Might as Well - Chapter 397 (Patreon)

Deeper and deeper, Sam soon found himself at another junction. However, as he watched from the shadows, he saw that this one had only one other exit. In the middle, instead of a guard station, was a giant bottling factory.

Enormous cylindrical containers rose toward the ceiling, ten times the size of the ones he had left behind, constantly surrounded by a small army of workers rushing around. Under those enormous containers were small stations where giant pipes led to them.

Every big one was surrounded by at least six smaller stations, where the smaller containers used for transport were filled with the liquid they stored.

‘That’s a lot of health potion,’ he mused as he took in the situation.

Occasionally, one of the pipes would let out a small hiss and splatter some of the potion around it, making sure that most of the ground was covered in mud, and that most of the workers on the ground were colored red, evoking the image of oil field workers in Sam’s mind.

Knowing that something was wrong with the potion, he wondered what kind of effect it would have on those people.

Looking around, Sam saw that there were many more guards around, all of them standing around with faces that radiated tiredness, as if they were wholly done with the entire thing. However, it was a bit weird how they were stationed around the room, and even around each and every station, both small and big. They stood underneath them, and on the wooden scaffolding and walkways.

And they were all facing inward.

As if they didn’t care if somebody came in.

No.

They wanted to prevent anything from getting out.

Sam’s eyes narrowed. There was a picture starting to form in his mind, and he wasn’t liking the direction it was taking.

Every day, thousands, hell, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of players consumed those potions. If none of them noticed anything, which was almost statistically impossible, then whatever was behind it was of a super high level.

Maybe the recipe was acquired from a divine source. Maybe the core manufacturing process was created by a grandmaster alchemist specializing in hiding the properties of potions. Maybe they acquired some kind of legendary artifact that made this possible.

Of course, it could also be just sheer luck or the game system fudging things to make everything more dramatic.

Though it was a possibility, Sam didn’t think that was what was happening. The blowback from the player base would be too large for the devs to approve something so big.

If he wanted to place a bet, he would bet on the divine playing their games. He was a literal time traveler; he was miles and miles ahead of everybody in the game, both in power, knowledge, skill, and everything else he could think of.

Cheating wasn’t really possible in the traditional sense, but if one of the gods decided to intervene, then that would explain how the Blood Army had acquired something this powerful.

On one hand, he was pretty annoyed, as it invalidated all his hard work, with a god simply handing over whatever they did to the leaders of his enemies.

However, on the other hand, he appreciated it. This was, after all, a game; it would have been a bit boring for everyone involved if he and his guild just steamrolled the Blood Army.

Would have been fun?

For sure.

For like five minutes, before everyone else realized that the only way they would be able to win against Sam and his group was to join forces.

Granted, now he wanted to see how his own forces would fare against all the armies of the world, but then he shook himself and returned his attention to the situation.

He was currently in the shadows, behind the stone-faced guards, ninety percent of them players, with only a few specialized units being NPCs, as a whole line of carriages headed into the tunnel, carrying the containers with the health potions.

Sam was wondering how to get through these guards when a noise cut through the general noise of work in the cavern, echoing from all the walls.

RIIIIIIIIIIP

A ripping sound, accompanied by bubbling and meaty sounds, followed by a wail of pain and then screams of fright, echoed all around him.

Peeking out from his hiding place, he paled a little.

The guards stationed there immediately began to yell. “We have another one! Charge!”

All of them rushed forward, weapons raised and swearing like sailors.

“Fuck! Again?!”

“Why couldn’t they be more careful!”

“I hate this fucking thing!”

“Kill it!”

Strangely enough, none of them used overt magic. Sam found it a little odd, but most of his attention was on what was happening next to one of the smaller stations.

Apparently, someone got careless, and an extra-large batch of liquid was splashed on an unsuspecting worker, who was already red from all the accumulated residue.

In the worker’s place – Sam didn’t know if it was an NPC or a player – stood a grotesque monster. It was as if it had ripped itself out of its previous body, unfurling in an undulating manner, pulsing and screaming at the same time. It had three different mouths, four arms, all ending in giant claws, and at least three dozen small, segmented legs.

And it was growing.

It started the same size as the person it had been, but even a few seconds later, it was twice its original size.

Sam narrowed his eyes and focused his mana sense on the situation as the guards approaching began hacking away at it, while the rest of the workers stood in total panic or ran away. The monster itself was thrashing around, not caring what or who it was stepping on. Several containers were upended, letting out a small flood of health potion into the muddy ground, causing all the guards to jump away in fright.

His mana senses were telling the part of the story that wasn’t being said by the Blood Army soldiers who jumped on the still-growing monster with well-practiced vehemence. It was simply drinking in the mana and life force contained in the potion all around it, the mud visibly drying out while the mana in the air swirled and was being sucked into the monster at an accelerated rate.

Even then, the guards stationed here were clearly experienced in this kind of fight, because the monster was slowing down, clearly not capable of sucking up mana and life force fast enough. It was still the size of a small house, its pulsating pink and red flesh, mouths lined with rotten teeth, arms flailing around without direction, occasionally hitting one of the players and sending them flying before landing on the ground.

Skills were used but only sparingly. Those players had clearly learned from the past and tried to use skills and abilities that required no or a minimal amount of mana.

Sam grinned.

Seeing as everybody was distracted by the fight, he saw his chance to sneak by and see where this potent and monstrous elixir was coming from.

‘But first…’ he mused to himself as he slowly began to extend one lone tendril of mana toward the monster, winding it between players, avoiding them until the tendril almost reached the monster that was clearly on its last legs.

It wasn’t bleeding.

It was the exact opposite.

The more wounds it had, the more dried out it became.

‘How about we balance things?’

His tendril of mana plunged into the monster, invisible to all as they were afraid to use any mana, and he could feel the monster greedily sucking in his mana. Looking down at his bracer, which was half full, his grin widened, and he touched a few runes in sequence, opening the faucet on it fully.

Mana streamed from it toward the monster, kept in line by Sam’s absolute iron will and control, as the hits and cuts of the weapons of the Blood Army soldiers almost within seconds became useless. The previously dried-out body of the grotesque monster regained its “healthy” color and began to grow at an accelerated rate.

“What is happening?”

“My god! Why is it growing?”

“Keep damaging it! Where is the backup?”

“Is one of the containers open?!”

“Negative! Emergency valves closed them!”

“Somebody go check them!”

“Aaarchg!” One of the people yelled as they were grabbed by one of the blindly flailing arms and brought to one of the giant mouths despite their best efforts to escape, even using some kind of flame skill that exploded from the bloody arm, brutally burning the hand. But thanks to all the mana Sam was providing the monster, the skin regrew within seconds and even grew a few extra spikes.

“You idiot! How many times do I have to tell you! DON’T USE MANA ON IT!”

Sam watched as even those guards who had stayed behind to keep an eye on things, or just in case, rushed forward, trying to deal with the still-growing monster. With a grin on his face, he simply rushed forward, going around the entire event in an arc, avoiding everyone’s eyes, as they were fixed on the raid boss battle in the middle.

By the time he reached the middle of the cavern, the faucet on his bracelet sputtered closed as the stored mana ran out, but the monster was still greedily drinking in his own mana.

Currently, it was the size of one of the enormous containers, growing more and more mouths, its flesh looking harsh red, the blood underneath it visibly pulsing. Spikes and teeth were growing everywhere, and if Sam saw it correctly, the many legs had turned into roots that were digging downward, anchoring the monster in place as it was seemingly beginning to transform into something Sam really didn’t want to see.

Abruptly cutting off the mana, he heard the monster shriek in pure greed as its food was cut off.

The players immediately noticed.

“It stopped growing!”

“Focus on the roots!”

“Archers target the bulbs on the top!”

“Somebody get the backup here NOW!”

Sam stopped in a shadowy alcove and watched the battle a little, making sure to record as much as possible for later analysis, because he had a feeling that this monster would feature heavily in the war.

The monster indeed stopped growing, and its spindly, spiked arms had turned into fleshy tentacles that were, at least to the Blood Army members, flailing around randomly, but Sam saw that they were extending toward the location where he stood when he cut off the mana.

‘It is looking for me…’ he mused. ‘Which means it’s not brainless…’

Granted, it could also have been instinct, but it was clearly ignoring everyone else, focusing on growing those pulsating, disgusting appendages and trying to search for the source of the mana that allowed it to grow so much.

Then, as Sam was amusing himself by watching the desperate fight against it, there was a flash of light a bit away, on a square piece of stone platform.

Instantly, mana flooded the cavern. Rotten and dripping with malice. Even far away, he could smell and feel it.

“Ugh…” he grunted.

Sam’s eyes snapped over, and they widened. Seven people, all dressed in the very best the Blood Army could offer, each of them either mages wearing necromancer-chic or warriors dressed in blood-red metal and carrying swords that even Katie would call a bit too brutal.

A cheer went up in the cavern as they arrived, and the flesh monster instantly forgot about Sam, snapping its searching tentacles toward the newly arrived players, their mana seemingly much more desirable than Sam’s.

One of the warriors stepped forward, raised their sword, and slashed down. Hundreds of spears made out of transparent red light flashed forward, shredding one of the tentacles, causing the monster to shriek loud enough to send some of the low-level players to the ground.

“What a bunch of weaklings…” growled another one.

“I was on a break, goddamn it,” one of the mages complained as she raised her hand, and blood-red lightning snapped out, hitting another tentacle and traveling through it, turning flesh into dust as it traveled.

‘Alright…’ Sam mused as the small team of elite players began to dismantle the monster one skill at a time, completely ignoring its ability to absorb mana, simply doing more damage than it regenerated. ‘Time to skeedadle…’

Turning around, making sure his bracer was once again concealing his mana, especially now that the elite players were here, he began to move toward the other exit, where giant pipes led into the darkness.

Behind him, not long after Sam once again vanished into the darkness, the desiccated corpse of the monster fell to the ground, finally fully dead, the entire area around it wrecked, several workers missing, and the guards that were there originally breathing hard while the elite team stood there with almost no sign that they had fought the monster.

As the ‘locals’ began to clean up after the monster attack, and the corpse began to turn to dust, slowly becoming one with the mud under it, one of the Blood Army players wearing heavy red robes, with several animal skulls carved with sigils and runes affixed everywhere, and holding a large staff made out of bone, also carved with runes, stepped next to the warrior that had moved first.

“Something is not right…” she said, her eyes looking around with great focus.

The warrior grunted. “The transformations have been happening more frequently among the workers.”

“I know that!” The woman snapped, in a harsh whisper. “But this advanced transformation was only witnessed when we did the experiments.”

“What are you saying?” the warrior asked, now turning back toward her.

She motioned around the cavern. “There isn’t enough life force in all the potion currently in the cavern to achieve this level of transformation. And notice, none of the large containers were breached.”

“Which means? Speak clearly, woman. You know I’m more about hitting things than reading those bloody convoluted books. Or doing math,” he snapped back. “You know I have dyscalculia.”

“Right,” she replied, a bit contritely. “The thing is, there must have been another source. A very potent source.”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a huff, letting out a breath. “Just a general calculation gives me a number so high, the only way it could have happened is if someone found a legendary-grade mana crystal, or…”

“Or…”

She stopped moving and stared into the distance. “Or if one of the top players were here.”

“They have enough mana for that?”

“If not, they have rather potent mana. You have seen the breakdown of S…o…l…” She slowly fell silent as both of them realized the same thing at the exact same time.

““Shit.””

After a moment, the warrior looked at her. “Do you really think Solar was here, stood next to the monster and fed it his own mana, without anyone noticing him? Nor the automated defenses?” he asked. “Just the fact that he doesn’t use blood magic should have caught him on the outskirts.”

“Don’t underestimate Solar,” she hissed, looking around suspiciously as if expecting the famous player to jump out from behind a crate and say ‘Boo!’ “I read the things he puts out. The man is a genius. Both for his knowledge of the magic in the game, and for his strategies.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other man waved, a bit annoyed. “I heard you sing his praises after watching the Roserun video enough... no need for another lecture.”

“Fine,” she pouted a little. “But if anyone, he would find a way,” she stated with great admiration.

The warrior shrugged. “Should we report it?”

The mage recoiled. “Are you stupid? And tell them what? Mathematically, the only possible way this happened was if Solar stood next to us and we did nothing, nor did we notice him?”

“Well, if you put it that way, then I’m sure the accumulation of dispersed potion in the mud is a much more obvious answer.”

She looked back at him and nodded. “Smart,” then she grinned. “See? You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be.”

The warrior’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll tell Mom that you stole her lipstick when we were fourteen.”

The mage gasped, clutching her hand to her heart. “You monster!”

“Then stop making fun of me…”

“Ugh…”