On the questing planet, Holy Eden, Baron Von Boff had just awoken from his slumber and wiped the sleep from his eyes. In a practised and habitual manner, he pulled his fat body out of his most luxurious and unnecessarily huge bed. With heavy steps, he ambled over towards the chamber pot in the corner of the room to relieve himself.

A bevvy of beauties slowly flowed out of the bed after him while giggling and chattering. As the fat Barron pulled apart his silk gown to do his business, a knock sounded at the door. The Baron paid it no heed and focused his full attention on completing his daily ritual.

Baron Von Boff was a man very susceptible to superstition, and under no circumstances would he allow his daily ritual to be disturbed. If it was, he believed that his luck would be like a flickering candle flame facing the onslaught of a cyclone. So superstitious was he, that even if his county was being raided and he was on the verge of being hung in the streets like a cur, he would still complete his daily rituals.

The knock sounded again, just as Von Boff started talking to ‘the little baron’.

“Knock knock!”

“Don’t you worry little buddy. Who’s a big guy? Huh? You are! Yeah, you’re a big guy! You’re the biggest guy in all the lands. You’re a humongous towering giant among dwarves!”

“Knock knock!”

For another 10 minutes, Von Boff went through the process of talking to his cock to convince it that it was huge. He then burnt incense, did a shamanic voodoo dance, which would most likely get him hanged if the church ever discovered him doing it, and then finally reading a few passages from the Book of the Holy God.

Following on, he sent one of his many concubines to open the door, as he very meticulously dressed in the most ostentatious and regal looking clothes in his entire county. Which one would hope they were, considering every decent tailor in the county had been kidnapped by him to work solely on his clothes.

As he was putting the last touches on his gaudy outfit, the Bishop of the local church was ushered in by the still barely dressed concubines.

Although the Bishop had many things he wanted to say regarding this, he chose not to. After all, the upper royalty of the kingdoms and the empires were all granted a significant amount of leeway by the church.

With a flourish, Von Boff spun about with a huge smile on his face to greet the Bishop. Unfortunately, his glowing smile was not reciprocated in the least, and the glowering dark clouds that were metaphorically hanging over the bishop’s head quickly erased all vestiges of a smiling face from the Baron.

“Baron Von Boff. I know that you are insistent on worshiping the Lord God in pray at the beginning of the day, but sometimes you must understand that the Lord God has many things he needs you to do. It’s best if you pray to him at the church, where we can contact you in times like these!”

Von Boff’s fat face scrunched up slightly and his bloated cheeks turned his eyes into two squinty little lines. He seemed to shake for a brief moment from the indignation of the situation, but quickly regained his senses. In a very plain tone, he questioned the Bishop.

“What’s the matter that has you so riled up this fine morning Old Greg?”

“The matter is that demons have attacked the city and freed all those sinful, ungodly creatures from the guardhouses!”

Von Boff’s face quivered once more, and the shock of the news forced him to sit down. He then very quickly made some religious motions with his hands and kissed a little sickle on a chain around his neck.

“What creatures did they take?”

“All of them! During the night they cleaned out every single guardhouse in the city, the only exception being the castle dungeons! Some of those creatures are a plague on all of humanity!”

“Manny! Manny! Get your ass in here!”

With the yells of the red-faced Baron, a disturbingly thin old man that looked like he was skin on bone clambered into the Barons room with a pile of documents.

“Gather the Knights Manny! Send out the trackers! We must find those demons vermin at once!”

With this order, Von Boff rose up looking far more dignified now that he’d thrown some orders around and moved to head for breakfast. His lackey/squire/castle manager Manny, stared at the Baron with wide eyes before making a gulping noise.

“My ... my lord ... the um ... we sent out the first detachment yesterday before they appeared, but it seems the Demons are far stronger than we thought and managed to fight off our detachment. From the reports of the few survivors, it was a bloody and fierce one-sided slaughter.”

Von Boff started to turn red, and his fat body jiggled about as if he was barely able to restrain himself. Finally, after it seemed he’d just averted some kind of heart attack, his beady squinted eyes turned on the bishop.

“Old Greg, send a request to the Cardinal for the support of some Holy Knights. Manny, gather the remainder of our forces in the city. I want the location of those demons and the location of those prisoners within the hour. And find out how the hell they got so many evil creatures out of the city without anyone realising what was going on!”

Murphy and his gang were presently seated at a small camp they’d set up nearby their portal. Around them were dozens of other creatures, humans and beast people that had been rescued from the dungeons of the Baron. Most of them were just innocent bystanders that were unlucky enough to spawn on this planet and be forced into shackles.

The most degrading part was that the Holy Church seemed to have developed a method to create skill books from them. As if they were trapped here and refined into their base stats until they were a useless level one player again. Only then would they kill them, and allow them to respawn elsewhere.

Normally, if a person needed some quick cash or experience points for the player store, they could convert the experience of a skill into a skill book. For example, Murphy could technically get rid of all his crappy skills and sell them. Unfortunately, this process carried certain penalties.

For example, if he converted his masochism into skill books and sold it, he could sell nearly 1.2 million worth of Masochism Exp. The penalty for such an action though was dependant on just how much he sold in one go. One level’s worth technically wouldn’t even effect his Pain Mastery Score. To create a single level 1 skill book only needed 1000 Exp, which in comparison to his 1.2 million was almost negligible.

If he created a level 10 skill book, then it would eat up 500,000 Exp. The penalty though would be severe. For a level 1 skill book, there would be almost no repercussions. He would simply get a debuff from the system for a day or so that limited how quickly he could raise experience in that skill again.

On the other hand, if he made 32 level 1 skill books, or an equivalent level 6 skill book, he would be penalised with something huge, like a debuff that prevented him from levelling any other skills until that skill reached the level it had been. Or even worse, he would be afflicted with something that ate through his Exp and dropped the skill another level.

Regardless of the outcome of such a thing, the point is that converting a skill into a skill book would eventually cost a player a lot more than just skill points.

That said, there were methods to get around this sort of thing, and many players focused solely on the act of levelling a skill and then selling skill books in the player store to others. How they avoided the huge penalties of the system was a mystery and closely guarded secret of these people.

In the case of the Holy Church, it was something to do with their religion that allowed them the ability to refine players into skill books. The only upside of this was that using such a method against an unwilling participant granted them a huge buff allowing them to quickly replenish their Exp the next time they respawn.

Murphy could see that these people Chuckles had lead out of the city were distraught and stressed from their time in the Baron’s dungeons. Many of them had planned to kill themselves and suffer the 48 hours of game time lost, just so they could escape this planet and start levelling again.

It was only thanks to Murphy kindly agreeing to make them squatters in his domain that they chose not to. If Murphy agreed to them joining his domain, it meant they were guaranteed a safe place to respawn so that they could focus on levelling again without worries.

As the group rested, Murphy was busily trying to learn a new skill. Apparently, this was a skill Seelie had started with, and it was powerful beyond reason. It was called multitasking. It was quite literally the ability to focus your mind on two separate tasks at the same time.

To train this skill, he was doing something complex and something simple. The complex thing was his Mana cartography. Thanks to Morbid climbing almost every high-altitude mountain in the area, Murphy now had a pretty good layout of the Baron’s county, and was now mapping it all out in his Status Space.

At the same time, he was busily sorting through all the loot they pilfered from the dead knights that had chased after them the night before. They were quite highly levelled, and even their warhorses were frighteningly powerful. Turned out, Murphy had greatly underestimated the strength of his companions.

When he originally encountered the Knights and was fought off, he hadn’t managed to kill any of them, and it was 5 against 1. If they’d only had three knights at the time, he may have been able to kill two and escape from the last one before the damage overwhelmed him.

He initially suspected that his adventuring party would be strong enough to take on 20 knights, especially with Morbid present. In the end though, he was greatly shocked to discover that the other adventurers in his party were all monsters ... both metaphorically and literally.

After leading the Knights into the forest, Murphy had planned to charge in with Morbid and attract their aggression while his companions picked them off at the sides. To his shock however, Lucile and Xanzu didn’t even wait for Morbid to turn around and had already jumped out of the carriage to engage them the moment Murphy made it clear he was about to fight.

Lucile was fast and flexible, and her speciality was close combat. The moment she was within a few meters of a charging Knight, her body disappeared, and moments later the sexy panther lady was wrapped around the Knight’s back with her claws and teeth digging into the soft parts of his armour.

Xanzu’s traits were well hidden, and Murphy was uncertain what his nominal battle style was. Being a werewolf, Murphy was certain his close combat would be no less powerful than Lucile’s. However, despite that being his suspicion, Xanzu never entered direct combat and simply flittered about launching arrows like some kind of machine gun.

His accuracy was unnervingly precise, and before anyone else had joined the battle, he’d already blinded the 3 knights that were moving towards Lucile.

Just as Murphy and Morbid had turned to face the enemy, Tuskelly had already appeared amidst the knights and had turned into a giant blob of jelly, which sucked in a knight and his horse. He then seemed to just pause in the middle of the battlefield as he busily dissolved them.

It was about this time that Murphy realised Carson had somehow reached the battlefield. For a little dwarfish fellow, he sure was spry. It was like watching rookies trying to catch a leaf in a storm. Even more surprising was whenever Carson struck a blow with his spiked gloves, the armour of his target corroded away into flaky rust.

Even more disturbing was seeing the corrosion continue until it reached the body underneath the armour and start causing huge lesions and unstoppable decay.

By the time Seelie, Juwan, Murphy and Morbid joined the fight, 8 knights were already dead or dying, and another 6 were sporting heavy injuries. Seeing the way the battle was turning, the Knights ran as fast as they could. Although Morbid could most definitely catch them, Murphy didn’t want to pursue them into a trap, so let the last few survivors go.

With this battle, Murphy now had a slightly better understanding of his team’s strength, and it would make it easier to plan in the future. On top of that, these knights had hoarded no small number of interesting things from all the people they’d extorted that were unlucky enough to respawn here.

Thanks to his deprive skill, if he got to a Knight before their soul was sucked into the reincarnation cycle, he could deprive them of all sorts of things. Depending on what it was, it needed more effort and focus from himself. In this case, he deprived every Knight he touched of a random number of items from their player inventory. The reason he did it randomly and left it up to luck was that it required far less focus and mana then if he was focused on only taking specific things.

He was sure he could also deprive them of experience and stats, but for now, his skill level and control weren’t strong enough for something like that. It was also factored by many other things like the player’s willpower or wisdom. Seeing as the Knights were this strong, he didn’t even try to steal stats or Exp. He could barely suck the stats and experience points out from a run of the mill cat or dog, let alone a powerful player.

On top of all this, he also wasn’t stingy with the bad luck and called in a dozen odd luck spawn to steal as much luck as they could from these knights before their soul passed on. This made it far easier for him to equipment steal from them.

This all led to him accumulating a great deal of random and interesting equipment. Every now and then, the grateful prisoners they’d rescued would glance over towards Murphy, only to witness him taking some powerful looking artefact or equipment from his player inventory and then biting it.

Watching him simply eating such rare looking and interesting equipment left them all dazed.

As he explored his loot, Murphy came across something interesting. It was a stone that he couldn’t identify. The interesting part wasn’t that he couldn’t identify it, because he seemed to find a new ordinary looking rock almost every day that he was unable to identify.

The interesting part was that this rock had something engraved on it. After a while of trying to decipher the scratching, Murphy gave up and went back to exploring his inventory. The moment his focus left the rock in his hands, his body started making the very habitual motion of going to eat something he couldn’t identify.

Without thought or effort, he popped the rock into his mouth and started chewing. Everyone nearby heard the shiver inducing sound as if some primal beast was chewing the bones of a comrade into dust.

Everyone glanced over to see blood pouring from Murphy’s mouth, and a disturbing grin spread on his face as his teeth chipped and cracked while that stone was munched into powder.

The whole time, Murphy remained oblivious. He could feel that he’d eaten something weird again, but it had become so common now that he just ignored it. It felt good anyway, so his focus remained on the inventory and Mana Cartography.

After a few minutes of everyone breaking out into a cold sweat and slowly backing away from the mad man who was self-mutilating by eating rocks, Murphy finally swallowed the strange rock and in a matter of minutes his teeth had all somehow magically reformed into brand new perfect pearly whites.

Everything then returned to normal. The only remaining indication that Murphy had just brutally destroyed his mouth and eaten some magic rock was the blood stains on his chin and mouth.

Everyone decided to simply ignore it. Most of these people were ‘evil’ races anyway, and many of them had their own strange and unnatural rituals that others frowned upon. Thus, the magic rock was quickly forgotten by everyone.

After their short break in the camp, Murphy led everyone back to his domain and left them in the care of Uncle Calligso. After stocking some more supplies, they then raced off back to the Quest Planet of Holy Eden.

Although Chuckles had been a busy body and rescued all the villainous looking captives, his real mission was only to collect information, and so he and his operatives remained spread out through the city gathering information.

The most useful information gatherers were the 2nd evolution spawn with Luck and Shadow traits. All luck spawn were small in comparison to the others, and the Shadow Luck spawn used their tiny bodies and advanced speed to their advantage. Places that were difficult to get to for the other spawns were a piece of cake for the luck spawn.

In this case, the church in the city was heavily guarded and seemed to have no few number of enchantments to limit shadows and fill every nook and cranny of the building with light. The scene certainly made the place look like it was blessed, but that wouldn’t stop these daring little bastards from sneaking in.

The reason it was so fortified was that the church was actually the greatest power in the area, and they kept records of everything for as far back as its establishment in this county.

Now, one might think it difficult for a spawn to use the shadows to sneak into a place with no shadows, and they would be right. The only exception was the luck spawn, who were fast enough to be nothing more than a tiny blur in the very corner of a person’s vision.

Those moments when you think you saw something out of the corner of your eye but when you looked over there was nothing. This moment became a disconcerting norm in the church since sunrise today. The guards were starting to freak out just a little bit.

Making it worse was all sorts of strange things happening. Light gems in the ceiling suddenly cracking, satiny curtains and lush carpets suddenly falling onto someone head or bunching up and tripping them. Being a very backwards place to begin with, the guards of the church were starting to get a little paranoid and thought the church was possessed.

On his return from the castle, the Bishop cast an endless number of holy protection spells and lift curse spells and everything else in his repertoire that he could think of. The only problem was, they only seemed to make things even worse.

Things started lighting on fire, a guard tripped over something and stabbed himself in the jaw with his own sword. Stuff falling over, things moving around. Even shadows slowly started filling the church, which technically should have been impossible.

With the greatest haste, the Bishop closed the church to prevent the citizens getting wind of this situation and creating a panic. The last thing he needed right now was for all the citizens to start panicking and spreading rumours that the church had been cursed.

Unfortunately, the strange things within the church only grew more common and devilish. The Bishop believed he could contain it until the arrival of the Holy Knights that he requested from the Cardinal arrived, but before the sun had even reached a quarter of the way through the sky, the first death came.

The guard captain of the church, and the highest in stats and levels, was the primary target of the luck spawn. Naturally, they couldn’t simply reveal themselves and start pouring bad luck into these guards, so they did the next best thing, and started pouring bad luck into the building.

Although stealing luck was most regularly used by the spawn to give people a terrible day, that didn’t mean they couldn’t give negative luck to inanimate objects just the same as Murphy did. After all, it was basically the same trait.

Therefore, the devilish little bastards chose to wait. First, they just flittered about out of sight and touched everything they could. Walls, pillars, chandeliers, benches, carpets, floors. Everything they had a chance to touch they touched.

Finally, after that guard stepped onto a negative 20 luck carpet and accidentally stabbed himself in the jaw, a moment of distraction came. With that, the 4 Shadow Luck spawn of Chuckle’s special operatives appeared like ghosts at the back of the distracted guard captain.

In a few short seconds, they’d already lightly touched him thousands of times. His luck plummeted into the negatives and he never even noticed. The whole time, the guard that had just stabbed a sword into his jaw was the only person that could see them sitting on the guard captain back. He wanted to shout and scream, but he was now more or less effectively mute.

One could say that it was just bad luck that he didn’t stab himself somewhere else. Being the little demons that they are, the spawn naturally capitalised on this and spent half the time mooning that poor guard from the captain’s shoulder and slapping their butts and giving the bird.

When that guard turned white with fear at seeing those little demons inside the holy church, and everyone finally realised he was looking at the guard captain, the spawn were forced to once again disappear.

The whole time that they’d been in the church, the spawn had been using the spell ‘dark domain’. Every now and then when they had the mana stored up for it, they would cast the spell. Although their dark domain spell was only low levelled, with all four of them casting it as often as possible, the effect started adding up.

At first, it was almost imperceptible. Thanks to the various enchantments that kept the church internally bright, it was like very, very, very slowly lowering the brightness on a monitor. If 100% was normal brightness, then every cast of dark domain only took it down 1%.

It wasn’t until things started becoming even freakier that everyone finally realised the brightness of the church had already dropped at least a staggering 50% of normal. The only reason none of the guards noticed was that it was so gradual and prolonged, fooling their eyes into thinking it was normal.

Unluckily for these hapless guard fellows, the guard captain was now cursed with horrendously bad luck, and his every decision led to the death of a comrade. At first, he wanted to immediately send someone to inform the Bishop, who had long since retreated into his inner chambers.

That poor fellow was squashed flat when one of the huge 20 meter high stone pillars suddenly fractured and fell straight on top of him.

He then ordered his guard to lock the building down, while at the same time sending another person to inform the Bishop. The second guard heading towards the bishop tripped over a communal plate used for gathering donations and crowned himself so thoroughly on the edge of a metal candle frame that he’d never get back up.

Following that, the first guard to start moving to lock down the church slipped on communal wine that had somehow leaked out of a wine bottle that shouldn’t have even been nearby. The resulting fall was catastrophic as his sword left his grasp and then stabbed right into the shoulder of the guard captain.

Moments later, while the guard captain was freaking out and starting to question his beliefs, lighting gems all over the ceiling and walls started cracking and shattering for no reason at all. Without all the lighting gems fuelling the eternal light enchantment, the accumulation of dark domains suddenly enveloped the entire church in an eerie darkness.

A glass pane high up in the church suddenly exploded as the black shadow of winged demon suddenly burst into the church. With a wave of his hand, chuckles cast his innate spell from his Commander evolution.

The horrified guardsmen watched on as one of the dead guards suddenly exploded into a gory mess of meat, a red light flashed, and then two dozen evil looking spawn were standing there chewing on the scattered body parts. As if previously rehearsed, they all simultaneous looked towards the guards.

“Yah...”

“rar Rah!”

“Rah! Rah! Rah!”

They seemed to just share a few confused strange demon words and then suddenly all burst forth while chanting Rah! In unison. The guards were dumbfounded, shocked and frightened. They’d never witnessed anything like this before. If it were a normal day, the 15 odd guards still remaining in the church would actually have no problems slaughtering these 2 dozen spawn.

The only problem was, Murphy had recently been teaching Chuckles about the importance of manipulating morale on the battlefield. This wasn’t something Murphy was an expert at either and was something that he’d been taught by the Elf Witch.

Needless to say, Chuckles loved the concept. As a demon and a warrior, manipulating people and then killing them were his two favourite things to do. In this case, he’d long since reduced the morale of the church guards to nearly gone. All it needed was that little push over the edge. In this case, his sudden abrupt entrance and the summoning of 2 dozen evil looking demon spawn.

Adding on all the strange curse like happenings and the sudden realisation of how dark the church had become, the guards were all frightened out of their wits, making them easy pickings for the spawn. Chuckles took the guard captain by himself, and in a very unclimactic victory, beheaded him right there on the altar of the Holy God.

It would be a lie to say that it was a hard battle. Mostly because the guard captain had such dramatically poor luck stats that every action he took resulted in self-injury. Chuckles probably wouldn’t even have needed to touch him before he somehow managed to behead himself.

With the church emptied, barred from entry and more or less cursed by numerous Dark Domain spells all stacked on top of each other, Chuckles and his operatives were now free to ransack the place and take as much information as they could.

Before that though, he very silently snuck into the Bishop’s chambers. The chambers were very spartan and bare, and the Bishop was hunched over his desk scribbling a letter to the Cardinal regarding the ongoing evil curse invading his church.

Unfortunately, this letter would never reach the Cardinal. With quick, stealthy steps, Chuckles snuck up so close behind the Bishop that it was a surprise he couldn’t here Chuckles’ breathing. Then like a snake from the bush, Chuckles’ stabbed his pointed poison tail into the neck of the Bishop.

Before the Bishop could fully register what was going on, he felt dizzy and a great deal of pain from every part of his body. It only took a few moments until his body seemed to become cold and the spark of life in his eyes had dimmed.

Outside of the city, many citizens had come to a stop in front of the church. Their faces were paled in fright, and unstoppable shiver travelled up their spines at the sight of the church.

What was once a glorious beacon of Holy transcendent light had now fallen into darkness. In the time of half a day, the church had lost its shining light, and large cracks had split along the once perfect walls. With the light gone, the shadows cast from within the church gave the stained glass windows an ominous and evil looked.

Where there were pictures of virgin saints and past glorious Pope’s, was now the visage of men bleeding and tormented by spears. A dark mist seemed to flow out from the ground and enshrouded the church in a very evil atmosphere.

By the time Baron Von Boff got word of the strange happenings at the church, Chuckles and his gang had already cleared out everything and fled into the shadows of the tall city buildings.

When Von Boff finally arrived with a contingent of guards and bravely sieged the cursed church, he was appalled to find all the guards of the church had been gnawed to death by some kind of beasts and what little remained of their bodies were strung up about the church in very standard Spawn Feng Shui.

Skulls of the braver and more valiant guards that the spawn respected for their battle prowess were adorned atop spears, and their blood was smeared across the walls depicting demons devouring men and all sorts of other standard Spawn artwork.

Although the Spawn believed they were helping to increase the culture of this world by leaving behind some decorating tips, the very sheltered and well brainwashed citizens of Holy Eden were appalled. This was something straight out of the book of sinners.

Von Boff and his companions all found it difficult to contain their lunch, and a few of them couldn’t even hold out long enough to get outside, which only added to the corruption of the already defiled church.

It seems that in the short absence from Holy Eden, Chuckles had returned to the portal to meet us as we came back through. The first thing he did was to report on his efforts to encourage cultural awareness on this planet. It couldn’t fault the little guy for his efforts, even though I felt they were somewhat counter-intuitive to his goal.

Regardless, I rewarded him with a huge leg of Cursed Rhino from the player store. It’s hard to say why exactly the spawn loved about this meat. To them, it was something akin to catnip for cats. The moment I took it out of my inventory all of the spawn, even Chuckles, starred at it with menacing glares.

It wasn’t just this particular meat though. Almost anything with the qualifier ‘Cursed’ in the name was like drugs for the little fellows. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need drugs to control the spawn. They all have some disturbing level of worship for me that has grown rather worrying at this point. I just like to reward them for putting in the effort.

Once the giant Rhino leg had been completely devoured, Chuckles and his operatives started pulling out old ledgers, books and scraps of paper. All the records of everything the Church had were stockpiled here. There was actually quite a bit more than I’d expected. It made a small mountain of scrolls and parchment that nearly reached Morbid’s head height.

That suggested that these little fellows must have just about filled their inventories to bursting with everything they stole.

Just at a cursory glance, I was impressed with the Church’s record keeping. Unfortunately, it was a little too meticulous and had information pinpointing nearly every pointless thing to ever happen in the entire county, all the way back to before the church had even been founded.

I felt a headache coming on just looking at it all.

Luckily, I had Seelie on hand to teach me another new skill. Speed Reading. With my level 6 memorisation, the speed that my speed reading levelled was quite fast. That being the case, it was still nothing in comparison to Seelie’s level 8 speed reading, which was completely unnatural. All she needed was a single glance, and she’d sucked in everything there was to be read from a page.

While I managed to read about 8 scrolls and 3 books, and even raised speed reading to level 3, Seelie had already completely read everything else. An entire mountains worth of reading material consumed in a matter of an hour or two.

When she finally finished the last parchment of paper, she gave me a smile and sat down with her legs crossed. After closing her eyes and breathing for a moment, she activated her 10,000 thoughts special traits and started organising all the information.

Naturally, I then had to step in and act as a heat sink to prevent her spontaneously combusting as she sorted through everything she’d just read and reorganised it.

Meanwhile, the other party members were busy scouting some interesting things I’d noticed while surveying the area from atop the mountains in the area. Chief amongst them was a lush forested area that had a permeant aurora floating above it.

“Ok, I’m finished. You were right. This was definitely the best method.”

Seelie stood up, and I quickly retracted my hand. My body slowly started closing all the huge burning cracks and scars across my skin. Without warning, Seelie reached out and touched my forehead, imparting everything she’d just pulled from those documents in an organised manner.

Then it ended. This time, Seelie didn’t take any liberties and only sent me the information. I felt that little part of me that had built up expectations quiver slightly and then die. It actually came as somewhat of a shock!

I opened my eyes with a confused expression on my face, only to see Seelie’s face inches away from me and quickly approaching faster!

‘Devious! Trickster! I’ve been tricked!’

It became clear now, that she was taking advantage of that moment when my brain was processing everything to attack me with her ... soft ... moist ... inviting ... lips...

‘ESCAPE!’

“BOOM!”

An echo spread about as I used all my considerable strength and speed to backpedal as quickly as possible, only to collide with the incredibly sturdy hind leg of Morbid, who was sitting there throwing furtive glances at me while trying to pretend to have noticed nothing.

Juwan and Chuckles were both sitting on Morbid’s saddle and pointing at something far off in the distance while also pretending to be ignoring the situation I’d suddenly found myself in, which was now starting to resemble a trap!

“What’s that thing over their Chuckles?”

“Ra ra rah yah ra!”

Although Seelie wasn’t as fast as me, she was far from being slow, having spent a significant amount of time hardening her body stats. She was in fast pursuit and nearly on me. The look on her face almost looked crazed.

I decided! At first, I promised I was never going to make the first move. Perhaps my pride couldn’t handle waiting anymore, or perhaps my heart.

It’s hard to say when I started to firm my resolve. I think, it was after the incident on 6 Star. Murphy started pulling away from me then. He would disappear when I was nearby, and he often started shutting down like he does around other people, making things even more awkward.

He never used to have trouble talking to me, but since we came here, he’s gotten progressively worse.

At first, I thought it was something to do with what had happened, but after spending a few quiet sessions in the ice pool in my wizard tower and using my 10,000 thoughts at maximum, I came to the conclusion that Murphy was avoiding me for another reason.

Although I couldn’t be sure what it was at first, I quickly realised after overhearing Juwan and my sister discussing his past. That’s when it clicked. Murphy never knew who his parents were, and even the systems on earth couldn’t help him determine who they were.

Murphy 21.08.31.0.

He was a Zero, and the greatest fear that anyone had of any Zero, and that they had of themselves, was to grow up and become an Abomination. Soon, he would turn 18. The day that his body reached a point of incubation and the strange powers associated with an abomination would consume him. The Day of Madness.

Although I don’t for second believe it’s possible for him to be one of those ... things. That didn’t change the fact that he’s had to live with that fear every day of his life, and soon, he would have to face that fear ... and he was obviously planning to do it alone!

Once I had my suspicions, I became certain. As such, even though it hurt a bit seeing him trying to draw away from me, I decided that I wouldn’t let him go through it alone. I was going to make him acknowledge ‘us’ so that he knew I would support him no matter what.

With that in mind, I finally solicited the help of my future brother-in-law, Juwan.

He quickly rallied Chuckles and Morbid to his cause, and because there was no danger to Murphy or I this time around, they quickly agreed. However, now that the situation was at hand, I felt stupid.

So stupid!

It was so childish. Like stealing a kiss would suddenly change everything. If it doesn’t go how I’d stupidly imagined it, which knowing Murphy it probably won’t, then best case scenario is that he simply ignores it, which is only going to hurt us both. Worst case is he simply runs away. How the hell am I going to stay by his side then!

But, there is no medicine for regret ... or stupid apparently. The plan was already in action. The implant had just finished and now was the moment. I felt my heart beating out of my chest and willed myself forward! My first kiss ... was going to be raping Murphy.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time around Lucile recently ... having such daring thoughts...

It doesn’t matter now! GO! Give me those wretched broken lips you bastard!

Time seemed to slow down around Murphy. He was looking everywhere for an escape! He wasn’t sure why, nor did he have the time to think about it. All he knew in that very short fast moment was that he was trying to avoid drawing Seelie even further into his currently unstable life.

Being blocked my Morbid had left him stunned for a brief moment, and at that moment, Seelie was upon him. Her slender arms wrapped around his neck and her body seemed to drift down life the wind to snuggle into close contact, locking herself to him.

The momentarily crazed look on her face faded away and became gentle and calm. Her eyes glistened in the omnipotent light created by the quest planet like some invisible sun hung overhead. Murphy felt his body freeze as she leant in towards him and her eyelashes fluttered as she closed her eyes in anticipation of contact.

Murphy felt like he couldn’t move. Seelie’s lips grew closer and closer, the moment seemed to stretch out into eternity, and a warm spring breeze blew through the surroundings, fluttering her scholarly dress, except the back which was flattened down by the humungous sword she carried.

Along with the breeze was the faint aroma of fresh flowers blooming in the spring. Then finally, at long last...

Murphy got a system prompt.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused an accident. -5 Luck!’

“Aaaa--CHOO!!!”

Murphy sneezed. At the most critical moment, just when Seelie was finally about to step forward and take responsibility for this deranged relationship, Murphy’s Law stepped in and made him sneeze.

Seelie was too close, and the moment he sneezed, his head shot forward as it does when one sneezes violently. His forehead smashed into Seelie’s face, causing her picturesque visage to spray blood from her nose and a busted lip as she reeled back as if struck by a hammer to the face.

As Murphy slowly raised his head, he saw Seelie standing there with blood pouring down her chin, and her eyes were nearly popping out of her head.

Time seemed to stop again as a very mystical book covered in ancient looking glyphs and pictures suddenly appeared in her hand. Before Murphy could fully realise what was happening, he felt a massive gravity suddenly oppress him to his knees.

Even Morbid, the massive magic immune hellhound, let out a little yelp and quickly jumped away like he’d been scolded by a spark from a fire. Juwan and chuckles both watched on stunned as a huge concave depression appeared in the ground with Murphy directly in the centre of it.

Murphy tried but quickly found that Seelie must have used an exorbitant amount of mana to cast this gravity lock. Not only could he not move a muscle, but he was also having trouble just breathing. Even if he wanted to summon his spell book, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even be able to hold it up.

It went to show that Seelie’s prowess with magic, and her overall mana, were far ahead of what Murphy possessed and even beyond what he imagined she possessed.

With Murphy locked in place, unable to even utter a sound Seelie produced a classic instant recovery potion to heal her bruised bleeding face, and then marched toward Murphy with a determined gaze locked on his somewhat confused and panicky face.

When she reached him, she knelt down and the moment she wrapped her hands around his neck, the gravity lock dissipated. The pair looked each other in the eye for a long moment, and finally, Seelie let out a long sigh.

“Murphy. Please stop this. I can’t stand to watch you pushing me away anymore. I know you’re afraid. I’m scared too. But, I know that if this situation were reversed, you would never let me go through this on my own and I...”

Slowly, Seelie’s eyes grew moist, and a glistening tear escaped from the confines of her eye to race down her cheek. Her eyes then suddenly became determined. Her voice was soft but firm as she leant in closer.

“I don’t care what you are, or about your past. And I don’t care what happens in the future. I know what kind of person you really are inside, and I know that if the madness comes, you’ll overcome it. Like you overcome everything. I know you’re afraid to see me grow old and die, but it doesn’t matter now. Nothing else matters because ... Murphy, I love you!”

Murphy could only smile wryly. The moment this incident started, he had a feeling where it was heading. He really didn’t want it to be like this, but in the end, his running away had only made Seelie force the issue. Furthermore, he’d run away from his feelings for so long, how could he not know what he was running away from.

Seeing Seelie’s resolve, Murphy felt himself grow weak. His defences dropped like a great wall under the assault of a thousand missiles.

His hands reached up, and his thumb wiped away the tears at the corner of Seelie’s eye, as he enclosed her face with both hands. Murphy’s smile changed from wry to somewhat stupid and goofy grin.

“Seelie. I ... I love...”

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has created and accident! -10 Luck!’

A loud yell resonated from the edge of the clearing within which the portal to Murphy’s domain was.

“Vile Demons, prepare to meet your end! Kill them all!”

Barron Von Boff charged out of the dense trees and underbrush leading a group of 40 knights all clad in shining white armour and radiating magnificent Holy light everywhere. They were all handsome, valiant and charming looking fellows, as if they’d all been cut from the same mould.

The most handsome and charming looking fellow was in the lead with a captain’s sigil on his armour. When he saw Murphy, who still had some remnants of the burning scars from being Seelie’s heat sink on his body, holding a beautiful women untold leagues beyond anything he’d ever seen, and about to kiss her, his face filled with indignation and jealousy.

“That demon is trying to rape that beautiful goddess. Charge! Slay that feral creature!”

The moment the fat Barron’s voice ruined the serene and touching moment, Seelie’s eyebrow twitched violently, and wrath engulfed her features.

She shot to her feet, and her book was suddenly summoned from the status space to float beside her. A slew of strange sounding languages poured from her mouth as she touched her book and 3 pages suddenly lit up simultaneously. A huge amount of mana burst forth from her body, and the ground rumbled and shook.

The winds in the clearing suddenly picked up to torrential levels, and some of the weaker trees were ripped from the ground. Seelie’s body was enveloped in light as three separate Spell Model all fired simultaneously.

A giant meteor fell from the sky like a god pressing down his finger to smite evil. Blades of wind started forming everywhere and slicing apart everything in their path. The ground trembled even harder and huge gaping cracks started to form, engulfing anything unlucky enough to fall into them.

Those valiant holy knights were stunned stupid and their hearts palpitated. As quickly as they’d charged in, they turned and charged away. The gaping cracks, like the mouth of the very planet itself, opened wide and swallowed nearly a dozen Holy Knights. The wind blades then followed up and sliced apart the legs of the knights and their steeds, felling another 20 in an instant.

Finally, the meteor collided with the ground and a glorious impact that shook the entire county spread out, engulfing 500 meters in flames and dust. Murphy was still on his knees, watching on somewhat horrified by this scene. He’d clearly vastly underestimated Seelie’s battle potential. Or perhaps, he should just never make her angry.

When the dust finally settled, only a handful of Holy Knights were still standing, albeit barely. Surprisingly, the fat old Baron had managed to survive the whole escapade and was actually the least damaged out of everyone.

He was slightly ruffled though, and he turned to focus his gaze on the now weak looking Seelie, who was on the verge of collapsing from Mana Overdraft.

“You fucking little demonic hussy! In the name of the Holy God, I’m going to imprison you in my dungeon for the rest of your pathetic lifetime.”

He slowly pulled out a very fancy and regal looking sword from a scabbard at his waist. He licked his lips, and a sinister smile crept onto his face as he eyed Seelie with somewhat greedy eyes.

“Then, you’ll become a suppository for my men to satiate their needs. You know what that means you fucking feral demon! You’re gonna get fucked! HAHAHA!”

At the mention of locking Seelie up to be raped, Murphy’s face changed as he thought back to the moment he thought he’d lost Seelie on 6 Star. Juwan and Chuckles, still seated on Morbid’s saddle off to the side both covered their faces with their hands.

Juwan couldn’t help but be bitter.

“Why is it that every time we get involved in little brother’s love life, someone tries to rape his woman.”

Chuckles just gave a grunt, and his demonic black wings suddenly sprung open on his back as he took to the sky.

Morbid let out a low growl as he slowly rose to his feet. His body leant forward, and all the hair on his back stood up as his rumbling growl spread out through the clearing in a clearly threatening manner.

Murphy slowly stood up, his eyes locked onto Baron Von Boff. With a flick of his wrist, his now considered very average looking Sword of Sharpness appeared in his hand. In the other hand appeared a disturbingly evil looking spell tome.

“Juwan, take Seelie back. Prepare the Domain in case we fail to hold them back. We haven’t protected the portals yet, so we need to be prepared if we can’t hold them back here.”

Juwan looked at Murphy somewhat surprisingly. For a rare change, the uncertain and perpetually spacey look was gone from Murphy’s face, to be replaced by a stern and serious gaze. It was almost like he was looking at a completely different person.

Juwan didn’t take too long to take in the sight though. Murphy appeared to not be taking any suggestions and was giving direct orders, and Juwan agreed that he should get Seelie away from this battlefield as quickly as possible.

He jumped off Morbid and raced towards where the barely standing Seelie was only just supporting her own weight and taking long rasping breaths. As Murphy walked past her to hold off the oncoming Baron and his few remaining Holy Knights, Seelie’s hand shot out to grab his shirt sleeve.

Unknowing just where she conjured up the strength from, she pulled him around and lurched forward into his embrace. Then, not allowing for any further interference from luck or fate or any other blasted interruption, she pressed her lips against his and stole hers, and his, first kiss.

Having accomplished what she set out to do, her body lost all its drive, and just as she was becoming limp in his arms, she muttered out under her breath;

“You’re ... mine ... now...”

Murphy had no desire to contest the ownership of his body with her, and the sudden kiss and forceful declaration still left a goofy grin spread across his face. He had no idea what was supposed to happen now, nor did he have the time to worry about it.

Juwan pulled the collapsed Seelie from his grasp and quickly escaped through the portal, leaving only Murphy, Chuckles and Morbid to face off against the 6 remaining Holy Knights and the seemingly very powerful Baron.

With a flick of his wrist and a strange glow in his eyes, he spun his sword in his hand then turned to face the quickly approaching enemies.

The Baron wasn’t sure what had transpired, or what he’d just stepped into the middle of. All he saw was the presumable demon master looking at him with a very odd grin on his face. More surprising was that Murphy then started laughing!

“Heh heh heh ... hahahaHAHA! Come forth. Today is a glorious day! Lay down your pathetic lives in honour of this day for me! HAHAHA!”

Chuckles looked down from in the sky and couldn’t help but stare at Murphy with a strange gleam in his eye. If it were possible to read his thoughts, they would be something along the lines of;

‘Master has awoken... ‘

Chuckles let out a loud battle roar along with Morbid letting loose a violent howl as they both charged in to push back the knights. Murphy’s face became slightly more manic as the sword in his hand started flashing around, and his body shot towards the oncoming Barron.

The Barron suddenly had the feeling of being stared at by some ancient demon that wanted to consume him. Just as they were about to meet head on, the Baron smashed his foot into the ground to suddenly halt, and his huge gem encrusted broadsword swung out in a long arc.

Murphy, who was still a few meters away was just about to use his shadow arts to rapidly close the distance, but it seemed the Baron had felt his intention and blindly swung his sword in anticipation. Clearly, although the Baron was powerful, it was most likely from all the skill books and stat boosts he’d stolen from his captives. His battle sense was terrible.

Murphy wasn’t deterred though. He slowed slightly as the huge broadsword flashed past and then cast out his dark domain. At the same time, he cast his slowing curse, ‘Just Wait a Moment, So I Can Scream the Name of My Ultimate Move!’, or more appropriately, ‘Just Wait’.

Von Boff felt his body slow down and even though he had level 1 Weapon Arts, which was the step above basic weapon arts, his sword was too slow in coming back. With the dark domain spread out around them, Murphy cast shadow concealment and shadow walking, and he appeared behind the Baron. Instead of stabbing out, Murphy rose his gloved hands and pointed his rude finger towards the rapidly spinning Baron.

The special effect of his gloves activated and released the 3 charges of poison touch, 2 charges of bad luck and 2 charges of spontaneous combustion.

The Baron’s fat body was suddenly engulfed in flames, which appeared to do almost nothing. Clearly, he’d consumed no small number of endurance stats from his captives. However, the poison was a different matter, and the luck especially so.

Murphy didn’t get caught up in the moment and become proud of himself just yet. Instead, he rapidly retreated while casting a 20 mana earth spike directly under him as he retreated. The huge earth spike stabbed up, only to be sliced apart by the Baron’s frantically swinging sword.

“You pesky fucking ant! I’m going to skewer you on this sword of the Holy God and parade you about for the world to see.”

His fat body jiggled as he used some kind of active skill and blurred towards Murphy. His sword sliced out, and despite Murphy’s quick reactions, it still cut across his arm, leaving an inch deep cut.

Seeing the little scratch, the Baron was momentarily stunned. He’d seen this sword cut through trolls like slicing vegetables. He clearly felt it make enough contact to slice right through Murphy’s arm, yet all it resulted in was a slightly big scratch.

Murphy didn’t even look at his arm as he quickly took advantage of that slight pause and rushed in low. His sword of sharpness lashed out, cutting along the Baron’s thigh. Unfortunately, nothing resulted from this. It was now clear that the Baron didn’t have a high endurance like he’d first thought. Instead, his equipment was just such a high level that Murphy’s crappy equipment from Newb Planet wasn’t sufficient to even scratch it.

Although the Von Boff appeared to simply be wearing very gaudy noble’s clothes, they were apparently enchanted with several powerful buffs that skyrocket his defence.

Murphy couldn’t help but grimace at the sight of his blade doing nothing. As the Baron once more swung his great big broadsword down, Murphy’s thumb flicked the pages of his book rapidly and then touched on the void prism spell.

A strange black shadow rose from the ground around the Baron trapping him in the void. Unfortunately, Murphy didn’t have the power or skill to make the spell powerful enough to hold the Baron back.

It barely gave him enough time to get a few steps away before flashes of sword beams blew the shadow apart and the slightly panting and ruffled Baron raced out with another movement technique in rapid chase of Murphy. The initiative was clearly in Von Boff’s corner, and cuts started to add up on Murphy’s body.

As they battled, the few direct strikes Murphy managed to land against this freak were all nullified by his equipment. Murphy was starting to feel slightly desperate, and from the corner of his eye, he could see that even Morbid was having trouble with the Holy Knights.

Chuckles managed to injure a few of them with sneak attacks while Morbid drew all their attention, but the Holy Knights were specialised in fighting demons and ‘evil’, so they were rather resilient to poisons and curses. Making things worse was that they didn’t seem to have Mana. Instead, they had something called Faith, which fuelled all their magic, making Morbid’s Magic Resistance mute.

By now, Morbid was in much the same condition as Murphy. Covered in bloody cuts and weeping wounds. Even though he was taking so much damage, his bloodlust only grew stronger.

Unfortunately, Murphy didn’t have the time to focus on Morbid and Chuckles, as he dodged another broad swing of the Baron’s sword and rolled to the side. He was running low and mana and had tried every trick in the book. Unfortunately, despite his combat experience to date, he’d never had to fight someone with such powerful equipment.

As such, he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Even worse was, despite the Baron’s total lack of real battle experience, he had numerous warrior skills that he’d stockpiled from others. Murphy could only count his blessings that the fat Baron had never bothered to learn any magic.

At the end of his tether, Murphy finally thought of a potential plan. He flipped his hand and put his sword away. He then even went so far as to remove his gloves, instead choosing to move forward and take on the Baron with his bare hands.

Although the sword was light as a feather in his hands, and almost seemed like a non-existent weight at his current level of strength, he still had to be wary of where it was pointing. On top of that, he had far more experience in close combat martial arts than weapons. Almost twice as much in fact.

With the weapon put away, he assumed a cat foot stance. The Baron eyed him up, seeing he was putting his sword away and was just planning to fight with bare hands, he wasn’t sure what to think. However, he only made a note of it and didn’t put too much effort into bothering with why.

Mentally, he already had this battle in the bag. Although he’d received no small number of nimble attacks from Murphy, he’d not even suffered a scratch thanks to his incredibly expensive equipment.

“Heh! You’re a stupid Demon, aren’t you? You think you’ll have better luck against me with your bare hands? Consider it your bad luck to have met me this day demon. Not even the gods can snatch your little life away from me!”

Murphy had a strange look on his face after hearing Von Boff’s proclamation.

“Bad luck ... you don’t say?”

He then smiled grimly as his body rocked back and forth before bursting forward with a blurring speed. The Baron felt the killing intent pressing towards him like a waterfront and quickly sliced out with his sword again. Murphy stopped just short of the Baron and threw his bare hands in front to grasp onto the sharp sword.

The sound of bones cracking rang out as Murphy’s fingers deformed slightly from the force of the sword and the flesh was carved away like tender meat from a roast.

However, the pain was only slightly more than the glorious pleasure, and his body shook slightly from the massive rush of endorphins. His grip tightened around the sword, and every point of his strength stat was utilised to maintain his hold on the blade.

Then, he began to devour! His eye’s glazed slightly as he focused his mana into his hands and then through them into the sword.

Although devouring wasn’t a rapid action, with Murphy’s full concentration and his large reserves of mana, he simply brute forced the process to speed it up. The Baron looked on with shock and confusion as he tried to pry his sword free from the demon’s grasp.

Then his shock and confusion became stunned and mind boggled, as his incredibly sharp and powerful sword, that looked glamourous and valiant, slowly started to rust and fall to pieces right in front of his eyes. The gems all slowly lost their lustre, and the shine of the sword became dull and then finally deteriorated into a rust scarred old sword.

“Get off you little feral! Get off my bloody sword you fucking demon freak!”

The Baron screamed out at the top of his lungs as he used his considerable strength stat to lift Murphy, who remained attached to the sword like a dog to a bone. He then smashed Murphy into the ground, making a sickening thud and cracking of bones ring out from the dust cloud created.

Without reservation, the Baron continued to lift Murphy and slam him into the ground, all the while watching with maddening eyes as his sword was slowly consumed.

The Holy Knights in the distance were momentarily distracted by the yelling, and their eyes were all drawn to the ghastly scene of the broken and battered body of Murphy, clutching onto the rusty old sword with the last vestiges of life in his body.

Seeing this moment, Chuckles took immediate action and darted out as a blurry shadow from behind Morbid’s huge bloodied paw. The closest Knight, who’d already suffered some severe damage, suddenly felt a cold piercing pain in his neck.

Before he could turn to see the devious smile on Chuckles’ bruised and bloody face, his life finally left him. The moment he died, Chuckles cast his innate spell and summoned forth his spawn. The Knight’s body exploded into chunks of meat and blood splashed across the faces of the other knights, waking them from the shock of witnessing Murphy somehow surviving the brutal beating of the Baron.

By then, it was too late. A red light flashed, and suddenly half a dozen spawn were mobbing another Knight. Morbid raced forward to block the others as the 6 spawns and Chuckles laughed sinisterly while slowly cutting down the lone knight.

The Baron heard a sudden scream from toward the Holy Knights, but ignored it as he huffed and puffed with great exertion. He lifted his sword again, only to see that Murphy was no longer attached to it. Or more precisely, the sword was no longer attached to the hilt.

Slowly, a very broken corpse stood up from within the dust cloud, holding in his left hand 3 glimmering crafting gems. These were the gems used to by craftsmen to imbue something with special properties. Technically, most crafted treasures actually got their special powers from the materials used in the process, but crafting stones can be made directly from raw materials instead and didn’t suffer from deterioration or were often purer, making them far more valuable.

Regardless, the process didn’t matter. What mattered was that this half dead demon had somehow sucked the magical properties out of his sword. Even more disturbing was that despite the massive injuries, bleeding wounds and jagged snapped bones poking out through the skin, the demon didn’t even seem fazed.

Murphy couldn’t stop himself from chuckling slightly when he looked at the stones in his hands. He had no idea what properties they had exactly, and even his identify wasn’t able to fully assess them, only giving them basic names like ‘Crafting Stone: Hardness’.

Although it was almost suicidal to try and devour something like item properties in the middle of battle, he had succeeded. Now the Baron had no weapon to...

The Baron flipped his wrist and summoned a powerful looking enchanted spear from his inventory, which metaphorically stabbed Murphy’s idea to death. His face was red with anger and indignation. It seemed that he was having trouble from not suddenly exploding, as his fat second chin jiggled in time with the rest of his fat everywhere else on his body.

“You fucking feral! Do you understand what you’ve done! That sword isn’t something you can just pick up at the corner market! It was a gift from the Cardinal of the West you fucking demonic scumbag! How am I supposed to explain this! I’m going to flay you for a hundred days!”

Murphy could only smile wryly as he steadied his breathing. He sent the gems into his inventory and then quickly got into a combat pose.

Once again, he quickly darted forward. This time the Baron was slightly hesitant to attack him with his weapon but stabbed out anyway. He couldn’t fight him with his hands even if he wanted to. He felt hand to hand combat was a commoner form of combat and beneath him, so he never bothered to use those skill books.

Seeing the spear darting out towards him, Murphy decided to take a different approach. This time, he used his arm to deflect, taking another huge gash across his right arm. He then stepped in close to the Baron and punched out as rapidly as possible.

Taking a page out of the tactics he taught the luck spawn, he accumulated nearly 40 punches in the time it took for the fat Baron Von Boff to swing the spear around his fat body and towards Murphy.

Murphy quickly ducked down and distanced himself. He summoned his spell book and cast void prison, then shadow concealment and shadow walking.

He appeared behind the Baron just as he burst out from the void prism again. Murphy then cast Just Wait with the last of his mana to slow the Baron for as long and as much as possible. Then he darted in and quickly jabbed the Baron’s fat body nearly 150 times before darting back.

He grinned as he watched all the system prompts popping up. He’d been quite lucky and accumulated nearly 40 luck already. Meaning that the fat Baron had already accumulated negative 80 luck, presuming he had 0 luck to begin with. Natural that was never the case, but even with the Baron’s superstitious voodoo dances and praying, he didn’t have enough to counteract the huge amount of bad luck he was quickly accumulating.

The Baron was enraged by Murphy’s antics and started using the Weapon Arts active skill, Mighty Spear. Seeing the Baron stepping into a charging stance, Murphy didn’t hesitate to quickly rush in as close as possible. The biggest downfall of long weapons like the spear was that they were rather weak in close spaces.

If the Baron wanted to use a skill like that, it was best to use it against someone that was charging at him, not someone that was close enough to slip into his guard the moment it started charging.

It seemed the Baron truly did have terrible combat experience. The moment Murphy slipped inside his guard, the Baron’s skill activated and huge force rushed out along with his spear in the direction where Murphy had been standing beforehand.

Although some currents of the energy stabbed into Murphy, the focus was well past him, making the attack basically useless. Murphy took the advantage to throw in a few more jabs and then quickly retreated again.

Von Boff was now fuming! He had never been so mad in his life. He simply couldn’t understand how this demon, whose body was so beaten and battered, could still fight at the same efficiency he had in the beginning of the battle. It was only then that he realised, at some point during their fighting, the bones that had been sticking out of the demon’s body had all receded back in.

Not only that, he watched with incredulity as the wounds very slowly sealed themselves. Seeing the Baron finally notice that he’d been slowly healing throughout the battle, Murphy could only curse in his heart. Now that the cat was out of the bag, the Baron would most definitely beat it to death.

Having realised that slowly accumulating damage wasn’t going to be enough, Von Boff could only grit his teeth. He really was pissed off. Such an annoying fellow showed up in his county. With another flick of his wrist, he produced a strange glowing pearl. Looking at it with a somewhat pained expression, he snarled at Murphy.

“It seems you thought to play me for a fool! Well, you’ve only yourself to blame now for not having run away when you had the chance.”

With that, he crushed the pearl in his hand, and it released a glowing golden mist into the surroundings. Slowly the mist formed into a glowing spirit with a huge barrel-like chest, teeny tiny head and waste that slimed into a tail of smoke. If Murphy didn’t know better, he’d have mistaken this thing for a Djinn.

When the golden mist creature appeared, a dominating pressure fell onto the area as if some ultra-powerful being was looking down on all the ant-like life forms dwelling here.

“Who dares defile the lands of the Holy God?!”

The Djinn’s voice boomed out like thunder, shaking all the trees about the clearing and scaring off wildlife for miles around.

Murphy was looking at the Djinn with a very strange expression, while Von Boff looked up with a very reverent and respectful expression.

“Great Angel! This lowly one begs your assistance.”

He then pointed at Murphy with a quivering finger as his face filled with madness.

“Great Angel, this demon has come to the lands of the Holy God to cause disaster! He frees the prisoners of the Holy God and slaughters his worshipers indiscriminately!”

The Angel’s glowing golden eyes focused in on Murphy who was taking this opportunity to slowly recover his injuries. Seeing Murphy looking straight back at it without the slightest bit of fear or reverence, the Angel frowned.

“Pitiful creature. You dare stand before this incarnation of the Holy...”

“What even are you?”

Murphy asked curiously.

The Angel, having been interrupted almost seemed slightly confused. This had never happened before. Every time it appeared before now, the lesser creatures on these tiny little quest planets were awed simply by its presence, and the crushing power of its divine presence was enough to sink even mighty Devils to their knees in front of it.

Not fully understanding what was happening, the Angel was momentarily befuddled.

“Pardon?”

Murphy looked at the Angel sceptically and then started to wander around it as he poked it in places, only for the glowing golden energy mist to act like normal mist and float about the place. Strangely though, this mist had a strange property.

“Well ... are you like ... an energy being or something?”

The Angel was now thoroughly confused. They didn’t cover these sorts of scenarios in Angel Training. No one had ever heard of someone not cowering at the sight of an Angel.

“I’m ... wait ... what? I’m an Angel dammit! I’m created from the faith and passion of the Holy God’s believers.”

Murphy simply looked up at the tiny little head and blinked dumbly.

“I see ... so ... are you like ... a player?”

“What? Yes, of course I’m a player. No one has seen an NPC outside of the training grounds for hundreds of years.”

“Whew. That’s great. I’d feel really bad if you couldn’t respawn after I kill you.”

“You what mate?!”

Murphy ignored the enraged Angel and the stunned Baron as he reached out a hand and put it into the ethereal mist that created the body of the Angel.

“Hah! Foolish demon! My body is indestructible. Your pathetic attempts to ... oi ... oi ... wait ... wait wait wait! Stop! Stop!”

Only after some posturing did the Angel finally realise that it was slowly being sucked into Murphy’s body like dust into a vacuum cleaner. It quickly found, that despite its grand powers and awesome strength, while Murphy was busily devouring there was nothing it could do. It was like all its strength was locked away.

“Argh!! Great Lord. Holy Master! Please save this pathetic servant! This servant begs you great Lord to ... oh god ... stop! I beg you mighty Demon Lord. Don’t devour this pitiful creature!”

Seeing no saving grace falling from the heavens from his so-called God, the Angel started begging mercy from Murphy. Seeing such a pitiful scene, and now feeling like this new trait, ‘Faith’ was going to bust and cause something like Mana Overdraw if he kept devouring, Murphy chose to stop.

Being a benevolent fellow, he didn’t want to kill this strange creature if he didn’t have to. After all, it just looked so pitiable while begging, sobbing and crying like a little girl.

The moment the devouring force from Murphy’s hand stopped, the Angel, which was now only half its original size, quickly dissipated and returned to wherever the hell it came from.

With the Angel suddenly beating a hasty retreat, the Baron was speechless. Not only him, even the Holy Knights who were now down to only 3 and facing off against a heavily injured Morbid and 20 odd spawn were shocked by the Angel’s sudden departure.

The Angel was supposed to be a mighty creature that lorded it over their tiny world. The Angel’s were born and bred to be servants of the Holy God, and the beads used to summon them were very rarely granted to a questing domain as small as theirs.

The shock only lasted a short moment though, as Morbid released a violent howl and took advantage of the sudden distraction to viciously bite one of the knights in half.

The Baron also quickly woke up and started to briskly retreat from the battlefield. He now considered Murphy to be a complete monster out of some kind of horrible dream. Not only did he heal rapidly during battle, but he could also even consume an Angel and suck the life out of his weapons.

Seeing the Baron who so arrogantly proclaimed he would turn Seelie into a sex slave rapidly escaping, Murphy’s eyes became cold. He pulled out his magic tome. Having no Mana to cast with, he used the faith energy he’d just sucked out of that Djinn/Angel creature.

To his shock and awe, when he cast the dark domain it used half as much Faith as it did Mana and covered twice the distance. Was this not getting twice the reward for half the work?

Not allowing himself to fall into complacency, he ignored the results of using Faith to cast magic and kept casting. Just Wait, Thorny Punishment, Shadow Conceal, Shadow Walking and then when he finally reached the now slowed and bound Baron he used every drop of faith energy he had stored up to cast Rampage on himself.

He appeared directly in front of the panicking Baron, his eyes glowing red and all the muscles on his body bulging out as if filled to the brim with power. He stepped forward and pulled back his fist. With a mighty roar, his fist rocketed forward creating a shockwave through the air.

“Boom!”

The collision with the Baron sounded as if a grenade had just gone off. The Baron was shot back like a bullet and rolled quite a few times before slowly crawling up to his feet in a very jiggly unbecoming manner. Much to Murphy’s chagrin, it wasn’t so easy to turn this situation around.

The fat Baron’s enchanted equipment seemed to easily protect him from damage and even from Murphy throwing out a punch with Rampage using almost 200 points of Faith, the power of which completely shattered every bone in Murphy’s arm and shoulder.

The Baron, although looking like a hungover drunk and covered in dirt, clearly didn’t suffer even half the damage Murphy inflicted on himself just to deliver that punch.

With all of its power used for that single punch, Rampage quickly wore off, leaving Murphy in a rather awkward situation. He could tell that he may have underestimated the power of the Baron’s equipment.

Seeing the state Murphy was left in after that world shattering punch, the fat Baron laughed like a madman.

“You fool! Hahaha! Truly a frog in a well, not knowing anything apart from the sky! I’m going to crush you like and ant!”

Seeing the Baron still with enough wind in him to posture and threaten, Murphy’s face fell slightly as his brow creased.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has created a happy accident. +10 Luck.’

The system prompt rang out in his mind, Murphy witnessed an arrow fly out from behind him and stab directly into the Baron Von Boff’s chubby fat face.

For an instant, it seemed like he wasn’t exactly sure what just happened. He seemed to be frozen solid like a stunned mullet.

Murphy quickly glanced back to see Xanzu standing at the edge of the forested area with a bow in hand and already quickly drawing his next arrow. Rushing out from the bushlands behind him were Lucile and Carson who both seemed to be covered in a very strange glowing sticky goop.

“Get off me you fucking freak!”

“But I’m so tired Lucile. Just carry me back to the portal. I can’t go on ... Oh?”

The moment they slipped out of the bushland and saw the clearing around the portal covered in craters and looking like a war zone, they quickly stopped.

The glowing goop covering the very irate Carson and Lucile quickly glooped off them and formed into the faceless being that is Tuskelly.

“Hoho! It’s the Boss! Hey there boss! Watch’a doin’?”

The others didn’t even bother with Tuskelly’s banter as they rapidly rushed into combat. Seeing the deteriorating state of Morbid, who’s fur was now completely red and matted with blood, Carson gave a nod to Lucile and raced in the direction where the last few Knights were putting up a valiant effort to take the spawn and the hellhound with them when they died.

Lucile raced towards Murphy, and at the same time she stood in front of him protectively, with her claws and canines protruded, Von Boff finally reacted to the arrow sticking out of his cheek.

“GAH!!!! It hurts! It hurts so much! Mumma!!”

Everyone had a strange look on their face as they watched the fat quivering Baron suddenly burst into tears and drop to the ground holding his face.

Murphy instantly regretted how much of an idiot he’d been. Despite all his combat experience, he’d completely ignored the fat Baron’s face this whole time. If he’d realised earlier, this battle would have been far shorter.

Seeing the state the Baron had devolved to from a single arrow in his cheek, Murphy felt the man to be far too soft. How he even survived this long in this game was beyond him.

With the Baron now a sobbing mess rolling around crying for his mummy, Murphy diverted his attention toward Morbid. Seeing the state his trusted companion was in, Murphy felt his heart ache.

Without regard for the arm that had turned to a thick bloody paste and dusted bones beneath the skin, Murphy raced toward Morbid.

With Carson, fresh and rested, joining the battle, the spawns quickly overwhelmed the last two knights. This battle had been a very fierce and difficult one for them all, but the rewards were plentiful. With the last two knights dead, huge orbs of experience poured out of what little remained of their bodies into the Spawn, with the greatest amounts pouring into Morbid, who’d dealt and received the most damage.

Just as Murphy reached his side and was preparing to force every last instant recovery potion he had into his pet dog, Morbid suddenly released a long growl and his body shook violently. He rose to his feet, and a loud howl rang out into the world as his already massive body seemed to bulge slightly and then grow a little bigger.

Almost a meter taller! Although it may not sound like much regarding an animal that’s already nearly 15 meters tall, a sudden growth spurt of a meter was still far too much to happen in an instant. Most confusing was that Hellhounds didn’t have the ability to evolve, so technically the only reason Morbid would still be growing was that he wasn’t fully grown and needed Exp to grow.

If that was the case ... didn’t that mean Morbid will still just a cute little puppy? What kind of concept was that? If he’s a god damn puppy, what the hell kind of size is he going to be once he grows up?

Murphy felt his heart ache once again ... at the thought of having to feed Morbid once he’s fully grown.

Despite his sudden growth spurt, Morbid remained injured and almost immediately collapsed after his little growing tantrum. The moment his big fluffy head hit the ground, Murphy was pouring in every type of recovery potion he had, which in comparison to a huge beast like Morbid was like a few drops on the tongue.

Seeing the effect of the potions only slightly healing some of his wounds, Murphy grimaced. With everyone gathered, they did the most important thing for anyone after a huge battle.

They looted all the corpses.

Which wasn’t many since most of them were sucked into the ground or incinerated by the Meteor.

Despite that, they had one thing that was going to provide a huge amount of loot. Most likely, more than anything they’d ever dealt with before. This time, they had a prisoner.

Being as soft as playdough now that he’d been injured, Baron Von Boff didn’t even resist when he was stripped of all his armour and placed in player chains from the player store.

Purchasing these chains was quite a pinch for Murphy’s pocket, but in the long run they would hopefully pay off. With any luck, they get far more from all the equipment stored away in this fat Baron’s player inventory. It was just going to take some effort on Murphy’s part to extract it all.

The whole time, Tuskelly remained on the sidelines looking very confused and uncertain about what exactly was going on. Eventually, Murphy left Lucile in charge and returned to his domain.

The moment he stepped through the portal he felt a vast number of curses about to be sprayed down on him like rain. Before they completed their casting though, the spawn all recognised their master and quickly started cheering with their almost cute ‘rar rar rar’ sounds.

Juwan let out a long breath when he noticed Murphy stepping through. Before he had the chance to ask, Murphy started barking orders to the spawn.

“Prepare the Alchemy Laboratory. Bring every herb we have stockpiled in the domain. Send the Alchemist Spawn to meet with me there. Gather the Smart Spawn and prepare to set up a warfront on the other side of the portal. Start sending out hunters to the other quest planets. We need to regain as much communal Exp for the domain as quickly as possible.”

All the citizens of the domain seemed to be strangely stunned by this scene. For some unexplainable reason ... Murphy was actually talking.

To the Spawn, this was rather normal. Murphy talked all the time when he was alone with them. In fact, getting him to shut up was more the issue.

But to the players, and even Juwan and Calligso, this was a strange thing to see.

However, the busy little spawn didn’t care about their shocked expression and pushed them out of the way as they all rushed off to do the bidding of their master.