Might as Well

“So, what have we learned?” Sam asks, squatting next to the groaning leader of the thugs.

The man, and all of his companions, didn’t answer. They just continued to writhe on the floor after Sam went through them without even unsheathing his sword. He quickly checked that his runic ward was still up and then returned his attention to the man, who was still moaning in pain.

Taking out his trusty poking stick, Sam used it to poke the man. “Come on! It isn’t that painful! Say something…”

The thug moaned a few more times, but then he opened his eyes, glared at Sam, and spat a giant loogie at him, which splattered cleanly at a miniature wind wall in front of Sam. They both stared as it simply hung in the air for a short second then fell to the ground with a disgusting but rather quiet splat. Sam simply poked the man again.

“Come on! Just talk. I promise I won’t hurt you again…” he lied.

The man’s eyes darted between Sam and the other thugs until he finally relented and let out a defeated moan.

“Okay, okay! I’ll talk. Just stop poking me, you asshole!”

Sam nodded and took away the poking stick, though he made sure to keep it visible. Just in case.

The thug, still on the ground, swallowed and began to talk in a hushed voice.

“We were…we were told by the boss to go to this building here,” he started to haltingly explain, nodding his chin toward the building that Sam’s company owned. “And to go inside and to break some stuff.”

“Why?”

“Dunno, man… Boss don’t tell me nothin’…” came the expected answer.

“Alright, then how about you tell me where your boss is?” Sam asked in turn.

The man looked back at him and shook his head. “Not tellin’! Not tellin’!”

“Or I could introduce my little friend,” he raised the poking stick high, “more vigorously.”

Uncomprehending eyes looked back at him.

There was a lot of yelling and cursing after that. However, when he managed to calm the idiot down, he sang like a canary. A canary desperately trying to stay alive. A few minutes later, he had a route to the base of the thugs and the other ones were visibly glaring at their boss.

“Anything else I should know?” he asked curiously as he stood up and stretched a little.

The thug looked up at him uncomprehendingly, as if the mere questions short-circuited his brain before the NPC answered with a dark grin.

“The boss got some strong people. They’ll kill you, bastard!” the man spat in anger.

Sam simply nodded again. “Good to know…” In the next second, several distinct but low-leveled wind scythes were unleashed, and soon the bodies of the thugs were turning into pixels.

“Now what should I do?” he murmured to himself as he jumped up to the nearest roof and headed directly to the location that the lead thug fingered as their nightly gathering point. Apparently, they always met in different locations to stay safer and the location of the next meeting would be sent to them via a dead drop. However, if he wanted to get some actionable information, then he had to get there before sunrise, otherwise, they would realize that the thugs sent on the job were killed.

Quickly sending a message to Lucy about adding a few more guards to the warehouses, he suddenly stopped in the shadow of a chimney and looked around as a bizarre feeling enveloped him.

‘Where the fuck are the guards?’

He looked around, using his vantage point from atop the building he was standing on, and found that there were no patrols going to or coming from the direction of the company’s warehouse. ‘All right… that’s not at all suspicious...’

Sam made a note to figure out who was responsible, then restarted his journey toward the criminal hideout. The building that was pointed out to him was in a more crowded part of the city, right at the edge of warehouses and the night activities. It seemed to house several businesses on the lower floors, but the second floor was a mystery. Well, not to him.

Before moving on, he brought up his mana and focused it on the building. Instantly, he found the gentle light of wards overlaying the structure, covering every door and window. Even the one on the roof.

Shaping his mana thinly, he wound it to the nearest part of the ward, gently touching it. The moment he touched it, Sam stilled and waited for a reaction. But nothing happened. No ripples, nothing. At least nothing was visible.

Grinning to himself, he took out a small stone from his inventory, charged it with a little chaotic mana, and threw it on the roof while he was still connected to the ward to see what the reaction would be.

Once again, nothing. The charged stone landed on the roof with a small plink noise, rolled around a little, and then stopped. No reaction from the ward, no reaction from anywhere around the building, and nothing from the inside.

‘Well, fortune favors the bold…’ he mused as he prepared to infiltrate the building. First, he sent out a gentle pulse of mana to see if anyone or anything was paying attention. Naturally, as he was inside a city, the pulse came back with a lot of false readings. From the people on the streets, random artifacts on them, untrained players blazing their mana everywhere, and products in shops, but all of them felt neutral. None of them were in a convenient place to observe the building. Granted, there was every possibility that the person doing so could totally suppress their mana, or had an artifact that did it for themselves, but Sam felt the risk was worth it. ‘Plus, I doubt anyone has anything like that around here. They seemed too low on the totem pole for that…’

He made sure that the pulse didn’t go into the building he was observing, so for now he was blind to the insides.

Looking around from the edge of the roof, he spotted a group of players making merry and just generally being loud. They were obviously untrained, as none of them had any but the barest control over their mana. But that suited Sam just fine…

He cupped his hand in front of him, creating a small ball of condensed wind, and gently began guiding it down to the ground with expert mana control, avoiding attention. Then he waited.

The moment the big group was under him, he guided the ball of wind in the middle of the group and let it go. Instantly, there was a small explosion throwing up skirts and cloaks, accentuated by screams and laughter. By the time the first scream could be heard, he was already in motion. Clad in shadows, held aloft by the barest of wind magic, he jumped, covering the distance between the two roofs in a blink of an eye. He landed softly, barely making any noise.

Ignoring the impromptu brawl that broke out in the street – based on the sounds he was hearing – he began creeping toward the window on the roof, near the chimney that was mercifully not in use. First, just to cover all his bases, he checked the chimney, but as he looked down into it he saw it was too narrow for his body and there were also several grates preventing birds and other animals from flying down. ‘Ugh, if I could transform into a cloud of gas, I could’ve solved this easier…’ he grumbled to himself as he moved to the dust-covered window.

Before doing anything physical, he took his small and thin thread of mana and began enlarging it, until it was as thin as a pencil, then it had enough bandwidth to handle his mana before fracturing. Pushing more mana through it, he covered the ward around the building until he blanketed the area of the window.

Then, just like in heist movies, he moved his mana around and cut inside the line his mana created, while the rest of the mana took hold of the mana of the ward, not letting it escape. With the hole created, he moved the captured mana far from the building and released it. Thankfully, once again, the ward didn’t react.

Sam then took out a small knife and shimmied the window open enough that he could slip in.

As the window closed behind him, he slowly let the ward regenerate, withdrawing his own mana, and landed in a dust-covered, spider-webbed attic filled with all manner of boxes and detritus. Clearly, nobody had visited the room in a while.

Not even moving a pinky finger, he sent out another gentle pulse of mana through the building. Instantly, he was flooded with information. He counted almost a dozen minimal mana signatures on the top floor, twice that on the bottom floors, but he ignored that for now. There were businesses there, and the mana signatures that he sensed were moving like customers.

And on the top floor, aside from the probable thugs, he sensed two anomalies.

One was clearly a player, with blazing mana that they were trying to restrain, tinted with some familiar darkness. The other anomaly was barely there. If he didn’t know his tropes, he would have dismissed it as nothing, or maybe as a pet. ‘Okay, OP enemy found. With player apprentice? Probable. Conclusion: be dramatic.’ He already found something worthwhile, now he just needed to gather a little more information.

Slinking along the wooden beams, he headed toward a small hole in the ceiling where load-bearing wooden beams met and a gentle light was seeping through, casting gloomy illumination on the attic.

Looking down the hole that was big enough to jump down, he saw several people sitting around. Positioning himself a little, he could see more of the room. On the other side, he saw a being in a cloak, the one with the static-like mana signature, next to another, a somewhat shorter person in a cloak, but their hood was off and Sam could see their spiky black hair with a streak of white and heterochromatic eyes. ‘Dear god, my guy. Can you be more edgy?’

Around them stood several thugs, mean-mugging them. And as luck would have it, they just restarted their argument.

“How long do we hav’ ta stay here, creep?” Came from the meanest-looking criminal. The rest of the guys nodded along, crossing their arms across their barrel-sized hairy chests and continuing to glare at the cloaked strangers.

The one fully covered remained silent, but the player clearly had no interest in listening to the thugs again. He stepped forward and snarled.

“Shut the fuck up, idiot. You’ll stay here until we say so!”

The thug didn’t budge. “You hired us to do a job. We’re doin’ the job. Why do ya need us to stay here?”

“Because I said so. Now stop yacking about and leave us!” came the snarled response from the edgy guy. The other one was still silent.

The thug shook himself and opened his mouth to answer, but the cloaked being held up a gloved hand and everybody fell silent, from the thugs playing and just talking with each other to the edgy wannabe.

They spoke up, their voice a little sibilant and hoarse, with an undercurrent of darkness. “We are here, my friend because I needed to be here today. And you, my brutish friend, are here to enjoy my exalted presence.” A small pause, and then the hand motioned toward the edgy guy as if it was an afterthought. “And my apprentice.”

The heterochromatic guy grinned savagely, and Sam could see small dark sparks racing across the cloak.

The stranger hiding his face continued to talk. “And now I take my leave, while my apprentice cleans up the rats.”

There was a confused silence, both from the thugs and the apprentice. However, Sam was very clear about what was happening. Sighing slightly, he unsheathed his sword silently and scrambled around the wooden beams until he could jump down. Taking a deep breath, he did just so.

As soon as he landed, every eye snapped onto him.

Inwardly glad he had a different face on, he grinned and raised his hand. “Hello there!”

The cloaked stranger cackled and raised their hand. Instantly, a very familiar – demonic – energy swept through everything and covered the walls. ‘Oh, hello consequences of my actions…’ Then the cloaked individual turned to their apprentice. “Take care of him. Do not fail me.” Following that, they executed a rather dramatic swirl of their cloak and vanished into a wisp of darkness.

Sam made eye contact with the player and took in the dark electricity that swept over the cloak he was wearing. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “No hard feelings, right?” And while the edgy guy was opening his mouth to reply, with no doubt something very dark and mysterious, Sam quickly spun around, releasing a disc of whirlwind which expanded into a cutting force, only stopped by the wall oozing with dark demonic energy.

Unfortunately for the thugs, they weren’t as tough as the newly enchanted walls. Returning to his starting position, Sam was met with the snarling visage of the heterochromatic edgy mage and a beam of darkness that had a thin core of light.

“Dark Beam!”

Naturally, he didn’t try to block it. He simply stepped to the side, and the beam splashed against the wall ineffectively.

“Multiple Dark Beams!”

Another barrage of beams, same width as the first one, but now they practically filled the room as they flew at Sam. He dropped flat on the ground, letting the beams go over him. He sprung up as soon as the last beam vanished and launched himself toward the mage.

Sadly, the mage was on the ball, and Sam’s sword only hit a shield made of mana. Then the guy’s other hand came up with an honest-to-god enchanted knuckleduster. Naturally, the weapon was made of silver material criss-crossed with some other dark material and inlaid with red and blue gemstones. Just like his eyes.

Sam made a quick note to show the recording to his friend to laugh at later, and as the right hook came at him, he lashed out and grabbed the hand. There was a brief moment of confusion from his opponent, and then Sam braced himself and pulled the guy towards himself. However, only his enhanced mana sense saved him. He had a brief window as he sensed the activation of a spell, allowing him to let go of the hand and conjure his own shield.

“Dark Nova!”

An explosion of dark energy erupted from the body of his opponent, going everywhere and destroying anything that remained intact after Sam’s little spinning.

He was also pushed backward.

For a moment, they stood there, looking at each other. Sam curiously as he took in the situation, trying to gauge the other guy’s level, while the edgy wannabe was already raging.

“How the fuck did you take that? That should have destroyed you!”

Sam grinned and shrugged. “Talent?” Which only further enraged the other guy.