Might as Well

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” he cursed as he beat a hasty retreat from Training Hall after his brief but memorable meeting with the girl from the Eternal Light. As he bade goodbye to Martha, who was back standing next to the line of people waiting for training, glaring at anybody who acted out, Sam couldn’t help but curse.

He didn’t recognize the girl, so he couldn’t exactly plan around her personality or past (or in this case future) history. And the fact she was drop-dead gorgeous didn’t really help. With the fact that the game allowed one to edit their appearance during character creation, drop-dead gorgeous girls were a dime a dozen. But if she was really part of the Eternal Light, there was almost a hundred percent chance she would be coming after him for recruitment.

At least they played Lawful Good most of the time, so they wouldn’t be sending assassins after him, only very aggressive recruitment attempts. According to the other Sam’s memories, there were rumors that they even used honey traps to get some players to join their guild, but nobody ever confirmed it.

For a short moment, he felt excited that they would be coming after him (the girl was hot), but then his rational mind defeated his libido and he was back to cursing.

Now he had to be content with a secretive demon gunning for his head, a vengeful billionaire business magnate hunting him, and a giant guild trying to recruit him.

Scowling a little as he walked along the street, he sent a brief message to Lucy to warn her, then another to Katie to meet him at the Mage Tower after he was finished with his errands. He then went around to fill up his bag with consumables while looking around the capital city to gauge the players' mood.

Almost everybody was in great spirits, rushing around gathering supplies, chattering about fractures, and heading to grind away from the city. There was actually a fracture in the city, but no player knew about it. It would be revealed later when an enemy agent manipulated events in such a way as to cause a monster break to destroy the capital.

Thankfully, the NPC army locked down the fractures around the capital, so the guilds had no chance to monopolize (they still tried to), making it the preferred location for unaffiliated players to grind their levels.

The situation around the smaller cities was much different. Where the local nobility or government forces were strong, they did the same with around an eighty percent success rate while where the local governmental forces were ineffective the guilds were running rampant.

This didn’t even account for the hundreds of fractures hidden in the mountains, deep forests, or endless deserts. Sam shuddered to think about going deep underwater. The shit that could be found in those fractures was more madness-inducing than anything that Katie had access to.

Fortunately, for some reason, underwater fractures only very rarely had monster breaks. He knew from his inherited memories that some people had a shrine that was prayed to every day to keep it that way. Plus, they used the donations to the shrine to send cupcakes to the dev team for a totally unrelated reason.

He left the shop selling trail rations and shook his head.

All this rumination about what would be was getting rather confusing. He needed to concentrate on the here and now and not on the infinite possibilities of the future according to a very smart and wise turtle.

As he neared the entrance to the Mage Tower, he saw a small group of eccentric people standing around and waiting for somebody.

Dan was wearing leather pants that molded to his legs and a shirt that looked high quality with visibly shining runes on it that showed off his muscles to the delight of everybody around him. Clarissa was there dressed in a conservative healer dress that nonetheless also showcased her figure. However, she had no idea about the reaction she was causing as she was busy glaring at people who were staring at Dan. Katie was in her edgy and spiky armor, her helmet hiding her face from the watchers, idly vibrating in place.

He walked up to them with his hand raised high as a greeting.

“Hey guys! Where did you come from?”

“Boss!”

“Hey.”

“Sup! Lucy sent them after you,” came the surprisingly helpful explanation from Katie.

Clarissa nodded while Dan grinned at him.

“What’s the plan, bossman?”

“I need to level up, so we’re going to grind. A lot.”

“Yessss!” Katie ‘silently’ celebrated with a fist pump, while Clarissa grimaced.

“Fracture?” she asked.

“Yes, they have a lot of those around here. We are just going to run them until we’re bored with them.”

“But they have taxes…”

“Yes, and guards. We don’t have to deal with annoying guild politics,” he explained, with Dan nodding excitedly in the background.

Clarissa stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Well, you are the boss.”

Sam smiled at her, then motioned toward the direction of the gates of the city.

“Let’s go, people. Grinding is waiting for us!”

Their trip to the first fracture they planned to conquer was spent mostly getting each other caught up and bragging about new skills and Clarissa complaining about annoying people wanting to get healed but refusing to learn any game mechanics.

Sam just walked along the team and soaked in the interactions. Back in his old life, he was a solitary creature, only venturing out of his den if it was important to one of the few friends he actually had. And the less said about the eternally paranoid other Sam’s private life, the better.

He tried to be better in his new life, but it was still hard to shake off the habits he accumulated over the years. But with these people, he was getting better and better. At least he hoped so.

Dan managed to get some semblance of control over his ice and fire spells while keeping up complaints about the people at his university.

Based on the description, Sam was pretty glad that the person he replaced didn’t go to one because he already spent enough time in university in his previous life. He didn’t need that much chaos in his life. From what he gathered from Dan, most of the decisions in the guilds that were created at Dan’s university were done at the urging of hormones. Sam doubted that any of them would survive until the new year.

Hormones and long-term planning weren’t exactly compatible…

Clarissa spent the time while Sam was running around trying to survive doing small healing commissions around Ironwood and Deepanchor, and she was visibly fed up with the stupidity of the players.

Enough time had passed that builds, competent builds, had started to appear on trustworthy forums that the general public could access. The problem with that was that those people who downloaded those builds, expected it to work like in any game.

Just choose the OP skills and be ready to do the OP damage.

Magic Unbound wasn’t like that.

If you didn’t put in the work, then it didn’t matter what kind of OP skill they had, they wouldn’t be having fun.

Sadly, these types of people were exactly the type that had the money to hire mercenary healers to keep them alive. And Clarissa liked making money…

“Seriously, you pay me enough that I’m considering giving up this healing for money thing…” she ranted at him. “The last group looked like a herd of supermodels, but based on their speech, they were at least fifty, if not more. They propositioned me several times. They even asked me if I offered a happy ending!”

Sam and Dan scowled, but Katie grinned. She skipped next to her friend and looked up at the taller girl with a vicious grin. “Want me to sacrifice them to my new gods?”

He was about to speak up, but Clarissa beat him to it.

“You’re sweet Katie,” she smiled at the other girl. “But I doubt even those eons-old monsters from beyond the edge of the universe want to do anything with those assholes.”

Katie placed a finger against her lips in a pondering manner. “You may be right. They must taste horrible…”

Clarissa stared back at the younger girl and let out a quiet chuckle that soon turned into a full belly laugh, though Sam could hear notes of relief behind the laughter.

‘Was she maybe relieved that we are supporting her?’

The area where their chosen fracture was around halfway developed with the workers from the city tirelessly working on it, joined by a lot of players who wanted to grind some crafting experience or simply make a little money.

Looking around, Sam compared the location to the one in his memories.

It was mostly the same as the sight of the location blurred together over the years when the other Sam visited it.

Before the Fracture it was a simple outpost, here to house the militia that patrolled the region, rangers who scouted around the forest and to function as a staging point for adventurers who had tasks in the area.

There was a well surrounded by wooden buildings and a half-built wall made of stone brought in from a nearby quarry. Surprisingly, the portal to the fracture appeared in the trunk of a tree, surrounded by a small amount of vegetation that refused to stay down despite players and NPCs trampling on it twenty-four-seven.

Around the portal was tight security, with elite soldiers from the capital glaring at anyone who even looked suspicious. There was no line to get in as the portal and tree itself were enormous enough that not even ten people could circle it if they were standing with only the tip of their fingers touching.

However, there was a building where they had to register.

The process was pretty simple. They provided their identifications, and they received a token that functioned as an access card through the magical defenses that the soldiers set up. Further, they were given a bag which expanded the space that they would need to collect the material that was dropped. Exceptions were personal items (that is, quest items) and spell or skill books.

Mostly because even the NPCs realized that the people could just learn the skill in the books and they would never know it dropped. However, they made sure to set up a small shop that bought any skill or spell book that the players didn’t want.

As for the materials and other drops?

They didn’t have a way to check if the players placed everything in the bag, but unless every player made sure to skim off the same amount, sooner or later a trend would be created from the drop amount. And if you were reporting less than the average drop rate… well, you would soon get a visit from some concerned people.

In the future, there were compilations of people being caught. The officials of the country were very efficient.

A few minutes later they were standing in front of the tree and the swirling portal. The blended green and brown lights were rather mesmerizing.

[Fracture: Vividora Outpost #42]

[A frequently used outpost near the capital city Vividora. After the fractures, it was quickly occupied by the country’s soldiers and now it is in the process of being transformed into a small village, all centered around the portal leading to the fracture. No drunken shenanigans!]

[Time Limit: No Limit]

[Charges: Unlimited]

Sam took a look at his teammates and nodded.

“Shall we?”

Inside, the tree was reminiscent of the first fracture they braved, though with fewer spiders (to everyone’s relief) and more forest animals.

The first level, as they headed upwards, contained rabid rabbits, hulking hogs, and furious foxes. They dropped meat, fur, leather, and other animal products with a few reagents here and there. Not big money, but consistent money.

They went through poor animals like Dan’s precious plasma through butter. Even Clarissa’s spells managed to vaporize poor rabbits, to the dismay of Katie, who thought they were cute.

Sadly, all rabbits were either too rabid or ran away in fear thanks to the girl’s eldritch aura.

His teammates were rather disappointed in the haul, but Sam just bade them to be patient. The Fracture had several more levels.

The second level was filled with even more of the same animals, but they were giants. Once again, destroyed rather easily.

On the third level, the giant animals began to use earth or nature magic, and in turn, started to drop magical material. Sam already earmarked some nice fox fur he would use to commission some gifts.

By the time they reached the fifth level, his teammates weren’t complaining.

Not when they had to beat back hordes of rabbits using earth magic to appear from under their feet while giant hogs, clad in poisonous thorn armor, charged at them.

On the sixth level, the foxes began to use illusions.

Thankfully, with their Mana Senses and Katie’s indiscriminate murder-blender playstyle, the illusions weren’t really that effective. Though it was rather annoying to clean the blood off after Katie got going.

Unfortunately, while the experience points and regular drops kept coming, they didn’t even have one rare drop. Sam felt it was a pity, as there was a pretty good illusion skill book that he wanted that dropped here. But that was rare even in the future where they perfected the art of farming this fracture so he wasn’t disappointed. Much.

On the seventh and last floor, they faced a gigantic rabbit as a final boss, who transformed into a giant boar when defeated, only to transform into a giant fox that in the end turned out to be an extremely powerful illusion cast by a very old and gray rabbit who was crushed by a crying Katie.

They reappeared at the other side of the tree, only to be greeted by a politely smiling official.

“Welcome back, adventurers! If you would follow me, we can deal with the taxes,” he stated with a firm look on his face as if already expecting an argument.

“What if we want to go for another run? Can we deal with that after we’re finished?” Sam asked politely.

The man blinked and nodded after a few seconds. He reached into one of his pockets, took out a slip of paper, wrote a few words, and then stamped it both with a physical stamp and a small amount of mana.

“Here, take this and have it stamped every time you finish the fracture.”

“Thank you!” Sam took the paper and placed it into his inventory, then turned to his friends and smiled.

“How about another round?”