Murphy quickly found himself in the alchemy lab. This was a section of the castle that the spawn allocated for the purpose of Murphy’s alchemy. It was actually quite rare for Murphy to visit it since it was built and the few times he had he was only using it to create the few potions he’d already created or discovered beforehand.

Most of the time, this lab was occupied by hundreds of Alchemy spawn, rushing around and laughing sinisterly while creating any number of questionable substances. For a change, Murphy came himself to create some new potions. Regardless of how powerful his potions were at present, for a beast like Morbid they were almost inconsequential.

With Morbid’s life hanging in the balance, Murphy now had only a short time to create something that would blow all his past creations out of the water. Thanks to the few raids they’d had, and no small number of questing parties of Spawn, they had a huge stockpile of herbs.

To the spawn, the concept of ownership was incredibly obscure. They were a tribal race, and everything they collected was for the good of the tribe. It was only very rare or sentimental things which the spawn held onto as personal belongings.

Even those few rare things would be offered up to Murphy, their master, if he requested them. If anything, they would feel it was an honour for Murphy to take stuff from them. It proved to themselves and their comrades that their taste in things was good enough to attract the master’s interest.

As such, the moment Murphy gave the order to bring every material in the domain that can be used for alchemy, the spawn rushed to throw their precious treasures at him.

Deep in the recesses of the castle, Murphy walked into the lab wearing only a pair of shorts. The contrast between his body when he first started the game and now was quite drastic. Where he had once been as thin as a bean pole, he was now far more developed.

His muscles were toned and sleek, and his body had filled out enough to make him look if not healthy, then at least not anorexic. The reason he only wore shorts while doing alchemy was that his method of alchemy was somewhat different to others.

Instead of timing his concoctions and developing a fixed routine, Murphy used the reactions of his body to determine the completion of a potion. It had actually developed into somewhat of a sixth sense when it came to alchemy, and Murphy used it to great advantage. Apart from him, no one else was crazed enough to wear anything less than 6 sets of protective coveralls, rubber gloves, boots and apron and at least class three face protection.

Exposing any skin at all while doing alchemy was an invitation for a gruesome and unnatural death.

As he walked into the lab, Murphy saw nearly every alchemist spawn that had been born in his domain rushing about the lab. They piled up herbs and materials along the walls and pushed huge empty cauldrons into the middle of the room with a great deal of effort and team work.

The moment he stepped in, the alchemy spawn were ecstatic. ‘Rah rah’ cheers rang out around the room, and the spawn all rapidly finished up the preparations. Murphy closed his eyes for a brief moment to remember all of his past experiments and to try and remember the properties of everything he’d ever encountered.

When he opened his eyes, a strange green light flashed out from them, and in his vision his identify skill went mad as it catalogued every material and herb in the room.

Then, he strolled into the centre of the room, surrounded by 5 huge cauldrons, and started pointing at materials along the wall.

“Cockatrice tongue, six clover, shell of the dragon egg. In this cauldron.”

Without delay, he started barking orders for his spawn, and they rushed to start pulling materials off the benches and walls.

Soon, the five cauldrons were filled with various different bubbling liquids. One of them even had the souls of the dead squirming around inside screaming and wailing. Naturally, although he’d successfully made a potion here, it was a very different effect from the recovery he was hoping for.

Even just touching the potion made his soul shake in trepidation. He decided that this particular potion, Banshee Blood, would have to be tested only after he had the time and was prepared to return to earth.

The others were all various concoctions middling from restoratives to corrosives, but nothing was strong enough to help Morbid. Murphy could only grit his teeth and keep trying.

Meanwhile, outside the castle, thousands of spawn were rushing around as if preparing for a huge battle. Every so often, a hundred odd spawn would walk through a portal and race off to start killing things for the Exp. When the spawn acted independently of Murphy like this, many things about their situation changed.

For starters, without having been summoned there by Murphy, the spawn were basically treated like a player by the system. Although they couldn’t evolve without the ‘summoned’ status, they could still accumulate Exp and raise their stats. As such, it wasn’t rare for the spawn to go out hunting and return with 1000 odd Exp, all of which was poured into the communal Exp of the Domain for Seelie or Murphy to spend.

Under Murphy’s orders, almost every spawn in the domain was either gearing up to hunt for Exp, or preparing to march into Holy Eden and set up a base camp. Even the players felt some duty towards the domain and insisted on helping out in Holy Eden.

No one was certain what Murphy was planning yet, but they could tell that he was gearing up for something big. As such, being the warlike races they are, and more so detesting the situation on the planet of Holy Eden, especially those that had been rescued from there, all the players of Murphy’s domain rushed through the portal to prepare the war camp.

Seelie was busy suffering the effects of the rebound from her Mana Overdraw and was currently under the care of her little sister up in her wizard tower. Juwan was leading the effort to prepare the war camp along with Lucile and the Clever Spawn.

Calligso, after hearing about the status of Morbid, raced to Holy Eden and hadn’t left his side since the moment he spotted him lying there half dead and covered with a multitude of wounds.

Slowly, things started happening in Murphy’s domain. At the same time, things were rapidly starting to heat up on the planet of Holy Eden. Chief amongst them was the planet’s capital, Eden City.

In a huge mountain ... wait, that’s a church ... in an unnecessarily massive church that could house an entire metropolis, and did, a dozen very pompous looking clergy were sitting around a polished marble table in a meeting chamber high up within the church structure.

Just looking down from this height gave a panoramic view for nearly a thousand kilometres off into the distance. Standing at a clear window and looking over this scene was an even more pompously dressed bloke, who couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else but the Pope of Eden.

The various clergy were all busily arguing about the demon invasion that was happening right now in a dusty little county in one part of a kingdom which was one part of one of many empires. In other words, it was a shit hole that no one on the rest of the planet even knew existed until today.

A very buff and heroic looking fellow, which contrasted greatly with his soft fluffy clergy robes, slammed his hand onto the table causing it to rumble under the pressure of his not inconsiderable strength.

“We sthould ride forth and sthquath thisth invasthen postht hasthte!”

Hearing him speak, everyone in the room couldn’t help but cringe as they tried to puzzle out exactly what he was saying with that incredibly irritating listhp ... lisp. Ahem...

“Barllo ... do you have to try and speak like that? Just use words without any s’s.”

A red hue appeared on the huge man’s face, and he gave an embarrassed cough before repeating himself.

“Ride forth ... kill them.”

“Why bother? Their just a tiny little domain that doesn’t understand the rules. They clearly don’t know that it’s impossible to siege a quest planet. We have protection from the system!”

A skinny young looking man with the bearing of a noble gentleman voiced what everyone was thinking. For the majority of people here, they couldn’t understand why they were even here discussing this.

“Foolish!”

With a grunt, one of the older clergy rebuked the young man. The moment he spoke, everyone quietened down. Apart from the Pope, this man was the longest living citizen of Holy Eden and commanded a great deal of respect.

Being rebuked by the Pope’s righthand man was almost the same as being rebuked by the Pope himself, as such, that young man’s face flushed with embarrassment and he quickly seated himself and shut up.

With silence suddenly prevailing over the meeting, the Pope, with a gentle smile and calm disposition turned and walked toward the table.

“You are still young Cardinal Lachaust. Becoming a quest planet does not simply relieve you of all threats. The system’s protection only protects us from being raided and losing mass. Things like this, where a smaller domain raids us for resources through a portal are very common, and the system has never done anything to prevent it.

“We must use our own power to deter such things from happening, lest all the smaller domains gang up and raid us to death. Even then, it would normally not be too much trouble. Holy Eden is big enough that only another planet sized domain could truly threaten us as a quest planet, but what would be the point?

“They don’t get any earth for their trouble, and although they can claim resources it wouldn’t be worth the cost of war. No, this situation is different. Although this is just a small domain, which we can crush with the might of our domain as easily as squashing an ant, the players are far more interesting.

“From the reports, it’s clear to me that the young Domain Lord invading us has a very unique power. One that could threaten our peace here. Do you know why that is?”

At the pope’s question, everyone just stared back blankly at him with confused expressions. The Pope smiled knowingly, and his grouchy old right hand stepped up to explain.

“It’s because he has the Deprive skill. Normally, at most, if we were sieged by other domains, the only resources they can take from us are what they can mine and carry away with them. But this kid, with his Deprive skill, can take everything. Geodes, monuments, resource nodes. The things that draw in players and creatures to our world to live here and quest here. Without, we are just an empty domain.”

A light of understanding lit up in the eyes of the Cardinals. Cardinal Lachaust dropped his fist into his palm as he came to a sudden realisation.

“You want to steal his power! If we had the Deprive skill, we could quickly accumulate even more rare resources and draw in more sacrifices for the Holy God!”

The Pope smiled has he touched his finger to his nose.

“That is why I called you all here. We must capture that young Domain Lord at all costs. I don’t want to scare him off with a huge army, and I especially don’t want him to realise what we are planning for him. We need to send small raids so that he doesn’t become suspicious. Sacrifice a few pawns to draw him in further, until we can pull him into a trap.”

With that, the Cardinals eyes all lit up with greed and desire, and they put their pompous heads together to try and come up with a realistic plan. For a rare change, someone was plotting against Murphy without underestimating him. Not everyone is as easy to capture as the fat Baron, and if Murphy realised they were going to catch him to draw out his Deprive skill he would most likely kill himself first.

‘Finally! This is perfect. The ‘Cursed Potion of Unreasonably High Health Recovery’. If this can’t heal Morbid, then I’d be hard pressed to find something that could.’

Having that thought, I quickly left the Alchemy lab, leaving the spawn to clean up everything I’d left behind. I just hoped none of them touched the red cauldron. Even I was dubious about touching it. Just being near the fumes caused my skin to melt off, which is saying quite a bit.

This potion cost me quite a bit to finally refine, and nearly half of the substantial stockpile of resources we had stashed away had been gobbled up by the cauldrons. On the plus side, I now had half a dozen new potions with interesting effects and my alchemy level was already pushing against the boundary of level 7.

I was actually quite frightened at just how easily I made poisons with explosive or poisonous effects. My explosives skill jumped several levels after I created a potion that nearly blew my castle off the top of the hill. It was only a lucky happenstance that Seelie had spent a bit of effort to reinforce the protective enchantments in the alchemy lab to prevent such things.

After that incident though, they would have to be renewed and probably made a little ... a lot stronger. With great haste, I rushed through the portal to Holy Eden. I then froze on the spot and quickly back peddled when I noticed the eyes of all the spawn starting to glow red and very malicious glares being cast at each other.

I almost forgot that I couldn’t be present on a quest planet with my summons if there are too many of them. Otherwise, they start killing one another. The system was very malicious in its stupid rules. Luckily, I was quick enough to retreat before any limbs started flying off.

After a few moments, Chuckles then rushed through the portal and snatched the potion before running back through. As he passed back, all the spawn that had been on the other side started filing back through to the Domain. After the last few spawn stepped through and communicated that it was safe for me, I stepped through.

Without pause, I raced towards Morbid. Chuckles was rubbing Morbid’s big wet nose with a worried expression. The phial of the Cursed Unreasonably High Health Healing potion was empty and lying in the dirt. As I approached, the wounds on Morbid’s huge body slowly started closing up with soft little red firefly like light sprinkling out every so often.

Morbid let out a comfortable sounding growl as his body shook. His big droopy dog eyes opened up to see Chuckles and I staring at him worriedly. Slowly, as his body recovered, the light in his eyes slowly came back. After blinking a few times, his massive body rolled over slightly and that massive wet tongue of his lapped out and bathed Chuckles and I in slobber.

“Grrrr.”

A deep growl came from his throat as he closed his eyes in dreamy comfort from the recovery effects of the potion. At last, a deep breath that I’d been holding in for a little too long was released, and my body suddenly felt heavy with fatigue and then just as quickly felt great.

After about an hour of sitting around rubbing Morbid’s belly and telling him how good a dog he is, he was ready to stop playing dead and jumped up to start leaping about everywhere playfully. It seemed, out of everyone, Uncle Calligso was actually the most excited about Morbid’s recovery.

“Haha! Come here you great over grown fur ball! HAHAHA!”

With greatly exaggerated leaps, Uncle Calligso then barrelled into the huge mountain that is Morbid and a wrestling match then quickly ensued. With Morbid now quickly healing, I returned my focus to the present. I had a few plans that I had to put into motion.

Chief amongst them was my plans for this quest planet. I intended to loot it to death. I sent Chuckles to gather information so that I would know where all the nearest resources worth stealing ... err ... I mean reappropriating were. Although it goes against my code of ethics to target a culture like this just because they were so oppressive, my domain needed resources and I’d rather take them from someone I disagreed with strongly.

Besides, it was a game, and I intended to be a hero. As such, looting this world wouldn’t weigh too heavily on my conscience, and I suspected that my player citizens wouldn’t be against trying to cripple a planet that focused on capturing races they were prejudiced against just because they looked evil.

On top of that, I’d found something interesting on this planet.

Faith.

I had no information on this yet, but I suspected it was a game mechanic for high levelled players later on in the game. Something like super mana or something. As such, I wanted to do some research on this energy and see if I could find a way to generate it myself.

Next thing on my list was to train my spawn and citizens. The best way to do that was to throw them into constant battle against strong opponents. This was the strongest quest planet I’d encountered so far, and it was perfect for tempering myself and my troops.

As I pondered over my plans, I meandered back to my domain and sat down in the throne constructed from the bones of enemies, courtesy of the spawn decorators. I was quite surprised by the amount of Exp my spawn had already accumulated in the only half a day that I’d been in the lab.

With those points, I then bought the two most pertinent things for my plans at present. A permanent portal stone, so that I could turn the random portal to Holy Eden into a permanent portal. The second was a Portal Protection enchantment.

With this, I’d be able to enchant my portals to only let my domain’s citizens pass through them. The last thing I needed was some scumbag from Eden sneaking into my domain and reporting my location to my enemies.

Surprisingly, these two items were cheaper than I’d initially expected them to be. It left quite a bit of remaining Exp which I decided to invest into a domain quest board and system quest board.

I set them both up in the town square down at the sinister lands. The moment I placed the system quest board down, it filled half the square. It was almost a hundred meters long and 5 meters high. Both sides were littered with all sorts of system quests from bounties to tutoring, and even random quests like slay 10 dragons from a Dragon Domain or capture an emperor from the planet of 30 emperors.

My Domain Quest board was tiny in comparison to it, but over the span of the night, dozens of requests for parties or bounties were posted up by the players in my domain, and every time something was posted, the board automatically grew a little bit more. A good number of the requests were placed by Alton for specific materials. He paid quite highly, but everything he requested was quite rare.

Come morning, I was still looking through all the quests of the system board and trying to familiarise myself with all the system quests and their rewards. Some of the quests were very tempting but required me to be linked to a specific planet. After looking through them for half the night, I discovered that the system quest board actually only had a handful of quests from the system.

The majority of quests were actually put up by other players and domains. After a quick inspection of my domain space, I determined it was possible for anyone to place a request on the system board. The only problem was that it was incredibly expensive, coming in at almost 1 billion exp just to post a single A4 sized request.

On top of that, many of the quests were filtered by system administrators, and only certain quests were allowed to be posted. For example, you can only post a bounty if the system determines you have a sufficient grievance with the target. Generalised targets, like the dragon slaying quest, were only able to be posted if you were at war.

Many other little footnotes were involved in what could be posted on the system board. The number of posts that were actually from the ‘System’ filled only about 1/10th of the quest board.

While perusing the board, I suddenly felt a soft bosom pressed against my back and a pair of arms wrapping around my waist. My breathing abruptly stopped, and my body seized like it was held together by rusted bolts.

“ ... Seelie?”

“ ... Murphy?”

Following this encounter was perhaps the most prolonged and awkward moment I’d ever suffered through in my life. I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do. After a very long and quiet moment, I decided to just muster up my courage.

Slowly, I lifted my arm and turned around to face the blinding bright eyes of Seelie, staring directly into my soul. In all the time I’d known her, I don’t think I’d ever seen Seelie looking so happy.

“Murphy, you never finished what you were saying yesterday...”

With a very expectant gaze, I was stared at. Stared to death by those big beautiful expectant eyes. I could only blush like a child and scratch my cheek as I averted my gaze off into the distance.

“Ungh!”

Following which, I received a very abrupt punch to the stomach and felt all the wind leave me. Seelie’s face was scrunched up into a cute little pout as she continued to stare at me expectantly.

With that, it felt like all the awkwardness rushed out of me. A stupid grin covered my face, and my hand slowly encircled Seelie’s waist, pulling her closer into contact until our two bodies were fully pressed against each other.

“Seelie. I love...”

Half expecting Murphy’s Law to suddenly operate, I glanced around suspiciously looking for any potential hazards. When nothing happened, I let out a long breath and looked back at Seelie.

“I love you too.”

Suddenly, my vision seemed to turn dark as a blooming smile filled with happiness spread across Seelie’s beautiful face and stole away all my focus. Even if I wanted to remain aware of my surroundings, with that beaming smile I was helpless to divert my attention.

Her arms wrapped around my neck and she pulled me closer until her soft lips met mine. It was only at this point that I realised I had no idea how the hell kissing was supposed to work. I mean, I’d seen plenty of people do it, but that didn’t mean I knew what the hell to do.

Luckily, just like earlier, it seemed I worried over nothing. It appeared to come naturally. Although I won’t say I’m a Mozart of kissing just yet, it wasn’t as hard as I expected. The only problem was, the kissing was taking a long time this time, and it seemed the longer it took, the more intense it became.

Quickly, it devolved even further as I felt my body heating up and my gender specific trait started rising from the excitement. Making it worse was Seelie pushing her body against me and rubbing up and down in a fashion that could only be considered humping.

“Rah! Rah! YAH! Yah yah!”

Suddenly, cold water doused our rapidly heating moment as Seelie and I were broken out of our own little world to the site of all the spawn rallying around us. I then had a very ominous feeling as the sounds they were making sounded suspiciously familiar.

Then they came from the sky like hail. Curses everywhere. They fell like confetti, and the spawn all started going mad! Without any pretence, spawn juices were shooting all over the place and loud screaming echoed out through the village. Normally, out of courtesy to their meat shields, the spawn didn’t hold their festival in the village.

It seemed they were taking ques from me this time around, and they held nothing back as thousands of the little bastards warmed into the village to procreate.

Seeing what we’d just started, I grabbed Seelie’s hand and fled as quickly as possible. Spawn fertility festivals were even more frightening than facing an army of unicorns.

Over the next few days, Seelie and Murphy worked through most of the awkwardness. Although they never did more than kiss or hold hands, they were far closer than ever before. They shared things with each other that they’d never told anyone before.

Slowly though. Neither of them were in a rush to share everything. For starters, Murphy had a few things in his past he might never tell Seelie about, and likewise there were things she was reticent to tell him about. However, the important thing was that they quickly accepted each other as that significant part of themselves they didn’t have before.

Despite what Seelie had thought, that stupid kiss was all Murphy needed to push him past his own self-ego and stop running from his feelings. In retrospect of everything, now that they were ‘together’ they both felt they were idiots and that they dragged out a simple thing making it far more agonising and complicated than necessary.

In the end, although Murphy was still afraid of what was going to happen when he reached 18, he was glad that he had Seelie to support him.

Juwan, thinking that the dam had burst and Murphy was now going to start accepting people in his life, quickly tried to capitalise on the event and get Murphy to go fishing with him, only to be ruthlessly denied. Thinking that Murphy only needed more time to adjust, and that eventually he would loosen his guard, Juwan continued to persist.

Even if Murphy wasn’t ready for more than Seelie just yet, Juwan would wait. His determination was as firm as a boulder, and it was agreed on by everyone that he clearly had a little brother complex of some form. Not in a perverse way, but in a fashion that he desperately wanted a little brother to mentor and dote on, which despite Murphy’s neglect, he continued to do so anyway.

Murphy was now stepping into a self-discovery phase, and for a rare change, he managed to socialise a little more easily with others. That said, apart from his outburst after the battle with the Baron, he climbed back into his shell part way and still had a little trouble socialising with strangers. Nonetheless, progress was progress, and everyone felt a little better now that the person leading the domain they lived in was growing up, even if it was very slowly.

During the few days since the battle, Murphy spent most of his time levelling his Spawn Summoning spell. Although the spell accumulated Exp from the spawn’s actions while summoned, it still wasn’t as much as he accumulated by actually casting the spell.

As such, Chuckles, Murphy and the now ever present Seelie would travel to 6 star with all their spare time and practise their summoning magic. Murphy even spent time practising his Hellhound summoning, much to Morbid’s displeasure. Many promises of dragon bones and walkies were made before Morbid agreed to even step anywhere near the de-summoning portal.

During this time, the church in Holy Eden didn’t sit idle. Every day they would raid the war camp at the portal. Under Murphy’s orders, the spawn and the citizens of his domain set up strong defences in the area and fought them off. The combat experience was priceless, and many of the players found themselves developing skills far more quickly under the constant pressure created by the powerful Holy Knights they had to battle against.

On the fourth day, Murphy and Chuckles were battling a hoard of orcs on 6 Star. They’d stumbled onto an orc encampment out in the wilderness during their travels and were almost immediately attacked. The encampment clearly had a portal to a domain within it, because the orc horde was endless.

Murphy’s and Chuckles’ Spawn Summon Spell were both at level 9 and 8 respectively. With the control number doubling every level, they could now control 800 and 400 spawns respectively. Although that was a far cry from the total population that lived in Murphy’s domain, it still wasn’t any small figure.

As they slaughtered countless weak orcs, they slowly summoned more and more spawn. Normally, depending on the quality and size of the body they can spawn far more, but in order to quickly accumulate more experience for the summoning skill, they limited themselves to only summoning one spawn per body.

As they marched forward, red flashes of light flashed out behind them as they subconsciously automatically spawned another spawn from anybody that hit the ground. With every kill, his army grew stronger, increasing the speed that he killed.

So that they could get some battle experience and hopefully evolve, many younger spawn that were freshly spawned would request to be spawned next by Murphy. Unless Murphy used his will to personally call forth a specific spawn, usually the system sorted it out through some method beyond Murphy’s understanding.

It was especially confusing on this particular day, because a spawn was summoned that had no battle skills what-so-ever. This spawn had only one evolution, but it was the mind based evolution. He was a Clever spawn, gaining most of Murphy’s mind based skills.

Generally, the spawn treated clever spawn very protectively and wouldn’t let them go into battle unless they had to. Which is why most of the clever spawn only ever had a single evolution, apart from those few that were born from the procreation of clever spawn and another spawn with different evolutions.

Spawn culture was very complex in many ways, and quite confusing. Seeing the Clever Spawn suddenly appear on the battlefield, Murphy and Chuckles were both stunned. Neither of them had ever seen a Clever spawn summoned to them during battle.

Murphy flicked his hand and cast a de-summon to send it back, but the spawn ignored it and raced in to do battle along with the rest of his kin. Seeing this, Murphy decided not to intervene with the little guy. This clever spawn clearly wanted to battle, so who was he to stop him.

When Murphy reached his maximum control limit and was only supplementing his army when a spawn died, he gave a grim smile and looked for a sufficiently sized pile of bodies. Strangely, when he went looking, he found the Clever Spawn leading a group of a dozen or so other spawns to drag lifeless corpses back from the front line into a huge pile behind them.

The moment he saw Murphy running over, the Clever spawn started jumping up and down screaming wildly. With a wave of his hand, Murphy cast the summon spell. This time, the pile of almost 50 odd bodies all exploded together and reformed into a huge demon gate made of fleshy bits and broken body parts.

With a great “BOOM!” the gate was blown open, and the huge towering figure of Morbid raced out snarling and gnashing his teeth. With an excited howl, he bowled into the Orc army and started shredding them to pieces.

Murphy gave a curious look at the diligent little Clever Spawn, who was once again dragging bodies back into a huge pile. With his identify skill, he could see this spawn’s stats, which were all quite weak. Apart from his skills like Stratagem and Memorisation, which were both rather high, the only other skills with many levels were design and metal and wood work.

He was the epitome of weak and harmless, less useful in an actual fight then even most un-evolved spawn were. However, he saved Murphy a great deal of time today, and he clearly had a good grasp of the battlefield that even Chuckles didn’t fully have, despite being a Commander.

This Spawns name was Serious. Since the beginning of the battle, Chuckles had been looking over at this spawn with a disapproving expression. What Murphy didn’t know, was that this spawn was a descendant of Chuckles. In fact, he was the only descendant of Chuckles that was born as a Clever Spawn.

Being born a clever spawn into a lineage of battle hardened warriors and more or less equivalent to a royal lineage with Chuckles’ status and position, Serious had lived a tough life. Although he was comparatively young, at only 7 or eight days old, he had been ridiculed and beaten down by his siblings no small number of times.

This was because Chuckles was especially protective of Serious. He often said that he wished more clever spawn were born in his lineage, and he strongly encouraged Serious to master his skills as a clever spawn in service of the Master. Which is why Chuckles was so disapproving of him wasting time on a battlefield.

Although Chuckles isn’t the smartest spawn, he was clever enough to know what sorts of things Murphy needed in his spawn underlings. At the moment, what Murphy needed most, was a Spawn that could lead the other clever spawn, which was what Chuckles wanted for Serious the most.

After watching Murphy patting Serious’s head affectionately, Chuckles’ worries were somewhat alleviated, and he was instead filled with pride. Murphy rarely took special notice of any of the spawns apart from Chuckles. Seeing his progeny gaining recognition from the Master, Chuckles could only give a hearty laugh and race forth once more to exuberantly kill his enemies.

Eventually, the tide of Orcs started to slow and Murphy pushed forward even harder. By about midday, Serious ran up to Murphy and started tugging on his pant leg while pointing at another huge pile of bodies.

Murphy was a little hesitant. He glanced over at Morbid and then looked about the battlefield. Seeing that they were still taking so many losses, he grit his teeth and waved his hand. With the 4th level of Hellhound Summoning, Murphy could now summon a second Hellhound.

He never summoned it before though, because he had no idea what the result would be. Soon, another huge gate made of flesh and blood grew in the battle field.

“Boom!”

The gate shook and quivered.

“BOOM!”

With another loud bang, a shockwave rippled out from the door as it blasted apart and a new Hellhound appeared on the battlefield. This Hellhound was the same size as Morbid when Murphy first took him in. It looked around with a vicious gaze and without a need for Murphy to tell it what to do, it raced forward with excitement to slay some orcs.

Seeing another big dog playing nearby, Morbid seemed slightly stunned. He glanced at Murphy then back at the dog and then let out a loud howl. It was impossible to not see the excitement radiating off Morbid as he trampled hundreds of Orcs while racing towards his new playmate.

In a matter of minutes, the two Hellhounds were racing around the enemy encampment nipping at each other and jumping around everywhere. It’s like they’d completely forgotten they were in the middle of a battle. Murphy could only face palm himself for not having foreseen this.

Everything he read about Hellhounds said that they were huge vicious animals that lived solitary lives and hated one another as much as everything else. Which clearly was not the case right now.

Seelie, who’d been sitting off to the side most of the time and focused on practising some skill that Murphy had never even heard of, opened her eyes at the ruckus. While the battle continued on, Seelie and Murphy watched the two dogs rampaging through the orcs while playing.

“I thought Hellhounds were supposed to be lonely and violent creatures.”

“Well, me too. Everything that I’ve read suggests that’s the case.”

Seelie’s eye glistened with a strange light as she observed the two huge dogs interacting.

“Do you suppose, it’s because of your summoning magic?”

Murphy scratched his head as he watched Morbid roll over the top of one of the Orc Chieftains tents, flattening everyone inside.

“It’s possible I guess. Probably similar to the spawn fighting each other when I’m nearby if there’s more than my control limit. The system must keep them in check somehow.”

While speaking, Murphy waved his hand and a handful of bodies nearby all exploded, summoning a handful more spawn to reinforce the ones that died recently.

Seelie and Murphy continued to discuss it for a while until Murphy suddenly got a system prompt.

‘Ping! Summoning: Demon Spawn, has reached level 10. Control limit is now 1600.’

Satisfied that he’d finally reached level ten, Murphy let out a loud whistle and the two playing hellhounds suddenly perked up their ears.

Seeing Murphy looking at them a little reproachfully, the two happy looking and playful Hellhound Puppy’s both turned into vicious snarling killing machines and raced off to kill as many Orcs as possible in the hope Murphy wouldn’t be upset with them for getting distracted.

By the end of the day, the orc encampment had been flattened and everything in the area, including all the still edible bodies, were ransacked and looted. The only thing Murphy couldn’t take was the Portal. It seemed that to steal a portal he would need to be on the side that it originated from.

After nearly 3000 spawn had died valiantly in battle and more than 10,000 orcs had been slaughtered, Murphy was content enough to head back to his domain.

This Spawn is Serious Spawn. All this spawn’s life he been bullied by the bigger tougher spawns. Ancestor Chuckles, the great-great grandspawn of this Clever spawn, always tells me to wait for some times and then just strangle them in their nap time. That would give this spawn a break for some days, but eventually those evolved bastards would respawn, after all, the great Master has granted us immortality!

Well, almost. Apart from Ancestor Chuckles, only a few of the other mighty spawn that have lived for long times, like months of time, have achieved real immortality. But every spawn knows if you work hard enough and evolve fastly enough, anyone could reach the time they also become immortal.

That’s my dream. To serve the great master forever! The only problem is, I’m too weak! I’m so weak, that I’m the weakest spawn in my entire brood. Even in the other lineages that have just the Clever Spawn, I’m the weakest.

But amongst all the Clever Spawn, I’m definitely the most Cleverest! I have to be! Ancestor Chuckles always tells me that to serve the Master I must be the cleverest spawn that ever lived, and so, I did all the clever things to be cleverer!

In my few long days of life, I learnt many things about the world. Using all the knowledge passed down from the ancestors, I strived to gather even more! Amongst all the spawn, this spawn was the first one to learn how to speak. But that’s a secret! Shhh!

Even the master doesn’t know yet. When the time comes, this spawn will surprise the master. But before that, I have to prove myself. Speaking isn’t anything too clever. It’s just that the other clever’s are too stupid. So to prove myself, I willed myself to be summoned.

I willed with all my might! Every part of my being desired for the Master to summon me next! And then ... it happened! He tried to send me back, but I couldn’t yet. I had to prove to the Master that I exist.

I can see Ancestor Chuckles’ reproachful looks, but this clever spawn doesn’t care. He will be cleverest spawn and help the master the most, and what he needs most is more bodies. Soon, he will want to bring the Big Fluffy! I have to do my best to be ready.

“Rah rah! Yah!!”

‘Come on you stupid louts! The master needs more bodies!’

I hope the master doesn’t get angry. I’m too weak to drag all those big Orcies. I’ll have to get some help from these dumber looking Body Spawn. They get the master’s powerful body stats so they should be able to lift the Orcies.

‘Quickly! Hurry! The Master is nearly ready! ‘

“Rah rar rahr!”

‘Master, over here! It’s Orcies! This clever spawn gathered these Orcies for the Master!’

The master summoned the Big Fluffy but this clever spawn knows, the master is definitely strongerer. He can summons another big fluffy. This Clever spawn’s Identify skill definitely isn’t wrong. So this clever spawn will be ready!

“Rah rah!”

‘More bodies you louts. Get more of the Orcies!’

Another Big Fluffy! The Master truly is powerful! Now, this clever spawn has to quickly start gathering the loots for Master. He won’t want to be waiting here for ever. The battle will finish soon now that the Big Fluffy’s are here. I must get the best loots for the master.

It looks like the master is ready to go. Now’s the chance! This spawn needs to join the hunting on the way back to get floaty orbs for the master. Also make the body stronger. The only way is to fight!

While running through the forest I was attacked by a huge fluffy. It was just like the Big Fluffy. But smaller. A Small Fluffy. Oh no! It’s too strong! This spawn can’t fight it alone!

While travelling back to the portal, I allowed the spawn to run rampant. After all, now that I could summon 1600 in one go, I wanted them all to evolve and level up as quickly as possible.

Sitting on Morbid’s back, I noticed Chuckles very irritably looking around.

“Chuckles. What are you looking for?”

Chuckles then went through the long process of trying to tell me something with his incredible charades skills. It was only now that I learnt about the spawn named Serious. I had wondered what the reason he came out to the battlefield was, but seeing how worried Chuckles was it was easy to tell that Chuckles believed he was too weak.

With that in mind, I took advantage of one of the secondary abilities gained from the Summoning Magic Skill. The ability to link with one of my summons.

The moment the ability activated I found myself floating around Serious like some kind of ghost. I watched on as he ran through the forest not far from us. Then came a wolf. It was a relatively weak creature, and most of the spawn could kill it in one or two blows.

Apparently, Serious was not most spawn, as it appeared he could barely hold onto his life after only a few bouts.

After a brief look around I floated over next to little Serious.

“Serious, don’t be distracted. Aren’t you a Clever Spawn? In battle, fighting isn’t always about using brute strength to overcome your opponent. Take advantage of your surroundings. Take advantage of the terrain. What do you know about this creature? You have the Identify skill, don’t you? Determine its weaknesses and then assess your surroundings. How can you defeat it without even being close to it?”

Serious’s body shook violently like he’d just been struck by lightning. Even after looking about, he didn’t seem to be able to see me.

Then something happened that made my body shake like I’d been struck by lightning.

“Thanks you, Master!”

It spoke! A spawn that can actually speak! Is that even a thing? I was quickly broken out of my shock when Chuckles started shaking me and looking at me very expectantly. It was rare for Chuckles to worry about the lives of anyone, let alone another spawn.

Seeing him so worried, I reached around Seelie who was leaning back into my chest and tapped Morbid on the head then pointed towards Serious.

Morbid slowed down and trotted over towards where Serious was. When we arrived, Serious was dodging to the side as the comparatively huge wolf lunged forward. Serious already had cuts and bruises all over his body from brief interactions with the wolf before our arrival.

I could see his eye’s darting around and assessing everything in the area.

Seeing that the poor little spawn was about to become dog food, Seelie reached out her hand to fire off a spell and kill it. Seeing this, Chuckles leapt forward and pushed her hand away.

“Rah yah rah!”

Seelie looked at Chuckles somewhat confused, and then at Murphy who was about the only person that had deep enough of a connection with the spawn to guess what they wanted to convey.

“What’s wrong with Chuckles?”

I scratched my head and looked over at Serious who had his little obsidian dagger out and was quickly retreating towards a tree.

“This little spawn came out here to prove himself. So, let him prove himself. If it really looks like he can’t hold on, then you can intervene.”

Despite Chuckles’ actions, I could tell from how closely he was watching the fight and how tense his body was that he was ready to leap into action to save his favourite descendant at any moment.

The Master is watching over me! I heard his voice in my head! Thank you, master, for guiding this Clever Spawn.

Assess the areas. Identify the weaknesses.

It’s a stupid fluffy. And it’s in a forest. So, the trees! But, how will that help me? I can climb the trees and run away, but this clever spawn didn’t come here to run away!

Think! What else! I need something that can damage it. A big rock! I can use a big rock! But how do I get it to stay under the big rock! Think!

That’s it! I’ll use the trees. Climb up and then run across the branches. Good, the stupid fluffy is following this clever spawn. Now how do I hit it with a big rock?

Over there! That spot is perfect. Come on stupid fluffy.

“Rah rah yah!”

Just a bit closer! Nearly there! Now! Jump off and hit the rock!