What an awesome fight scene!!!!!!!!!!!!

Deja vu, the author thought as they wrote that line, but the feeling soon subsided and was replaced by awe after seeing this Giant Red Carp flying through the air, attempting in vain to avoid the volleys of [Fireballs] and [Grass Whips] and other attacks which were lowering its HP to dangerous levels.

Just to say, though, while this world had a system based around Soul energy and crystals and all that Daoist whatever that was too complicated to go into except in the soon-to-be-released-pending-reader-demand-R-18 chapters, this was NOT a LitRPG, even though Thedude3445 is the Parent of American LitRPGs, a title that is unfairly assigned to that one Donkey Kong guy who writes a lot of LitRPGs, but actually belongs to Thedude3445 and nobody else. Yes, Thedude3445 has written some of the most classic LitRPG stories of all time, such as Reborn on a Systemless Earth... With a System, and Nothing Else So Far, but unfortuantely this specific book was not actually a LitRPG and featured nothing in the way of blue boxes and stat sheets and sarcastic pop-ups lampooning the RPG genre. There was not a speck of respect towards either Dungeons & Dragons (for nerds) or Final Fantasy (for turbo-nerds), and if you weren’t blatantly ripping off either of those two universes, then were you really a LitRPG to begin with?

Of course, everyone did have levels and stats, so actually this was a LitRPG after all. I, the narrator, will retroactively add in stat boxes if readers demand it, and they will only be placed in the absolute most intrusive places.

This was all said to say that the warriors fighting the Giant Red Carp were doing a really good job and probably really doing a good job at enhancing their souls! But guess who wasn’t? That’s right; our heroes Xi Guo Lao, Budou, and Kiwi, that’s right! That really sucked and it would have been a really dumb and annoying story if they weren’t the primary beneficiaries of all major story beats, so they jumped into the fight as well.

The warriors, all dressed in masks and deep dark, honestly pretty revealing green clothing (think Peter Pan from the horrible 2003 movie with Jason Isaacs from Resident Evil, though he sadly was not the one in the skimpy leaf outfit)(wait, I could have just used the Jolly Green Giant aka Paul Bunyan for Green Beans, as a much more universally recognized visual idea), attacked the Giant Red Carp with all their might, but as soon as our three Ghebvillian heroes attacked the fish as well, they turned their attention to the humans and began assaulting them with all their might.

A fierce battle took place.

Lots of punches and spell shouts and souls being traded back and forth like Pokemon cards.

Kiwi swung his arms around wildly and managed to hit absolutely nobody, but he pretended that he contributed to the fight afterwards and since nobody was paying that much attention to him, nobody was able to contradict his story and he lived on in the public memory as someone who fought valiantly in the battle.

Soon, the Giant Red Carp was dead, but... So were a lot of the warriors. Because Xi Guo Lao, Kiwi, and Budou killed a lot of them in the fight.

The utterly massive fish’s meat was laying around in chunks, just waiting to be cooked using the world’s in-universe crafting system, and to be eaten to give extraordinary strength to all who consumed it.

But two factions of warriors faced each other down in pretty intense intensity.

“Who are you?” asked Xi Guo Lao, whose name was becoming increasingly easy to make a typo for the longer the author continued to write. “Why were you totally stealing our kill?”

One short warrior, wearing a long mask and lots of ornamental armor, stepped up closer to our three heroes—Xi Guo Lao, Kiwi, and Budou—and planted a spear down on the ground. They folded their arms and learned their head forward. “You are murderous cretins. Surrender now or be executed brutally.”

“We only killed like, five of your dudes,” said Budou. “Statistically, if you are rounding to the nearest ten, that’s a zero.”

“No,” the warrior said, “That’s ten.”

“What? You round down if it’s five or below.”

“No, you definitely round up with five.”

“Let’s agree to disagree,” said Budou. “Math is all just opinions anyway.”

“Maths,” corrected the warrior, who now had a British accent.

Then the warrior pulled up their mask to reveal—

The soft, beautiful face of a youthful (but above age 18) woman!!!!!!

Then all of the warriors lifted their masks—

They were ALL beautiful women!!!!!!! (Except for Henry, who kept his mask lowered as not to hurt the dramatic nature of the scene). Green hair, green skin, and really angry green eyes!!!

Vine women!!!

“We are going to kill you!” the lead warrior lady shouted.

Oh no!!!!