Abdiel looked down on his monster horde with displeasure. He had always disliked picking on the weak (who weren’t demons or Fallen), so the idea of exterminating the little villages of Daena’s countryside disgusted him on a deep, fundamental level.

However, even if he wanted to, there was no avoiding it. The ‘mobs’ (the sub-sentient versions of beings spawned by the System in newly-Sublimated Zones to serve as a threat to those just arrived) were driven by their natural and implanted instincts to kill those not directly controlled by the System. The Fallen Angels would eventually gain sentience if they survived long enough, but the Fallen Orcs and goblins were hobbled by their racial punishment from the System. They would never rise above Tier 0, regardless of their level. They would never gain Classes or be able to build skills outside of those gained from their archetypes and racial evolutions. Abdiel was unaware of the why of their punishment, but it was the reason why the only surviving orc bloodlines were those that had evolved to Tier 2 or above and become their own sustainable sub-species.

The goblins had fallen entirely at some point in the past. Their species had once been brilliant engineers and designers of mechanical wonders before they had fallen and been punished by the System. There were no fully-sentient goblins remaining in existence.

That made the horde a disorganized mob, whose numbers frequently split off to slaughter anything in their paths. The Akibahara Enclave had easily butchered the orcs and goblins who ran at their walls, and Abdiel had been careful to keep the Angels out of visual range so they wouldn’t be driven to strike.

The Enclave was not the target he had been assigned… the target, in this case, was the established Dukedom of Daena. He was to throw this horde at the walls of their towns and cities to temper their people and encourage the rise of new stars from the Tiered Races.

In truth, Abdiel couldn’t even understand why he was the one chosen. Any halfway-sentient tool of the System could have herded the horde toward Daena with a bit of effort. His power was unnecessary, and he wasn’t even allowed to tear the wings off the Fallen Angels to pass the time.

His need to serve, a need embedded into every Angel’s soul at creation, made it impossible for him to even consider disobeying. However, it didn’t eliminate his displeasure with his current position.

He noticed that the ‘original’ Fallen Angels and their dragon master were not answering his call, but that was fine with him. He wasn’t allowed to kill beings of the First Realm who acted of their own free will directly, so it wasn’t like he could do anything about them in any case.

To vent his irritation, Abdiel flicked his finger once, evaporating the burning ruins of a town recently butchered by the orcs and goblins. The few dozen creatures lingering in the ruins were of no moment compared to the hundreds of thousands in the horde, so it wasn’t disobedience, in his mind. What was left behind was a pit of sand almost a kilometer wide, the pressure of his bloodlust sufficient to initiate the disintegration of the lower-Tier matter of the First Realm.

The worst part of this mess, in his mind, was that he couldn’t even delegate the task of herding the horde. Even the most intelligent were unsuited for command roles. Angels, even on Earth, often took centuries before they realized they could speak anything other than the words they were commanded to speak, the goblins were too stupid to form anything like tactics or command structures, and orcs who began to show promise tended to commit suicide for some reason. From what he could tell, orcs whose intelligence passed 20 in the horde below always, without fail, committed suicide… which was why the goblins had better shamans than they did.

Some kind of built-in mechanic inserted by the System? He wondered. It wouldn’t be the first time he had seen the System do something that looked to be against its apparent modus operandi. There was probably some kind of problem with allowing the ‘mob’ orcs gain sentience and a command structure.

In any case, the next few weeks are going to be more boring than the time I spent fifty years watching a farmer cultivate his fields and build a family, He thought irritably, his white wings flapping in an agitated manner despite his control of his lack of any need to use them to fly.

_______________________________________________________________

Duke Vugra watched the departure of the diplomatic expedition with some satisfaction. It was hard finding good chances to test the mettle of his children and potential pawns. He would have had to send Veha on a quest to test her abilities at some point, and the Sublimation had provided him with an ideal opportunity.

He was currently sitting on a parapet near the top of his castle, a distortion in the air in front of his eyes showing the portal he was using to observe their departure. Gerahl was lying down on the slate tile roof, snoring, his mana automatically flowing to the portal as he provided it with energy.

Vugra was undisturbed by this, as he was accustomed to Gerahl’s absurdities. Even in the High Human’s youth, he had been frighteningly capable, using complex magic with a flick of his finger, even if he didn’t have the specific spell needed. That he could maintain Dimensional Magic in his sleep was hardly worth mentioning, given how close he was to the peak of the First Realm.

There were, in fact, two portals in front of his eyes… and the second one showed the horde of monsters headed their way. His current wife would probably have been enraged had she known he was sending their daughter into such a dangerous situation, but he had no compunctions about displeasing just one more in a long line of women who sought to use his power and position to enrich their families.

The horde is fairly large… but what is really troubling is that Angel. The horde is disorganized, no leaders having arisen as of yet. That Angel is most likely from a higher Realm… one of the System’s tools sent to make sure we are tempered, as usual, Vugra’s expression was plagued by ennui. His long life and general lack of ambitions beyond his current position had led to him becoming intimately familiar with the System’s preferred tactics for dealing with nations and provinces that did not encourage rapid growth in levels and power.

It was a mark of how little he valued any of his individual citizens – or even towns and villages – that he was perfectly willing to watch his people be trampled if they were too stupid to get out of the way. Vugra’s interests lay elsewhere… and even his closest advisors often failed to understand why he acted the way he did.

“My friend, you are brooding again,” Gerahl remarked, not bothering to move the straw hat covering his face as he reclined on the roof.

“I still cannot figure out how it works,” The elf said, his voice nearly emotionless.

“No one knows how it works, in any of the Realms ruled by the System. We extrapolate, we test, we examine, but we never quite figure out the details. You know more than almost anyone in the Patchwork System due to your experiments, but you must have figured out by now that there are some elements you will never be able to observe unless you begin to progress again,” Gerahl said, his voice scolding his oldest friend mildly, little force put into it.

After so long together, they had had similar arguments tens of thousands of times. It was why Gerahl had chosen to approach the edges of transcendence while he waited for Vugra to give up on trying to search for his answers in the First Realm. The ancient being had already figured out that they needed to sample the higher realms before they would have enough information to confirm their hypothesis, but Vugra was obsessed with using his citizens and children to observe instead of going higher and doing it himself.

It would be so easy for Vugra to just release the hold on the hundreds of millions of xp he had stored up in the platinum bracelet on his right arm, Gerahl knew. The moment he did, Vugra would pass the limits for the First Realm and transcend, and Gerahl would follow after, to keep his friend from knowing true solitude.

It wasn’t possible to live as long as Vugra did, as a ruler, without gaining enough xp to transcend. Most rulers in the First Realm eventually reached that point, and those that wished to remain in the ‘small pond’ tended to use ‘Armbands of the Fool’ like the one he wore.

Vugra was already sufficiently evolved to transcend… and that was the reason the horde was so large. The System did not like it when those who could transcend didn’t. So, it sent enough of a horde that it might be able to force him to actually use the xp he had built up in that bracelet.

Gerahl had seen it over a dozen times since they had created Daena together. A Sublimation came, an interesting survivor arrived, then the local Zones formed a beast wave or a horde to sweep across his lands in an attempt to force him to use everything while also tempering and testing the rest of his domain.

The System was immeasurably powerful but bound by its own rules. It couldn’t force him to transcend directly, and tools like the Armbands of the Fool created by the hands of mortals were permitted under the rules, though they would never be given as drops in a dungeon or off of creatures in the wild.

There is also the issue of that Saevere, Lyam Aldren. He is precisely the type that the System likes to use as an excuse to skirt its own rules, Gerahl thought but didn’t state aloud. His mind was already beginning to cloud as his spell drew him back into slumber.

It was difficult for him. Gerahl very badly wanted to leave the boredom of the First Realm behind, but he was too loyal to Vugra to leave him there alone. So far, none of his children or grandchildren had managed to achieve any form of immortality before transcending, and his few friends weren’t any better. Vugra was far too accustomed to losing his friends and family to the passing of time, and it had eaten away at the best parts of him, leaving him cold and unfeeling.

If Gerahl left him behind or managed to get himself killed, he was afraid Vugra would go mad.

The ancient elf was unaware of his closest and most loyal friend’s thoughts as he eyed Lyam through the portal over his right eye, It is too bad I did not manage to mark him. The data I could have gained from a reborn Saevere would be valuable indeed.

Vugra’s familiar had failed to enter Lyam’s shadow. The man’s aura was lethal to elemental spirit entities that had negative intentions toward him, though he doubted if the Saevere realized that. The clone that had made the attempt had dissipated the moment it tried to enter his shadow, and the feedback had disabled his familiar’s main body for over an hour.

The best he had been able to do was gain information from the demihuman familiar’s shadow, which was interesting in itself. That it was a Pinnacle Beast bound into a humanoid form showed that Lyam was even more favored by the System than he had imagined… which meant that the expedition would inevitably hit enough trouble to satisfy his belief in the need to temper his daughter.

He was interested to see how that turned out, and if the expedition was lost with all hands… well, he could always find a new wife when his current one tried to have him assassinated.

_________________________________________________________________

Lyam watched the progress of the expedition caravan from his perch atop one of the massive armored wagons. The ‘caravan’ was composed of seventy-five fourteen-foot tall and twenty-foot long wagons covered in enchanted steel armor, pulled by magically-tamed monstrous herbivores called zagrils that were roughly the size of an elephant and twice as strong.

In addition, the wagons were flanked by fighters on foot and others mounted on horses, giant lizards, and an assortment of other mounts. Mages with shield abilities were placed within each wagon to protect those who were off duty as they slept, while magic users with long-range offensive abilities and Classes with archer abilities perched in armored ‘nests’ atop each of the wagons, prepared to unleash massive amounts of damage on anything that approached the expedition.

Veha herself was riding a giant black Warg with glowing amber eyes at the front of the procession, a silver rod topped with clear crystal her only apparent weapon. The bunny was somewhere in the forest around them, indulging her curiosity and feeding on anything stupid enough to approach. The rabbit’s obsession with clinging to him had eased somewhat in the past week or so, so Lyam felt a great deal more at ease, his solitude actually serving to help him center himself.

His duties as a scout weren’t particularly onerous so far. Ranging ahead through the trees while Nezz sneaked through the undergrowth well ahead of the expedition’s main body had been surprisingly enjoyable. While Daena was an interesting city, Lyam found that he was beginning to enjoy the wilderness more than he had on Earth… probably because on Earth, he had been too busy to really ever indulge in experiencing nature.

Why the hell did I take on so much work, anyway? In retrospect, it was baffling. A single hit in the last few years of his career on Earth usually netted him enough money to live on for five or six years in relative luxury. He had no real reason to be taking on two or three jobs a month, with his rates.

While the challenge was exhilarating (especially when he took out a particularly well-protected target), it wasn’t enough to justify the rate at which he worked. He loved overcoming obstacles, but deliberately creating obstacles for himself to overcome wasn’t a natural reaction, now that he thought on it.

It felt like every time I thought of taking a vacation, a job would pop up on the request board that was perfectly suited for me, He mused.

Of course, that was Loki’s doing. Loki had a strong grasp on what made Lyam tick on Earth, so he always knew how to keep his favorite toy on edge and just a few steps away from true insanity.

Suddenly, Lyam noticed a weight on his lap and looked down to see Mirrha slumbering on her side, her tail partially encircling his waist as she slept. He tried to think of when he first sensed her presence, and he realized that his colder side had noted it over an hour ago and decided it was no problem. It was rare for his personas to deliberately keep sensory input from him, but he wasn’t alarmed. His ‘cold mind’ was intensely focused on survival, so it had probably just decided she wasn’t a threat.

Mirrha was undeniably a beautiful woman, though the feral cast of her features, accentuated by the elongated canines that peaked out from her lips, would probably put off some men from Earth. Her ears twitched as Lyam began caressing them, remembering their one night together. It was easily the most pleasurable experience he had had in over a decade, so he found he had no desire to wake her up or push her away… just watching her was somehow entertaining, an experience both familiar and strange. On Earth, he had often sat up awake with the women he slept with, watching over them as they drowsed by his side. He was fairly sure that the surge of protectiveness he felt toward sleeping women was something integral to his nature, even now that he was a different species.

Not that Mirrha needed protection. There were only a few members of the expedition with higher levels, and he could sense that she was more dangerous than all of them, including Rugrit and Nezz. He felt honored that she trusted him enough to sleep defenselessly while using his lap as a pillow.

He felt a surge of jealousy from the rabbit, who had apparently glimpsed his situation from the forest, but she knew better than to approach him. She had slowly figured out he had no interest in her body, one way or another, and she could sense from her link to him that he was unlikely to ever treat her the way he was treating the Felinor.

The rabbit was displeased, despite her stomach full of delicious, delicious goblin brains. Her master was hers. To have his attention stolen by a cat threatened to enrage her, despite her inherently flighty nature.

She didn’t regret the actions that resulted in her bonding with him. She was incapable of regrets, being much closer to an animal than a human in nature. However, she was vastly displeased with the situation, where her master never paid attention to her when he didn’t have to.

The cat on his lap only made it worse. Cats were natural enemies to bunnies everywhere, and she sensed the desire to mate from the cat when she approached her master earlier. If the bunny couldn’t mate with her master, then why should a cat get to?!

The bunny didn’t realize this, but the influence of Lyam’s incredibly dense soul energy was altering her bit by bit. The jealousy she was experiencing didn’t come from the more primal part of her nature but from a human-like desire to keep her master to herself. The process was accelerated by the energy Lyam’s sub-personas were expending to keep the bond isolated from his core personality as much as possible.

It was only a matter of time until the rabbit’s evolution of the spirit reached the next level.

This was, in fact, a function of the rabbit’s insane luck. Tsukuyomi’s blessing was simple to the extreme, but the results were undeniable. Pure beasts, no matter how powerful, were inevitably vulnerable to the more calculating and scheming humanoid races. In order for the bunny to survive and retain a degree of agency in the future, it needed to gain a similar degree of subtlety and understanding.

Though that was a ways off. After all, three hundred levels and hundreds of intelligence had only barely allowed her to become sub-sentient. The species wasn’t meant to gain sapience on its own, and even a god’s intervention could only create the possibility.

The rabbit, out of frustration, smashed in the skull of a nearby level 100 ogre and sucked down its brains, unable to understand why its emotions were so riled.

Lyam frowned as his level suddenly jumped up to 43. The rabbit was killing almost constantly when it wasn’t asleep or eating, and the results of the shared xp gain, minimal as it was for each kill, was noticeable. Lyam didn’t have time to make kills on his scouting missions, so most of his gains came in this manner, outside of a boost in stealth skills and the addition of the Woodcraft skill.

He knew he should be kinder to it, but the way it had forced the bond on him irked him greatly, no matter how he tried to reason with himself. He would have preferred to choose his own beast to bond with as a familiar, instead of having the constantly-hungry rabbit in humanoid form begging for every scrap of attention he was willing to spare.

The constant need to partition off the part of his mind most effected by the bond to retain his sense of himself made everything harder. He was beginning to see why the book, Schools of Magic, said that Soul Magic’s side-effects could be debilitating when used carelessly. The influence the bond had on the rabbit itself were glaringly obvious in the creature’s obsession with trying to have sex with him and the constant need for comforting and attention that was only now beginning to recede to reasonable levels.

At the head of the caravan, Veha sighed internally at the twisted anger on Rugrit’s face, barely visible within the visored helmet of black steel covering most of his face, “Father specifically placed me in overall command of the expedition, Captain, and while I have no intention of stepping in to make military decisions without proper information or valid training, the expedition’s objective requires that we arrive at the enclave within the month. Setting up camp here to power level your men on the goblins and orcs plaguing the forest is not a choice I can make, under the circumstances.”

“And I say we will not make it to the enclave if more than half our force is below level 50! Losing a week to push the men over the first wall will allow us to enhance our standing in the eyes of the people we seek to treat with,” He argued furiously. In his mind, the proliferation of large numbers of ‘mob’ orcs and goblins over level 60 in the area presented an ideal opportunity to quickly power up his forces. Typical of a sheltered noble, it never occurred to him to wonder why there were so many goblins and orcs in the area.

Veha, on the other hand, for all her inexperience, was a highly intelligent woman with a paranoid mindset born of having witnessed her half-siblings die off, one by one, sent out on seemingly routine missions that turned out to be deadly tests from their shared father. Unlike her siblings, she never once believed her father loved her, nor did she make the mistake of thinking he valued her beyond her potential, which would have no meaning until it was realized.

She doubted Rugrit realized just how much danger they were in. For all his family’s apparent brilliance in open battle, even the most intellectual of them lacked in subtlety. The decline of Rugrit’s family over the years had been notable, due to this lack.

However, she had no intention of allowing the fool to drag her down with him. So, she gave him a direct order, “By my authority as appointed head of this expedition, I require that we continue on with all proper haste and care. I deny your petition to remain here to train your troops.”

Rugrit’s eyes flared with resentment, before he bowed from the waist, grudgingly acknowledging the authority bestowed upon her by their shared master, “As you wish, Envoy.”

Lyam noted this interchange from a distance, sensing vaguely the emotional undertones by observing their body language and expressions, though his ability to read lips apparently didn’t activate the System’s translation functionality, to his disappointment. To settle himself down, he caressed Mirrha’s ears gently, smiling slightly when she began to purr, burrowing her head into his lap happily.

___________________________________________________________

Three days later, Lyam was leaping through the treetops alongside the road, Nezz far below him and Mirrha moving parallel to them both, a massive steel warbow unstrung in one hand.

Mirrha was the sub-leader of the mission’s mercenary detachment, which was mostly made up of Felinor, with a few elven magic specialists added in to diversify their capabilities. However, she spent most of her time scouting to stay near Lyam, fobbing the work of command off onto her younger sister, Zeizha.

Lyam had an arbalest made out of runed steel strapped across his back, borrowed from Nezz to give him some non-magical ranged firepower. The Armory was on his left wrist as usual, but it lacked the powerful shield-piercing and silence enchantments on the more specialized weapon.

The bunny was shadowing them from the ground, running in perfect silence at a speed that was a bit disturbing to Mirrha and Nezz. Lyam hadn’t bothered explaining to them anything beyond the fact that she was a familiar, but they could both sense the deadly power the bunny possessed in every limb, despite her relatively low apparent level.

That was another aspect of stats that Lyam had come face to face with… the bunny’s physical stats all outweighed his by a great deal due to her true nature and body density, which was something like four times his own. It was like each of her physical stats were worth more than twice his per point. As a result, she was pretty much impossible for any of them to match in pure power… though all three could dance around her all day if they had to due to her lack of combat skill.

However, it did mean he couldn’t run away from her, even if he wanted to.

Still, the sheer number of orcs and goblins in this area is alarming, He thought with concern as Mirrha sent an arrow through the skull of a muscular orc while Nezz cut another’s throat, Lyam Crushed the heart of a third and the bunny splattered the fourth and fifth ones in quick succession. Nezz’s Silence spells enveloped each of the kills as they fell, and a single drop of black energy fell on each body as they left them behind.

By the time they were out of sight, the four corpses were already reduced to bare bones, and within a few minutes even the bones would be gone, the concentrated necrotic power of Nezz’s Disintegration Drop accelerating the entropic process to roughly a month a second.

He ignored the notification that told him he had reached level 44, focusing on the job at hand. He was tossing everything into intelligence automatically as he gained levels, and he bought Portal without really thinking about it, having already decided to get it when he hit 90. To gain access to all the spells available in his skill shop, he would need a total intelligence of 130, and that was a ways off. With an intelligence of 94, he found that his mind processed information more clearly and he made connections between data points more easily.

The downside was becoming evident though, as he hadn’t boosted his willpower to match his growth in intelligence. The distance he could jump with Blink Step wasn’t improving, though he had an easier time using the spell, the mental stress bothering him less than it had the first few times he used it. He was pretty sure that greater willpower would extend the range he could safely jump at once.

He shook his head slightly, dismissing those thoughts. He needed to concentrate. He embraced the ice within his soul, his eyes, lively a moment before despite their abyssal depths, becoming flat and predatory.

It was on the morning of the thirteenth day since their departure when they encountered something that made them all stop and hide themselves immediately.

An Angel.

To be specific, it was a Fallen Angel, a level 120 Corrupted Power, to be specific. Lyam grimaced when he heard that over the ‘whisper’ link Nezz was maintaining with them using his Class ability. He listed out its abilities and spells, which were surprisingly few. It had a basic flight ability, no skills whatsoever, and Corrupted Lightning and Fire.

“It is probably a mob. The lack of unique abilities and titles makes it almost certain,” He said over the link.

Mobs, as it was explained to Lyam, were the System’s answer to people’s attempts to clean out areas bit by bit. When a Zone wasn’t conquered sufficiently quickly or a conqueror failed to properly claim their area, members of the dominant aggressive species within the borders of the Zone would be created using the System’s power as ‘mobs’. These mobs were completely non-sentient at first, gradually gaining sapience over time, though this sapience was often filtered through the System-given roles forced upon them at their creation.

While mobs were less effective than the sapient creatures that first appeared in newly-Sublimated Zones, they were a method by which the System encouraged its denizens to be bolder and take more risks. Not that this always worked… there were always societies that instead took this as an opportunity to ‘farm’ a Zone… though what they were seeing in the area was one of the reasons why this was considered unwise.

“I think we are seeing the beginnings of a full-on monster horde,” Nezz said worriedly over the link. Occasionally, when the System became sufficiently irritated or interested in a region, it would deliberately send its mobs to attack lands outside their Zones in massive forces. Against a truly well-organized domain, the hordes usually were destroyed in short order, but massive damage was often done to the towns and cities closest to the border.

“Daena… not ready… nobles… stupid,” Mirrha remarked. Lyam got the gist of what she was saying, but his lack of knowledge of local politics made true understanding impossible.

“The expedition will need to take a detour. If this is a true horde, we will be buried if we maintain our current course,” Nezz concluded, “We will return to Mistress Veha and I will suggest that we take a different road around the horde’s likely route.”

“Understood,” Lyam replied, commanding the bunny to follow as he turned back toward the expedition.

“Wait. Problem,” Mirrha’s words halted them before they could set off. They turned back to see that the Fallen had been joined by seventeen lesser members of its kind and over three hundred orcs, ten of which had a near-sentient light in their eyes.

The orcs were unarmored, their skin bare save for loincloths and simple fur cloaks. Each was armed with an axe or club, and there was no sign of ranged weapons or evolved types. Each of the Fallen had the appearance of a black-winged female with simple silvery steel breastplates on their chests, a sword or spear of fire or lightning in one hand and a kite shield in the other. The Fallen Power had a long-handled greatsword held in a two-handed grip.

“Lyam, Mirrha, I will buy some time. Get back to the expedition and direct the mistress to command our mages to create an underground shelter off of the road. Inform her that it is my opinion that escape through a simple detour is unlikely to succeed, understood?” The high-level scout said in a sadly resigned voice over the link.

“Negative, Nezz. The rabbit and I will take care of it. Your Class doesn’t have any wide-area abilities or spells,” Lyam replied immediately. He wasn’t being selfless, he was simply being pragmatic. While it was unlikely he could kill the Angels, he was quite capable of staying ahead of them, if he wasn’t stupid about it. The advantages of Blink Step and Portal, combined with the bunny’s speed, would probably make it possible to stay ahead of the Fallen once they got their attention.

There was silence on the other end for several moments before a reluctant Nezz conceded, “Very well. Mirrha, you can keep up with them. Keep those two alive. I will head straight back to the expedition.”

“Understood…” Mirrha replied.

The bunny’s Stealth was so good that Lyam could only tell where it was due to his link with it. Mirrha was completely silent as she leapt from tree to tree before coming to stop on the limb that Lyam was using as a perch.

“I am going to blast the area with a wave of Ice Lances focused on their wings. After that, I will Blink Step away and fall into Stealth. Once we have distanced ourselves sufficiently, I will cast a Portal and get us to that town we passed through two days ago,” He said, laying out his plan. At his current intelligence, he could cast up to twelve Ice Lances at once while directing them accurately. The main reason he had chosen to take on the role of bait was because his teleportation spells would make it easier for him to get away alive with his allies compared to Nezz, who was one foot and limited to running.

The advantage of using the Ice Lances, compared to the Gravity Arrows (other than MP cost) was that they had a physical element which would allow for penetration even if the enemies were resistant to Ice Magic. In his experiments, Lyam had determined that, save for times when he was dealing with an opponent resistant to both Ice and physical strikes, Gravity Arrow was less effective than Ice Lance.

Mirrha looked like she wanted to object, but instead she just pointed to her bow with one hand before pointing at the Fallen.

“Feel free to disable a few of them yourself. The fewer capable of keeping up with us, the more likely we can get out without being hurt,” He said quietly.

She nodded sharply before vanishing into Stealth before his eyes, showing off her much higher skill level.

Mirrha was annoyed that her current mate was risking himself before she had gotten a child out of him. Her hormones were beginning to go completely active for mating season, so she had often found herself thinking up reasons to touch or be close to him whenever possible.

However, another part of her was eager to see what he could do against such higher-level opponents. The Power was at level 120, with the lesser Fallen all hovering around 60 to 80, but they were mobs. The sub-sentient, almost programmed reactions of mobs made them sluggish and easily outmaneuvered compared to fully-sentient members of the same species. They also lacked Talents, Titles, Classes, Cultivation, and Perks. This meant that their stats were lower, their skills nonexistent, and their resistances were weaker than ‘true-born’ members of the same species at the same level.

In other words, she was fairly sure that they could kill three or four of them, even including the Power. However, dealing with all of the Fallen, in addition to the orcs, would be impossible. None of them had a Master Ability yet, nor was Mirrha’s cultivation focused on the mass-extermination of large numbers of opponents.

So, she knew her mate’s chosen tactic was the best one available. Crippling as many of the Fallen as possible would make a running battle doable, though they would likely take wounds in the process before escaping their pursuers.

That didn’t make it easier for her to ignore her race’s instincts when it came to males.

After all, they were such hopelessly incompetent creatures.

__________________________________________

It took them several minutes to get into position, the bunny remaining stealthed, having been instructed to ambush and splatter any enemies that looked like they were getting within striking distance of her Master or Mirrha.

Lyam focused the entirety of his will and mind on the gathering of Fallen at the edges of the battalion-sized group of mobs that had formed up in the clearing. Foot-long, three-inch thick javelins of ice began to form in the air around him until he had thirteen (apparently, his estimate was somewhat conservative) in place. At the same time, all emotion drained from him, extinguished like a match in an instant by his cold mind.

His eyes widened as he took in his targets, the positioning of each ice javelin correcting slightly. He wasn’t going for a kill. He estimated that he lacked the power to reliably kill even the lowest-level Fallen in a single strike with a ranged spell. While it was possible he might get lucky and hit something vital, it was more efficient to target their wings, as Nezz’s examine had shown their Flight ability was based on the mana flow through them when they were intact.

He took a deep breath before releasing it slowly, the javelins launching at the precise instant the last of the air exited his nose. Thirteen ice javelins punctured a single wing on eleven Fallen, and two punctured the wings of the Power, sending it dropping like a stone to the earth below.

Without hesitation, he turned and Blink Stepped four times in quick succession, dropping a mana restoration pill down his throat mechanically before doing so twice more and repeating the process. By the time the Fallen and the orcs began to pursue, he was already half a kilometer away, now leaping from branch to branch with minimal aid from Psychokinesis.

Mirrha had successfully damaged the wings of four other Fallen in the same instant, her Rapid-Fire and Sure Hit abilities making it easy. She immediately turned around and began leaping through the trees, going into Stealth the moment she managed to break the sight line with the battalion of mobs.

The bunny ran after her Master, somewhat confused as to why he wasn’t decapitating the crippled creatures in order to present her with their brains in a conveniently portable container. With the scary flying chicken man crippled, it would have been easy enough for her to splatter any of them that made trouble.

Fortunately for the bunny, it was Lyam’s assessment that was correct. The rabbit had become accustomed to her old body’s insanely powerful physique, and she had yet to truly gain a gut-level comprehension of her current limits, given the lack of true opponents in the area. So, as usual, luck and fortune favored the rabbit as she fled after her beloved Master.

Following Lyam with expressionless faces were two female Fallen, the only two still capable of flight. One had a hole in her right wing that made her somewhat slower, but it had missed the meridians guiding mana for her Flight ability.

There was no emotion within them. They were commanded to strike at the mortals designated by the System, so they struck. The attack on them indicated that a target was nearby and the target’s aura was visible, so they followed without hesitation.

Whether for better or worse, one was level 85 and the other level 78. Both were Lesser Fallen Angels, the most basic of their kind, ones who would normally be only barely sentient in any case. Without the more complex duties angels usually took on in normal worlds, there was no room for true sentience to develop in either’s mind and spirit.

Lyam was not dismayed by the two Angels following him, but, gauging by their auras, it was unlikely he would be able to take both on his own before the more crippled ones caught up. The Power would not be following until its wings regenerated (which, given the rate at which the System accelerated regeneration of wounds, would likely happen within less than an hour), but the partially-disabled others would likely catch up if he chose to focus on killing the ones close behind him.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to do so. The slower of the two’s lower torso suddenly vanished in a welter of amber-colored blood, his familiar’s familiar furred foot emerging from the mess, even as a familiar tongue punched into her skull from behind.

Stupid bunny, I told you to kill it, not feed! A part of his mind, the one not in control at the moment, cursed. His cold mind merely noted that this was an expected result given the impulsive behavior of their familiar, and immediately launched four Lightning Strikes in quick succession, blasting the Level 85 Fallen in the chest, sending it flying into a nearby redwood. He immediately followed it with four Ice Lances, using Ice Manipulation to cause them to explode the moment they got within a certain range of the Angel.

The Angel’s wings disintegrated into a wet golden mist, shredded black feathers dusting the air around it as it dropped to the earth just like the Power had earlier. Lyam’s cold eyes observed it with mild displeasure, It’s body is unscratched… how annoying.

The mob’s natural aura was that of a divine creature, however corrupted and diluted by the process of its spawning it was. Ice, being a Tier 1 school, could not harm the more durable parts of its body, even if the wings were significantly more vulnerable.

Zar’estra appeared in his right hand, and a Blink Step brought him immediately to the right side of the Angel. Without hesitation, he swept the blade of the sword-staff downward, cutting deeply into the mob’s throat, using Gravity Manipulation to draw the blade down faster than it would have otherwise. Despite this, there was significant resistance, and he was absolutely certain that trying to cut through the creature’s bones would be an exercise in futility at his current level.

He Blink-Stepped away and continued his flight, leaving the dying creature behind to bleed out on the forest floor. Once he was out of sight, he Stealthed, satisfied that he had fulfilled his role as bait. They had fled in a direction perpendicular to the expedition’s path of travel, so it was unlikely the battalion of mobs would catch wind of those they were trying to protect.

Note: For future reference, killing an Angel with a physical weapon with my current physical stats is only barely feasible. My spells can harm their most vulnerable parts, but they are insufficient to deal mortal wounds. Willpower increases will likely overcome apparent magic resistance in the future, but current build plans make close combat unnecessarily hazardous. Recommendation: Increase Strength and Agility to sufficient levels to make penetration of divine flesh at observed levels easier, His cold mind rattled off its recommendations for the future. Its pragmatic, emotionless viewpoint was counter to his current course, and it would likely be set aside for the moment. However, Lyam would likely begin investing in physical stats again as soon as it was practical.

He ghosted past orcs and goblins, refraining from striking due to the density of the enemy presence. He couldn’t stop the bunny from its rampages, as it didn’t listen to him when it was hungry, but only the Fallen Angels really presented a threat to the creature, so he didn’t bother trying.

Mirrha rejoined him some time after his clash with the Fallen, as rain began to pour in torrents from the sky. To his surprise, the number of orcs and goblins in the area had only increased over the past few hours, and he was beginning to think that they were being overtaken by the horde’s vanguard.

Mirrha’s fingers were lightly stained with blood, despite the rain soaking her from head to toe. She looked truly miserable, despite the hood protecting her sensitive ears. The bunny looked even worse, with her white fur plastered to her skin, and he could sense her complaints constantly being shot at the partitioned part of him he had handling her.

In their way was a force of about twenty-seven orcs, more heavily armed and armored than the mobs they’d encountered up to this point. Each wore scraps of leather and chain armor, and their weapons were of fine steel instead of crude iron or bronze. In addition, his sense of their levels told him they were hovering in the upper 60s, despite the fact that most of the orcs up to this point had been under level 30 (which had struck him as odd, since most of the goblins were in the 60s).

They were occupying the burnt-out ruins of a walled village placed in a mountain pass. The mountains themselves were crawling with Fallen and what looked to be harpies, all of which gave off an aura in the upper 70’s, with a few much higher. Mirrha’s expression was grim, though not as grim as he would have expected.

“Orcs… not… a threat. Noisy kills bring Fallen,” She remarked, the gist of her words getting across despite the limited ability of the System to translate Felinor speech.

“Stealth kills?” Lyam murmured questioningly.

She nodded slightly, “Wait for night. Orcs… not see. Hunt.”

Lyam pursed his lips in thought. It was probably the best option, under the circumstances. The orcs were apparently going nowhere, and risking a portal so close to the Fallen in the mountains would be foolish, given his understanding of the spell’s emanations. Better to wait for nightfall and use the orcs’ limited nightvision to their advantage. If this were goblins, it would have been better to hit during the day, given their light sensitivity.

He nodded slowly, acknowledging her wisdom. The truth was, Mirrha was a better leader than he was by far. Her tendency to defer to his decisions seemed to come from a combination of an inherent dislike of being the leader and her sizing him up constantly.

Not that he minded, since it meant his nights had been very ‘active’ of late.

They waited for nightfall, the two beast-girls huddling under a dark green tarp he pulled out of his inventory as he watched the orc encampment from the tallest tree that had a clear line of sight to the ruins of the town. Occasionally, a Fallen in crimson armor with violet-streaked wings would set down in the town for a few minutes, speaking with an orc who displayed something approaching an actual intellect, but for the most part, the orcs simply ate the remnants of the town’s denizens and their fallen brethren while screwing each other indiscriminately.

If Lyam had had a normal frame of mind, he might have been disgusted, but he was actually a bit fascinated (not by the sex). From what he could tell, the orcs in this town were even more different than would have been indicated with their (relatively) higher quality equipment. They seemed to have a semblance of intelligence and free will, though the free will seemed to vanish whenever that Fallen, whom he was sure was somewhere around level 140, arrived in town.

This made their plans somewhat more problematic. The orcs in the forest simply were too stupid to detect them, even if they made a mistake. Their lack of life experience showed in the way they ignored sounds and obvious signs of potential enemies, only attacking when something became visible. Moreover, they seemed to ignore one another entirely, to the point where he had once seen an orc cut another in half simply because it was standing in front of a deer the first one had seen pass behind it.

These orcs, however, were aware of their surroundings… enough so that they might be able to pierce Stealth under the right conditions.

Better to kill them systematically in the night than to try to sneak through. Having intelligent orcs chasing us will make things more difficult, especially with that idiot bunny constantly trying to feed its hunger on anything that approaches, He thought, disgruntled.

The bunny was frighteningly quiet, to the point where she had yet to be detected by any of the enemies they had come across so far. As such, he doubted that the orcs would do any better, even if they somehow managed to detect either him or Mirrha.

When night fell, the rain strengthened, pouring down in sheets, gale-like winds sweeping through the forest. He signaled Mirrha through the rabbit, and they dispersed to strike from opposite ends of the town.

__________________________________________________________________

Lyam approached from the south, flying through the air with psychokinesis while using his power over shadows to draw his own around him to blend in with the night and avoid the sight of any Fallen who might be looking his way.

Zar’estra was in his right hand, the Armory forming an elbow-length blackened metal gauntlet with hooked blades emerging from the ends of the fingers like talons. He observed the organization of the orcs in the area and found two who were off on their own, rutting crazily behind a ruined home on the edge of town, the half-eaten remains of a woman from the village sprawled beside them.

He altered the pull of gravity around himself with Gravity Manipulation, drifting slowly into place above the two orcs before reversing his grip on the sword-staff and suddenly increasing the pull of gravity on himself to four times normal. His body slammed down, the sword staff plunging through the skull of the orc on top and into the throat of the one on the bottom, even as the impact of his feet crushed ribs and pulverized organs.

He felt a sharp stab of pain in his legs but Zar’estra’s enchantment drew on the fading life energies of the two dead orcs to restore the damage to his ankles and knees in a second. He swept the sword staff to the side, ripping it out of the two corpses in a welter of gore before returning it to its place in his soul. The weapon was too large and cumbersome to be of use in the close quarters of the ruin.

He shifted the Armory into a short, thin sword with a wickedly-sharp edge and began creeping toward the position where he saw a half-dozen orcs sleeping under the charred timbers of a burnt-out smithy.

The rain had soaked him to the bone, but his increased constitution and his cold mind allowed him to ignore the discomfort of the cold and wet with ease. As he passed an orc, staggering along and smelling enough of alcohol that its stench reached him even through the rain, he thrust the blade through its trachea, twisting it quickly before withdrawing it in a sweeping motion that ripped it out of the side of the creature’s throat.

The orc fell to its knees, reaching up to its ruined throat for a moment before it simply fell forward, its dying body unable to support its own weight. To be sure it wouldn’t somehow regenerate, Lyam used Gravity Manipulation to bury it face-down in the mud, knowing it would likely drown if it managed to restore the damaged flesh… not that he thought that was likely.

In the smithy, his targets lay in a pile, exhausted from their indulgence during the day. He considered what to do with them for a moment, as they were too close to one another to make killing them one by one a decent option. A channeled Lightning Strike would kill them easily, but it would also be loud and get noticed, given that the storm wasn’t unleashing lightning of its own.

Ice Lance is the better option, He concluded, altering the spell formula with his Ice Manipulation as eight formed over the pile of orcs. He sent a surge of energy through the altered structure of the spell as they plunged downward, and once they were inside the pile, they exploded into shards, almost silent as they shredded the creatures with a liquid squelch, sending gore splattering across the charred walls.

He was satisfied with the alteration he had made, and he was surprised when a notification flashed briefly across his vision.

New Spell Variant created: Exploding Ice Lance. XP awarded for the creation of a new Spell Variant.

Your Ice Magic is now 20. You have reached Apprentice rank in Ice Magic.

It surprised him somewhat that the spell didn’t already exist, but he supposed that most people wouldn’t automatically visualize something that penetrates then explodes automatically whenever they see a pointed projectile. Especially since he had always been fond of explosive bullets when stealth wasn’t warranted. It was just too bad he had to use high-caliber single-shot rifles with replaceable barrels whenever he fired the damned things.

He mentally flooded the local darkness with his shadows, ‘feeling’ through them to detect any nearby movements. Thankfully, it appeared that no one had noticed the noise.

He emerged from the ruined smithy and melted into the darkness, the rain hitting his clothing under his shadow cloak only vaguely indicating that something was physically present. Two streets over, he sensed three orcs staggering drunkenly through ruined homes, one with sword in hand as he gleefully destroyed what was left as the others egged him on.

He made his way to where he sensed them and made a moue of distaste when he caught sight of the ‘evolved’ mobs. Each of them was wearing a cloak of what could only be humanoid skin, with severed fingers hanging from their belts, many of them swollen with rot. The stench from the rotting flesh and poorly-tanned skin was overwhelming, to the point where even his cold mind reacted, albeit in an extremely muted fashion.

He observed for several minutes, keeping them in sight as they made their way from ruined home to ruined home, the one in a destructive mood holding a cleaver-like sword loosely in his massive left hand.

That was another thing he had immediately noticed once he caught sight of them earlier in the day. Each of these orcs was larger and taller than the ‘civilized’ orcs he had met in Daena, with a slightly smaller head and longer tusks. He guessed that racial devolution caused by reduction to Tier 0 mobs had deformed their brains sufficiently that they were driven by the worst of impulses unless under someone else’s direct control.

Close combat isn’t a wise choice here. I guess I’ll have to use a spell, Lyam thought and focused on his Ice Manipulation, transforming the rain above the orcs into tens of thousands of ice needles. The orcs collapsed in a welter of gore a moment later, their flesh and bone ripped apart by the sheer weight of the sharp ice. Their scant armor was torn to pieces, its crude construction unable to survive the force of that much ice in such a short time.

He felt a slight pounding in his head, warning him that he had pushed Ice Manipulation a little too far by transforming water into ice instead of manifesting it.

You have gained the skill, Water Magic. You have gained the spell, Crude Water Manipulation (Ice transformation specialty).

He looked at his status and saw he had lost a few hundred HP, probably brain damage from the abuse of his Ice Manipulation spell. He cast Regenerate; watching his HP tick up rapidly, sighing with relief when the last of the dull ache in his head vanished.

He got flashes of what the bunny was doing… but it was mostly just feeding on any orcs unfortunate enough to encounter her. She was also enjoying herself immensely, as the last few days had seen her form a growing addiction to the sensation of flesh and bone being pulverized by her kicks.

He hoped Mirrha was doing well, but he simply had no way to communicate with her from a distance.

His progress through the town was marked by orc corpses, those in groups generally killed as quickly and quietly as possible with his new spell and those alone taken with weapons from the Armory or – occasionally – with Zar’estra. Despite their relative power compared to the rest of the horde’s orcs, they still lacked the skills and abilities a true orc would gain as they grew, and they had no Class to accelerate their stat growth.

That changed, however, when he came to the town square and hid behind a rain barrel, tightening his shadow cloak over himself.

The square was filled with lesser orcs, most of them of much lower levels, as well as three orcs whom he sensed to be over level 80… and a single Fallen Angel in tarnished golden armor who gave off the aura of someone over level 200. The Angel was obviously sentient, as his expression was full of contempt as he scolded the orcs in a language the System didn’t translate.

Lyam’s ears and the inside of his head hurt whenever the Angel spoke, and he very badly wanted to clean his brain out with soap afterward, for the words felt oily and unclean. There was something fundamentally… wrong about the language the creature was speaking.

He suddenly noticed that the orcs’ eyes were all glowing faintly green, and he could see what looked to be luminescent worms crawling beneath their skin.

What the hell is that?! He thought with disbelief. Something in him kept urging him to unleash all of his fairly prodigious MP to create as powerful a gravity well as possible in an attempt to kill everything int hat square. However, his cold mind ignored the urge completely, logically, pragmatically noting the practical impossibility of success in killing the Fallen Angel… or possibly even the orcish leaders.

It was a failure on Abdiel’s part that he had not noticed several of his slaves being taken by an Eldritch Abomination hidden in the mountains. If Abdiel had taken his current work seriously, he probably would have extinguished the creature the second he noticed its presence. However, he was far too busy enjoying the deaths of the members of the horde in the siege of a large fortress town on the opposite end of the mountain range to pay attention to a minor, ruined village in the middle of nowhere.

The Fallen and the lesser orcs in the square were non-sentient beings, easily devoured and transformed into puppets by the creature. In addition, the Fallen’s power had grown immensely the moment it was taken, even as the false divinity within it was corrupted and twisted into a parody of what it had been before.

It was actually more painful for the orc commanders. Each of them was sentient, albeit limited. They had suffered horribly as their nascent spirits were shattered and remade in their new master’s image, their flesh altered and mutated in horribly illogical ways that did not conform to Euclidean geometry. This was not yet visible on the surface, but it was evident in the jerky, awkward movements of their limbs and the occasional random bulge of flesh that would emerge then disappear from their skin.

The lesser orcs were devoured without resistance, their minds and spirits not advanced enough to even recognize the difference between what they were before and what they had become. While they had been taken a short time before, they were already beginning to show signs of horrific mutations such as third arms, tentacles emerging from odd spots, and twisted desires.

If Lyam and the others hadn’t struck the town that night, they would likely have spread into the countryside to increase their numbers, the Fallen as their general and the corrupted orc commanders as his officers. The horde of mobs would be turned into a horde of abominations in short order.

Fortunately, Lyam was present and one of the peculiarities of Fallen biology prevented it from the becoming a ‘carrier’ like the lesser thralls.

From the other side of the square, Mirrha looked upon the gathering with eyes full of absolute loathing. She knew what the green worms and abnormalities in the lesser orcs’ bodies meant. All Felinor were taught of the abominations of the Enemy. It was why no Felinor was willing to tolerate the existence of those who practiced Eldritch magic or worshiped the Outer Gods, despite the System’s tolerance of their presence.

Her daggers disappeared and a massive greatsword glowing with the silver mana of her personal cultivation appeared in her right hand, her soul weapon, Sinara radiating the power of her Core Establishment cultivation and her levels, along with her personal Dao of the White Talon. For Mirrha was a Battle Cultivator from a long tradition of such, one who was considered a genius by her own people and acknowledged by the System with the Title ‘Breaker of the Black Wave’.

Lyam realized that Mirrha was going to go on the attack shortly after the infested Fallen departed, and he was stunned to see all four of the corrupted orc commanders turn to white ash as what looked like a giant white bird talon tore through them and more than twenty lesser orcs. There was no sense of ‘burning’ to the talon. Rather, it was a talon that radiated absolute denial of that which the user despised. It did not acknowledge their existence, so when touched by it, they had no choice but to be reduced to the base elements that made up their bodies, their mana annihilated by the denser, purer mana of a true cultivator and the powerful Dao it held.

Realizing he had his moment, Lyam used the rain like he had elsewhere, unleashing a storm of ice needles that instantly shredded and pulped the lesser, infested orcs. He then followed this with a dozen castings of his Annihilation Codex, ignoring the agony of his HP being torn from his flesh that occurred with each, his cold mind uncaring of such matters.

The Annihilation Codex enveloped the pulped remains, crawling with what looked like worms and tentacles of bilious green energy, and exploded in blood-crimson flames, destroying the Eldritch remnants in seconds.

Lyam fell to one knee, blood running from his eyes, nose, and mouth, his eyes red from popped blood vessels. He had overstrained his body, and his left arm was swollen to twice its normal size, looking like it might burst at any moment. With an effort, he cast Regeneration three times in quick succession, rapidly accelerating his recovery. He then dragged one of his healing potions from his inventory and chugged it, wanting to puke at the sickeningly sweet taste.

He felt the swelling in his arm go down, and his vision cleared, Well, that tells me the downsides of abusing the Blood Curse Tattoos.

Mirrha was standing over him, a look of mixed pride and concern on her face, “Cultivate. Mana, tainted. Karma… corrupted.”

Lyam pulled out a phial with a single plant seed and opened it, dropping the seed onto the mud of the square. In an instant, a single white flower bloomed before him.

He got in the lotus position before it and dove within himself.

What he saw made him a little sick. His Karma Manipulation skill in combination with his grasp of his inner world gave him a good view of the corrupted karma tainting his aura and the foul impurities born of his abuse of the Annihilation Codex blocking the meridians in his left arm. With determination, he began using the purification techniques and Karma manipulation, intensifying the mana density inside his body as he slowly forced the contaminants out.

His skill latched onto the flower in front of him and began funneling the tainted karma and impurities in his aura to the young plant, a flower whose seed was germinated in his personal mana and blood. Normally, one could only purify a little karma during a session of cultivation and meditation. However, with Karma Manipulation, he was able to offload the costs of his magic onto the young flower. Gradually, the petals of the flower turned a dark red speckled with violet and his arm was cleansed of the impurities.

The rain stopped and the skies cleared, dawn emerging from the horizon about at the moment the process was complete.

However, it was at that moment that Lyam’s spirit met its limit, and he fell into a deep, healing sleep. The System’s aid was good for recovering damage to the physical body, but the spiritual and mental body were another thing entirely. Karma wanted to latch onto the soul, and the act of removing it was… exhausting.

Mirrha picked him up and ran through the pass, followed closely by the bunny.

___________________________________________________

Lyam’s recovery from the overload of his body took almost a week, though he was on his feet the next day. There was only so much aid the System and healing magic and potions could give. His HP wasn’t damaged, but his ability to use mana was hindered due to his abuse of the Curse Tattoos. Blood Curse Tattoos were meant, he discovered from Mirrha’s scolding, to be used as emergency tools to save the user’s life or give them a chance at victory in a situation where speed of casting was everything.

Every use of a Blood Curse Tattoo created a small amount of cursed karma which would taint the user’s aura and begin to demonize their body by infiltrating their meridians. However, anyone with the Mana Cultivation skill could easily cleanse the cursed karma over time. Unfortunately, the effect of using the tattoos was multiplicative, not additive. The more corrupted karma in the individual’s aura when they used one, the faster it built up in their body and spirit.

Thankfully, that was where Lyam’s Karma Manipulation and his abuse of the flowers that fed off of corrupted mana and karma came in. The flowers, known as Blood-soaked Lilies (after the System’s translation to English) were famous for being an obvious mark of a Curse Magic user, as it was common for them to reproduce prolifically around those individual’s territories and homes. The flowers, once they matured after absorbing the karma and befouled mana, transformed into flower-shaped mana crystals that were a perfect power source for arrays used in defending against curses or enhancing outgoing curses.

In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for nobility to hire Curse Mages or learn Curse Magic solely so they could create those crystals, as there was literally no better general defense against that branch of magic than an array using those crystals.

Their travels through the deeper forest on the other side of the pass were hindered by the need to evade the thick patrols of increasingly intelligent mobs. They noticed that the orcs that showed were getting to be higher-leveled and acted (relatively) effectively in groups, and the Fallen seemed to have been organized into proper squads to scour the area.

They encountered no more Abomination thralls, but Mirrha’s tension never really let up. This was exacerbated when she began to go into heat, her body demanding she mate and produce a child as soon as possible. While she was able to use the powders and pills given her by the Clan shamans before her departure to suppress the desire, even pragmatic fears of discovery would soon fade in importance compared to her race’s reproductive imperative.

Fortunately for Lyam, he was mostly unaware of Mirrha’s internal conflict. He might have been perceptive about human women, but Mirrha’s mannerisms were just alien enough that he missed many of the cues that would have otherwise tipped him off. If he had realized what she was going through, he might have felt obligated to do something about it, despite his inherently practical nature.

The bigger issue was that the bunny had somehow gotten separated from them at some point. He was sure from his sense of her that she was currently in some kind of feeding frenzy, but the incredibly feral aura that touched his own when he tried to sense for her told him that it wouldn’t be wise to have her in his immediate vicinity, at the moment.

He was beginning to get a sense that if they didn’t find a good spot to use his Portal soon, they might get worn down enough to be discovered by the horde.

The problem was that both his and Mirrha’s nerves were being worn away by the need to maintain their Stealth at all times, expending at least some mana while awake or asleep to keep enemies unaware of their presence. This constant flow of mana was wearing at their bodies and minds in a way the frantic moments of battle didn’t. Of course, neither of them was likely to collapse or receive permanent damage from this, but the fact remained that they were slowly weakening.

The fact that mana usage, even if it was below one’s natural regeneration, could cause damage or exhaustion had been something of a shock, since his experiences in the dungeon had defined how he felt magic worked. The System reinforced the body and made it unbelievably resilient. However, every use of mana strained the internal system used to channel it, if only in the slightest of manners. Moreover, Lyam had been abusing his spells from almost the moment he awoke in the System. It was inevitable that he would begin feeling the effects if he wasn’t given any true rest for days on end.

Mirrha was more accustomed to this kind of thing, but being in heat made her mana fluctuate at odd times, straining at her control. Stealth, as a skill, required one to utilize part of their mana regeneration to maintain, and they had been maintaining it more or less constantly since they left the pass behind.

So, it was perhaps inevitable that all restraint went out the window when Mirrha set eyes on the entrance to a cave network she was familiar with from an exploration job she finished a few years before. She dragged Lyam wordlessly into the cave and used Earth Magic to seal the entrance.

Her eyes glowed as she shoved him against the wall, ferociously claiming his lips with her own, her tail, incredibly strong with the force of her cultivation and her lust, wrapping around his waist possessively as she ravaged him. Her body was warm to the touch, and she felt liquid heat building in her loins as she rubbed herself against him, desperately marking him with her scent as hers.

This was not a normal mating frenzy. Felinor females rarely felt the need to claim a mate as theirs, as it was custom for them to use a male once, then forget about them until they next met.

However, on rare occasions, a Felinor female would find a male that her spirit, cultivation, and flesh all desired… needed to a degree that made it impossible to treat them as yet another absentee father for their children. Mirrha was in love… and she hated that that was the case. She was a proud warrior, a protector of her people, a respected mercenary captain, and a valued leader of their tribe’s Wanderers. The absolute passion and devotion that had completely erased her rationality was stimulated further by the memory of how he had dealt with the Taken. The memory of shards of ice ripping them to pieces, followed by those strange and horribly powerful fire orbs incinerating the remains in an instant… the sheer brutal efficiency of his actions had driven her over the edge.

Lyam was reeling under a sudden deluge of emotions that seemed to be coming over a second link to his spirit, Mirrha’s soul suddenly laid bare to him as she desperately ripped at his armor, stripping him naked while she kissed him desperately. In order to save his clothing, he sent it to his inventory and embraced her, choosing to give into his passions.

He realized that he was truly fond of this feral woman. It was a familiar yet strange feeling. He had loved before, though those loves were made futile by the incompatibility of personalities. With Mirrha, there was no fear of that. He could feel her spirit as it touched his, taking in the broken mosaic that was him on a primal level beyond conscious understanding… and only growing more passionate and hungry with every moment.

Soon, he was on his back, Mirrha riding him as she growled and purred in pleasure, screeching with passion as her claws dug into his shoulders, carving into his chest. He felt his length filling her, slamming into her with incredible rapidity as she desperately sought his climax to fuel her own.

Her beautiful breasts came to his hands as he squeezed and fondled the moderate yet perfectly firm curves, eventually shifting to her hips as he twisted her around so she was facing away from him and got on top, slamming himself into her repeatedly, his hand on the back of her neck.

They struggled, shifting positions and giving and taking dominance as their urges demanded, both of them intoxicated beyond all sense of control or rational thought as their spirits touched and enfolded one another in rhythm with the clashing of their bodies.

However, both of them soon approached their limits, and Lyam leaned forward as he slammed himself into her hips from behind, forcing her face down into the ground as he released inside of her, opening his mouth to bite into her left ear, notching it in a way her spirit demanded. Instead of healing, the notch glowed azure for a moment before the fur around it gained a slight silvery sheen, marking her as his… even as one of the open cuts on his shoulder glowed green and left a mark in blue behind near his collarbone.

They both collapsed into an exhausted sleep, neither bothering with Stealth or further precautions for this first time in over ten days.

___________________________________________________________

Lyam awoke to a glaring notification that refused to be tossed aside until he read it.

You have soul-bonded by a Felinor and have gained the Perk Felinor Mate Bond: Mirrha. The Felinor Mate Bond is a rare Perk that only occurs on the occasions when a female Felinor discovers a male whose soul is perfectly compatible with her own. The formation of this bond is permanent and involuntary. From now on, you will gain +1 to Dexterity and Agility as the benefit of your bond, and all Felinor-aligned individuals will be well-disposed to you, while those opposed to Felinor interests will distrust you.

The notification was odd… it had personality, and he could sense an odd feeling of… glee in the energy of the notification before he dismissed it. He looked down and saw Mirrha’s naked body nestled against his chest, her claws latched lightly into his back as she clung to him like a second skin, her tail wrapped around his hips with her head buried in his collarbone.

He could sense her contentment as she slept. It was less overwhelming than the initial feeling of the bond with the bunny, and it felt much more natural. It was as if it had always been meant to be there, and even his cold mind didn’t disapprove, for some reason… and it usually disapproved of all his sexual partners.

He could also feel that all of the effects of the negative karma infesting his mana system were gone entirely… which should not have been possible. He delved into himself and was struck by the sight of his mana system. His core was slightly denser and more compact, his meridians wider, if only slightly so, and he could sense they would be more resistant to the side-effects of Curse Magic in the future. He could also sense that mana was somehow seeping into his bones and muscles for some reason, infusing them subtly with the magical energy.

When he checked his status, he saw that his Mana Cultivation was at 48, verging on the Adept ranks. That was a huge gain… and it was a gain that seemed to have come on its own, without his knowledge or agency.

He frowned when he saw he had a new entry under Cultivation.

What the hell is Dual Cultivation: Ferocious War of the Lycen Beast?

For the first time, he also found he could look at her status, as if it were his own.

Name: Mirrha

Level: 92

Race: Felinor (Tier 3)

Profession: Wanderer (Racial Variant: Felinor), Mercenary

Class: Cultivator (Locked), Battle Cultivator (Specialization: One Against Many)

Title: Slayer of Titans (granted for killing an opponent five times one’s own level, +25% Damage to all enemies of higher level), Evolving Cultivator (Evolved your race through cultivation, +10% to mana and health regeneration), War Leader (Granted for leading a military force to victory over a larger force, +25% to the effectiveness of all leadership-related skills), Breaker of the Black Wave (Personally halted the advance of a horde of Eldritch Abominations without aid, +100% damage to all Eldritch beings, immune to Eldritch Influence, trusted by enemies of the Eldritch, despised and feared by those who are allied with the Eldritch)

Available AP: 0

Available SP: 0

HP: 12532/12532

MP: 14321/14321

Str: 40

Agi: 100

Dex: 125

Con: 50

End: 50

Int: 75

Will: 80

Cha: 50

Lck: 20

Martial Skills: Light Blades 79, Long Blades 85 (Greatsword specialization), Polearms 25, Barehanded 61, Shield 25, Light Armor 59, Stealth 75, Wall-running 50, Water-walking 31, Battle Acrobatics 40, Tactics 55, Leadership 43, Strategy 24

Magic Skills: Commander’s Eye 30, Earth Magic 25, Wind Magic 39, Water Magic 27, Ritual Magic 10, Darkness Magic 60

Crafting Skills: Skinning 89, Harvesting 55, Wood-carving 39, Hunting 76, Tracking 88

Knowledge Skills: Monster Knowledge 44, Cultivator Sage 27

Spells: Earth Manipulation, Minor Earthquake, Sucking mud, Quicksand, Wind-Flight, Slashing Wind, Silent Steps, Water-Breathing, Water Blast, Water Blade, Summon Water, Clean, Dry, Ritual of Mana-Gathering, Ritual of Mana-Cleansing, Shadow Call, Shadow Step, Darkness Orb, Piercing Shadows, Devouring Darkness, Shadow Manipulation

Weapon Style: Life-song of the Gliding Varen (Master)

Non-Combat: Perception 45, Mana Cultivation 76, Spirit Cleansing 29

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Intermediate: Sinara, Greatsword), White Talon (combat cultivation technique, +300% damage to Eldritch beings, channels Dao to purify and destroy flesh tainted by Outer Gods, inflicts +80% damage to undead and corrupted creatures), Furious Blaze of the Warmaster (combat cultivation technique, empowers allies and increases all of their stats by 13%, may be enhanced with time), Battle Cultivator’s Mana Enhancement (Battle Cultivator Class ability, funnels mana regeneration to enhance physical capabilities)

Cultivation: Felinor Technique (Forbidden), Dual Cultivation: Ferocious War of the Lycen Beast

Dao: Foundation V (White Talon: Perseverance, Purity, The Hunt)

Perks: Survival V (Non-critical blows will not kill this individual unless made to the heart or brain), Highspeed Regeneration (Health regeneration speed increased by 400%), Mana Core, Liquid Mana IV, Felinor Mate-Bond: Lyam Aldren (+1 to Intelligence and Willpower per level gained)

Racial Perks: Body of the Felinor (+20% effectiveness to Agility and Dexterity, +25% to mana regeneration), Born to Cultivate (Born with resilient meridians that allow for easier cultivation), Natural Body Cultivation (the user’s bones, muscles, and organs naturally absorb excess mana while cultivating, gradually enhancing them without deliberate intent, gradual increase in effectiveness of physical and mental stats)

Talents: Natural Leader (All Leadership-related skills rise faster), Cultivator V (high aptitude for cultivation, increases likelihood of gaining inspiration for breakthroughs), Beloved by Mana (all spells cost less mana to cast, dependent on aptitude for the school being used), Survivor (will survive situations most others would fall to), Curious Mind III (More likely to gain knowledge skills and raise them more easily)

Mirrha’s status was… impressive. Comparing it to the others of similar level he had been allowed to examine, her basic abilities were just that much higher. He did find her mastery of Darkness Magic somewhat unexpected, though in retrospect, he probably should have realized her ability to disappear at will was a bit much for Stealth alone.

He looked down at her with an inordinate level of fondness as he caressed her head, running his fingers through her silky-soft hair and over her ears, fondling them lightly.

Mirrha awoke with the realization of what had happened. She could sense the bond between them, powerful and unbreakable. She could also sense her own pregnancy, which sent an instinctive surge of love through her, even as she realized that this was not a good time to be pregnant, though it wouldn’t begin to cause problems for weeks.

The mate bond she was resigned to, despite the fact she knew it would cause problems in her relationship with the Clan. True Mates were considered sacred and separating them was considered a cardinal sin. Children born of such unions were considered blessed, and, due to the effects the parents’ bond had on them in the womb, they tended to inherit a great deal of the strength of both parents, whereas usually the male parent’s influence on a Felinor child would be minimal at best.

The real issue was that she was fairly sure she would not be able to overcome her instinct to keep the child with her, which was forbidden. All Felinor children were raised with the clans, not their parents. The father was never supposed to meet the child, unless the father was himself Felinor, and the mother was only supposed to play a minimal role depending on the Shamans’ decisions.

There were a number of reasons for this, but the primary one was history. Historically, it was well-established that cultivators made horrible parents. They spoiled the children when allowed to raise them themselves, weakening both them and the clan as a whole. As such, all Felinor children were communally raised until they reached the age where they could think for themselves.

The issue with True Mates was that they attached fiercely to anything and everything involved with their mate, especially any children involved. Mirrha was fairly sure she would try to kill anyone who tried to separate her from the child… and that was with her trying to exercise self-restraint.

She was also unsure of how Lyam would react to having to leave their child. Her view of his spirit from the night before was vivid in her memory, and she had seen the degree to which he had been broken and the fact that, instead of healing, he had sealed the shards of himself together and stabilized himself as he was. He fiercely clung to everything he was, including his broken nature. That intense sense of self was why he showed such a strong cultivator’s talent, but it also cost him in pain… pain so incredibly horrifying she shuddered to remember her experience of it over their link.

He wasn’t suffering at present. Emotional pain simply didn’t exist for him, for the most part. However, her glimpses of his memories had been enough to tell her that he should not be alive, much less sane. That strength of self was part of what attracted her, but it also worried her, now that her fate was so intimately linked with his.

The other issue was that… creature he had bonded as a familiar. She had a feeling that it was making his fate even more tumultuous than it would have been already, and she also had a suspicion that their bond – or rather the opportunity that allowed it to form – was created in part by the creature’s insane level of luck. Mirrha had previously estimated she had another ten days before she went into heat, but it had suddenly come up when they were in range of a cave she was familiar with.

She decided, however, that she might as well enjoy her time with her lover before they had to go back into the wider world and breathed deeply, his scent giving her a difficult to describe sense of comfort that melted away her worries like butter in a hot pan. The absolute devotion and love that buried all rationality beneath its weight filled her entirely as she reveled in her mate’s presence.

Lyam, as linked to her as he was, felt the same emotions break through all his internal barriers, and he soon began caressing and kissing her passionately.

It was some time before they came back to themselves.

________________________________________________________________

Lyam and Mirrha emerged from the save a day later, rubbing their eyes as they tried to get used to the bright sunlight coming down from above. The rabbit, her expression sulky, sat outside the cave, sending her protests to her master over their link, along with demands for delicious greens and the right to take a turn with him… the former of which was granted when he tossed her a head of lettuce and the latter of which was denied categorically.

Thankfully, the bunny was still a bunny, so it immediately forgot about everything else when the lettuce came out.

As the bunny pounced on the lettuce, Mirrha spread her senses across the immediate area. After a few minutes, she turned to Lyam and spoke to him, part-mental, part-verbal, the former filling in the gaps left by her verbal speech, “There are no enemies within range. You can safely contact the Captain.”

Lyam pulled a small blue crystal out of his inventory and smashed it, sending a surge of coded telepathy toward its twin, which lay in Nezz’s own inventory.

A few minutes later, he heard Nezz’s voice, “Lyam, are you alive?”

“Yes, we survived. We are sufficiently distant from the enemy for me to form a Portal to Saerd,” He replied.

“Do not bother. The Mistress has already evacuated the town and sent half of Rugrit’s men back to the city with the refugees. She intends to take my advice and hole up underground while the horde passes. If you can, you should meet up with us south of the town,” Nezz said quickly.

“She intends to continue onward once the horde passes?” Lyam inquired.

“Yes. She has no intention of abandoning the mission, though milord has tried to convince her that it is a lost cause,” Nezz’s mental tone was neutral, showing that he was making an effort to conceal his true feelings on the matter.

“We will try to meet up with you… I think I will still use the Portal and try to find you afterward. Do we have time?” The young Saevere asked.

“If you are quick, it is possible you will find us before we seal the entrance,” Nezz allowed.

“Then we will hurry,” Lyam said curtly before cutting the communications.

He began the creation of the portal, creating the anchor points in the earth before him before initiating the actual process of casting the spell. A focusing incantation emerged from his lips, differentiating the spell from the silently-cast ones that were the norm most of the time.

He concentrated on the spell, seeing a massive 3D diagram appear in front of his eyes made up of tiny runes he instinctively understood stood in for hundreds of thousands of equations. Blink Step was as simple as flicking a finger in comparison to Portal, which he could feel stretching his mental capacity to its limit.

A seven-foot tall rip in space appeared in front of him, showing the empty main street of the town of Saerd. Mirrha and the bunny jumped through immediately, but as Lyam started through, a bolt of magical flames smashed into him from above, disrupting the portal at the very moment he passed through.

All went black.

_______________________________________________________________

Saraviel frowned as the portal exploded into a thousand streamers of colored light before imploding then exploding again, shattering the nearby trees and creating a twelve-foot deep crater in the earth beneath where it had been. Unlike the other Fallen, he had had the mental capacity and presence of mind to tag the insolent creatures during their ambush, and he had followed them with intent to gain a little revenge for the injury and death of its mindless and inferior fellows.

The portal had been too good an opportunity to pass up, given the Saevere’s disturbing level of competence and the Felinor’s wariness. Whenever he had attempted to get close for a strike until then, he had been forced to retreat lest he be detected.

Saraviel had Fallen in the distant past because he was a coward, by nature. He had betrayed his creator because he was more afraid of his general, and he had betrayed his general when he went to Hell because he was more afraid of a future in Hell than he was in suffering the curse of the Fall on the surface of Earth.

As such, he had none of the arrogant belief in his own power that so many of his kind indulged in, and he always wanted to strike when his targets were vulnerable and unaware, if possible.

It was perhaps inevitable that he would join the horde when he realized that Abdiel was above, watching for potential problems. Unlike the others, who served that lazy dragon, Saraviel had managed to hide when the previous master of the Zone was killed, so he had been free… and thus had no real choice but to obey when Abdiel arrived.

Saraviel hated mortals with a passion. However, he especially hated mortals who defied their betters, and the way Lyam’s group had ambushed his lesser fellows had galled him. So, he had decided that they needed to learn a lesson.

He really hoped the Saevere’s death had been painful as he was ripped apart by the forces of his own magic.

______________________________________________________________________________

Kasumi, Nobuhara, and Michael stood atop a glowing circle of mana they had discovered in the forest as they followed the horde. A week before, they had used the excuse of scouting the horde to depart Akibahara, which suddenly found itself without enemies when the mobs started migrating out of the city Zones. Thus, it hadn’t been difficult to convince Command to allow them to leave.

Kasumi was excited, for the message they got when they entered the circle was one any gamer would recognize and find a fascination for.

Teleportation Circle discovered. Destination: Eiffel Tower Orbital Dungeon, Dungeon Town 2. Do you wish to utilize this Teleportation Circle? Y/N

Michael and Nobuharu were wary. Something about the dungeon’s name set off alarm bells in their heads. As such, they opened their mouths to shoot down Kasumi’s desire to head in.

Unfortunately for them, Kasumi had already made her decision, and the next moment, they vanished from the surface of the First Realm.

______________________________________________________________________________

In a distant part of the greater Forest of Daena, a young dryad ran frantically, pursued by dozens of orcs and goblins. The nude, brown-skinned beauty was following her creator when the portal he created collapsed of a sudden. The sudden disruption of their connection had broken her out of Stealth and resulted in her current predicament.

Ahead of her, she caught sight of a glowing teleportation circle and jumped in just as it was about to vanish, accepting the prompt within without thought for where she would end up.

________________________________________________________________________________

Veha sighed deeply as Nezz and his men sealed the entrance to their shelter. Lyam Aldren and his crew had not arrived on time. While she did feel some remorse for sealing the man out of their shelter, the horde was getting too close to the entrance for anyone’s comfort. Saerd already burned in the distance, and Fallen Angels, Harpies, and even a Lesser Dragon could be seen flying through the skies above it.

There was simply too much risk to the expedition and the villagers they were protecting if they waited any longer.

Veha was deeply frustrated by the disruption of the task she was given, but she accepted what could not be changed. She had managed to send Rugrit back with half of his men, saying that only he could be trusted with the refugees’ well-being, stimulating his pride in the process. Having rid herself of him she was left with his two Captains, both of whom were much easier to deal with and less likely to suggest something idiotic.

When the horde had passed entirely, they would emerge and head for the Earthling enclave, the villagers accompanying them along the way.

Given the size of the horde and the degree to which it was spread out, this would likely take several days… or even weeks. Nezz had pegged the horde’s total numbers at being just under five million, after all.

In the end, she concluded she would have no choice but to wait for however long it took. They didn’t have the means to directly oppose the horde, and she was not about to ignore the task given by her father. He was especially unforgiving with those he deemed to be cowards, after all.

______________________________________________________________________________

~An Excerpt from the Schools of Magic, an Explanation for the Ignorant

Dimensional Magic is a Celestial School born of elements drawn from Force, Gravity, Spatial, and Spirit Magic. Spatial Magic is said to lie outside of the Tiers of schools because it has, as a basic requirement to learn it, the use of Force and Gravity Magic. However, it is possible to gain access to Dimensional Magic without learning Spatial Magic.

However, just because it is possible to learn Dimensional Magic without learning Spatial Magic does not mean you should do so. Using Dimensional Magic without a solid grounding in Spatial Magic can result in skewed spatial coordinates, disorientation, and even expulsion into the Void.

Certain Perks and Talents adjust individual’s abilities to allow for safe use of Dimensional Magic, such as Spatial Orientation or Perfect Positioning. However, the MP costs for Dimensional Magic rise when the knowledge gained from higher mastery of Spatial Magic is not present. Dimensional Magic is highly reliant on an instinctive grasp of higher mathematics that is only inherent to a few races known to exist in the System, such as the Gelaan and the Saevere.

The Gelaan, who are not a Sublimated race but rather one that can travel to and from different universes under their own power, have never formed a society inside the System, so attempts to observe them or obtain a sample of their biological material to study have always failed. However, the Saevere, though a nearly-extinct species, were once a common sight all over the System. Observations of captured Saevere known to be capable of Dimensional Magic have noted that their brains are naturally more efficient than most other humanoid species, allowing them to perform high mathematics without conscious thought. Thus, despite the fact that their magic feels instinctual to them, it can be inferred that their utilization of magic is cognitive rather than instinctive.

The fact that all Saevere have a Talent that allows them to master a Celestial School without prerequisites further backs this hypothesis, though the decrease in Saevere numbers due to their seemingly near-suicidal desire to explore and find new things eventually made further studies impossible.

Dimensional Magic, therefore, is one of several branches of magic that require high cognition to master. This is further proven by the fact that no known non-sentient race is capable of using it.

_____________________________________________

Lyam’s Stat Page at the end of Volume 1

Name: Lyam Aldren

Level: 47

Race: Saevere Wanderer (Tier 3)

Profession: Hired Killer

Class: Curse Blade (Locked), Dimension Walker (Legendary, Master)

Title: Cain’s Successor, Kinslayer, The First Curse Blade, Soul Master, The First Dimension Walker (75% chance to shift destination of dimensional travel that would otherwise be fatal to a safe zone)

Available AP: 21

Available SP: 24

HP: 375/6100

MP: 10432/10432

Str: 30

Agi: 45

Dex: 45

Con: 30

End: 30

Int: 94

Will: 60

Cha: 30

Lck: 42

Martial Skills: Light Blades 42, Long Blades 32 ,Backstab 40, Stealth 49, Magic Resistance 12, Shadow Manipulation 15

Magic Skills: True Sight 50, Ice Magic 20, Lightning Magic 10, Water Magic 1, Life Magic 1, Gravity Magic 35, Curse Magic 15, Soul Magic 10, Karma Manipulation 1, Dimensional Magic 15

Crafting Skills: Blood Curse Tattoo 30, Enchanting 25, Skinning 3

Knowledge Skills: Anatomy 15

Spells: Psychokinesis, Gravity Arrow, Blood Curse, Create Soul Familiar, Blood Curse: Bloodfire (invocation and manipulation, basic invocation consumes 1 HP and 1 MP per second), Karmic Sacrifice, Gravity Manipulation, Levitation (Gravity), Blood Curse: Gravity Manipulation, Blood Curse: Wind Manipulation, Blood Curse Array: Annihilation Codex, Blink Step, Portal, Ice Lance, Ice Manipulation, Ice Sheet, Lightning Strike, Paralyzing Bolt, Lightning Manipulation, Regeneration, Crude Water Manipulation (Ice Transformation Specialty)

Weapon Style: Cat Dances with Swords (Novice), Weaver’s Halberd (Intermediate)

Non-Combat: Perception 50, Mana Cultivation 48, Spirit Cleansing 75, Dissection 1

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Novice, Sword-staff:Zar’estra), Shadow Cloak (Novice), Dimension Thrust (Novice), Thief of Knowledge (Novice, gives a 25% chance to consume knowledge from a defeated enemy and a 100% chance to obtain knowledge willingly given by a friendly subject)

Cultivation: Basic Technique (Unnamed, aura-focused), Dual Cultivation: Ferocious War of the Lycen Beast

Dao: Formation I (Undefined/Unnamed)

Perks: Kinslayer I (5% damage boost to sapient humanoids, -5% to damage taken from sapient humanoids), Absolute Metabolism (Perfect immunity to and absorption of poison, disease, and curses), Eyes of the Fallen God (Unknown Aegis), Soul Familiar: Humanoid Magic Bunny (Luck +2 per level gained), Cultivator, Spatial Orientation (You can always tell where you are relative to your previous location, even without sensory reference points, as long as you are on the same world tier), Unbound from Chains (Immune to paralysis and mesmerize spells and abilities, and will automatically negate teleport locks below Tier 3), Felinor Mate Bond: Mirrha (You have been accepted as the true mate of a Felinor and your soul and body have been marked. Those who are allies to the Felinor will aid you, and their enemies will despise you. Your soul is linked to your mate and you gain +1 to Agility and Dexterity with every level gained, your mate gains +1 Willpower and Intelligence per level), Natural Body Cultivation (gained through Felinor Mate Bond)

Racial Perks: Mana Core, Innovative Nature III, Inspiration, Wanderer (you are happiest when wandering, -10% to all stats when you have remained in an area longer than a year)

Talents: Compartmentalization (This individual can shuffle his emotions to the side almost at will), Cold Mind (This individual will ignore all attempts to sway him emotionally from a chosen course, whether born of magic or conventional means), Persona Creation (This individual naturally adopts personality traits that will give him a better chance of success in his chosen endeavors), Greater Magic Affinity (potential to master at least 3 schools of magic, two basic, one Celestial, Class Schools do not count for Affinity Talents), Dimensional Magic Affinity (Dimensional Magic can be mastered without using a Celestial magic mastery slot)