady to delve into the facture,” the smarmy guy explained while leering at Clarissa, ignoring Katie and Dan. “Thus, we would like to be paid for our trouble.”
Sam had a rather hard time keeping a straight face.
“Naturally.”
It was a really ugly grin on the guy’s face. Sam glanced around and he could only see people from Abyss Vipers watching with excitement. Most looked like they enjoyed the same song and dance several times a day.
“I’m glad you agree!” The idiot in front of him exclaimed. “It warms my heart that people realize our efforts. It really does…”
“You don’t say…” Sam said with a bit of sarcasm. Thankfully, the other guy was so far up in his own intestines that he didn’t notice, just kept nodding.
“Now, my new friend. Allow me to explain the new tax,” he began, raising a hand and unfurling a finger. “First you entered. That’s twenty percent.” Another finger added. “You came out. That’s another twenty-five. There are four of you, which means you have to pay ten percent tax for each of you. That brings it up to eighty-five. And naturally, we can’t forget our glorious city and country. They also deserve their due. That would be five for the city and ten for the country.” He finished holding up five fingers for some reason, looking inordinately proud of himself.
“You want us to pay a hundred percent of our loot?” Sam asked, trying to inject a minute amount of disbelief into his voice. Not with a lot of success, though the guy was still oblivious.
“Oh, no no, my friend.” The man replied while shaking his head. “We want everything you own…”
“What?” Sam asked flatly while eyeing the slowly approaching guild members. The plan called for them to stall until they had a bunch of Abyss Vipers as close to each other as possible, but it was really hard to stand so close to the smarmy guy and on top of that, listen to the stupidity that was flowing from his mouth.
“Well, my friend,” the guy began to speak as he finally stepped out of Sam’s personal space and took out a dagger while his friends formed a half circle behind him. “To put it simply: Strip or we will do it for you!”
“Can I?” Katie suddenly spoke up next to Sam eagerly.
“Yeah, go ahead…”
There was some bemusement on the idiots’ faces but before any of them could voice their apparent confusion, Katie blurred forward and punched the guy so hard in the face – already being buffed by Clarissa before they left the fracture – that the game system instantly turned him into rainbow pixels.