Might as Well

They spent a good amount of time discussing business.

Lucy went over the happenings, but ultimately, it wasn’t anything interesting. With the seal of the Silvercrest family on their recommendation, a lot of doors opened and a lot more doors stayed closed that otherwise would have opened when a new business wanted to set up in the city of Ironwood.

Sam made sure that she still had enough money to continue with their plans, then jumped to the next topic after receiving confirmation.

“What’s the next step?”

“I already had the team start on the warehouse renovation,” answered Lucy as she organized the papers on her desk. “I’ll let them get a head start on it, as people will be more likely to rent storage area with the insane farming levels, then move half the team on to one of the housing projects.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “What about the luxury building?”

“Still in the planning phase,” came the answer immediately. “I have a friend who is an architect. I had them mock up a few things.”

“In-game or out?”

“Both,” Lucy answered, then retrieved a file from one of her drawers and passed it over to Sam.

He opened the file, and it was filled with very nice and detailed drawings, both artistic and technical, about the planned building.

Sam spent a few minutes looking through them, but as his only connection to architecture was system architecture, he couldn’t tell much about the technical drawings, but he quite liked the artistic renditions of the building. It was understated and minimalist, yet exhibited an aura of nobility. Just what guests of a certain type would expect.

“Honestly, Lucy, this looks amazing.” Lucy visibly perked up after the praise. “But can he be trusted?”

“She. And yes.”

“Good. Bring her in as a full-time employee. Have her sign a contract both here and out of the world.”

“Confidentially?”

“Yeah…”

“Alright. I’ll ask her.”

“Thank you.”

There was a small moment of silence as Lucy made a few notes. When Sam saw she was finished, he continued.

“Also make sure that every worker who works on the project, let’s call it Project Honey,” Lucy sent him a deadpan glare, but he just shrugged with an easy smile. “signs a confidentiality agreement. Make it very elaborate. Play up the hush-hush aspect of the entire thing. Also, tell the project manager that they should be okay to accept bribes, but we need a list of who paid and how much.”

Lucy stared at him for a full minute, then let out a small snort.

“You’re evil.”

Sam just smiled at her.

When he wasn’t planning his ascension to a powerful player in Magic Unbound, he usually fell back on his old hobby.

Reading.

He mostly spent his time reading about the history of the world, trying to see where the differences were. Most historical figures were the same, but the events that happened around them were subtly different. And he just read about the history of the potato and thought he might as well try a similar tactic.

“Also, start looking for a proper managing team for the luxury building. We want them to look distinguished and posh.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

“Try making connections to groups of crafters. I want to sponsor one and develop it into a crafter guild or company, depending on how things go.”

Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded, and began writing again.

“Also, do you have an email address I can send stuff to? It would be nice if we could communicate outside of the game…”

Lucy stared at him for a second, scrutinizing him before answering with an email address.

Sam and Lucy spent a little more time arranging the details of the company projects, but then Sam was shooed out by Lucy as she was going to a meeting.

Feeling victorious, Sam returned to the Cloudy Day Inn to talk to the owner of said establishment. Unfortunately, Andrea was in, so he had to ‘suffer’ through her emotional goodbye.

“My dear, Samuel and Lucky! I shall miss your radiant presence in my fair establishment!” exclaimed the big woman.

Sam watched, deadpan, as the big woman cried crocodile tears as she desperately hugged Lucky’s neck. The happy wolf just sat there, panting, his tongue lolling out in happiness. With his increased size, the two of them together looked like normal-sized dog and their owner.

“I mean, I still need to eat…” he mumbled, wanting to get out of the awkward situation. The rest of the people in the building either stared at them with open curiosity or were laughing their asses off.

Andrea moved so fast that to Sam it seemed she teleported as suddenly as she was standing in front of him, grabbing his hand in her own. Her eyes shined with unshed crocodile tears and she was also beaming with a megawatt smile.

“Yeah?”

“Excellent!” came the joyous exclamation from the woman as she let go of Sam’s hand and began cheering.

At least several eyes moved on from Sam toward her movement.

After a few seconds, she calmed down, though she was still beaming, and spoke up.

“I’d hate to tell my friend Sarah that her protégé had given up on enjoying my welcoming presence!”

“Sure?”

Andrea may have said something, but it was smothered in laughter from the people watching and the woman’s squeals as she did her best to hug poor Lucky to death.

After escaping the inn and making a thankfully not magical oath to return to eat there, he decided it was time to pick up another big quest.

Sam knew about several quests in the area, though thanks to him foiling the Monster Break, most of them would never happen now. Or maybe they would start differently. Thankfully, there were several of them that wouldn’t be affected by the absence of the catastrophic event.

With Lucky safely hidden in his shadow, the Chameleon mask active on his face, and a low-quality sword hanging from his belt, he began to walk around the city.

The tension was still there, but more than likely the guilds that were at each other’s throats not so long ago realized that something was not kosher and maybe began talking, or moved their focus onto other things.

He did a quick check-in at the Auction House, but nothing interesting was being auctioned, so he just unloaded a few items he gathered during his quests. Mostly, some of the more high-quality weapons and armors he looted back from the bandits’ hideout.

Thankfully, in Magic Unbound, items didn’t really have levels or associated damage values. A sword didn’t do 4-6 damage. It did as much damage as the metal (or other material) it was made of could do at the speed the players were swinging it.

It made evaluating the value of a piece of equipment much harder, but it prevented the usual equipment farming prevalent in other MMOs. People only changed their weapons when their blacksmiths found a way to craft better ones, or their enchanters figured out another enchantment, not when they found one that did one more damage.

It emphasized the talent of the players and creative skill use, instead of every fight becoming an arithmetic problem. That was why players’ health and mana didn’t grow with level up. They would only grow from skills that anyone could acquire (technically) or status points that can be worked for.

While some people were still stronger than most of the player base, it still eliminated the fact that in most games, those who were higher level had an insurmountable gap between them and the newer players.

In this way, if the higher leveled player didn’t pay attention to their health because they used their strength to make sure everything died before they could be attacked, then they could be taken down by a newbie.

Sadly, for the rest of the player base, Sam was cheating.

As he walked up to the objective of his walk-around, he observed the other players who were also entering said building or leaving it either happy, exhausted, or angry.

The building was a rather simple affair. A big Square with equally big doors, and behind it a giant yard, filled with all manner of people training with familiar and unfamiliar equipment.

Sam knew for a fact that the only reason this building was allowed inside the city was that every year there was a humongous amount of money spent on sound and smell enchantments that prevented them from reaching the population.

He dodged around the throngs of people and entered through the simple doors.

Instantly, he was hit by the smell. The smell of sweat and exhaustion could be almost seen physically in the air. Sam felt as if he was walking underwater. Instead of water, however, it was perspiration.

He felt like he should be casting Clean on himself continuously.

Cautiously, Sam walked around people going to and fro, and approached one of the workers that were just standing around, watching out for people.

“Hello!”

The worker, a young man, turned towards him and, as a greeting, flexed his pectoral muscle at him through his thin undershirt.

“Hey! Need anythin’?”

“Yeah. Want to talk to somebody for training with swords,” Sam said while slapping his sword on his hip.

The medieval gym bro glanced at the sword and then took a long measuring look at Sam, evaluating him.

Then he grunted and turned around and began to walk away. Sam, somewhat familiar with gym lingo, simply followed him.

After a short walk, they left the building and approached a part of the giant courtyard, where a harsh-looking man, equally jacked as his impromptu guide as well as dressed in the same style was yelling at several players holding swords, or sword adjacent weapons.

“Balance! Balance! My grandmother could disarm you and she can’t even lift a broom!”

Several people changed their stances, and the man grunted either in satisfaction or despair. Sam couldn’t tell.

“Alright, you sad try-hards! Let’s do a break here! You guys go away and rethink your life!”

The assorted people let out a giant sigh of relief and, with forced calm, began to power walk away from the man. He then turned towards Sam and his guide, who stepped forward and motioned toward Sam with a different type of grunt. Seeing the other man’s nod, Sam’s guide gave him a small wave and walked away.

The trainer, hearing the grunt, immediately began to examine him.

“What do ya’ want?”

“Training.”

“With what?”

“Sword.”

“Show me.”

Sam nodded and unsheathed his sword. He took a deep breath, trying to slip into a meditative mindset, then began to execute the basic sword arts that he had learned from his inherited memories and mixed with a few things he thought would be useful.

He moved through the movements that had become familiar over his time in the game. A few months ago, back in his old life (and old, somewhat overweight body), he would have never imagined that he would have been this into swordsmanship.

Sam stepped, lunged, and slashed. He moved through the forms, imagining as the monsters he had fought were in front of him. Slowly, but surely, he slipped into a rhythm and he could only hear his own heartbeat and the whistling noise of the sword.

He didn’t know when, but he was roused from his routine by a harsh grunt.

“That’s enough, boy.”

Sam stopped mid-lunge and took a deep breath. Ignoring the notifications flashing in the corner of his vision, he turned towards the trainer. He absentmindedly noted that he was drenched in sweat and his limbs were trembling.

Apparently, his meditation mindset worked.

He took another deep breath and looked at the man.

The man, instead of saying anything, flexed all of his upper-chest muscles and began walking around him, humming gently.

The older man walked around, and then finally stopped right in front of Sam. For some reason, he once again flexed at Sam. It was kinda awkward because he felt that he should be flexing back, but he had no idea how to do it.

“Good. Do it again.”

And that’s how the rest of his day was spent. He went through his routines while the trainer walked around him and quietly corrected his stance with a few pokes of a stick, or gave him some advice about something he did.

It was rather educational. Because, while he had his memories, they didn’t always come with explanations. So, it helped him put everything he knew (which wasn’t much) about swordsmanship in order.

Finally, after Sam was totally exhausted, limbs shaking and he could barely hold the sword in his hand, the old trainer once again raised his voice.

“Stop!”

Sam stopped and had to actively fight against the instinct to collapse to the floor. Instead, he began to cool down.

While he did that, the trainer began talking.

“You’ve little talent, but you work hard. Fundamentals are good, your body is in shape. Can’t teach you much. You need better trainers.”

Sam was still breathing heavily, so made to speak up, but before he could gather enough oxygen to speak, the other man continued to talk.

“But! I can run you through our graduation test. That will help you achieve your goals.” He frowned a little as he ran his eyes over Sam’s body. “And maybe get a little muscle on your bones…”

“Thank…you…” Sam finally managed to spit out between taking in big gulps of air. “When?”

“Go home, and rest. Come back tomorrow. I’ll take you there,” came the answer. And with one last flex, the muscled man turned around and left towards the building.

With great effort, cursing the realism of the game, Sam managed to crawl back to the office building and as he trudged up the stairs, he made a note to talk with Lucy about getting someone to invent a magical elevator.

Finally, he staggered into his apartment, threw off his stinky clothes, and fell face-first into his new bed. Lucky appeared directly over his own bed, landing on it with a small huff.

Sam turned around, looking up at the ceiling, then as his last action before logging out to get rid of the exhaustion he was feeling, opened his notifications.

[Mana Body Enhancement is now Level 25!]

[Mana Influenced Body is now Level 2!]

[Mana Body is now Level 7!]

[Meditation is now Level 25!]

[Thanks to mastering Meditation and taking another step towards enlightenment, you learned the skill Active Meditation!]

[Active Meditation: Level 0/50 (0%) You mastered the basics of meditation, which allows you to meditate while moving. You need to meditate for 100 seconds stationary before you can activate this skill. It decreases your stamina and endurance consumption while increasing your mana regeneration.]

Sam managed to scrounge up enough energy to smile a little. Active Meditation was the bread and butter of every warrior. After maxing out the skill, it would be able to be activated instantly, not to mention the sub-skills it would provide. It was very useful for a wide variety of situations. Several monk-type players did some ridiculous things with Active Meditation in his inherited memories. He wanted to replicate those things…

[Shadow Footwork is now Level 27!]

[Intermediate Breathing Technique is now Level 7!]

[Calm Heart is now Level 24!]

[Flow is now Level 16!]

[Freeform Defense is now Level 2!]

[Intermediate Sword Mastery is now Level 15!]

[Thanks to an instructor’s help, you gained the sub-skill, Strong Grip!]

[Strong Grip: Level 0/5 (0%) (Passive) Your grip is strong. Enemies will have a harder time separating you from your chosen weapon.]

[Thanks to a competent teacher pointing out your mistakes, you broke through with the skill, Intermediate Sword Mastery!]

[You gained the skill, Advanced Sword Mastery!]

[Advanced Sword Mastery: Level 0/20 (0%) (Passive) You stepped into a realm where you can call yourself a swordsman without embarrassment. You know how to handle the sword and how to be deadly with it. Further increases the damage done with swords. Decreases the mana and stamina required for sword-related skills.]

Strong Grip was one of the most common skills, but then it was something that could be gained by anybody who spent any time under the tutelage of a trainer. Still, it was nice to know that the rumor that if you went to the Training Hall with all stats at least at 15, then you would be fast-tracked to the graduation test. He didn’t want to spend at least one in-game month in the Hall, so this worked out well for him.

He turned off the screens and with the last dregs of energy, he clicked on the logout button.