Chương 397: Chapter 380

The rest of the interview was all about the video. Mariann tried to tease more details out of Sam, but he held fast against determination wrapped in a rather beautiful and excited package. They replayed certain parts of the video, especially the explosion, as she marveled at it and peppered Sam with questions. He just smiled enigmatically and refused to share anything truly groundbreaking. Though, occasionally, he made sure to pretend to drop a nugget of wisdom here and there.

Nothing important, but every time it happened, Mariann played it up for the viewers. Then came the last part. Even though they were already almost an hour past the originally agreed-upon time, Mariann was still raring to go, though Sam could see that behind the carefully maintained cheerful façade, she was growing tired. Being in the digital space made things easier, but mental fatigue still caught up eventually.

"Now!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together while looking toward the drone cameras.

"We've reached the last part of the segment. My new friend, Solar, was nice enough to stay an hour longer, so I thought, why don't we cap off this special occasion with a special segment!" She paused, smiling toward the camera, then after a few beats, continued.

"That's right! A question-and-answer session! But!" She held up a finger dramatically while winking at the cameras.

"This time I'm not the one asking the questions!" She pointed at the cameras.

"It's you! Yes, you, the person sitting there watching this broadcast! So if you have any questions, click the link that will appear any second and write them in. Our team is going to collect them, and then I'll ask our resident gamer!" She grinned and looked over at Sam.

"How about that? A nice little capstone for our show." Sam smiled back and started to answer. They filled the next few minutes with inane chatter before a screen appeared in front of Mariann, listing the questions her team had collected.

"Wow! It appears we got over five thousand questions in just five minutes!" she exclaimed, then gave the camera a thumbs-up.

"You guys rock! Now let's see what the first one is…" Sam just watched her with mild curiosity. Mariann looked back at him with a cheeky grin.

"Care to guess what the first one is?"

"Is it about my relationship?" Sam asked with a heavy sigh.

"Bingo!" Mariann laughed.

"So, do you have a girlfriend... or maybe a boyfriend?" Sam weighed his options, but then just sighed.

"I'm currently not in a relationship like that."

'There, that should be enough…' he mused, completely ignoring the thoughts of a certain person bubbling up in the back of his mind.

"Oooh, mysterious! I like that!" Mariann proclaimed.

"How about the next question?"

"Might as well…"

"Great! So, a lot of people want to know: where did you get Lucky?" she asked as the wolf perked up at the mention of his name. Sam smiled, continuing to run his fingers through Lucky's fur as the wolf panted in delight.

"Believe it or not, in the beginner village." Mariann's eyes widened.

"In the beginner village? Such a powerful wolf? Well, I suppose you are Solar, so I shouldn't be surprised, yet I am." Sam just chuckled and said nothing more. That would send a lot of people on wild goose chases through beginner villages looking for the mythical shadow wolves.

"Alright, this one's a bit more interesting. People want to know: what's your favorite fracture so far? You've probably cleared a few by now, right?" Sam thought about it, running through all the fractures he had experienced.

"Always the next one. The system of Magic Unbound guarantees that they never turn out boring…" he finally answered.

"Booo!" Mariann retorted playfully.

"What a canned response. However, I can't blame you. The fracture system is pretty good."

"Another one!" Mariann said when it was clear Sam wouldn't elaborate on the fractures, glancing at the next cluster of submissions.

"This one's important for a lot of newer players. Do you recommend solo play or team play?"

"Both," he said almost instantly. Mariann raised an eyebrow.

"That's not really an answer."

"It really depends on what you value. With solo play, you can achieve higher growth and experience things in a truly unique way. Naturally, it comes with extra danger and perils," he explained.

"With team play, the danger decreases, but you get to experience this wonderful game with your friends or even family. And I think that's priceless. So I would recommend everyone to experience both." Mariann studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"Okay, that one I'll actually allow. That sounded almost like advice."

"It was."

"Dangerous precedent," she muttered, then smiled back at the camera.

"Did you all hear that? He can be helpful." Sam continued to smile at the camera while Mariann let out a small laugh and went looking for another question. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The questions kept coming, and Sam did his best to answer them in ways that were either vague or just specific enough to be unhelpful. Mariann didn't seem to mind, growing more animated as he continued sidestepping anything substantive in her prompts.

Sam suspected that because these were not her questions, she wasn't the one who was 'suffering'. Then, thankfully, the interview came to an end. Mariann leaned back in her armchair and let out a delighted giggle.

"Well, my dear viewers, it seems we have reached the end of our broadcast!" She paused, still smiling.

"I know, I know… There are many more things I'd also like to know about the mysterious Solar here, but maybe next time. For now, let's be happy we got to see something so interesting. I, for one, didn't expect to see something so… bombastic! Hahaha!" Sam smirked at the camera. Mariann, meanwhile, continued.

"So, as always, this was Mariann, your source of everything neat and great! See you guys next time!" She waved at the camera until the red lights vanished, then instantly collapsed into herself.

"Uuuugh," she groaned.

"That was fucking tiring…" Sam nodded.

"Indeed." He stood up and stretched. Now that the interview was over, he needed to see what Tim and the rest had managed to achieve. However, before he could leave, Mariann approached him. She was still wearing her explorer outfit, but had apparently lost the jacket somewhere. She stepped up to Sam and looked up at him. He idly noted that one of her hands was nervously playing with her hair.

"Thank you for your hard work," he reassured her.

"It was exactly what we needed." She smiled.

"No worries. Anytime you need a journalist, make sure to call me!" she said, pointing one of her thumbs at herself.

"Naturally," Sam replied. Mariann reached out and lightly touched his armor.

"Listen, how about we discuss some further cooperation over lunch? I'm starving…" Sam looked down at the slightly shorter woman gazing up at him with hopeful eyes and considered the offer. He was hungry, so lunch sounded like a good idea. Besides, cultivating a relationship with a journalist like Mariann would always be useful. He was about to answer when a yell came from behind him.

"Sa…Solar!" Mariann jumped away in fright, looking around his body to find the source of the yell. He simply turned around with a small smile.

"Lucy! What's up?" Lucy glared at him, visibly angry for some reason. She marched over to them, sending nasty looks at both him and Mariann.

"I heard you were finished. What're you still doing here?" Sam blinked.

"Just talking with Mariann. Why? Did something happen?" Lucy eyed them for a moment before turning fully toward the journalist.

"Thank you for your hard work, but we need to deal with some guild matters." Then, without giving Mariann a chance to answer, she reached out, grabbed Sam by the arm, and began pulling him toward the doors. Sam looked back and saw Mariann wearing an odd expression before it slowly morphed into a smirk, as if she knew something the others didn't. She gave him a small wave, then practically skipped away. Sam turned back to Lucy, who was still dragging him along, and let out a sigh.

'Why is this my life…' Fifteen minutes later, he was seated in Lucy's office at their Ferabor headquarters while a visibly grumpy Lucy handled her paperwork with surprising vehemence. Her familiar stood nearby, glaring at Sam with glowing red eyes.

"How did the interview go?" he asked after a few moments of silence.

"Did it work?" Lucy spent a few seconds pretending she hadn't heard him before letting out a snort.

"Did it work? It worked too fucking well."

"Our offices are inundated with calls, emails, and whatnot. We even had real-life couriers showing up," she declared, finally looking up at him.

"So… success?" he asked with a faint smile. It was always amusing seeing Lucy like this. She was outwardly angry and furious, but he knew that inside she was probably celebrating like a kid who had just gotten a new toy.

"Yes. The broadcast broke several records even before they played our video," Lucy said. She made a gesture and a screen materialized in front of Sam. It displayed the backend of the broadcasting site, at least the portion they could access, showing the live statistics from the interview he had just taken part in.

"If you look at this, the peak concurrent viewer count almost reached fifteen million," Lucy pointed out.

"Nearly five million higher than the previous record."

"Ah, I see… it peaked when we replayed the video."

"Mhmm…" Lucy nodded.

"Per the agreement with the news company, the video goes up tomorrow on our channel. Until then, they're the only source. People are obsessed."

"I expected as much…" Sam muttered as he scrolled through the technical details.

"What about the response?" Lucy let out a small laugh.

"As expected, a lot of people are laughing at the Blood Army. There are already at least a dozen meme threads about deifying the ladder you used." Sam grinned at that while Lucy continued.

"On the other hand, we received at least a hundred death threats and a few worse things, and I think that was just the initial count."

"Worse? What's worse than a death threat?" Sam asked curiously, though in truth he had a feeling he didn't really want to know. Lucy, apparently, felt the same.

"Trust me, you don't need to know. It was forwarded to the security team. Let them deal with it."

"Fine. Fine… What about the Blood Army? Did they say anything?" he asked, shaking his head. Lucy frowned.

"A bunch of threats and the usual accusations that you cheated." She perked up slightly.

"The official Future Unknown company account already shared the segment with the video, congratulating you for your 'ingenious infiltration technique'. They also added a disclaimer saying they checked, and you didn't cheat."

"I assume people didn't like that?"

"Your assumption is correct." Sam let out a sigh.

"That's good. Now, the only thing we need to know is whether the operation was successful." Lucy smirked, and the screen in front of him shifted from the broadcasting station's backend to a simple map. It displayed the southern part of the Emerald Kingdom, with current territorial borders clearly marked. Green for their side, red for the enemy. Large dots of matching colors marked key locations. The view zoomed in on one of the bigger red markers, deep behind enemy lines. A small city, unremarkable at first glance.

It had basic industry, including a small mine, but thanks to Tim's spy network, they had learned it was actually a cover for an underground distribution point. Beneath the city lay an old ruin, not large enough to reach into the Abyss, but still containing a fair number of fractures and valuable resources. And, of course, a few secrets – because there were always a few secrets.

The Blood Army had excavated the ruins, first to properly farm the fractures, but once the war started, they repurposed it into a distribution point. A very important location for the war effort. Sam grinned. With all eyes on him thanks to his first official interview, along with the explosive information he had released, most attention was now on him as people tried to process it – including the higher-ups in the Blood Army.

Sam imagined them watching closely, combing through everything he had said in search of weaknesses. The rank and file, on the other hand, would simply be watching because a famous player was giving an interview. A perfect opportunity for a bit of infiltration action. Was it a bit on the nose to use a video about him infiltrating a Blood Army stronghold to distract the Blood Army so his team could infiltrate them? Probably. But Sam enjoyed the irony.

And he would enjoy the look on their faces when they realized what he had done. Exchanging a delighted, conspiratorial look with Lucy, he knew they were thinking exactly the same thing. He rubbed his hands together.

"Tell me they took a video."

"Oh yes," Lucy said as she stood up. She pulled Sam from his seat and pushed him onto the large sofa at the edge of the room, then sat down next to him, slightly leaning into his shoulder, and summoned a large screen. The display instantly showed a video. It only took a second for Sam to recognize it as Tim's point of view.

"Everybody ready?" came through the recording, and Sam settled back into the sofa next to Lucy to watch.