Might as Well - Chapter 390 (Patreon)

After finishing with their preliminary plans, they agreed on the direction of their actions for the foreseeable future and went over a few smaller issues, such as requests to set up Heavenly Forest locations in certain cities, including some on other continents, with people wanting to invest in the business in exchange for franchise rights.

They spent some time discussing allowing people to set up their own Heavenly Forests. After all, there were already places copying them with more or less success. Altogether, a project like that required a lot of money, and the world didn’t lack people with excess wealth. However, most of them had no idea how to make it profitable. Most of those ventures quickly devolved into private clubs for the owners and their pals after the initial attention died down.

The few that survived this hurdle were rarely profitable.

They lacked the reputation that Heavenly Forest had worked so hard to build. Most people who visited them did so because they had heard about Heavenly Forest and expected similar experiences. They rarely got them.

In the end, however, they simply agreed that allowing franchising would only dilute the brand. Lucy would instead divert a bit more money toward the project and start the process of setting Heavenly Forest locations up in all the capital cities.

This would provide them access to those cities, both as players and as business owners, and last but not least, it would make them a lot of money.

Afterward, Sam turned to Katie. “Alright, what did your father tell you?”

Katie vibrated in her seat while Isabella rolled her eyes beside her. Everyone else watched in silence.

She grinned. “He was approached for advice and for any potential secrets he might know about you. They also asked for investments.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes!” she declared with a shark-like smile. “With very stringent clauses, but he did invest. This gave him an opening with the group. So far nothing has come of it, but he insisted on sending one of his people there to observe, so we can expect info soon.”

The room broke into light applause as Katie soaked in the attention, bowing to everyone with a massive grin on her face.

Sam tapped thoughtfully on the wooden surface of the table before sending a thankful smile to the girl. “Tell your father I’m thankful.” Then he turned to Tim. “Coordinate with Katie and make contact with the observer. See what you can do with it.”

Tim nodded and jotted down a few notes.

Katie grinned at the bespectacled man and gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll get you the info, Tim-Tam.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Alrighty, Timmy.”

“I changed my mind.”

“No takes backsies.”

Sam returned to the game with a relaxed expression on his face. This was what he knew, and what he was good at. At least relatively. Recently, pro gamers in Magic Unbound had begun to fully emerge, showcasing their talents through videos.

Many specialized in physical combat with weapons like swords, spears, or even bows. Honestly, Sam could name any weapon, and there would be someone wielding it like they were born with it in their hand and had a hundred-year-old monk guiding their movements. But there were also people showcasing magic on an unprecedented scale.

Not to mention streamers and high-ranking guild players, all of whom were extremely proficient at the game.

His paltry accomplishment with void magic and the sword seemed to matter less and less as the people around him got used to the game and started to blossom. It wasn’t that he minded, as that was the entire point of the game: to play the game. But it still stung a little. He was still the unofficial top player in the game, voted there unanimously every time somebody asked the question, but since he didn’t participate in PvP, there were no official numbers quantifying his strength, so most people just guessed.

Still, most people named him as the strongest player ever.

Though it helped that those same people counted the destruction of Roserun as part of his “power.”

At least, the title of the richest player was never in question.

It was Lucy.

Grinning slightly, he entered the headquarters in Ferabor. There, he said his hellos and dealt with a few issues before going through a few unremarkable rooms and half a dozen fake walls before stepping into another room. On the left and right were doors leading to a stairwell, and at the middle, with a small ding, the entrance to an elevator was revealed.

From the ceiling of the elevator, a small device detached, hovering in the air before unfurling and revealing one of Liz’s drones. It had an adorable spherical shape, with its face made out of a blue material that mimicked a serious face, with its eyebrows set to make it look a bit angry.

Blue light emerged from it and scanned him before the drone turned green and flew back, allowing Sam to step into the elevator.

The doors closed before him with another gentle ding, and he was heading down. There were no buttons to push – aside from the emergency ones – as the elevator only went to one place and one place only.

The Cave.

Granted, on paper, it was called the Arcano-Technological Research Field Laboratory, but because ATRFL didn’t sound like any funny word, they simply went with calling it the Cave, as the entire thing was located in a cave.

After almost half a minute of travel, the elevator slowed down, and with another ding, the doors opened again, revealing another empty room with only one double door made of metal that looked heavy.

From somewhere beyond his sight, two drones descended and began to scan him. Blue light swept through him before turning green with a chime.

That wasn’t the end of the security measures. He stepped forward, knowing that there were several mechanical pressure plates in the floor that would trigger an emergency shutdown in case his weight didn’t match the recorded one. It would also flood the room with poison designed by Clarissa after a bit of research in the Healer’s Guild and the Nowhere Library.

Plus, Sam had made sure that there were even more security features aside from the basics that even he didn’t know about, just in case.

Walking over to the wall next to the door, a small panel slid up and revealed a touchpad, where numbers appeared in randomized locations. He input this week’s code. When the war started, they would switch to daily rotating codes, but for now, weekly was enough.

There was a moment while the system processed his entry before there were three beeps. The panel slid back, and the door opened with a hiss of escaping air.

He walked through the door and entered the short corridor as the door closed behind him. Air was cycled through, ruffling his clothes before the next door opened, and he was finally in the facility.

Most of the people working here were players, with a smattering of NPCs. Interestingly, while there were a lot of service staff who were NPCs, there were also many of them working in research or in one of the many workshops.

The service staff was mostly made up of people from the Maid Force, who were there for training, to provide an additional layer of defense, and to keep an eye on the people. After all, nobody pays attention to the servants.

Most players who were caught selling information, or trying to sell it, were caught flat-footed and were totally flabbergasted when they realized the guild knew about their actions.

Fun for the whole family – but mostly for Tim.

Sam nodded to a nearby maid who was carefully cleaning and headed deeper into the facility.

On the first level, it was mostly people with the lowest security clearance experimenting in workshops or working on tasks handed down from the guild leadership. The second floor had people with higher security clearance, who were starting to build and create new artifacts and alchemical creations.

And the final floor contained the main attraction of the Cave.

Liz’s workshop.

Entering through several more gates, past mean-mugging guards and surreptitiously watching maids, he entered the enormous hall. Inside, it was buzzing like a beehive, with people everywhere and the air filled with a large number of drones flying around.

Several were hauling containers, a few were cleaning, and others were surrounding different types of massive projects, helping to put them together. Welding lights were everywhere, mixed with lights coming from all sorts of mysterious devices he had no name for. Liz, using her unique powers, had managed to set up the basics for an entire industry.

It was supremely awesome.

In short order, he was directed to a smaller side room, where Liz was standing behind a U-shaped desk, with several blue screens projected around her as she conducted the construction much like an orchestra conductor.

As the door opened and Sam entered, she looked up, and he saw a small window showcasing the area he had been in a few seconds ago, which blinked out of existence.

“Boss! How was the trip? Did you see anything interesting?” she asked with a grin.

Sam smiled. “Everything down here is interesting. But I’m here for the promised miracle.”

Liz nodded, then frowned a little. “It’s not really a miracle in itself, but I think you’re the one who could make one out of it.”

She walked over to the back wall, filled with wall-to-wall storage, pulled out a drawer, and took out several items before walking back to the table and placing them on it.

They were little square devices, with intricate crystal lattices and metalwork, along with a pretty simple clasp on the back. They were about the size of his palm, with an almost see-through crystal in the middle.

“So, this is it…” she declared casually. “I tried to make something to help with infiltration. You know, helping to suppress mana so that people could avoid the detection nets.”

“I assume it didn’t really work out?” he asked, leaning closer and looking at the items on the table.

She waved her hand in a wishy-washy way. “Technically, it worked. It absorbs mana, but only if you can direct it into the device yourself. If we set it to automatically absorb it, we can’t set it low enough to stop it from sucking people dry in minutes. Nobody has enough mana regen to maintain them for long enough without chugging potions continuously,” she explained with a shrug. “I thought you could give it a try, as you’re a freak of nature and gaming.”

“I’m glad for your belief in me…” Sam muttered as he picked up one of the strange devices.

[Mana Absorption and Storage Device (v5.64): A magi-tech device built from intricately grown crystalline structures and enhanced with runes and metallurgy to be capable of absorbing, storing, and expelling mana.]

“Expelling?” he asked, intrigued.

Liz nodded. “Yeah, storing a lot of mana for a long time in the same device is dangerous. Either it changes, gets corrupted by the inherent chaotic nature of mana, or, in the worst-case scenario, develops sentience.”

Sam chuckled.

“You laugh now, but wait until I show you our sentient device village…” Liz snarked. “But yes. We need to expel the mana after a certain amount has been absorbed or after a certain amount of time.”

“Which is?”

“The one you’re holding in your hand is capable of holding fifty thousand units of mana, and the lowest we managed to put the absorption rate is seventy-five per second.” She let out a frustrated groan, leaning against the table. “Barely anyone has that much passive mana regen…”

Sam blinked and opened his own status screen. He had over fifteen thousand mana, with his base regeneration set at over six hundred.

“So, set to the minimum absorption, it would allow operation for ten minutes, give or take a minute. Right?”

“Not exactly,” Liz replied. “The absorption needs to be set above the user’s mana regeneration for full stealth.”

“Oh, then this would last a minute at most for me…” Sam said disappointedly.

Liz stared at him with her mouth open. “O-one minute? Wait a minute! That would mean your base mana regeneration is…”

“Over seven hundred, yes.”

“How the fuck?” Liz asked before she shook her head. “No. Never mind. You’re Solar.”“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” Liz said, but she became much more animated. “This is awesome. With your freakish stats, we can go way higher.” She let out a bout of mad laughter and summoned a screen, beginning to sketch some kind of plan.

Sam just let out a sigh. “What about the storage? How high can you go with it?”

“Theoretically?” Liz asked, not looking up from her work. “There is no limit. However, after a certain amount, the sheer amount of mana and material starts to radiate its own mana, thus defeating the purpose of the device.”

“Hmm…” Sam turned the device around in his hand. “Could you create a series circuit with multiple devices in a row? That way, when one fills, the next one can absorb it, and so on, extending the time of operation?”

Liz looked up from her work and stared into nothing, her mouth silently moving. It took a minute before she was ready to reply. “That should work.”

Sam nodded. “Glad to hear it. Then please put together a bracer that can absorb my mana, providing at least an hour of stealth operation.”

“An hour? That would be almost three million units of…” Liz mused for a second before shaking her head and looking at Sam. “Don’t worry, boss. I’m on it. Give me a day. If it explodes, two.”

“Also, put together a few dozen expendable ones that could be set to constantly emit absorbed mana.”

“Oh, why would you… dammit, I was so stupid,” Liz exclaimed as she realized Sam’s plan while also slapping herself on the forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that…”