Might as Well

The seven assassins all visibly tensed after he said that and one of the killers for hire standing around him, ready to strike, in their rather edgy and body-concealing clothing, spoke up. His voice was hoarse, and Sam was pretty sure he was forcing himself to speak in a much deeper voice than usual.

“What? We were completely hidden–“

“Silence Number Five!” came the harsh whisper from the one standing alone in the high-quality clothing.

Sam just smiled. He didn’t know when the assassins would come, but thanks to his Mana Sense he could perfectly well sense when they began to follow him the moment he stepped outside of the city gate.

“So, who sent you? Greyskull? Maritime? The syndicate?” The Greyskull guild existed, but the other two were random names he just came up with. He wanted to see if they gave away anything. Because, while he knew they were from Silent Step, he didn’t actually know who sent them. While his actions didn’t upset many people, he already had several confrontations with people who Sam felt would gladly pay Silent Step to murder him.

“As if the Greyskull could aff–“ the chatty one spoke up again, their voice alight with indignation. However, he was immediately silenced by his superior.

“Number Five! We are the Silent Step, not the Talking Step!” The moment the sentence left his hidden mouth, he tensed and turned towards Sam.

Sam just smirked at him and shrugged. “That one was pretty obvious…”

The leader of the group let out a sigh and shook his head. “Dammit, Number Five…” he murmured under his breath.

While they were distracted, Sam channeled his mana into the ground, preparing to cast several spells, while his hand gripped his sword handle. Based on the mana he could feel from them, every one of them aside from their leader were scrubs so he didn’t need to worry, but it never hurt to be careful.

Finally, the leader of the group shook himself and straightened their back.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re going to die!”

And on an unseen signal, all the assassins launched their attack on him. Credit where credit is due, every one of them aimed at a different spot to make his attempt to dodge futile.

So Sam didn’t dodge.

He simply tapped his feet to the ground and the spooled-up mana sprung up, bringing with them three walls made of rock, earth, and the bits and pieces of grass that got stuck to them as they suddenly emerged from underground.

Several phantasmal daggers struck the walls, while Sam launched himself forward with great speed. His sword was raised high, and the moment he arrived next to the lead assassin who just stood there, their entire body radiated surprise.

Sam cut down but had to immediately turn and raise his sword to parry the strike from the man, while the body he cut in half crumpled into flakes of blue light behind him.

For the next few seconds, they were locked in a battle.

The assassin’s blades were wicked sharp, shining with subtle blue light which Sam knew were the hallmarks of hexes. More than likely, if the blade would touch him, then it would confer all manner of negative effects, like slowness, disorientation, or even blindness.

However, Sam was faster, and with his longer weapon, he managed to keep his distance from the hired killer. And even if he managed to get a hit in, his Mana Shield was there to tank it.

While the two of them were dancing around each other, the other assassins slowly spread out again, probably to make sure he wouldn’t flee.

Parrying another overhead strike from the head assassin, Sam glanced at their watchers, noting that one of the assassins decided to climb up on one of the walls he had created. He looked back at the group leader and smirked.

“Watch this!”

Before anyone could react, he reached out to the last vestiges of mana that remained in the Earth Walls and connected to them, and with a mighty mental push overcharged the mana inside. Which, predictably resulted in said walls exploding in a shower of rock shards.

Poor guy, standing on the wall was pretty much obliterated by the explosions, while the rest were thrown in disarray. Sam simply chose to summon a Shadow Shield to protect himself while the dagger-wielding assassin did the same. The only difference was that his shield was silvery grey, while Sam’s was shadowy black. ‘Dear heavens, like a battle of edginess…’ he thought while dancing backward, dodging another flurry of dagger strikes.

While the leader’s subordinates scrambled around, the leader managed to keep calm and continue their fight.

Sam appreciated the other man’s talent, which he knew from this brief exchange was much greater than his. Sadly, while talent allowed one to flourish, it was still a game and superior skills (and numbers) were sometimes too much of an issue to surpass.

He angled his sword when receiving the next strike, causing the enemy’s dagger to slide off his sword, while the man fell a little forward, not expecting the resistance to vanish that way. That allowed Sam to spin around and strike at the man’s midsection with a vertical strike.

However, his enemy didn’t try to correct their stance, instead, they went with the stumble, flowing into a roll, which they used to gain distance from Sam. This made it so that Sam was no longer between the heavily damaged team and their leader, instead, he was outside of their circle, with his back to the forest.

Sam raised his sword into a guard position, made sure that his stance was stable, and spoke up.

“Round two?”

He didn’t get a verbal reply, instead, the assassin team began to launch spells and weapons at him as one.

His reply was casting his shield spell once again, and for the millisecond it lasted against the barrage he activated Shadow Burst to vanish from their sight.

Sam jumped to the side, circling around them and while they were looking for him, he raised his sword and launched a Wind Flurry at their unprotected back.

The boss was fast enough to dodge, but three of the mooks fell to the spell leaving three people left over.

Sam gave a cheeky smile while one of the mooks began yelling.

“You bastard!” he then began yelling a long string of spells. “Speed Burst! Haste! Burst of Desperation! Penetration Strike!”

With that, he shone with hazy gray light and launched himself at Sam with rather impressive speed.

Sam, instead of dodging decided to stand still.

Seeing as the boss of the assassins seemed to be observing for a moment, no doubt trying to figure out his fighting style, rather than supporting his subordinates Sam decided to grandstand. The assassin mook reached him in a heartbeat, skewering his body with his sword only for the body to gasp out loud, then dissolve into wisps of shadows.

The mook collapsed on the ground, no doubt hit by the penalties of one of his skills, while the other two began to look around wildly, trying to spot him.

Using the last second of his Shadow Burst, Sam simply reappeared behind the leader of the team sent to kill him and thrust his sword deep into the man’s chest. He let out a quiet gurgle and as Sam pulled the weapon out, collapsed on the ground, dead. As Sam watched the blood gush out of the giant hole on the man’s back, he only had one thought. ‘Maybe the Wind Drill was a little too much…’

The guy on the ground on his knees just stared at him in disbelief while the other one shook his head and turned around to run.

“Fuck this shit, I’m out!”

Sam watched the man run away, leisurely walked up to the kneeling ground, and took his life with a single swipe of his sword. After making sure the guy was dead, he spoke up.

“Lucky, fetch!”

There was a faint echo of bark coming from the shadows, then several heartbeats later Sam heard a bloodcurdling scream.

A short time later, Lucky trotted back to the clearing dragging the last guy’s dead body by their arm in his mouth. He dragged the dead body next to the other ones, spat it out, then sat back on his haunches with a proud grin on his face.

Sam gave him a pat on his back as well as a proud smile.

“Good job, buddy. Let’s go and clean up this mess…”

After going through the bodies, and seeing if they dropped anything (sadly nothing) he watched as they vanished into puffs of multicolored pixels.

He then used his Mana Sense to make sure nobody was coming back, but that was just a routine check. He knew from his inherited memories that Silent Step would never take revenge. They only went after their target if they were paid. If the client paid for one try, they tried it one time. If they paid to try it until the target died, then they would try it until then.

Those members who were prone to take personal grudges were weeded out fast.

Instead, of worrying over them, though he knew that the next team would be probably either bigger or would fully be staffed with veteran players from the guild. He would deal with them when the time came.

For now, he got a practical experience against players that preferred to play assassins and that was enough. It also helped that he made pretty good money selling his own location to them…

‘I hope they come back for more information…’

Chuckling to himself, he returned to his journey toward the marshy area.

Thanks to the fight, some of his skills managed to level up, though, vexingly his Shadow Burst was still stuck.

[Mana Shield is now Level 52!]

[Mana Body Enhancement is now Level 42!]

[Earth Wall II is now Level 10!]

[You learned the spell, Earth Wall III!]

[Earth Wall III: Level 0/10 (0%) (Active) A spell that allows you to create a wall made of earth and stone. You have control over the strength, shape, and measurements of the wall. Allows you to strengthen the created wall with extra mana. Allows you to change the wall’s shape using mana.]

[Wind Drill is now Level 9!]

[Wind Affinity is now Level 25!]

[Thanks to you using your wind spells to strike hard and fast, you learned the new sub-skill, Windstream!]

[Windstream: Level 0/5 (0%) (Passive) When you are using an offensive spell and moving towards a target, your speed is increased by 10% for each skill level.]

[Active Meditation is now Level 31!]

[Discernment is now Level 9!]

[Shadow Footwork is now Level 43!]

[Shadow Mirage is now Level 21!]

[Shadow Shield is now Level 5!]

[Basic Armor Mastery is now Level 3!]

[Calm Heart is now Level 36!]

[Flow is now Level 27!]

[Multitasking is now Level 64!]

[Parallel Processing is now Level 5!]

The improvement to the Earth Wall was welcome, and the Windstream sub-skill was also a nice addition to his build.

It was not a big improvement, but nonetheless, he was happy with it. Humming slightly, he refocused on the road, making sure to have his Mana Sense constantly active as sometimes marshes and deeper forests got some wandering monsters that were much higher level than the monsters in the area.

The monster he was preparing to hunt, Mossy, was a moss creature that resembled a toad that somehow melted into a puddle of flesh, then was enveloped by moss that behaved like hair. They were especially hard to hunt if one went without preparation because thanks to their body’s shape and texture the moment they stopped moving they became one with nature around them. And they lived an incredibly sedentary life, mostly living on the insects and bugs making their home in their moss hair.

Thankfully, they were magical, so one person with some kind of mana sense in the hunting party was enough to find them.

And the reason people needed to hunt them?

There was one specific spot on them, right over their heart, where the moss growing, thanks to the excessive mana leaking from their organ, had special properties. This made it an incredible ingredient for alchemists as the moss taken from this spot increased the effectiveness of several types of mana potions.

Sadly, they were known to be hideously hard to breed in captivity so players had to resort to hunting them. According to his memories, in the future one guild dealt with this by declaring the area where these monsters lived as a nature reserve, setting up walls, and going for periodic culling hunts.

However, to his luck, nobody knew of this property yet. Thus, he could collect them, and when the dungeons came out, his team would be able to enjoy the superior mana potions.

Though he had to make sure to be careful with his actions as he had no way of knowing about this property…

The deeper he walked into the forest the darker it got, soon the trees got sparser and sparser, yet their crown still blocked the sunlight, casting the entire area into an eerie darkness. Which was enhanced by the cloying smell drifting upwards from the still waters and muddy ground of the marsh.

He had to step carefully to avoid sinking into the ground and had to stop several times as he heard groaning sounds and thought that some monster was ready to attack him. Every time it turned out it was just the wind moving some rotten wood carcass.

His Mana Sense was fully active, ready to detect the smallest thing.

A quarter of an hour later he stopped, took out a low-quality spear from his inventory, and with a frown on his face began to poke the ground, only to act surprised when the moss-covered ground jumped up and began to flee from his deadly poking.

Sam chuckled a little and simply sent a Wind Blade after the fleeing monster.

Walking closer to the bisected creature, he took out one of his knives and crouched down.

“Let’s see what you got, little buddy…” he murmured while reaching forward with his knife, ready to dissect the monster. After all, he had to make a show of the discovery…