Might as Well

Their trip toward the mountains was as leisurely as possible.

They discussed current news about the world of Magic Unbound as well as a few real-world events. When they ran out of topics to talk about, Sam began explaining the concept of Evolution Ritual in case they managed to find mounts or familiars for the rest of the team.

He didn’t have the time to deep dive into the topic, but he had Lucy do a little research about the topic and had been reading the copied material in his free time. After all, the other Sam didn’t really know much about runes, so he wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

Plus, he wanted to see if he could improve on the process. It was a long shot, but it was an interesting project.

They made sure to stop for a few minutes at the entrance to the mine shaft where the fracture was that the Silvercrest family controlled. Long lines of players were waiting to get underground, and the area on one side was full of people yelling loudly, trying to put together competent teams to challenge the fracture. On the other side, exiting the underground structure were exhausted but happy people, returning from challenging the fracture, either boasting to each other, and the surroundings or simply waving around their newfound items.

Sam suspected they would be deprived of said objects in short order after leaving the vicinity of the mine shaft entrance based on some covetous looks on people’s faces.

Satisfied that the business was going well, they simply walked through the crowd and stepped upon the road that led through the mountains. It was still an area that was patrolled by the guards of Ironwood and a lot of adventurers so, they didn’t really expect much action.

The winding road only went up midway through a small mountain, but even at its highest point, you could see the forests surrounding the base of the mountains and the plains of the Emerald Kingdom.

Sam and his team were attacked by a few lone earth golems, but they were quickly defeated by Lucky while they didn’t even stop to look at the monsters.

A few hours after they started their journey, they reached a rest station up in the mountains. It was a flat recess in the mountainside where the Merchant Association had carved a simple structure into the stone while leaving enough space for a few dozen carts to rest. It was mostly there so that merchants could rest the animals that pulled their wagons, and so that people who ventured deeper into the mountain range would have a base to return to if needed.

Currently, it was empty, so Sam directed his team to one of the tables that was set up so that it provided an excellent view of the surroundings and motioned them to sit down while joining them.

He retrieved the list he was given back at the Association and laid it on the table with a rudimentary map.

“This is one of our tasks,” he waved his hand at the list of materials. “The other one is to look for errant fractures.”

“Do you think there are fractures up in the mountains?” Dan asked.

Clarissa snorted. “Of course, there are. Probably hidden, so we either find it or the monsters inside break free.”

Sam nodded in agreement. “That was my thought, too. There are probably fewer of them up there, as fewer players frequent the area, but my gaming senses tell me that there is treasure up there!”

Clarissa nodded. “No doubt, deep inside jungles and deserts, as well as under the sea, the situation is the same. A few hidden fractures that, if not found, erupt with monster waves. Basic game design, but make sense in the lore.”

“Alright, you convinced me,” Dan said. “What about mounts?”

Sam just shrugged. “There are a lot of weird or powerful monsters up there. There is a chance that we can find something that you would like to tame, or maybe, if we are extremely lucky, we find eggs.”

“Like the one Katie got her crazy cat from?”

“Exactly…”

“Any idea what we could find?”

Sam knew every one of them, as they would become a major export of Ironwood. “Not a clue!” he cheerfully told his friend. “That’s why we are here. To find them! To boldly go where no players have ever gone before!”

“And have sex with them?” Katie asked rapidly, with a mischievous smile on her face.

“Ye… No, Katie.” He replied, glaring at the smaller girl while Clarissa snorted and Dan let out a guffaw. “Bad Katie.”

She just giggled.

Sam was happy to see that his earlier admonishment didn’t diminish her cheer. Now he only needed to see if her behavior also changed in battle.

“Anyway…” he spoke up and began pointing on the crude map. “As you can see the map I managed to get,” read: he asked Lucy to get him one. “is pretty basic. We are going to leave the road here, then go up on this path until we reach there. From there, we have several options, but we can only make decisions up there. Any questions?”

“What kind of opposition can we expect?”

Katie perked up instantly and Dan nodded along to Clarissa’s question.

“Golems. A lot of golems. Goats, bears, and birds of all sizes.”

“Demonic goats?”

“Probably.”

“Cool.”

“Any other questions?”

They all shook their heads, and Sam nodded. “Then a final check of the equipment and we can go!”

Sam watched as they began to open their status screen to check this and that and turned to take in the sights.

The mountain range touching the Emerald Kingdom was breathtaking. It touched several countries as it almost bisected the continent, but to his knowledge, at this time only the rare expeditions tried to approach the middle mountain.

In the future, there would be countless player-led expeditions trying to reach that specific mountain, as it was rumored to hide some great secrets. But thanks to the monsters unleashed by the fractures plus the already present monsters on the mountain that were already pretty strong, nobody had accomplished it according to his inherited memories.

His reason for heading to the mountains was connected to this tangentially.

Years later, there was a monster break that almost destroyed Ironwood and the surrounding area that was found to be originating from up high in the mountains. A fracture that wasn’t cleared finally broke and unleashed a demonic horde of monsters on the world.

And he was here to make use of it. He didn’t know exactly where the fracture was, only that it was around the peak of one of the closest mountains to Ironwood. He hoped that with his Mana Senses stretched to the maximum, he could sense the turbulent mana of the portal and head there directly.

He looked back at his team and saw they were all ready.

“Let’s go! Adventure awaits us!”

Predictably the golems that called the mountains their home began bombarding them with attacks the moment they entered the path leading deeper into the mountain range. However, thanks to Clarissa and Sam’s shields they didn’t really have many problems with the periodical stone avalanches they tried to bury them under.

As the golems weren’t high enough level to provide them with many experience points, they simply ignored them and charged through whenever the simple constructs tried to block their way. Or had Puffball and Lucky have a little fun with them.

Heading deeper, the golems got bigger and rarer, also much calmer. As the earth-attuned mana grew, so did their intelligence. They saw several towering earthen constructs tending to their rock gardens, or simply sitting in the middle of flat space and staring at nothing. They even spotted a smaller one that was spending its time carving figures into rock. The figures themselves were misshapen and unrecognizable to Sam and his team, but the golem seemed to be having fun.

As they went by the golem proudly gestured toward its latest work that reminded Sam of a pool noodle that was halfway melted then somebody tried to use a knife to carve away the melted parts.

They gave the proud golem a small applause and headed higher and deeper.

Leaving behind the eccentric golems, though Sam suspected they walked over a few of them, as he knew from his memories that most of the bigger golems simply sit so long in one place that they become part of the scenery, forming their own mountains.

One theory was that the central mountain was actually an ancient golem that was protecting some insane treasure.

Their first non-golem enemy was, to everybody’s surprise, a goat.

It was the size of a pony with a wicked sharp horn and used its ear-torturing cry as a sonic attack.

Sadly, they didn’t stop it in time, and the first cry echoed around the walls of the mountains, which was soon answered by more and more bleating and rumbling.

“Well, great… Goat avalanche…” Dan muttered as he stared at the quickly destroyed corpse of the goat monster. “Do they even drop anything interesting?”

Clarissa quickly opened up the forums and did a quick search while Sam kept an eye out. He knew the answer, but he didn’t want to become the guy who had all the answers.

“Not much drop research, but the skin, meat, and other products sell for a nice amount. Horns are the most sought-after. The bigger, the better,” she reported after skimming through the forums. “Somebody apparently also got a Sonic Scream skill book…”

“Any good?”

“Eh, according to this, if you don’t have some way to protect your vocal cords you get a debuff after using it…”

“Lame…”

Sam nodded, knowing that such skills could be easy to find. Hell, his body enhancement skills would probably do the trick. A little practice with his mana, and he would be golden.

“We can sell it if it drops unless one of you wants it,” he spoke up as he began dismantling the corpse. “We still need to hunt them. They’re on the list.”

He was sure that his teammates said something, but the next second, another goat monster jumped up to where they were and let loose an earth-shattering scream.

Rubbing his ears after Katie simply shattered the poor beast with one strike, he turned to them. “Channel mana into your ears and coat them with it. That should protect you from most of the damage.”

According to his senses, Clarissa managed on the first try, while Dan took a few tries and by the time he finished salvaging what he could from the second goat, Katie managed to create a bubble of mana around her head, looking through his Mana Sense as if she was walking around with a fishbowl on her head.

They spent the next few hours fighting goats.

The bleaters were pretty easy to deal with when they were alone, but when in groups their screams became brutal barrages that taxed Clarissa and Sam’s shields to the maximum. Still, the materials kept piling up and even the experience points were coming in a non-negligible amount.

They didn’t stay in one place, continuously heading forward with Sam searching with his Mana Sense. Thanks to it, they found a few small deposits of magical ores, but so far nothing interesting.

It was after another battle with a herd of goats that contained a bigger goat than the others (around the size of a small adult horse) that something happened. The monster itself surprisingly didn’t use sonic scream but earth magic to create concave walls of the earth to further reflect the sound coming from its brethren.

Ground Shake was an excellent tool to destroy those walls…

But the event that happened was that something finally pinged at the edges of his Mana Sense.

“I found something!” he called out, and they all stopped harvesting the dead animals surrounding them.

He began turning, looking in the direction his senses were telling him the mana signature was. He raised his hand and pointed.

“There! Something is there!”

His friends stepped up next to him and began straining their eyes to see.

“In that clearing almost opposite of us?”

“Yeah!”

“The one that has only one visible path to it that is teeming with herds of goats?”

“Yeah!”

“The one that has giant birds flying above it? Oh look, one of them just snatched a goat away. Aaand the goat looks tiny in its claws. That one?”

“Yeah…”

Sam looked at the others and motioned toward the rest of the carcasses. “Let’s go deal with the bodies first, then we can do a little more scouting before heading over there.”

Clarissa nodded glumly, as she hated handling dead animals and Dan didn’t answer as he was constantly looking up, probably seeing if any of the giant birds were there to snatch them up. Katie was already butchering one of the goats.

“Ugh, I hate the blood…”

“There is a glove spell, you know…”

Clarissa’s head snapped up, and she stared at Sam, aghast. “THERE IS?”

Sam just looked confused. “They teach it at the Healer Guild. But you need to be part of the guild to learn it. So, it’s the Clean spell for us plebeians…”

Clarissa just stared at him for a few seconds then returned to the butchering while angrily muttering under her breath about annoyingly cryptic teachers while the rest of them shared a glance and tried to keep their giggling to the minimum.