Murphy, Seelie and Chuckles all watched on as Serious led the wolf through the forest towards a creek bed. Sitting along the creek beds sides were numerous big rocks that seemed to be balanced perilously and on the verge of falling. Murphy nodded his head subtly as he watched Serious lure the wolf into the creek bed and then suddenly jump down from a branch.

Although he had hardly any weight to his skinny little demon body, it was enough to move the rock slightly. Just as the wolf was preparing to jump out of the creek bed, the now even more destabilised rock got another push from Serious and rolled down the edge to smash straight into the head of the rapidly approaching wolf.

A sickening thud and crunching sound was heard along with a high pitched yelp. Although the rock wasn’t enough to kill the wolf, it was enough to daze it slightly.

Taking advantage of that pause, Serious leapt on its back and started stabbing violently with his jagged little knife. Blood pooled down into the creek, and the stunned wolf eventually collapsed into the sandy creek bed.

Seeing his victory, Serious let out a resounding roar, which was actually just a cute little shout, and then in time-honoured spawn fashion started biting into the wolf with great gusto. A tiny little experience orb popped up from the body and shot into Serious.

Although it was a tiny orb, it was actually equal in experience to killing a boss monster on Newb Planet. The general levels of creatures on 6 Star well and truly overshadowed anything from Newb Planet with only a few exceptions like the dragons, elf witch and a few other top monsters.

Seeing his descendant that was as weak as a sick kitten, actually killing something, Chuckles’ puffed his chest up with pride. His cleverest descendant was most definitely the cleverest. Most spawn had never imagined you could kill something with cleverness. Normally, just rushing in and stabbing it quickly was enough.

With this short battle played out, Murphy glanced at Serious once more, then tapped Morbid to head off. Serious would be fine for now, and he would keep an eye on him with the summoner link on the way back.

By the time they reached the portal, a number of spawns had undergone their 3rd evolution. Now that numerous spawns had undergone it, Murphy and Seelie were noticing a trend.

“Murphy, the 3rd evolution of your spawn seems to be like a job class or something. Chuckles became a Commander, which gave him the power to summon and command his own kind. That one spawn that is always hunting fresh meat for the others has gained the Hunter evolution. One of them even evolved into a Feng Shui Master. If this is only the 3rd evolution, what comes next?”

As they were observing the horde of spawn rushing through the forest to return to the portal, Seelie was using her identify skill and picking out the new 3rd evolutions in the group. Not that it was hard, considering they were surrounded by swaths of other spawn while they flexed their muscles and showed off to each other.

Murphy leaned his chin onto Seelie’s shoulder as he looked off towards the forest with glazed eyes. He was currently watching Serious make his way over and had somewhat unintentionally leaned onto Seelie creating closer contact, not that Seelie would complain.

“It’s hard to say. Chuckles is by far the most powerful spawn. He got my base stats from 3 different areas. Poison, Shadow and Body. Although they all get something different with every evolution, Chuckles has most of my body stats and is the perfect warrior.”

“Rah rah!”

“Heh, yes and my most trusted follower. However, until he evolves again, I wouldn’t be willing to guess what exactly comes next. He’s only level 18, and the 4th evolution isn’t until level 24. It’s still too far away to worry about.”

As he spoke, he suddenly pointed out his hand, and his spell tome appeared. He then fired off a fireball far into the distant forest. A few minutes later, Serious came stumbling out of the forest dragging the corpse of a hairless bear with a huge burning wound on its back.

With a great deal of exertion, Serious pulled the bear’s corpse all the way to the portal, where he finally placed it into his inventory, gave an exuberant wave to Murphy and Chuckles, then raced through to Murphy’s Domain.

Although one might think that Serious Spawn was an idiot for not having put the bear in his inventory straight away, it would then be apparent those people were the idiots. Serious spawn was a Clever Spawn and many of his inherited memories were about long lectures Murphy had given the spawn over their travels together.

In this case, Serious remembered that putting something into your inventory actually reduces its weight slightly. He then also remembered that Murphy had told them the best way to increase a stat was to constantly be using it.

Serious wanted to get stronger, and so that meant that he needed to use his strength as often as possible so that he could build up more strength stat points.

Murphy figured that Serious probably forgot about how the inventory system gave a much more uniform weight to help with strength training and decided that when they get back, he would take Serious under his wing and teach him as much as he possibly could.

With his hunting over, and having finally reached level ten in his Spawn summoning, Murphy now had to finish getting everything in order for his invasion of Eden. Having watched the hellhounds playing about earlier, very much contradictory to their normally violent and solitary nature, he chose to de-summon the other hellhound before passing through the portal.

From his and Seelie’s observations, when under the effects of his summoning, the demons tended to act in a manner that would facilitate the master’s control over them. This was obvious from the actions of his spawn when he first ever summoned them and they killed the extra summons outside of his control, despite how they normally have no aversion to each other, at least not to the point of instantly killing one another.

However, his domain either had no summoning limit or was considered as a homeworld for the demons. He couldn’t be sure if they were still technically considered as summoned under his command while there. If it was a case of the former, then the demons had nothing controlling them and the hellhounds would probably end up in a death match if they couldn’t separate from eachothers territory.

Naturally, if it was the latter, this wouldn’t pose a problem at all. Nonetheless, Muprhy decided not to take the risk of having two huge almost uncontrollable beasts going beserk in his domain the moment the walked through the portal.

With their return, naturally all the spawn madly rushed off to have another sex party ... err ... fertility festival, in honour of their victory over the Orcs. The new 3rd evolution spawn got a great deal of attention and were almost raped to death under the influence of the endless sinister mana pouring from the sky in the form of curses.

Seeing this seen off in the distance the moment they returned, Seelie pushed back as close as possible to Murphy while squirming about. Having Seelie’s bum pressed up directly against his crotch and purposely massaging him to rise to the occasion, Murphy had no choice other than to blush...

And then very quickly redirect Morbid to his huge barn-like dog house.

The first step in his preparations was complete. If he wanted to hunt on Eden, then he needed to be able to summon a significant portion of his troops. His next step, although unnecessary, was to finish up with Baron Von Boff.

A very solicitous Rock Skin from the church of darkness offered to humanely extract any information the Baron might have. Although the Rock Skins were amongst the more normal of Murphy’s player citizens, being just humans with skin as hard as rock, they all creeped him out a little.

That was because they all followed the church of darkness, which didn’t actually worship a god or deity but instead worshipped the vast stretches of nothingness between the domains. Murphy was pretty sure they were all nuts and were suffering from something like Space Madness, but they were mostly obedient citizens and didn’t create trouble.

They also followed the rules of his domain and only sacrificed volunteers. Although Murphy had half a mind to simply outlaw blood sacrifices and the like, he felt that within the game no one was really getting harmed that badly by it. His only stipulation was that they had to be volunteers.

This led to a rather unique cross belief integration in which different belief systems would volunteer one of their own to another system in return for a volunteer from them ... that they could then sacrifice. Every 3rd day was especially strange, as all the major belief systems met up in the middle of town and debated their beliefs then traded sacrifices with each other.

In the few cases were a belief system required an unwilling sacrifice, they only needed to visit Murphy and he would pay a player with good acting skills to fill that role for them. It was rather unnerving for new players that happened to witness a very public and vocal abduction of some poor stranger who was then eviscerated on an altar right in the middle of town.

However, the system worked. Even though the majority of these religions were vastly different and often came to loggerheads, they were still drawn together by the fact that they all believed in openly killing people for their beliefs. Of the two religious groups that didn’t sacrifice living beings, one was a pacifist group, and the other was very out of place in Murphy’s domain, being the Order of the Holy Light.

This faction actually only had a single person in it. A do-gooder knight that was drawn to Murphy’s domain by the stories that he rescues innocents from oppression and fights against the tyranny of pirate domains. Despite the population distribution in Murphy’s domain being severely skewed towards ‘evil’ races, Sir Fanny insisted on staying here.

He actually got along very well with many of the other citizens until he witnessed someone being dragged into the town square to be sacrificed. His attempted rescue led to him joining said sacrifice. Luckily for him, Murphy had the spawn keeping an eye on the situation around his Domain and quickly learnt that they planned to throw Sir Fanny out into the darkness of space as a sacrifice to the big black nothing.

Although Murphy tripped on his way and failed to arrive in time to rescue Sir Fanny, Sir Fanny wasn’t even mad. He simply respawned 48 hours later and continued on doing whatever it was he did before. Murphy took that chance to talk to him about how religion worked in his domain, which lead to a very awkward chuckle from Sir Fanny.

The truth of the matter was, he actually did succeed in rescuing the sacrifice from the jaws of death, only for said sacrifice, a Banshee lady, to berate him half to death. Having realised his mistake at the time, he quickly agreed to atone for it and asked to be sacrificed as well.

Murphy had no words. He simply couldn’t understand the kind of people that were starting to gather around him, and chose to simply ignore it unless he absolutely had to.

Returning from that digression, Murphy was now in a dungeon located below a very simple shop owned by the Rock Skin’s leader, Skin-Like-Granite. Don’t ask about their naming sense, even they don’t understand it.

At this moment in time, Baron Von Boff’s hoarse sobbing and moaning could be heard as Skin-Like-Granite handed Murphy a large pile of parchment inscribed with all sorts of information that the Rock Skin’s had extracted from the baron.

When Murphy saw him, he could tell the Baron had been treated very well, and his imprisonment so far had been extremely pleasant. Seeing him like that, Murphy simply couldn’t understand what they’d done to him. He had steeled his heart and was prepared to walk in and see a complete mess of the man.

The moment the Baron spotted Murphy, he crawled across the hard stone floor like a dog and grabbed onto Murphy’s pant leg while begging and sobbing.

“huhuhu ... p-please young master ... huhuhu. Sp-spare this ... sniff ... spare this lowly ... huhu ... lowly scumbag. I ... I can’t take much more. If ... huhuhu ... if they talk about my mother like that ... huhuhu ... I ... huhu ... please young master ... sniff ... huhuhu.”

Murphy could only glance sideways at the ever stony-faced Rock Skin standing nearby. He just smiled back when he saw Murphy’s sceptical glance.

“As I said, not a scratch. We only deal in the most gentle and honourable methods for breaking a person’s will. This fellow broke on the same day you brought him here. We just spent the last few days buttering him up for you.”

“I see ... um ... thank you?”

“Certainly M’lord. Consider this one, and any future troublemakers on the house. For your assistance in rescuing my clansmen from that forsaken Holy Eden, you have our undying gratitude.”

Murphy scratched his elbow somewhat awkwardly as he looked at the very humble acting Rock Skin.

“Undying ... isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Murphy then turned his gaze to the very pitiful scene of Von Boff. Whatever the Rock Skins had done to him, it really had messed him up. They didn’t even need the chains on him to prevent him from being able to injure himself and log out. He just grovelled about the place and cried endlessly.

Despite how pitiful he looked, Murphy remembered how brutally beaten and tortured all those people were that Chuckles had rescued from the Baron’s City. He couldn’t put all the blame on the baron for that, after all most of it was done by the church. But he could certainly blame the Baron for sitting by idly and not only doing nothing but also raking in the rewards from it.

With that, Murphy reached out and focused his mind. His Deprive skill fired up to maximum as his hand touched onto Von Boff’s head. To his great surprise, he felt absolutely no resistance what so ever. Normally, even a tree would resist when he was trying to Deprive from it.

The moment his hand came into contact with the Baron, his other hand started glowing with a strange light. One by one, skill books started materialising out of nowhere. Dozens of different skill types started materialising into books and dropping from his hand onto the floor.

The Baron’s eyes rolled back into his head as a huge pile of skill books started to accumulate around them. There was so little resistance that Murphy felt his mana quickly depleting at a rapid pace while his Deprive skill pulled out almost everything.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused an Unhappy Accident. -15 Luck.’

It was so fast that he failed to stop it from reaching absolutely nothing. Murphy then suffered a crushing pressure as he went into Mana Overdraw and his soul shrivelled up and cracked apart like a brittle and dried up piece of paper. Then, just as all those little pieces of soul were about to scatter apart, a huge force came from every little piece and pulled them all back together.

It was like the little pieces of his soul refused to be separated. If Murphy had to guess, he would say this is most likely due to his Undying trait and was fuelled on by the Mana Demon title he gained way back when he first reached the thorny tower.

Thanks to the Undying Mana Demon title, he couldn’t die from backlash or overdraw, and his soul would reform 4 times faster than normal. The only problem with it, was that his mana then went into flux. Normally, that isn’t so bad. Until now he’d never had anything too drastic happen when he went into overdraw.

On this occasion though, Murphy felt a tiny bit of mana slowly replenish and then almost immediately activated without his will. It simply evaporated out into his body and the surroundings. The issue being that if he didn’t purposely control it, his mana had the default nature of his deprive skill.

The moment the faint purple mist spread out from his body, the Mana of the surroundings was rapidly sucked towards him. With gritted teeth, Murphy pushed the Rock Skin backwards towards the stairs.

“Evacuate the town! Right now! Get everyone as far from here as possible!”

With a very worried look on his face, and feeling the huge fluctuations of mana happening nearby, the Rock Skin man raced up to the town screaming for an evacuation.

The Baron, who was half out of it, suddenly grew pale and then very quickly his body began shuddering violently. At first, it was somewhat slow, but as the mana that was in flux around Murphy rushed into his body and fed the cycle of fluctuating Mana, more and more deprive natured mana flowed into the Baron completely unchecked.

Murphy had been expecting to see it suck out all of his mana, but instead watched on stunned as the Baron’s body slowly started disintegrating into a fine powder, only to start reforming into shining gemstones. At a single glance, Murphy knew that these stones were Stat Boosters.

Not only that, random equipment started just popping out of nowhere. Presumably, it was sucking equipment out from the Baron’s player inventory. On top of that, more skill books started to form around them from floating purple lights.

Murphy didn’t have time to be worried about that for the moment though. All of the Mana being drawn in from the world around him was almost instantly evaporated the moment it was absorbed by his soul. It would then spread out into his body and the nearby area and suck in even more mana.

With all his might, Murphy focused his attention on his soul and used all of his willpower to slow down and stop the process from continuing.

With a great deal of effort, slowly, his mana started to settle down and stayed within his soul. Once he gained control of it, and it was no longer feeding back into the cycle, all of the Mana still being sucked towards him from the wayward mana that escaped rushed into his body like a surge.

Murphy very worriedly watched on as his mana almost instantly reached the maximum he could withstand and his soul popped like an over-inflated balloon. It then just as quickly reformed itself as the oncoming wave of mana continued to pour into it, blowing it apart all over again.

Hurts So Good was now rather powerful since he’d gone from Masochism to Pain Mastery, but still not powerful enough to dull the pain of having his soul shatter. All the veins on Murphy’s body bulged out as his teeth grit together so hard they started to crack.

Blood poured from his mouth as the sheer strength he had somehow mustered up while tensed in pain liquified his insides. His muscles were ripping themselves apart, and the forces going out of control inside his body were ripping his skin to shreds.

His heart was beating so rapidly and furiously there was almost no way to discern between each individual beat and it instead sounded like the purring of an engine spinning at dizzying speeds, which no normal heart should be able to produce, let alone withstand.

Again, Murphy’s soul shattered apart like a plane of glass being dropped and his eyes bulged out of his head as his knees buckled and forced him onto the ground. This was even worse than the time the Elf Witch blasted him with Soul Fire.

Strangely, no matter how painful or tormented he felt, he simply couldn’t pass out. After suffering through this continuous barrage for nearly 15 minutes, the surrounding deprive mana that had left his body had finally run its course, and the huge amount of mana that had been streaming into Murphy slowed down and then eventually stopped.

Seelie was the first to approach when she realised the mana flow had calmed down. She rushed into the underground chamber at full speed to see a weak and barely still breathing Murphy collapsed on the floor. Surrounding him were piles of skill books, stat boosters and enchantment gems. Fine dust particles from the disintegrated equipment and the Baron were floating about in the air and covering everything.

Without regard for anything else, Seelie raced to Murphy’s side with a tear stricken face as she started pulling out recovery potions by the dozens.

After the very generous use of recovery potions, Seelie pulled the weakened limp body of Murphy into her embrace.

“You idiot! What the hell are you doing?! You worried me half to death!”

Suddenly, Murphy rolled to the side and spewed up a huge mouthful of a sickly black tar substance. Then without warning, his stomach rolled again and he continued to vent its contents until only the clear stomach acid was coming up.

He wasn’t sure how, but Murphy ‘knew’ this stuff was all the corruption that had sat idle in his body. This sickly black tar was everything in his body that wasn’t ‘actually’ a part of him. Most of it was preservatives and chemicals that would normally just remain dormant and locked away inside the body until they eventually added up and killed a person.

For the first time, Murphy felt a strange euphoria overcome him as if a huge burden had just been lifted from his soul. In the black sticky mess that he’d just vomited up was a little black gemstone. Just looking at it, Murphy felt like he recognised something he never wanted to admit even existed.

His identify skill fired up and a little overlay appeared in his vision.

The Madness

Born from the fruit of a forbidden love, a creature, dark and heinous, arises.

*When consumed, undergo the tribulation of Madness. If you can remain sain afterwards, you will gain your birthright. If you fail, be consumed by madness and lose yourself in a world of torment.

Murphy fished it out of the sickly goop and held it up to the dim torchlight.

“Man, that sure is ominous sounding.”

Kneeling beside the crouched and weakened Murphy, Seelie looked at the strange black gem with worry in her eyes.

“Murphy ... what is that? It feels ... so evil.”

Murphy kept it away into his player inventory with some reluctance. His body was very quickly repairing all the damage he’d done to himself, along with the help of a great many recovery potions. He pushed himself to stand up, only to be caught and have to lean on Seelie when his legs became unstable.

“It’s ... my Day of Madness ... and my birthright apparently.”

“Birthright? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You don’t actually plan on keeping that thing do you? You’ve just dodged a bullet that you’ve spent your whole life running away from!”

Seelie’s face couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to be worried and upset or frowning and angry. She felt that little black stone was the cause of everything bad that had ever happened to Murphy and the last thing she wanted was for him to actually use it.

At the same time though, she knew deep down that Murphy had escaped having to face what was once inevitable and at the same time, a cornerstone of his entire life. If he didn’t undergo the Madness, he would perhaps spend his whole life never knowing what he was and knowing Murphy that would eat him up inside.

This was especially true considering he was now basically immortal. Although the ramifications of that hadn’t fully sunk in for these two, especially since they were still so young in comparison to forever, they had nonetheless discussed it many times and already sussed out that it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and sunshine.

If Murphy was going to live forever, then that was a very long time to regret not having explored this more.

Eventually, she could only sigh and shake her head. It would be an understatement to say that Seelie was a very understanding young woman. In fact, she probably already understood far more than Murphy had bothered to think about yet.

For him, it was a link to his parents and his real family. Apart from that, he hadn’t fully thought about anything else just yet.

After waiting a short while, and chatting a little longer, Murphy was finally strong enough to stand on his own. With a wave of his hand, the contents of the chamber were swept up into his inventory. He was a bit sour that all of the expensive equipment the Baron had been using was turned into enchantment gems, but everything else they got from this escapade was still quite valuable.

Many of the skill books and stat boosters were freely given back to those who Murphy had rescued from the baron’s city. Although it was a far cry from what had been taken from them, the action was very humbly accepted and many of the citizens who only chose to stay in Murphy’s domain to retrain their stats decided to stay behind and apply for permanent citizen status.

By the end of the day, the permanent citizens of Murphy’s Domain numbered over 300. The diversity of life in his domain rapidly exploded as he now had almost 20 different species living in all sorts of different places about his domain. Although the smog didn’t have many new residents, a town was starting to form on the hillside in the green land and the town already in the sinister lands suddenly started seeing new construction.

After the incident with the Baron, Murphy and Seelie went to visit the Grey Dwarf Blacksmith, Alton.

As they stepped into his workshop, which was actually one of the largest buildings in the entire village, they were immediately engulfed by the smell of fire and hot metal. It seemed Alton had agreed to share his forge with a few of the other craftsmen that had moved into town. Not only that, more than a hundred spawn ran about the place chaotically, assisting one craftsmen or another and some of them even practising their own craft.

Murphy was surprised to see Serious very diligently following Alton around the workshop as Alton pointed at this or that or showed Serious a new skill or technique for crafting.

When Alton spotted Murphy and Seelie walking over, his usually always angry and frowning expression made a rare smile.

“If it isn’t the young Lord. I heard you selflessly gave up everything you sucked out of the Baron back to those poor individuals that suffered under him. I knew I picked the right place to come!”

As he said that, he waved Murphy towards the back of the workshop. They soon found themselves in a little offshoot building that was more or less Alton’s home. It was probably more accurate to call it an office because it was covered in half scribbled designs and various formulas of every kind. Little test benches were set up about the place with what looked like experiments of various sorts.

Alton nodded towards Serious to go prepare some tea as he swept all the books and scrolls off a table and sat down with his guests. He then looked somewhat expectantly at Murphy.

Murphy could only smile wryly when he saw those expectant eyes staring at him without a word. He rolled his hand and a huge sack filled to the brim with enchantment stones materialised onto the table. Alton’s eyes glistened as he reached out and snatched the sack then took out a magnifying glass to start inspecting them.

“Truly magnificent. That Deprive skill of yours is completely abnormal. Great Gaia! You even have some rare attribute stones, and oh my! A level six durability stone. Oh and they’re all so pure. The things I could do with these. If only ... oh?”

Alton then looked at Murphy with a strange look.

“What?”

“Nothing much, it’s just ... how much time have you spent researching this power of yours? I was wondering if you can ... hmm...”

Alton then reached into the sack and pulled out two small green gems.

“If you can Deprive both of these enchantment crystals and make a single gem?”

One of Murphy’s eyebrows lifted up quizzically as he thought about it. Honestly, he’d hardly experimented with his Deprive skill at all. Mostly because it was still only level 6. The higher the level of a skill, the more you intrinsically know about it.

It’s not that you particularly discover it yourself, but simply understand that it can be done. At level 6, Murphy knew he could deprive mana, faith, vitality, enchantments and even skills and stats. That was all he really knew at an intrinsic level. However, he also now knew that he could not only deprive just objects, but even the world itself.

During his spasmodic flux of mana, he hadn’t been depriving the air or the buildings or the land of mana, although in his very near vicinity there was a little of that, as can be attested by the now dead Baron. Instead, his deprive skill had been sucking Mana out of the universe. Like it was drawing it out from nothing.

Not only that, when the mana was sucked into him, it seemed to be replenished from the void with a little bit extra, as if the act of taking mana away from the atmosphere led to the universe pouring even more into it. The area in that chamber was now a mana hotspot, with more natural and free mana just floating about the place than even the wizard towers, which were designed to cause that effect.

Thinking about just how little he truly understood about anything in this strange place, Murphy was tempted to simply ignore it. He’d rather stay ignorant than have to learn more about this crappy magic stuff.

‘Why couldn’t I just have Imbue like all the other poor saps?’

Murphy wondered to himself as he reached out and scooped up the two shiny crystal rocks from Alton’s palm.

He then focused himself somewhat and started pouring his mana into his closed fist. A soft purple light shone from his hand and enveloped the room for a few seconds until Murphy opened his hand to reveal a slightly bigger green gem.

In his identify he could see that the gem had gone from two low-quality level 2 gems to a single low-quality level 3 gem.

Before Alton, spurred on by his greedy dwarf blood, could lash out and snatch it, Seelie’s hand flicked out and beat him to it.

“Interesting. Low-quality gem of Sharpness. Alton, what is the difference between gem qualities?”

Alton, being somewhat dumbfounded by Seelie’s speedy hands, only blinked a few times and then opened the sack to pull out a few more gems.

“First, you have to understand that Enchantment Gems are usually either made by the system or with the assistance of a very powerful mage using spell models. You would probably be powerful enough to refine certain lower class materials into their base components, but it would cost you a great deal of time, mana and mental effort.”

While speaking, he laid out a handful of gems on the table, all of the same type, but of different sizes, shapes and purity.

He then picked up two little gems about the same size and held them both up to the light as he tried to see through the murky gemstones.

“Apart from a high level of Identify, the only way to determine a gemstones worth is by purity. The most expensive gemstone I ever seen are only at the High-Quality level. Even then, that was by chance. I’ve always lived my life at the lower realms and domains of Domain Warz and so haven’t had the chance to journey anywhere that might have better.

“In sayin’ that, I’ve heard plenty of rumours about the quality becoming even more frightening in some of them ancient domains. Things like Celestial Crafting Gems and Gems of Abnormal Greater Quality. Just thinking about working with something on that level gives me shivers.”

Alton then put the two stones down and eyed Seelie with a probing gaze.

“Why? You thinkin’ of having the boy try and purify a gem? It’s already too ungodly that he can create one from raw materials. I doubt it’s even possible.”

At the same time, Alton was busily pulling out a bunch of stones that all had the same properties. It was as if his body was automatically acting to experiment this possibility even while his mouth was denying it was possible. His eye’s then swivelled around and locked onto Murphy.

“Well?”

He then looked on half expectantly as he pushed a small pile of stones across the table. He was starting to stare with an almost feverish gaze at the gems stone pile and then looking back at Murphy with an expectant and pleading expression.

Murphy could only half grin seeing the sight. Although Alton was always an angry old bastard, it turned out there were some things even he could set aside his personality to pursue. Apparently, rare crafting materials was one of those things.

Murphy stretched out his hand and placed it on the pile of stones. This time everyone could see the purple light pour out of his hand and just seemed to be slowly disintegrating all the stones bit by bit. In his other hand, at a far slower pace than the other pile disintegrated, a gem about the size and shape of a grape slowly took form.

Alton now had the shakes and almost couldn’t control himself. He watched on as the last of the stones in the pile turned to dust, leaving behind a powdery substance on the bench. The moment Murphy let out a sigh and finished, two hands simultaneously stretched out towards his palm.

This time, Alton was ready and had already started moving before Murphy was even done. His stubby little grey hand was as swift as a Merlin bird and blurred in everyone’s sight before he had the little grape-sized gem clasped in both hands and staring at it like it was his newborn child.

“It’s ... it’s beautiful. A level 6 Lower Rare Enchantment Gem. Something like this could buy you an entire continent on any quest planet in the lower realms.”

Murphy wiped the sweat from his brow as he ignored the crazy half breed dwarf. He focused himself again and then sent out just a tiny bit of mana into the air around him. A visible distortion of space seemed to ripple out and slowly mana began to flow into him from the universe.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that he could control this process. Although, if anything, it was actually far more trying mentally than what he’d gone through to purify that gemstone. Which wasn’t really that much of a problem, since the more trying it was for him, the more his Hurts So Good fired up to make it feel wonderful and the more his Please Sir trait fired up to slowly increase his mental fortitude some more.

Before he could sink into the calm feeling generated to counteract the stress of controlling the process, he received a palm to the face.

“What the hell are you doing? I don’t want to be sitting here if you go all holocaust again!”

Murphy awoke from the dreamy mental state to see Seelie glaring at him half ready to throw another palm out. He could only sheepishly rub his head and grin like an idiot.

“ ... Sorry.”

Murphy then looked at Alton, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything and was completely enamoured with the gem in his hands. He then frowned slightly and crossed his arms in thought.

“Alton, I already know what your next request is going to be, but I can’t do it just yet. I want you to use the gems of lower quality to outfit my spawn. We definitely don’t have enough to outfit them all, but a few hundred shouldn’t be a problem, and I will get you more stones. When we’ve robbed Eden of as much as we can, then I promise to make you a whole bunch of high tier gems to play with.”

Alton gripped the level 6 lower rare gem protectively and seemed about ready to stomp his feet and throw a tantrum. Then after reconsidering, he just let out a long sigh and glared at Murphy.

“It’s a promise then. I probably only have a few years left in me, so you’d better fulfil it in half that time!”

Murphy chuckled and then glanced over to look at Seelie.

“That’s fine, but it’s also not the main reason I came to see you today. There’s something else I want your help with.”

“It’s not?”

Seelie looked at Murphy strangely when he said this. She didn’t remember Murphy saying anything about another reason for visiting Alton. The fact that he kept it hidden from her made her somewhat suspicious.

“What else can I do for you? I’ve still got a backlog of your ideas, and we’ve barely started full scale production on the cannons. With outfitting those little demons on top of everything, I don’t have enough hands to finish everything you’ve already got me doing.”

Murphy scratched his head and looked off into the distance spacelly, despite there being a wall directly in the way of his vision. He then seemed to make a resolution and nodded to himself.

“Seelie, I need to discuss something personal with Alton ... I ... hope you don’t mind.”

He looked somewhat apologetically at Seelie. He didn’t intend to keep her at a distance on this, but it was too important to him. He also didn’t want to get Seelie’s hopes up and then douse them when his plan failed.

Seeing the big puppy dog eyes she was getting from Murphy, Seelie could only frown slightly, then got up in a huff and walked out.

Alton, the bystander in this exchange, could only watch on somewhat awkwardly until Seelie had left. He then chuckled and gave Murphy a meaningful glance.

“Heh heh. Boyo, you’ve really stepped in it this time.”

Murphy ignored it and then turned to look very seriously at Alton. He seemed to be considering his words for a long time before he finally said;

“How would you like to live a little longer?”

Alton shot to his feet and glared at Murphy icily as his hand slammed onto the table.

“You threatenin’ me boy?”

Murphy quickly shook his head with a wry grin and held his hand up defensively. Clearly, Alton had misunderstood him. Murphy reconsidered his words for a moment before speaking again.

“Umm ... not quite what I meant. Alton, you said you probably only have a few years left in you. If that’s the case, I want to help you live a little longer. I’ll be honest. The reason for this is purely selfish. It means I get to keep you around for a while longer, but more importantly, it may help me understand a way to keep Seelie around.”

Alton tugged on his ruffled grey beard as he pondered over something for a while. He then looked at Murphy out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s the catch?”

Murphy let out a long sigh and placed his hands on the table. He looked at them for a while and then glanced up at Alton. He gulped loudly as his body seemed to start sweating as if he was going into shock.

“I think I’ve ‘killed’ killed the Baron.”

“What?”

“I mean ... I think the Baron is ... permanently dead.”

“That’s impossible boyo. I’ve been in this game for a long time and I’ve never seen...”

“When I was trapped in the mana storm from my deprive power, I felt like I could see his soul being ripped apart and turned into energy. I think I deprived him of his soul, and as far as I know, there isn’t any way to come back from something like that.”

Alton’s beard tugging became even more pronounced and he looked like his shaking hands were about to completely rip his beard out of his face.

“So what’s this got to do with me?”

At Alton’s question, Murphy raised his palm and looked at it as a soft purple light slowly spread out from it, generating rippling space waves that slowly weakened about a foot or two from his palm.

“You once told me that you’re a permanent player right? You were born in Domain Warz and this is your home. So if that’s the case, you should technically be immortal until either your soul completely dissipates or your body can no longer hold itself together.

“With the system’s ability to perfectly recreate our bodies, flaws and all, I don’t believe that it will be your body that is the reason you could die. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even be ageing at all. I think it’s perhaps something to do with our sense of self. The system most likely recreates our body based on how you perceive yourself normally. You most likely only aged this much physically because every time you’ve died the system has refreshed your body to your match your soul.

“So I guess the question is, why does your soul dissipate? What is the reason for a person’s soul eventually breaking apart? Originally I just thought it was the way things were and I never bothered to think about it. But after the Baron I did start wondering. I came to the conclusion that in the game, death is unnatural. There should be no reason for you to ever die in the game unless someone forcefully breaks your soul apart.

“When you die, your soul is normally sucked from your body by the system just before it dissipates. Whatever the system does with it, I can’t say for sure ... but I guess it just puts it somewhere safe. I also guess that the soul can’t survive without a vessel like the body, and some way to interact with the body, like the mind. That’s why there are three different stat types in the system.

“More importantly, I think that repeatedly being ejected from the body may be causing the soul more damage than what it would normally suffer during a normal lifetime. It may be causing people to die a soul death faster than normal, but that is only a theory and completely unfounded. After all, I have no basis for that conclusion, it’s just a hunch.”

Alton’s eye’s shot open as his breathing rapidly spread up and his grip on his beard was now well and truly ripping out hairs from his chin.

“This is naturally the case for you, until eventually you get to the point that your soul can’t hold on any longer. This made me wonder, why do things die from old age. Then, I went through the mana storm with the Baron, and as my deprive skill ripped his soul to pieces to feed my body, I saw all these things it left behind. Like little pieces of the soul that were dark and scared.

“I also saw these scars on my own soul, and watched the deprive mana fluctuating around me slowly stripping those parts away. I feel better now than I ever have in my life.

Murphy then clenched his fist as he looked at Alton solemnly.

“I believe that those little pieces of rot on our soul are what eventually causes a person’s soul to die. I don’t know what they are, or what they represent, but I want to find out. If I can determine the cause, I can treat the illness. Although I wouldn’t be able to permanently prevent your soul from falling to pieces, I may be able to prolong your life by decades, or perhaps even centuries.”

Alton was now sweating like he was trapped in a sauna and his body with shaking violently. His eyes looked like they were about to bulge out of his head. Then with a very deep and long breath, he forced himself to calm down. With a wry smile he looked at the determined face Murphy was giving him and chuckled.

“No.”

Murphy was stunned for a moment.

“No?”

“That’s right boyo. Before you jump to conclusions, I will tell you right now that I desperately want to live a little longer. But you’re young and ignorant, and you’ve just discovered this power. Although your claim to be able to see a soul as you devour it is interesting, I can’t be your guinea pig to experiment on. I still want to live after all.”

Murphy’s eyebrow quirked up and his face showed confusion.

“What?”

Alton was just about to start speaking again when Murphy slapped his palm against his head and laughed at himself.

“Idiot!”

He then noticed Alton’s face scrunching up and quickly cleared the air before there was a miscommunication on top of a miscommunication.

“Alton, that’s not what I meant. I was calling myself an idiot. I haven’t explained properly.”

Now it was Alton’s turn to be stupefied by the situation. He always knew it was difficult talking to Murphy about anything, and even now when Murphy was more talkative than ever, he still had trouble understanding what the hell he was getting at.

“What I mean is ... arhm ... you should have met a few other players that were born in the game like yourself, right? Some of them will be getting close to the end of their lifespan. I need your help to set up some research and to ask those people if they’re willing to help us out. I’m hardly qualified to lead a research team on something as difficult to comprehend as a soul. Before I joined the game, I wasn’t even sure what a soul was. In fact, I still don’t have a clue what a soul is.”

Alton looked at Murphy with strange eyes.

“Then why don’t you talk your little missy into leading it? Her job class is scholar for the sake of the Deep Black! She is innately predisposed for researching things no one understands.”

“Yes, why don’t you ask me about it?”

Murphy and Alton both jumped like rabbits under gunfire and spun their heads to a corner of Alton’s dingy little side cottage where Seelie was sitting on a stool like she’d never left and accepting a steaming cup of tea from the industrious Serious.

Murphy gulped slightly and could only scratch the back of his head and try to look innocent, like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

“Well ... you see ... I actually wanted...”

“Yes ... I’m sure...”

Under the intense pressure of Seelie’s gaze, Murphy could only sweat. He’d seen that burning gaze many times, and new with certainty that he really couldn’t hide anything from her. It was like she was reading his mind.

“Fine then. I’ll take care of this. Until I’m ready, I don’t want you using your deprive power on anything you’re not 100% sure you can do. I’ll set some things up so we can learn more.”

With a gulp, Murphy just nodded his head and let out a long sigh. Since she had taken the first step in their relationship, she’d gotten some confidence and taken a slightly more dominant role. She wasn’t going to let him do anything stupid without her nearby.

Alton chuckled as he watched the interplay between this couple. It was clear who actually wore the pants in this relationship just from a glance.

With Alton now busily training up the spawn blacksmiths and using all those hundreds of enchantment stones to equip my spawn army, I felt slightly more at ease.

That said, we still lacked too many resources. Trying to operate a domain felt like I was just throwing resources into a big black empty pit. Proper materials for crafting and building were in short supply. On top of that, reports from Holy Eden suggested the Church of the Holy God was now becoming more aggressive in their attacks.

If I was going to loot them and help all those captured people, then I needed to do so soon, before they realised just how big of a threat I am to them. The smithies would probably need a few days to burn through those crafting stones and equip the spawn, so until then I need to do something to lower the pressure from the church on my troops.

I sent them there for war so that they could adapt to a real battlefield situation and help them gain experience. If the Church gets too aggressive, my people would simply be wiped out, and the war would be all but pointless.

As such, I decided it was time to do some sleuthing. Although we received a great deal of information about the religion and the county from the church Chuckles desecrated ... err ... redecorated, it was like a drop in the ocean compared to the other wonders that must be hiding on that corrupt planet.

After some more thought, I decided that my current method of defending a single portal was not the best way to train my citizens anyway. First of all, the nature of many of the races living in my Domain is to be sneaky about things. Assassination, poisoning, subterfuge. They were far more skilled in these areas than in direct combat.

On top of that, now that we’d set up a beachhead in the Baron’s county, they know exactly where to find us. I was aware it was a losing war from the start, and only really an excuse to train, but most likely the morale of constantly losing in a situation where they can’t utilise their gifts properly would be more damaging to my citizens.

As such, I pulled everyone back from the other side, and I used Deprive to close the portal.

I gave the citizens a day to rest and recuperate, then called a meeting at the castle. The spawn had been very diligently hunting Exp since the portal first opened to Eden and since Chuckles and I went out to level our summon skill, Chuckles small army had been relentless.

I now had close to 700,000 Exp in the coffers of the domain. With those funds, there are many things I could achieve. But instead, I spent it all on more portals. Buying portals would normally be a very tense moment for many domain lords. That’s because without some exorbitantly expensive scroll that will refund the portal stone, the portals are usually permanent.

If the portal opened in a place that was too hazardous to survive in, then that portal would have essentially been wasted. I, on the other hand, had no such dramas. I could close and re-open my portals freely ... well mostly freely, as long as I had the mana for it.

As such, I bought 4 different portals to Eden and 2 new portals that used the majority of my saved Exp. Of the 2 new ones, one led to a planet defined as a beast world. From my understanding, these worlds are something like a natural hunting ground for all sorts of creatures that have little to no consciousness.

These creatures were more or less NPC enemies. They weren’t as rich in experience as other player creatures, but they breed like rabbits on aphrodisiacs and building on a beast planet was impossible thanks to some clever interference by the system. That said, you could harvest a shitload of resources from these planets because flora and fauna all seemed to grow back overnight.

It made these planets the perfect place to hunt for resources, strong beasts and if you’re lucky, other players.

The other portal I got my hands on was something called The Underground. While the beast planet would be a rich source of meat and experience and it had many secret opportunities hidden about on it, the underground world was solely underground. From what I’d heard, this was a world that was like the backwards of normal space.

Instead of huge expanses of space separating tiny floating rocks we call planets, the underground world was huge expanses of earth separating tiny pockets of empty space. Just the concept of such a place was difficult to grasp. However, the most important thing was that the underground world was rich with resources and materials that are difficult to find anywhere else.

It’s apparently overflowing with gems, metals and rocks with extraordinary powers, while at the same time filled with huge monsters that would frighten even the strongest of players. The whole place was like a death trap ... but a very wealthy one.

Alton was actually the one who made the request for this place, insisting that the spawn were going to love it. He was probably referring to the fact that the spawn had completely infested the underground of my domain. Apart from about 30 meters of topsoil that was magically holding itself together, everywhere below that was like an ants nest of tunnels and caves that the spawn lived in.

Huge caverns were filled to the brim with eggs waiting to hatch out more of the nefarious little bastards, and other caverns were filled to the brim with bones and dark altars. I’d only been down a few times, mostly because the Elder Spawn all insisted I ‘bless’ their altars. I wasn’t exactly sure who they were praying to, and a subtle feeling in my gut told me not to bother trying to find out, as it would only cause me more distress.

With all these portals in hand, I recalled everyone in the outside world and set the portals up in a little round courtyard between the sinister village and the hill village. It took a while to recall everyone for the portal change over because it wasn’t rare for various groups to head out on a mission that often took days to complete.

Once everyone was back, I collected every single portal and moved them to the Portal Courtyard. It was quite a sight seeing nearly a dozen portals all in one place. 3 of them were random portals, 4 of them led to various places on Eden, one was for 6 Star, one for the beast planet and one for The Underground.

10 portals was a lot. Of them, I only had enough to splurge for basic protection enchantments for the Eden portals and the portal to 6 Star. The other five remained undefended for the most part.

With this completed, and all of my 300 odd citizens temporarily here at home, I called a Domain Meeting. I only realised, once I was standing in front of all these staring eyes, that I hadn’t gained quite as much confidence from Seelie’s kiss as I’d thought I had.

Although I seemed to have plenty of charisma after my battle with the Baron, most of that was from my adrenaline. In truth, it was only that little bit of self-confidence I gained from actually being kissed by a girl that helped me break out of my shell a little bit.

Although that was the case, it was just enough. Along with the considerable weight from my shoulders at the appearance of the strange gem I coughed up, I forced myself into this situation to try and learn how to adapt. That was the only way I could eventually overcome my crippling fear of talking to strangers and in front of groups of people.

Well ... that, and the great deal of tireless effort my Please Sir and Hurts So Good traits put in behind the scenes to suppress the negative feelings that generally drowned me in these situations.

As such, I ended up standing in front of all my citizens while nervously scratching my head with a trembling hand and cursing myself for being so stupid as to think just pushing myself into this situation would help me overcome my fear.

Everyone watched on with slightly downcast expressions as Murphy embarrassedly chuckled at himself but still said nothing. He’d had them all sitting here waiting for him to address them for nearly 5 minutes, and yet just seemed to be muttering to himself and looking at them with a strange face like some kind of madman.

It was only when Seelie stepped forward and took his hand with a blushing face that Murphy seemed to regain some slight amount of clarity. His muddle headed appearance slightly faded as he looked at Seelie and then towards the portals he’d just finished setting up.

At long last, he stood up straight, and his entire aura seemed to change. It was as if what had been a shy boy suddenly became a domineering general of war.

At last, he spoke.

“Everyoaahhne...”

That domineering aura then quickly collapsed when he finally spoke, and the first word caused his voice to crack in the time-honoured embarrassing manner. His “everyone” rose to a higher octave unintentionally, and the oppressive atmosphere that had been brooding in the area was dispersed like a fart in the wind.

“Aghem!”

Murphy cleared his throat while ignoring everyone’s good-humoured chuckles and then tried again with a little more encouragement from Seelie.

“Everyone ... errr, I first need to apologise for calling some of you back during important missions or quests. It would be difficult for you all to make your way back hear without dying and respawning otherwise. In addition, I want to directly tell you all that as of today, we are starting a crusade.”

The moment he paused everyone broke into cheers and discussion. This was what they’d been waiting for. A glorious crusade against evil doers. To fight for the little guy that was busily being suppressed and to strike out at those people that took so many benefits from the hard work of others.

Murphy, feeling his nerves going into overdrive and his stomach doing backflips, had no choice but to secretly summon his spell tome behind his back and cast ‘Can’t Stop the Music’ with his maximum mana. Although he’d practised his little speech repetitively until it was burned into his mind, he still didn’t have the confidence to stand in front of 300 people without falling to pieces.

“There will be ... missions posted for ... rescue operations, scouting and investigations. Any of you that wish to make some profit or feel that they can contribute to this operation are free to join in. That said ... I will have to ask anyone that isn’t planning to contribute to avoid drawing attention to our portals on Eden. If you all rush forth and ... um ... start havoc ... the attention of Eden’s protectors will ... be drawn towards us ... err and we will lose any chance to covertly rescue as many people as possible.”

Having spoken for so long, he was having somewhat of an internal panic attack and completely lost his train of thought and had suddenly become confused as if the whole thing was too much for his brain to fully handle.

His innate fear of socialising may have been suppressed, but it wasn’t something that just disappeared overnight. Luckily, he had Seelie by his side to give him a little nudge and awaken him. Then as if he forgot entirely about that interruption, he continued on with his meticulously practised speech.

“I know some of you simply wish to vent your frustrations. If you want to blindly go raging about on Eden, one of these portals will be left open permanently, and you can use it to start a warfront and train yourselves. However, that is your own prerogative, and anyone captured can only blame themselves. The other 3 Eden portals will be closed and re-opened regularly to avoid discovery. If you’re taking missions in areas of those portals, please be sure to return by the set times.”

Murphy then let out a tense breath and quickly turned around and walked off leaving everyone slightly befuddled. Chuckles watched Murphy’s show with a strange glint in his eyes. He was the most confused, because his master had clearly shown signs of awakening recently but now seemed to have lost that domineering aura and gotten stuck somewhere in between.

Not long after, Murphy pulled aside Serious and left him in charge of the main battlefield portal, having simply said; “Train yourself.”

Clever spawn were rushing to post up jobs to escort spawn with the mana cartography skill or to investigate areas nearby the new portals. Serious, threw the not insubstantial spawn workforce into full swing as they picked a portal and started to build up a beachhead on the other side.

A great many things started whirling into overdrive as the entire domain once again continued gearing up for a massive war. The only difference was that many parties of adventurous players had opted to join the more exciting subterfuge and spying missions. Putting their personal talents to full use.

While this was going on, Murphy returned to his castle and stood on the battlements overlooking the bustling crowds in the village far off in the distance. His mood seemed strange, and it was clear there was something on his mind. As he observed the spawn industriously rushing through a portal while dragging a huge felled tree, his hand turned, and a little black gem appeared within it.

Murphy unconsciously started to play with the gem between his fingers as if by habit. Every now and then, the gem would become ominously darker as if it was the reverse of glowing.

Eventually, after observing his domain for a little longer, he looked down into his hands and stared intensely at that gem.

“ ... My birthright ... What exactly is it? Mum ... dad ... will this give me any clues as to where you are ... who you are?”

While staring at the gem he finally realised a little nuance to the stone’s structure he hadn’t initially spotted. There was a strange pattern that looked like it was shallowly inscribed on the surface.

This pattern was the same as the pattern inscribed on that odd stone he’d habitually chewed up and swallowed on Holy Eden days earlier. Finally recognising this, Murphy’s body shuddered, and his eye’s widened in shock.

‘What the fuck? Why? How is it that... ‘

Slowly his hand gripped into a fist around the black gem and his face twisted strangely as his tight grip caused his arm to tremble.

‘This game ... this game ... does it have something to do with the madness phenomenon? Is this where I’m going to find the answers to all my questions?’

With his mind spinning into a frenzy, Murphy’s face became firm as he stared out at the stars in the sky. A resolution filled him. A desire unquenched.

“I’m going to discover all the secrets of this ‘game’.” He declared to himself. He felt his blood boiling with excitement for discovery, and unconsciously his back straightened and his figure looked as though it could hold up the sky.

The citizens of Murphy’s domain all seemed to sense an oppressive might radiating from the domain lord’s castle and all eyes were drawn to the silhouette of Murphy standing atop the battlements. His figure gave off the magnificent grandeur of an unsurpassable hero.

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

An unexpected harsh wind blew out of nowhere, and everyone watched on with strange faces as that magnificent silhouette suddenly appeared to be doing the peculiar dance people do when they lose their balance on a ledge. Various expressions observed as that silhouette, comparatively tiny to the enormous stone castle wall, finally lost the fight against gravity and silently fell off. Soon after, a dull thud and groan were heard ... completely ruining the aura of majesty which had pervaded the entire domain just moments ago.