Might as Well

The gaping man didn’t say anything as Sam stepped forward, the handcuffs landing on the ground, in pieces, with a clinking sound. He looked outside of his new prison and saw, satisfied, that nobody noticed his current level of freedom.

By the time he turned back to look at his neighbor, the other man managed to gather his wits to speak up.

“What the hell? How did you do it?” he whispered harshly, yet as silently as possible, fearing discovering.

Sam just shrugged. “They mistakenly gave me normal handcuffs.”

“Oh, that’s lucky.”

“Yes, indeed,” he answered with a smile. Then he called out. “Lucky!”

Before Gregory could question him, Lucky, in all his silken and shadowy glory, emerged from Sam’s shadow.

The proud wolf strutted in front of the downtrodden man as he once again gaped in surprise.

Ignoring Gregory, he turned to Lucky. “Make sure to protect him.”

Lucky nodded his head, stepped forward, and rubbed his giant body against Sam’s. He laughed quietly and ran his hand through his companion’s fur. “I know we haven’t played much lately, but after this, we can spend a little time together…” he whispered, putting his head closer to the beast.

Lucky let out a low whine, conveying his agreement and how much he looked forward to it, before doing one last rub, and then with a graceful dive returned to his shadow.

[Spirit Link is now Level 41!]

Then in the next second, a wolf head emerged from Gregory’s shadow.

“By the gods!” he yelled in fright as the wolf head, with an appropriate wolfish grin slowly sunk back into the shadow.

“Shhh!” Sam chided him and the man immediately moved both of his hands to cover his mouth.

“Sorry!” he whispered, looking abashed.

Sam simply waved it away as he slowly began to retrieve the equipment that he had put away before his journey to the deeps.

Cloak on his shoulder, the sheath of Moonlight returned to his side. He unsheathed the magical sword and did a few warmup movements with it.

He looked over at the other man and spoke up.

“What kind of weapon do you want?”

The man looked away with a blush on his face.

“I’m afraid… I-I’m not the best at fighting or magic,” he admitted while avoiding looking into Sam’s eyes.

“No problem,” he replied with a hopefully reassuring smile. “I can deal with them, but here,” he took out a dagger in a sheath and threw it to the other man. “A dagger, just in case.” Then he looked over Gregory proper, retrieved a full set of clothing, including a sturdy pair of boots, and handed it over. “Change your clothes while I open the cages!”

“Yes!” came the excited reply as Gregory clutched the new clothing to himself with one hand, while the other held onto the dagger with a death grip.

Sam ignored the undressing man behind him and turned his attention to the door. It was a basic cage with bars thick enough and close enough to each other that no matter how thin one was, one wouldn’t be able to slip out. And thanks to the anti-magic property of the bars, it was impossible to slip out with magic.

Admittedly, Sam knew that it was possible to overload them, but even he didn’t have enough mana currently to do that. And the local pirates were smart enough not to go after someone who could overwhelm these basic anti-magic metals. Not that a person like that would fall prey to this kind of piracy…

He then kneeled next to the door and eyed the lock. ‘Let’s see if online tutorials will help me out…’ Then Sam pulled out a set of lockpicks and began the arduous process of opening the lock.

While he was doing that, a small part of his mind was thinking about other players.

Poor Gregory had confirmed that other players had already reached the pirate haven, either by accident or by being captured. This meant they knew that there was an advanced pirate operation hidden on the island.

Naturally, all of them would guess that if there were pirates, then there was also some treasure. This meant, they either planned to get that treasure on their own and kept the location secret until they could come up with a way to get in and get the loot, or they went and informed a friendly group about the location.

Getting a big enough ship to transport the necessary manpower to this island to take care of the pirate infestation wasn’t easy, and most importantly, cheap. So that excluded some of the smaller guilds.

‘Can’t ignore the possibility of several smaller guilds banding together…’ he mused as he worked on the lock.

That meant that he was working with an unknown deadline.

Thankfully, he was mostly interested in Gregory and the rewards his rescue would bring him, but upon further thought, if he managed to find the location of the treasure he would undoubtedly scoop it up.

CLINK

‘Finally…’ he thought as he managed to fully turn the lockpick and the door slowly opened.

He stood up and pushed the door open, his hand ready to lash out with magic in case there was some kind of alarm he didn’t notice.

Fortunately, no alarm sounded and he managed to escape the confines of the cage. Out of it, he spent a few seconds luxuriating in the feeling of freedom.

‘Ten thousand years… and I’m finally free!’ he thought with a chuckle, then he turned back to Gregory, his eyes looking at the other prisoners. Some of them were eyeing him, but all of them were smart enough to stay silent.

Sam made eye contact with several of them and gave them a brief nod while holding up his hand in the universal wait-a-second sign. Instantly, several prisoners began cheering.

Before he opened any more doors to the cages, he walked to the door that led into the prisoner hall and leaned against it to listen to the other side, while using his mana to get a sense of the other side. Surprisingly, he didn’t hear anything but he could sense a few pirates patrolling not far away.

Nodding to himself, he turned back and made a shushing noise to the prisoners.

After he made sure that everyone understood the magic, he walked forward and began the tedious task of freeing people.

It took an hour for him to let everyone who was still cognizant out of their cell, then dress them in random clothing he had in his inventory. He even threw a few weapons at them, at least to those who claimed to be capable of fighting. But as they were held for some time as prisoners and mine workers when the pirates wanted to punish them, Sam didn’t expect much from them.

Still, any backup was better than none.

Finally, they all stood in front of the only door leading out of the prison hall, with Gregory near Sam with a worried look on his face.

“Are you sure this will work?” he asked, wringing his hands in worry.

Sam looked back at the man, nodded, then gave him a reassuring smile and a thumbs up.

“Don’t worry, I got this!”

“A-alright…” the man replied, marginally more relaxed.

Sam then turned back to the waiting crowd and called out in a loud whisper.

“Listen up, people! Here is the plan…”

A few minutes later Gregory with Lucky in his shadow and Sam slipped out of the prisoner hall, with the door left wide open so that the others could see that they weren’t being left behind, and began creeping through the catacombs.

Their first task was to eliminate the patrols, and then figure out a way to escape the location. Then find a ship and return to the mainland.

Easy-peasy, murder-clown-crazy…

Eliminating the first patrol was laughably easy. Sam simply used his speed to get behind the first group and with a simple movement of his sword two heads were rolling on the ground while the Exp notifications went off in his ear.

Gregory looked rather queasy, but thankfully he didn’t say anything, or vomit…

That was followed by a quick search of their bodies, with Sam pocketing anything that was worth something, and they continued on, looking for more patrols, while the rest of the prisoners followed them silently, keeping a healthy distance.

‘Odd… there should be more people down here…’ Sam thought with a frown. He held up his hand in a fist and the entire proceeding stopped.

He closed his eyes and focused on his Mana Sense. They were deep enough, and the entire facility was filled with spots of anti-magic metal, so he couldn’t get a really clear picture, but from what he could sense, there were a lot of people running around.

‘That doesn’t look good…’

He was about to voice the information he gleamed, when the entire facility began to shake, with dust and sand falling on their faces.

Gregory looked over at him with hope on his face.

“Friends of yours?”

“Nope!” Sam answered cheerfully, popping the p sound.

“Oh no…”

“On the contrary, my friend. Oh, yes!” he responded with an excited grin. With the pirate base under attack, their escape would become much easier. From the pirates. The players would be another thing… “Our captors' attention will be on the new interlopers, not on us…”

Gregory's eyes widened and a small smile appeared on his face.

“Now come on! Let’s find out who is the newest enemy of our enemy!”

It took them a few minutes to proceed further into the pirate facility and capture one of the panicky pirates who were running around not paying attention to the shadows.

This, in turn, revealed to them, that it was a coalition of guilds bombarding the island, led by the locally famous Steel Lions. Sam had to force himself not to cackle at the opportunity that fell into his lap.

After informing the rest of the captives about the arrival of the guilds, they decided to huddle up down there to wait for the rescue. Apparently, the Steel Lions had set themselves up as the local good guys, handling all sorts of criminals and other miscreants. The general populace rather liked them.

Sam left them a few more potions and weapons and wished them good luck, before dragging the hopeful Gregory with him.

“Wait! Wait! Why are we not waiting for Steel Lions? They are great people so they’ll surely help us leave this place!” he babbled as Sam used his Mana Sense to navigate the corridors.

He looked back at the man and smirked.

“Maybe you… However, they will kill me on sight.”

“Why? Are you some kind of criminal?”

“Of course not… I’m just friends with the leader’s sister. And their father, shall we say, does not approve…”

The other man’s eyes went round in surprise.

“Oh… then what shall we do?”

“That’s easy. While the pirates fight off the guilds, we rob the pirates blind and then escape in the chaos.”

“Huh?”

“How does a 90-10 split sound to you?”

“What?”

“Excellent!”

Instead of heading to the surface, Sam led Gregory on a merry journey through the facility.

Any pirate they met was instantly dispatched, and those who tried to ambush them were swallowed by shadows. Meanwhile, the entire structure was shaking and they could hear distant explosions. Sam had to use the Clean spell several times just to prevent looking like he just woke up from sleeping under a sand dune.

Gregory was jittery and was eying his shadow with suspicious eyes as if expecting Lucky to emerge to feast on his legs.

Finally, almost half an hour later, they found a giant door, made from anti-magic metal barring their way with several pirates standing guards.

They were felled easily with a few pinpoint accurate Wind Bullets, and then they walked up to the door.

Surprisingly, it was Gregory who spoke up first as Sam was examining the door.

“I recognize this. SUSNE vault door. Basic but sturdy. Impossible to open with magic, and takes hours to pick it. Hours we don’t have…” he explained.

Sam just chuckled and waved the other man’s worries away. Then he walked up to the wall directly next to the seemingly impenetrable door and placed his hand on the stonework.

“Sounds tough. Thankfully, we are against complete morons,” he stated as with a brief twist of his own mana, reorganized the stone near the door, creating a hole big enough for a person to walk through.

Then he stepped aside and bowed a little.

“After you!”

Gregory sent him a withering look and walked through the manmade hole, Sam smirked and followed his newest friend. As soon as they were both over, he reached out and closed the hole, not wanting to give away their entrance method.

After being done with that, he turned back to the new corridor and looked around. Sadly, it looked just like the others. However, there were more lamps and it seemed a little bit cleaner. On this side of the door, there was a small room carved into the stone, probably a security station. However, a quick cursory check made it clear that it was empty.

Sam did a last check on his equipment and bade Gregory follow him.

“I think we’re heading in the right direction, but my gut tells me that something is going to happen. So, when I give you the signal, run away and hide. Understood?”

The other man didn’t say anything, just nodded vigorously. Meanwhile, Sam thought about the possibilities that awaited them. He hoped he chose right, because if it turned out that the door only protected the creepy doll collection of the pirate lord, then he was going to do unspeakable things to people.

A few minutes later, the empty corridor opened into a circular room that had a few tables and bookshelves with paper scrolls and books on them. Opposite the corridor entrance was an arch leading into another room that was surprisingly not illuminated by any light.

‘Oh, wow, that is definitely not a trap…'