Oh, Sage! Something terrible just happened! That final system prompt was definitely not a good sign! Orphan Crippler? What the hell kind of title is that? It already sounds terrible! How the hell am I supposed to come back from something like that?

“Sigh...”

At least I managed to set a new respawn point! If I had to hike that road all over again Sage only knows what accidents I may have run into.

Let’s see, what’s the time ... Holy Crap. It’s only midday. Let’s see, I got sucked in at 8:30 ... so that’s three and a half hours. In Game time that’s equivalent to four times that ... which is 14 hours! Man, this game’s so brutal.

I’ve only got 3 hours of game time, and I’ve already died more than three times. “Sigh...”

Well, I’ve been starving for almost 14 hours, so I should go and eat something. I wonder if Juwan is still home or not...

Guess I’ll go down and have a little peek in the fridge.

Sneak, Sneak, Sneak. Avoid the third step. Sneak, Sneak, Sneak.

‘Ping! A new skill has reached level 1. Sneak.’

Oh shit! The game system still works even out here in the real world! How is that possible? Hmm ... maybe I should experiment with the system in the real world as well.

“Growl!”

But first I should eat something. Ok ... Sneak, Sneak, Sneak. Hmm, let’s see what tasties are in the fridge. Cheese ... Milk ... Carrots ... mmm ... oh, there we go! Looks like Alice left some cake in here. Hmm ... I probably shouldn’t ... but it looks so good...

Num, num, num. Cake is the best. Whoever invented cake is a genius! Ok, back to my room!

Sneak, Sneak, Sneak...

“What the hell are you doing home you little shit stain?”

Ahh shit ... looks like Alice is home. Sage, I hate that bitch!

“Ah ... haha ... Hey, Alice! I didn’t realise you were home. I’m feeling a bit sick today, so I was just resting up. Heh heh...”

Ahh ... she’s making that face she makes. Like she wants to bludgeon me to death with a soft blunt instrument. Like a pillow. I assume that would be her weapon of choice because the longer it takes me to die, the happy she would be.

“Whatever! Just keep away from my stuff in the fridge! I know it was you who ate my pudding that last time! Let me warn you that if there’s a second time you’re going to get an ass whooping.”

Heh! You wish, you prissy little bitch. We both know you’ve never been able to get the upper hand on me.

“Oh, Little brother. How are you feeling?”

Ah great. This giant prick is still here as well. Oh is that what I think it is?

“Hey there Juwan. Is that a Dimension Key you’re holding?”

“A what? This is one of those things from the mysterious black thing in the city centre. A Dimension Key? You know what it is?”

Heh. Do I ever! Mmm. Yes ... Let’s introduce you to the world of Domain Warz. Let’s watch you suffer the endless torment of the twisted Game System.

“Hoh. Not really. I’ve only heard its name. If you want to interact with it, you need to splash some of your blood on it. Then you can do something like this.”

Log In!

Murphy didn’t get to see what Juwan’s face was like when he suddenly disappeared from the middle of the kitchen, but he liked to try and imagine it.

When he respawned, he appeared in a totally different place to the previous smouldering, decimated village. As he surveyed his surroundings, Murphy found himself in the centre of a bustling marketplace filled with a variety of shops and stores. His respawn point was the city centre.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to fully inspect everything in the market square, because a group of knights clad in shiny silver armour crowded around me with their pointy spears and swords facing my direction.

“Halt! You’re the one that crippled all those poor young orphans and left them on death’s door? How dare you show your face in Gateway!”

As this was yelled at Murphy, a knight in gold armour stepped up with a piece of parchment. He then unrolled it and started reading a list of very undesirable things.

“Murphy Law, The Unstable Lone Wolf Poison Master and nefarious Orphan Crippler, your renown has fallen below -20. Consider this an official warning. If your renown drops below -40 you will be marked as a wanted criminal by any law-abiding city. Take care in the future.”

He then rolled it up sauntered off with his posse of shiny knights, leaving Murphy standing in the middle of the market square with everyone giving him hate filled gazes.

If a stare were like a bullet, Murphy would have been riddled with holes and perhaps even completely vaporised by the magnitude of the burning hateful gazes he received.

If his Hurts So Good weren’t forcing him to enjoy all these angry glares, he’d probably have long since run away to hide. Instead, he just smiled his most amiable and charming smile as he wondered into the markets.

The first thing he did was found a quiet place to sit down and organise his inventory and to check his stats. He picked up a few interesting things from the Bear Caves. First among them was a set of boots. They looked like comfortable soft leather boots, but he felt there was a little more to them.

As he investigated the boots and tried them on, he realised that they drastically reduced the weight of his inventory. He decided that he would be keeping these boots for himself and left them equipped.

He also found a simple conical bamboo hat which seemed to make all those hateful gazes turn away and back to their own business. He assumed this hat must have some kind of attribute that hides the person’s identity or makes the person difficult to identify.

Either way, it was a Sagesend at this moment in time.

He also found a simple looking dagger with a slightly greenish blade. The moment he touched the tip he regretted. It seemed the blade was super sharp. So sharp that it could stab into his skin even after it had an endurance level approaching 18.

Even more disturbing was that his whole body suddenly lit up in ecstasy as a burning pain filled his every nerve. If it was anyone, the level of pain should have rendered them paralytic. Murphy, on the other hand, appeared to only be feeling a slight bit of discomfort.

He decided to equip this dagger to a little leather dagger sheath on his belt. He then sorted through all sorts of other things and tested them out to try and identify their properties. As he did, a system prompt popped up.

‘Ping! You have levelled a new skill to level 1, Identify.’

“Oh ... interesting. It must be a skill for identifying the properties of something.”

With that thought said aloud to himself, Murphy poured through all the equipment in his inventory and equipped to his body one more time. This time around, instead of a game overlay that just showed a name and basic description, he started seeing other stats and attributes of equipment.

He discovered that most weapons had a damage modifier, which increased the damage they would normally do. Armours and wearable items had some defence modifiers and accessories generally had some simple attribute bonuses.

The hairpin of the little beast girl gave a bonus of 2 to the maximum Mana. The Sword of the Bandit Leader had a sharpness attribute that made it sharper than normal. The Evil Instructor’s belt had two special effects. It could automatically pull potions from your inventory and also had a 1% chance to ‘magically’ duplicate a potion when it’s pulled off the belt.

To test this function, Murphy started pulling potions off the belt then throwing them back into his inventory. Probably thanks to his terrible luck score, he never got to witness the belt magically produce a free potion.

Unfortunately, out of all the equipment in his inventory, the armours were even more useless than his own body’s endurance and only added weight to him if he equipped them. Thus, he was better off staying in the dirty village clothes he’d robbed off those innocent villagers.

When he scrutinised the Dagger again, he discovered its name and properties. It wasn’t that it was sharp in the sense the edge was sharp. It was rather that it was incredibly pointy. The attribute it had was simply defined as Super Pointy.

It was also apparently poisoned with a level 2 poison enchantment, which Murphy had already discovered. What he found strange though, was that even if it was poisoned, the enchantment was only level two. The reason this confused him was that it still seemed to do plenty of damage and hurt a lot, by comparison, he managed to reach the point that he could stroll around mostly unaffected in the green poison smog, which was considered a high-class poison recipe.

The last thing identified were the potions and the magic scroll. The Magic Scroll had the apt name of Flaming Balls of Fire. When broken the scroll would summon 4 balls of fire that fired in the direction the caster pointed in.

The potions varied and unsurprisingly were mostly poison. He’d used the two super rare ones, so he wasn’t sure what they were, but the remaining ones made him even more curious about the state of his poisoned dagger.

This was because the purple fog poison was apparently Level 4 ... and he suspected he could probably breathe that stuff like normal air by now.

He thought he understood the reason when he finally got around to checking his stats properly.

When he went to his Status Place, he felt that it was starting to get very crowded. As such he tried altering what his stat screens showed.

After some playing, he simplified it a little more so that he could keep track of everything easily. The discovery that he could customise his status screens led him to imagine some possibilities in the future, but he chose to ignore it for the moment.

Murphy now understood why the poison from the little dagger could still affect him. It was his own damn fault! Poison Assassin allowed the poison of the dagger to negate some of his poison resistance. He could see this being a good and bad thing ... but mostly bad.

He had long since come to the conclusion that poison was the best method for him to help increase his bodies endurance through taking damage. It was a constant damage over a prolonged period of time and could affect nearly every part of his anatomy.

With Poison Assassins passive buff to his poison, it meant he could use poison to keep damaging his body to make it even more durable.

The downside is, letting Please Sir and Hurts So Good operate sped up the rate that his weird Masochism skill levelled. Just looking at it, he could tell it was only 20,000 experience points away from tipping over into level 11.

He hated this skill because it gave birth to those creepy special traits. He didn’t know how the game system assigned these skills in the beginning. He was definitely not a masochist. In fact, he hated pain more than anyone.

Somehow though, the system seemed to think otherwise ... either that or this entire game was a huge joke!

I could only consider this entire game as a joke at this point! All of my stats were wacky and twisted. How it’s possible that I ended up with some disgusting skill like masochism was beyond me. Unfortunately, for now, I would just have to silently suffer.

With a long sigh of dejection, I rose from the quiet street corner I’d been sitting at and moved to a nearby vendor to trade all the junk I’d picked up. Thanks to my new bamboo hat, the vendor didn’t recognise me.

I was only guessing, but I suspected all my titles and negative renown would impact my ability to sell or buy from the NPC’s. It hid my identity and renown making me look like just another normal customer.

After some haggling, I sold some of my things. Some of it I had to keep. Even the vendor seemed to think it was junk. I then spent 3 hours walking around trying to sell off everything and empty my inventory.

While I was exploring the city and checking out shops and vendors, I heard some rather disturbing rumours about someone who fell from the sky and obliterated a little orphanage in town. My heart bled for these little buggers.

I should know how tough life for them is, after all, I too was once a lonely orphan. However, this sentiment quickly became bitterness when I realised that the heartless bastard who destroyed a full orphanage and crippled half the residents, was actually me!

I was the Orphan Crippler! If it weren’t for Hurts So Good somewhat holding my feelings in check, my heart might have literally started bleeding from the bitterness and unfairness of the world. To think that my accident would create such a cruel state of affairs.

With that in mind, I decided to fix this situation no matter what! I would help those orphans even if it came at the expense of my own life. With this resolution in my heart, I started exploring the city with greater vigour and purpose.

Strangely, on this planet, the sun was very slow to cross the sky. By now I’d spent more than 24 hours in the game, and the sky was still bright and sunny. Based on the position of the sun it was just after midday. In the real world, it should have been getting close to 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

However, even though the real world was moving much slower, I was running on the game world’s clock and was starting to get tired. That being the case, I grit my teeth and firmed my resolve again by thinking about my time back in the orphanage.

For the first time, I tried to use magic. I intuitively knew that I could summon my Spell Tome from my Status Place. Therefore, I found a nice quiet place out of sight and summoned my Spell Tome.

With a little flash that lit up the dark alley for a second, it appeared in my hand. I then opened the book and focused on the only spell I had. After a little while ... I realised I had no idea how the hell to even cast the spell. Most of the stuff I needed to know was intuitively gifted to me when I claimed the Tome and it filled my head with information.

I assumed that the spell needed me to use Mana Manipulation somehow, but I wasn’t sure how. I sat down in the dark alley and tried to remember everything that had been forced into my head at that moment. After contemplating on that information for a while, I found a method.

I closed my book and practised for a moment. I focused my mind and tried to imagine the Mana in my body slowly flowing around like gas in a container. I then tried to imagine it flowing into my finger.

Once I managed that, I opened my eyes to discover my finger dully glowing. I then touched it onto the page with my only spell. A strange pattern lit up on the page of my spell book. It was complex and difficult to make out all the different lines. Along with the strange pattern was some strange words that I couldn’t understand or comprehend.

“Cast!” I quietly commanded the book. With that, the strange pattern briefly lit up, and the colour of my finger changed to a dull red glow. At the same time, I felt the Mana focused in my finger change in a subtle manner, like it wasn’t just some neutral energy but had instead become sinister and evil.

“Gulp.”

Although I am a cowardly person, and really didn’t want to cast some evil curse on myself, the thought of the suffering I unintentionally caused those poor orphans pushed me forward.

I pointed my finger towards myself and willed the spell to fire. I then felt a strange sensation as a gloomy dark red light shot into my body. All the tiredness and sleepiness from a moment ago dispersed like dust being wiped from the cover of a book.

I felt refreshed and not even the slightest bit tired. At the same time, I started to feel calm, relaxed and clear minded. If I had to guess, that feeling was a result of my Hurts So Good automatically reverting the impatience and irrationality of the curse into a positive sensation.

I checked my status and witnessed my Masochism rising at a slow and steady rate. At the same time, my Mental Fortitude in my Endurance Stat was also very slowly rising. Thank you ‘Please Sir’ trait for being so useful.

I calmly considered the potential repercussions of this. For the moment, nothing bad would happen, but eventually my Hurts So Good won’t be able to quell the tide of my rising irritation, and I will start to feel it.

With that in mind, I quickly sent my Spell Tome back to my Status Space and head off into the city to complete the mission I’d set for myself.

After another hour of searching, I finally found what I’d been looking for. Around the city was a few alchemy shops with herbs and ingredients and everything needed for alchemy.

I bought some equipment from these places, but the two things I needed most were a recipe to help heal the orphans and a guide that can teach me how the alchemy system works.

To my dismay, both of these things were very expensive. I could only afford one. Considering that, I felt that the need to know how alchemy worked was more important. That could at least give me a steady source of income, and I could eventually find a way to heal the orphans from that.

I didn’t want to create another accident like the incident in the forest with the bears. If I set off a poison fog in the orphanage, I’m sure not even the Sagely ‘Hurts So Good’ could prevent the regret and heartache from literally killing me on the spot.

As such, I chose the guide. The guide I found was an amiable looking old man with a gentle smile and fluffy white beard. He was a bit rotund and if I were to liken him to anyone he would resemble the image of that ancient Santa Clause fellow from the old era on earth.

He wasn’t wearing a red suit though. Just normal commoner clothes. After paying him an exorbitant fee of 200 silvers, he invited me into a simple alchemy laboratory filled with all sorts of equipment. The centrepiece of the lab was a big black cauldron that looked like it was stolen from a witch’s coven.

I then delved into the glorious laws of alchemy. Which actually turned out to be somewhat complex with all sorts of strange rules. If I had to simplify it, then alchemy in the game was basically using certain ingredients to create a potion that gave the desired result.

In this game system, the probability of successfully ‘refining’ a potion will depend on your Alchemy skill. Later on, once you gain more experience with certain types of potions, you can gain Mastery’s which also add modifiers to your potions. In my case, I’d accidentally managed to get Poison Mastery.

It took me almost 3 hours just to complete the basics. Just completing the basics course raised my Alchemy to level 3. At the same time, I levelled up another skill to level 1 and raised my Identify skill to level 2.

Memorisation: The higher the level of memorisation, the easier it is to memorise and remember things.

I was somewhat surprised that this sort of thing could become a skill, but it was a happy kind of surprise. The reason this skill managed to level up was that one of the most important parts of alchemy is memorising how certain attributes interact and affect each other during potion refinement.

Identify levelled up thanks to the huge number of potion ingredients I had to learn to identify. Thanks to ‘Identify’ I didn’t have to worry about memorising the herbs attributes because once I identified a herb, the system remembered it for me and I could view its attributes and special effects in potions just by looking at it.

Of course, I came to learn that Identify wasn’t omnipotent. If I tried to Identify something with higher levels and stats than my Identify skill, then it either wouldn’t show its attributes or would only show part of the objects information.

That meant that I might still not know all the stats of the equipment I was wearing. Luckily, I found a way to determine if my Identify failed to learn everything the system could show. If an object were fully identified of all its properties, the overlay that appeared on it to show its name and attributes would have a little # symbol in the corner.

I didn’t notice it before, so I suspect it was a result of Identify reaching level 2.

Continuing from my deviation, 3 hours and a few lab accidents I won’t mention later, I waved goodbye to the kind, clean-shaven Santa and left the city.

Don’t ask why he was clean shaven, I refuse to discuss it.

Anyway, I left the city because if you wanted to properly identify the properties of something then you must either buy expensive books filled with boring lines of text describing it, or you would have to investigate the item in question and test its effects yourself.

So, even though my heart bled for the Orphans, I, unfortunately, didn’t have the money to buy the recipe for a rejuvenation potion that could help them. Worse still, after investigating, I found out the potion was nearly level 6.

That meant my failure rate wouldn’t even be 50% unless I had an Alchemy level that was equivalent. Worse still, ingredients for that sort of potion were all expensive.

Luckily, the hills and forests surrounding Gateway City were exploding with alchemy ingredient. Unluckily, they were also filled with endless amounts of danger, as can be attested to by the few incidents I had stumbled into on the way to the City.

As I ambled about in the forests scrutinising everything in sight, my Identify skill was getting a severe workout. It soared by leaps and bounds thanks to the nature of my method to identify something’s properties. Whenever I encountered something I couldn’t get any information on from the system, I would think of those poor orphans, firm my resolve and eat it.

I suspect thanks to my luck stat, almost everything I ate was a deadly poison of some description. By the time it was afternoon on Newb Planet, My Poison Mastery, Endurance and Identify Skill had all gone through substantial growth.

At one point in my collecting, I got an alert from the system.

‘Ping! Masochism has passed level ten and evolved to Pain Mastery!’

When I got this notice, I jumped back to my Status Space and investigated. Sure enough, Masochism had become Pain Mastery. Apart from the name change, the experience and level reset to 0 and 1 respectively.

Interestingly enough, even though the experience counter had dropped to 0, gaining experience in the skill was now a great deal slower. What would have increased my Masochism by 100 points before, now only gave Pain Mastery about 20 points.

The only thing that made me feel good about this development was that it wasn’t named something as perverse as ‘Masochism’. In addition to the change to the masochism skill, the special traits specific to it also seemed to have evolved.

The moment I returned to the city I checked my status.

From what I could see, I had some increases in all my stats ... except for wisdom and charisma, which both still sat in the negative levels. I couldn’t figure out why exactly these stats remained in the negative. From the sub-stats under the average scores, it seemed to indicate that I was just generally a complete idiot when it came to any form of social interaction.

Earlier, when I managed to convince that giant stupid bear, by charisma stat increased, only for it to fall again after the whole thing involving the orphanage. Wisdom was much the same. Although it seemed to indicate that I was wise in matters that I was detached from, in personal matters my wisdom dropped through the floor.

Unfortunately, for a change, I couldn’t argue with the systems evaluation of my social skills. I will readily admit that my ability to socialise properly are all rightfully portrayed by negative figures. Unfortunately, I knew that these stats definitely affected other parts of the games system.

For example, I had a sneaking suspicion that things like Mana Manipulation would require high wisdom and intelligence and if these stats were high, then Mana Manipulation would most likely have a boost in experience gain.

That was just a personal suspicion though. I hadn’t found anything yet to validate that thought.

It would most likely be the same if I wanted to gain a skill like bartering or leadership or something. These things would most likely require a high charisma stat to increase quickly.

I’m not entirely sure which stat affected the speed of growth of my Pain Mastery, but if I had to guess, it would be the Cement Stat. I still couldn’t figure out what this stat was supposed to be.

It seemed to be like luck, and didn’t have sub-stats or anything that needed averaging out. This made it difficult to determine what exactly the hell it was. Just reading the name of it makes me remember an old proverb I heard from Uncle Calligso on regular occasion when he first started training me.

“Eat a tablespoon of cement and harden the fuck up.”

“Sighh...” Just thinking about the potential origin of this strange stat brought back a flood of unpleasant memories.

I also took note of the Introspection Stat. It apparently had levelled up at some point as well, but what I did to accomplish that was beyond me. Once again, after some pondering, I speculated that it was from all the time I spent considering the origin of some of these stats, or possibly from when I did the imagining technique to visualise mana ... or maybe both of these things?

It was too hard to guess exactly what the fuck was going on with these crazy stats.

My Luck had apparently dropped again, but after Santa lost his fluffy white beard, I already expected to see that happen.

After my return to the city, I looked around and found an old run down cottage on the outskirts of the city that was abandoned. It was quiet and out of the way, which suited me perfectly.

By this time, it was about 6 o’clock in the real world. Just as I had settled into my new cottage and was about to, for the very first time of my own accord and without dying, log out, I received a system prompt.

‘Ping! Another player is attempting to log in nearby your log in point and is requesting to create a party. Would you like to accept?’

This was the first time I’d received a system prompt like this, and it left me speechless for a moment. For the sheer novelty of it, I unhesitatingly accepted. It was only after I said ‘yes’ that I considered who it might be.

After remembering that I’d told Juwan how to activate the Key, I realised I’d just agreed to form a party with the person that I hated the most. By that point in time, it was too late to take my words back, and I was forced to watch on with a bitter expression as Juwan materialised out of a flash of light in my rundown little cottage.

“Yo, Little Brother. I was worried about you!”

Ahh shit! Why the hell did I accept the party request? I should have known better. Do I truly lack that much wisdom ... or perhaps, in this case, it should be considered common sense? Damn!

“Err ... hey, Juwan. Fancy meeting you here.”

Ok, let’s just be polite for a few minutes then log out.

“Little Brother. This is some game you’ve discovered. Took me all this time just to finish the Instructor’s tutorial quests. Luckily when I asked about you, the Instructor knew how I could get in touch with you.”

What? Your Instructor actually gave you such useful information? My Instructor was ... hmmm ... well, never mind about what happened to my Instructor. I’ll just learn these things as I go. More importantly, let’s try something.

Identify!

‘Ping! This player’s skills are too high a level to inspect.’

“ARGH!” Fuck my head! It’s killing me! What the hell! Is this some kind of backlash? How the hell can Juwan be so powerful already?!

“Little Brother! What’s wrong?! Oh! You must have tried to identify me, huh? Sorry about that. The Instructor told me that there were some accidents when you first started and you haven’t finished your tutorial yet. If you want, I can help you out. There’s a lot of important things you’ve missed.”

What ‘help me out’? What ‘important things I’ve missed’? Shut up you smart ass! Trying to rub it in! It’s not my fault I was born into this world with negative luck stats! What the hell do you understand about adversity?!

Wait...

“How does the Instructor know who I am?”

“Oh, well, she said that you were spawned into her original village and killed everyone because of a mistake. Because she’s a guide, she was respawned in another village, which was where I first spawned when I logged in. She did ask me to get her hair pin back though.”

What?! That vicious little beast girl was the Instructor? Ahh ... my luck really is no good. No good at all. Hmm ... I’ve spent more than 24 hours in the game now. I wonder if it’s ready again?

Hah! Excellent. Ok, make it look casual. You just need to touch him.

“I really have been unlucky today Juwan. You should be careful around me, after all, Misery Loves Company.“

Ah! What the hell was that? Did he just flash with silver light?!

‘Ping! Special Trait Modifier ‘Endurance’ was not strong enough to overcome the target’s Special Trait Modifier ‘Kindness’. -5 Luck.’

What the fuck?! This is just too cruel! This is too horrible! This is too disgusting! Fucking ‘Kindness’?! Why the fuck does a massive dick like him have ‘Kindness’ as a special skill?! He’s the most snakish, vile, forked tongued bastard I’ve ever met?!

“Oh wow! Thanks, Little Bro. That’s a pretty impressive special trait. Being able to give out luck to people. You truly do have a charitable heart. My special trait is somewhat boring. It’s called ‘Kind Men Won’t Suffer’. All it does is protect me from negative status effects and damage.

“My other trait is even worse, it grants me a second life. Meaning if I receive too much damage I instantly heal back to full health. I feel like they’re bad traits to have. They’re so selfish, only helping me. I wish I had a trait like yours where I could give people luck!”

You bastard! You evil prick! How dare you make yourself out to be so humble and gallant! Bastard! Liar!

“Err ... heh ... yeah ... giving people good luck. My trait’s called ‘Lucky Charm’...” Come on Murphy! Even I wouldn’t buy some crap like that!

“Whew ... You really are a good Little Brother. I admire your selflessness greatly. I only stopped in to tell you that I’m almost finished my tutorial quests. My last quest is to meet the Lord of Gateway City and receive a reward for slaying that Dragon that recently went on a rampage.

“That means I’ll be heading to the next place before you. To be honest, I want to stick around and work together with you till you’re ready to go through as well, but after slaying the dragon, I received a system prompt telling me I ‘have’ to leave Newb World. I think it’s some kind of method to prevent people from just living here and levelling endlessly.”

Dragon? When did a dragon go on a rampage? You’re making things up! You didn’t slay a dragon! No way did you slay a dragon! Fucking dragon slayer my ass!

“Anyway, I’ll see you later ok. Mum’s putting dinner out soon so be sure to head back and eat something. I don’t know how this game world works and if eating here will actually fill us, but you should join the family for dinner once in a while. Everyone misses you when you close yourself up in your room.”

Fuck sake! Stop nagging me like and old women! You think I don’t see through all your veiled criticisms and jabs at my character! I know I’m anti-social! Just piss off!

“Oh ... uh ... ok.” Sighh ... It’s alright, one of these days I’ll speak my mind. One of these days.

“Mnm. See you at dinner Little Brother!”

To say that Murphy is a little bit socially awkward would be a deliberate misinterpretation. It should be rather clear by now that his social acuity can only be labelled with the word; Inept.

In this case meaning that he’s very, very bad at it. Apart from Seelie, who is the only person he’s spent any time around, Murphy can read other people and understand social cues about as well as a child could understand advanced quantum theory or a wild animal could understand how a car works.

In saying that, his ineptitude isn’t all encompassing. He can at least understand some simple things ... like saying something when other people speak directly to him, or not farting in crowded places.

From there, adding even a single more person than 1, complicates things for Murphy beyond his ability to fully comprehend. Joining an ongoing conversation, just being part of a conversation, and even trying to follow a conversation between more than 2 people is so far beyond his realm of comprehension that he’s forced to shut down.

All the sounds become ‘mph mph mph’, and it’s not rare to see him simply staring back dumbly when asked a question. Adding the general nervousness around people he’s unfamiliar with, which is pretty much everyone, Murphy’s ability to comprehend a social situation drastically devolves.

To the point that he would even forget to not fart in a crowded place.

Which is very much the situation that has just happened at his family dinner. Making things even more troubling, was the innumerable number of suspicious and questionable alchemy ingredients he’d ingested today.

About halfway through the dinner, just when Uncle Calligso had turned to ask him how his studies at school were going, Murphy forgot to control himself and let slip a little fart. It was only a little one. So small no one even heard it.

Unfortunately, the sheer toxicity of this accidental slip caused everyone bar Murphy and Juwan to fall unconscious, thoroughly destroying this pleasant and peaceful family event. Juwan, who was sat next to Murphy, and made a habit of sitting next to him for as long as Murphy could remember, became slightly hysterical seeing everyone collapse.

Making him even more unsure of what was happening was a very shiny armour made of silver light that flashed into existence the moment Murphy had accidentally released. It seemed to be straining so hard to repel the negative status effects of the gas that it was starting to crack.

Juwan thought some kind of gas leak must have happened and quickly started rescuing everyone from the dinner table.

This lead to wasting a whole hour before the Department of Safety cleared their house for them to return. While everyone was outside in the fresh air, a strange girl turned up at his house and just started talking to him about inconsequential stuff out of nowhere.

Murphy, being the social butterfly he is, just nodded and smiled politely until his house was cleared.

“OK, I’m heading back inside now.”

When he said this, the strange girl started to follow him.

“ ... Um ... something ... I can help you with?”

The girl made a “Urgh!” sound that was very familiar to Murphy. This was then followed by a long silence in which the two people stared at each other for almost a minute. The expression the girl was giving Murphy was very similar to another expression he received from another girl on a regular basis. Like his skin was going to be peeled off by the severity of the glaring at any moment.

“ ... Errr ... do I know you perhaps?”

Murphy’s eloquence once more came to the fore. The intensity of the death glare he was receiving increased. If anyone else nearby was to see this, they might have been mistaken into think these two were lovers, lost in each other’s eyes.

Only Murphy was able to sense the very real threat to his life from that stare. Clearly, this girl’s patience was very robust because she just continued to glare and wait for something. She was clearly expecting Murphy to suddenly remember something.

He thought back onto the moment she showed up out of nowhere and very naturally started talking to him like they’d known one another forever. Suddenly it clicked. He somehow managed to remember one of her sentences containing something about school.

“Do you perhaps ... go to my school?”

It seemed even this girl, whose patience appeared without limit, had finally lost her patience.

“Murphy, one of these days I’m going to say something incredibly important and then never repeat myself. If you’re not listening when I do, then you can only blame yourself.”

A huge boom went off in Murphy’s head. He’d heard this saying hundreds if not thousands of times. He now realised how he knew this person.

“You must be a friend of Seelie’s. I’m sorry, I forgot who you are.”

Once more, a long, long awkward silence.

“Murphy ... I am Seelie. It was the first thing I said to you when I came up next to you on the street. I chose to customise my appearance when I created a character, and it became permanent.”

“Oh...” Replied Murphy very awkwardly.

He then scrutinised the girl in front of him. Apart from the eyes, which were still the exact same eyes that could stare a war veteran to death, she’d changed completely. She was now taller, about two or three inches shorter than Murphy.

He hair was long, black and was as smooth and straight as silk. She was slightly tan, and her body was now somewhat more developed. She looked like she’d suddenly become quite fit.

Unlike the Seelie he knew, this girl was wearing somewhat revealing clothes. Tight stretch pants that revealed her taught ass and slender thighs and seemed like they were even a little tighter than they should have been, appearing like a second skin and revealing ‘everything’.

She was also wearing only a simple singlet that was also a size too small, making her bust seem on the verge of busting out. She was sexy and gorgeous, and it was very difficult for Murphy to see her as Seelie. Still, the most important part, the eyes, were definitely Seelie’s.

Not knowing exactly how to react, and getting a little chilly standing out in the cold night, he invited her in. They started to discuss everything they’d discovered while playing today. It seemed Juwan must have had some huge stroke of luck, because Seelie was still only part way through her tutorial missions and had only just gotten the mission to come to Gateway City.

Apparently, part of the tutorial missions is creating a class. Class creation was somewhat different from other games. Unlike in other games when you select a class and it limits you in your choices of development and skills, Domain Wars class creation is more selecting what areas you want to get a boost in development from the system.

For example, Seelie created her own class called Scholar. This Class gave her bonuses to Intelligence, Wisdom and Endurance. By giving a growth bonus to these stats, it also gave a growth bonus to things like learning skills related to magic, the mind and special skills.

Similar to Murphy, she had a weird skill like Masochism. Hers was something not creepy though. Patience.

She even displayed one of the special traits she received from this skill. ‘Since you didn’t listen.’

When she touched Murphy, he suddenly heard a system prompt.

‘Ping! Receiving memory implant. Would you like to accept.’

With a tentative ‘yes’, Murphy suddenly experienced the strange memory upload of the system, only this time it came from Seelie. He felt her memories from the entire day suddenly pour into his head. He watched on as her memories of the day flashed past like a fast forward movie through his mind.

At one point, he couldn’t stop himself from blushing bashfully when he witnessed the scene of Seelie very vigorously masturbating on her bed before she came over tonight. He wasn’t sure if she meant for that to be in the implant, so he chose to just ignore it.

What he didn’t realise was that Seelie had a sly smile on her lips when she caught Murphy blushing like a little school girl. She knew how socially inept he was, and chose not to push the topic. She couldn’t help herself from thinking the same sentence she thought to herself every day.

‘One of these days Murphy... ‘

After this short sharing session, and while Murphy was awkwardly trying to suppress the rock trying to protrude out of his pants, they decided to head into the game. Because they were next to one another when they logged in, the system asked if they wanted to form a party.

Naturally, Seelie did, so Murphy accepted, and they spawned into his run down little cottage. Because Seelie was trying to learn everything she could about magic, and Murphy was determined to help all those poor crippled orphans, they split up.

Seelie left for some place called the Mage Academy, and Murphy remained in his dilapidated, gloomy little cottage, slaving over a big black cauldron over a fire as he started mixing all sorts of random things in the hopes of finding something like a rejuvenation potion.

It was only about an hour later, that a huge incident happened in the city. A small neighbourhood in the outer slums was suddenly shaken by an earth shattering ‘BOOM!’. A whole bloke of little shanties and cottages was obliterated in a huge ball of fire.

Murphy grimaced as he got the system prompt.

‘Ping! You have levelled a new skill to level 1. Explosives.’

‘Ping! You have completed the hidden quest. Clear the Slums! -5 renown.’

‘Ping! You have created a new potion recipe. Level 8 Volatile Concoction.’

‘Ping! Your special trait, Murphy’s Law, has caused an accident. -1 Luck.’

He then watched on as he once more completed an arc through the sky and rapidly approached the ground at high speed. Luckily, the slums had just been turned into a tempest of flames, so there weren’t any orphans underneath him this time.

A moment later, a sickening thud sounded out. Unlike with the Dragon, which used enough firepower to level a castle, Murphy’s Volatile Concoction was only about half as powerful. That meant that after a brief hour of lying in his own blood, his body managed to mostly pull itself back together with the help of his unnatural endurance.

He then returned to his, now charcoal and ash, cottage. His cauldron was apparently as durable as he was, having somehow survived that explosion. He sighed in regret as he surveyed his surroundings. He came to realise that he was going to need to buy that absurdly expensive potion recipe after all.

He just wasn’t sure if he’d be able to afford it. Although he now had nearly 100 different potions in his inventory, almost all of them were poisons, explosives, acids and even a weird potion that was basically a very weak infectious disease.

He’d also now depleted his stocks of ingredients he’d just spent 24 hours gathering. He looked up at the now dark night sky and once more sighed in joy ... while trying to sigh with exasperation.

He decided to try his luck and marched back towards the city centre where there were market stalls and street vendors scattered everywhere. After asking around for a little while, he discovered a place that will buy his questionable potions.

In a very dim and eerie alley, Murphy followed a huge, fat, greasy man that looked like he eats babies and massacres villages. Strangely he was very receptive and careful when dealing with Murphy. Murphy wasn’t completely sure why until the man opened a dingy little door at the end of the alley and told him to go ahead.

“Mister Unstable Lone Wolf Poison Master the Orphan Crippler. This is the entrance to the underground society. Please try not to cause too much trouble here.”

Murphy couldn’t help but become somewhat solemn as he walked in.

‘Did he have to use all of them? I mean, couldn’t he just say Mister Law, or Mister Murphy? Or better yet, couldn’t he call me Bear Hunter?’

After descending a very long and cramped staircase, Murphy found himself in a strange cavern under the city. The entire cavern was full of very seedy and sinister looking people. Murphy, being as keen on the uptake in social environments as he is, completely neglected these ominous signs.

To the desperate for money Murphy, this was just a convenient marketplace that happened to be underground. The kind of people in it didn’t even register with him.

He put on his Bamboo Hat to hide his identity and started walking around.

Everywhere he looked people were selling weird stuff. Necromancy scrolls and sinister sounding ingredients were everywhere. There was even a part of the marketplace selling cages. Murphy was quite impressed with their sale methods.

‘Oh, they even filled all those cages up with people to show how good they are.’

While exploring, Murphy came across a little alchemy shop with something that caught his interest.

He approached the shopkeep and then glanced back at the shelf.

“The rabbit foot?”

“3 silver.”

‘Holy Crap! Three silver just for some poxy little rabbit’s foot! Even if it has Luck +1 isn’t that too much? I’ll never be able to get enough of them.’

Even with that in mind, Murphy spent the last few coins he had and got the rabbit’s foot. He then wore it on his belt, dropping his luck back to -11. Continuing on his exploration of the underground markets, he decided that perhaps it would be easier if he just set up a little place of his own.

He found an empty area at the edge of the market, pulled out a thin blanket to display his goods, then started setting his potions up. As he did, he pondered if he could ever become a famous potion master, perhaps he should mark his potions with a signature symbol.

When he had that thought, the system loyally answered his internal query.

‘Ping! Would you like to create a Signature Insignia?’

With a ‘yes’, Murphy suddenly found himself in his status space staring at his status screens. Unlike what he’d initially thought, he wasn’t given a chance to design his own insignia. Instead, the system seemed to randomly generate one based on his achievements and stats.

Murphy was as bitter as a lemon when he saw the generated insignia. His insignia wasn’t something gallant and noble, it also wasn’t humble and reserved. His insignia came out as a Wolf head holding a Dagger dripping with poison in its mouth.

He immediately hated it. He hated it so much that he didn’t even want to use it. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, or perhaps because the system was just a bitch, all the potions that he had in his inventory suddenly flashed and then had the insignia inscribed on the phial.

He could only silently cry on this inside as he placed all the potions out on the sheet and waited for some customers. It wasn’t long until someone came along. Strangely, when he saw him, Murphy intuitively knew this guy was another player.

It wasn’t until now, when he wasn’t fully absorbed in ignoring everyone around him, when he realised that almost everyone walking around here gave him that feeling. About 3 in every 4 people here was a player. He suspected that it was somewhat similar up in the city as well, he’d just never noticed.

The player was a short, lanky fellow that looked like he’d spent his whole life on the other side of the law. He came up and perused the phials in front of Murphy before suddenly his eyes widened in shock.

“What are these? I’ve never seen any poisons with such quality. What are the effects?”

Murphy then went through the motions of pointing them out one by one and describing the effects ... which he had personally verified. When he was done, the man pulled out a little coin purse filled with 3 gold coins and nearly a hundred silver coins.

“I’ll take them all.”

Murphy, whose bartering skill was negligible to none, simply nodded, took the man’s purse and started walking off. Murphy didn’t realise it, but he’d just made a huge haul. If he ever told someone that he earnt 3 gold coins for only 100 odd bottles of poison, they’d laugh him to death.

3 gold was equivalent to 3000 silver coins. Most poisons wouldn’t sell for more than 10 or to 100 silvers. In this deal though, Murphy lost out. All his poisons were level 4 or greater. Some of them even got as high as level 10 poisons.

The potion level’s weren’t intentional. In fact, it was very much the opposite of what Murphy had wanted to accomplish with alchemy.

After exploring the markets for a while more, he went back up to the city to go and find the recipe he needed. Just as he was leaving the staircase back to the surface, a system prompt arrived.

‘Ping! Your Poison Mastery has reached level 5.’

‘Ping! Your Poisons have received attention in the underbelly of Gateway City. Because you were hidden by an item, your insignia has been attributed to the Poison Assassin title. -20 Renown.’

‘Ping! The item, Hat of Clouded Identity has gained renown and has been given new effects.’

Murphy quickly scuttled away and removed his bamboo hat. As soon as he took it off, he noticed a change. Underneath the front brim of the hat now had the insignia of the Poison Assassin, a wolf holding a poison dagger. As he inspected the hat, his Identify skill operated and he let out a breath of dejection when he read the new status of the hat.

Poison Assassin’s Hat of Concealment

This hat was once a nameless hat that hid the identity of the wearer. However, later in its life, it came into the hands of a notorious and villainess assassin who’s skills in Poison and Assassination were renowned throughout Newb Planet.

With the use of this hat, the poison assassin moved unhindered in the world and perfected his skills.

-This hat conceals the identity of the wearer.

-Bonus growth to Concealment and Sneak skills

-Bonus growth to Poison and Assassin skills.

Although the hat was now renowned, it kept its ability to conceal the wearer’s identity, which was really the only important thing that Murphy cared about. Those other weird bonuses didn’t matter. When he finally gets rid of this bad luck, he plans to try and push his stats back from the horrid direction they’re travelling in.

Obviously, sneaky assassin skills and poison skills weren’t what he planned to achieve.

Now that he had the money at hand, the goal Murphy had set out to achieve was finally close at hand. He raced to the shop with the rejuvenation recipe and bought it. He then hurried about and got all the ingredients he needed.

Surprisingly, good poisons were quite the money maker. He only spent about 1 gold for everything he needed for the rejuvenation potion. He then quickly returned the still burning rubble that was the slums and started concocting.

In the middle of his concocting, he got another prompt from the system.

‘Ping! Your spell, Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, has reached level 2.’

That immediately sounded ominous to Murphy. Unfortunately, as useful as the spell was, he could still feel it’s effects slowly accumulating. At the moment it wasn’t anything too bad. In fact, since his Hurts So Good trait had evolved it really helped to reduce the impact.

However, it wasn’t a good thing that the spell levelled up. Its main effect wasn’t to help the caster eliminate the need for sleep, it was to cause irritation and irrationality. Its levelling up only meant that the negative effects would start stacking faster.

Luckily ... or unluckily, his other nefarious trait, The Unstable, hadn’t had the time to accumulate. Although it was indirect, and he chose to try and ignore it to prevent himself from crying, he had just obliterated the slums ... and those few innocents that didn’t commit crimes to survive there.

It was only because it’s the very nature of the world to ignore those types of people that even the system didn’t seem to care much and only tagged him with -5 renown for the hidden quest.

As he pondered on it, he wondered where all these hidden quests originated from. If it was a quest ... shouldn’t it have a reward?

He quickly checked around in his Status Place and tried to imagine a Quest Log. As he tried to will it into existence, a new book with a plain leather cover on it popped into existence. Open opening it, a list of all the quests he’d completed came into view. Some of them had Completed next to them, and some of them had Pending.

He flipped through the book to check some of his quests. Each page had a quest title and description of the quest and how it was completed. It then had the system rewards.

A few of these quests simply had renown as a reward. These were the quests that were marked completed. Among them, only 2 quests were still marked with pending. The first was a quest the system had given him when he first found the magic tome.

Quest Giver: Game Master Jasmine

You found an old magic tome in the Cave of the Ancient Bear King. Inscribed on the back of the book was the name ‘Elizabeth’. Find the owner of this tome.

Reward: Level 2 Spell Model

“This can be considered a tutorial quest. Because you killed your Instructors, but mostly because I find your struggles amusing, I am helping you out with some tutorials.”Jasmine.

Murphy was stunned.

‘Personal tutelage from the game master? How lucky is that!’

At the same time, he was slightly dubious.

‘Was it the Game Master who set it up so that I would receive such a sinister spell tome?’

Well, for the moment it didn’t matter. Murphy glanced at the other quest that was still marked as Pending. This was the hidden quest for assassinating the Prince of Kindness. On the bottom of the page was the drawing of a box with ‘Continue Quest Line.’ written in it.

Murphy could tell straight away that if he touched that box, he would be getting sucked into some doubtful plot and would undoubtedly be on the wrong side of it.

He didn’t even need to consider and immediately closed the book. As he let go, the Quest Log Floated back out into his white space and started circling around him along with the Spell Tome and all his other status screens.

He glanced over at a stack of sheets loosely bound by string. That was his potion recipes. Unfortunately, apart from 3 pages, all the rest were either red or green. This symbolised that all of his recipes were either explosive or poisonous.

Of the three that weren’t, one of them was some accidental cure potion he’d cooked up for the Bear King, Miracle Water. The other was the rejuvenation potion he was in the process of refining. The last was bug repellent.

He looked at the loosely bound pages with bitterness for a moment longer before returning to the game world and focusing on the rejuvenation potion.

I continued the potion refinement with my fingers and toes crossed. Every time I dropped another ingredient in I would silently pray to the Great Sage. I spent 100 silver coins running around town buying all sorts of knick knacks.

I don’t know why, perhaps because of the nature of my stats and special traits, but I regularly found really cheap ordinary things that had a luck modifier. No one else seemed to be able to identify the luck modifier, and I didn’t plan to tell anyone that their useless junk was actually incredibly useful.

As such, I was now adorned with all sorts of strange accessories that granted luck. It seemed lucky accessories were somewhat rare because almost all of them only gave +1 luck or simply had an attribute like Reduces Bad Luck by 1.

After hunting for almost an hour, I managed to get enough accessories to get me all the way to 1 Luck ... as opposed to -1 luck. This was when I felt that I might just survive this potion refinement ... as opposed to suddenly being engulfed in flames again.

Very tentatively, I crushed the juices out of the last ingredient and dripped a few drops into the cauldron. Within a few seconds, a sweet and refreshing aroma wafted up from the cauldron. I scooped a little of the mixture out into a phial and scrutinised it closely.

After nearly a minute of death staring the potion, my Identify skill finally seemed to catch a glimmer of the potion’s properties.

Rejuvenation Potion. Level 3.

This Potion helps to heal all manner of ailments. Within 24 hours can fully heal minor injuries from burns and cuts to broken bones and indigestion.

I was ecstatic. At last, I succeeded in completing the rejuvenation potion. To test it out I took out my Sword of Sharpness and with a little effort managed to cut a slice in my arm. Because my Please Sir had driven my regeneration rate to an unnatural level, I started healing at a visible rate.

Luckily it wasn’t so fast as to not be able to test the potion. I quickly swallowed the contents of the phial. The moment I’d swallowed I noticed something had gone horribly wrong. It burnt all the way down. Although it was sweet and tasty on the tongue, it was violent and toxic on its way down my throat.

I felt my body getting pins and needles. I felt my pores close up giving me goose bumps and preventing me from sweating. Slowly my body began to burn up. Thanks to Poison Assassin, my poisons neglected quite a bit of my poison resistance, and so if I administered poison to myself, it often ravaged my body uncontested.

My muscles started to spasm and flinch. A few ingredients I’d left sitting on the edge of a rescued bench were knocked off and fell into the cauldron. The contents of the cauldron suddenly lit up in flames and bubbled and frothed like the liquid had come alive.

I smelled a filthy rotting stench suddenly burst forth from the cauldron. Instead of what I had expected, which was the gases from the cauldron making me even worse, all my afflictions seemed to slowly start lessening and then as quickly as they came, completely disappeared.

Stunned, awed, shocked. I had no idea how to explain what just happened. Conveniently, the Game System jumped in to let me know.

‘Ping! You have created a new recipe, Honey Pot Potion.’

‘Ping! You have created a new recipe, Instant Recovery.’

‘Ping! You have earnt the title, Taste Tester, by testing all of your potions on yourself.’

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused a Happy Accident. +1 Luck.’

“Ha ... haha ... HahaHAHAHA!”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing in jubilance. Even the growing tide of irritation from my curse spell couldn’t stop my happiness from exploding out. For once, I finally had some good luck! I finally had something good happen by chance.

I quickly checked my status to investigate the new title and the recipe descriptions.

Honey Pot Potion

At first glance, this potion is a rejuvenation potion. Unfortunately, that’s only at a glance. Although it does truly have the ability to restore the body to perfect condition over a period of 24 hours, it first has to destroy the body. The pain and agony of this process is unquantifiable, and even people with the strongest pain endurance will suffer from it.

Instant Recovery

This potion is quite miraculous in its effect. After consuming, restores the body to peak condition. Can even cure some poisons and ailing status effects.

Taste Tester.

By eating all sorts of dubious things just to test the effects and even consuming unidentifiable potions, your ability to determine the attributes of ingredients or potions by a simple taste is almost uncanny.

Eating something will grant a x2 bonus to Identify.

I rushed to fill phials with the Instant Recovery potion I’d just accidentally created. Although it smelt dastardly, it had incredible effects. I then packed up all my alchemy gear and even took the rickety half burnt table.

It didn’t take much searching to find my way to the orphanage. I was rather surprised by the mess I’d made of the place. The orphanage resembled a little chapel and had a dozen odd children morbidly ambling about with crutches or covered in bandages while trying to play in the yard.

The little chapel also had a huge hole in the roof and out one of the walls. Following that hole was a long stretch of ripped up dirt and cobblestone, almost reaching 20 meters away from the orphanage.

I was rather nervous as I approached the chapel. I don’t do well in these sorts of situations. Although I wanted to help people, I am the first person to admit I lacked a key attribute to achieve that goal ... social skills and courage.

Nonetheless, watching those little orphans mulling about looking like someone took a crap on their birthday cake, my heart bled. Metaphorically of course. With my level of regen, the only way my heart would start bleeding is if someone managed to first stab through my skin and flesh.

I procrastinated and lurked about for a bit as I tried to get my courage up to go in and help the orphans. For a change, I was glad I had the Hurts So Good. Although it dimmed the nervousness and trepidation, the more I thought about it, and it grew, the more of it was converted into courage and confidence.

However, Hurts So Good can only do so much. That first step, to actually walk into a place I had destroyed and try and help lives I had ruined, even if by accident, required my own personal courage. No matter how powerful Hurts So Good was, things like this still required a person to muster up their true feelings and push forward by their own willpower.

Finally, after lurking for almost half an hour and muttering incoherently as I stared at the chapel, the pressure and discomfort from all the glares I was getting from passer-bys looking at me like some creeper outweighed the need for courage. Thus I quickly ran away towards the chapel to avoid the continued silent persecution they were giving me.

Wait! I mean, I wasn’t running like a coward, I was marching in with courage and confidence. Definitely not being more afraid of the continuous glares then facing my fear of rejection. Definitely...

Ahem...

Yes, so I marched into the chapel like a triumphant hero to find the curator of the orphanage. As I walked in, all the orphans looked at me like I was the monster from under the bed. I felt my Hurts So Good go into overdrive as it tried to correct the very negative feelings created by being feared by these innocent little souls.

Eventually, it reached its limit, and I was overcome with sadness. I still forged on though. It was too late to turn back at this point.

Once I stepped into the chapel, I saw a figure in plain commoner clothes on his knees and facing the huge hole in the wall I’d created by accident that day. He seemed to be praying. After closer inspection, I realised that he was praying to a half-broken statue that was directly in my flight path.

Apparently, not only did I destroy a roof and wall, I even obliterated the statue of the patron of the chapel.

My Hurts So Good felt like it was an invisible armour that was about to explode. My mental fortitude went up another level just watching this scene. Hearing my footsteps, the man stood up and turned towards me.

The moment his eyes locked onto me they were filled with fury and hatred. Even though my social skills are poor, I knew this was a moment when I should interrupt and explain myself before he could start yelling.

“Errm ... the orphans ... I want ... umm...” Smooth. So smooth. My charisma probably just gained 3 points just from that short explanation.

“You bastard! What the hell do you think you’re doing here?! You came back to finish us off huh? I’ll bet you’re one of that rat-faced bastard’s men, aren’t you?! Well go back and tell him he won’t get his damn money! We had a deal! You wouldn’t hurt the children, and we would pay you the protection fees! You tell that bastard he broke his word!”

‘Protection fees? Someone’s trying to extort an orphanage? What a bastard! What a malicious prick!’

My mind raced as memories I’d made a great deal of effort to repress all started flooding back. Hurts So Good finally seemed to snap under strain and my body shuddered from the feelings of rage and madness exploding from my heart.

“Tell me ... who!” This wasn’t voiced as a request. For a strange turn, my anger had completely clouded my normally messy and incoherent mind.

“Don’t ‘who?’ me you fucking prick! You go back and tell Taritz that he can get fucked!”

Just as I was about to respond, another voice joined the suddenly rapidly spiralling out of control drama.

“Who can go get fucked? Huh?! You tryin’a flake on the boss you fuckin bitch?! Huh?!”

Walking in from behind me was a group of 6 rough looking hooligans. They carried shabby swords on their belts, and more strutted about like they owned the place than just simply walked.

The leader of this group was about mid-twenties with a face full of stubble. He held one of the orphans from outside by the scruff of her neck. She was only a little girl and one of her arm was all red and swollen. Clearly, she’d suffered from a broken arm after the ‘accident’.

The leader pushed the girl forward, making her collapse to the ground. He drew his dented old sword from his sheath then pointed it at the girl.

“We’re here to make our collection. Taritz doesn’t like late payers so you’d better pay up or we’re gonna be starting a butcher’s shop. Heh, first on the menu, premium orphan meat.”

I slowly turned to look directly at these intruders that were rough housing the little girl. My eye’s reddened, not with sadness at the scene, but with madness and anger. The curator become fretful seeing one of his charges being visibly threatened in front of him.

“Wait! Please wait! We only had a few donations this month. With all the damage and the injuries, we can’t afford it. Please just give us some time!”

The leader was about to respond when he finally noticed me, standing only slightly off to the side, staring at him with a somewhat vicious expression.

“What you lookin’ at punk? Huh?! You wanna get the shit kicked out’a ya? Huh?!”

Finally, something snapped. I couldn’t control my body as one minute I was standing more than 5 metres from the group then the next I was standing between the girl and the hooligans slowly drawing my Sword of Sharpness.

“Scum deserves death.”

With this short explanation for them to know why they died, I charged forward. My sword flashed as I closed distance with the leader. He stepped back in a panic and waved his sword out to try and deflect my strike.

‘shink!’

My sword of sharpness continued on through the man’s blade as if slicing tofu. Apart from a slightly grating sound and the ‘ting’ of half the sword falling to the ground, the chapel turned silent.

Finally, the group of louts managed to process that they were being attacked. They also managed to realise that their leader had just had his throat slashed and was busy spilling blood down his front like a waterfall ... except bloody.

They all rushed to draw their weapons. Once the enemy has the initiative, it’s difficult to take it back. Remembering this old adage, I pushed the leader back causing him to collapse onto his back, I then stepped over him and rushed forward to take full advantage of their slow reactions.

With another swish, my sword arced out and cut the wrist of the next attacker. My body shuffled forward and then slashed upwards across the torso of another hooligan. 3 down. I could see the fear building in the eyes of the last remaining 3.

Their reactions caught up, and the closest of the three cut across diagonally with a chopping motion. His two companion had also sped forward and were thrusting towards my abdomen, trying to pierce me. Unfortunately for me, despite my training and quick reflexes, I couldn’t deflect three swords at once, and I was too late to dodge.

This in mind, I decided that if I’m going to die, I might as well take them out with me. The most threatening strike was the chop towards my neck. I chose to raise my arm and block this strike first. I then felt a dull jolt of pleasure in my stomach as my sword, which had just deflected the attacker’s, was already rapidly swinging back down towards his own neck.

I felt the sword slice through his flesh like cutting butter with a hot knife. I glanced over to see the other two attackers staring at me like I was a monster.

It was only at this point that I realised the two swords I thought had stabbed into my stomach, had in fact not stabbed into anything at all. Apart from two shallow cuts in my tunic and on my skin, that were rapidly healing at a visible rate, I took almost no damage.

Seeing this, I felt that all the pain and suffering from my strange traits was now worth it. Not forgetting to take advantage of this brief pause of confusion and hesitation from the final two attackers, I slashed across, slicing both across the necks.

“Watch out!”

I heard the high pitched scream of the little girl. Then a moment later, a sharp jolt of pleasure and even a little pain flooded my body from my back. I felt the effects of fast-acting poison. Based on my experience with such things, I was pretty sure it was actually one of my own creations.

I slowly turned around to see the attacker I’d left alive with only a cut wrist. Seeing me not suddenly falling to my knees in agony, and still having the hilt of the dagger poking out from my back, the attacker was befuddled and terrified.

The reason for his terror was because, despite my efforts to stop it, the pleasure I was feeling from the poison made me feel good all over. Although in any other situation my smile simply would have looked happy and honest, this situation instead made me look like a smiling demon.

As if his existence didn’t even matter, I slowly put my sword back into its sheath. Seeing my focus leave him for a brief moment, he tried to run. ‘Tried’ being the operative word, seeing as my hand shot out and connected with his throat as he made to move.

He fell to the floor with his eyes bulging out of his head and struggling to try and breath. I slowly pulled the dagger out from my back. Slowly, because it felt so good.

‘Sage damn it ... This weird trait is definately turning me into some kind of pervert. I never would have taken the time to enjoy the feeling of pulling a blade out of my back before I came to this world.’

With the blade out, I then, in a very unceremonious manner, started looting my enemies. Some money, a few interesting looking accessories and the dagger. They were obviously poor and useless. Even the experience mist that rushed out of them into me was negligible.

At last, my focus turned to the curator, who was now standing in front of the little girl protectively. All the commotion had also drawn the attention of the other orphans who all stood at the door of the chapel with varying looks of amazement, fear and awe.

I wasn’t too sure how a situation like this usually ends. For starters, I just killed a bunch of people, they probably don’t want their bodies sitting here stinking the place up.

That in mind, I pulled out a potion called Burning Acid. I feel it’s a pretty self-explanatory name. With a couple drops on each of the bodies, they all lit on fire. Strangely the fire was green and gave people the feeling it was sticky and greasy.

However, it let off no smoke or even heat. It quickly consumed the corpses and even the blood on the floor, disintegrating it all into ashes. Once the bodies and the blood had all been dissolved, I took out another potion. I looked the curator in the eye as I quickly slashed myself with the sword of sharpness then consumed the potion.

The wound I slashed had some strange twinkling light start to pour out of it and moments later was completely healed. I took out a little bag filled with dozens of these potions and then also took out my coin purse.

“For ... the accident...”

With a vivid and well-articulated explanation, I threw them both to the curator, reached out and grabbed the surviving attacker, then fled the scene as quickly as possible.

As I stepped off the grounds of the orphanage, the curator ran out of the chapel.

“What about Taritz? He’s going to come after you for killing his goons.”

I just turned and smiled at him as I resolved my heart for what I was about to do. In my mind, as I looked at all these pitiable little orphans and remembered my own time at an orphanage, I whispered...

‘I’m going to kill him!’

The moment Murphy resolved himself to this act, then turned and dragged the weak coughing body of the goon into a dark alley, a few pleasant system prompts all started popping up.

‘Ping! You have gained the title, Orphan Heart.’

‘Ping! You have completed the quest, Prevent the Orphans Suffering. +15 Renown.’

‘Ping! Your donation to the orphanage has raised your status in Gateway City. +10 Renown.’

‘Ping! You have accepted the quest, Kill Taritz the Gangster.’

‘Ping! Overcoming your fears to help the orphans has shown your true mettle. +1 Cement.’

Murphy decided to wait for a moment before investigating the new status updates. He had something else to do for the moment. After pulling the goon through a few alleys, he threw him against a wall in a quiet secluded place.

He pulled out three potions then forced one into the man’s mouth, instantly restoring his raspy swollen throat.

After coughing up some coagulated blood he seemed to be OK, so Murphy grabbed him and forced another potion down his throat. Moments later, the goon arched back in pain as he started shaking and screaming out uncontrollably.

This was something called Corrosive Poison, another of his accidents while trying to refine something that could heal the orphans. Unlike other poisons which cause cells to rapidly die and by extension influences the nervous system of the body causing pain and discomfort, this poison only targets with the nervous system.

By slowly burning away at the pain receptors and then the nerves in the body it’s a very effective torture method. Eventually, it just leaves a person in a crippled state, burning the nervous system all the way back to the brain and then consuming that too ... eventually.

In his hand, Murphy waved another potion in front of the man.

“Taritz ... for the cure...”

Once again displaying his -3 charisma stat, Murphy explained his proposition to the screaming man. The man, seeing the cure being held only a foot away from him, couldn’t control his mouth and spilt everything he knew about Taritz.

Murphy didn’t care about the man’s life story. Based on the quest name he’d already guessed the man was a gangster boss of some description. All he wanted to know was where the man was.

Finally, after some stop and start explanation by the man, who was unintentionally increasing the time he suffered by being so long winded, he revealed the location of Taritz. Murphy then grabbed his sword, flicked it out then just as quickly sheathed it.

He then dropped a few drops of the potion in his hands on the corpse and walked off as it rapidly dissolved into ashes and scattered about the alleyway.

He then retreated to his burned down cottage to prepare some things and check his status.