Chương 57: Chapter 56

"Come out, you rat!" yelled the douche leading the group, while the knight froze in place, seemingly not knowing what was happening. The guys standing guard immediately turned around and unsheathed their weapons. One sword and a spear were aimed at him. The spear began to crackle with lightning while the sword simply glowed blue with mana.

With his Mana Sense, Sam could feel as the mana began bubbling chaotically in the two mages that were protecting the arrogant guy, but at the same time he saw that they could barely control their mana. So, while he was prepared for anything, he didn't expect much from them.

There was a chance that they found some super OP skill that would wreck Sam with one hit, but he felt that then they wouldn't be standing around as a hired muscle for a guy who looked like he just stepped out of the second-rate villain factory if they had access to anything like that. As stealthily as possible, he reached out with his mana, stretched as thin as possible, and moved the mana towards the two mages while calmly standing up from his hiding crouch and stepping forward, giving the assembled group a wave.

"Hi! Sorry about interrupting. I was just walking by and couldn't help but be surprised by your… statement," Sam finished his greeting a little awkwardly. The guy just stared at him incredulously while his minions were glancing between him and Sam, probably waiting for an order. Finally, the guy managed to find his voice and exclaimed angrily.

"What?" He shook his head and continued.

"Doesn't matter. Who the hell are you?"

"Ohh, I was kinda lost, see, and then I heard some noise–" Sam couldn't even finish his bullshit excuse before he was interrupted.

"Shut up! If you are going to lie, at least make it believable!" The guy sneered and then turned toward the guy with the spear.

"David! Get rid of him!"

"Sure thing, boss!" answered the spear wielder, then dropped into a somewhat proper stance and gave Sam a smirk. Sam just looked back with a blank stare. Apparently, the spear wielder took this as permission to 'get rid of him'. With a mighty cry, he launched himself at Sam.

"Lightning Charge!" The person's entire body lit up with sparks of lightning as they moved toward Sam, intent on skewering him. Thankfully, Sam was familiar with the skill. It raised the speed and penetration power of the user. Unfortunately, to the other guy, even with that speed, he was faster. He hopped to the side at the last second and as the spear wielder passed by him, he raised his arm and unleashed a Wind Blade. Carried by momentum, the guy fell to the ground behind him in two pieces.

The other people of the group gaped at Sam, who just quirked an eyebrow challengingly. The arrogant guy's face contorted with anger.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" He then pointed at Sam.

"Go and get him!" The others, hearing this, nodded and charged at Sam, with only one mage standing back to protect their leaders. Though the mage had the presence to cast one very important spell.

"Earth Cage!" Instantly, the earth grew from the ground under the feet of the knight, causing them to let out a sound of surprise. The earth sneaked up their body like tree roots, crisscrossing over them until they were bound like Christmas ham. Sam spared a glance at the struggling knight, then focused his attention on the sword wielder and the other mage. Surprisingly the other two guys only stepped closer to their arrogant leader.

Still, even so, he had to contend with a sword wielder and a mage with an unknown specialty. The mage's specialty was solved instantly, however, when he began yelling spells.

"Double Fire Ball!"

"Fire Lance!"

"Fire Lance!"

"Fire Lance!" Instantly, two giant fireballs shot off toward Sam, surrounded by three hotly sizzling lances made of fire. Proving that he was somewhat competent, the lances were aimed to his left, right, and front, thus making sure he couldn't properly dodge the Fire Balls. The sword wielder probably used some kind of speed-enhancing move to get behind him, cutting off his last escape route. However, he couldn't hear it over the roar of the Fire Balls.

He looked directly into the eyes of the mage, who stared back with a seriousness that shouldn't be present in a video game. Then Sam winked. And at the same time simply jumped upwards using his Wind Movement skill, evading all the Fire Lances and then watched from high up as the Fire Balls impacted precisely where he stood, throwing earth and rocks everywhere. Making use of the split second where nobody knew his exact position, he began casting several Wind Bullet Barrages. One from each hand.

One was aimed at the sword wielder and the other, naturally, at the mage.

"Up there!" one of them exclaimed, but Sam didn't care. He released the spells and watched as the swift bullets struck almost instantly in contrast to the relatively slow Fire Balls. As he landed in the same position from where he launched off a few seconds previously, landing in a small crater and scorched ground. Sam ignored the sword wielder as he was smashed into the ground yards away, though he took note of the notification that he had died.

However, he paid attention to the mage, as they had more chances to protect against the Wind Bullets. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Fortunately, the guy was totally surprised by the incoming projectiles and was smashed into the ground, where he now lay motionlessly. Sam turned to the leader of the rapidly dwindling group and spoke up.

"Can we talk about it?" The guy opened his mouth and then closed it. Apparently, in his anger, he couldn't even let out a word. For a few seconds, they looked at each other. Sam sporting an easy smile, the arrogant guy gaping, the knight struggling, and the minions staring grimly and gripping their weapons, hard. Finally, the guy managed to find his voice. Unfortunately, he proved this by angrily yelling.

"What the hell do I pay you guys for? There is one of him and like three of you!" Sadly, the corpses couldn't reply to him. It took him a second, but he also realized this fact.

"For heaven's sake… Jim, Craig, forget about that idiot and help me deal with this one!" The two, who as of now said nothing, nodded silently and abandoned their position next to the still-struggling knight and stepped forward next to their leader. One took the giant hammer off his shoulder where it rested previously, holding it with one hand and smacking it into his other hand's palm with a menacing look on his face. It helped that he was around six-six tall and built like an oak cabinet.

The other one took their spear (though this one had several spikes on it, even at places where spikes usually didn't appear) and pointed it at Sam, and while he was marginally smaller than his friend, he still radiated an aura that told everyone looking at them that they ate their cereal without milk.

The remaining mage took a step back and while Sam could sense that half his attention was maintaining the Earth Cage spell with one of his hands, he raised his other one and aimed it at Sam, probably ready to unleash a few spells to support his colleagues. The main antagonist simply reached into his inventory and retrieved a black greatsword that seemed to be dripping with malice.

For a moment Sam thought he was once again face to face with the now familiar miasma, but a further look with his senses told him it was a different malignant mana. The guy was sporting a malicious grin as he gripped the handle of his greatsword, a black aura flowing from the weapon over him, starting from his hand until it covered his entire body.

"It seems, you made a rather big mistake by challenging me–" He began monologuing as the black aura started to increase around him but was interrupted by Sam appearing next to him and punching him squarely in the jaw while the Mage seemed to suffer a backlash from his Earth Cage spell as Sam had cast a Mana Disruption on it. The knight used this moment to break free from the weakened roots made of earth and raised their own sword, ready to act.

Luckily he didn't need to as after punching the arrogant guy in the face, Sam simply cast a Wind Drill on his fist (fists were technically counted as weapons) and punched a hole through the mage who fell down with a shocked and pained look on his face. Then he spun around and, with a simple Wind Flurry from each of his hands, eliminated the hammer and spiky spear guy. Luckily, at this level, his unnatural control over his mana was just something that other players around his level couldn't defend against.

He smiled happily that for once he could experience the fruits of his sorta-reincarnation.

'Damn, it feels awesome to be OP!' he thought. Then he looked at the knight and spoke up.

"You alright?" The sound that answered Sam surprised him.

"Yes, thank you. He used some kind of artifact to seal off my mana." Her voice, as the knight seemed to be a woman, was soft-spoken, but under it, Sam could hear a current of anger.

"Ah, Seal of Punishment. They sell that to bounty hunters to help bring in their marks alive." He answered as he recovered from the surprise.

'Probably the pretty girl hiding behind plate mail… That would make the other guy either some cousin wanting to inherit, some guy wanting to marry her, or cause trouble for her family.' He couldn't wonder over the issue too long as the guy whose face he just smashed in seemed to be regaining his sense. He turned around, placing himself between the guy covered in icky darkness and the knight.

Seal of Punishment lasted on NPCs that were targets of a bounty until you brought them to justice (after defeating them, of course) but on players, the low-level ones lasted for an hour. The arrogant guy staggered to his feet, the aura of darkness oscillating wildly around him as he felt his jaw with his hands while groaning.

"You asshole! You're going to pay for this!"

"You don't even know who I am…" he replied while taking out a simple sword from his inventory. He didn't want to use Moonlight for something like this. Naturally, his enemy immediately spotted that Sam was using a common rarity sword and began to chuckle.

"You think your common pig sticker can defeat my Darkfang?" he exclaimed while raising his greatsword high up for a moment. The aura of the sword intensified, then the guy charged forward, slashing downward.

"Dark Charge!"

"Dark Slash!" Unluckily for him, his attack wasn't met by the squishy body of Sam but his Shadow Mirage, while Sam simply jumped backward, dragging the knight with him. Naturally, Sam could have made the punch to his face a lethal one, but based on all the tropes he got familiar with in his past life he was hundred percent certain that the guy he was now facing would become a recurring antagonist, so he wanted to learn as much about his abilities as possible. The guy growled and raised his greatsword again.

"Zamor grant me strength!" he yelled and Sam could instantly feel the mana around the guy increase as well as his aura. Based on the surprised look on the guy's face, it was a much bigger increase than he expected. Sam was less so. Zamor was like Calon, a being who made deals with people, granting them power. Only Zamor didn't have cults or anything like that, as the being only liked to deal with individual people who liked to fight, were aggressive, and had some dark tendencies.

And their blessing was rather annoying. The more powerful the enemy the one who made the deal faced, the bigger the blessing, essentially giving the player a shot (never a hundred percent shot, as Zamor liked to see them struggle) at defeating somebody or something that they couldn't before. On the downside, if they lost, the bigger the blessing, the bigger the punishment.

As the arrogant guy realized what his blessing meant and an ugly grin spread over his face, Sam shot forward, his blade charged both with neutral and wind mana.

"Hah! I can see you!" And indeed he was much faster, able to react to Sam's mana-enhanced speed. At the moment, Sam would even say that he was the slower one, not that he cared. He continued his charge forward. His enemy laughed contemptuously, dodged his strike aimed at his head and at the same moment struck down with his greatsword, only to be surprised again as his greatsword struck only the ground under Sam. Granted, it threw up a tremendous amount of debris, but seemingly it didn't affect Sam one bit.

He opened his mouth, but Sam was faster. Using the hand that wasn't holding a weapon he punched forward delivering a full-powered punch enhanced by all the spells he could layer onto it, punching through the dark blessing that covered his enemy, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of their chest. Sam then took a step back and watched as the guy tried to gurgle something but simply fell back onto the ground, dead. All in all, the entire fight barely lasted a few minutes, but Sam learned a lot.

Turning towards the knight he had saved, ignoring as his sword cracked as the mana left it, he put his weapon away into his inventory. Sadly, with the increased level of his skills, if Sam used them on a normal sword they would be ruined after a few minutes. The knight stood there silently, though thanks to the helmet, Sam couldn't really tell what they were feeling. They stood there for a few seconds, simply staring at each other when the knight spoke up.

"Uhm, I can pay for the sword…"

"Don't worry, it was just a random sword," he answered, waving the issue away.

"Alright…" she replied hesitantly, then fell silent again. Sam spent a moment checking his status screen to see if he accrued some bad karma, but apparently, the game system judged that he was in the right so there was no punishment for killing the players. Plus, he suspected this wasn't the first time they did something like this. Zamor didn't grant their blessing to people who spent their free time petting adorable bunnies and baking cakes. He then turned back to the fidgeting knight.

"So, what was his deal? Did you steal a kill, or is he in the hair-pulling stage?"