“You know, I was wondering why you were walking around on your own. Weren’t you worried about assassination attempts?” Clarissa asked as they were working on one of the shelving units that were going to be used to hold the plants in the proto-hydroponics section of the cavern.
“Huh?” Sam grunted as he was trying to fit one of the screws into the hole while the offending piece of metal refused to cooperate.
“I mean, you’re walking around without any disguise or protection while there are several hundreds of bounties for your head.”
Sam couldn’t help but chuckle. Partially about the question, but partially because he finally managed to finagle the stupid screw into the proper position.
“Oh, that’s simple. We leaked that we were expecting a giant assassination attempt. So, people stood back and waited to see who would do it and to see what they could learn from it.”
“And that’s worked?” Clarissa asked agog at the gullibility of people.
“They wanted to kill me and they expect that a lot of other people want to kill me. We played on their assumption,” he explained proudly. “I expect it would work a few more times before they wise up.” He looked back at Clarissa. “You know, like the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
“Profound. But you know, sooner or later people will realize that you’re always playing mind games. Like the boy who cried wolf. Then it won’t work.”
“Good. If we’re careful and watch for the moment, it can be used…”
“You mean you’re also planning for when people realize how you do things?” Clarissa asked, surprised.
“Well… I’m more like the idea guy. Lucy and Tim make those ideas a reality,” he told her. “I freely admit that without them I wouldn’t be here…”
“That’s rare…”
“What?”
“Admitting that your success is because of other people…” Clarissa said with a sarcastic tilt of her head. “Most of my… acquaintances that I have gotten to know during my gaming days start to brag about the smallest thing they achieved. Even if it only happened with the support of their group or guild.” She looked rather bothered by it. “Hell, when I look on the net, there is always some bozo bragging about their fantastic skills or items they got after their guild carried them through the fracture.”
Sam just simply listened.
“Then I simply compare the skill or the item to something I got while doing something fucking insane with you and have to wonder what’s wrong with you.”
“Huh?”
“With the amount of stuff you know and have, you could have the hottest thing on the net! Why are you not capitalizing on it? A few months of that and you would be set for life!” she exclaimed, panting slightly.
Sam just shook his head.
“Clarissa, I was set money-wise the moment the game came out. I bought the shares…”
“But the power… If I had that… I would…” she retorted, floundering slightly.
“Look, I get it. It’s awesome to think about what you could do with that power, but most people forget the darker side of fame. Especially in an, let’s call it industry, where things change very fast. One day, you’re the king, but as soon as somebody finds a spell or item that defeats you, you’re nothing. Instead of that, I just cruise along, having a stable life… much safer and less stressful,” he told her with a small smile. “Yes, I could have been really famous, but that’s not the life I want. I simply want to play the game and, more importantly, have fun!”
“That’s it?”
“Why? Why do you play the game?”
“To get money, of course!” she instantly responded.
He couldn’t help but sigh. “Clarissa, you’re already rich.”
She looked at him bewildered, tilting her head to the side as if she was thinking really hard about what he said.
“When was the last time you or your family worried about money?” he asked with a challenging look.
“Huh…” she murmured, then shook her head and simply wandered off in a daze.
Sam watched her go and shrugged. Maybe she needed it to be spelled out like that… Even so, he shot a message to Lucy so that she could watch out for the team’s healer. Then he turned back to the shelving unit, once again taking up the unending battle against the uncooperative screws and other odds and ends.
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Sam stood in a remote area of their still unnamed town, with his team watching from the side and Lucky standing next to him.
Katie and Isabella were leaning against a fence, not unlike someone from a ranch dealing with cattle would, watching him eagerly. Dan was sitting on the ground, grooming Hawky with his fingers to the absolute joy of the bird. Clarissa was standing not far from him, arms crossed and simply watching.
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It was time for the debuff to run out.
He watched the timer count down as Lucky began to recreationally chase his own tail around.
[Duration: 0 minutes 45 seconds]
Making sure to warm up he went through a few stretches.
[Duration: 0 minutes 3 seconds]
[Duration: 0 minutes 2 seconds]
[Duration: 0 minutes 1 seconds]
Sam instantly felt when the debuff vanished. His mana felt like an enormous weight had been removed from his body. He flexed his mana and watched as the world around him wavered, the mana trying to change it, but without directions achieving nothing.
It was time to try out his new skills.
“Lucky! Shadow!” he called out to his familiar who gave up catching his own tail and without hesitating upon hearing the order jumped into the nearest shadow, vanishing, only to reappear in Sam’s shadow.
He smiled as he felt the warm presence in his shadow and called out.
“Transformation! Armor form!” He did this mostly to make sure that the system knew for sure what he was doing, and because, like most of his peers, he always wanted to be one of those young people who gained the ability to instantly change into armor and fight the enemy of the weak.
Immediately, the shadows around his legs thickened, turning into a syrupy consistency, and began to flow up on his leg, until the liquid substance covered his entire body. Then the moment it covered everything, it seized and within a brief instant it took shape, solidifying into a material that looked like metal and leather, revealing his face with a massive grin.
The armor was part metal and part leather, at least from its looks. It covered his chest with a piece decorated with a stylized face of the wolf. He was also wearing a sleek-looking shoulder pad, bracers made of shadowy black metal, and gloves covered in metal around the knuckles. All of this was connected by a leather-like material that oddly looked a little like scales covered it. His legs similarly were covered by metal in vital areas with greaves decorated like a wolf’s jaws and the boots looked somewhat like an abstract representation of the clawed feet of a wolf.
“Badass…” he whispered, grin still on his face as his friends were politely clapping. He flicked his hand and his sword appeared in his hand with a flash of darkness as the Living Armory skill allowed him to summon it.
He did a few practice swings, then went through a few movements, trying to find how his new armor worked with his skills and preferred fighting style. To his happiness, it didn’t change anything. He could feel the power coursing through him, the new skills he and Lucky got empowering him even further.
‘Can’t wait to see what it is like to use it in a real fight…’ he mused as he finished a strike aimed at an imaginary enemy.
He didn’t have to wait long as Katie was on him with her greatsword sizzling with dangerous magic, her eldritch aura undulating enough that he was pretty sure his anti-chaos skill was steadily going up.
“How about a little practice fight, boss?” she asked with a bloodthirsty grin which told Sam that saying no wasn’t in the cards.
He smiled at her. “Come at me…”
She let out joyous laughter and instantly pounced forward, intent on cleaving Sam in twain.
In turn, Sam had to activate his own enhancing spells and danced out of the way. Only to have to continue to move as Isabella joined, her swords trying to decapitate him. He parried the sword strikes, only to have to summon a shield to protect himself from being fried by a simple fireball fired by a grinning Dan. Then Clarissa joined by pelting him with simple bullets made of mana as if it was fired from a rifle.
He also let out a brief laugh, but then he was quickly shut up by his team, and for a while, he could only focus on surviving.
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“How were the new skills?” Lucy asked absently as she was working on a document, the tide of which was seemingly unending. Though, apparently, she was enjoying herself.
“Simply badass!” he answered happily, still a little high on success. Some of the skills he got were a surprise, but overall, his plan came together very well. He couldn’t wait to see where these skills went.
The concept of such skill structuring was still in its infancy, being played around with by researchers around the world. In the future, there were several basic skill structures, or ‘classes’ that people put together. They were mostly the basic ‘classes’ making sure that there was at least some standardization around the game, making life easier for those who ran fractures regularly. It allowed regular people to be somewhat competitive. Naturally, the meta of the game changed almost instantly, so if you relied on an in-vogue ‘class’ to dominate, you would be ill-prepared to react to the changes.
Thus, making sure, that while these meta ‘classes’ were easy to achieve thanks to the countless guides, having a ‘class’ that you worked on and developed on your own, and thus knew about all the ins and outs was always superior.
Naturally, there were always guilds hunting for the one meta ‘class’ that would be able to beat everything and would have no weaknesses, but by the time the other Sam died, nobody officially managed to do it.
Sam’s current build was based on a guy’s build who developed skills to merge with spirits as a necromancer and gain incredible melee powers. If that guy could do it with spirits, why not with a spirit familiar that was raised from level one just for this?
Far superior in his opinion…
He had already begun to work on a few ‘classes’ they could hand out to the guild, but he wanted to wait until the first rumors surfaced on the forums. He was already starting arms races practically every time he fought somebody. He didn’t want to personally start this one.
Plus, it made his life a little easier…
“That’s great. Happy for you. Bless you and whatever. What about the blood crazies?” she asked as she moved the finished document from the middle of the desk to an out tray. Sam could feel the mana settling on the paper as Lucy’s skill encrypted the contents.
“Do you want me to check it out?”
“Please. Tim has been going crazy trying to keep all those idiots back from trying to kill you. He and everybody need a break. If you could drag all those crazies with you, I would be forever thankful…” she told him with an accusatory tone.
“Alone or with a team?”
“Clarissa is tapped to train the healers. Lara wants to party with Dan a little, go on a few fracture runs just to experience it.”
“What about the Trouble Twins?”
“Isabella said something about showing her cousins who was the best. I assume Katie will be there, making things worse and chaotic.”
Sam hummed and hawed a little, throwing around his plans in his head, trying to fit the new information and also trying to figure out a solution to the Blood Dance. ‘Maybe taking a look personally would help?’ he mused before nodding and watching Lucy let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll go. I always wanted to check out the beaches. Maybe we could build a proper beach-side Heavenly Forest…”
“Thank you… I’m really worried about the blood magic thing.”
“Don’t worry. I have…”
“… a plan,” she finished for him with a small glare. “I know. You always have one. But I have been putting out feelers and I think I have something with one of the replies.”
That caused Sam to sit up. From what the other Sam saw, most of the resistance against the Blood Brothers was unorganized and chaotic as nobody really expected the angle of attack. It took some time until they found things that would help them.
“Anything actionable?”
She shook her head. “We’re still…feeling each other out. But soon I think I can make an offer…”
“Ugh, politics…”
“Indeed.”