Might as Well

Gregory gave Sam an encouraging, albeit rather shaky, thumbs up, turned around, and ran out of the room they found themselves in. Sam nodded to himself and faced the arch leading to the dark room.

His sword was held in his hand, magic crackling around him as he filled up several layers of Mana Shield. His other hand was wreathed with wind, ready to strike at a moment's notice.

Slowly, but with measured steps, he walked forward after sweeping up the scattered documents around the room. He didn’t think they were stupid enough to leave actionable information in the open, but based on how they installed the vault door, he wasn’t going to hold his breath.

The moment he crossed the arch light flooded the room.

Squinting, he saw that several light artifacts affixed poorly to the walls lit up, illuminating the giant hall.

Which was rather empty.

He could see a few boxes and chests at the back, but nothing like a mythical pirate treasure.

‘A clearing house… great….’

However, before he could ruminate more on this fact, and the loss of the imagined treasure, his eyes found the eyes of the man standing before the few remaining boxes.

It was a big man, dressed in leather armor that had a lot of rather suspicious spots that looked like dried blood. In his hands, he held two axes, both of them covered by fresh blood. Seeing that, Sam quickly glanced around and spotted several pirates, hacked into pieces in one of the shadowy corners that weren’t illuminated by stolen light artifacts.

“Done lookin’ around, boy?” the man growled, and Sam returned his attention to him, gripping his sword in preparation.

“Yes,” he answered in a clipped tone.

The other man just grinned, his face stretched with the grin, showing an ugly sight.

“I knew at least a few rats would be heading here to get some payout when we were attacked, but I never imagined that one of the prisoners would come here. How lucky!”

‘And I sent Lucky with Gregory… How unlucky…’ he mused as he assessed his enemy with his skill.

He had rather interesting but unfamiliar mana inside his body, oozing around inside his body disgustingly.

“Ready yourself, boy! I’m going to show you why–“

He was interrupted by Sam simply raising his hand and shooting a ball of wind directly at his face, not wanting to listen to the monologue of this small-time villain.

The man’s grin just widened as if loving the fact he was attacked, raised his axes in front of himself with the arms crossed, and simply tanked the attack.

“I like it! I’ll show you, boy, what it means to kill!”

Sam continued to bombard the man with Wind Balls, trying to figure out what his deal was. He refused to go near the man without knowing what kind of skills he had.

The pirate let out a roar, hunching forward, and flicked both of his axes forward. However, instead of the blood flying off it with a splatter, the blood stayed on the blades, continuing to drip in a normal manner, pooling under the man’s feet. Then the man glowed deep red, which lingered for a moment, the Wind Balls still ineffectively slamming against the pirate. Then the light expanded into a pulse that shot off.

Sam jumped back and raised the Shadow Shield just in case, as the pulse passed by him. It hit the walls, bouncing off them and then dissipating.

For a moment nothing happened, but Sam could feel the local mana being agitated, then he glanced over to the corpses that the giant man created and saw blood oozing out of them in the direction of the pirate who was grinning at him, now with red teeth as blood practically flooded out of his mouth.

Despite that, his voice was clear and tinged with excitement,

“Let me show you the dance of my people, boy! The dance of BLOOD!”

The slowly oozing blood sped up and flew towards the man, where it swirled around him like a bloody tornado before it calmed down and flew to his weapons, enveloping them.

The end result was that the man was left holding two giant axes made of blood, while his arms were also enveloped by the sticky-looking blood, with his entire body radiating a gentle red glow.

Sam just scoffed.

A Blood Mage, and from the looks of it, a Blood Berserker. All might, no brain. Still, they were rather dangerous to those who didn’t know what to do.

The man let out another roar and charged forward with impressive speed.

Sam simply activated his own speed-increasing skills and dashed out of the way, his sword raised and a barrage of Wind Blades slamming into his enemy’s body, causing a few shallow wounds to appear. However, the blood that came out of the wounds just flew toward the weapons, adding to the bloody mass that was already there. Sam didn’t mind. Just because the blood improved the weapon it didn’t mean the man wasn’t hurt. The joy of a berserker.

They fight and fight and fight until they don’t.

The man skidded to a stop, only to stumble as Sam slammed one of his feet down and let loose a Ground Shake. As the man tried to get his bearings Sam raised his foot again and stomped on the ground, channeling his mana into it. Then watched with a smile as the pirate flew back as a column of earth emerged in front of the stumbling man with extreme speed.

With another tap of his feet, another burst of mana, and the flying man was met with a wall of earth, slamming into it with high speed.

Sam didn’t let up. As the man tried to get his bearings and blindly swung his axes around while letting out pained and excited roars, he sent a Shadow Cloud at his face, tethering the cloud to himself with a thin thread of mana to make sure he could keep it around the man’s face.

Then with his sword held up, he walked toward the man. With a brief twist of his mana, three clones appeared next to him that instantly went around, just in time for the pirate to let out another burst of redlight that swept the flimsy Shadow Cloud away.

Sam grinned and the clones followed along. However, instead of confusion, there was only deep-seated satisfaction on the enemy’s face.

“I can smell your blood, little mage!” With that declaration, he shot forward, both axes held high, and swung down on the real Sam.

He simply turned into shadows, ignoring the attack.

The moment the man was away from him, growling confusedly, he let out a barrage of Wind Blades, mimicked by his clones.

Sam was rather glad he had the skills he had because this way he could use the best way to fight against Blood Mages. The community called it the Keep-Away strategy, which was rather simple and revolved around one simple concept.

Don’t let the blood touch you.

That’s why Life Blood was such a dangerous skill. The Blood Mage could directly control the blood inside the person. After all, how would one get rid of all of the blood inside them?

Another collection of wounds and the weapons grew even larger.

The pirate swirled around with an angry snarl.

“You can’t hide from me, little mage! I’ll tear your body limb from limb!”

Sam refused to answer, instead, he summoned another Earth Wall in the way of the charging berserker while dashing to the side and raining down deadly wind.

This continued for a minute. The berserker charging, Sam dodging or deflecting the attack in some way while inflicting wounds on the man.

Finally, however, Sam could see that the pirate was slowing down. ‘His berserk skill is running out…’

One last charge with an inarticulate roar, and Sam transformed into shadows letting the ludicrously-sized Axes swing through the space he was in before, then dodged to the side and swung his sword enveloped by a wind construct in the shape of a greatsword

The greatsword bit into the man’s back leaving a giant wound behind, but most importantly severing the man’s spine.

Berserker or no, the man collapsed instantly on the ground, with the blood splashing down as it lost its coherence, creating a giant puddle of dirty and corrosive blood.

Sam stepped backward, not wanting to touch the blood, and waited as the pirate in front of him gurgled in his death throes. He raised his hand and sent a final Wind Blade, mercifully ending the berserker’s life.

Instantly the EXP notification went off in his head and the corpse quickly transformed into rainbow-colored pixels that vanished in short order, leaving behind a trashed room and a simple book where the corpse was.

He walked up to it and picked it up, reading the title.

“Blood Berserk… fun skill. Not for me though…” he mumbled as he pocketed it.

Quickly he rushed to the back of the hall, picking up the chests and boxes, not even checking what was in them, just as another explosion rocked the facility.

“Right! Time to get out…”

He found Gregory and Lucky back at the guard station, miraculously alone and rather bored. It was rather funny, how the two of them perked up the same way when he showed up.

Though, only Lucky got head pats…

“Did you find anything?” Gregory asked, wringing his head.

“Yeah, a Blood Berserker and some treasure. It seems this was just a pirate clearing house…”

The young merchant nodded. “Makes sense. However, how do you plan to escape?” he asked as once more they were covered in sand falling from the ceiling. Sam shot off two Clean spells and answered with a grin.

After Sam took a minute breather to refresh himself after the fight, they returned to the vault door, where he created another opening and then they continued their journey toward the surface.

It was rather uneventful.

They occasionally met up with a few fleeing or looting pirates, but they fell quickly under Sam’s sword or Lucky’s claws. They sometimes had to go around collapsed corridors but they met nothing that could really stop them.

Both of them agreed that more than likely the bulk of the pirates were fighting the invading guilds. And it seemed they were slowly but surely losing, hence the cowardly pirates breaking the lines and looting whatever they could.

Soon they reached the stairs that lead upwards, half collapsed and filled with corpses and debris. And more blood than necessary. Apparently, the guy in the vault wasn’t the only Blood Mage in the pirate group.

His Mana Sense told him that there were no living beings upstairs so he used a little mana to create a safe passage amidst the debris and they left their prison behind in a short order.

They emerged into chaos.

Most of the buildings he saw when he arrived were turned into ruins thanks to the bombardment but the wall still held. From the cover of the rubble, they could see the frantic defenders rushing about, as they tried to protect the facility.

Sam could sense an active shield over the facility, but based on the rainbow-colored holes in the sky, it wouldn’t be holding out much longer.

“Now what?” Gregory whispered, his eyes darting around anxiously.

“We sneak,” he replied with a whisper, then crouched down and began to sneak toward the next cover. Gregory followed him after a few moments of hesitation.

After some time of sneaking, while the shield protecting the facility became even more tattered as countless projectiles crashed through it, they managed to reach an intact building.

They took refuge inside to rest and to evaluate the best escape route.

Technically Sam could wait for the guilds to conquer the pirates and then negotiate a ride on one of their ships, but he didn’t really want to deal with the Steel Lions right now.

He could also hide and wait until the battle was over and sneak away while the guilds were looting, but that was also rather dangerous.

‘Sadly, the best time to leave is now when everyone is distracted…’

Finally reaching a decision, he gathered himself and Gregory who was ravenously eating some kind of meal that the owner of the house left behind when the battle started and left the house.

They slowly approached the wall opposite the beach where there were no attackers as the jungle was too thick for them to move around thankfully.

Using his sword sharpened by the wind he cut a simple hole in it, and then used his own mana to disrupt the shield protecting the facility momentarily, they were out.

They rushed through the empty space that was left between the wall and the jungle, but as the pirates' attention was fully on the attackers, nobody was there to see them, and after that the jungle mercifully concealed them.

“Come on, Greg, let’s get out of here…”

The journey through the jungle was rather uneventful.

They had a few scares when groups of players rushed past their positions, but thanks to Sam's senses they always managed to hide away.

Based on the sounds coming from the direction of the facility and the excited grins on the players’ faces, they left just in time.

Though by the time they reached the final treeline that lead to the beach, poor Gregory was a nervous wreck.

Stopping before they left the cover provided by the tropical trees, he turned to the other man.

“Say, do you know how to work a ship?”

Gregory looked at him taken aback, and shook his head with a blush on his face.

“I-I was always responsible for the business side of things.”

“Plan B it is then!”