Before I left the room, presumably provided by the witch, I checked my stats and skills. I was quite happy with the amount of progress I’d made in training my skills during my journey to the Witch’s Tower.

The most surprising were the sudden huge jump in my Mana Capacity and Mana Regen. It seemed the ordeal of sucking up more than half the Witch’s Mana had greatly boosted my Mana stats.

It was only a pity that Mana was the thing I was least interested in. Although magic was cool and all, it was generally connected with boring things like reading endless books and researching boring things. Personally, I preferred the idea of fighting dragons with nothing but a shield, my body and a good sword.

Using only my wits and skills to defeat my enemy instead of relying on some overbearing spell that would most likely have huge repercussions and ruin endless innocent lives along with my target.

Unfortunately, I could only do my best with what I had, and right now I had so much Mana I couldn’t possibly use it all even if I tried. I was regenerating nearly 20 Mana an hour, and my maximum mana had reached nearly 80 points.

After some more checking, I found my Athletics, a skill I generally ignored, had progressed rather quickly thanks to stacking my inventory with rocks. Having to try and move around properly when being so encumbered had greatly improved my co-ordination.

Adding to that, my strength, endurance and agility were all rather fast in growing. My strength had reached 14, and my agility had reached 8. My endurance was a whopping 30.

From what I understood about stats, that was something akin to my strength being 14 times stronger than the average strength of every player and race when they first create a character.

My endurance was now high enough to basically be on the same playing field as a creature made entirely of rubber.

Not only had my stats and skills evolved, but my two spells had also both levelled up once.

Demon Spawn seemed to gain experience both from the summoning as well as the growth of my demon spawns. Although my spawns had only grown about half an inch in height since I summoned them, their strength and other body stats had increased by half of what they were born with.

I was pretty sure that if they kept growing at the same rate, then they would outgrow even me in a matter of weeks. From what I could tell, the only bonus to having the spell at level two was that I could now spawn 3 more demons, giving me a total of six.

I then checked my Curse spell. It appeared to have levelled up thanks to my casting it on my spawns. I guessed the shock from the mana surge earlier had dispelled the curse diagrams in my body and released the demons from the curse, which was why the lazy buggers had been sleeping instead of guarding me.

Without hesitation, I cast it on them all again. Unlike what a person would usually expect, the demons all started making delighted ‘yah rah raw!’ noises and dancing around when the curse came back into effect.

Their eyes filled with a dim red glow, perhaps indicating that they were powered up by the curse somehow? To be honest, I had no idea what the curse did to them.

I only knew that apart from them seeming to love it, no negative reactions happened. Even after nearly a full game day, which is about 96 Earth hours, the demons didn’t show any negative side effects.

However, unlike the last time I cast the spell, I now realised what the side effects were on the demons. After only a few moments of the spell being cast, the demons all started being very randy with each other and very quickly the once tidy clean bed of silken sheets was turned into a depraved demon love nest.

It only now struck me why the demons always seemed to insist on doing naughty demon things with each other. It was because my curse was acting as some kind of perverse demon aphrodisiac. I wanted to dispel the curse but the moment I tried the demons actually started getting upset.

So I was then stuck between a rock and a hard place. I could have cute rational demons that were good and loyal, but a little bit randy, or ugly irrational demons that were angry and violent. The decision was very difficult for me, considering I was the one who had to suffer as they insisted on remaining within line of sight with me.

If I tried to leave and let them do randy demon things, then they all stopped doing randy demon things and followed after me. If it even remotely looked like I was about to sit down or stop for a while, then they would immediately start doing the two backs ... or in this case three backs demon dance.

Only making the scene more disturbing was all the ‘YAH! YAH! RAR! RAHW!’ sounds they made while in the act.

I decided to ignore it and continue checking my inventory and status. Usually, they finished after a little while and then raced up to me like loyal little minions wanting to follow me everywhere and waiting for orders.

If not for the debaucherous and randy actions between one another now and then, they would have appeared rather cute.

As I continued to check through the inventory, I remembered a spell tome I’d picked up from the sweet old lady/witch that I’d killed in front of the academy.

After some thought, I decided to try my luck. Originally I’d intended to leave this tome with Seelie, but she declared she didn’t need it. Her ability to learn magic from the books of the academy meant that she didn’t require the use of a tome from the system.

I, on the other hand, had no ability to make heads or tails of those confusing books and so desperately needed the memory implanting ability of system skill books more.

With a little trepidation, and having checked my surroundings to make sure nothing could disrupt me this time, I decided it was safe enough and touched the book to identify it. After closely scrutinising it, even after a few minutes, the overlay didn’t change from ‘Unknown Spell Tome’.

With no other choice, I could only tentatively open it and absorb the spell to find out what it was.

‘Ping! You have learnt a new spell in Sinister Magic. Curse: Rampage!’

I wasn’t even surprised anymore. I’d simply assumed by now that everything I picked up would most likely be some kind of trap set up by the system to drive me further towards evil magic and cruel traits.

After quickly checking the spell description, I could only sigh bitterly in my heart. Very quickly though, I corrected my thoughts. Even if the skill was sinister, it was just like all my other skills. Only the method of use was sinister. If I used it properly, it would definitely be a force for good.

Curse: Rampage!

When cast on a target, the target will become enraged and start rampaging. This spell will give the target bonuses to all resistances, defence and body stats.

Bonus stats and duration of Rampage will be determined based on the Mana Spent, Spell’s level and Player’s Sinister Magic Arts Skill.

Cost: 5 Mana or greater.

By nature in a game, Murphy wanted to test the skill straightaway. He turned to his busily rutting demon spawns and then cast the Rampage on all three of them with 15 Mana each.

The moment the curses activated, the three demon spawns stopped their rutting and suddenly started to bulk up. All their skinny, wiry little muscles became bulky and powerful looking. This bulking up was especially pronounced in very specific muscles of the little male demon spawns.

In addition, that strange red glow in their eyes flashed and then dimmed back to a slightly brighter red glow than before.

In an instant, the rutting of the three demons became frantic and unstoppable. Their need to copulate became so powerful it looked like if they didn’t make babies with each other within the next second, then they were going die from exacerbation.

As if to reinforce this image, the two male spawns ‘expanded members’ started firing nonstop. It amazed Murphy that it was possible for them to even store that much liquid in their tiny little bodies. The depraved love nest that was once a beautiful, classy bed quickly became even more feral, and the entire room soon followed.

It was like two fire hydrants had suddenly exploded in the middle of the room. Murphy had to dodge into the closet to hide from the friendly fire that was just a little bit too friendly.

Just as Murphy hid himself away in the closet, the door of the room opened, and the maid girl from earlier walked in. As opposed to the last time he’d seen her, the maid was cleaned up and had no marks on her. The only thing still remaining was the shackles.

The moment she entered the room, she encountered a face full of friendly fire from the demons. Suddenly, the three demons glowing red eyes all turned and focused on her simultaneously. Murphy was forced to close his eyes out of fear he was about to witness some heinous crime.

15 minutes later, all sounds in the room became quiet, and Murphy peeked out to check if the coast was clear. What was once the bed had been shredded apart, and the entire room was in a disorderly mess.

Lying in the middle of the floor of the room was the maid who seemed to have passed out with a very pleased expression on her face. Surrounding her were the three demons who were looking around somewhat confusedly for Murphy.

The moment he stepped out from the closet they all quickly ran up to him while making excited ‘YAH YAH RAR!’ sounds. As if they were very pleased with Murphy’s new spell.

Seeing the little demon spawns jumping up and down covered in some gloopy clear liquid, and noticing the state of the room which was also almost entirely doused in clear gloopy liquid, Murphy had no chose but to smile very bitterly.

He then glanced at the naked body of the maid who was moaning in her sleep and had all sorts of fluids covering her or leaking from her. Murphy then decided that a quick escape would be best and made to leave what could only now be described as a crime scene.

After escaping the guest room, he began to explore the tower. All the walls were covered in thorns that seemed to follow his movement. Every stop he took the thorns would align perfectly so that if he bumped into the walls, they could stab him.

Out of curiosity, he even reached out and touched them. The moment his finger made contact, all the little thorns and spikes suddenly enlarged and tried to skewer him. Instead of hurting him, the thorns seemed to be like a stalk of grass trying to push against a rock.

They were simply bent back from trying to extend from the wall and then snapped. They couldn’t even break through the simple barrier that was his skin.

Having then lost interest, Murphy continued on. It wasn’t long before he came to a room with a window overlooking the world from the top of the tower. The room was filled with books and looked something similar to a study.

Sitting in a chair was a somewhat lonely seeming silhouette. It was the Thorny Witch. She sat in a chair of bones and looked out of the window at the landscape below.

As Murphy entered, she glanced back at him and made a somewhat disgusted face.

“Sighh ... so another freak has come to my tower. If you’ve come to kill me, get it over with. If you’re like the other one and came for ‘Punishments’, I’m afraid I haven’t got the temperament to entertain you.”

Murphy simply looked on, trying to decide how he should proceed. Eventually, after a long and awkward 10 minutes of staring at her as she looked out at the world, he spoke.

“ ... the game master ... tutorial quest...”

“What?”

“ ... tutorial ... quest...”

“Pardon?”

“...”

The Witch, Elizabeth, gave him a scalding glare as if telling him to just spit it out. It was bad enough that she couldn’t kill him even after trying, but he seemed to have some kind of brain aneurysm from the mana overload and couldn’t even form sentences properly.

With a wave of her hand, a curse was suddenly cast, and Murphy felt his ability to properly structure a sentence increase a hundred fold. Which was just enough for him to be able to form a complete sentence.

“The Game Master Jasmine ... sent me here to complete ... a Magic Tutorial.”

As if it had suddenly completely depleted all of its energy just helping Murphy form that single sentence, the curse suddenly shattered like glass made of sinister mana.

The Witch watched on stunned. That wasn’t just some little curse. It could cause even quiet introverts to become so talkative everyone would hate them. It was a curse designed specifically for tormenting anti-socials who hated interacting with other people.

She cast the spell again, this time with double the mana.

“So, I came here because ... I thought you were evil or something ... but the quest ... and you seemed alright...”

Shatter

The spell shattered again. This time lasting only a little bit longer than the previous one. Elizabeth’s curiosity was now piqued.

‘Does he have some kind of Curse resistance? Curses are a rare magic though so not many people would be able to build up any sort of tolerance for them. Hmm ... perhaps he has Sinister Magic Arts as well? That would explain why he summons those little demon creatures... ‘

Elizabeth stood up from her chair and started walking out of the room. Just as she passed through the archway that was the entrance to the study, she beckoned for Murphy to follow.

“Come along then, if you’re to be my pupil, I’m going to need to train you from the beginning.”

Murphy, somewhat still unsure of what actions he should be taking, decided to just go with the flow for now. If this beautiful woman really was evil, he could just kill her later on.

Ahh, what a strange tower. I wish I could go and fight an evil wizard in a tower like this. Save a damsel in distress who’s all like, “Oh my hero! Let me reward you!”, kiss, kiss, kiss...

... or something like that...

“Oh, it’s the Hero! Please punish me! Wait! Let your demons punish me some more!”

Of course ... there is something like a damsel in this tower ... sort of. Oh, there they go again. Not sure what the little demons have against that maid girl but they don’t seem to let up whenever they see her.

Hmm, I wonder where that elf lady is taking me. Oh, a library? Oh ... it’s a library. Great. So I’m going to have to spend my time reading after all. What a cruel game. Please let my next tutorial be a combat tutorial.

“Since you have summoning magic, then you should start with these books. Then go and learn these books on sinister magic arts since I’m pretty sure you have that as well. Hmm, also you should learn about demons since you seem to have a special sort of bond with them. Is there any other magics I should teach you about?”

... another type of magic I want to learn about. Well, in all the old stories people with holy magic and stuff were the best. More importantly though, that sort of magic has healing properties. If I learn that kind of magic, I can help everyone!

“ ... Holy?”

Oh, she’s giving me a weird look. Is that ... pity?

“Heh. Young man, if you’ve already started on the road of sinister magic arts, learning holy magic will be very difficult. Nigh on impossible. If you really want to learn holy magic now, you’d need some kind of special trait.”

Ahh ... of course it’s that way. I shouldn’t even be surprised. The damnable game system! It’s so cruel! So evil! I swear! One of these days I’ll break through this game system! I’ll make it to the top, and I’ll find the evil bastards that created such a thing! Then I’ll punish them!

“OK, well, that should do for now. Read through these quickly then come to the top of the tower. I’d teach you magic outside, but some strange poison fog showed up, and I can’t go out from the tower anymore. Even that strange girl can’t seem to survive in the fog and dies every time she goes out.”

Oh ... she’s giving me another strange look. Does she suspect me? Please don’t blame me beautiful elf lady. It wasn’t my fault. Ahh damn. It’s showing on my face. The guilt is written all over my face.

Quick avert my guilty eyes. Just nod politely and pretend to listen.

Hmm, it’s been almost 12 hours. I wonder if the tower has any food in it? Let’s go ask that maid girl.

Ahh ... Let’s see...

“Rar rar rar!”

Oh? The demons can smell her? Well then, lead the way, little buddy.

Ah ... what a strange room. Oh, what’s that? An automated whipping machine? Did she make that herself?

Hmm, is this a torture room? This is definitely a torture room, right? Oh? What’s that ... oh Sage! What is she doing to herself! How is that even possible! Is she okay? She looks like she passed out in that state? Why are her hips still doing that?

Ahh. Who cares! I don’t want any more contact with this freak than necessary.

“Oh, it’s the Hero! Have you come to let the demons ravish me again? Please say you’ve come to give me some demons of my own! Please please please!!”

... how am I supposed to respond to that? Hmm, the little demons definitely don’t seem enthusiastic about the idea.

How do I ask if they have food? It’s somewhat rude to ask for food, isn’t it? I mean, I’m sort of just a freeloader now, right? Should I have brought my own food? Hmm, what if they don’t want to share any food with me...

“Growl!”

Uhp! Never mind. Looks like my stomach has taken it upon itself to express its opinion. Whew, that’s lucky. I really didn’t want to have to try and explain what I was looking for. Man talking to other people is so hard!

“Oh. The hero is hungry huh? Well, there’s nothing to eat in the tower. All our rations were finished yesterday. Ever since the weird poison fog, we can’t leave the tower. It’s such a strange fog that even the Lady Elizabeth can’t dispel it long enough to escape.

“Oh, that’s right! Didn’t you come in through the poison? Wah! You’re body’s so powerful! I wish I could go out and enjoy the poison but even for me, it’s just too strong. I can’t stand it at all! Welp, I guess that just means you’re going to have to go out and get food for us all Mr Hero! Good luck!”

Hmm ... how did I suddenly become responsible for food? It’s not my fault your tower was in the range of my Poison Marsh! How was I supposed to know some weird poison smog was going to bust out of that flask! I mean, I only changed one damn ingredient!

Whew! Calm down. It’s OK. Hmm, I really want to leave here as soon as possible, but I’m going to have to study all those crappy books first. I wonder if...

“Little demon guys. Why don’t you go out and hunt for some food for me?”

“Yah yah yah! Rar rar!”

Oop. And off they go. That was surprisingly easy. Oh, one of them stayed behind? I guess they must be really protective of me huh? Hmm ... should I have given them some more specific instructions? I don’t want them to go and start stealing someone’s cattle or something...

Oh well. I’m sure it will be fine. No one even lives all the way out here anyway. At most, they’ll find some forest beasts that we can cook up.

Hmm, maybe I should do some more study about the demon spawns first. It would be better if I could understand enough about them.

Ok, let’s see... ‘How to summon a demon’ ... hmm, I can already do that. Umm... ‘Demi-Demons, a controversial investigation into subspecies derived from demon’s cross breeding’ ... well, I might need that later ... my demons tend to be quite ... promiscuous.

Ah! Here we go! Creatures of the Demon Plane 101. Let’s see, Grotesquery, Demon Hound, Black Dragons ... umm ... is that supposed to be a succubus of some kind? Is this a graphic novel? Why is the drawing so ... you know what, let’s avoid summoning one of those ... I’m only human after all. Even my self-control can only take me so far.

Ah! Here we go.

Demon Spawn.

The rarest form of demon in the Demon Plane and also the creature of the Demon Plane with the greatest potential for evolution and growth.

Unfortunately, this demon has the lowest birth rates among all demons and is often ostracised by other demonic creatures due to it being very weak at birth.

Although they have the greatest potential for growth amongst all demons, they have two huge flaws that greatly limit that potential. They can only grow stronger when under the command of a summoner, and they have a sex drive so low that it’s almost none existent, making reproduction so slow that the race is on the verge of completely dying out.

The elders of Demon Spawn tribes have had to resort to forcing their kin to reproduce just to keep their small handful of tribes alive. If a mage ever found a method to help these creatures breed, then he would be considered the greatest hero of their sub-race and would be drowned in their undivided loyalty.

The reason that the Demon Spawns are normally considered so weak is that the only way for them to become strong is to learn from a master and gain traits from their master through constant contact. It often makes these demons act very endearing towards a master and rarely want to leave their side.

At the same time, it’s not unusual for Demon Spawn to be summoned, grow stronger, then return to their tribe as a very powerful demon. Unfortunately, because of their species of demon being completely devoid of sexual desire, and the tribe elders having no control over the strong demon spawns, forcing them to copulate and create a stronger bloodline of demon spawns is very rare and near impossible.

While that is the case, Demon Spawns lay eggs instead of live childbirth, and if they had even the remotest increase in sexual desire, their reproduction rate would explode.

A freshly hatched Spawn would mature within days of birth to the limit of their bloodline potential then reproduce and lay at minimum a batch of 20 spawns within 3 days of having reached maturity.

Even more disturbing and the reason this creature is considered so frightening and with one of the greatest growth potentials is that the progeny of this creature receives inherited memories and fully inherits the average skills and stats from its parents.

Murphy was forced to swallow as his throat suddenly became somewhat dry. Somehow, he had gotten a creature that was on the verge of going extinct in the demon realm and had even found a way for them to start procreating.

An entire species’ future could be decided by him personally. Or more accurately, an entire species’ survival was resting on his shoulders.

He now had a few choices to make. If he simply summoned all the Spawns to this plane, then they would all go into a mad frenzy and kill each other. He could essentially wipe an entire Demonic Race out of existence.

At the same time, and more in line with Murphy’s personality, this was an opportunity to help an entire race of beings evolve and at the same time teach them some of his own philosophy. Such as not indiscriminately killing everything in sight, which was probably one of their current major flaws.

He looked over at the demon spawn that had remained behind to guard him against danger. It was currently scurrying around on all fours and sniffing books on the table or pointing at pictures and screaming “Rar rar Yah!” while jumping up and down.

It was hard to believe this little imp like creature had so much hidden potential.

While he busied himself with some more books, he suddenly had a huge rush of experience mist surge into him. Quickly following that the system gave him some prompts.

‘Ping! Snappy has died in battle with the Evil Wizard Garfol.’

‘Ping! Chuckles has killed the Evil Wizard Garfol.’

‘Ping! Chuckles has cleared a level 3 dungeon.’

‘Ping! Chuckles has reached level 3 and evolved.’

‘Ping! Summon: Demon Spawn has reached level 3.’

Initially, Murphy felt sadness. Learning of the death of one of his Demons upset him quite a bit. Then he felt a slight bit of comfort in that Chuckles had somehow survived. He hadn’t been aware his demons even had names.

He glanced at the Spawn nearby and used identify.

BitchTits

Race: Demon

Species: Spawn

Level: 2

Status: Severely Pregnant.

Loyalty: Infinite.

Evolved: No.

Evolution Bonus: None.

So it turned out not all of his Spawns had pleasant names like Chuckles or Snappy. That aside, Murphy was stunned at the status of BitchTits. From outer appearances, she didn’t seem to be pregnant. She still seemed to be the same red skinned skinny little demon from before. Only a little taller now that she’d grown a bit.

Murphy then grew somewhat confused ... what was a dungeon? And why the hell were Chuckles and Snappy in a dungeon when he’d only sent them out for food. Not to mention, that was only a few hours ago, how did they suddenly get into so much trouble?!

He decided he’d just have to wait until Chuckles came back and hope his charade skills were up to par.

About 5 hours later, Chuckles returned and the smog parted around him as he approached the tower. Being hauled behind him was a cart he’d stolen from somewhere which was filled with all sorts of creatures.

Bears, foxes, goblins, bandits, rabbits. The crowning Jewel to the cart was a faceless man in black robes and had a sinister looking spell tome swinging from a chain on his belt. Still attached to the man’s lifeless corpse was the lifeless corpse of Snappy who appeared to be biting a hole through the man arm and had it severely restricted.

Among the corpses were various trinkets and shiny things that had been looted from the dungeon. When he pulled the cart up to the door of the tower. He stood proudly and started screaming “Rar rar rar!” at the top of his little voice.

Murphy came out with BitchTits to see Chuckles standing very valiantly with the cart behind him. He was markedly different from when Murphy had sent him off. The first thing was a huge burn scar he’d presumably received from some kind of fireball spell.

On top of that, he was now more than a foot taller and reached up to just past Murphy’s waste. His usually wiry and skinny body now had some muscle mass, and his red skin had changed to a strange purplish red colour from its normal shiny red colour.

The crowning jewel to his evolution was a strange barb dripping with what can only presumably be poison on his tail, and his two little horns had grown a tad bit longer and more pronounced.

Murphy was impressed. He couldn’t hide it, and he knew that some positive reinforcement was needed. First, he checked to make sure his main fear hadn’t come true and upon seeing that Chuckles hadn’t brought back the bodies of any civilians, he walked up and patted his head like he would a dog.

“Good job Chuckles. You’ve done well. Do you want a reward?”

The moment Murphy finished asking, Chuckles started jumping around excitedly while screaming “Rar Yah Rar!” Everywhere.

He then went and grabbed two bandit corpses from the top of the cart and dragged them up to Murphy. He then pointed at one while going “Rawr Raw rAr” and then he pointed at himself and BitchTits.

“You want to eat the bandits yourself?” Murphy asked curiously. He was pretty sure that his demon spawns knew by now that Murphy didn’t eat other human creatures so they would be getting to eat the bandits later anyway even if they didn’t ask.

Chuckles shook his head then started pointing some more while going “Rar rar yah!”

It took almost an hour for the creatures with more social talent than Murphy but couldn’t talk to explain to Murphy who had no social talent whatsoever but could talk, what they wanted.

It turned out, the one whose charades skills weren’t up to par was Murphy as any other normal person, with an hour of miming from the two Spawns, would have been able to guess what they wanted.

It finally clicked when Chuckles started pointing at BitchTits stomach area. As such Murphy pulled out his spell tome and cast the De-Summon on one of the corpses so they could go back home for a while.

Before they left, they both rushed up to Murphy and grabbed his hand while putting it on their heads. They then pointed at the spell tome in Murphy’s hand.

Murphy was little quicker on the uptake this time and used all the manner in his body to recast his Insomnia Curse on the duo before they rushed into the portal that formed out of the exploded bandit corpse.

Murphy then looked over at the other corpse Chuckles had dragged over and realised Chuckles was telling him to summon more Spawns so that they could evolve and receive a sex drive. He wanted Murphy to act as a sex hotel for his kin.

Murphy, being weak to the whole species is going extinct thing, didn’t even need to consider. He walked up and started using deprive to drain whatever little bit of mana remained in the corpses on the cart. Once he had enough, he quickly re-opened the summon gate using 12 Mana and 12 little spawns came out.

On a glance, his identity told him their names and status’. None of them was over level 1, and some were even level 0, indicating that they hadn’t even reached full adulthood yet. Clearly, Chuckles had gone back to set things up so they could send all their young through to let them have a chance to get stronger.

For a Spawn, living longer than a month was rare. Chuckles most likely wasn’t expecting to come back, but instead planned for all his young ones to eventually be summoned by Murphy and get stronger as well. He had, quite deliberately, put the hope of his entire species onto Murphy’s shoulders.

The first thing Murphy did was to curse all his new spawns. He could see them all becoming giddy with excitement, but they controlled themselves enough to wait until Murphy didn’t have something for them to do first.

He had them all drag the corpses into the tower then taught them how to clean a corpse and butcher it. He only taught them to do it for things he’d eat. The humanoid corpses were left alone for the demons to eat however they wanted.

He also taught them the most important skill ... Looting.

They quickly took all the interesting looking stuff off the bodies of the bandits and the wizard then disappeared their corpses in a somewhat violent and brutal manner.

Once they’d finished gorging and Murphy had sent a demon to bring the maid to store the meat from the monsters, he returned to the library to finish his tutorial quest.

Over the next few days, Murphy spent all his time in the library. His identify skill and memorisation skill both shot up by a few levels with Identify reaching level 5 and Memorisation reaching level 6. His intelligence stat rose by 7 points because every time he finished a book, the elf witch would give him 2 more.

After a week, his physical stats had barely moved, his demon spawns had all levelled up at least one or twice and all the female demons were pregnant again.

Murphy had avoided creating the scene with the Rampage curse again, but because he was always busy in the library, whatever demons didn’t go out to hunt stayed behind and busied themselves with saving their race.

He could tell Chuckles and BitchTits were still alive because they’re curses were still in effect, so Murphy half suspected that the Spawn Tribes were currently going through a rough week with those two going wild.

Interestingly, the constant use of his curse had raised it to level 5. Luckily his spawns hadn’t somehow ended up in another dungeon and weren’t bringing back any villagers as food stuff, so he was pleased with their progress even though none evolved, and his summon skill didn’t level up.

Strangely, these Spawns all seemed to have some natural hatred of the Maid as well, so she often came to play with them on regular occasion.

For a rare change, having been forced to live with other people frequently interacting with him in one way or another, his wisdom and charisma both slightly rose. Not much, but enough for him to see hope in them eventually reaching a positive number.

Also of interest was that he’d learnt quite a few new spells under the tutelage of the Witch. Most of them were, of course, cruel or sinister in nature. But they were all powerful and could help him later on, despite making him feel somewhat bitter at the effects of them.

The Tower became lively again for the first time in a very, very long time.

By the end of nearly a month in Earth time, which was only about a week in game time, Murphy had read the entire library of Elizabeth’s Thorny Tower and received a prompt from the system telling him he’d completed his tutorial quest for magic.

When he was preparing to leave, he asked Elizabeth, because he could now talk to her without help, if there were a combat tutorial he could do next.

“Umm ... is there ... combat tutorial?”

As eloquent as ever. When he asked this, Elizabeth gave him a strange look.

“How much do you know about the game after Newb Planet?”

“ ... Nothing ... I think...”

Elizabeth couldn’t help but sigh slightly as she saw him still struggling to form a full sentence in the presence of anyone apart from his little Demon Minions.

“The world after the tutorial is greatly different. It could be said, the purpose of the tutorial is to train you in the mechanics of the game so that you can use them to your advantage later. After this, unless you prefer to, there isn’t really a need to engage in single combat.”

Murphy looked at her strangely as he started trying to imagine what kind of game this supposedly became after he left the tutorial world.

“That said, combat mechanics are the most simple, and a tutorial for something like that is useless. In the end, you will develop your own fighting style, and if you’re good at it then you’ll be good at it, or if you’re bad, then you’ll just die a lot.

“Anyway, now that I’ve taught you everything I know, you can piss off back to Gateway City. Take this with you, it will act as your token that proves you’ve finished the tutorials.”

Murphy wasn’t certain what to think or feel now. For starters, the witch had never told him anything or taught him anything. She only cast spells on him now and then or had him cast spells on the maid occasionally.

Every now and then, she’d pick some books for him to focus on, but in the end, for some reason, she’d just forced him to read every book in the tower.

He didn’t realise it, but his reading ability was profound, and the rapid increase in his memorisation skill only made it all easier. She couldn’t claim to have memorised every book in her library, whereas Murphy, the freak, somehow could.

This wasn’t because his reading skills were particularly profound but more because his Hurts So Good made the boredom and tedium of reading endless books into joy and anticipation. Having the right mindset can dramatically affect a person’s ability to study.

Not only that but the stat which affected his memorisation skill the most wasn’t solely intelligence but mental fortitude. It didn’t matter if he could understand everything he read. As long as he remembered everything, then a day would come when it would just click, and he’d understand.

Having such a monstrous mental fortitude and helpful Hurts So Good was the key reason he’d completed his tutorial as quickly as he had. It also helped that he wasn’t required to understand everything he’d read. If that were the case, he’d probably be stuck here a lifetime. He understood about 1/100th of what he’d read.

At last, Murphy left the tower with his demons in tow. Instead of heading directly back to Gateway City, he decided to do a little bit of exploring. He had to send all the female Spawns back because they’d all ended up pregnant. As such, he just sent the whole lot of them back together.

He then found a nice fresh corpse and channelled his summoning. A strange magic circle was formed, a flash of light passed, and then standing in front of Murphy was Chuckles and 11 other Spawns, 4 of which had purple skin and poison tails. These were the newly evolved Spawns from Chuckles’ brood.

As soon as he appeared, he rushed up to Murphy while jumping about excitedly and screaming “Wah yah, Rar rar!” everywhere. He rubbed against Murphy like a cat then started talking the demon spawn gibberish to his brood.

At a glance, Murphy could tell that each of these spawns was level 3 and evolved. He was quite surprised when he used Identify to inspect them.

YaHoe!

Race: Demon

Species: Spawn

Level: 3

Status: Healthy

Loyalty: Infinite.

Evolved: Once.

Evolution Bonus:

*Gains all Poison Related Skills of the Master.

*Immune to all Poisons.

The other 7 Spawns were all around level 1 or 2 and were clearly fresh. Nonetheless, Murphy happily welcomed them, and they began to hunt.

Unlike the last few times, only male spawns came through this time. He worriedly cast his curses on them hoping not to see something unseemly. Luckily, they did appear to become a little more lively and active, but they weren’t displaying any signs of doing weird things with each other.

Murphy was quite glad that his Spawns had started sending only male groups. It was obvious to him that they were trying to send just males to prevent having to keep sending some of them back all the time. That way, the group could stay with Murphy for longer and then go back when they had evolved or levelled up enough.

As they hunted Murphy finally encountered a Dungeon. It was just what it sounded like. Some kind of sinister place filled with sinister creatures and people.

The first few dungeons he encountered people and creatures thought he was another sinister being that had come to take over their dungeon as his own lair. After he’d cleared a few, word spread and the dungeons became on guard against any sinister looking interlopers, which was somewhat abnormal for a dungeon.

As he travelled about, his lower levelled Spawns all started levelling and evolving. Some evolved with only his physical stats, and some evolved into being able to cast some of his curse magic. The ones that could use his curse magic were hailed as heroes by their brethren.

They were like priests of fertility to the Spawn.

Curse Spawns were suddenly highly revered by the other Spawns, and they were often protected by their brothers with almost as much enthusiasm as they protect Murphy.

By the time Murphy returned to Gateway City, he’d evolved nearly three sets of Spawns at least one. Murphy’s summon spell levelled up to level 4, and he could now summon 24 Spawns at once. Usually, it was always young normal spawns that came through, and Murphy would run around levelling them up for a bit then send them back once they evolved.

The only spawn that had stayed with him the whole time and refused to go back was Chuckles. Because he stayed with Murphy the longest, he reached level 9 and had evolved again at level 6.

His outer appearance mostly remained the same, only becoming a little taller again and being the height of Murphy’s navel. However, his second evolution gave him some strange powers.

He received something akin to Murphy’s Hurts So Good and Please Sir traits. Since then, he often sparred one on 23 with the other demons and raised his endurance to levels almost as unnatural as Murphy himself.

Murphy was pretty sure if this continued that Chuckles’ next evolution would cause him to evolve Murphy’s weird luck traits. From what Murphy could tell, he wouldn’t have to worry about that until after Chuckles reached level 12 though.

From a guess, he was pretty sure that the level needed for evolution would follow the number of maximum summons he could make at once.

So it would start at three and then double each time. After level twelve, Chuckles would most likely have to wait till he was level 24 to evolve again.

By this time, Murphy had been away from Gateway City for nearly 8 weeks in earth hours. Of course, in game days and real days, it had only been 2 weeks. On earth, he’d been missing for almost 2 weeks.

Juwan seemed to be the only one who was sure he was alright, and everyone else believed that he and Seelie had eloped somewhere.

It was about this time that the method of activating the artefacts that suddenly appeared was released by someone onto the data stream.

The whole planet went into an uproar of madness. Everyone was screaming their beliefs to the sky, and all sorts of people were trying to have all the artefacts either confiscated and locked away or utilised for war.

Slowly, people started joining the game. Murphy, of course, was oblivious. As people from earth started appearing in Newby Villages similar to the one Murphy first appeared in, Murphy was just stepping back into Gateway City as people rapidly ran away from him in terror.

Or more accurately, they were running away from the visage of Chuckles, who had refused to leave Murphy’s side no matter what. Murphy even threatened to throw him through the Spell Formation only for the little bastard to latch onto his arm like a dog and not let go until the spell pattern faded away.

This left Murphy in the somewhat awkward situation of returning to the City with a demon creature following him around like a loyal little servant.

Before he’d even made it the main city gates, he and Chuckles were surrounded on every side by soldiers in shiny silver armour pointing weapons at them. Murphy felt a vague sense of déjà vu as a knight in golden armour stepped out.

Unlike the last time, the knight directly drew his weapon this time and didn’t even bother with a warning.

“Vile scum! How dare you bring demons into the city! Are you trying to ruin the great city of Gateway?!”

Murphy, with words as sweet as honey and cobbled together as if by a poet or wordsmith, explained the situation to the guards.

“ ... a ... pet...”

The scowls of the guards grew more rigid, and they seemed to become slightly more alert as if they were preparing for a great battle.

“You some kind of Demon Tamer? You want to bring that thing into the city?”

Murphy considered for a moment as he and Chuckles shared a look as if mutually conversing with just their expressions.

“Tamer ... I suppose ... Demon pets ... aren’t allowed?”

When he asked this, the city guards all became silent for a moment. It was true that no one had ever tried to bring a demon into the city before, but everyone knew they were vile and wicked beasts. If they let this creature in now, there may be no end to demons entering the city.

However, in saying that, Gateway City prided itself on being friendly and accommodating to all races. The laws of the city specifically stated that no one, regardless of origin or race, was to be persecuted simply for being a part of that race.

This left the guards in a tough spot. The laws of the city were ironclad and they as guards had sworn an oath to only uphold the law and justice and nothing else.

Finally, the guard captain thought of a way he could rid the city of the demon, and its master.

“The rules of the city state that no pets of dangerous origin or nature are to be...”

Before he could finish his statement, the guards watched on with rapidly changing expressions, as a little child was knocked over by commoners quickly trying to escape from nearby the demon. What the guards were watching though, was not the little boy, but the demon.

Seeing the boy with a scraped knee and injured by the rush of the crowds, the demon Chuckles rushed out towards the boy faster than the guards could properly comprehend. They could barely keep up with the creature’s movements let alone rush forward to stop it.

Their faces all then went from worried and horrified to befuddled and confused, as Chuckles helped the little boy up and patted the dust off him, then pulled a potion from his dirty tribal looking clothes and poured it on the boy’s wounds.

Very quickly the crying boy was cured of his ailments and didn’t feel any pain anymore. The crowds all watched on as the little boy hugged the demon and thanked him before running off to his very worried looking mother.

The whole scene was simply too unbelievable. To the adults, who had already been fed many prejudices since birth, the demon Chuckles was just a demon and a vile creature but for some reason showed some sincere kindness, leaving them all confused and questioning their beliefs.

To the children, who all believed what they saw more than what they heard, Chuckles was just a cute little man about the same height as them who had some strange features like horns, purple skin and a pointy tail. If anything, they found the visage of Chuckles to be ‘cool’.

To the guards, who had just been hoping to accuse Murphy of harbouring a creature that could only kill and cause mayhem, Chuckles really was a little demon. It was almost as if he knew that they were going to try and use such an excuse to throw him and Murphy out of the city and used this method to shut them up.

The guards were unwilling. So, so unwilling. It almost physically injured them just holding back the desire to immediately try and slay Murphy and Chuckles. The only reason they did hold back was that they weren’t certain if they could kill the pair.

Chuckles was already somewhat beyond their ability to contend with. If Murphy had tamed that creature, then it meant his power must be on a level even higher than the demon’s. How anyone had remained on Newb Planet long enough to reach such a level of power boggled their minds.

Normally, if a player had reached a certain point and trained enough skill to be deemed capable of surviving in the Domains, then they were highly encouraged by the game system to move on from Newb Planet.

If they stuck around for too long, the Game System would simply suspend them, and they’d be punished until they eventually left Newb Planet.

Luckily for the guards, someone came along that was capable of calming this escalating situation down.

“Hoh? A young player with demon summoning abilities! Very rare. Young man, you must be the player that has received approval to move on yes? Well then, come along.”

All the guards turned at the sound of the gentle and amiable old voice. Having approached through the crowds gathered to gawk at the spectacle, an old man with a big red beard had appeared, riding atop a very gallant and powerful looking white steed.

He looked like he’d come straight out of one of those fairy tale books about ancient Heroic Kings.

All the guards suddenly bowed and greeted the man in unison. “City Lord!”

Murphy simply looked at the man, then after glancing at Chuckles and the guards for a moment, started walking towards him to follow him.

Strangely, even the City Lord seemed a little apprehensive about getting too close to Murphy and his demon. He kept a steady pace while remaining at least 5 steps abreast of them. If Murphy moved a little closer, he would take another pace away but act as if nothing was amiss.

Chuckles, seeming to have noticed this, couldn’t stop himself from having some fun with the old City Lord and purposefully stepped closer and closer to him until the horse was nearly about to walk into the side of a shop front.

Murphy ignored the spectacle and simply followed behind. He didn’t care about his Spawns having some harmless fun. As long as they remembered the promise they’d made him. That they would only kill to fill their belly and in self-defence.

He knew it would be too much to make them promise to never kill innocent humans. After all, to the demons, innocent humans were the same as innocent cattle. Sentience had nothing to do with the argument. Who cared if something was sentient or not. If you are hungry, then eat. It’s a simple rule of nature.

Only humans, with their overinflated egos and strange views on things, seemed to fail to realise that they too were edible and part of the food chain. How arrogant is it to think that you can eat other creatures but them eating you is barbaric or cruel.

That said, although Murphy could recognise the situation from his Spawns point of view, it didn’t mean he endorsed needless slaughter or any such thing.

To live in this world filled with strange creatures, magic and danger, then potentially being killed or eaten by something stronger than you is an inevitable outcome for every creature, humans included.

Murphy, was of course, more impartial than most in this respect. Thanks to being close to his spawns for such a long time, and having read so many stories and arguments on similar subjects in Elizabeth’s tower, Murphy had come to understand that right and wrong was relative.

As long as he felt what he was doing was right, that was really all that mattered. With that in mind, he taught all his spawns his own personal beliefs on what was right and what was wrong.

For example, it’s not wrong to need to eat, only wrong to eat more than you need.

It’s not wrong to take an innocent life if it serves a necessary purpose, only to take a life for no purpose at all.

It’s not wrong to attack if provoked, only to attack unprovoked.

Many similar beliefs were expunged by him unto his loyal demons. All of whom, being young and impressionable, ate it up. Murphy came to realise just how ostracised and isolated the Demon Spawn species must be.

For a race that has the power to pass on memories from the parents to the children, the only way they couldn’t have become more powerful by now was for someone or something to deliberately isolate them.

Anyway, the point was, Murphy was more or less a pragmatist, but he believed in trying to do good. If something he believed was wrong, was happening in front of him, then he would step forward to help ... provided there wasn’t a big crowd, and he wasn’t expected to say anything.

If he still believed this to entirely be a game where everyone was just made up from data and pumped into his head, then he would probably have no problems with talking, similar to how he at first had no problem speaking to the little girl or the instructor in the beginning.

After the instructor had verified that this was, in fact, a whole different world, things changed slightly. Although it was still a game, all the people here were real. He still wasn’t certain if all the NPC’s were inhabitants or if they got warped out similar to him when they died, but he chose to believe in the second option because it was more soothing to his soul.

If it were the first possibility, although he was sure he could handle it, he would probably not handle it well. After all, he now had a few innocent lives on his hands by now.

At last, I stood at the gateway to the next part of the game. My time in the tutorial world was over. Surprisingly, waiting for me at the gateway was Seelie. Apparently having found some method to do something ... Honestly, I’m not sure, I stopped listening about half way through and just nodded politely as she spoke.

The Gateway was slightly anti-climactic. It was just a simple archway with two wooden doors. When the doors were opened, there was only whiteness on the other side.

We received no lavish send-off. If anything, the City Lord and Head Mistress of the Academy, who were the only ones present, seemed to be encouraging us to leave as quickly as possible. They were almost a little rude in their eagerness to push us through.

I shared a look with Chuckles, and we both simply walked through to the next realm with Seelie beside us.

Just as we stepped through the Gateway, Seelie grabbed my hand for some unknown reason, and then whiteness enveloped us.

The next thing I knew, we were standing in a white space similar to the status space in that it was white and endless.

Unlike the status space however, there was nothing here at all.

Chuckles had disappeared, and the only ones here were Seelie and I ... holding hands still...

‘Gah ... so awkward ... has she noticed she’s still holding my hand?’

I, very awkwardly, tried to let go only for her hand to tighten. She looked at me with an odd expression which I couldn’t understand at all and then she looked back off into the vast whiteness.

I wasn’t about to insist that she let go of my hand, so I just lightly held hers back and decided she’d let go of me eventually.

Finally, something came. We both heard a now very familiar, ‘Ping!’, and then a very unfamiliar person suddenly appeared.