Might as Well

Sam left the Silvercrest manor satisfied and creeped out in equal measure. On one hand, the lord listened to him and took his ‘fears’ seriously. He didn’t get any quest, but he hoped that the system would run with his advice. On the other hand, the young lady of the house acted quite weirdly when he joined her and Lucky in the garden.

She was acting equally shy, yet bursting into giggles after every second word. His questioning gaze directed toward her mother, who was calmly sipping her tea, only yielded an amused glance at him and nothing more.

After extricating Lucky from the weird clutches of Lucrecia using the hostage negotiator skills he didn’t know he had, he quickly left the manor with a beautiful young lady waving at him next to a stone-faced butler.

As he walked away, with Lucky safely hidden away in his shadow, he couldn’t help but shudder. He had a general idea why Lucrecia was giggling, but he didn’t even want to entertain it.

Getting into a relationship (no matter what kind) only led to bad things. Based on the other Sam’s memories, it happened a lot thanks to the lifelike behavior of the NPCs in Magic Unbound.

And it never ended well.

On the other hand, if he was wrong, then voicing his idea would more than likely sour his relationship with the Silvercrest family.

It was better to pretend not to notice anything.

His next task was preparing for the Fracture.

In his inherited memories, the Fracture happened a week after the announcement. However, now that the announcement itself was brought forward, Sam didn’t have the confidence to say that he even had a week. Alternatively, he could have the time until the original release, but that was unlikely.

The game’s popularity was shooting up, and one of the most often repeated questions on the forums and any other possible locations was: ‘Where are the dungeons?’.

Sam was pretty sure that at most he had a week to prepare before the event.

Nodding to himself, he headed directly to the auction house. Before the Fracture happened, he wanted to evolve Lucky one more time. And for that, he needed ingredients. Thanks to his Runecarver skills, he could draw the ritual and when he was spending time in the library, he made sure to pick up a copy of it.

Now his only task was to gather the ingredients. Fortunately, some could be bought from the shops around Ironwood, and more than likely, he would find several in the Auction House. Sam also hoped he would get lucky and find the catalyst he was looking for or something better.

Lucky was currently a Shadow Spirit Wolf, which meant that although he had no skills or spells that made use of his Spirit Nature, the wolf was still dual-natured. And Sam wanted to cultivate this dual nature. Thus, he couldn’t use just any old catalyst but something that had a connection to both the shadows and spirits.

He couldn’t bank on finding another (stronger) shadow spirit like the one he had used for Lucky’s first evolution. Mostly because the one he fought back then was severely weakened and hindered by possessing a dead body. Sam was strong, but he wasn’t confident of defeating a shadow spirit at a level that would leave behind the material needed for the ritual.

Maybe if he had spells and skills that were the exact opposite of the shadows, he would stand a chance. Unfortunately, he had hedged his bets on the shadows and now he had to suffer for it.

Plus, using two very conflicting elements only led to tragedy down the line. In the beginning, it was fine, but when the players reached a level where spells got more complicated and got more requirements for successful casting, then things would get ugly real fast.

The most famous example from his inherited memories was a mage who decided to focus on learning dark and light magic. Theoretically, it was possible to achieve what the mage wanted, but because he was a day one player, his foundation wasn’t stable enough.

When he tried to cast any spell that contained both natures, they simply exploded.

No matter what they did or tried, the moment the spell was cast they exploded, thus crippling any chance for further advancements in their chosen path.

Of course, in true gamer fashion, theorycrafters after hearing about the mage’s bad luck took everything they knew about spells and mana natures and created a build that would help achieve what the mage attempted.

It was so bloody complicated that it took a major guild paying exorbitant money to a player to try to attempt it. Not to mention the money they paid for trainers, information, and materials.

Then there were the wars. After all, theorycrafters didn’t much care about things like borders or geopolitical relationships…

Finally, after almost a year, the guild managed to achieve what the mage failed to do. The player could use spells with two contrasting natures.

It was a colossal failure.

Why?

Because those genius theorycrafters only considered one thing when putting together the build: ‘How to make two completely opposing natures work together in spells?’.

They completely forgot about taking into account combining the natures…

Sam walked into the Auction House, ignored the usual crowds, and sought a quiet spot near one of the walls. He sat down and opened the interface.

For now, he ignored the RMT part, as that would be handled by Lucy. As soon as the paperwork went through, they would be both part of a company in the real world (mostly for convenience and tax reasons) and then Lucy would be able to convert gold to real money which would go into an account that would be accessible by both of them with certain restrictions.

As always, he went through every major page, making sure he didn’t miss anything interesting. There were the usual scammers, people putting up worthless items for a ludicrous amount of money, and the other usual shenanigans that took place in an Auction House.

In the end, he found nothing, as always. Some materials would be useful for their business, but he simply made a list of them and sent them over to Lucy. Finally, he arrived at the skill book section. He carefully combed through the selection, looking for anything interesting or unique.

Most skill books only contained spells that could be learned from any teacher. Granted, one had to find the teachers, but it was not impossible. And the game was nice enough to mark those skill books that were rare in some way for those who were observant enough.

The reason he was looking at the skill books and not going after said teachers was that he knew that there were no teachers in the area that would be able to teach him shadow-natured spells and skills. At least not without doing things he didn’t want to do. Like sacrificing children, or adorable little rabbits.

Thus, he was relegated to hoping that skills would drop, or he found some being auctioned. And as he scrolled through the list of books, his eyes found one item.

He instantly clicked on it and bought it at the asking price. A little more excited, he scrolled down a little more, but that was his only find.

Shaking his head, he turned his attention toward the material section and began to hunt for materials for Lucky’s next evolution.

Before leaving the building, he picked up the book he bought, put it in his inventory, then left toward the gates of the city. With the materials heading towards the company building where they would be moved into his room, he only needed the catalyst. As predicted, he didn’t find anything worthwhile in the Auction House. Thankfully, as a good (kinda) reincarnator, he knew exactly where to go to acquire what he wanted.

But first the new skill.

After leaving through the gates, he headed randomly toward the forest surrounding the city of Ironwood.

He navigated through the trees, using his stealth skills to avoid any fights. Luckily, those monsters that had seen through his admittedly subpar stealth skills weren’t aggressive enough to attack him.

Finally, after reaching a small clearing, Sam looked around both with his eyes and his Mana Sense, and after not finding anybody around, he took out the black book. It was so black that it seemed to suck in the stray sunbeams poking through the treetops.

With a small twist of his mana, it entered the book, and it instantly transformed into a smoke-like substance that stayed in the form of the book for a moment, then it flew up, swirled up and around him before shooting into his chest.

Instantly, a notification screen popped up.

[Congratulations! You’ve learned the skill, Shadow Shield!]

[Shadow Shield: Level 0/25 (0%) (Active) The spell allows you to conjure a shield made of shadows in front of you. The spell protects against physical and magical attacks.]

It was a simple description, but it would be useful for him, especially if he managed to upgrade it into a shield that protected him from all sides.

Dismissing the screen, Sam took a deep breath and softly spoke up while raising both of his hands in front of him.

“Shadow Shield!”

Instantly, the mana inside him began to move, and barely a second later, gaseous shadows began to stream out of his hands, forming a shield that was approximately the same size as him.

Sam took a moment to marvel as the shadows swirled around in the shield, then dismissed it.

Then spent the next hour repeatedly casting the spell until he could manage it without yelling the name of the spell. A shield that couldn’t be cast at the moment’s notice was useless as a shield.

When he was satisfied with his current mastery of the spell (and gained exactly one level in it) he spent a little time playing with Lucky.

Sam’s target for the catalyst was a cave system some distance away from Ironwood City. On the highest levels, close to the surface, it was a standard cave system with moss, mushrooms, and the occasional monsters. However, if one ventured deep enough, one would be able to find a way to get deeper.

And the monsters there, thanks to a magical phenomenon, were shadow-natured. And if he was lucky, he would be able to find one that was also spirit-natured.

He walked through the forest with Lucky watching out for him from the shadows, occasionally killing the odd monster decided that he would be an excellent snack.

In the end, after several hours of trekking over the countryside, he arrived at the valley where one of the cave entrances could be found.

Sadly, instead of the calm and quiet of nature, with birds chirping and the tree tops rustling gently in the wind, Sam was met with the sound of fighting.

Slowing his approach, he engaged his Shadow Cloak and began creeping closer to the tree line. Thankfully, he approached the valley from a direction where he was hidden by the trees and some large boulders, so he barely had to skulk around.

When he reached the edge of the forest, he finally saw the fighters.

There was a large group made up of at least seven people against one person, with four of them standing at a distance, seemingly guarding the rest. Two of them were between the group and cave entrance, while the other two were opposite of them.

Of the remaining three, two were standing to attention, just watching the fight, while the last one was facing off against their enemy. A lone warrior, dressed in plate mail and wielding a bastard sword.

Sam immediately noticed that the clothing on the seven was rather uniform. ‘Probably a guild or mercenary group. Who is that knight, though?’ he wondered as he moved around to get a better look at the fighters.

Finally, arriving at a spot where he could see them better, he witnessed as the knight charged at the guy and swung his bastard sword. He, if the person was he, the armor made it hard to determine, was fast enough that Sam knew the other person wouldn’t be able to dodge, unless he had a skill or spell to help with it.

He was surprised when the guy didn’t even try to dodge. Instead, the hands of one of the two guys standing behind him shone with white light and the sword was stopped by a shield flashing into existence between it and the guy’s face.

‘Well, that’s not good…’

Needing more information, seeing as it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill fight, he moved closer, hopping from boulder to boulder staying in cover. Fortunately, everyone’s attention was on the fight, so he didn’t need to worry much about being discovered.

After a few moments, and a few more tries by the knight to cave in the other guy’s face, he was close enough to hear them.

Of the four standing around, the closest to him was snickering, and the two that were shielding or buffing the guy otherwise were concentrating hard on the fight, while the guy being protected stood tall with an arrogant expression on his admittedly handsome face. His black hair was pulled up into a neat ponytail and his armor looked high class, though Sam’s Mana Sense told him it was nothing special. Not even a simple enchantment.

The only enchanted items were on the guys behind him, probably their focus.

And finally, he could hear them talking. Or rather, he could hear the arrogant guy ‘talking’ at the panting knight.

“… give up! You can’t win against my might! You will submit to me or I’ll make sure that you suffer!”

Sam stared at the guy for a moment. ‘Who talks like that?’

“Are you serious?” He burst out without thinking. Loud enough that everyone could hear it.

Instantly, everyone’s heads snapped up and turned in his direction.