With the portals all once again re-opened, Murphy’s domain became like a beehive, with thousands of spawn and hundreds of players all rushing about in preparations for the upcoming crusade. With the closing and re-opening of all the portals, Murphy’s 6 Star portal had re-opened on nearly the other side of the planet from where it initially was, giving the players not interested in the crusade a new and exciting area to explore.

More importantly though, the portal opened up only a dozen-odd kilometres from one of 6 Stars Capital cities, the city of sin. Aptly named because of the type of people and business it tended to draw in. Thanks to the loose lips of a few of Murphy’s citizens, the rumours of a tiny little Island-sized domain declaring a crusade against a vast quest planet stirred up the entire populace of 6 Star.

Sin city suddenly exploded with activity in response to this rumour and players started rushing here in an attempt to gain passage to Murphy’s domain. Many were interested in the cause, taking advantage of the battlefield to train or just wishing to take advantage of the enormous amount of resources needed for war and wanting to trade for some profit.

Murphy had never expected the news of his crusade to be so stimulating that it caused such an uproar from all of the players on 6 Star. He was dubious about merely letting random people start storming into his domain, but decided it didn’t particularly matter in the end.

His domain wasn’t a quest planet and as such his domain lord status gave him a great deal of freedom in how he manages it. For example, he could set something similar to permissions which allowed him to limit the movements of people inside his domain.

As such, he set a kilometre radius around the portal altar were un-associated players were free to roam trade and squat. He also moved the mission board for the crusade into this space and had the spawn erect some make-shift lodgings and conveniences in this area for passing travellers.

It had only been a day since he re-opened the portals, but already an influx of nearly 500 players had rushed into his domain chasing their goals. Many naturally followed the endless stream of spawns into the portal for the battlefield, simply having come to join a substantial chaotic battle, while others started setting up stalls or selling goods all adventurers need.

Murphy also took advantage of this and allowed his spawns in crafting related jobs to start setting up stalls as well. What surprised him the most was that the poisons and instant recovery potions of the spawn alchemists were selling so fast they ran out of the ingredients to make more in only a matter of hours.

Of course, there was also plenty of troublemakers, thieves and generally incorrigible people that were creating strife, only to suddenly be surged by a rush of spawn and disappear in a little burrow in the ground nearby. It was almost comical watching dozens of little spawns screaming, huffing and grunting as they tried to force a still kicking and screaming troublemaker into a burrow with an opening only half their width.

As the day slowly passed, nearly a hundred teams were sent out between the other three portals each protecting a clever spawn with mana cartography skill. Gradually, as the day passed they all started returning and the clever spawn would immediately race off to the castle.

In a rather wide circular room of the castle, hundreds of other clever spawn were rushing around under the guidance of the elder spawn as they sorted through information from the returning teams. In the centre of the room was a strange pedestal giving off a bright glow and projecting into the air a considerable planet like map of Eden.

Every time a clever spawn returned to the castle with a mana cartography map, Murphy would use his deprive skill to suck the map from them and update his own. Then with the help of this projection pedestal, he could display it easily in the war room so they could plan out exactly how they were going to run their future operations.

Thanks to this, Murphy’s mana cartography skill started skyrocketing in experience, and he began to realise that there were dozens of interesting things he could do with the map he’d never noticed before. For example, he could mark areas of the map and add various information that would be helpful.

In just the first day, Murphy had already mapped out 3 entire regions of Eden without having ever left the comfort of his castle. Not only that, but each of these areas had markings covering them denoting areas rich in resources or other towns and cities.

At the same time that Murphy was mapping and planning were to rob, spawn under the command of Serious would rush back to keep Murphy updated on the situation of the battlefront. It took nearly the entire day before the Church reacted to Murphy switching the portal location and attacking a city on almost the other side of their planet.

By the end of the first day, Murphy’s cartography skill had levelled up to level 7, and he already had a pretty good idea of the situation of 3 small regions. The only problem was, these three regions were all comparatively tiny on the huge expanse that was a planet.

Thus, he could only sigh as he realised the magnitude of the task he had undertaken. Nonetheless, when the artificial light of Holy Eden began to set and night was coming into play, Murphy still gathered a few teams of operatives and set off through one of the portals.

Naturally, Carson, Lucile, Xanzu and Tuskelly all insisted on joining Murphy’s operation. They were, after all, his primary adventuring team now, though Murphy hadn’t realised exactly when they came to this conclusion or why.

On the first night of the long war, 12 teams of citizens from Murphy’s domain, each leaning towards stealthy classes, all split off into different directions and scattered amongst the three regions that had been explored that day. The primary goal of each team was rescuing any prisoners that were being held in the larger towns and cities of each region.

The secondary goal was to capture the Baron or Lord of each region and city or any clergymen of the church they could find. Lastly, the third goal was explicitly for Murphy’s team. Amongst the three regions they’d explored, numerous geodes and a few rare creatures had been discovered during the scouting missions early in the day, and Murphy’s purpose was to capture these strategic resources. Or more aptly ... to steal them.

It had been almost an entire game week since I’d last come to Holy Eden. All of the preparations for the crusade were tiring and wearisome, certainly not a part of the game I’d expected to have to suffer through. Luckily, apart from some essential elements I was involved with, Seelie and the Clever spawn took care of most of the preparations.

Much to my liking, I now only had to do the grunt work, which is where most of the joy of the game lied. In my opinion anyway. The moment we stepped through the portal, my team sped off in our Chaos Carriage behind Morbid towards our first target.

It only took about half an hour before Morbid let out a snort and slowed to halt under the canopy of some ancient looking old trees at the top of a fat hill. Lucile, Carson and Xanzu hastily left the carriage and began to investigate our target while Tuskelly gooped off into the forest as a puddle of sentient mud.

I followed Seelie as she stepped out of the carriage and moved to the edge of the tree line on the top of the hillside. As we stepped out from the shadows of the trees, we took in the sight of a massive hole in the ground covered with wooden strata and rickety elevators suspended by rope and pulled up by teams of slaves being industriously whipped by generic guardsmen with generic mean faces.

“Work harder scum!” and other familiar catchphrases of unimportant side characters rang out into the night sky along with the cracking of their whips and regular grunts of slaves.

Guard towers only a few stories high and looking as if they would collapse in a stiff breeze were placed about the area generously and had huge flaming torches along with what looked like some kind of lens that focused the torchlight as a spotlight.

As we watched on, the slaves hauled up another creaky elevator which was slowly unloaded by some more slaves in a very mechanical fashion, only showing the rare burst of energy for a minute or two after a whip reminded them about good work ethics.

Just seeing the condition and treatment of these people had me clenching my fists. After surveying the area for a while longer, my team started to reassemble on the hill.

Lucile was the first to return, and I almost didn’t even notice her presence sneaking up on me if not for the great deal of effort I’d been spending training my hearing recently.

“The patrols on the east side have been cleared out. Xanzu has a good spot nearby and is tracking the location of the guard captain.”

I merely nodded as I watched a strange puddle of mud slowly seeping out from the ground and working its way up Lucile’s slender white legs.

“Ugh! Get off me you disgusting bastard!”

“Oh! Oh! Don’ fight it baby ... wait ... I mean, I’m just so tired, let me rest a little. You know how tired I get when sleuthing about as a puddle.”

Tuskelly, never a gentleman, slid up along Lucile’s body in such a disgusting manner that I felt embarrassed enough for the both of them. After firmly attaching himself to her chest, groin and thighs like a second skin, he finally reported.

“No problems on the west side. I set up the thingy just like you said to.”

Hearing him refer to the very technical summoning circle as just a ‘thingy’ filled my heart with some doubts but I chose to just ignore them for now. We had numerous stops we needed to make tonight, and we couldn’t afford to get bogged down in one place too long.

After waiting a few more minutes, I detected a faint glinting like a distant reflexion of the sun from the north side of the giant hole. Seeing this, I took out a little silver mirror that seemed to be glowing with moonlight and flashed it back. Once the other side stopped, I grinned.

“Looks like everything is ready. Let’s go. Try to take out as many as you can before they realise what we’re doing.”

With that, I made a clicking sound with my tongue, and Morbid suddenly launched out of the woods behind me like the shadow of a dark cloud covering the sun. Without hesitation, I reached out and grabbed onto his fur. By the time I’d pulled myself up to his back, he was already halfway to the edge of the encampment around the hole.

Before we even made contact or were noticed, a pillar of light shot up from where Seelie was standing on the hill, distracting the slaves and guards attention towards it. A continuous stream of arrows took advantage of this bizarre distraction as they flew out from the east side of the encampment and started piercing into the legs and arms of anyone that looked even remotely important.

I couldn’t help but be impressed with Xanzu’s skills with a bow. He was indeed a monster of long-range combat, despite being a creature renowned for its cruel and vicious close combat potential.

At the same time, a strange gas began to pour out from the northern forest and billowed into the encampment like a rolling wave. Everyone engulfed by it would collapse to the ground paralysed, and the few strong enough to fight against it quickly found themselves getting a punch in the guts from a grey midget that seemed to be spewing this fog out from various open containers on his body.

Finally, the mesmerising glow of Seelie’s spell faded, and an uncountable number of light rays pierced through the night overhead like lasers, instantly overloading anyone they touched and sending them into a stunned state. Nearly half of the hundreds of guards were struck by this one attack and just started staring off into space as if they were daydreaming.

Someone finally realised that something was very wrong and started screaming; “Attack! We’re under attack!”, at the top of his lungs. Unfortunately, he was quickly silenced when Morbid very unceremoniously arrived at the encampment and stomped him flat.

Seeing a giant hellhound towering as high as the guard towers suddenly appear nearby drove the few remaining conscious guardsmen into a panic and they fled for the only direction of the encampment that wasn’t being attacked.

Seeing them all fleeing in the predetermined direction, I pulled out an old parchment from my inventory and ripped it in half. Just as the scattered remnants of guardsmen were rushing into the woods, an eerie red glow lit up the darkness of the tree line and a resounding roar echoed out.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused an Unhappy Accident! -7 luck.’

“Damnit!”

Although I’d been desperately hoping nothing would go wrong, I should have long since known that Murphy’s law was going to interrupt my plans tonight. I have no idea what ended up being summoned and decided it was better to not find out.

I gathered my party at the edge of the dark abyss and quickly prepared ropes from my inventory as I charismatically started giving out orders.

“Hurry...”

With that, our figures disappeared over the edge as we started to slide down the ropes into the darkness. The pit turned out to be a little deeper than expected. It took nearly 10 minutes for me to reach the bottom and that was at an almost complete free fall.

As I was falling, I suddenly noticed a slight glow of torches and abruptly caught hold of the rope, which immediately dislocated my shoulder from its socket. If not for the quality of the rope, it probably would have snapped. If not for the quality of my body ... it also probably would have snapped.

While dangling from the rope and pressed against the rocky wall, I observed numerous slave whipping guards diligently whipping slaves and uttering derogatory insults towards them. The slaves appeared incredibly malnourished and sickly. How they’d even survived to the point that their bodies could degenerate to this state was a mystery to me.

All the slaves were slightly less diligently hauling sacks of a dirty black ore out from a tunnel almost directly below where I was hanging. As I observed the scene, the remainder of my comrades caught up to me. With a simple nod of acknowledgement to each other, we all dropped the last 15 odd meters into the hole.

The instant I landed, my very much outdated sword of sharpness sung as it was freed from its sheath. I rapidly approached the nearest guard and swung at his fat body.

‘CLANG!’

My sword was deflected by a skilful counterstrike from the guards dirty leather armour ... which barely had a scratch left on it.

‘What the fuck! I can’t even cut through the scum of this quest planet ... I thought the baron was just an exception.’

I quickly retreated as his sword thrust towards me, slicing through the fabric of my meagre black t-shirt and scrapped across my skin like a knife across the surface of a boulder. I barely even got scratched enough to bleed, despite that strike being dead centre with my shoulder.

Seeing the shocked expression of the guard as his sword deflected from my skin, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. Taking advantage of that shock, I shot forward at my fasted speed only to be parried by his leather arm guard ... which was in no way the panicked guards flailing of his arms and was definitely skilful ... otherwise, all the levels I’ve poured into my weapon mastery would be pointless ... right?

Once more I raced in, this time anticipating his ... skilful swordsmanship. Using my body’s absurd levels of endurance to my advantage, I allowed him to deflect my strike with his flimsy looking cotton scarf ... wait ... I mean, he skillfully dodged and hysterically ... eloquently struck back at me, only for me to continue forwards relentlessly. During the moment he seemed to believe he would kill me in a single strike, I too swung my sword once more towards his neck.

To both of our shock, my sword err ... missed again?

‘Stupid fucking cotton scarf ... the thing must be made from dragon silk.’ was definitely not what I was thinking at the time because it would be embarrassing to admit I was thwarted twice by some common fabric worn by a generic low levelled guard.

As I struck, he stabbed into my stomach only for his sword to act as if meeting a solid wall and barely penetrating a mere few millimetres through my skin. As the force of his strike pushed me back, an arrow shot out from nearby and pierced the man’s chest.

I could only watch on helplessly as my skilful foe struggled with gasping breaths and collapsed. When I returned my focus to the surroundings, I noticed the dozen-odd guards nearby had already been killed by the others. It was about this time that I finally realised a fatal flaw with the distribution of my stats and skills.

My offensive ability was absolute shit. Sure, I could take a beating like nobody’s business, but I couldn’t kill anything. Well, not unless I used magic, which despite its convenience I somewhat despised. On top of that my most significant attribute, taking damage, was useless if I kept enough distance to properly use magic from my spell tome.

I now remembered that even the baron had been felled by a single arrow in an instant while I had mindlessly engaged him in combat for nearly half an hour. The moment of realisation must have shown on my face, as all my compatriots looked at me with eyes of pity or encouragement.

“Sigh...”

Juwan, the huge jackass, simply patted my shoulder and laughed as he praised and encouraged me.

“Heheh! I always knew you were a kind spirit little brother. To have spent all your time here training to defend and take damage while everyone else focuses on killing each other. Truly worthy of admiration.”

‘Peh! What admiration! I want to do damage too! It’s not my fault, ok? I’m just too afraid to get better equipment in case I ruin it. And my magic is potent ... mostly ... probably...”

I then also came to a disturbing conclusion, during my internal ranting, that most of my magic was utterly useless. The few spells that actually could harm someone were nowhere near high levelled enough to take out soldiers of Eden, which were quite highly levelled in comparison to other domains we’d visited.

On top of that, many of my other abilities were focused around debuffs and delayed damaged as well. My Luck is entirely fucking unpredictable and even more so when I’m stealing it from other people. My poisons are only useful if they make skin contact or if they breathe them in. If I had no allies with me, I wouldn’t have to worry too much about that, but one slip up and then I’ll be left standing here watching as my teammates dissolved into puddles around me.

This led me to wonder just how much stronger my party was than me. Well, damage wise anyway. When it came to taking a thrashing, I seemed to be unrivalled.

As I was cursing at the world for being so unfair, and ignoring Juwan’s entirely misplaced bragging, I stalked off towards the gloomily lit tunnel all the slaves were dragging bags of ore from. It was only a few minutes of travel and calming down the many frightened and curious slaves until I came to the edge of a large ore vein.

While still slightly upset at having realised just how useless I am in battle, I reached out and began to deprive the ore vein. Slowly but surely, a large black rock with a metallic lustre gradually formed in my hand. This was the geode that this stone was connected to.

On a domain this size, a geode could sprout out veins of ore for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Luckily for me, and thanks to some testing on my own domain, it was apparent that I only needed contact with an ore vein connected to the geode to be able to rob it from the planet.

Once the black geode had fully formed, we quickly started to herd the slaves towards the elevator and rushed them all up to the surface. Using the corpses of the guardsmen, I summoned a group of spawn to lead these hapless chaps back towards the portal.

As the last few refugees were hurried away by my diligent minions, I finally took notice of our surroundings and realised Morbid wasn’t guarding the entrance like I’d expected and had rushed off somewhere. Straining my ears, I finally heard the sounds of roaring and thumping from off in the distance.

I could only assume that Morbid was keeping whatever was unexpectedly summoned busy in the forest somewhere. Letting out a loud whistle, the team gathered up near me in preparation to flee the moment Morbid returned. It wasn’t long before we felt the ground shaking and heard the crisp crack’s echoing from the trees as a house-sized dog launched out of the forest with...

“What in the fuck is that thing?”

Murphy’s party watched on with varying horrified expressions as Morbid raced towards them with a few bleeding gashes and cuts across his snout and body. His left ear had drooped down from a deep laceration, and his teeth were bared in a vicious snarl and covered with black viscous blood.

Following hot on his trail was a small army of black creatures that looked entirely foreign to anything Murphy had seen before. Dozens of them flittered through the trees like ghosts, occasionally disappearing from sight in a puff of black smog that was summoned from their bodies, only to reappear twenty or thirty meters away still running at full speed.

They advanced through the forest and subsequent open field on four long gangly legs, each adorned at the tip with four serrated, jagged talons equally distanced on the foot like an X. Their bodies were completely black, thin and looked half decomposed with various wounds still gaping in their flesh and pouring diseased black blood.

Each and every one of them had an almost unnaturally spherical head armoured with something akin to a chitin carapace, atop a long neck. They sort of looked like a smooth black marble and was completely featureless apart from the ‘jaw’, which was more akin to someone merely having cut the creatures spherical head halfway through and sewed it back together. The wire somehow keeping their heads together seemed to stretch and deform along with the jaw as they opened mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth.

The head almost looked like some kind of disfigured evil Packman. The creature had what could only be a thin dexterous tail. Or more precisely, they each had nearly 7 tails, running along the spine of their back like a Mohawk.

As if this creature wasn’t already disturbing enough, its leathery gaunt skin was covered in pustules that occasionally popped and released a cloud of smog that effectively kept most of the creature hidden from view in the dark of night.

Murphy’s party, after a short moment, to try and comprehend exactly what the creature they were looking at was, burst into action as Morbid arrived. Xanzu was already silently drawing his bow back as Seelie flipped open her tome of magic and began chanting a spell.

Murphy was the fastest to react among them, as he raced forward to embrace the giant sniffling nose of Morbid who was giving him soft whines and growls like a bullied kid, as if he’d somehow been wronged by the world and expected Murphy to enact vengeance for him.

Before Murphy could get adequately enraged at the fact someone had kicked his dog, Xanzu released his bow, and a stream of arrows began to pour forth towards the dozens of shady black monsters. Juwan and Carlson both advanced towards the front of the party to intercept incoming enemies while Lucile and Tuskelly stood close behind them, prepared to start picking off any monsters that left themselves open.

The monsters spread out as they approached, occasionally disappearing in an almost inaudible ‘poof’ of smog and reappearing nearby. They began to circle around the group like vultures, all the while pouring haze from their bodies and slowly engulfing the party in the miasma of smoke.

Xanzu’s arrows, for a rare change, didn’t appear to take any casualties from these creatures, as they passed into the smog and then harmlessly flew out the other side. Presumably, this pollution was some kind of skill innate to these beings, which allowed them to make short distance teleports and sense projectiles.

Considering these creatures all looked like a form of undead, their surprising dexterity and nimbleness could only be attributed to their multiple tails, each allowing the creature an absurd amount of reflexive balancing in their footwork and running.

As they circled around the group, they began to let off an eerie low moan, like an old woman who fell over and couldn’t get up. The most disturbing part about this was that as more and more of the creatures joined in, the moans seemed to resonate with each other causing the ears of the party members to reverberate and begin producing some light vertigo effects.

By this point, Morbid was growling back menacingly. Troublingly, however, he was growling towards the dark forest in the distance and didn’t appear to pay these creatures any mind. This worried Murphy far more than the creepy feeling these monsters gave him. If Morbid the vicious demon dog the size of a house was worried about something in that forest, then, of course, Murphy was doubly concerned.

“We need to leave, right now.” Said Lucile, who amongst them all had the highest danger sense. It was clear from a single glance that something had her hackles raised. If she were in her panther form, she’d most likely have all the hair on her back standing on end right now.

Murphy looked around them at the creatures and then glanced back at the forested hillside they originated from. In the distance, he spotted a dozen of his Minion’s shepherding the slaves away towards the portal.

“We can’t yet. The slaves ... If we leave now, those creatures...”

Seeing the determination on Murphy’s face, everyone in the party knew that Murphy would be unable to abandon those slaves. Although this entire war had the benefit of stealing from a rich quest planet, the people that knew Murphy best were aware that his primary focus for this whole operation was explicitly to free as many slaves as possible.

In addition, being the kind of people that they are, Murphy’s teammates all agreed with his perspective. If they couldn’t even save the first slaves they rescued, what was the point of this war? It would be a total farce.

Seeing the retreating slaves, everyone made gloomy expressions as they focused back on the creatures around them and the encroaching smog. At last, Seelie, who had been chanting some spell this whole time, finally finished and flourished her hands outwards. A mystical light with no visible origin pierced through the dark sky like the sun parting clouds and rained down on them, engulfing the party in a protective glow that slowly spread outwards towards the creatures.

The reverberating and disorientating moan of the monsters became screeches and cries as they quickly leapt back from the circle of sunlight pouring in like a godly reprieve.

Seeing this, Juwan took the initiative and launched himself forwards with a loud battle cry.

‘Ping! War Cry of the Brave has been activated by a party member, all party members receive double damage on first attack against a creature.’

‘Ping! Shield of the Chosen has been activated by a party member, all party damage to party members is reduced by 1/4.’

‘Ping! Aura of Kindness has been activated by a party member, all party members intuitively sense the condition of their comrades.’

‘Ping! Leading the Charge has been activated by a party member, all active skills and spells have mana cost reduced.’

‘Ping! Bearer of Sin has been activated by a party member, please select a party member to receive the following effects. Takes half of all damage given to each individual in the party, gives half of all healing back to party members.’

Before anyone could fully realise what was going on, Juwan slashed his sword towards one of the creatures and cleanly separated one of its legs. He then launched himself backwards with surprisingly nimble steps, considering the bulk of his obnoxiously shiny silver armour, and prepared to start forwards again.

Before he did, however, he let out a long sigh and seemed to fix his face with a half pained half proud expression.

“I’m sorry little brother, but only you can bear the Sins of this pitiful older brother.”

“I elect Murphy Law as the bearer of sins!” He shouted.

Following which, Murphy felt a strange sensation wash over his body. Moments later he felt the usual guilty pleasure of taking damage as Juwan parried a strike from the angered monster, which had enough power behind it to completely lift Juwan from the ground and throw him back nearly 5 feet.

Almost as quickly as Murphy took the damage, his unnaturally high endurance and vitality began to patch him up. Juwan stared at the sky with some shock for a moment as he felt the damage he’d taken already repairing itself. Although it was one thing to witness it, it was totally different to actually experience it. He now realised just how monstrous his brother’s regenerative abilities were.

With Juwan having opened the gates, the other party members didn’t hold back and quickly rushed forth to do battle. It came as a great surprise to them that whatever these creatures were, they were inordinately more powerful than anything they’d battled before. They appeared to be some form of undead and could only be stopped by completely severing their limbs, or striking through the almost impervious chitin armour of their heads.

To make matters worse, the creature’s speed and strength dwarfed everyone in the party apart from Morbid, whose power is hard to overshadow even for mythos level creatures like dragons. Unfortunately, Although Morbid was capable of squishing them flat or rending them to pieces with his claws and fangs, he was just too big to catch them.

Murphy, in a somewhat unsatisfied manner, was forced into the centre by his cohorts, each explaining that he had essentially been designated the role of debuffer and healer. They couldn’t afford for him to take more damage than he already received from them, and he only really had time to use his powerful debuffs when he was outside of direct confrontation.

Unfortunately, Murphy soon came to realise that he was virtually useless against a regular undead creature like this. Of his spells, apart from direct attacking spells, the only debuffs that worked were ‘Rampage’ and ‘Just Wait a Moment, So I Can Scream the Name of my Ultimate Move’. ‘Soul Inferno’ doesn’t affect a creature without a soul, and the Blood Fly’s only really worked on creatures that actually had ‘Life’ to feed on life force.

Amongst all his other magic the only other practical spells were ‘Void Prism’ and ‘Shadow Tentacle’. Neither of which would be particularly useful considering ‘Void Prism’ trapped something in another plane of existence, meaning it can’t actually take damage and well ... dick shaped shadow tentacles should be self-explanatory. That would never be a thing Murphy used in any situation ... ever. Even if it could save all of existence ... not ever.

This left him occasionally throwing elemental magic about the place and slowing the creature just as Xanzu’s arrow was about to enter their weird smog, making it incapable of adequately dodging. Murphy was feeling particularly useless today.

The only spell this left available to him was ‘Ello’ Poppet’, which was a spell he generally disliked using out of pure distaste for the act of controlling another being against its will. However, considering these creatures were mindless undead, it may be the only thing he’d ever willingly use this spell on.

This thought in mind, he flipped his ... unconventional spell book on the right page and began the most protracted chant out of all of his spells.

As Murphy was distracted, Seelie was doing more actual hands-on combat than him, busily swinging her huge door-sized sword about the place like an oversized guillotine. As the light encompassing them pressed outwards, the smog of the creatures seemed to shrink back in fear of it and Seelie would freely fire off some simple combat spells at any complacent monster that was exposed.

Carlson intercepted another monster that used its strange teleport ability to try and get the drop on the concentrating Murphy, throwing out a point-blank punch just after the air distorted and it appeared in the middle of their group. With and inhumane screech it was flung back out into the miasma, one of its thin black legs dangling uselessly and being slowly eating away by some kind of poison that apparently even killed already dead things.

At last, Murphy had completed the abhorrently long chant of the Ello’ Poppet spell and pointed his finger to his forehead while his eyes locked onto a monster currently stuck to Morbid back and digging it’s disgusting claws in trying to rip out his incredibly sturdy flesh.

For a brief moment, the creature froze entirely and dropped lifelessly to the ground like a statue, its legs twitching unnervingly in the air. It then suddenly sprung back up to its feet and raced into the smog. Seeing this action, everyone briefly glanced at Murphy, who was currently standing in the middle of them all with his eyes closed with a look of complete concentration.

Moments later they head a strange “Skree!” echo out within the fog and witnessed the previous smog monster pushing another creature out of the smog into the light as they both battled fiercely and bit and clawed at each other.

Being the more experienced adventurers of the group, Xanzu and Lucile didn’t miss the chance to take advantage. 3 Arrows seemed to appear like magic in the neck of the creature being pushed out, and Lucile swept over it with her body spinning like a top as her razor sharp claws rend the flesh from the other side of its neck.

It was only after many long minutes of fighting these creatures back that they finally slew one completely. The moment this beast died, Murphy focused in on it like a buzzard. With a wave of his hand, the crushed and battered corpse exploded in a gory mess of fragmented remains and a red portal opened, releasing a handful of savage looking minions all outfitted in snazzy new armour.

Somehow, despite these armours and weapons being custom crafted in the forge for these spawn, they somehow managed to customise them further to make them appear as chaotic and vile as possible. Broken skulls adorned the shoulder pads, and leather parts seemed to have been ... chewed on. The equipment all looked to have been soaked in blood until each of them was dark black with a red sheen.

Strangely, many of the spawn continued to use their little obsidian daggers that Murphy was now convinced they must be born with, and many others had their weapons crafted from this material instead of opting for standard metals. Murphy wasn’t sure what their obsession with this strange black material was, and nor did he have time to care at the moment.

As soon as the minions were summoned they shot into battle like arrows from a bow. Many of this group were highly levelled and had, if not three, then two evolutions. These were all body type evolutions, and these spawn carried Murphy’s strength and endurance stats. The moment they moved to the outskirts of the pervasive light, the pressure on the other members of the party reduced significantly.

These little spawn were most assuredly little demons, each with even more sinister and brutal methods of battle then the last. They were also tenacious to an ungodly level, even persisting on after losing an arm or leg. If they were totally disarmed, they still continued on, going so far as to crawl across the ground with their chin and body and trying to bite the legs of the creatures in the dark smog.

Having finally summoned reinforcements, the battle drastically came to a close thanks to Murphy continually summoning more spawn with every dead enemy. It was another ten minutes later that the group stood in the field, bathing in the glorious ethereal light surrounded by the corpses of dozens of smog monsters and groups of battered and beaten Spawn.

True to my many ministrations, the Spawn diligently began the most critical task after any gruelling battle. Looting. As was taught to them either personally by me or to their parents and in some cases grandparents, the spawn industriously began ripping the corpses of these creatures to pieces, taking anything even remotely useful or what looked like it would make an excellent addition to the Spawn Feng Shui of their ... den?

At least, I assume that’s what they call the places they sleep or ... well, whatever it spawns do down there in the ground. It’s not ominous at all that I occasionally hear them making almost religious sounded chanting down there. Yep, probably shouldn’t focus on those things.

Instead, I return to focus on the battle that just happened. First of all, what the hell was with all those crazy buffs? Seriously? Juwan you stupid piece of shit! Can’t you be less OP? And what the hell was that Bearer of Sins crap? Isn’t it too coincidental that it aligns so well with my build? Did you create a skill just to personally target me?

Ahh ... I’m doing it again. Ok, calm down. Let’s not be angry at him over this. But seriously ... I should double check.

“Did ... was ... you create that skill?”

Ahh just look at the smug expression. Why are you looking so fucking smug you bastard?

“Sure did. I’m sorry little brother. I wanted to try and make a skill that could help you but creating a skill is really hard, and it turned out nothing like what I wanted.”

Why are you looking so apologetic now? Just stop that you sicko! Bastard! Damnit! So jealous! I mean, Seelie told me about customised skills, but that’s only something you hear about from ancient players that have been in the game for a long time. Even Alton, who’s lived his entire life in this game only has a few self-created skills.

Huuu ... just calm down. I really need to focus. Hmm. Let’s focus on the other most important part of that battle. Let’s see, what was that message I received...

‘Ping! You have created a contract with the Demon Shadow Race, Cuddly’s.’

‘Ping! New innate spell, Summon Cuddly.’

Just ... I mean ... well ... what in the fuck is a Cuddly? Surely it can’t be...

You know what ... no matter how long I stare at this undead smog creature, I will never be able to associate it with something I want to cuddle. In fact, I don’t even what to let one of these things even remotely close enough to make physical contact with me.

I guess the only way to know is to summon one and find out. It’s not like there’s a short supply of dead bodies nearby.

As the exhausted party consumed some healing potions and rested for a brief moment, and the numerous Spawn were hacking apart the undead creatures nearby, Murphy continued to stare at the undead ‘pet’ he had taken control of during the battle. It was standing nearby him as if like a guard, covered in numerous mostly superficial wounds and spewing noxious smog from throbbing pustules every now and again, ensuring its body remained mostly shrouded.

Despite that, the other party members kept well clear of the creature, the only exception being Seelie who was quizzically probing it with all sorts of strange investigatory spells and Murphy who seemed to be struggling with some kind of inner turmoil, almost as if something about the creature battled against everything he excepted about reality.

If it weren’t for his facial expressions still changing now and again, everyone would have thought that its very existence may have broken him.

At last, after an indeterminate amount of what appeared to be constipation, Murphy seemed to resolve himself to the fact that this creature actually existed and then pointed his hand at a nearby corpse. In the usual scene of completely unnecessary gore and floating body parts, a demon gate appeared.

Unlike usual, instead of being completely red, this gate had a purple outer edge to the swirling light. More unlike usual, nothing seemed to come out from the other side, and the portal just remained floating there, orbited by various rotting body parts.

It took nearly a minute before a ball of black wool tentatively poked out from the gate and glanced about, which was pointless considering the ball of wool had no visible features and was mainly just a ball of wool, not having eyes in other words.

The wool ball then locked onto Murphy and as if seeing its own mother rapidly left the portal, followed behind by the rest of its body, which was equally as woolly. It looked entirely like a massive ball of fluffy, soft cotton wool, with another ball half-hardy attached to it to represent its head. The ball of wool seemed to bounce along the ground in a very cheerful manner as it joyfully approached Murphy. It then proceeded to start rubbing itself on him very affectionately.

Everyone could only watch in on complete mystification as Murphy blankly stared down at the ball of wool that came up to his chest height and was now making a sound that was eerily close the moaning that those earlier creatures were making. He then seemed to glance at the smog monster and scrutinise its thin, gangly body and tough leathery skin and then look back at the huge ball of cotton in front of him.

“Nope. Nope. Nopenopenope. Can’t even ... not even ... just ... Nope.”

He then proceeded to push the ball of wool back into the portal it came from and rapidly closed it behind it.

Finally, Lucile couldn’t hold it in anymore and asked the question on everyone’s tongue.

“What ... the ... fuck ... was that thing?”

“Demon ... sheep?” replied Murphy, seemingly also unsure about what the ball of wool was.

Once again, the only sound that could be heard was the sound of the Spawn fighting over Packman heads as the party stared incredulously at Murphy. Murphy could only count his blessings that the spawn hadn’t witnessed their great and mighty overlord summoning a giant ball of cotton. Not because he was worried about his image, but more because he knew of their penchant to quickly fall in love with fluffy things, as can be attested to by their sheer joy when Morbid is too tired to try and eat them and they all crowd around hugging him.

If they witnessed this creature, he’d be forced into summoning them by the spawn, which he couldn’t say no to at the best of times. He can only imagine what kind of havoc would be unleashed on his domain if the spawn ever learned of these creatures.

“Why is that a question? Didn’t you just summon that thing?” It seemed Murphy wasn’t the only one having trouble with the absurdity of the situation as Lucile once again broke the silence.

“Well...” Murphy then pointed at the undead creature still oozing foul smog, and then shrugged.

“Oh no ... Nope. Nopenopenope.”

Apparently, Murphy wasn’t the only one completely broken by this experience as Lucile also started chanting his earlier mantra, quickly followed by everyone else’s eyes going wide in disbelief and similarly breaking.

“That’s not even...”

“How can something ... that’s...”

“Definitely not.”

The only one that didn’t seem to be muttering to themselves and completely unable to accept the situation was Seelie. Her eyes were quietly boring a hole through the back of Murphy’s head, as if expecting him to reveal that this was all a prank and this farce would quickly be exposed by him if she just stared him to death right here and now.

Murphy was the first to come back to his senses as he glanced at Morbid who was still wearily watching the distance forests.

“We ... should go.” Murphy said as he summoned another portal and sent all the Spawn back.

As if this was a lifeline thrown to drowning men, everyone quickly agreed and raced back to the mountain they initially arrived on and saddled up Morbid. Despite what appeared to be somewhat severe wounds, Morbid’s vitality was even more beastly than Murphy’s, and by the time they’d set out to their next destination for tonight’s raids, most of his injuries appeared to have healed up.

Except his ear, which although it was healed, remained folded and drooping slightly like some kind of permanent scar. Somehow, it only made him even more endearing to Murphy ... despite being a vicious house sized war machine.

Meanwhile, as the team were rapidly making their way towards another distant resource Murphy was hoping to acquire, an amorphous cloud of smog floated out from the forests and settled in the air overlooking the battlefield.

It simply hovered there for a few moments before shooting off into the direction Murphy had left with astonishing speed after leaving behind the echo of a quiet deathly and aged whisper.

“How interesting...”

I alone stand atop the mountain of corpses lain bare at my feet. No, not a mountain, but a church ... an altar. I’ve long since lost track of the years I’ve been serving my lord in this intrepid ‘game’. Nonetheless, here I stand, in a church so monumental it holds nearly an eighth of the entire planet’s population.

Foolish and blind mortals as they are, will never realise that everything I have built here, everything that has been raised up with the bodies of our enemies as its foundation, is but a fleeting and inconsequential thing in the eyes of our Lord. This planet is only one of many, of millions of other domains all cultivated with the single purpose of feeding the Holy God ... well, one of the Holy Gods.

After all, even my Lord can’t fathom the extent of this game, where gods are as common as grass and devil kings like leaves of a tree. In the visions He sends me, I am always humbled. Just when I believe my concept of this ‘Domain Warz’ can’t be shaken, He shatters it again. I know I am not alone, there are many ‘Lesser Clergymen’ like myself, trying to rise through the ranks of our Great One’s religious structure, and like me, these other clergies have witnessed the magnitude of our Lord’s vision across the vast expanse of domains.

Truly one cannot express the feeling of being so ... completely and utterly insignificant. But then again, that is the point I think. The point of this game, is to become something that is without limit. To achieve a level of power that is beyond that of even the God’s. Just as my Lord tries to accomplish as well.

“Haaaa ... I should focus more on the things at hand.”

Let’s see ... what was I doing before I started staring out this bloody window? Ah, that’s it.

“What is the situation with the Young Domain Lord?”

The Pope finally snapped out of his thoughts and returned his focus to the gathered Cardinals gathered in the meeting room around him. At his question, all of them suddenly went quiet and stared at something seemingly fascinating on the roof or in their hands.

At the continued silence, the Pope could only sigh and focus on his most trusted aide and friend. Seeing the Pope looking at him, said Cardinal gave a gruff grunt and stared daggers of promised retribution at his incompetent peers.

“The Depriver remains unfound. We aren’t sure how he’s doing it, but for the past 4 days he and his cohorts have managed to infiltrate various smaller kingdoms and we’re even receiving reports from the forest of Holy Beasts that he’s been enacting assassinations throughout the forest on Unicorns and Fairies.

“According to reports, he hasn’t shown his face on the central battlefront in the Hoperfill county since this whole debacle began. More disturbing than this is the willpower of his forces battling on the front lines. Although we could easily crush them with numbers, they seem to have levelled significantly in the past few days, and we require numbers greater than their own to keep them suppressed, even the Holy Knights are starting to have trouble. Also, every attempt to capture one of them has resulted in them smashing some strange potion causing them instant death and evaporating their body.

“We’ve discovered his filthy hand has been snatching up various important resources, to the point where nearly 3 entire empires on opposite sides of the planet have been cleared out of geodes and spawn points. He’s even taking important structures from the capital cities which have taken generations of followers to build. The little bastard has even started taking our Places of Worship!”

At this, his gruff old companion finally lost the barely concealed rage and smashed his fist into the marble table in front of him, completely obliterating it, along with the floor below, which was filled with various clergymen praying and chanting rituals to their God.

All the other Cardinals rapidly back peddled from the sudden hole in the floor and looked at the cranky old Enforcer with slightly mixed expressions.

“Come now Tor, there’s no need to get worked up. The battlefront is inconsequential now. Don’t bother feeding any more soldiers into that endeavour. It is apparent we have failed to properly evaluate the craftiness of this young fellow and have vastly underestimated his economic prowess, either that or the abilities of the deprive skill. After all, the only way for him to strike so many places so quickly is to close and reform portals in these places by chance. This is actually a boon for us.”

Being the youngest of the Cardinals and least experienced, Cardinal Lachaust spoke his confusion plainly.

“A boon my Lord? Would it not be more difficult to capture such a slippery scumbag using the portals so freely?”

The Pope just smiled meaningfully and turned back to overview his planet from the window of his mounta ... err ... Cathedral. Seeing this, the other Cardinals all lowered their heads in thought until Barllo, the biggest and burliest of the lot suddenly slammed his fist into his palm.

“Of courthe! He’th trying to uthe the thystem mechanicth to outwit uth. But the thythtem ith dethigned to athitht the domainth. That meanth we can uthe the Domain thythtem to trap him!”

Everyone thimply ... err ... simply cringed slightly, as Barllo tried to explain. Seeing the confusion on the others faces and Barllo about to launch into another explanation, an older Cardinal with thickly rimmed glasses interceded to spare everyone the trauma.

“If he’s using system based portals to get around, then we can intercept them with the domain authority. Although Holy Eden has dozens of new portals open on it daily, if it’s a direct portal that only connects to Eden then we can simply redirect them all to the dungeon.”

Tor grinned like a savage wolf as he began barking orders to everyone. The Pope continued to stare across the vast expanse spread out below him, and the other cardinals started to prepare their trap. Operation: Surprise Buttsex ... err perhaps not. Let’s go with Operation: Wrong Hole ... err ... Operation: Portal Trap. Let’s go with that.