“Sit rep!”
“Plants are doing okay! Tree is still weird, but I fed it another seed and it grew another inch or two.”
“Distortion is still pretty cute!”
Sam bravely ignored Katie’s remark and turned to Isabella. While he was busy arranging their loot in the ever-growing pile of crates – for some reason the organization would get messed up the moment they looked away – Isabella ran around, followed by the loyal Sable, and took down information about the new fractures.
She smiled and took another look at her notes. “Checked and all of them start with four charges, so we can’t really tell how far that number will rise. The first one is probably rock and plant, based on the description. The rest are all combinations.”
“Anything special?” Sam asked curiously as he idly played with Lucky’s fur to the pleasure of the wolf.
The young woman shook her head. “Nothing I saw implied that.”
Clarissa spoke up with a frown on her face. “This won’t be sustainable, you know… We’ll spend half our lives in these fractures if the charges grow every time we defeat one. And we don’t even know how many layers are to this damned distortion…”
‘Three. There are three layers…’ Sam wanted to say, but he knew that would be impossible to explain away, so instead, he just kept his face impassive. “I don’t think we need to worry about the charges. I think the maximum would be twelve or maybe thirteen if the game wants to be cheeky. We can do that with our hands tied behind our backs. If we really need to hurry, we can do two teams and stagger the entries.”
Clarissa considered that for a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense, but this thing,” she motioned all around here as they all ignored Katie playing ball with Puffball with a piece of eldritch energy in the approximate shape of a ball. “was created for bigger teams. You saw the news. Guilds are all over the other one. If they found that one, what’s to say they wouldn’t find this one?”
“Because I had Lucy leak the location?” he asked with a sly smile.
“Oh…”
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“So, anybody got anything good after leveling up?” Sam asked as they sat around their camp table, munching on the meal that Katie had put together for them. The team had followed his lead and turned off the immediate level-up notifications to increase their gain.
Sam wasn’t sure that the experience point gain would grow, nobody could prove it even in the future, even with guilds who tried to do clinical experiments to figure it out, but somehow something always happened that ruined the experiment.
But it decreased the obsession with the numbers and had people focus more on the game and not just making the numbers bigger.
Dan just shook his head. “Fire got stronger, ice got stronger and magic also got stronger. No special subskills sadly…”
“I got a pretty nice True Damage subskill!” came from Isabella.
“Oh, how much?” Sam asked curiously.
“Nine percent, fully leveled!” she declared with a smile and peace sign.
“Nice!” he returned the gesture with a thumbs up.
“Still growing my mana reserves,” added Clarissa after she swallowed her bite of food. “I have been trying to do split healing, but my Multitasking is still not high enough.”
“You only need Multitasking for that?” Sam asked.
“According to the forums, most healers who managed to figure out split healing without the spellbook, did it after maxing out Multitasking.
Sam nodded, leaned back, and considered the issue. ‘Now how to tell her what to do without outing myself…’
Clarissa and the rest stayed silent, as all of them knew that in the matter of mana and spell control, Sam was the undisputed champion in their team.
“I think… you should consider this from a different direction…” he began explaining, while Clarissa leaned forward, clearly interested. “Instead of casting one spell in multiple directions, why don’t you try to cast the same spell multiple times, then merge the thing together?”
“Would that work?”
“It worked for me…” he replied while sharing his Spell Layer and Spell Matrix skills.
“I want this so much…” Clarissa whispered as she quickly noted down the details.
Sam smiled, then turned to the others. “Katie? Any gains?”
She looked back with an innocent expression, then down at her armor-clad body. “Are you saying I gained weight?” by the end of the sentence her voice went into the shrill category.
Sam gave her a deadpan look, then turned back to his food. “It’s fine if you don’t want to share…”
Katie just crossed her arms in front of her and pouted.
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After making sure all their video game bodily needs were met, the pets and familiars were happy with their playtime, then they returned to the fractures.
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There was a small discussion about which one they would be attempting, but Isabella wanted a new, stronger monster for Sable, so they went for the rock and plant one.
However, Sam was sure most of them, including him, were hoping that more seeds would drop.
Sam, as usual, stepped forward and touched the swirling energies making up the portal to the fracture. The colors, as expected from the portal, were dark brown, the color of good soil, mixed with a dark green color that reminded Sam of lush jungles.
[This is no monkey chase!]
[Life…always finds a way. Now, if humanity appreciates this… that’s always a question. Go in and do your usual adventure things! You saw Mother Nature angry once already, but how about once more, with a supporting cast? A small hint: prepare to duck. Another hint: No ducks.]
[Time limit: None]
[Penalty: Sweaty pits. The sticky kind.]
[Reward: The distortion eases]
[Charges: 4/4]
[Hidden Bonus: Additional growth for the Tree of Rewards]
“That’s singularly unhelpful and fucking creepy…” Isabella deadpanned as they all read through the screen that popped up.
“Look on the bright side!” chirped Katie, with a giant grin on her face.
“What, you goblin?”
“There are no ducks!”
Sam quickly activated the portal before a fight could break out!
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They appeared in a damp clearing, surrounded by foliage, trees, and even more dampness.
As far as they could see, which wasn’t much, they could only see thick trees and dense foliage dotted with a few dangerous-looking colorful flowers here and there.
“A jungle?”
“Ugh, I’m already sweating…”
“What’s that noise?”
“Where?”
“Over there!”
“Ugh, those are some big mosquitoes…”
“And they’re coming right for us!”
“Dan, for the love of all that is unholy, use your fire!”
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As it turns out, mosquitoes – even if they were giant ones – burned pretty easily. However, after the first batch of monsters was destroyed, Sam immediately summoned a giant dome of swirling air that kept out the buzzing menaces and allowed the rest of them to snipe them from afar.
Katie was very deadly with her energy slashes…
Then they began to head toward the only visible path, sneaking through the dense forest. They were barely a few yards in when Sam felt a mana signature approaching them from underground at extreme speeds.
“Under us!” he exclaimed and by the time the team jumped back, the ground broke and a new monster emerged.
It was a star-nosed mole with actual eyes and wriggling tentacles on their face. And a nice big circular hole where the mouth should be, decorated with circular teeth that whirled around, creating a nice buzz saw sound.
For a moment they stared at the abomination against nature, and the abyss stared back with small black beady eyes that radiated a sort of hunger that could never be satiated.
Clarissa was the first one to break the silent staring by launching a glob of poison right into the maw of the monster.
It flew in a straight line, and the monster swallowed without a thought, causing it to instantly begin to choke.
They watched in silence as the monster rolled around, pounded the ground and even dramatically wheezed as it died.
Then as it disappeared in the familiar explosion of rainbow pixels, when none of them went forward to harvest it, there was only one thing left behind. A skillbook.
Sam stepped forward, bent down, and picked the book up.
[Congratulations! You found the skillbook for Acting!]
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Their trip through the jungle was beset with hordes of star-nosed moles breaking through the ground and trying to devour them, while literal clouds of giant blood-sucking mosquitoes – thankfully, the non-sparkly kind – tried their best to break through their shields.
At least the drops were somewhat interesting.
The star-nosed moles always dropped ore slivers, but there was always one in every group that dropped one small sliver of star metal. Granted, it was just a dramatic name for meteorite ore, but it was still valuable.
Sam hoped they would be able to gather enough to create some fantastic weapon from it. If not, he planned some jewelry made from it for the core members of the guild and the company.
The mosquitos, unsurprisingly, dropped mostly reagents related to blood magic, even some special blood in crystalline form.
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Sam made sure that the latest batch of moles was destroyed after finishing their dramatic death sequence, or at least those that had their bodies in one piece, and headed for the shiny thing he spotted falling from the last cloud of mosquitoes.
He reached down and picked up the dark red irregularly shaped crystal and took a long look at it.
[Drop of Crystallized Blood: A drop of crystallized blood from some magical being. Has many uses.]
“What does it do?” Clarissa asked as she stepped next to him, also staring at the blood.
Sam shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest, but we’re not selling it.”
Naturally, he knew exactly what it was used for. One could gather them and take them to a vampire or blood mage, who would then identify the type of blood or even its origin. Then came the fun part. Using several blood magic rituals, one could enhance themselves with the blood. Or enchant artifacts…
Alternatively, blood mages were known to use them as projectiles. If Sam remembered correctly, there was one guy in his inherited memories who crafted senbons from thousands of this item. They called him Crimson Rain for one glorious afternoon, then he went bankrupt, as it was not cheap to get that much crystallized blood.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to collect some…
“Do you think we could feed it to the tree? Blood is rich in minerals…” came the unexpected question from the team’s healer.
“You know what? That sounds like something we should try…” he replied with a smile, then turned to the others. “Hey guys! If you see shiny blood crystals, make sure to get them!”
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Soon, however, they reached the end of the road and found themselves in a clearing with an enormous mound of soil, artistically piled high.
The clearing itself was surrounded by trees with thick trunks, with the random foliage making sure that there wasn’t even an inch wide hole in the wooden barricade.
Then the earth shook, and the sky was rent apart with the buzzing of a million wings.
The enormous soil mound’s top was blown apart, raining down dust and soil on their shields while the biggest star-nosed mole revealed itself. It had two layers of tentacles and at least three circular sets of teeth in its mouth that all rotated in a different direction.
However, instead of roaring, it released a whining sound, high-pitched enough to hurt their ears. Sam instantly reinforced his barrier while Dan pointed upward.
“Look! The sound is attracting the mosquitoes!”
Sam took in the situation and made up a quick plan. “Right. We need to do this quickly before the mosquitoes overwhelm us. Dan, you’re on zapping duty. Izzy, perimeter. Katie, we are going to hack’n’slash!”
“Hell yeah!” Katie celebrated with an enthusiastic fist pump.
“Sure, boss!” was Dan’s reply as he instantly began weaving the fire around himself, ready to take care of the bloodsuckers.
Sam unsheathed his own sword, summoned even more wind around his other hand, and looked at Katie next to him as Clarissa made sure they would survive the action with buffs and Isabella and Sable turned to face the other direction. “You ready?”
“I was born ready!”
They launched themselves forward, ready to rend the giant boss monster into several smaller pieces but Sam was still able to hear Isabella’s call.
“You were born as a chaos gremlin!”