Might as Well

After another hour of constantly rushing towards his goal, only stopping every few minutes to make sure his heading was correct, Sam finally stopped at a clearing, as even his prodigious Mana Regeneration couldn’t keep up with his use of Shadow Cloak.

As he stood, resting a little bit, he had a decision to make. Either he waited for his mana to regenerate and then continue, or go ahead without using it.

It wasn’t like he was in a real rush…

Yes, the guilds were trying to hunt the trolls into extinction in their greed for the skill book that everybody wanted, but they were pretty far from reaching the area where he was headed. But still, currently, most players were dedicated and hardcore gamers. Gamers only like a few things: finding secrets, collecting loot, and being the first.

And nothing attracted curious and fame-hungry gamers more than a secret area.

No matter how much something is hidden, somebody, somewhere, would find it.

And Sam couldn’t allow someone to overtake him.

Feeling as if his breathing was coming under control, he turned to his status screen and clicked around the settings for a little while. Sam would be going into a high-stakes environment, and he didn’t want to be distracted by a wrongly timed pop-up. So, he turned off the skill level-up notifications and only left those that would inform him of status effects and the like.

Thankfully, the game had the option to set a notification profile, as well as the capability to save multiple profiles. He set the current one as Basic and the new one as High Tempo.

Then he did a few stretches, checked his equipment for the last time and, without activating his Shadow Cloak, shot off again in the direction of the forest where the Chalice was said to be hidden.

Sam pivoted, slashing down with his sword, bisecting the giant grasshopper of all things, then at the same time jumped back as another launched itself at him. He didn’t have to react as Lucky crashed into the grasshopper with an eager howl.

He didn’t even get to watch the carnage unfolding as, with an eery sound, several more grasshoppers jumped at him from behind several bushes, and he was once again in a fight for his life.

“Why grasshoppers?” but the only answer to his question were cricket sounds in the background.

He just sighed at the stupidity and went back to massacring the giant, unnatural grasshoppers as they tried to aggressively hop at him and Lucky. The silly wolf looked like he was having the time of his life.

Half an hour later, he was standing in the middle of a field filled with corpses of giant grasshoppers, breathing heavily, but smiling triumphantly.

‘Apparently, the first hurdle is done…’ was his first thought, and then he froze.

Lucky watched as his master froze for a second, then walked up to the nearest tree and began to bang his head into it while yelling.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Sam stopped trying to use concussion to make his idiotic brain forget the fight, and then went to the nearest corpse.

He quickly infused a drop of mana into the tip of his sword, then thrust the sword into the still corpse. He grabbed hold of the drop of mana and, with a violent motion, had it burst inside the carcass.

Instead of an explosion of gore, he was rewarded by the grasshopper corpse turning rainbow-colored, and then, in the next instant, shattering into a million little pieces and sinking into the ground, vanishing from sight.

“Of course they are illusions! You were told it is using illusions…” he grumbled under his breath as he spread his mana as thin as possible and enveloped all the corpses he could see and sense. Then the next second the entire scene was filled with rainbow light, then nothing but the slightly torn-up forest, no grasshopper, but a very confused Lucky sitting in the middle.

Sam just sat down next to the confused Lucky with a huff and began petting the wolf.

After trying to ignore his blunder, Sam took a breather, and continued on his journey, while lambasting himself for forgetting that he was dealing with an illusion-using monster. Though at least he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in the correct place.

He took hold of part of his mana and expelled it from his body, trying to spread it as thin as possible while still keeping it connected to himself.

Sam knew from his inherited memories that illusions could be broken. Few and far were those that couldn’t, and most of those were either cast by legendary mages or anchored to artifacts deep in ancient ruins.

When he judged that the mana was spread far enough from him, in a crude globe, he paused for a second, then began to vibrate the mana in the surrounding cloud.

To his dismay, the scene of the forest rushing past him shattered, and he found himself back in a very familiar field, with a very confused Lucky sitting in the middle and watching him with concern.

“Fuuuuuuuh…”

He sighed and began rolling up (metaphorically) his sleeves.

‘This is going to take a while.’

Sam’s second attempt went almost the same. He shot off towards his direction with the cloud of illusion-disrupting mana already primed, yet the moment he activated it, he found himself back in the clearing.

Just to make sure he wasn’t imagining, and holding to the adage that ‘if you can’t repeat it, it ain’t science’, he did two more times, exactly the same.

And his experiments were validated. It took exactly the same time to break the illusion and find himself back in the empty field.

Then he went out without the disruption field and just kept rushing ahead, pumping his Body Enhancement to the maximum.

However, after a few minutes, he noticed something that he overlooked the first time. Some trees were repeating themselves.

‘Oh, look, this is the second time I've seen that flower…’ Sam remarked to himself as he slowed down and stopped in front of a simple yellow flower resembling a marigold. With a quiet sigh, he activated his disruption field and found himself back in the clearing, with a very confused Lucky, who watched him with a tilted head, and a tongue lolling out.

For the next hour, he tried several ways to escape the situation. He tried going super fast, super slow, tried it backward, sideways, even zig-zagging but nothing worked. He tried going back towards the Candle rock, but even when he tried to leave the place, he still found himself back in the clearing where he fought the illusionary grasshoppers.

He tried staying in the clearing and disrupting the illusion by stretching his mana even further, but the only thing that happened was that he heard a small noise, akin to a crystal globe shattering, and nothing more. Afterwards, the way out was still blocked by the illusion.

Sam even tried going out, as if heading towards his goal, and then just unleashing some devastating attacks. The only response to that was a giant army of grasshoppers swarming him and the burning forest around him. While Sam appreciated the opportunity to practice and hone his sword skills, it was not the goal he was aiming for.

So, feeling a little frustrated, he let out a yell and charged into the horde of grasshoppers with Lucky at his side.

He made sure his stance was solid, but otherwise, he kept spamming his skills, trying to get a true feel for them, practicing with them, and so on.

Lucky was just having fun…

For half an hour, after getting almost killed by a kaiju-sized grasshopper and quickly shattering the illusions, he logged out, took a water break and tried to organize the information he acquired into something resembling a form.

Luckily, by the time he returned to the game, he had something approaching a game plan.

He continued as he did before, trying different things, charging this and that way. Shooting off attacks at random things, pretending to be getting angry.

A few times, just for the fun of it, he redid the Attack of Grasshopper scenario. He found it rather therapeutic…

But finally, after several hours of fruitless action, he felt he was ready.

It was a risky move, but based on the hints and information he gathered from his inherited memories, and his actual knowledge of mythology and somewhat dubious knowledge he gained from reading all those iskeai and gaming novels.

For a moment, he closed his eyes, resisted the temptation to check the skill level-up notifications, as he knew the system took that into account when determining results and enemy strength, even the final reward sometimes, then opened them, and for the last time he rushed off, directly towards his goal, burning enough mana to make a lot of mages jealous.

Then, just as Sam did so many tries previously, he reached inside himself, grasped the mana circulating there, drew out a good chunk of it, and using the by now routine ability, and with a small twist of his mana, shattered the illusionary world around him.

Sam found himself back in the clearing, still as he left it, though with a few more craters and scars. Lucky was again, back in the middle, watching him confusedly. The poor thing had no idea what was going on…

Then Sam started on his plan.

“What the hell? What the frick is going on?” he exclaimed, acting as angry as he could be, while stomping around, making sure that his mana was churning around him, showcasing his anger.

He continued to do this for a few minutes, angrily jumping and stomping around the clearing without any aim. Then, after completing a circle around the now worried Lucky, he stealthily reached inside his inventory and retrieved the sparklescale powder he purchased just in case, and began to prepare it.

Sparklescale powder came from grinding down scales of the Sparkescale Mollusk, which could be found in certain seas, but could be bred pretty easily anywhere, with some know-how. Their scaled shell was pretty good at disrupting magic, and if the Sparklescale Mollusk was allowed to mature, that disruption turned into outright magic resistance. They were pretty hard enemies to defeat for mages.

Slowly, under the cover of his churning mana, he separated a tiny thread of mana, and enveloped the small leather bag in his hands that contained the powder. Holding it as if it was a snow globe. Still continuing his angry stomp through the clearing, and when he was in the middle with Lucky jumping out of his way with a small yelp, he suddenly stopped, and with a flex of his will, shot the globe of mana containing the bag of sparklescale powder, and with another exertion of his will detonated the bag over the clearing.

Instantly, sparkling powder began falling on the clearing like snow and, with his senses cranked up to eleven, he could immediately feel the illusionary construct around him waver.

Yet, he knew it wasn’t the same as when Sam did the same with his own mana. After all, he was rather amateurish with his attempts and the scale powder was permanent and one would defend against it differently than against simple mana disruptions.

His hope was that the monster was originally from the area and had no knowledge of the intricacies of the deep sea mollusk lives.

And as he reined in his own churning mana, while slowly petting Lucky as he sat practically on his legs, he looked around and couldn’t help but let out a satisfied smile as his eyes zeroed on an area near the edge of the clearing next to a most stereotypical tree stump that Sam had ever seen.