Might as Well

It took him several hours to cobble together something resembling a coherent article, but to him, it looked more like a list of things to talk about with his thoughts about said topic added to it. Granted, even like that, the entire thing was several pages long. Plus, upon rereading his ‘rant’, he realized there was a very visible undercurrent of anger laced through the whole text.

‘Apparently, the other Sam’s feelings still hadn’t dissipated…’ he mused as he took the time to go over the entire thing, change the wording to look less like the manifesto of a school shooter and more like well-thought arguments about the realities of gaming.

Then he added a few notes to the end of his creation, mostly about the goals and such, followed by sending the entire thing to Lucy for a review. Hopefully, his friend would be able to use her magic to create something more elegant than a rant written by him.

‘Maybe Isabella could take a look?’ he wondered as he got back the confirmation that the letter went through. ‘Didn’t she study business and marketing?’

Sam took a little break, had a few glasses of water with his meal while staring broodingly out of his windows at the city and wondering about his place in the universe.

Was it really his job, his task to reveal the injustice that began to choke the players around the world?

The answer was clearly no.

There was no isekai goddess that tasked him with cleaning up the world or saddling him with any other task before he came to be ‘resurrected’ in this dimension. There were no curses on him and he had no great power, be it economic or political. He had no hidden relatives with mysterious pasts that would offer him the aforementioned power.

He was only one man. One man, who planned to take on the entire world.

Did he need to do it? No. Did he want to do it? Yes.

It would probably come back to bite him in the ass, but Sam didn’t care much about that.

‘What’s the point of a second life if you don’t live it to the fullest?’ he mused as he finished his meal.

“Alright,” he exclaimed, pumping his arms up and down. “Let’s do a little exercise, then back to gaming!”

While now that the new gaming pods came out, exercising and proper nutrition weren’t as important as it was before, Sam knew himself, and he knew if he didn’t keep up this regimented and disciplined life, he would soon turn to a sedentary lifestyle and with that came the belly and tiredness. He was rather enjoying the feeling of lightness and the looks women gave him, thus the sacrifice of time and effort.

Plus, it was just the first-generation gaming pod. It was made from current tech and quickly integrated into a coherent whole. The real improvements would come starting from the second-gen pods.

If he remembered correctly, when the other Sam died, they were using fourth-generation gaming pods and seventh-generation helmets.

Sadly, that meant that while new helmets would come out almost every year or so, he would have to wait for the second-gen pods for at least two years.

He took a seat in front of his computer and opened up the official website for Magic Unbound. For now, he ignored the official forums and instead, he went for the news.

There were dozens of posts with showcases that showed off one or two aspects of the game, highlighting some of the things that people would enjoy, mixed in were posts about patches, bug fixes, and explanations to questions that a lot of people asked. Like about major mechanics, people claiming that other people, guilds, or groups were cheating, and so on.

The most popular post, pinned to the top, was simply titled: ‘How does mana work?’ and had only a sentence as an answer.

‘Figure it out.’

Most of the post was filled with trolls laughing at the noobs and people raging at other people who figured it out or the company for not sharing even a basic primer with the players.

The competition for pictures of pets, summons and familiars was still ongoing, the forum posts filled to the brim with pictures of cute, diabolic, or even edgy pets. According to the notes, they were aiming for summer solstice to draw the winners. Until then, people could only look at the countless pictures of pets and vote with all their might. There were straight-up fan pages for some of the pets and the war in the comment sections was heated enough that there were entire pages unreadable because of inappropriate comments.

However, what really interested him was the latest news.

The ‘Race to the top!’ event is written in big bold letters on the topmost post.

It was a very simple post.

It had a list of the top fifty players worldwide as well as a link to see your local list for the area where you were. It was broken down into continents, countries, and in some countries, even into counties.

Thankfully, his name was nowhere near the top as he stopped leveling after finishing the Valley of Distortion. It was mostly full of people with Level 95 or 96. Some of them were well known, but a lot of them were hidden ‘masters’ or no-lifers. No matter who they were, their fame had shot up into the heavens as people realized what they were capable of.

A lot of people complained that they were revealed to be high-leveled, but Future Unknown just linked the relevant ToS page and the argument was done.

And of course, because the company couldn’t make anything easy, they announced that the winner would get a high-definition one-sixth scale figurine of their character with the option to re-order it once a year while the game lasts. There were also a few miscellaneous rewards, like titles in the forum, frames for the account pictures, and some unique emoticons.

Most people demanded that the victor should be rewarded with in-game items, but the developers announced that they didn’t want to enhance the winner even more, thus the out-of-game rewards.

Even though there were no in-game rewards, the people still went crazy for the figurine. Every person who found themselves on the list found themselves examined with a magnifying glass and hunted by their detractors.

The list was dynamic, thus as soon as somebody leveled up, or lost a level, the list was updated. Which made the post the most viewed one the game company had made so far.

Sam was really tempted (hoping he could convince the company to include a figurine of Lucky in the deal) but he also knew that this was just a marketing ploy to make people interested in the figurines that the company would start selling. First just a one-on-one representation of the in-game model, but soon they would offer seasonal clothes for them – the most popular, for some unfathomable reason, would be the summer collection – as well plush toys of monsters, pets, summons, and familiars.

‘Still… could I do Level 101 with my current quest?’ he thought as he watched as the top fifty on the list rapidly changed, not unlike the announcement board at a busy airport.

For a moment, he sat there in thought.

Reaching Level 101 was a qualitative change for anybody, but with his foundational skills, his improvement would be even better. Plus, the announcement didn’t actually say that the players needed to reach Level 101, thus a lot of people were only planning on reaching Level 100. And that one level of difference mattered… The experience points required to reach Level 101 were almost five times the points needed for Level 100, which in itself wasn’t easy to reach.

‘Or I could focus on the portals and make bank…’ he mused.

Sam still hadn’t made a decision by the time he returned to the game. For now, he still had time to make that decision, thus he could focus his energies on the quest he was given by Fitzgerald.

Upon login into the game, he opened his quest screen and was very satisfied upon seeing that the 38% went up to 41%. More than likely Lara had already begun to execute the things they had discussed.

He took a few minutes to walk around, watched as players and NPCs worked side by side, made sure to do a very thorough sweep of the area with his Mana Sense to see if he could spot any problem areas or infiltrators.

Thankfully, while the area was soaked in old mana, there was nothing to worry about for now. As for the NPCs, he made sure to note which ones were much more powerful than a carpenter or builder should be and sent a note to Tim to investigate.

Then he turned around and stalked out from the center of the newly developing town, heading for the quarry and to deal with the issue of the monsters.

He arrived at the quarry on the back of Lucky, just in time to watch as a contingent of guild players fought off another wave of monsters. The monsters were golems, more than likely born from the earth mana suffusing the quarry. They were made of the gray stone that the people were trying to mine for the wall and the eventual buildings and were mostly shaped like spiders. From his vantage point he overlooked the battle where the clearly experienced players demolished the monsters with brutal efficiency. They clearly learned the weak points of the monsters and used them to their advantage.

He spotted hundreds of smaller ones, maybe around the size of a corgi, stuttering around on four stony legs, trying to bite people’s ankles or jumping on them when they weren’t paying attention. The next size was around a pony, with six legs, giant pincers on the front, and actual spikes all around their body. They were the bruiser and tanks of the monsters, ramming into the players, trying to trample and crush them. And among the deluge of stone spiders were the giant ones, maybe one for every dozen medium ones. They towered over the players with their height and spat extremely sharp pebbles while using the sharpened end of their eight legs. They also sometimes shook their body releasing some kind of gray dust that appeared to be trying to choke people and hide the smaller spiders in it.

Sam watched as the group of players from his guild quickly dealt with the monsters, then celebrated for a moment before they began to police the scene. He even spotted the group of people he requested for this task, standing around the corpse of one of the big ones and clearly having a bragging match based on their body language.

He cast his mana sense at the corpses and then at the mountainside the quarry was built into.

‘Well, those are not fracture monsters… no dimensional taint… no demonic energy either…I wonder…’ Sam closed his eyes and focused all his senses on the mountain from where the monsters originated from. He ‘looked’ through the gravel, sand, and stone, going deeper and deeper until he felt the edge of some kind of mana field. Going a little deeper, he suddenly seized and before he could do anything, he saw with his mind’s eyes eight red lights turning on in a very familiar arrangement. Then everything vanished and Sam felt like somebody walked up to him, and punched him in the nuts, stomach, and face at the same time.

For a few seconds, he only saw shapes and colors as he tried to regain his breath and by the time he managed to rein in his hammering heart, he noticed he was lying on the ground with a worried Lucky standing over him.

He reached out and patted the wolf’s head. “Thanks, Lucky. I’m all right now…”

Slowly getting up, he looked toward the mountain with a sour taste in his mouth. “Fuckity fuck…”

When he reached the sitting position, instead of continuing, he reached for his system screen and made a call.

Instantly, two faces appeared on the screen in front of him.

“Yes?” asked Lucy with a worried look while Adam just raised an eyebrow.

Sam didn’t mince his words. “Found something big. Mobilize guild. I want everybody we can spare here!”

Adam spent a moment looking at his face before nodding silently and disconnecting from the call, leaving Sam alone with Lucy.

“What did you find?”

“Something big and nasty hiding under the quarry. And may have pissed it off…” he replied with a small grin.

“How big?”

Sam looked away from the screen and eyed the mountain looming over the quarry.

“Pretty big…”