Might as Well

Leaving the Administration Building after the warning, he made a quick stop at the general store to stock up on perishables, but because the mine shafts he had to examine were rather close to the city he didn’t make much more preparations.

He left the city of Ironwood as soon as possible, launching into a run as soon as he cleared the gates.

Thanks to the old trainer, he already knew the way over there, so he simply turned off his brain and ran.

Sam arrived after a half hour of leisurely exertion at the area where he could see the mountainside filled with countless holes that led to abandoned mine shafts, while in the distance he could see the walls protecting the current mining area.

Ignoring the thriving crowd heading toward the mining headquarters, he simply checked his weapons, whispered a few instructions to Lucky, then began to climb the ramps that were carved from the mountain a long time ago.

He kept an eye out for trouble, then activated his Mana Senses, knowing that there was at least one magical artifact, however small. Sam hoped that it would speed up the search. Though as he beheld the mountain with his Mana Sense, he knew why people didn’t succeed before.

The entire area was saturated with mana, probably from the excavation made by all manner of magic, or maybe even by the mountain's own mana.

Sighing a little, he made sure to filter out the background mana radiating from the mountain and headed for the mine shaft.

He knew that the treasure was in the third one, but he needed to make it realistic. Plus, who knows what kind of obstacles the game system would arrange against him.

The first mine shaft was exactly like he expected a mine shaft to be.

It was dark, dusty, and painfully empty.

The ground was littered with debris fallen from the ceiling or mined out of the walls by desperate people looking for gold or any other metal ore to sell. Sam had seen beehives with fewer holes than the walls of the mining shaft.

Taking the map given to him by Old Thomas and his trusty Light Ball spell, he began walking through the tunnels and corridors looking for the elusive treasure. Or at least pretending to search.

He knocked on walls, pulsed his mana sense, and even tried breaking down a few walls to see if it was behind them. But as expected, he found nothing, just even more dust.

Shaking his head theatrically, he put away the first map, took out the next one, and began heading for the exit.

After leaving the first mine shaft, he began climbing the mountainside again.

Entering the second mine shaft, Sam was much more careful as he could sense something flickering with his Mana Sense. Because it was so faint, he couldn’t say for sure what it was, but based on his experience, either it would be something wanting to eat him, or worse.

Cautiously moving forward, Sam had his sword in his hand, his Mana Shield up at hundred percent, and his other hand was ready to let a beefy Wind Blade rip at the slightest provocation. Knowing about the clichés he also made sure to regularly look up at the ceiling. Nobody liked to be surprised by ceiling spiders. Or anything falling from the ceiling.

Sam frowned a little as the mana signals flickered a little more, as if moving around, but because they were really faint, they almost got lost against the background mana of the mountain. So, Sam was really surprised when, by his estimation, in the middle of the mine shaft, something happened. Suddenly, a circular part of the wall popped off and a giant spider, fangs glistening with unknown substances, launched itself at him. Followed by several others.

He would have liked to say that he had dealt with the entire situation calmly and in a collected manner, but that would be a lie.

When he calmed down enough to take stock of the situation, the entire area of the mine shaft, the walls, ceiling, and even the ground were covered by deep grooves after being struck with a barrage of Wind Blades. And surrounding Sam were the diced-up corpses of at least dozens of corgi-sized spiders. At least that was the number he could count. The rest were in so little pieces that he couldn’t even make out their individual parts.

Taking a quick breath, he tried to calm down. ‘Alright, Sam… they are dead…’ After reassuring himself, he quickly harvested the parts that were still in one piece and continued even more cautiously forward.

Despite expecting to be attacked, it was still hard to overcome his instinctual fear of giant spiders attacking him from the darkness.

So, the visit to the second mine shaft was finished with fewer spiders in the tunnels and even more pockmarks and grooves carved everywhere. As well as spider bits everywhere. Everywhere.

Sadly, Sam's level was high enough that the spiders only gave a few experience points, not enough for anything serious. Still, the parts he harvested from the spiders would be useful later on.

Taking a few calming breaths outside of the entrance of the second mine shaft, Sam gave a once over of the map while making sure to mark where he was ambushed by spiders then put it away into his inventory to give it back to Old Thomas with a very stern warning.

Then his eyes zeroed in on the last mine shaft on his list. Retrieving the map, he did a final check and continued his journey upwards on the debris-covered slopes of the mountain.

Arriving before the last entrance, he took another deep breath, and with sword held high, magic ready and his heart steeled, he stepped inside.

Though, he did say a quick prayer for spiders not to appear in this mine shaft…

The last tunnel system looked the same as the previous two, but as he walked deeper and deeper, he noticed that there was a small amount of fog rolling on the floor. And as Sam walked forward, said fog began to fill up the tunnel he was in, making it hard to see.

When he first noticed the fog, he used his Mana Sense to see what was causing it and found a few weird mana signatures deeper inside.

‘Is it an ambush or an ambush? Place your bets, people…’ he mused to himself with a small smirk.

Outwardly, however, he showed nothing on his face. Just simply raised his sword a little higher and continued to walk forward.

Not so surprisingly, nothing happened aside from the fog thickening up to suffocating levels. He could, however, see several holes on the walls that reminded him of the spiders in the previous tunnel.

Shuddering a little, he continued forward, knowing that soon he would be even richer.

Deep in the tunnels, he finally reached a turn that he knew would lead him toward the treasure. However, the fog thickened up enough that even with the Light Ball spell up, he couldn’t see anything.

He had to rely on his Mana Sense so that he could walk forward in a straight line.

Turning on the corner, he had to move fast as a lot of things happened.

He heard a noise like a whip and had to move fast with his sword to protect against the arrow heading straight at his torso. Thankfully, his newest enemies used mana-based skills to guide the arrow, thus he could sense its direction.

CLANG!

The arrow was stopped by his hastily raised sword, covered by his mana.

Immediately a short laugh rang out and Sam could hear footsteps approaching him from the direction the arrow was fired from.

Sam settled into a comfortable stance with the sword held in front of him pointing downwards, ready to parry, and the other hand behind his back, shining with mana, ready to be unleashed.

From the fog, four people appeared. One at the back, decked out in leather armor and his face hidden by a hood, was holding a long bow with another arrow ready to be let fly, aimed at Sam.

‘Basic archer…’

The person on the right of the group was holding a simple staff that Sam could feel radiating minuscule mana. It was shining red, leading Sam to believe that the mage preferred fire magic. At this level, it was rather easy to distinguish the types of magic being cast, as they had usually one nature. Later in the game, where mages could combine mana natures as they liked, it would become exponentially harder.

The man on the left was holding two daggers, so Sam designated him as a rogue, while the man in the middle was holding a circular shield and axe.

“Welcome, stranger!” cried out the man with the shield, banging his axe on his shield. “Are you looking for the treasure?” he asked, his words dripping with sarcasm.

“And if I am?” Sam replied glibly, mentally marking where to attack if diplomacy broke down.

The others laughed when he said that, while the man with the axe just smirked at him.

“Then you’ll only enrich our pockets, my friend. After all, do you think you’re the only one who got that quest from the old fool? He gives it to anyone who goes near him…”

Sam didn’t actually know that as by the time the other Sam heard about the situation with the treasure, the dungeons were everywhere and nobody ever mentioned the quest. Still, it made sense. He did acquire the quest rather easily.

“So?”

The man’s smirk grew even bigger.

“So, that means you either pay us, or we take it from your corpse! Just as we had taken it from many others…” explained the man, satisfaction dripping from his words

Then the mage spoke up, mumbling a little.

“You’re probably going to be the last because we couldn’t ambush you…”

The man holding the axe threw his friend a glare, but in the end, shrugged.

“Well, yeah… A smart man knows when to cut their losses…”

Sam just snorted.

“A smart man would know not to let their enemy prepare!”

His enemies’ eyes grow big after realizing what he had said. The moment the last word left his lips, Sam activated Shadow Burst. He launched himself forward, aiming at the gap between the shield bearer and the dagger-wielding person. He arrived next to the archer, who had enough time to let out a surprised noise before his sword skewered him.

Sadly, the rest of the players playing bandits weren’t too stupid, so Sam had enough time to pull out the sword from the archer’s body, but before he could move again, the mage let loose a rather potent fire missile.

Sam simply raised his hand in front of his face, letting the first layer of his Mana tank the spell.

“Yeah, take that asshole!” came the exclamation from the shield-bearer and apparent leader of the band of idiots.

Sam ignored the damage, and simply let go of the spell that he gathered in his other hand.

A very tightly controlled Wind Bullet barrage slammed into the guy with the shield, though he was fast enough to raise his shield in front of him, which resulted in him being pushed back as several dozen Wind Bullets slammed into his shield.

With the same motion, he ran mana through his sword and let out a smooth vertical Wind Blade with a slash, while at the same time dodging the rogue’s lunge towards him with his daggers sparking with a dangerous light.

The mage wasn’t as fast as his physically focused friend and didn’t manage to put up any protection against Sam’s spell. He fell to the ground short of several parts of his body, oddly reminding Sam of the spiders he had run into at the previous mine shaft.

“Bastard!” growled the dagger-wielding rogue and exclaimed. “Poison Slash!”

Instantly a sickly green colored light enveloped his daggers, and he slashed them toward Sam angrily.

Sam reacted with a simple burst of wind from his palm, which slowed the two projectiles enough that he could duck under them.

This distraction allowed the guy with the axe to return and charge, while yelling some kind of war cry, at Sam.

With Shadow Burst on cooldown, Sam used the Wind Jump skill to dodge to the side and let the angry man continue his charge right toward his friend.

He spun around and smirked as he saw the realization crystalize on the rogue’s face too late.

Sam watched with barely held-back laughter as the axe-wielder smashed into the rogue and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs and curses.

Just to make sure they knew that he was aware of their humiliation, he spoke his next spell out loud.

“Wind Drill!”

With a powerful step, he appeared next to the two and struck down, his sword going through both of their bodies. They struggled for a second, but then both went still.

Sam pulled his sword out of the body but didn’t put it away. Just because the idiots were dead, it didn’t mean there wasn’t any other danger present.

He also spent a few moments rifling through the drops of the would-be bandits, coming away with a few silver and gold coins, as well as a bottle of basic health potion.

Player killing in Magic Unbound was handled rather weirdly. As long as nobody knew you were doing it, then you didn’t get red names like in other games. But as soon as somebody figured out, then you would get a reputation. The more people knew, be it players or NPCs (though in this important NPCs knowing was worth more) the redder your name became. Inversely, the longer you can keep your activities secret from others, the better the rewards from the people you kill. So, seeing as only Sam knew about them, their drops were rather tame. Not that Sam expected that they had anything good…

Watching as their bodies transformed into light and then fell apart into pixels, he shook his head and continued toward his original goal.

He did a quick check of his map to make sure that he was in the right place, then re-summoned his Light Ball and began walking forward slowly. He sharpened his senses and used the pommel of his sword to knock on the walls every few steps.

Those four idiots probably already searched every inch of the tunnel, so it wouldn’t be there.

Then as he was reaching where the mining stopped, he felt something with his Mana Sense. A small blip in the ocean of background mana radiation of the mountain.

Stopping in front of the wall, he stepped closer and placed his ear on it, while he struck it with the pommel of his sword.

He smiled when, instead of a dull tone, he heard the knock echo behind the wall.

Sam put the weapon back in its sheath, then placed his palm on the wall and used his Earth Wall spell to move the material in the wall somewhere else. In the next second, he stepped through a newly created hole into another tunnel that seemed to be partially filled with stone and other debris.

‘Probably a cave-in…’ he mused as he walked forward his sword back in his hand.

As he continued to walk forward soon the features of the small off-shoot tunnel became familiar thanks to his inherited memories. Hastening his steps in excitement, he walked along the corridor until he reached a small cavern that seemed partially unnatural. Probably a natural pocket in the mountain enlarged by a human hand.

And in the middle of said cavern were two chests partially sunk into the ground, partially covered by fallen stone, but spilling out silver with green patina on it, while the gold coins mixed in them sparked thanks to the light that his spell showered the room with.

Sam stepped forward raising his sword, pointing upwards, and let loose a powerful Wind Blade without taking his eyes off the treasure.

He ignored the body that fell behind him with a small thud and began carefully to excavate the chests.

Behind him, the greedy drake, with brown skin and scales like rocks glared at Sam but the spell almost cut it in half, thus it could do nothing but watch as his treasure was stolen away as the life slowly drained from its body.