Might as Well - Chapter 396 (Patreon)

They were for sure setting up a trap for him. Or someone else. Sam doubted that if they knew for sure it was him here, the presence of the guards in the corridor leading up to the overworld would be so sparse.

Of course, he knew it could be the play. Place a deliberately low number of guards there, tempt the infiltrator, and dogpile them when they emerged. Though he also thought that if the Blood Army knew he was here, there would be an entire army streaming down those carved corridors just to claim the bounty on him.

Plus, of course, it would be worth more for propaganda…

He hoped that the leadership responsible for this installation was arrogant enough not to contact headquarters before they captured or killed the infiltrator.

Sitting on the roof of one of the square stone buildings, in the shadow of a small outcropping, watching the bustling underground town operate as if everything was normal, he tried to think of a way to get around the trap.

His legs were crossed, and he was rubbing his chin.

Option one was just charging through, relying on his superior power and void magic. If the enemy didn’t know it was him, then unleashing void magic could give him a window of opportunity. However, that decision also came with a large disadvantage.

The moment he unleashed the first void spell, the Blood Army would know who he was. And in turn, they would know he, and by extension his entire guild, knew about their super-duper secret ritual.

They could activate it prematurely to prevent Sam from further interfering, or do something worse… like increase the KPIs. The monsters…

Option two was trying to sneak out, but with the increased scrutiny and the absolute lack of information about what was happening beyond the stone corridors, that made it an unpleasant option.

Option three was to simply kill himself and respawn, but he didn’t want to chance any penalty for doing that in the middle of an enemy fortification. While that option was a viable method of ‘travel’ in many ways, the game system liked to punish people who used it to get out of sticky situations to incentivize creative gaming.

Option four was to cause a distraction and use that to escape. However, as Sam looked around, he saw that any explosion or anything like that would, more than likely, bring down the roof on them. The construction of the cavern didn’t seem that stable.

His gaze panned through the cavern thoughtfully, looking for something to spark an idea, while his hand idly played with one of the mana-chips.

Then his eyes moved past the slowly gathering guards at the entrance he had used, the workers who were still not giving a flying fuck about what was happening, and moved to the completely opposite side of the cavern.

Sam smiled.

According to Tim’s report, most of these installations weren’t alone. They were connected, like the one that had one small installation under every mountain peak surrounding a valley. And this cavern looked very much like the endpoint of a logistic chain.

Standing up, he stretched, then began heading in the opposite direction from the entrance, looking for an opportunity.

And boy, what an opportunity he found.

Another corridor, much smaller than the entrance one, but still wide enough to let two transport carriages move comfortably through next to each other. There was also a station for unloading said carriages, and even a rudimentary rail being built to facilitate the movement of the product.

‘If they win and get to keep these caverns, I can see them building large railway networks between them…’ he mused as he assessed the situation. ‘Would be kinda cool to see… oh, well…’

Seeing as everyone’s attention was on the other side, he just strolled into the station, opened a few doors until he found a map.

It was indeed connected to other locations.

Three installations like the one he was currently in, all supplying a different part of the Blood Army territory, all connected to each other by spokes, with a smaller central location.

Folding the map up and pocketing it, Sam spent a few moments searching the small office, but aside from more paperwork to steal, he found nothing interesting.

Thus, he left the station and entered the completely dark tunnel, leading him who knows where.

Because it was such a long journey, he decided to chance summoning Lucky. Naturally, he could have run, but it would be more comfortable to ride on the giant wolf.

His shadow pooled around him, and he saw Lucky’s shiny eyes appear, but the moment he tried to break through the surface of the pool of shadow, a thin membrane of red appeared, preventing him from emerging. Simultaneously, a notification screen appeared in front of Sam.

[You have discovered a curse affecting you and your surroundings!]

[Curse of Displacement: Prevents any manner of summoning or spatial movement, up to but not exclusively: familiars, pets, contracted spirits, contracted demons, and so on.]

Frowning, he tried to pierce the veil of the red, transparent membrane, but he felt as if he were poking a wall made of titanium. It was not an ad hoc curse, probably layered over the location to prevent information gathering or stealing via familiars.

However, Sam was more worried about the fact that he hadn’t even sensed the curse being applied.

‘Unless, of course, it is automatically applied to anyone who enters the premises…’ he realized after a moment of thought. ‘I wonder how many other curses there are…’

He stepped deep into the shadows and focused inward, scanning his own body. Soon, he found several anchors, looking like disgusting barbed wire clinging to his skin through his Mana Sense.

[You have discovered further curses affecting you and your surroundings!]

[Curse of Crumbling Trail: You are tagged with an uncleanable marker made out of blood and magic. Leaving the area of the curse activates this tag, broadcasting your presence to the caster.]

Somehow he had a feeling that the “uncleanable” keyword was aimed directly at him…

[Curse of Endless Hunger: The curse attached to you needs a constant supply of blood mana. As soon as you stop feeding the curse, it will activate and damage you based on the amount of blood mana you have fed to it.]

Sam let out a sigh. “Alright… they got a bit smarter…” he muttered after reading the curses. Alone, they wouldn’t be dangerous, but together, in the middle of enemy territory, it would be difficult to deal with them even for him.

He looked down at the pitiful-looking Lucky, who was staring at him with large, dewy eyes, wanting to know why he couldn’t come out to play. “Maybe later, buddy. Okay?”

Lucky let out a whine, and his eyes vanished back into the shadows. The pool was absorbed by his own shadow, leaving him alone once again.

“Alright, a bit of a nerf, but not that big of an issue.”

He opened his inventory, and after a few moments of searching, he found a speed potion, downed it, and with lightning speed, he was off into the deep darkness of the tunnel.

A top athlete can run between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour over a short distance. With all his speed-enhancing skills, plus the potion raising his base speed, he managed to eke out a constant speed of at least sixty miles per hour, by his conservative estimate.

The middle of the spoke connecting the three installations was around fifteen miles away. At top normal human speed, it would take half an hour. He made it in less than fifteen minutes.

Slowing down to a trot, he approached the light shining at the end of the tunnel. He waited until the aftereffects of his speed potion disappeared and his body was once again raring to go, stuck a metal plate to his armor, letting the invisibility envelope him, and cautiously skulked forward until he was at the edge of the shadows and could see into the space.

It was a massive underground junction, with a building in the middle acting as a guard post while also coordinating the deliveries. One of the other tunnels was currently flooding the area with giant carriages, all of them purposefully built to allow giant containers full of liquid to be transported over large distances, pulled by mutated beasts, drooling a mix of foam and blood.

The beasts themselves looked like someone took a horse, bred it with a rhino, then, just for funsies, sent in a squad of lizards to have fun. Large, stocky builds, powerful legs, long necks and faces with a stumpy horn, and scales covering their bodies. Their eyes were bloodshot and basically glazed over.

Sam suspected the creatures went crazy the moment they were born, so the Blood Army was using magic to keep them docile.

At the third tunnel, he saw several of these carriages ready to travel, their fronts affixed with special lanterns, projecting their light forward like some old-timey car lights.

‘So the first one is the intake, and the other two are the outtake…’ he mused as he observed the small army of people swarming the carriages, scanning them, making sure everything was in order, and then prepping them for the next leg of the journey.

However, to his luck, it looked like the people here hadn’t heard of the alarms from where he came…

Now all he needed to do was decide where to go. One of the tunnels would lead him to another small, unassuming town where he could possibly sneak out and deal with the curses.

However, the other one would lead him deeper into the system, potentially revealing the origin of the mysterious health potion.

He would also need to find a location where he could safely log out without being found. The system would prevent the Blood Army from doing anything to his body while offline, but if they found him, the moment he logged in, he would be surrounded by an army.

Or two.

Maybe even three.

He spent barely a minute observing the situation before letting out a sigh mixed with a chuckle. “Fuck it. We ball.”

Ignoring the tunnel leading back to the surface, he turned his attention to the other one, through which countless vehicles were streaming in.

The way inside was easy.

The mutated monsters acting as beasts of burden were conked out of their minds. Thus causing Sam to wonder what would happen if even one managed to shake off the magic...

And Sam was a man of science.

‘Time for a small experiment!’ he thought gleefully.

Stealthily moving along the edges, between parked carriages and crates piled high until they almost reached the ceiling of the cavern, he approached the tunnel.

There was also a small fenced-off area where several of these beasts were kept. They were fed by what seemed like a specialized unit, all of them wearing medieval-looking hazmat suits made out of silk and leather.

He waited until they finished feeding the last one, leaving the grotesque monster messily burying its head into the trough, sending mystery meat and things Sam didn’t want to know everywhere. Then he slowly approached the animal pen and threw one small metal plate inside.

It was a runic script he had created to clear out mind-altering magics from an area, like enchantments that tried to control people or abilities used by monsters to charm their victims, like the demons.

Not wanting to even give a hint of his involvement, he quickly scratched a small self-destruct sequence onto the plate before tossing it over the fence.

It landed in the disgusting mud and sank into it without anyone noticing. Especially not the beast.

The timer was set to thirty seconds.

Enough time for him to retreat toward the tunnel entrance and wait for the chaos to break out.

He was hiding behind a pile of equipment left there to repair carriages and containers if the need arose when two players walked by. They were both dressed in high-quality armor and were completely relaxed.

“I still don’t understand why we have to patrol here?” one of them grumbled as they stopped for a moment.

His friend just scoffed. “Hey! At least we get paid extra for the boring work.”

The other one perked up. “True, true, but it’s still boring as hell… Nothing ever happens here.”

“And that’s what we want,” came the reply. “Our enemy is Solar. What do you think would happen if he discovered this place?”

“Shit. You’re right,” said the other man before perking up. “Roserun looked awesome, though. Have you seen that video about the guy calculating what that kind of explosion would do in the real world?”

“Hell yeah! I’m pretty sure Solar is on some watch list after that…” the other person replied with a laugh.

“Some? Try all of them!”

The two of them were laughing at the joke when a roar mixed with a scream cut through the air. It reminded Sam of a very deep, bass-boosted screech of an eagle, with a bit of neighing added in for fun.

The next second came the sounds of wood splintering and people yelling, punctuated with more of the skin-crawling screeches.

“Shit! What was that?”

“One of the Bloodbacks got loose! It’s rampaging!”

“Again?” the other guy asked, aghast, before both of them rushed toward the chaos, allowing Sam to slip by with a small smile on his face.

Soon, he was inside the dark tunnel, running against the tide of large convoys, each of them carrying enormous containers, and very, very bored drivers as they waited for their turn to enter the underground junction.

‘Let’s see how deep the hole goes…’