Might as Well

After they collected Clarissa, or as she was known by her username, Heal4Money (rather aptly, Sam thought) they headed directly out of the city. Sam found it so confusing. Here he was rushing around, trying to prepare for a catastrophe that would destroy so much, and yet they were just milling about, talking with each other, presumably gossiping about this and that.

Their formation was rather simple. Katie was in the vanguard, Clarissa and Dan behind her, and Sam behind them, ready to strike at anybody. With his superior senses, if somebody wanted to ambush them from behind, he would be the first to notice. Lucky was still in his shadow, ready to strike at anybody.

Surprisingly the little cat familiar stayed stuck on Katie’s head as they rushed forward with impressive speed, parallel to the main road that the caravan would use to approach Ironwood. They were currently under the effect of a stamina regeneration buff from Clarissa. He could have been faster thanks to his skills, but he wanted to forge a proper team, so he was content with leisurely keeping pace with them.

He saw Dan glancing at him incredulously as they sped through the sparse forest that covered the side of the road. He could understand why. Both he and Clarissa were panting in exhaustion, though the woman had a resolute face on her.

Knowing that an exhausted team would be less than useful, he called out.

“Let’s stop for a rest!”

Instantly, the people stopped, with Katie skidding to a halt too late and ending face-first in a tree. The tree groaned on the girl’s impact but in the end, held under the assault. Katie, rather comically at that, simply slid down to the ground with a small moan.

Dan and Clarissa just stared at her for a moment, then one turned toward Sam with a questioning look on their face. He just gave them a confident smile and motioned for them to sit. He stayed standing, while Dan just shrugged and took a seat on a fallen tree covered in moss and let out a long sigh. While Dan was relaxing, Clarissa glared at Sam, but he ignored it. She was paid and after the first fight, she would see Katie’s worth. Or go mad and spontaneously combust. He gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

“Man… why is it that we are exhausted and you are fine, boss?” spoke up Dan, not quite whining. Clarissa also turned towards him while Katie was in the process of picking herself up from the ground while her familiar meowed against the rough treatment.

“Indeed. I know my spell. It only regenerates stamina that the recipient has,” came the questioning statement from Clarissa.

He leaned against a tree, while his senses were dialed up to the maximum. He wasn’t expecting somebody following them aside from the Silent Step, but he still wanted to make sure they were safe.

After he was satisfied that nobody was around them, he returned his focus to the people in his party.

“I’m mostly speed-focused, plus I’ve got a nice stamina regen…” he replied.

Dan nodded as if expecting. “I saw you fight, boss. Mighty fast with that sword of yours!”

Clarissa just frowned. “That’s still a lot of regen…” Sam watched as she worked through the math and just smiled amusedly as her eyes widened.

Sam nodded at her, but before he could answer her unasked question, Dan spoke up, his eyes on the canopy as his breathing slowly returned to normal levels.

“Why do we even need to get this person? Are they so important?”

Sam took a moment to think about the question as both Clarissa and Katie directed their attention to him.

Did he trust them? Not really… He barely knew them… But he trusted Clarissa’s integrity, Katie’s innocence, and Dan’s dedication. Plus, trust was a two-way street. Somebody had to start the process…

Finally, after a minute of silent contemplation, he began talking.

“They’re a powerful crafter that our company recently hired. I wanted to make sure they arrive safely.”

Naturally, they all got his not-so-subtle hint.

It was Katie who spoke up, raising her hand as if she was in school.

“Um, boss, is anything going to happen?”

“Probably. Did you guys notice that there haven’t been any big events?”

The answer hit them like lightning. Instantly, he was besieged by innumerable questions.

After explaining his ‘hunch’ to his party, they stopped their impromptu break and once again headed for the caravan. They were all silent as they contemplated what was said. Dan, Clarissa, and Katie were more than likely thinking about what Sam said, while he himself was hoping that he didn’t make a big blunder.

‘Better to find out now, when the stakes are not that high…’ Sam mused as he went over what would happen in the hypothetical scenario if one of his party members decided to forward the information.

Based on what he knew of trade caravans that were common in the area, he knew how much distance it would be from the city. Then he just had to do a quick check with a map that Lucy kept in her office and he was good to go.

He kept the party mostly in the forest to make sure they didn’t run into anyone annoying on the road, as well as to not trigger the common traveling quests.

It was a small exploit that would be soon patched if he remembered correctly by the all-seeing system. It mainly meant that while a person traveled on something that the system acknowledged as a road, be it made from rocks, sand, forest soil or even burning hellfire, several common and not-so-common quests would be triggered, based on the travelers’ luck, circumstances, and active and not-active quests.

These included getting waylaid by bandits, coming upon a carriage with broken wheels, fleeing peasants, random monster attacks and even meeting with mysterious merchants, soothsayers, seers, or eccentric healers who could heal any wound.

And they were circumventing it by traveling next to the road but not on it. A simple distinction, but important.

Naturally, he couldn’t voice it, so if anyone asked, it was to keep their movement a secret as Silent Step recently tried to assassinate him.

With the speed they were traveling, they would need to camp once, which meant that they would meet up with the caravan the next day if his math was correct.

They were sitting around the campfire built by the resident pyromaniac and Sam. he created the base for the fire with his earth magic while Dan created the flames that were currently roasting their dinner.

Hog meat skewers, courtesy of Sam’s inventory, with a few spices that he also had on hand.

When Sam declared that they were settling down for a while, Katie simply plopped down on the ground with the grace of a water buffalo while Clarissa ever-gracefully took out a simple woven deckchair and sat down on it, while Dan found another felled tree, dragged it over and used it as a seat.

Sam used his power over earth to create a simple elevated seat for himself, then summoned Lucky for a backrest.

They spent most of the time just chatting about things they had experienced in the world of Magic Unbound, each of them taking a turn telling their stories.

For example, when it came to Sam, he spent his time describing the overly dramatic guard captain back in Greenwood.

They were about finished with their meal when Katie spoke up a little hesitantly.

“So, boss. I’ve got a question…”

Sam swallowed the last piece of meat on his skewer and nodded.

“Shoot…”

She fidgeted a little until the cat familiar on her head swatted her with its suddenly giant paw.

“Ow…” she rubbed the spot a little, then looked back at Sam. “Can I… Can I tell my brother about it?”

“Oh, he also plays?”

Her answer was a vigorous head nodding.

“Yeah, he wants to make a guild.”

“Then why are you here?” he asked, then realizing he was rather rude, he continued. “If you don’t mind me asking…”

Katie just grimaced. “Because he is stupid. It’s always ‘Katie do this’, ‘Katie don’t do that’… I just wanna smash stuff!” She finished by slamming her hand down on the ground while the shadow familiar on her hand mimicked her, though it only hit the air.

“Is he any good?” he asked, wondering who her brother was. His inherited memories didn’t have anything about her relations.

“Bah! He thinks so…” came the exasperated answer from the girl. She hummed thoughtfully, then reluctantly muttered her answer. “He is good at organizing stuff…”

Sam nodded in understanding and thought about it.

Would it affect him?

“Which city is he in?”

“Dunno…” came the careless answer, causing him to sigh. ‘She really only cares about smashing things… Probably, no point asking more questions, too.’

After a minute of thinking, while Clarissa took out her book and Dan was settling in to meditate as Sam instructed him, he had his answer.

“Do you want to tell him?”

Katie put a finger to her lips and thought about Sam’s question.

“I want him to owe me…” she finally admitted.

“Do you think he will believe you without any evidence aside from ‘my friend told me so’?”

Katie looked back at him, and Sam saw Dan open one of his eyes a little to look at the younger girl, while Clarissa’s book lowered somewhat.

Finally, she hung her head and let out a small whine.

“Probably not… He’d think I’m trying to prank him…” based on the defeat in her tone that happened a lot.

Sam gave her a reassuring smile and nodded.

“Go ahead and mention it to him, but don’t go into details. As if you have heard a rumor.”

Katie beamed at him while Clarissa frowned.

“You don’t want him to know it came from you?”

He shook his head.

“What would be the point? To blame me if I’m wrong? It’s not like I can give him more information…”

The healer scrutinized him for a moment, causing Sam to sweat a little, but in the end, she hummed thoughtfully and returned to her book.

Katie returned to grooming her little eldritch monster while Dan continued meditating.

Sam just smiled and enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere.

Their trip (mostly due to the exploit) was rather uneventful. They were naturally visited by a few curious or too-dumb-to-live monsters, but they got rid of them with laughable ease.

Watching the small little kitty made of shadows chomping on a monster’s head was rather unsettling.

The four of them kept quietly chatting, mostly about the game, but Sam saw they weren’t as distant from each other as at the beginning.

Occasionally, they would emerge from the forest, checking on the road to see if they could spot the caravan the crystal crafter was traveling with, but unfortunately, they only saw other travelers.

They had been running for a while now when Sam spoke up after he sensed something with his Mana Sense. It felt like a bunch of amorphous blobs of wild mana, shaped in a vaguely humanoid shape, all tinted with the color red, which to his mind represented rage and anger.

“Enemy ahead!”

They slowed down, with Katie pulling out her sword, Dan his giant cavemen club that immediately began to sizzle with heat, and Clarissa grabbing her staff with both hands.

“Prepare for a fight. I’ll scout ahead,” he declared.

All of them nodded and stood closer to each other in a pretty basic triangle formation.

Sam activated his Shadow Cloak and began creeping forward.

Soon he came upon a big temporary camp, filled with goblins, hobgoblins, and a few orcs from what he could see. They weren’t camping, however. To Sam’s eyes, they were simply preparing to head out. And from what he knew of their modus operandi, a vanguard already left this forward camp.

‘I’ll need to warn the military back in Ironwood about the goblins. If they are brave enough to come out and prey on travelers on the road, they know the city patrols…’

It also explained why there weren’t any guards. Goblins and orcs weren’t the most organized monster races, but even they were competent enough to have scouts and guards around camps. But if the fight already started, then most of the guards had snuck off to join the vanguard. The little buggers were vicious and battle-hungry.

In the middle of the camp, sitting on a makeshift throne made of random rocks and hastily cut-down tree logs, was a giant orc, wearing some kind of leather armor with a clearly stolen metal helmet, sharpening a crude greatsword. ‘Probably sent the vanguard to get killed and to soften the enemy,’ he mused. ‘We can take them…’ he finally decided after taking a longer look around. He mostly checked to see if any of them had anything enchanted or if there was a shaman present.

An enchanted item in the hand of any goblin could be nothing or a giant headache, depending on the item. However, a proper goblin shaman was much higher ranking than even the orc in the middle of the camp, and if they wanted, could change the tide of any battle with their magic.

Granted, the shamans’ magic was mostly based on sacrifice, so if you managed to survive the initial onslaught, you would have to fight against a diminished goblinoid army.

Thankfully, he didn’t see the telltale sign of the shaman totem, so they wouldn’t have to worry about blood magic.

Slowly, making sure he wasn’t noticed, Sam retreated from the goblin camp and hurried back to his teammates.

The moment he arrived back to the small clearing he left them, he dropped the stealth skill and raised his hand to his mouth, and shushed them.

He ignored how Katie was bouncing with eagerness and took a deep breath. ‘First battle with my new team… Let’s see what happens!”

“Goblin army camp,” as he began explaining Katie’s bouncing intensified, Clarissa grimaced and Dan simply nodded. “We can take them, but we have to be fast. I’m pretty sure they are not alone.”

None of them argued with him, all of them well aware if you see one goblin be prepared for at least a hundred to be near.

“Clarissa, focus on Katie and Dan. I can heal myself if needed.” The healer nodded while Katie began to stretch, her familiar adorably imitating her on her head. “Dan, stay close to Clarissa and try not to burn down the forest.”

“Will try, boss!” came the cheerful exclamation from the giant man.

“I’ll be going for the boss and Lucky will take care of the fleeing enemies.” A small bark of acknowledgment sounded from his shadow. “We don’t want them warning the others.”

Sam looked at them and nodded again. “Do a last check. We attack on my signal.”

Instantly, everybody was busy checking their equipment, but Sam could feel the excitement suffusing them.

A minute later, everybody was ready and raring to go.

Sam gave a last look around, unsheathed his sword, and began counting down.

“Three…”

The yellow light began infusing Katie’s sword while gentle blue light enveloped her, originating from Clarissa’s staff.

“Two…”

The flame on Dan’s club intensified and Sam could sense that the mana fueling it was much more tightly controlled.

“One…”

His own sword was enveloped by a slightly buzzing wind, ready to cleave his enemies.

“Go!”