Might as Well - Chapter 398 (Patreon)

Sam left the noises of aggression behind as he rushed forward, using every available bit of mana inside his body to enhance his speed. Based on how these things usually went, there was a certain chance that the backup would somehow find him, or worse, already have a way to find him specifically.

With his fame and the large number of bounties on his head, there were for sure entire teams trying to figure out how to find him, disable him, and finally, kill him. He didn’t doubt that this project was very important to the Blood Army, so those people who came to see what was happening would have significant power.

A few strange artifacts wouldn’t be out of the question…

With how varied the game was, there was no doubt something existed that could find him, even though he had made sure to eliminate his own smell and mana signature, which most people used to find others.

At this point, most people based everything on mana, or blood, he supposed. Even search spells and skills that didn’t use physical tells, like smell or sound, took mana for granted. Per the world’s setting, every living thing had mana.

It didn’t matter if it was a small bug or an enormous dragon. It had mana.

Even inanimate objects that could be dangerous, like golems, had mana, as mana was the very thing that sustained and moved them. Undead? Mana brought them to life.

So based on all that, if something didn’t have mana, then it was less than a rock. Basically invisible to probably ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent of skills and spells. Sam would never exclude the possibility that some spells would work, but for most people, this was a fact of life.

Now, later in the game’s life, after some expansions and too much fighting against undead, players would develop soul-based search techniques, which would make his current setup look completely useless, but he figured that was a bit of a problem for future Sam.

As he ran, he looked to the side, where giant pipes were set up, running straight into the darkness, with an occasional guard station that he had to get around. However, seeing as they were impossibly bored and were either napping, practicing magic or skills, or playing games with each other, that was almost child’s play.

As he got further and further, he felt the ground slightly rise, and soon, natural light began to flood the tunnel.

Slowing down a little, he stuck to the shadows.

Sounds began to pick up, and soon the situation revealed itself in front of him.

The pipes led above ground, where they terminated into several giant containers, which themselves led toward a giant building that was covered in a bunch of camouflage as it stood under the shadow of a mountain. It was a giant building, and based on the sounds emanating from it, the factory was a massive processing plant built to produce the noxious potion, which was then sent underground, where it was transported and, for some reason, stored before being bottled and spread around the world.

All around it and the hole leading underground was a wall. It looked high enough that it would actually take time to scale it. Time enough to be spotted. Most of the area lacked any greenery, with only spotty shadows provided by the camouflage covering the entire area, reminding Sam of World War pictures. There were a bunch of support structures around, but none of them were close enough to the hole where he was currently hiding. Putting aside the strange fact that the factory was set up here and not underground, Sam frowned.

The only way out was through the empty space between where the pipes emerged from the ground and the nearest wall.

The problem was that the entire courtyard was filled to the brim with players.

Most of them were running around, doing odd tasks or hauling things here and there, but a rather sizable amount of them were staring at the hole and aiming their weapons at it.

Thankfully, he was still covered in the shadows, and most of those players looked bored as fuck. Even the leaders were mostly doing their best to keep them in line.

“Stay in your place!”

“Be ready to fire!”

“I don’t want anyone sleeping on the job! We’re here to capture whoever the fuck decided to infiltrate!”

One brave soul spoke up.

“Sir… we have been here for hours… Can we… can we take a break?”

The leader, some guy dressed in armor covered in skulls of various animals, stalked toward the sound and began yelling about things most middle managers yelled about.

Sam ducked back into the shadows and cursed a little.

‘Alright, so they’re a bit smarter than I expected them to be…’ he mused. ‘No doubt these scrubs are here as bait. Anyone with any power would look at them and think they could take them.’

Granted, Sam was pretty sure that he could take them, and whatever team was hiding themselves. But it all came back to the same issue. The Blood Army didn’t know who the infiltrator was, and he didn’t want them to know just yet.

Sam began to think.

He could go out there guns blazing, but he could also turn back and see if he could take his chance at the other end. Though he suspected that the same thing was waiting for him there.

‘Or…’ he mused as his eyes followed the giant pipes leading toward the factory. ‘It would be tricky timing…’

Slowly moving, careful not to make any noise, he retreated deeper into the tunnel and began examining the pipe. It was a mix of several metals, with runes here and there reinforcing the structure and ensuring nothing escaped. They were not everywhere, but every few dozen feet, there were a few of them.

Based on what he could see and what his own skill was telling him, they were pretty generic, probably bought as they were, and not some bespoke work. Probably because the Blood Army had to use a lot of pipes, so paying for a Rune Master to personally do it would cost more than setting up the entire location.

However, that gave Sam a very nice chance.

Originally, he thought he would need to use explosives, but with these runes, just a few alterations made to look like a manufacturing error that suddenly failed would allow him to do what he needed.

Gleefully taking out his precision carving tools used for metals, upgraded and refined by Liz, he began to slowly modify the runes, while from aboveground he could hear the leader of the group waiting for him, or rather the infiltrator, emphasizing that they were waiting for him, kept yelling. Soon, as he worked, he could hear several other people join the argument.

It got heated, and Sam wondered for a moment whether he really needed to put together a distraction, because by the sounds of it, there would be a ready-made distraction outside of the tunnel.

Then something changed.

The sound of the argument cut off, in an instant, as if someone had pressed the mute button.

Then, as Sam also froze, not wanting to make a sound, a new voice called out.

It was a deep sound; however, it was unnatural enough that he suspected that there was either a spell or an artifact deepening the voice.

“That’s enough.”

The silence continued just as his hand, holding the carving tool, hovered over the last few runes he had been modifying, while his head was turned in the direction of the end of the tunnel, making sure he heard everything.

“You’re all here to do a job. So do it. I don’t care if you’re bored. You were paid; act like it,” the deep voice said, before the cadence changed from condescension and chastisement to pure annoyance and a bit of challenge. “And you! I can fucking hear you! Come out or else!”

Sam frowned. ‘That was not good.’

However, the guy didn’t seem to know yet who was there or how many. Sam also suspected that this was just said to bait out anyone.

Looking down at the runes, he let out a quiet sigh. It would seem his quiet plan would be useless here.

Reluctantly, he reached over and started carving again, uncaring if he was heard.

Which he was.

“Hah! I knew it!” the deep voice exclaimed triumphantly. “Prepare yourself! They’re already scratching at the walls!”

Sam chuckled a little. ‘So their hearing wasn’t that good…’

Within seconds, he finished rewriting the last rune, then ran his fingers gently over the newly created runic chain and simply activated it. Nothing happened yet, but the moment he needed it, the runes would flare, and he would have a distraction.

Putting away his tool, he turned to face the tunnel’s exit, where the aforementioned deep voice was still doing its best to get him to come out.

“Hah! Chicken shit! Do you dare to face the might of the Blood Army?”

“Come on! Try to face me like a man!” There was a small but hurried whisper after that, before they cleared their throat. “Ahem. Or a woman! I don’t care! Just show your face, moron!”

Sam looked down at himself, then back at the tunnel. ‘It seems I don’t really have a choice…’

And just as he thought that, the voice began to yell. “I’m going to give you a minute! If you’re not out by then, I’m going in. And you don’t want that.”

Holding back a snort, Sam took a deep breath as his mind was working a mile a minute. He was assessing the situation, the conditions, the options, the resources, and everything else, trying to come up with an optimal solution.

He was currently under multiple curses. He was most likely surrounded by an army that may or may not have a hidden team waiting, ready to strike when he was most distracted. He was in enemy territory with no chance of backup or help coming.

The moment he used any of the spells he was famous for, the entire Blood Army would converge on the area, making everything a hundred times harder.

However, he wasn’t exactly without tools.

He could make clones out of shadow mana, a skill he rarely used and that was well known among the assassin and rogue community as an essential skill. Probably something an infiltrator would have access to.

Most players would be able to create a few clones, maybe an even dozen, that would be useful.

But Sam was different. He looked down at his arm, the bracer bristling with mana, proving once again its worth in printer ink.

“Thirty seconds!” came the call, and Sam could feel the mana in the air stir.

Not waiting anymore, he opened the tap on the bracer and began using his prodigious mana control to transform the neutral mana into shadow mana. Within seconds, he was surrounded by several clones of himself, all of them looking a bit washed out, as if the color had been leached out in the wash a few times, or the wrong filter had been applied. Then, the next second, that dozen turned into sixty-four, then one hundred and twenty-eight.

Sam only conjured this many because he also made sure to load them up with enough mana to be able to last a few seconds at least, whatever was waiting for them.

Basic instructions were simple: Launch themselves out of the tunnel, protect themselves, get into melee, kill as many players as possible, then detonate themselves.

“Ten seconds…” came the call from aboveground. “I can feel you trying! Good! At least this won’t be boring!”

Sam grinned at his clones, who looked forward boredly, wearing the face of some random person he had seen once, copying him thanks to the Chameleon mask. The first few lines would definitely be destroyed, but he quickly reached into his inventory, pulled out a few explosives, and threw them at the ones standing in the back line.

“Five!”

He cracked his neck and turned toward the tunnel exit.

“Three!”

Not even waiting for the countdown to end, he spoke one word out loud.

“Go!”

The clones surged forward.

“Two… what the hell?” came the voice as pandemonium broke out.

As predicted, the first few clones were sniped out of the air, but they came so fast and in such numbers that, by the time they realized they needed to switch to area-of-effect attacks, the clones were already within their ranks.

As the clones streamed out, leaving the tunnel emptier and emptier, Sam continued to hand out explosives before finally closing his inventory and joining the throng of facsimiles.

Sam flew forward, launching off the ground and soaring into the air for a brief moment, taking in the situation.

The army waiting for him was in disarray as they tried to kill the clones while also protecting themselves from shadow spells and, most importantly, the spells and skills of their fellow players. It was total chaos.

In the middle of the melee was a woman.

She was tall and was wearing a blood-red bodice with spikes everywhere, a flowing cape that looked more like liquid than cloth, and her red hair set in a hairdo that Sam could only describe as ‘supervillain-esque.’

Her deep voice was mixed with the general chaos as she flung spears of blood-red flames around her, occasionally incinerating a clone or one of her people who came too close to her.

“They’re just fucking clones, you morons!” she yelled in her impossibly deep voice. “Just one hit, and they die!” She punctuated this by throwing her hands out and summoning a blood-red tornado of flame around her, completely enclosing her and several clones.

Sam used this exact moment to land, activate an invisibility plate, and rush toward the factory.

Just in time, too, as the first clones carrying the explosives reached their desired target.

BAMMM!

WHOOOOM!

FWHUM!

A/N: Apologies for the late posting. I was on holiday this weekend, and somehow this was set up to be uploaded on the 24th not on the 23rd. But now it is here!