Might as Well

“Want to talk about it?”

“No!”

“Are you sure!”

“Yes!”

Sam watched with a furrowed brow as Katie stormed away, uncharacteristically serious. He shared a glance with Clarissa and Dan, but both of them just shrugged. They had even less idea of what had just happened. And Sam had no idea…

He jogged next to Katie and took a deep breath.

“So, what’s up with that girl?”

Katie instantly whirled around and grabbed his shoulders, shook him a little while, looking directly in the eye. “Did you make a deal with her?”

“Um, no…”

She sagged a little and let go of his shoulders. “Good. Nothing good comes from dealing with that cow!”

Sam wisely said nothing.

Katie also stayed silent for a second, then continued. “I went to school with that cow! You can’t believe anything she says! I definitely didn’t put a glitter bomb in her locker! I also didn’t soak her socks in milk, then let it dry and put it back in her bag. And I most definitely didn’t redesign the cheerleader uniform to say Suckleader and exchange all her uniforms with it!”

Looking directly into the fervent eyes of the smaller girl, Sam did what anyone sane would do.

“I’m sure you didn’t do that, Katie,” he agreed with her.

They stared at each other while their other two teammates watched the exchange with interest.

“Just out of curiosity, what did she not do in return?”

Katie just scowled in response and crossed her arms in front of her.

“Alright, then what do you want me to do with her?” he asked, then he smirked mischievously. “She offered me space in her guild, you know…”

“What? How dare she! You cannot do that, Sam! No! I won’t allow it!” came the vehement refusal from the girl.

“I refused, Katie…”

“Oh..,” she looked taken aback for a moment, then nodded. “Good. Nothing good comes from associating with that cow!”

Sam just sighed.

“She’ll come after me after this, you know that right?” he asked exasperatedly.

Katie nodded, and the fire was back in her eyes.

“I will protect you! I still have some leftover glitter bombs and I know where she lives!” she promised with a fist pump.

“Please don’t do that…”

Dan and Clarissa just tried not to laugh behind them.

The rest of the way back to the city, they mainly listened to Katie explain their sordid history with Isabella and how it was definitely not her fault.

Once again confirming that the girl was bonkers.

They arrived back and separated to refuel and take a little break before returning to grinding. Sam spent the time answering messages from Lucy and Liz and getting caught up on some happenings with the company.

The company was heading in the right direction and the income was enough to fuel their expansions for the while. With the access to the sea in Deepanchor and the support of the Silvercrest family, their economic supremacy in Ironwood was all but guaranteed. In other cities, it was a little different, but they were well on their way to becoming big players in the Emerald Kingdom. Sadly, a lot of people saw their success and were imitating them. However, not all of them could get the same level of support from the local nobility or rulers, so their success was a hit-and-miss.

Plus, the crafting skill Liz got made their Heavenly Forest still the best among all the luxury accommodations. There were several videos about it on Shadowland, with comprehensive reviews (naturally behind paywalls). It was pretty sweet that he didn’t even have to advertise it.

After an hour, the others returned, Katie somewhat calmer, with Puffball in her hand being petted into bliss.

He stood up from his seat at the café and walked up to them.

“Ready for another round?”

“I’m burning with excitement!” Dan responded, raising his hands in the air and waving them around.

Clarissa gave the man a sidelong glance and nodded. “I’ve restocked and am ready for another run.”

“We have to make sure we’re stronger than that stupid cow!” exclaimed Katie with Puffball jumping up on her helmet to survey all his domain.

Sam just sighed and waved them toward the city gates.

Their second Fracture target was another outpost made by the city thankfully. Sam really didn’t want to do anything with guilds for now. Already, Lucy and the Silvercrest family had to work overtime just to stymie the groups around Ironwood who decided they wanted to take control of the Fracture and the outpost they had set up.

Thankfully, the Silvercrest family had an expansive spy network, so for now, they were managing. And with Katie’s act, her father was equally distracted by other things to bother them or his company.

The fracture they were heading for was next to a cliff, where the fracture appeared in a small cave only visited by bears and adventurers fleeing from the rain.

Which meant they had to deal with a fracture that had a lot of bears and other bear-like creatures.

However, as they approached the road heading toward the outpost protecting the fracture, just outside of the view of the towers, they were stopped by a group of seedy-looking players.

They dressed trashily and looked like every stereotype of ‘evil’ gamers. Multicolored mohawks everywhere, grungy armor, extra spiky weapons and pervertedly leering at anything that identified as female.

Poor hedgehog.

“Stop there! If you want to access the fracture, you have to pay up!” The lead idiot exclaimed while the rest of them laughed like hyenas.

“Hahahaha! Maybe you could have some fun with us, eh?” one of them leered at Clarissa.

“You do know that the guards will have your ass for this, right?” he asked, making the barest attempt to avoid the inevitable aggressive negotiation.

“Hahahaha!” the idiots laughed. Their leader grinned at him and began loudly explaining their plan. Like a chump he was. “We have them distracted so we can do whatever we want! And we want to take a toll! So, pay up or suffer!”

‘Wow…’ he thought, amazed at the idiocy in front of him.

A quick pass over them with his Mana Sense told him everything he needed to know.

“Dan, make them burn…”

The rest of the trip was miraculously empty of any more idiots, though they still made a report about them at the gate.

The officer taking Sam’s report just let out a tired sigh.

“Another group?”

“Got a lot of them?” Sam asked commiseratingly.

The man just nodded tiredly.

“Every other day there is another group that thinks it's such a smart idea to set up shop, just outside of the view of the towers. As if we didn’t patrol. Then they try to distract us with something else…” he explained while writing down the details of their encounter. “Thankfully, there is always someone ready to clean them up, so we don’t have to do too much, but it’s still annoying.”

Sam took the receipt the overworked city official offered him and pocketed it.

“Why don’t you have adventurers patrol the area to take care of them?”

“And have them turn into another toll-taking group? Tried already, didn’t really work out…”

Sam scratched his chin in thought.

“Then why don’t you extend the outpost to the crossroad?”

The officer looked up at him thoughtfully.

“Could work… Anyway, thanks for reporting. Have fun in the fracture!” he said, offering his hand for a shake.

Sam shook it and left the room behind.

The outpost was almost the same as the other one, seeing as it was built by the same people, but while the other was centered around a giant tree this one was a half circle, and in the center of the straight side was the cave where the fracture was.

The people from the city had expanded the cave and inserted a few supporting columns to make sure as many people as possible could access the fracture.

Even now, there was a steady stream of people coming in and out of the silver-brown portal.

The crowd was even bigger than back at the other fracture.

Sam could see several big groups that dressed rather low-key, in a rather familiar manner.

‘Gold farmers…’

Among those people, there were always at least a few scary-looking individuals directing the blandly dressed people around who looked around apathetically.

The only good thing he could say was that the gold farming groups that operated so openly weren’t the worst. They were still farming gold without any break and only paid the least possible amount to the people who did the actual farming, but they made sure they didn’t suffer and had them work in shifts.

The worst one used migrants, or those who had nowhere to go. Locked into some seedy apartment and forced to play the game without pause at the threat of starvation, or worse.

Sadly, to his knowledge, while the developers behind the game tried to fight against those kinds of gold farmers, it was and would always be an uphill battle. They were always operating in the dark, through several cutouts and whenever the police managed to bust one, they would burn a patsy and set up shop somewhere else.

And the leaders atop those organizations were always affluent people, well protected from the long arm of the law.

The presence of these groups made sense, as the fracture had a habit of dropping silver and other valuable ores. Granted, one would expect that this would cause massive inflation, but thankfully the game developers made several consumables that used silver or silver powder as an ingredient.

Most of those consumables would be used until the very late game.

For example, several resistance potions required a pinch of silver powder that the potions used to cling to the surface they were applied to.

Thus, it was economically sound to mine the poor fracture to death.

And they were here to join the crowd that was excited to delve into the bear-infested caverns.

They went through the registration, got the bag for the loot, and received a bunch of warnings about drop bears.

They entered the fracture without any further fanfare.

[Fracture: Vividora Outpost #37]

[An outpost built around an old cave that was home to a lone bear ages ago but stood empty until a fracture appeared in it. The government of Vividora runs the outpost and everybody who causes any trouble is going to be punished by the full force of the army of the country.]

[Time Limit: No Limit]

[Charges: Unlimited]

The inside of the fracture looked like a cave, hewn from the rock with the claws of some kind of animal.

ROAAAAR

A normal-sized bear charged at them, with its claws shining with a metallic sheen and eyes filled with madness.

“Ready team?” Sam asked as he unsheathed his sword. Dan took out his giant mace that was already sizzling, Katie naturally began to cackle while eldritch yellow light began to cover her body and Clarissa simply began casting buffs on them. “Let’s go! I want a bear rug!”

The first floor of the fracture was a simple maze of caverns, full of angry bears with metallic claws that wanted to tear them apart.

As the fracture was around Level 60, they had their work cut out for them.

In turn, their levels were practically shooting up.

Sam still hadn’t checked his notifications, wanting to make sure he had mastered his current skills. Plus, he wanted to work on the advice he got back at the Training Hall.

Every time he fought, he tried to minimize his movements as much as possible. By the time they reached the end of the first floor, he felt like he was starting to get the hang of it.

The second level was still filled with bears with metal claws, but they were Rock Bears. Dan took over leading the group, as he was the most familiar with those kinds of monsters.

The drops were pretty good, mostly from a monetary viewpoint.

They got silver ore, iron ore, some magical ores, and a few crystal reagents here and there of which the biggest ones were earmarked for Liz, but otherwise nothing much.

The third floor had much bigger bears, the rock on their bodies starting to transform into proper metal.

On the fourth floor, the metal on the bears fully transformed, and the drops of silver ores grew in number.

Finally, on the fifth floor, the silver metal has fully taken over the bears, creating silver golems in the shape of bears.

They took a little rest at the beginning of the fifth floor after defeating the first golem.

“Let’s rest here for a moment…” Sam said as he sat down on a stray rock. “These bears are rather exhausting.”

“Tell me about it, boss!” Dan agreed with him. “I thought those Rock Bears were annoying near Ironwood, but these are much harder to melt…”

Clarissa just groaned. She had been overworked thanks to her shielding spells. Katie really liked to charge into the enemy, but she wasn’t high-leveled enough to survive more than one or two strikes from the enraged bears even with her berserker skills and armor enhanced by the Old Ones.

Sam looked over at Katie, ready to explain to the excitable girl once again why charging into the middle of mad bears made of metal wasn’t the best idea when he saw that she was scowling.

“What happened?” he asked.

She looked back at him and made a hopeless motion toward her screen, which was only visible to her.

“That cow keeps sending me messages…”

“Alright, put that down and come here. We need a tactics meeting.”

She looked back at the screen, then at Sam, repeating the motion a few times, before sighing and making a motion that hopefully meant she closed down the messaging application.

“Now come here, and please, for all that is unholy, listen to what I’m saying!”

“Sure thing, Sam!” chirped the girl, her earlier mood already forgotten.

“Okay, Katie, this is very simple.”

Katie nodded enthusiastically.

“Do. Not. Charge. Into. The. Group. Of. Metal. Bears!”