Chương 40: Chapter 39

For a long moment, Sam luxuriated in the feeling of getting one over his enemy, then he watched as Lucky with a violent motion threw the murderous assassin maid away from the lady of the manor, then with deliberately threatening steps left the shadow and protectively stood next to the suffering woman, almost curling up around her. He looked enormous with his fluffy fur puffed in anger.

Instantly, several guards and undercover guards posing as maids were on the false one, pushing her into the ground, but keeping her alive. Sam didn't spare any more thought to the assassin as, coincidently, the ritual seemed to be picking up. The white fire blazing in the chalice grew even brighter and bigger, while the smoke rising from the woman turned into almost liquid as it left her body.

The cursed smoke as it left the body began to churn in the air over the ritual circle, expanding then contracting, but it stayed strictly over the rune circle. The wizard standing at one of the focal points of the ritual never stopped chanting, and the moment the great cloud of miasma and very dark magic began collecting above the ritual increased their pace and volume of chanting.

As the guards who weren't guarding the oddly docile assassin were starting the cleanup, the lord of the manor stepped up next to Sam, staring at the ritual, most specifically at his wife. Sam said nothing, just watched as slowly, with raised hands and the magic radiating light to his alternative sights, the wizard directed it ever so slowly over the burning white fire which, as soon as it touched the cursed material, began to grow upwards.

At first, the flames just barely tickled the bottom of the bubble of miasma, but that was enough to send the miasma running. It began to vibrate and churn even stronger, but the ritual held firm. Soon the bubble of miasma was suspended over the flame like a choice of meat and was being burned. Second by second, it decreased in size, and Sam could see how the pulsing dark magic was also decreasing, as a bonus, the magic in the lady of the house was also calming down, though it was dangerously thin and weak.

Sam just watched along calmly as Lord Silvercrest muttered and walked to and fro, fretting for his wife. A three focal point ritual was nothing to write home about. In his memories of the future that never will be, he saw several rituals where more than a hundred wizards, sorcerers, and mages had to participate with material costs that would have bankrupted a small country. Depressingly, these rituals were mostly performed for the sake of some spoiled second-gen rich heir who wanted to get stronger.

In truly human fashion, there were actual guilds that specialized in providing exactly this type of ritual with very competitive fees. Of course, there were sinister rituals carried out by necromancers and dark mages. Summoning daemons and other dark beings to do their bidding, or be devoured by the very beings they summoned. That was why he wanted to learn Runecraft. His hope was that if he knew how rituals worked, then he would have an easier time disrupting them.

Sadly, the other Sam didn't know much about runes besides the basics, so he had almost no insider information about it. But that was exactly what made it interesting to him. He wasn't following the steps of the other Sam. He was blazing his own trail… As his thoughts meandered, the ritual let out the biggest pulse to date, and the white flame rose once more, enveloping the bubble of miasma, once, twice, and three times. And when the flames came down after the third time, the miasma was gone.

Sam could physically feel the absence of the cloying miasma from the area. The entire garden, the maids, guards, the nobles, and even the assassin let out a sigh of relief. The flame continued to merrily burn while the wizard controlling the ritual changed their chant and over the next few minutes, the magic in the ritual slowly drained away, going back to the ley-lines and the white flame in the chalice slowly decreased in size until it went out completely with a small puff sound.

"Sylvia!" the giant man immediately exclaimed and rushed next to his wife. Sam noticed that the wizard sent the lord an annoyed look but otherwise stayed silent. The enormous man stopped on a dime next to the harshly panting noble lady, knelt down, and began to cradle tenderly the woman in his hands.

"You're alright! You're alright…" Sam turned away, knowing that he wouldn't be much use to the man as he could see several people dressed as healers with the sign of the House of Silvercrest rushed over and began to fuss over them and the wizard. Instead, he began to help with the cleanup. He collected shattered weapons, armor, and clothing scraps, dug up corrupted ground that was hit by the attacks of the possessed enemy, and shoveled it into boxes brought in. And sometimes nicked a few things from the corpses.

An amulet with weird runes, a ring with an unfamiliar symbol, weirdly shaped daggers, and in one case, a very nice bag of money. Sam was sure that the Silvercrest servants knew what he was doing (he wasn't trying to be stealthy) but either they chalked up his behavior to being an adventurer or they didn't care. Slowly, over an hour, the garden was put in order, though it still showed the signs of a fight happening, the corpses were taken away and the debris was piled in one out-of-the-way corner.

Sam was about to find an excuse to leave when the tired-looking butler approached him.

"Master Adventurer," he greeted Sam with respect shining in his eyes.

"Hello," Sam returned the greeting with a respectful nod.

"I bring greetings from the Master." Lord Silvercrest and his wife have long ago been bundled up and escorted back to the manor.

"He bids you to return on the morrow to discuss your well-deserved remuneration."

"I assume he was quite louder than that…" said Sam with a small smirk as he began a quick check of his equipment while also letting out a small whistle to call Lucky back to him. The fortunate wolf was being pampered by several maids. Hearing the whistle, he sprung up from his back and, with several powerful jumps, arrived next to him. Sam gave him a quick pat on the head and the silly wolf jumped into his shadow with a graceful swan dive.

"Quite," replied the butler in a dry tone and turned around, leading Sam to the gates. Leaving the manor grounds was rather funny. While inside the manor walls, a small battle had taken place, several skirmishes had broken out throughout the city between rival guilds while the city guards desperately tried to calm things down. Naturally, it didn't help that the promised raid on the Auction House Warehouse didn't happen, so now everybody was pointing fingers at everybody else.

At least, that was what he overheard during his walk. First, he visited the Auction House to check if there was anything that would interest him. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. He sat down for a little while in one of the corners that were reserved for the independent players while several areas of the Auction House were covered with several clans and guilds who had their people eternally hunt for bargains.

The first thing he noticed was that there were several highly armored guards walking around in the halls of the establishment and when he turned on his Mana Sight, he saw that several servants who were serving the people or answering questions had suspiciously high mana levels. Though he had to stop as one of the women who were at the service desk sent him a playful glare. Sam gave her a respectful nod with a small smile, then returned to browsing.

The material section wasn't interesting to him as nobody had much chance to find the important mines. Though he made sure to check just to be sure, sadly it was just as empty as he expected. The armor and weapon were full of mass-manufactured crap, as was the alchemy section.

'The novels lied to me. Where is the Thousand Year Old Ginseng? Where is Fire Sword of Awesome?' he grumbled to himself, then turned his attention to the recipe section.

'Let's see… armor, armor, weapon, weapon… potion, potion, addicting drug…' Once again, nothing interesting. Searching for runes, he came up with nothing. Finally, he turned towards the skill book section. As expected, the top of the screen was full of the Life of Blood skill book for ludicrous prices while mixed in were some ridiculous skills like Lightning Beam, Blizzard and other, very situational skills.

'Soon they will learn the cons of long cast times… And hopefully the concept of friendly fire…' he mused with an evil smile as he did a few searches. Searching the wind category yielded him the Wind Drill spell that allowed one to envelop their weapon with a drilling wind effect. Mostly useful for spear users, but he wanted to integrate it into his rotation. The shadow category was empty of anything interesting, which wasn't a big surprise as it was a rather rare type.

Then, as promised to himself, he looked into the health-increasing skills. He discarded the idea of getting several smaller skills that would give him a few percentage improvements because Sam didn't really want to over-clutter his skill collection. Finally, after half an hour of searching, he found a very cheap skill at the bottom of the list for several gold coins. With shining eyes, he immediately bought out the skill, not even bothering to bid on it. It was just too good of a catch.

With that, he stopped his browsing, walked up to the service desk, waited until it was his turn, and was helped by the woman who noticed his snooping. He paid for the items and put them into his inventory before leaving. From the Auction House, he directly headed to the Cloudy Day Inn. He ordered a filling meal, as after a fight one needed to replenish his energy, and while Lucky, the great ham, begged for scraps around the dining hall, he tried to fight the urge to open his notifications.

Finishing his meal and thanking the waitress with a smile, he collected Lucky, who was in the process of charming several waitresses off the clock and retreated to his room. Inside the room, he gave Lucky several high-quality slices of meat and water, then changed into much more comfortable clothing, hopped on the bed, with his back to the wall, and took out the two new skill books. [Congratulations, you've learned the spell, Wind Drill!] [Wind Drill: Level 0/10 (0%) (Active) A spell that allows you to grant the tip of your weapon wind shaped as a drill, enhancing its penetration ability.] [Congratulations, you've learned the skill, Mana Body!] [Mana Body: Level 0/100 (0%) (Passive) Your mana permeates your body, enhancing and improving it. The better the control of your mana is, and the more mana you have, the bigger the effect is. For every 100 Mana Points, it grants you 1 Base Health gain. For every skill level, it increases the Health Regeneration by 0, 1.] The moment he learned it and the skill book vanished, he instantly felt mana coursing through his body, reaching every little corner. It was a rather peculiar feeling. Sam didn't think he could have explained it using words. It was an awesome skill, especially for him with his humongous amount of mana. And combined with the rest of the skills, it would become a powerhouse soon. Though it made sense why the person selling it was doing so.

According to his inherited memories, most people who specialized in mana were hovering around 500-600 Mana points currently. So this would seem like a waste of time and money to get.

'How they would cry later when it turns out you would need to do a very tedious quest to get this book…' Smirking at his good luck, Sam finally turned towards his notification screen while the satiated Lucky jumped on the bed and laid down next to him. [Spirit Link is now Level 17!] [Your companion, Lucky, has reached Level 18!] [Lucky's skill, Shadow Jump is now Level 7!] Sadly, Lucky wasn't lucky enough to learn a new skill.

Still, any improvement was good, so he made sure to praise the silly wolf a little before turning to his own notifications. [Congratulations! You've leveled up!] [You're now Level 23!] [Gained 2 unassigned attribute points!] [Gained 1 WIS point because of the wise decisions that you made!] Nodding slightly, he added the two unassigned points to DEX and AGI before continuing. [Advanced Mana Control is now Level 19!] [Stable Mana Control is now Level 10!] [Mana Shield is now Level 36!] [Controlled Mana Shield is now Level 10!] [Sustained Mana Shield is now Level 10!] [Layered Mana Shield is now Level 1!] Sam had to goggle at the incredible gains he had gotten with Mana Shield.

'Apparently shielding against miasma is really worth it…' [Earth Wall II is now Level 2!] [Phasing Strike is now Level 1!] [Extended Mana Strike is now Level 1!] [Efficient Mana Slash is now Level 5!] [Double Mana Slash is now Level 4!] [Mana Body Enhancement is now Level 23!] [Mana Influenced Body is now Level 1!] [Mana Disruption is now Level 6!] [Congratulations, thanks to your ingenuity you have learned the skill Spell Layering!] [Spell Layering: Level 0/25 (0%) (Passive) Allows you to layer spells onto each other. The synergy depends on the spells themselves. For every level in this skill, you can add another spell to the layering. The current number of spells that can be layered: 2.] Sam stared at the spell for a moment, then nodded with a satisfied smile. He had hoped to gain it, as it was a pretty basic Spellblade class skill, but he had expected he would need to do the layering without the skill a few more times.

'Probably the Mana Control helped…' [Wind Blade II is now Level 2!] [Wind Flurry is now Level 1!] [Wind Bullet is now Level 1!] [Healing Wind is now Level 4!] [Wind Jump is now level 1!] [Wind Edge is now Level 3!] [Wind Affinity is now Level 4!] The wind-natured spells were climbing with a steady pace so Sam was satisfied. [Shadow Footwork is now Level 14!] [Shadow Burst is now level 5!] Sadly, he didn't have the opportunity to use his Shadow Mirage skill, but he didn't really mind.

Using a skill like that in real battle was foolish beyond reason. Finally, he turned his attention towards physical skill. [Intermediate Sword Mastery is now Level 12!] [Freeform Defense is now Level 1!] [Intermediate Breathing Technique is now Level 4!] [Calm Heart is now Level 20!] [Flow is now Level 11!] [Thanks to exposure to the corrupting miasma you gained Corruption Resistance.] [Corruption Resistance: Level 0/100 (0%) (Passive) Thanks to exposure, you gained resistance against corruption. Makes it easier to resist the effects of substances and spells that try to corrupt you. Each level increases the resistance by 1%.] Satisfied with his gains, Sam did a quick read-through of his status, then instead of heading out, he retrieved the loot from the battle and began to examine the runes on the amulet he appropriated from one of the dead assailants.