Chương 160: Chapter 155

For a drawn-out moment, they stared at each other and the system screens before them alternately, before Sam grinned and began to chuckle.

"Well Liz, it seems the next time your contract is up for renegotiation we are going to have to pay through our nose to retain you…" She snorted and returned the grin.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll only ask for a small ransom…"

"Good. We only have so much money…" Sam replied sarcastically.

"Make sure to hide your light crafting in the streams."

"Why?"

"People are already hunting for you…" he didn't even have to finish the sentence and Liz was already nodding in understanding. While Sam left the handling of the stream to Liz and Lucy, he still got the report and sometimes watched the streams to see what the general populace thought about Liz. And sadly, there were a lot of wannabe stream snipers and people who were trying to suss out how she got her unique golems. If they added the light crafting…

"Do you have anything you want me to craft with it?" Liz asked excitedly, looking at Sam with anticipation. Sam just shook his head.

"I don't have anything. This was just a spur-of-moment decision to see if it would synergize with your skill."

"Ohh…" Liz looked down, disappointed.

"So, please do some experiments and see what is possible. Maybe hard light projectors?" Liz looked up and then away at her screens, frowning in thought. A few drones started flying around gathering materials and tools while Liz began to mutter under her breath.

"If I do this…" Sam smiled and bowed his head a little.

"Then I'll leave you to it. Bye, Liz!" He never received an answer to his goodbye. Shaking his head mirthfully, Sam stopped a few steps away from the room in thought. Then quickly he sent a message to Lucy about Liz's new skill and to have her upgrade her security.

'I really need to beef up the security around here,' he began to muse as he continued toward his next destination.

'Tim was a good start, but we really need a guild to use as security and beating stick against everybody else…' Slowly, he walked up the steps.

'Pity Isabella refused to lead the guild, but there is still that guy.' Making a note to check out his target and their status he refocused on his journey. A few minutes later he arrived in a meeting room in one of the upper levels of the headquarters. Inside he was met by Dan and Clarissa sitting next to each other, quietly talking. Dan in exasperation and Clarissa was nodding with an understanding look on her face. Katie was sitting near them, with the eldritch cat in her lap.

Isabella was sitting on the exact opposite of the berserker girl and was staring suspiciously at the young woman. He took in the sight and sighed.

'If I manage to get them to work together, I will petition the dev team to add an achievements system just so that I can get one for it.' Outwardly, however, he just smiled, clapped his hands together, and called out.

"Who wants to do some fractures?" Naturally, everyone was in. As they headed for the coordinates that Isabella brought with her, Sam spent some time talking with every one of his party members. Katie and Isabella were easy. When they weren't trying to kill each other with snippy comments, they were geeking out over some other niche game or celebrity news. Clarissa was pretty satisfied, and they mostly talked about how proud she was of her sister. It was all very uncomplicated.

The pets, Lucky, Melody, and Hawky, were following along with only Isabella casting the occasional jealous glance at them. Instead, Sam's attention was on Dan. As they were following Isabella who was reading from a scroll, they had to walk, so Sam simply walked next to Dan.

"So, I heard you got yourself a girlfriend…" Dan's head snapped up and looked at him.

"W-who told you?"

"Clarissa told Katie, who told Lucy who, for some unfathomable reason, told me."

"Why?"

"Haven't the foggiest…"

"Huh…" For a few minutes, they continued their journey in companionable silence before Sam spoke up again.

"Everything all right with her?"

"Yes… I think."

"You think?" Dan took a deep breath and then began talking.

"I'm just worried. You know the situation around the uni has been crazy. We have enough rich kids that one of them could, theoretically pay for all… this…" This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Sam just waved away his worry.

"Heh, you worry too much. Most of those silver-spoon-fed bastards only know how to ask their daddy to take care of stuff. What's her handle anyway?" Dan just chuckled.

"Yeah, sometimes even that is too much for their remaining two brain cells… Handle?" Sam nodded.

"Yeah. I have a few contacts that can look her up and we can see if she is on the up'n'up."

"Oh, nice! Her name's Lara and her in-game name is SilentTomb… Are you choking?" Dan asked worriedly as Sam tried to pretend he wasn't actually choking on his saliva. Coughing a few times until he regained a little equilibrium, he smiled at Dan.

"Don't worry, it just went down the wrong pipe. Anyway, I'll check her out and get back to you, OK?" Dan gave him a grateful nod and fell silent again. Sam was meanwhile freaking out inwardly. It seems the universe was listening to his woes.

'If I can get her on my side… wow… so many issues would be solved…' he mused. Naturally, even if those issues got solved many more new ones would crop up. The other Sam didn't know SilentTomb's name, but the in-game name was famous enough. The woman was like Tim, obsessed with security. She built a guild that set up shop in an abandoned castle and turned into a bustling metropolis that had never been conquered. Sadly, he didn't really know much, as the woman kept private information very close to her chest.

True to her name, she only spoke when she needed and never more than needed. But if Sam could recruit her and then go after the guy, he wanted to lead his guild, then they, plus Lucy and Tim, would probably create a very impressive guild.

'I need to start looking for the guy like right now!' After putting his thoughts in order, he smiled at Dan and began asking him questions about university life. No matter how much Dan complained, that shit was hilarious to Sam… The fracture's location they were heading for was given to Isabella by a seer whom she saved from brigands, around the time the fractures first appeared.

And now, deep into the countryside, they were standing at the edge of a small meadow where a menacing fracture portal was merrily swirling in the middle of a ring made of mushrooms. Or as they were known… fairy rings. Sam stared for a second, then spoke.

"Yeah, no. I'm not going in there." His teammates looked at him with visible surprise.

"Why not?" Katie asked.

"That's a fracture with fey in it. I'm not going to mess with them…" he said while pointing at the portal that somehow looked extremely cheerful at his declaration.

"Don't worry, boss," Isabella tried to reassure him.

"The fey hasn't been introduced yet to the game…"

"Yeah! They usually keep that for the late game!" Katie added her two cents while Clarissa looked curiously at the portal. Dan was simply petting Hawky who was resting on his hand. Sam, however, frowned.

"Wait, I never told you guys?"

"Uh, told us what?" came the general response to that. Sam slapped his head in disbelief.

"Can't believe I forgot…" Isabella frowned.

"I don't like the sound of it…" He nodded.

"Yeah, you won't. Fey are already here…"

"Where? Not even guild intelligence heard of them? Otherwise, they would have tried to get some quests and artifacts from them. All of them tried to ignore the giggling mushrooms.

"The children," said Sam simply.

"The children?"

"Yeah. Any city. Any slum or dark district with a lot of orphans. Chances are, most street urchins you meet are fey."

"Why?"

"They like to protect children and fuck with people. Two birds with one joke…" he explained to his team as they listened to him.

"How do we recognize them?" came the expected question from Dan. Sam just spread out his hands helplessly.

"That's the best part. You don't." He fished around in his inventory and retrieved a small token.

"The seer that gave you the map probably was also a fey…" Wordless he shared the screen with the others. [Token of Friendship (Fey): A coin bearing the mark of the fey. Can be exchanged for favors with the fey. Be warned, they are not obligated to accept it.] Seeing them finished with the short reading assignment, he put away the coin, ignored the dancing mushrooms under the portal, and posed one simple question to his team.

"Do you guys still want to do the fracture?" He wasn't really surprised that all of them said yes. Katie smiled at him and gave him an energetic thumbs up.

"I trust you, boss!" Sam just sighed and walked forward, careful not to step on the mushroom, and reached toward the fracture. Instantly, another screen popped up. [Fracture: Yonderland] [A portal in the middle of a fairy ring. How coincidental… Enter at your own risk and try to exit. Or not… Be careful with the scenery. And the locals. And the space-time continuum. Basically, hold your britches because this is going to be a wild ride!] [Time Limit: Between last week and sometimes never, or Tuesday] [Penalty: You can't leave] [Charges: Depends how funny you are!]"Well, it's as clear as expected." He looked back at his teammates and animal partners.

"Last chance to stop… any takers?" Hearing no response, he let out a disappointed sigh and touched the enter button. His sight was immediately awash with rainbow light. They appeared in the exact copy of the meadow they started in, minus the portal. The fairy ring was there and in the background, Sam could hear the chorus of the fairy's chime-like laughter.

"Weapons ready. Actively look for illusions and traps." He unsheathed his sword and began pulsing mana in a random pattern, looking for irregular mana formations that would be used to anchor illusions.

"Also, never split up."

"Got it."

"Yes, boss!"

"Okay!" Clarissa just grunted as she began layering buffs and shields on everybody. Isabella took her two swords and began, gently, hitting the blades against each other with rhythm. A few seconds later waves of mana began cascading off her, covering them and granting them some smaller buffs. She grinned at them.

"That was the basic layer, the important bits come in the fight!" Sam said nothing as he knew how bladedancers worked. Instead, he made sure nothing snuck up on them.

"There!" he called out and pointed among the trees. Thanks to his ability to see mana and the flow of action he could see the hazy outline of something big. Clarissa instantly shot off a spell that disrupted the invisibility and revealed three small bears on each other's shoulders, wearing the pelt of an even bigger wolf. Not leaving anything to chance, before the small bears that looked like full-grown bears, just small, could react, Sam was cleaving through them with his sword.

As the pieces of the animals fell to the ground, he heard Katie exclaim.

"Ugh, I wanted to see if they had a good excuse…" The first part of the fracture was pretty straightforward for a fey fracture. They had to contend with all manner of hidden animals in all manner of shapes and sizes. Not that Sam minded. It was a pretty good opportunity to fold Isabella into the team. As a bladedancer, every hit of her sword caused some kind of effect. If she managed some kind of rhythm according to her skills, then those effects were amplified.

Sam had no doubt the girl had extensive dance lessons in real life. They met with more miniature bears dressed up in all sorts of pelts, snakes in suits, trying to convince them that they were just lost and so much more. Thankfully, all of their stats were high enough that those attempts at charms and mind control didn't really work. They were still annoying, along with the incessant low-key laughter in the background. Reaching another meadow, this one without the mushrooms, but pretty nice benches to rest upon.

Which turned out to be mimics. As Sam watched the girls go to town on the poor mimic after it made some suggestive moves with its barbed tongue he had only one thought.

'Of course, there are mimics here…'