After falling through the empty black void towards the distant light for well over five minutes, Murphy came to the conclusion that he was, in fact, not getting that much closer to it.

He also came to the conclusion that the void he was falling through wasn’t quite as empty as he’d previously thought. It wasn’t anything specific that gave him that impression. More an amalgamation of clues. For starters, the odd sound now and then, which somehow managed to only barely be on the very edge of his hearing, even with his impressive senses.

Then there was the odd sensation of seeing something out of the corner of his eye that he couldn’t quite catch. The shadow in his vision, naturally, fled back into the darkness the moment he tried to turn and spot it. Even after throwing some fireballs about the place, he still couldn’t see anything.

The fireballs didn’t illuminate anything at all, regardless of how far away from him he through them. That said, it did allow him to be certain he was still falling. After throwing them about the place, he managed to surround himself with a cluster of a hundred odd fireballs that were all falling at the same speed as him except at varying distances around him.

Silently thanking Galileo, the long-dead pre-apocalypse polymath scholar, Murphy tried to focus his senses in an attempt to find whatever it was that was disturbing him. This was unnecessary though, because just as he was closing his eyes to focus his hearing, a glint not dissimilar to metal catching light flashed out from the darkness of the void.

Then, almost as soon as he’d noticed it, a flying sword blew through a handful of his fireballs and stabbed him in the thigh. The most disturbing part of this was that his high endurance didn’t seem to be capable of defending him at all. Even more disconcerting was the manner in which the sword then dislodged itself from his thigh and retreated back into the darkness.

Murphy didn’t even have time to react. He just silently stared at his rapidly repairing leg with wide eyes. Only for a brief moment though, as his ears picked up the cry of hundreds of swords being unsheathed in the darkness, beyond the light of his makeshift flaming lanterns.

“It’s fresh meat! Fresh meat!” A voice echoed from the void, sounding like an echo of a child and sword being unsheathed at the same time.

“Hahaha! I, Shiniest of shining swords, shall claim this being as my sword puppet!”

“Nay! This sword puppet shall be miinneeee.”

Voices of all different backgrounds began to ring out around Murphy. ‘What the fuck is a sword puppet?’ he wondered to himself.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity to ponder on it long as thousands of swords began surging out from the void towards him. His fire lanterns exploding in a conflagration of red light before the void collapsed in around him in the wake of a tide of flying swords.

“What the fuck?”

Murphy hardly had the time to react before the fastest of the swords had already blown past him, cutting tiny slices from his flesh. The first wave of swords was so fast that his Deflect skill didn’t even seem to register them as projectiles until they were gone, making him look like a jerky stop-motion that was jumbled up and clipped together haphazardly.

His sword would swing to deflect a sword only half a second after it already passed.

‘Fuck! I’m going to be diced to pieces.’ Murphy thought to himself as he watched the next wave of swords rapidly approaching him, consisting of thousands of larger and slower swords. The problem was, while he couldn’t deflect those fast swords, they only numbered in the hundreds, and his body was able to easily keep up.

With a wave of thousands of huge 2-metre long bastard swords and thick great swords however, he suspected that even if his deflect could help him, the sheer number of projectiles would drown him in rusty iron before he’d even diverted a dozen swords.

Murphy looked down at his own sword with a furrowed brow. Although he didn’t manage to deflect any of those earlier swords, he did clip a few. Imagine his shock and surprise when he discovered chips had been gauged out of his supposedly invincible sword.

Obviously, I can account for the big bite impression in the side as my deprive mana, but why the fuck are all these other random swords chipping away at this piece of shit.

What invincible sword? This is a wooden tooth pick!

“Wheewww.”

With a long exhale, I calm myself down slightly and focus on the incoming sword tide. I may have no choice but to completely unleash my deprive skill again, but I’m slightly afraid. If I lose control again, what’s to say I won’t completely deprive myself of a body and soul?

I slowly start releasing deprive mana form my body, expecting it to start spreading out in waves like previous times. To my surprise, no deprive mana leaves my body at all. With a furrowed brow I look at my hands and realise that mana is leaving my body, just nothing like it normally does.

Instead, it’s all pouring out through my hand, seemingly getting sucked up by my sword which is now glowing an ominous dark purple.

“Shwinngggg”

It almost sounds like the sword is crying out as it starts vibrating rapidly.

“Ah shit.” I got distracted with my crappy sword, and now I’m about to be engulfed by the...

As the sword wave approached within half a metre of Murphy, it looked from his view like a curving wall of sharp metal completely surrounding him from every direction.

Just as he half expected to die, his sword hand jerked back into a guard position then flicked his sword out, making it start spinning rapidly. Murphy felt a burst of expectations and hope fill him, only to seconds latter lose sight of the sword as he was completely engulfed by the wave of metal.

A loud screeching of metal sounded out and a shockwave of air blasted out from the giant ball of flying swords attempting to skewer the new visitor to their domain. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, there were so many swords crowding into a single space that they somehow managed to all get into each other’s way at the critical moment.

This created a rather awkward scene as Murphy tentatively opened his eyes to see thousands of swords stuck only a few centimetres from his body. All of them buzzing angrily and trying to be the first one to dash forward and skewer Murphy, but being compressed together into a solid wall due to so many of them fighting for the same chance.

“Fuck! Get out of my way Glorious Roaving Sword!”

“Stop pushing! Argh!! Stop pushing! I’m made of softer metals! You all are compressing my soft body!”

“Get out of the way up front! That there is my sword puppet! Move aside!”

“Who just touched my hilt?! Get off me you pervert! Stop! No! Do you believe this lady sword here won’t self-explode if you keep vibrating against me like-OH! Mmm ... never mind. Just ... ooohh ... go a bit to the right!”

“PILE ON! IT’S A PILE ON! EVERYONE GET IN HERE!”

Murphy’s eyebrows raised slightly as all the swords started saying strange things to each other. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this situation. Especially the idea that swords could do ‘that’ with each other. Then he started wondering just where the hell his sword was.

After a brief inspection, he found it directly above his head stuck halfway into the sword wall. It must have been trying to protect his head or something?

“Heh heh! You won’t be getting out this way little sword brother. Trying to make your escape under the eyes of yours truly! Humph!”

“Shwiinggg!” His sword violently vibrated as it kept trying to move. It could neither move forward or retreat backwards.

Murphy was quite glad about that, especially considering if his sword moved from the wall it would probably collapse in on top of him. He then reached a hand out and pushed it against a sword, watching with horrified amazement as he discovered the sword was so sharp he didn’t even feel as it sliced three of his fingers off.

“Haha! Take that you stupid puppet! I may be the bluntest sword in this sword domain but I can still take three of your fingers without even moving! HAHAHA! Fear not! Once you have been eviscerated, I shall claim you as my puppet and put your bits back together!”

Murphy looked at his hand, then glanced around himself at the wall of swords. After a few seconds, his fingers grew back and his eyes lit up as they focused back on the sword which claimed to be the dullest blade here.

With glee written on his face, he willingly reached out both hands and started vigorously touching it’s blade.

“Eh? Wait! What are you ... oh god! Stop! You’re going to rust my blade with all this blood! Stop! Oh god! How can that be possible!”

“What is that puppet doing over there?”

“He looks to be ... self-mutilating?”

“Oh god! That’s disgusting! He’s not even trying to cut himself properly! This is an affront to us sharper swords!”

“That’s right! You have to hit that other part of your arm with a sword to cut it completely!”

“Hey guys? Why is their so much blood pooling up down here on us bottom swords? Is there something going on up there?”

“Argh! I’m blind! The blood is completely covering my blade!”

Murphy’s eye’s looked like lanterns as the excited gleam within became a roaring fire! Once his fingers were gone, he started with his hands. When they had been sliced to bits he started with the wrists, then arms.

Once he had completely carved off his shoulders, Murphy went to scratch his back and then sighed. He’d lost a lot of blood and was probably going to pass out if he kept going without giving his body a chance to heal.

He looked down and realised the circular room made of swords he was in must be falling at the same speed as him, because he was still floating right in the middle of it, about half a foot above an ankle-high pool of blood.

This made Murphy slightly nervous.

“If we reach the bottom and I’m still as soft as right now, won’t the sword sphere explode and kill me?”

Gritting his teeth, Murphy angled his body slightly and used a foot to very gently push himself towards the wall behind himself. Almost immediately his back became heaven as his body was filled with pleasure. Hundreds of pointy blades very slowly started to sink into his body from behind like dropping a block of butter on heated skewers.

There was literally zero resistance from his body. Murphy became completely oblivious to the world around him as the swords pierced right through and his eyes rolled back into his head. Now and again his hips would jerk about making the swords slice him up a bit more.

“What in the fuck is going on? Hey you guys over there, what did you do to my sword puppet?! He’s gone all weird!”

“We didn’t do shit! Oi, move over so I can go have a look!”

“Oh sure, I’ll just push these other 40 thousand swords piled onto of me to the side so I can give you some space, you stupid piece of shit!”

“Ohhh yesssssss!”

“God damnit! Who told lusty sword about this gathering! This was warrior swords only!”

“Fuck off with your warrior swords only! Every sword in the fucking domain is here right now!”

Time passed slowly as blood dribbled out of the jerking body of Murphy. The swords continued to bicker and argue with each other, but none agreed to back off. Instead, the thousands of sword all continued to pile on and started pushing harder.

This resulted in the giant ball of swords slowly compressing, hundreds of weaker swords being completely shattered, their sword spirit’s being gobbled up to strengthen their competitive brothers. The problem was, the majority of swords that grew stronger were at the front, so while they encroached slightly closer to Murphy, the pushing sword from behind couldn’t continue to pressure them, resulting in another stalemate of sorts.

By now, Murphy was skewered on the tips of swords from all sides. Even if he were in a situation where he could move, it would only be to move onto the edge of another sword. The various swords impaling him hummed and vibrated now and again as they tried to slice his body apart.

This stalemate continued on for half a day and the blood draining from Murphy’s body had already filled the space he was in up to his waist. Then something finally changed.

“Hey! What are you doing? Stop pushing back!”

“Who’s pushing back?! Cut that out! You’re going to help out those bastards on the other side!”

“I-I’m not! It’s ... the puppet is pushing me back!”

“What!”

“Impossible!”

“Nonsense!”

“Oh! Not the grip! Ooooo...”

While the swords started breaking out in a cacophony of nonsense once more and the Lust Swords were taking advantage, Murphy’s body was rapidly trying to patch itself up and slowly rejecting the foreign bits of steel sticking into it.

It has to be said that had the swords not been continuously vibrating and trying to sashimi Murphy, he most likely would have eventually died from the fatigue caused by his body regenerating all the lost blood. They just would have been forced to wait slightly longer.

Unfortunately, the swords were unaware of Murphy’s disturbing penchant for adapting to various life-threatening damages, so had unintentionally been exacerbating his body’s strange talents the whole time. Now it was too late for them to cry, as Murphy’s body had reached the state in which it was sturdy enough to take the punishments of the unmoving swords. Even the vibrating swords could only be slowly forced back.

It was at this time that Murphy finally awoke from his disturbing pleasure coma. The satisfied feeling of starving to death struck him almost as quickly as he opened his eyes. He felt like he was about to fall into a food coma, which was quite the opposite of how his body should have been screaming for sustenance.

Knowing by this point the intricacies of his own suffering, Murphy forced his arm through a series of blades until he could reach his mouth and started stuffing as much food and water as he possibly could from his inventory into his mouth. At the same time, he pondered where exactly his body was getting the resources to produce so much blood.

Ignoring the inconsistency of his body, Murphy then turned his attention to his supposedly legendary sword that was currently stuck between other swords just above his head. While forcing a glowing mushroom into his mouth that seemed to be dripping caustic acid, Murphy squinted at the sword.

Finally, after half an hour he had emptied his inventory of nearly everything he deemed edible and his body’s repair had sped up considerably, even causing a few of the weaker swords stuck in him to shatter or bend from the pressure of his body forcing them out.

After some finicking with his arm again, and having sliced various bits of meat from himself as he tried to navigate the hundreds of swords skewering his body, his hand finally got in a good position to reach out for his sword.

As I reached out for my sword, I let the deprive mana within me flow from ... well, where ever the hell it comes from. My soul, or my body fat, or maybe from indigestion. Who can say? Probably Seelie, and it’s likely she’s told me before, but I’m not ... remembering of stuff. Anyway, who really cares apart from people who love the science of magic? Not me, obviously.

Argh! Fuck these fucking swords. They don’t seem to appreciate my deprive mana, so now they’re all just vibrating as hard as they can and it feels so good! I really think I need to find a curse that turns pleasure into pain. Surely such a thing exists. It sounds like something those whack job sinister magic user’s would come up with.

Oh? What’s that you say? I’m a sinister magic user? Shut up conscience! Magic is a tool. Just because it was created by bad people to do bad things doesn’t make me bad if I’m using it to help people!

No! Obviously, I’d never use those really horrendous curses! Just because a tool is mindless doesn’t mean it isn’t destructive. A plasma bomb is completely indiscriminate for example. In almost no situation is wiping out thousands of square kilometres of land going to be an acceptable loss/gain scenario. Although, perhaps things could be considered a little different in this world. After all...

No! I can’t think like that. Next thing you know I’ll just be unleashing blood fly plagues in unsuspecting cities for the experience points. Or worse, using the puppet curse to create an army of unwilling servants.

Whew. Need to focus! The pleasure of my body being slowly eviscerated is making me dizzy. I don’t normally have my deprive energy active, mostly because it’s fucking frightening. Now and again when I’m practising with it, it will flare up violently for no discernible reason. While I may appear to be mostly immune to it, I am in fact not at all immune to it.

Namely being that it deprives me of the use of all others skills and mana types, and if it’s feeling particularly excitable, I might even start having stats be gobbled up into my deprive energy.

That’s not too much of a problem when I’m alone, because the energy all comes back to me eventually and everything I’m deprived of once more becomes mine. In a dangerous situation though, for example when surrounded by countless violent psycho flying swords, I may end up dying and bleeding out from a simple cut because my stats have been so dramatically weakened.

It was only recently I’ve been having this issue though. Specifically ever since that kiss. That one, amazing, life-changing kiss.

Well, I may be exaggerating it a little bit, but who can honestly say they weren’t changed by their first real kiss with a girl. Ok, that may be over exaggerating again. I understand nothing about these things. I honestly expected to die alone, quietly bleeding out on the roadside after being hit by another car.

Which now makes me wonder about how things are going on earth. Half my adoptive family has followed me in here and now I can’t get rid of them, while the other half probably haven’t even realised I’m gone. I should definitely go back and see how things are going on good old Earth.

But then I’d lose something like ... great sage! I’d lose days of game time! So much time wasted in reality? Like hell! Although I really need to go back to finish my higher level studies enrolment and choose something to learn, otherwise Uncle Calligso may start practising those wrestling moves he’s been trying out on Morbid. I’m sure I could take it well enough, but I really don’t want to pop a boner while wrestling with my adoptive father. I have enough social scars as it is.

NNGHH! Sigh. There I go again. I think I’m starting to build up an unimaginable tolerance for pleasure, which is one of the reasons I’ve been avoiding anything more with Seelie.

Ok, that’s a bold-faced lie. Although now that I’ve had that thought, I really am starting to worry about that. Sure, the whole evil sociopathic monster lurking in your soul thing was my initial reason, after all, if we go further and get any more attached, she might end up doing something stupid if I don’t make it past my 18th. While that’s not as much an issue now that I sucked that bit of me out, I am strangely opposed to not eventually going through with the Tribulation.

It contains my birthright after all. Even now, with every passing day the Tribulation rests on a wristband around my arm, I feel the desire to undergo it rising. I often find myself just sitting and staring at it when I have free time.

Regardless, that is the main reason I have been running away from Seelie whenever things get heavier than our tongues touching. Now, however, I am very afraid that my numbing sense in regards to pleasure will result in Seelie feeling like she can’t please me ... which she may not be able to without a large array of sharp weapons and violent spells. Already I’m at a stage where only sentient level magical artefacts can harm me, which alternatively gives me pleasure. I’m not even sure if I can feel normal pleasure anymore.

Maybe I should run off to the Predator Universe and rub one out in the forest like a savage? Just to be sure that it still works that way. Also to release some of the building pressure from Seelie’s constant advances. I often can’t even think about her without immediately getting hard anymore. Especially after she started pouring in memories of what she’s doing by herself every time she touches me! I’ve never even taken her clothes off in person, and I could probably trigger her orgasm in less than a minute.

Oh no! I just realised that this may have all been a cleverly disguised ploy to train me up like some common dog! She knows exactly what to do to get herself off, and she’s made sure I know what to do ... Even a simple creature will learn after seeing various repeated scenes thousands of times.

Great Sage help me! Sigh. I sure have been saying that a lot lately. I didn’t even really know anything about the great sage before Seelie mentioned it. Now I seem to be praying to this intangible myth frequently.

Maybe I should pray to something else? No. That is probably a bad idea. Given the nature of this world, praying to anything is probably a bad idea. Last thing I need is to be giving away power to some nut job ruling dozens of worlds in slavery and despotism like that Holy Light God fellow from Eden.

Nearly there! Just a few more millimetres!

Gotchya!

With a gentle hum, the faint purple energy flowed from Murphy into his sword. Almost immediately, the half dozen swords it was stuck between began screaming as they were disintegrated by the deprive energy flowing through the plain looking blade, all the raw materials being almost simultaneously sucked into the blade of the sword like pebbles falling into a pond.

Then everything suddenly started moving again. The hundreds of swords in direct contact with Murphy’s body were already slowly being turned into their constituent materials by virtue of his depriving mana, each and every one of them fighting to try and either eviscerate him with just the bit he was touching or back away as quickly as possible.

With a gap being created in the giant ball of swords, the sheer pressure of the swords behind started to collapse the sword ball like a deflating balloon. Murphy’s deprive energy ticked again and a huge gush of it started filling the pool of his blood he’d been floating in, along with every sword touching it by proxy.

Swords started screaming and yelling in pain all around him as more of the flying bastards poured in like rain through the gap.

Murphy started whipping his swords around over his head and watched on with shock as it sliced through everything it touched, leaving the remains too slowly deteriorate into various precious materials behind it, which it inevitably gobbled up on the next swing back.

The more it ate, the heavier, sharper and more balanced it became.

It never actually changed shape or design, apart from the bite mark Murphy guiltily tried to ignore, which seemed to have filled itself in after just the first sword it gobbled up. It was now obvious why this sword was advertised as an indestructible sword.

Most likely, as long as even a speck of it remained, it would be capable of absorbing more materials with the help of Murphy’s deprive skill. Murphy found himself wondering just what sort of miraculous material this sword was made from, and how in the hell that crazy old Smith got his hands on it.

As far as he was aware, the only thing that wasn’t deprived by his skill was his own body, though even that defensive mechanism had been on the fritz lately. Which brought him to start wondering what happened to the various limbs he’d been losing when sparing with his adoptive father as of late.

Being momentarily distracted by this quandary, Murphy missed it when he received a notification from the system.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused a tremendous accident. -233 Luck.’

It was only when he started hearing strange voices coming from outside the giant sword ball he refocused on the moment and noticed the message.

“Oi guys! Check i’ out! Looks like a big ol’ sword orgy over ‘ere!”

“Oh? Quick, send a pulse. Can’t believe them swords left us all out o’ this!”

“Wait! You sure you wanna to do dat? I mean, what if them polearms or war hammers come over ‘ere. You know what they’s like. Total freaks!”

“Too late now. I awready sent out da pulse. At least if we ge’ in now, we can enjoy ourself’s ‘fore they rock up!”

These voices were all significantly different in comparison to the voices of the swords. The swords all spoke with an airy noble atmosphere and seemed to use proper speech. The new voices all sounded rather brutish and savage. Murphy didn’t get the chance to figure out what was going on though, because following a whistling noise a huge serious of clanks rang out and the entire sword sphere rumbled.

“Hey der sword bro’s. We axe boyz want some of dis action aye.”

“Fuck! Get out of here you dirty axe plebians! This is a sword gathering! Go and find your own weapon puppet!”

“What you say? Weapon puppet? Uh oh...”

“What do you mean uh-oh?”

“Oh hey! Did I hear something about a weapon puppet over here?”

“Fuck! It’s the war hammers! Quick everyone scatter!”

“It’s too late! I can’t get out! Hey, get off me you fat wood chopping piece of shit!”

“Hahaha! Oh this looks great! Let us dagger fellows joins in!”

“Fuck, what are the daggers doing here?”

“Move away you bastards! Let me out! I don’t want the sword puppet anymore!”

“Oh? What’s all this then aye? We siege weapon crew wouldn’t mind a weapon puppet.”

“Fuck off you huge bastards! You’re not even real weapons! Get out of here!”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!”

Weapons from all walks of life and military disciplines started pouring in from all directions. Despite the number of swords in the centre of weapon sphere all trying to escape from Murphy’s deprive energy, their combined strength simply wasn’t enough to prevent the crushing weight of all the new weapons from pressing in on them.

The sheer weight of a few war towers, ballista and siege rams colliding with the group started crushing the weaker swords into shattered remnants.

All of a sudden, the swords were once again being pushed inwards, causing the previous stalemate from the swords pushing against each other to collapse. Everything started compressing in around Murphy. Slowly but surely, even with his deprive skill steadily devouring things around him, sharps bits of metal started stabbing into him again.

About the only place that wasn’t affected was his sword, which simply ate anything that even touched it.

Murphy took a deep breath and tried to refocus himself. He was well aware he had to somehow get out of this situation before he was crushed by the sheer weight of all these weapons.

Unfortunately, his only good escaping skill was shadow walking. The prerequisite of shadow walking being in shadows. In this completely dark void, there wasn’t even light, so how could there be shadows?

He couldn’t cast fireballs everywhere because he was basically trapped in a huge container of vicious weapons. The light would only illuminate and create shadows in the centre. He wouldn’t be able to move outside with it unless he could get shadows to connect through the maze of weapons to the void beyond.

He literally had nothing to help him escape this situation. With that in mind, he decided to just completely let loose. He started ramping up his mana output until deprive mana was simply pouring out from him like a purple aura. Unfortunately, despite his deprive already being level 7, it simply wasn’t enough to quickly dissolve these absurdly high ends weapons fast enough to save him.

Instead, the area around him simply started filling up with raw materials and compressing against his body as sword after sword was dissolved.

Murphy then started trying to fill his inventory with the materials, but then all the pointy bits of the weapons started pressing in around him once again.

He felt like he was going mad in his desperation. At last, on the brink of madness, he simply emptied his inventory of the various dubious substances he kept within. Mostly various explosive and caustic chemicals along with the potions and powders he made from them.

“Oh hey? Is this lubricant? Who let that stuff out?”

“Oh gross. You siege guys need to calm down a bit. Leaking your lubricants all over the place like a leaky faucet.”

“Wait, guys. I don’t think that’s lubricant. Weird powders are sifting through over here as well.”

Murphy ignored their inane chatter and gritted his teeth. His eyes were bloodshot and wide open, which would have made him look like a madman on the very brink of world destruction had there been any light to see by in the area.

He closed his eyes and prayed to ... well, no one at all actually. He decided to just go with it and have faith that his body could withstand the forces involved in the amount of stuff he’d just released around himself. Finally, letting out a long breath, his middle finger rose on his hand and he focused on releasing the sole charge of flame stored up in his gloves from his fire starter perk in the recent days.

“Oh guys. Does that look like the ground down...”

Before this comment could come to fruition, there was a great conflagration of flames spread out from the centre of the weapon ball. What had been thousands upon thousands of weapons in a huge cluster in the void suddenly became a brightly shining sun pouring huge spurts of flame out in every direction like massive solar flares.

Countless shooting stars seemed to be shot out from the sphere of fire, leaving long trails of flames tailing along behind them as they poured down on the fog covered ground down below.

From the very bottom of the sun, an especially bright star seemed to fall out like a drop of liquid squeezed from a fruit. Bits and pieces fell off from it occasionally burning into ashes. It rapidly descended to the ground under the guidance of gravities impetus. In a matter of minutes, with a dull thud, the star crashed into the dense fog, stirring it into a billowing wave that rippled out from the impact point.

On the ground, a barely conscious Murphy grinned as he read his most pertinent status updates.

‘Ping! Murphy’s Law has caused an unprecedented happy accident. +67 Luck.’

‘Ping! Congratulations, you have activated the hidden effect of Blind Optimist. 6 minute boost to experience gained in Endurance sub-stat: Heat Resistance, Explosion Resistance, Plasma Resistance.’

Title: Blind Optimist

Even when dealt a crappy hand at life, you remain optimistic in everything. You somehow manage to find some good even in the greatest of catastrophes.

Gain random bonus dependant on situation.

Power of bonus determined by Luck stat.

Murphy was now very glad that he’d managed to save up so much luck recently. Despite being flogged for 233 earlier, he was still more than 40 luck in the positive. It may not seem like much in comparison, but it was actually rare for anyone to have more than a few points in luck at any one point in time.

Usually the universe treats it like some form of karma and cashes in extra luck or negative luck quickly. Murphy had spent a great deal of time thinking about and researching the topic. Especially because of his The Unlucky title, which gave him 10% more likely hood of accidents nearby him being negative even if his luck was positive.

Even worse was the Sinister Undying trait from his Class, which doubled all negative luck and halved all positive luck. With those two things hanging over him like the reaper’s scythe, he was forced to have his luck spawn steal luck for him as frequently as possible. It was probably the only thing keeping the population on his domain under control and encouraging people to leave.

Though he felt slightly guilty about it, he’d made sure they only stole luck from people with a positive luck stat. About the only people they wouldn’t target though was the stone skins. Even Murphy got chills thinking about those strange monkish fellows.

After Murphy read through his messages, he simply laid there, a charred mess. His body very slowly recovering. Taking it’s time thanks to having to regrow every limb apart from his head. How anything inside him wasn’t cooked to a well-done state was beyond him.

He was pretty sure he had significant brain damage though, because his thinking was especially slow for some reason, even with his mass computation ability which indirectly sped up his thoughts slightly. At least he thought that was the case until his lungs, which were very slowly sucking in tiny wisps of mist, started to warm up. Then the slowly repairing musculature and skin also started slowing down in its repairs as his body lit up with pleasure all over.

Even with his monstrous abilities, it was only a matter of minutes before the pleasure tipped over the breaking point into pain and torment, causing him to simply pass out.

As his crusty burnt eyelids closed slightly and his eye’s glazed over, someone strolled out from the fog, covered in a glowing suit that seemed to push away the fog. Even then, he was fully suited up in some kind of steampunk hazmat suit with various tanks on his back and a convoluted mess of tubes leading to various sprayers and a gas mask. Not an inch of skin was visible and there short stature mad them look like a little block of metal walking around.

Without wasting a second, the hazmat suit dwarf quickly rushed up to Murphy. Without even showing the slightest sign of helping him, the suited person stood over the crispy body that was very slowly healing. Then, they aimed both spray attachments on the arms of the suit at the charred mess and began spraying a concentrated rainbow of gas over Murphy.

His slowly repairing muscles and skin came to a halt as they began forming into pustules and blisters. Anything that came in contact with the rainbow fog began rotting away. The eyes peering through the glass of the gas mask seemed shocked to see that the Murphy hadn’t already been reduced into a pile of goop and started pouring even more rainbow gas onto the body, even going as far as to start kicking and stomping on it in a vain attempt to cause some form of injury.

This continued for almost half an hour until the gas stopped spraying out and only released a few weak spurts and completely stopped. Still, Murphy seemed to be very, very slowly drawing breath.

“Fuck! You fuckin’ monster! Just die already!” A distorted voice rasped out from the suit. They then flung two cylinders off their back along with the sprayers and began taking out a pouch filled with glowing needles and stabbing them into Murphy indiscriminately.

Murphy’s body began to glow strangely and insects made of mana began climbing out from the stranger’s suit, ravaging his body as huge scars and pulsing boils started forming near the needles.

Even with all this, Murphy’s body continued trying to outpace the damage by growing back. Worse still, it seemed the effect of the poison just kept getting weaker and weaker until another three hours passed and charred messy flakes began falling away revealing clear tanned skin.

“Fuckin’ freak! That’s me best stuff!” The suit wearer started huffing indignantly then finally just threw up their arms before storming back into the fog.

A red glowing orb sat in the air high above observing this all, glowing ominously.

“Tsk! Even that fellow Carson couldn’t kill him faster than he adapts. I was sure he’d die on this level. No matter. He’ll never pass the last level. Hahahaha!” With maniacal laughter, the glow winked out of existence, leaving the slowly recovering Murphy lying in the poison fog.