Murphy jumped down from Morbid’s back. His heart in his throat and his voice raspy and filled with killing intent.
“Morbid. Kill him.”
With a single command from Murphy, Morbid let out a ground shaking roar. The pig man’s entire body locked up as the effects of an innate spell, ‘Fear’, fell onto him and froze his body like a statue. His fingers grew limp and shakenly dropped Seelie from his huge fat hands.
Only a brief moment from ruining Seelie’s life forever.
Morbid’s mighty roar echoed through the surroundings and was still sounding out as he lurched forward. His movements for such a huge beast were so fast it almost seemed as if he’d teleported. His rage was corporeal as with a single swipe, pig man was launched into the forest like a huge sack of meat from a catapult.
Trees snapped in half from the force of his projectile motion. Before he could even touch the ground, Morbid was already a step behind him, swinging his paws as huge sharp claws scratched down and took with them the pig man’s arm.
Murphy quickly raced up to the lifeless body of Seelie, only to be stunned when he discovered she was already dead. Her mouth was filled with blood. Although he was no coroner, he could guess that she’d bitten the tip of her tongue off to escape her fate.
He could only let out a long breath when he came back to his senses. You couldn’t log out when you were in the midst of battle or outside of a safe zone, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t kill yourself and force a logout.
He felt somewhat relieved that Seelie had escaped the fate of suffering this foul creature’s touch. If she’d still been logged in when he arrived, and something had happened. Perhaps Chuckles, Morbid and Juwan truly would come to understand the phrase ‘wishing for death but cannot die’.
He eyed the swirling portal nearby and reached a hand towards it. A little zap of lightning sparked out and forced him to retract his hand.
‘So they already have wards on their portals? They must be fairly advanced. No matter. I will seek redress for this situation in time.’
“Morbid. Come.”
Morbid finished ripping the corpse of the pig man to shreds, then walked over to see Murphy holding the lifeless corpse of Seelie in his arms with a dark expression. Morbid, feeling some guilt for this situation let loose a long mourning wail into the sky.
His cry was filled with sadness and anguish. As if he was crying over the death of his closest kin. The forests shook, and creatures for kilometres in every direction fled as they felt a huge killing intent suddenly engulf the entire forest.
Every living thing nearby felt their body’s become cold and it was as if they were on the verge of having their tiny little lives snuffed out by some enraged deity’s wrath.
Murphy looted Seelie’s corpse then jumped onto Morbid. They raced back to their domain so that Murphy could log out and check on Seelie.
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Shit, shit, shit! I’ve fucked up! I’ve fucking fucked everything up! Murphy is never going to trust this stupid older brother! I’ve delivered his most beloved into the hands of some deviant and then fucking lost them!
I hadn’t planned for any stranger to show up and rescue her before Murphy did, but I thought at the time it would create more pressure, so we agreed to simply follow after them and make sure nothing untoward happened until Murphy turned up.
Then we lost track of them in the haunted forests. Murphy would have only just logged back in at that time, so we raced back to get him. With some luck, the direction they were heading in was close to our portal, so it wasn’t far. But every second that passed without Seelie in my sight was like a needle stabbing into my heart.
I’d created this mess to help Murphy out, but in the end, I had created a catastrophe. When little brother left, I felt how angered he was. Although it wasn’t directed specifically at us, I felt something I’d never felt before when I saw his eyes.
Since I’d always considered this a game, I never really feared or despaired when I faced death. When I saw his eye’s though. I felt like I was actually seeing something that could kill me. I felt like how those old era earthlings must have felt when they watched all those missiles landing off in the distance and then the resulting cloud of radiation and dust blowing towards them.
Haa ... brother will surely be upset with me. More importantly, Seelie will be upset with me. Even if Murphy hates me forever, I still had hope that I could hang onto Seelie and be close with brother that way. Now though, she will most definitely consider me to be an idiot and a menace.
It seems, trying to do something good isn’t as easy as little brother makes it look.
Chuckles and I both anxiously waited for Murphy to return. By the time he got back, we’d worn a trail in the ground from our back and forth pacing and chewed our nails to the finger in worry.
Although we were worried about how little brother was going to react. We were more worried about Seelie. We’d met enough players now and been around long enough to hear stories. Just because it was a game, didn’t mean it couldn’t leave scars.
When Murphy finally returned, he didn’t even acknowledge our existence. He simply dismounted from Morbid and logged out. It appeared that Seelie had been killed, because she didn’t come back with Little Brother.
We expected to be reprimanded, or punished, or anything. The thing that hurt the most though, was that we weren’t punished, just ignored. Even when Murphy came back, he acted as if we didn’t exist. He simply walked through the Portal to 6 Stars and didn’t come back.
48 game hours later, Seelie re-spawned in the domain. She was obviously upset about something, but whatever it was it clearly wasn’t us. In fact, she even thanked us for trying so hard. It was difficult to accept such a thing when she described what happened.
When she found out that we had no idea who the pig man was and explained we never recruited him, she became silent for a short time then let out a long sigh. After that, she did the exact same thing Murphy did. She left Chuckles in charge, and walked through the portal.
Raid day came and went. We were targeted by another domain on Murphy’s list and regained 5-day protection status after Morbid went on a rampage. Then we geared up and prepared to set out. From what Seelie said, someone else had directed that rescue from the dragon’s tower.
We didn’t know what the reason was, but even if Murphy and Seelie didn’t blame us for our stuff up, we blamed ourselves. Therefore, we were angry. Someone had taken us for fools and very nearly took advantage of Little Brother’s woman!
Just before we left, Murphy returned looking like a shadow of himself and covered with dried blood and wear and tear on his coat and clothing that could only have been from endless numbers of near fatal injuries.
He said nothing, and only went to the half-finished castle where he spent nearly 40,000 experience points and extended our raid protection for another 5 days.
Murphy still acknowledged nothing and no one. When he walked back through the portal, he looked like a half-dead robot. Simply making the motions, with no true soul or motive behind his actions. While still preparing, about half an hour after Murphy left, Seelie returned and did the same thing. Adding another 3 days.
With the just completed raid, we now had 13 days of amnesty and could completely throw ourselves into the mission we had set out to accomplish. We would find out everything we could about Seelie’s abduction.
With wrath and regret mixing together like one of Murphy’s volatile concoctions, we set forth to find the perpetrator and right this wrong.
When we finally left to 6 Star and reached the nearest city, there wasn’t a single worthy quest. Everything with more than 500 experience as a reward had been consumed. It didn’t matter too much though. We didn’t come here to quest, and instead came to gather information.
Chuckles used his summoning to call forth his Shadow Squad, and they spread out across the city like clandestine shadows, sucking up information from everywhere they could.
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I wanted to be angry at those three morons. I really did. But when I looked at Morbid’s huge puppy dog eyes, and remembered the heartbreak he expressed when we finally found Seelie, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him for what happened.
Juwan was a different story. I regularly and very frequently hated on Juwan but the simple truth of the matter is, I didn’t really hate him. I was more afraid of creating a relationship with him than anything, and so in my head, I vilified him. It was about the only way to keep distance between us.
In the end though, he is nothing if not persistent. He thought he could help me out behind the scenes this time but failed. In a twisted sense, although I could definitely blame him and finally have my reason to actually vilify him, in my mind all the blame came back to only one person. Myself.
Even Chuckles, who I felt somewhat betrayed by at first, had set out on this misguided endeavour for me. At the end of the day, the only person to blame was myself.
And so I did. I took all that blame I thought I’d be piling on those three idiots, and took it upon my own shoulders. Even though Seelie had escaped some horrible incident, she still suffered. A little bit of innocence she once had, was now taken away.
When I went to see Seelie, she seemed calm and unperturbed, but I’d known her long enough to tell it was an act. I may ignore the world around me, but I am not a complete fool. My wisdom stat may be in the negative when it comes to social interaction, but even I could pick up on the clues.
Thus, I set out onto Planet 6 Star in order to get even stronger. Strong enough, that even if Seelie were taken to the other side of the universe, I could still find her and protect her. Just like I promised to do the first time I met her.
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I took many advantages of Murphy once I started learning magic. Chief amongst them was a tracking spell. Although it has a rather limited range, it helped me inadvertently set up moments when he catches me getting undressed, or I trip into his arms just as he’s turning a corner. Silly things that seem stupid in retrospect of everything else going on in our life now.
But it’s all part of my plan to subtly increase my presence in his mind until he can’t forget about me. Seems so childish, but at that moment when I was distraught and wishing I could die, it was useful.
I could sense my tracking magic suddenly light up so close it was almost on top of me. I knew that Murphy had finally come, just in the nick of time! However, I then felt ashamed of myself to an escalating degree. I didn’t want Murphy to see me like that, and no matter what, I didn’t want him to remember me like that.
Weak, powerless to protect myself. Incapable of taking care of my own issues. Although it warmed my heart that he’d come, I didn’t want him to think that I couldn’t take care of myself. It was the whole point of learning magic and becoming strong!
I then had a brain fart that I wished I’d had a minute sooner. I pushed out my tongue, and mustered all the force left in my weakened body to bite it off. The pain was excruciating, and I almost stopped myself until the thought of Murphy finding me in this situation, still logged in, made my stomach churn and my ego burn.
I wasn’t going to let this man pig take anything from me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to suffer the indignity of this situation when Murphy found me.
The best part was probably watching the face of the pig man distort as blood overflowed from my mouth and poured down my throat into my lungs. I want to say that killing myself in that situation was easy, but it really wasn’t. Dying like that, it was mostly quite quick, but also incredibly painful and frightening.
I’d died a few times in the game, but never from something as torturous as drowning in my own blood. Just as my final brief moments of clarity faded, I heard Morbid’s enrage howl, and then it all went dark.
Murphy was then at the door of my house within the hour. Which lead to a very awkward scene. He was obviously incredibly worried about me but wasn’t sure how to ask about it, so I did what has become mostly habit now and gave him an implant, obviously altering the end a little bit, so he thought I’d killed myself the moment the pig man grabbed me.
He looked at me sceptically, and worriedly at the same time, which almost seemed cute. I talked for a little bit and for a rare change he didn’t seem to space out once. When he finally left, his face was that stoic, serious gaze I fell in love with.
I was worried he might be angry at those three morons, but in the end, he didn’t seem to blame them at all. Which led me to ask myself who I blamed for this situation developing like it had, the answer to which was myself.
My lack of power, preparation and my arrogance nearly cost me that most important thing that I was saving only for Murphy. Well ... mostly. Technically I was only a virgin in that I hadn’t had a dick. I’d popped my cherry quite some time ago on my own terms.
The point is, I was angry at myself for being powerless, and so to fix that, I planned to get power. The next time something like this happens, it’ll be some pig man wanting to rape Murphy, and me racing to his rescue!
Then after rescuing him, it’ll be all, ‘Oh Seelie. Oh Murphy... ‘ Ahem!
I’m gonna store that one away in my spank back.
Anyway, in the end, the person I blamed most for this was me, and so I set out to correct that the moment I could log back in. When I returned and discovered Murphy had already left and was most likely doing the same thing as me, I felt that gap widening again.
So I didn’t hesitate and set forth. Every quest worth doing, I would set out and do. Even the lower end quests I would set out and use them as an opportunity to strengthen my weaknesses. Which in this case were body stats and close combat skills.
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In the end, this huge cluster fuck resulted in proving that all 5 people involved were complete idiots. They all unanimously blamed themselves like a bunch of self-righteous pricks and raced off to become godly strong or find someone behind the plot to abduct Seelie so they could vent themselves.
It turned into a long 13 days were the lot of them just raced around 6 Star planet stirring up all sorts of trouble and then on the 13th day they all returned, sat down, and silently drank very strong liquor to drown themselves.
In the end, this 13 days had been a cooling off period which everyone used for some soul searching. Murphy came back and acknowledged that in the end, he was just running away from admitting his feelings.
That, of course, didn’t stop him from still ignoring them.
Seelie came back looking like a war maiden, clad in armour and sporting a serious looking sword almost as tall as her body. She’d clearly become quite a bit stronger, but at the end of the day, she didn’t feel like she’d actually accomplished anything.
It was only after she’d slain countless dangerous beasts and thwarted who knows how many evil plots that she came to acknowledge she was running away from the same thing Murphy was. She was a little different in that she already knew how she felt, but was instead running away from telling Murphy and finally forcing the issue.
Even after recognising this, she remained too shy or too scared to actually do it.
Chuckles came back and acknowledged that he had failed his master and even betrayed him. His guilt was like tar that could only be washed off with a lifetime of effort.
Unlike the two domain controllers, who were both idiots and clearly needed a life coach or some kind of serious help, Chuckles vowed his literally undying loyalty to Murphy and swore to always keep his master’s intentions in heart. Even if they didn’t align with what he actually needed most.
Which was the case with him and Seelie.
Morbid was just a big stupid dog, and like he had amnesia, completely forgot about the whole thing. Apart from seeming a little more protective of Seelie than before, he remained innocent and stupid.
Juwan had always been doing exactly what he felt he should be doing from the start. He had no great insight to his motives during these 13 days and if anything only became more fanatical about getting his little brother’s approval.
The next day came, and everyone woke up with hangovers as the protection of the system finally finished and their domain was free to be attacked. Because Seelie and Murphy both ran off with the desire to become strong enough to protect each other, the domain had made little to no progress.
Apart from the castle finally being finished, the spawn didn’t go out of their way to improve anything else.
While the controllers were away, the Spawn spent their entire time rooting and making babies. Thanks to that, their population had tripled in the 13 days Murphy was gone, and the entire place was teaming with the little bastards running everywhere and causing all sorts of mischief.
Murphy was stunned to discover that he had almost 5000 spawn living in his domain. Which wasn’t a good thing because they didn’t have the space to support that many Spawn. Plus, every time they had a festival or held some ritual, the place would be flooded with Spawn juices.
Which he quickly discovered after they used the excuse of him coming home just to hold one.
Because they’d both done some soul searching and seemed to understand what was really driving them, and because what they discovered was in fact how it had pretty much always been, everything seemed to fall back into normalcy between Murphy and Seelie.
It was almost like everyone suddenly forgot what happened and seemed to be unanimously blocking it out.
The only exception being Juwan, who still fully intended to push Murphy and Seelie together. Unfortunately for him, talking to Murphy was like talking to a brick wall. Although he had some more success talking to Seelie, he only felt the weight of his mission growing when she declared that she wasn’t going to play a damsel just to make him come for her.
After all, even after this whole incident, he just ended up running off and killing things to drown himself in combat instead of actually manning up to his feelings.
Come the end of the day, no one seemed game enough to attack them directly, so Murphy and Seelie started planning what to do with the domain. Although during the 13 days the domain hadn’t progressed at all, Seelie and Murphy had both finished a boatload of quests while running away from themselves and had so many quest rewards it wasn’t funny.
They’d even had to sell some of their stuff because their inventories were so full.
Among the things they’d kept were gems, ores, herbs and other ingredients for crafting and alchemy. Among the most useful and interesting things was something called a Geode. Which was a crystal you could plant that would steadily grow certain resources like iron or stone. Even other precious gems if you were lucky.
They started planting these things all over the place. Unfortunately, they weren’t a one-day growth kind of thing and needed about a week to properly start creating. Once they reached that point, they would continue to grow to a fixed size, and then they stopped. After that, once you start harvesting them they just keep growing back.
They were clearly designed for the purpose of creating a renewable resource point on domains, but Murphy wasn’t really surprised by the technology of this game anymore. Whoever created it had a disgustingly godlike level of technology and power.
Murphy then started designing and building some more things, even going so far as to spend experience on some rather expensive stuff for his construction efforts. For another 4 days, the entire domain lit up as Spawn raced everywhere completing all sorts of tasks.
In the end though, their most limiting factor was land. As such, everything Murphy had started preparing was to achieve the goal of getting more land. They simply floated around, running form larger domains.
All the smaller domains were too afraid to try and make a move against them, and the few domains that decided to try and team up against them received a single ballista bolt with a Spawn that raced around everywhere being almost untouchable. This locked their domain down in raid status and allowed Murphy to escape.
When they thought they’d finally caught the little bastard, Murphy would cast summoning magic and recall him.
The Spawn were rather special in a way. They maintained a somewhat semi-player status because they were originally summoned by a player. They received all sorts of benefits from the system, but were still bound by certain limitations due to the fact they didn’t actually have a dimension key on their home plane.
Murphy could create a respawn point for them, but that too was limited in its function. Although it allowed them to respawn in the domain after 12 hours, the Spawn didn’t get sent home and instead sort of just floated around in limbo.
The respawn point had to be specialised, and it only worked for Spawn. It also became their lifeline. If the Respawn point were destroyed, then the Spawn in limbo would die. At the same time, a price was paid for every spawn that resurrected.
Based on their stats and skills, the respawn point would consume experience from the domain’s communal Exp. If the Controller ran out of Exp, then the respawn point wouldn’t operate.
It wasn’t quite the same as an NPC, which had a no freedom, fixed status and couldn’t improve, but it wasn’t quite a player, which had complete freedom and would just respawn elsewhere if they died.
Turned out that summoned semi-player creatures were the mainstay of domain defences. It was quite cheap for a Controller to purchase a Race Specific Summoning Scroll. This allowed most controllers to summon beings of their own race which then filled a semi-player roll.
There were only two problems with this. The first being, anything summoned in such a way only had one life unless the controller set up a spawn point. The second was that the summoned beings would generally be as weak as weak could be, and would have to train skills and stats from nothing.
Although players were more expensive and harder to keep, they were worth far more than summoned units because they already had significant levels and training, making them worth hundreds of summoned units.
Murphy had been quite lucky in having innate summons such as Morbid and the Spawn. Morbid was a born tank and unstoppable force already, while the Spawn evolved rapidly and took on many traits from the Master in doing so.
Although it made his minions a somewhat mixed bag, and no two evolved spawn had the same skills, traits or stats, it gave his army and undeniable edge over the competition. Both in the speed they could gain levels, and the diversity of their strengths and weaknesses.
It just so happened, that today was the day Murphy decided he was ready. He splurged from the huge stores of Exp he and Seelie had pooled together from their mostly pointless soul searching trip, and bought the scroll that would grant the Spawn’s altar the ability of a respawn point.
He almost felt his heart bleeding from the huge amounts of resources used on this endeavour, but none the less tore the scroll anyway.
A huge beam of light seemed to generate from nowhere and fall onto the circular courtyard. Spawn from all over the domain were popping out and screaming while banging poorly fitting shields or helmets.
In almost the same instant that the lights faded, a huge festival was being thrown by the Spawn. They didn’t particularly care about being able to respawn. Death was inevitable for these creatures, and they had readily accepted that before now.
They were more celebrating that their summoner was such a great man who looked out for their species. Which at the end of the day was worth more to them than having a second chance at life after a glorious battle in which they died.
That was the mindset of the Spawn, and if someone could actually understand their jabbering and incoherent noises, they would learn the Spawn placed less value on their own lives and more value on killing things. Having life was just a means to go and kill more stuff.
They’re Demons after all, and no matter how deep Murphy’s philosophical teachings are, these creatures can’t change their innate nature overnight.
With the respawn point ready, Murphy then rounded up his most powerful spawns and started teaching them about tactics. He had some plans he wanted to try out on this raid, and he needed the spawn to be capable of carrying them out.
While he was doing that, Seelie was following his instructions already and controlling the domain to float about near other domains they’d targeted. At first, they didn’t seem to react too much. Most of them were in protection status so weren’t worried about being attacked, and they also knew that they probably couldn’t take on Murphy’s domain alone.
At first, it seemed rather innocuous and innocent. The enemy was just floating around scoping them out. They’d then fly off to another domain hundreds or thousands of kilometres away and do the same thing.
After a while, they just started ignoring them. Even the domains that weren’t in protection status started to loosen up and ignore them. This was because all the domains they floated near were almost 3 times the size of Murphy’s little island of land.
Not to mention they were filled to the brim with far more powerful defenders and fortifications.
Then things changed a little when they floated up to only a few hundred meters from the edge of these domains, and the two gravity wells and atmospheres intersected and formed one. Murphy called this an ‘air bridge’. Unlike normal bridging, which is the earth forming a single midpoint between two domains, air bridging happens well before that. Often as far as a kilometre of two from the target.
In this case, the domains were still two small for something like that, so Murphy had to be quite a bit closer to form it. But the best part of this was that he wasn’t actually forming a ‘real’ bridge and their two domains still remained independent and mobile, just sharing a single gravity well and atmosphere.
Eventually, at a particular forested domain, things devolved slightly.
All the Spawn lined up along the edges of the domain and started banging their shields or screaming at the top of their lungs while jumping around. It looked as if they were all getting ready for war.
Making the inhabitants of this domain even more nervous, was the huge Hell Hound that patrolled the border and glared at them rather menacingly from across the gap. Dodgy catapults were hauled up to the edges of Murphy’s domain, and all pulled back ready to fire.
The only thing was that each of them was empty. The thing that made the creatures hidden in the domains forest the most nervous, was when Spawn started hauling huge sacks down to the catapults then loading them up.
Despite much threatening and posturing on the part of the big domains via voice projection, Murphy remained silent as his Spawn prepared for the task ahead.
Finally, after all this posturing from Murphy’s Spawns, Murphy’s domain just started floating away again. Just as they were starting to get some speed and distance up, and the air bridge was about to break, the Spawn lit all the sacks on fire and launched them into the other domain.
At first, nothing was thought about this. It was only a dozen odd catapults, so no matter how much Murphy tried, he would be unable to actually hit anything in the massive area of land these domains had.
Turned out, all he really wanted to hit was the domain in general. The flaming sacks hit the ground and exploded into pieces. Spraying flaming dog shit everywhere.
The entire domain was raised to the highest level of alert when the putrid stench of flaming shit filled the atmosphere and citizens of the domain either fled from the turbid smell through portals or were immediately paralysed as they vented their lunch.
The Spawn all cheered and laughed loudly as Murphy’s domain raced off into the starry sky. The beauty of this plan, was that each of the domains he’d targeted were so far apart, that by the time they caught up to Murphy, he will have already shit bombed another one and moved on.
Morbid’s box had been filled to overflowing precisely to fulfil this purpose.
By the end of a game day, which was 96 hours, 6 notorious domains had all been bombed with shit, and their rage filled the heavens. The more civilised controllers that were often bullied by these domains lost their civility and started projecting their raucous laughter hundreds of kilometres toward these shit covered domains.
In a single day, Murphy had successfully enraged and humiliated the 6 biggest and most notorious fish in his little sector of space.
He then ghosted his domain, disappearing. The next day, he came and did it again. By this point in time, not only had these huge pirate like domains been completely humiliated in the sector they hunted in most, but news of this humiliation was spreading out to other star sectors.
Coalitions of pirate like domains that these domains were affiliated with were all enraged beyond belief. Not only was Murphy slapping the face of these specific domains, but also their allies.
They had to put a stop to this nonsense immediately and regain their status as feared pirates. So they placed huge bounties on Murphy and sent out smaller domains to track him. In the end, they discovered that Murphy’s domain must have some treasure that allowed him to remain in darkness for a prolonged period, because even after two days, there wasn’t a trace of him.
After a few more days, things quietened down again, and everyone assumed Murphy had escaped to another sector to avoid being pursued so heavily. The pirate like domains in question all finished cleaning the shit from their domains and tried to forget about the huge insult they’d suffered.
Then like a demon of the night, his domain reappeared right in the middle of his original star sector and began launching even more devious attacks. Flaming shit rained from the sky’s, laced with volatile concoctions, making it literally explode on impact.
To rub salt into the wounds, all sorts of weird curses started being thrown randomly into these domains. Murphy even went so far as to launch his Ain’t No Rest Spell Model, which resulted in thousands being afflicted with insomnia.
Although it wasn’t permanent, like he’d expected, and its effects weren’t dramatically increased, the spell model caused a huge area of effect curse that covered nearly half the domains he was attacking. It also had negligible Mana channelling cost, making it a perfect long war style weapon.
After another day of this, with vultures and mini domains tailing him, he fled. When he went into ghost mode, it was followed by meteors hurtling towards the smaller domains that were trying to follow him. The resulting chaos and confusion led to his eventual escape once more.
Then day’s slowly began to pass, and the insomnia curse started rearing its head. The weaker willed inhabitants started showing signs of madness and even the strong willed were easily losing their tempers.
Although that wasn’t rare in the type of people that rob and plunder with no ethical compass, the level of their tempers had skyrocketed to the point they were hanging people for the slightest mistakes.
These huge domains started turning into chaos as civil war almost broke out numerous times. Then, once more, Murphy appeared. This time, the domains believed they were ready for him. Like a bunch of cowards, they’d all moved into very close proximity of one another and were being circled by tens of vultures.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
If Murphy appeared again, they planned for the vultures to lock him down with raid status and then they were going to all dock him and give him his just desserts. After which, with nearly 30 odd vultures and their 6 huge domains, his domain would be reduced to nothing in a single go.
What they never expected, was for Murphy’s domain to appear out of nowhere right in the middle of all of them.
The moment it appeared from the darkness of space, iron ballista bolts with huge glowing chains were flying everywhere.
Of the 6 domains he was attacking, two were forested biomes, two were some kind of red dirt and rock biome, one was a grassy plane with grass that was near head height and the last was filled with flaming gases and magma.
The most confusing part about this whole scene was how Murphy had managed to get in the middle of them without them ever knowing, and what the hell he was planning to do against the 6 biggest domains in the sector by himself.
More intriguing was the ballista bolts. Unlike before now, how everything he shot at people was from the surface of his domain, the new ballista were all in hollowed out little alcoves down underneath the domain.
The huge spike-like base of the domain was massive, and the entire thing looked like a beehive and was filled with tunnels and ballista bristling off the sides like hairs. Hundreds of ballista all fired at once and stabbed into the spike like bases of the other domains. Even the vulture domains circling nearby weren’t able to escape from being struck by a chained ballista bolt.
Then, slowly, the glowing chains tightened and began to shrink back. Slowly pulling these huge domains directly towards Murphy’s.
To say the other controllers were confused would be an understatement. Although they had some hesitation regarding the initial poison biome, and weren’t sure what to expect in that strange black biome, they felt they were more than adequately prepared.
If Murphy pulled all of them into his biome at the same time, then he would be swarmed to death. It was almost as if he was helping them to achieve the goal they’d set for this trap right from the beginning.
Huge drums on the turrets of Murphy’s castle began to beat loudly and as the 6 Domains ‘bridged’ with Murphy’s, their speed and depth of sound increased. They seemed to be shaking the very air of the entire domain, and the loud clanging and screaming of demons could be heard from beyond the wall of poison smog on the outskirts.
As soon as the bridge was fully formed, the six Controllers charged forwards with their residents to slay the vile symbol of fairness and justice which Murphy had unwittingly become in this star sector.
The fastest to cross the bridge and pass into the smog was from a forest biome, a spider race. There were all sorts of strange spider species, and they ranged from little palm sized babies to huge 8-foot monsters. The most frightening of them all was the Controller, which was covered in armour and stood nearly 12 feet high.
They were the most confident of everyone, most of them having high resistance to poisons. If anything, they felt this poison smog would make a great home for them. They quickly discovered how wrong they were though as the hordes of spiders skittered into the smog only to be engulfed by its thick pervasive wall like a coin into the ocean.
The moment they set foot into the smog, raid status was declared for Murphy’s domain, locking its movement down and assuring the other domains they had the time to use their own means to move through the smog unhindered. Mostly being cure potions or protective spells.
As they started moving into the smog on their own ends, they heard the high pitch screams of the spiders that had charged into the fog before them. The beating of the huge war drums atop Murphy’s castle only seemed to increase with pace the more the spiders screams echoed.
The leading parties of the other domains felt their hearts tighten as they forged through the thick smog of the poison marsh. The first to break out of the fog was from the magma race. Some type of flaming rock golem which was mostly unaffected by poison, but slow, making them a step behind the spiders.
When the controller of the golems stepped out of the smog like a towering giant nearly the same height as the spider queen, he was shocked to find nothing. His domain had docked right next to the spider domain and was only a minute behind them in entering the smog.
It worried him that at the moment he left the smog into the sinister lands, he didn’t spot a single spider corpse. In fact, apart from the strange flowers and trees of this biome, he saw nothing. For hundreds of meters up to the base of the grassy hill, there wasn’t a single thing.
He wanted to call his men to slow down and advance carefully, but unfortunately, more than half of them were suffering from some strange curse and were completely irrational. They simply charged forth from the smog with big slow lumbering steps and continued towards the castle in the distance.
The war drum’s beating had slowed in pace once the screaming of the spiders coming from the smog had completely died down. The flaming rock golems moved forward at a rapid pace, unhindered by anything. Hundreds of the huge golem people stomped across the sinister lands and sprayed fire about the place just for kicks.
That was until they sprayed fire onto a very strange looking giant flower. The moment that flower caught fire, hundreds of flowers all rapidly broke through the ground and started attacking. They were particularly weak to the fire, but their teeth were magical and sinister in nature. With ever whipping flower head, a golem lost a limb.
With great effort, they broke through the barrage of carnivorous flowers only to discover every single one of them, perhaps by purpose, had lost at least one limb. They hadn’t lost too many lives, but their combat prowess had been cut in half after a single foray.
More disturbing was that the moment a flower accomplished its goal, it would burrow into the ground and shoot off somewhere else. This was disturbing because the moment it burrowed into the ground the flames that were damaging it would be doused by the earth.
As they continued to move forward, slightly more cautious than last time, they spotted another of the domains finally breaking through the smog far off to one side. The leading golem was about to warn them to watch out for the flowers, only to watch on horrified as the huge head of a giant dog slowly appeared from out of the top of the smog behind them.
The first few to step out of the smog from one of the red dirt domains was a group of lizard looking humanoids. However, they quickly regreted moving into the open area of the sinister lands as a huge pour reached out from the smog and squashed them flat.
The dog head let out a low growl, and the drums of war beat faster and faster as Morbid’s big head suddenly disappeared into the smog and light from spells flashed and screams from the lizard men rang out in chorus to the drums.
The flame golem leader was stunned, shocked, a little frightened. Before he could wrap his head around the strangeness of this domain, a new set of drums started beating in a different rhythm, and he watched on as another domain made land beyond the smog only for hundreds if not thousands of strange demon creatures to pour out of hidden burrows and engage them.
The golems face became serious for the first time, and he pushed for the castle even faster. If he could claim the castle, then they would survive this massacre.
The other lizard domain broke free from the smog and encountered a single woman clad in golden armour with a huge sword almost her own body length and width adorned on her back. She smiled coyly and instead of taking the sword, she flipped her hand, within which appeared a spell tome.
Moments later rivers of fire raged, and icicles sharp enough to pierce metal rained from the skies. The Smog on the outer edges of the domain surged and seethed as all sorts of battles broke out across Murphy’s domain.
This was only the beginning though. These huge domains didn’t only have a few hundreds or thousands of residents. They were powerful because they had tens of thousands. Their armies were a far cry ahead of Murphy’s in terms of sheer numbers, and like a tide of locusts, they continued a relentless march through the marsh and then into the sinister lands.
Slowly, the lands surrounding the castle were filled with war and death and Spawns valiantly surged up from burrows, slaying 5 enemies for everyone one of them that died. Chuckles flittered across the field with his little special forces team targeting the stronger enemies for assassination.
Spawns lined the walls of the castle firing spells as the war drums grew frantic and great reverberations spread across the chaos in the fields around the castle. Ballista and catapults launched bolts adorned with explosive powder or volatile concoction like a serenade of death in complement to the drums.
Alchemist Spawn were throwing all sorts of vile concoctions around causing purple poison gases to appear and toxic sludge to cover their enemies.
Red flashes of light from curses poured across the sinister lands, and the enemies returned fire with powerful spells obliterating groups of spawn in the dozens.
Juwan, Morbid and Seelie were almost capable of holding back their sections completely by themselves. Although Juwan wasn’t powerful in regards to direct combat, his skills focused on leadership and comrade bonuses. Powerful buffs and auras emanated from him like a celestial glow, and he could turn a group of 100 spawns into the equivalent of 1000.
The whole time, Murphy stood atop his castle walls and watched on with an anxious expression. He’d originally hoped he could take care of this battle with just ingenuity and a few key powerful teammates. It seemed his thinking was rather wishful.
At last, he felt that the majority of the enemies had poured into his domain like lemmings, and he launched a crossbow bolt into the sky from the battlements of his castle.
As it reached the peak of its flight, it ignited and spewed bright flames out like a flaring star. The drums of the castle froze. With that, a domain suddenly appeared from the darkness of space as light flooded forth on its surface, revealing it only a few kilometres from the ongoing chaotic war of 6 versus 1.
Standing at the edge of this flat grassy domain was a lion man clad in armour and letting loose a mighty roar.
Moments later, another domain revealed itself in a glorious flash of light. Then another, and soon, dozens. Then more again. Nearly 50 little domains, all fresh spawns and young domains. Their combined inhabitants barely numbered in the thousands, but each and every one of them was a true player and stood at the fore of their domain in preparation to dock.
Their valiant battle spirits surged as they released resounding war cries. The drums upon the turrets of Murphy’s castle suddenly burst forth with greater vigour than ever, and the collisions of the reinforcing domains shook the huge mass of floating earth that was the 7 warring domains.
With little to no defending forces remaining on their home turf, the leading groups of invaders felt their hearts suddenly jitter and tighten.
This had been a trap from the very beginning. It was already suspicious that Murphy had dragged them into a 6 v 1 battle, and centred himself right in their midst. They now realised that they were stuck in a strange predicament.
They could try and finish the raid on Murphy, in which case the indignation and humiliation he’d caused them would be relieved. But that could cost them their own domain. Even if they killed Murphy, and successfully raided him, if he were already in a party with these domains then his domain would get their raiding spoils and survive the attack.
Making the situation worse was that these huge domains each represented different uncivil factions that were more akin to pirate groups and bandits than players. That meant that they couldn’t rely on these other factions to stick it out and kill Murphy first instead of running away to save their own skins.
As if by unanimous agreement, they started trying to fall back to protect their domains. Unfortunately, Murphy wasn’t having any of it. They were going to stay here and enjoy a good brawl first. As the beat of the drums once again rose to a crescendo of madness, the ever battle loving Spawn charged forth.
This time, they held nothing back. Every spawn in the domain poured out from the burrows and rose up a blade to take the life of their enemies in battle. Because the 6 domains were now all trying to fall back towards their own domains their focus was split.
They lost some of the huge fighting morale they initially had from their numbers, and were now frantic to return. This subtle shift in mindset caused the battle to have a sudden and drastic change in flow. Invaders lives were reaped like wheat at harvest.
Every flash of a blade, arrow or bolt took a life with its inertia. The morale of the Spawn never changed. Although they could feel fear, they only felt it towards a loss of a chance to kill as much as they could and then die in battle. Death, and war itself, was their greatest love and desire.
Among all the races of the many dimensions, secret planes and vast universes, demons were the most frightening for this single reason. Also, their design sense was a little cruel, so that was probably a close second.
The thousands of spawn that had built their homes under the earth of Murphy’s domain had taken severe losses, but that didn’t stop them from crying out for more. They longed for this type of unreserved chaotic warfare and especially loved Murphy now because he gave it to them. They had no intentions of letting him down.
The moment the waves of attackers started to pour back over the dividing line between the Sinister Lands and the Poison Smog Marsh, spawn were spewing out of holes in the Marsh and hunting them like animals.
The huge lumbering golems were an especially favourite target of luck spawn. Slow moving things were the easiest to attack hundreds of times very quickly and bit by bit they accumulated so much bad luck even Murphy probably couldn’t survive it.
Missed steps and sudden random traps only helped to decrease their speed further, and by the time the first of the leading attackers from the golem race broke through the smog onto the bridge, he was covered from head to toe in chips and gauges from his huge stone body.
Just as he made it out, a little phial of strange water was slung from a luck demon and shattered on his big rock face. He heard the little devils laughing like mischievous children as they all raced back into the fog to continue their trouble making.
The leader of the golems didn’t think too much of it at first, and his flames evaporated the murky water almost immediately.
It was only when he reached the other end of the bridge that his vision began to blur. His steps faltered, and he stumbled, falling onto his knee. The flames on his body slowly started to die down from raging inferno level to camp fire level and then soon to simmering coals.
He felt his entire body racked with pain. He glanced back to see those evil little bastard scooping up some disgusting looking water from a river at the edge of Murphy’s domain. Whatever was in that water, it was now very slowly killing him.
Even his abnormal endurance and physique, which awarded him immunity to many things, couldn’t repel whatever was in that heaven defying water. He could faintly hear the drums of the castle beating far off in the distance and slowly, his body lost even more strength as he slowly fell forward onto his hands.
He looked around himself in a daze and saw Spawn racing across the bridges of his neighbours, pursuing the retreating pirate domains like a swarm of fly’s. Huge bolts that moved kilometres in their flight passed through the sky overhead letting out massive ‘whoomph!’ sounds as they smashed into the earth of his domain.
He couldn’t fully understand how it had all turned out this way. They had the numerical superiority by far, and their soldiers were experienced in domain combat through hundreds of battles already.
Although he had to admit that Murphy’s domain was very strange, and he had rather powerful methods, he felt that it shouldn’t have been so difficult to squash him. They’d eliminated uncountable numbers of fresh domains just like this in their time reigning over this sector.
Even more confusing to him was how exactly Murphy had managed to lure all these other domains into this war. It was difficult enough just to get along with one or two other domains. Backstabbing and secret plots were as common as greetings in Domain Warz.
For him to gather this many domains and get them to cooperate with each other, he must have promised them something that no one else could give them. Something it was almost impossible to acquire without him. If that was the case, what could a fledgeling domain like Murphy’s possible give these other smaller domains?
Unfortunately, the huge flaming golem leader wouldn’t find out for another 12 hours. His body could no longer hold itself together and slowly, the smouldering rocks making him up began to crack and slowly fall apart.
Murphy had thought about methods to try and weaponize the river water, but it turned out anyone with less than a 30 positive luck stat would get sick the moment they touched it. He concluded that the river must contain some elements of his luck traits and was something like a biome in itself.
The only creatures that could even get close to it were the luck spawn which generally had pretty high luck stats from stealing it from everyone else.
With the battle having suddenly shifted focus onto the domains of the enemy domains, Murphy left Seelie to guard the castle and charged into battle atop Morbid so as to quickly eliminate what was left of his opponents.
Although the domains he’d called in for assistance were strong in their own right, and each of them was mostly made up of players with full player status, they were fewer in overall numbers. As such, he sent his commanders, Juwan and Chuckles to reinforce the problematic red dirt domains.
He and morbid took on the magma domain, which morbid was apparently very at home in, swimming through lava and barking at fire ... you know, dog things.
The other 3 domains, the two forest and grass plains, had alchemist spawn starting burning acid fires everywhere. Although they definitely didn’t have enough to clear domains of this size, there was enough of the stuff to cause chaos and havoc, lessening the pressure on the reinforcing domains and increasing the pressure on the pirate domain.
Battles broke out and raged for almost 24 hours, from the moment Murphy appeared to the moment when the last of the pirate domains leaders was slain, and the remaining populations all submitted themselves as prisoners to save their tiny little lives.
A huge meeting of Controllers was then held at Murphy’s domain, in the Spawns ritual courtyard. 50 controllers, all standing or sitting together in a single place, for a single purpose. It was a rarely seen sight not just in this star system, but across every star system in the vast space that was the Domain Warz.
For so many factions, even many that opposed each other, to all band together, it was almost an impossible feat. That said, they were here for something that was normally impossible to get so easily. The land of the domains they’d conquered in this battle were only a bonus.
Although it was a significant amount of land, in group raids with parties over 5, the domain that did the most work often received the largest rewards. That meant that Murphy’s domain would most likely take 5% of each of the pirate domains and then about 40% of each domain would be divided amongst the other 50 parties involved.
For a group of domains this size, although the pirate domains were large, in the end they wouldn’t even get as much land as they would have if they’d done a normal raid. This time around, their goals were different.
At last, after having travelled the 6 domains, the lieutenant or most trusted second of each domain returned to Murphy’s dragging behind them huge carts overloaded with loot and treasure. There were all sorts of things loaded up in these carts, from rare herbs or plants to priceless artefacts and crafting materials. Countless treasures were looted from their enemies, but everyone’s eyes were still locked onto Murphy.
Murphy was the only Controller that travelled with the lieutenants of these multitude of factions. This was because his task was somewhat different from theirs. Although he was looting as well, he was looting something far more important.
Amongst countless players for countless years, the players with the deprive ability are far and few between. In Domain Wars, they are considered more a myth or legend. Most of them end up dying too often because of the overbearing nature of the deprive ability causing Mana Overdraw.
The most worrisome part about that, is that Mana Overdraw rips apart the soul. Even the mighty game creators can only repair the damage so much. Eventually, it causes these players to become unstable, or completely be obliterated.
Murphy was special in this sense. The Game System can give you amazing powers, but the majority of them are only amplified by the system and are actually something the person in question has developed by themselves innately. Although it’s possible to learn skills you didn’t have and level them up, you will always be innately qualified for certain things others are not.
In this case, the nature of Murphy’s soul was truly perverse. It was only after a great deal of research on Seelie’s part that they managed to get a slight glimpse at how the Game System actually worked, after which Murphy nearly wanted to cry at the thought of how disgusting his soul must be to generate such disturbing traits and titles like Sinister Undying and The Unbalanced.
Nevertheless, Deprive is a very rare skill, and its overpowering ability to take almost anything that is in anyway related to Mana makes it beyond powerful in many respects.
In this case, the rewards from working with someone with such a power would be huge. When Murphy returned, not only had he stolen almost 30 odd portals, he’d also stolen geode stones for resources, entire buildings created from the system’s blueprint building scheme and even spell formations from things like respawning points and all variation of other things.
Everything he’d looted, was something you normally couldn’t take away. It was all things that usually cost an inordinate amount of experience points to purchase through the game system or required any number of painful and difficult quests to receive as a reward.
Not to mention that these things were usually a permanent part of a domain once they were installed, they also grew with a domain. Meaning if your domain grew, depending on the class of the treasure in question, it too would grow more powerful as you gained more land.
These things, if you could loot them normally would be the first target and considered priceless. This was the driving force behind this temporary coalition and was the thing that these domain controllers threw aside their differences to fight for.
Once the carts were stopped, ordinary loot was organised based on merit and contribution first. Things like this would normally be a very rowdy and chaotic affair, but luckily the system had measures for things like a party raid.
It tallied contribution points and merit from the beginning till the end and would split any looted resources rather fairly at the end.
The exception to this was if they agreed on certain things before the raid. For example, they all agreed that in this case, Murphy would get the first pick of 5 things, and everything else would then be split based on the system’s decision.
The reason they split the normal loot first was so that they could trade it and use it to barter for the more important items later, which was the whole point they came to Murphy’s domain in the first place. To barter.
After Murphy and everyone had agreed they were ready, everything that had been looted suddenly began to swirl around in the air overhead and slowly, bit by bit, it landed in front of a controller where he would quickly store it in his inventory.
In a few cases, Murphy’s for example, his inventory simply wasn’t big enough, and Seelie or Juwan had to step forward and store it.
Then, Murphy took out a sack filled with glimmering gems and scrolls with strange ruins and glowing carvings. He didn’t even need to think as he immediately picked out another respawn point scroll along with a slightly more advanced mage tower. The last three were all resource geodes. Gold, Mithril and something that was similar to a soft plastic.
Once he was finished, he threw the sack into the air, and the system quickly sorted everything and divided it amongst the others.
Chaos ensued moments later as the controllers all started to bicker and trade with each other. The few times a fight nearly broke out, Morbid’s huge paw would stomp down into the courtyard, and his house-sized body would loom over everyone with his big car sized head leaning down with a snarling growl.
This was the second reason they held this here in Murphy’s domain. Before they all partied up, they’d signed a raid contract from the player store that more or less confined them to follow their oaths. It was a rather miraculous system and punished players severely for breaking it.
Of them all, Murphy was the only one with the absolutely overpowering combat strength, and so they agreed to let him host the exchange because it was certain if anyone stepped out of line here Murphy could enforce the law.
He was also forced to, because that was part of his agreement in the raid contract.
After nearly 4 hours of trading, the other domains all started moving to leave. Congratulating Murphy on a successful raid and promising to help out if he planned another one, provided he had the same incentives of course.
Murphy simply smiled and nodded to everyone. The only person he exchanged words with was the Lion-man.
“ ... good raid...”
“ ... thanks...
“ ... next time...”
“ ... sure ... good?...”
“ ... sure ... seeya...”
“ ... seeya...”
The other leaders all had strange expressions on their faces as they watched this exchange. It almost felt like the two people had just shared thousands of thoughts and expressions with these few single bland words. They almost felt like they were watching these people have a conversation in a completely different language.
While this was going on, the spawn had all raced off and dug the chained iron ballista bolts out of the other domains, where they were slowly pulled back into their little hidey holes under Murphy’s domain.
Now that they were finished, they all broke apart and started floating off into different direction like a swarm of fly’s being shooed from a corpse. With Murphy’s domain being the last one, the 6 huge domains all started falling to pieces as clouds of dust were pulled from them to float out into space and form upon the leaving domains.
Each of these huge domains had lost almost 50% of their land and dropped down an entire rank back to tiny level domains. For clarity, the ranks of domain range from desolate, which is a tiny little rock enough for a single house, all the way up universe rank, which currently no one has ever achieved and spanned a distance that was difficult to calculate or measure.
Murphy had just moved up from Fresh domain to Tiny rank domain. For him, the most important ranks started at desolate, fresh, tiny, island, nation, continent, moon and planet.
Fresh, Tiny, Island, Nation and Continent were all ‘flat’ domains and started at 1, 5, 10, 100 and 1000 km in radius respectively.
At a certain point, the domain can go through the process of becoming planetoid in structure. At which point it is then measured in the radius of it spheroid instead of the radius of the circumference. To reach this stage, he needs more than 1000 km as a continent rank, at which point he could become moon rank with a radius of 500.
This was a generalisation of how Domains ranked up, some of them, especially weird ones like water biomes, started out spherical. They were particularly troublesome to deal with because they didn’t dock in the normal sense, but instead flooded a domain.
Rules set by the system for those sorts of battles were very peculiar, but luckily, Murphy had avoided any huge blobs of water he saw floating around the place.
With the looted land from this battle, he had once again doubled the size of his domain. He’d now stepped beyond the 5km radius limit of a fresh domain and become ‘Tiny’. When he first learnt about the sizes for domain ranks, he truly felt small. The gap between his domain and those planet domains was astronomical.
That didn’t stop his ambitions though. The reason he loved playing games, was to strive for the top. It may even take him a lifetime to reach a point he could contest with those overpowered goliaths that were the leading ranked planets.
That didn’t bother him too much though. He had an unlimited number of lifetimes. Most especially because he had the trait, young forever. Although that was the case, he still seemed to be ageing. He wasn’t sure when young forever would stop it. He assumed it would be at about 20 or 21. When his body had fully developed.
After that though, it was anyone’s guess.
Personally, he preferred the idea of growing old and dying. There were two reasons for this. The first, and one of the contributing factors to Murphy now remaining adamantly dense in regards to Seelie, was that Seelie would eventually grow old and die. If he had a closer relationship with her, he was afraid of that happening.
The other reason was a secret he kept buried deep within his heart and was the main contributing factor to everything. His nervousness around people, his fear of living forever, and most especially his fear of getting too close to Seelie or Juwan.
Even the fact that he allowed her to remain so close to him at present was due to his own personal weakness of heart. He couldn’t be with her, he couldn’t bear to be without her. It was a very contradictory state of mind, and something that had plagued him in regards to close relationships his whole life.
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The domain was once again under protection status, and we’d made a huge haul of goodies that would have taken us god knows how long to accumulate doing quests and raiding smaller domains. With everything we had now, and the huge expansion of land, we could start some more permanent projects we’d been working towards.
The first of which was some permanent players. Although the Spawn were a powerful and versatile weapon, they were still limited in many aspects. True Players, on the other hand, had no limitations. Unfortunately, many players that aligned with our goals were greatly opposed to the summons and aesthetics of our domain.
At the same time, many players we’d be more likely to kill on the spot, and often did, would rush to our domain to join us. It was only now that we’d made a name for ourselves that other players started to take us more seriously and consider joining us despite the nature of over half of our domain.
Which is also the reason that we decided to start building a player town. The Spawn were rather upset that I was preparing to bring in strangers but were easily placated when Seelie simply described them as meat shields for the Spawn.
That would just have to do for now. I hoped in my heart that the many different cultures would be able to assimilate and eventually become, if not friendly then at least tolerant.
To my surprise, instead of drawing in races that one would think were inclined towards fair battle practice and defending the weak, we drew in even more races that looked like they were on the brink of some bloodlust frenzy or ate babies in their free time.
Most surprising was that all of these people shared similar views. They were people and creatures that the world and other races all looked at as if they were evil. They were weighed down by endless prejudices and pre-formed opinions thanks to the culture or nature of their race.
In their hearts though, they were individuals that strived for justice and honour. They represented everything bad and evil with how people viewed their origin or culture, but lived their lives to protect those very same people that looked down on them and to uphold a code of ethics.
They were true heroes at heart, and if they had been born a different race, they would surely have been renowned amongst their people as saints, healers, knights and nobles. People would rain down accolades and noble titles onto them and hoist them on their backs with cheers.
Instead, they were booed, hated, driven away and feared. They were the creatures and beings of the darkness, that everyone was repulsed by. Even if they did a good deed, they were considered to have been plotting some scheme.
I had trouble not immediately rejecting them when they travelled to my domain from 6 Star. It was only thanks to the nature of my own experiences and own world view, that I managed to stay my sword hand and welcome them in.
Although I had no doubts that many of them were plotting against me in secret, I would be remiss in my own moral code of conduct if I were to turn them away.
Everyone was initially granted the same status as Juwan, who was permanently delegated to squatter class citizen. If they proved themselves, they would be richly rewarded and have the chance for a permanent level of citizenship, in which case they could take advantage of many other useful things such as the respawn point or things usually only sold in the domain store that I could supply them with.
Not only that, but with the growing player base in the domain, they would have a focal point for trading and partying together. They could work with people of similar ilk and motive and swap resources or commission items and enchantments.
For these initial joiners, I decided to make some exceptions and to help them properly settle in and get the township started.
On the first game day after the raid, I had a small area about half way down the growing grassy hill delegated for the construction of the town. With the domain now reaching over 5 km in radius, the hill alone covered nearly 2km.
As such, my far bigger than I’d planned for castle sat at the highest point of the hill, easily surveying the entire domain. Nearby was a tall Mage Tower which stood out in stark contrast because it’s design was rather foreign in comparison to the sinister design of my castle.
Nearby was the source pond of the sole river in my domain. About halfway down the hill from there was where I planned to start construction of the township for players joining my domain.
For these first few players, the idea was that they would trade experience to me in exchange for a build scroll and then build something from the rather generic lists of buildings in the Domain Store. At least, that was how it should have happened. Instead, many of them commissioned the Spawn with meat and loot to build it for them instead.
In a rather twisted manner, the majority of my new residents had similar tastes and greatly appreciated Spawn Feng Shui. Not only that, they much preferred the sinister land, and after the first 12 player citizens all requested to build their homes alongside the Demon Spawn’s smithies and workshops, I just gave up and let them build where ever the hell they wanted.
Only a few players preferred the grassy hill, most of them beast races. Still, the ones living in the sinister lands were nowhere near as suspicious as the ones that willingly strove out into the vast Poison Smog Marsh to build a home. Even the normal sinister races were somewhat in awe of those madmen.
There were two reasons for this. The first was that without an absolute immunity, most beings suffered repercussions from the Smog without me commanding it to avoid them, which they politely declined when I offered. Even I couldn’t freely move through the smog without being in pain. So I was impressed.
The second was that, the demon spawns that had somehow evolved both Luck and Poison were unquestionably the evilest little bastards you’d ever meet. There were only about 40 of them, and they had their own little tribe, but they were hated by everyone.
Even the other evolved spawn that had a luck trait hated them.
This was because, by the very nature of bad luck, as soon as you had a negative luck stat from them touching you, the 5% chance of being poisoned from their touch jumped up to 80% chance. Making it even worse was that their poison was absolutely vile.
It wasn’t painful, or even particularly noticeable. At least not until about half an hour after when your guts started to feel like you ate a meat grinder and the literally explosive diarrhoea nearly killed you from causing dehydration.
Adding to that was when you’d completed vacated your digestive track, your skin started glowing blue, as if to tell the whole world what had just happened to you.
For proud and strong players like these people, that kind of thing was the greatest humiliation they could suffer.
By the end of the five days, nearly 50 players had moved to into my domain, from all sorts of races. There were even some undead and other demons. We even had a rather renowned player commission a forge be built in the sinister township.
He was a race that was half dwarf and half dark elf. Making him the most disgusting and vile spawn imaginable to both races that were ancient enemies of each other and far too proud and haughty as far as ancient races go.
Thanks to that half-breed status, he was hated by both his parent races and they chased after him for a lifetime. He was also what people called a game born player. In other words, his home universe was actually the Domain Warz itself, and he was born from the act of coitus between two players.
That gave him a somewhat special status seeing as most people returned to their home world for childbearing, or simply used experience in the player store to abort or prevent pregnancy in the first place. He was something akin to an immortal player. He had no home so he could never be logged out, and he always respawned just like any other player.
The only thing that could actually kill him was old age. Eventually, he would reach a point in his lifetime when his soul could no longer keep his old body running and would just sort of dissipate. Even the system couldn’t prevent that eventuality.
Anyway, he was renowned for his master forging skills and had created an endless number of rare and powerful enchanted artefacts, weapons and armours.
However, he was also renowned for being incredibly picky with whom he would craft a weapon for. He didn’t explain why he sought out my domain for a new home, nor did I bother to ask. The black skinned dwarf paid for the forge he wanted up front and then spent an entire day with the Clever Spawn designing it.
It was actually incredibly impressive and would require days to finish, as opposed to the usually shorter time span required when hundreds of Spawn swarmed over the job to finish it for other player’s buildings.
There was also a group of races that took advantage of me upgrading Seelie’s mage tower and requested to have the old smaller tower rebuilt in the township for them. They mostly focused on dark magic arts and required a place to act as a repository for their knowledge and a place to practice and develop new spells.
It looked rather out of place in the township, seeing as it was about the only generic building from the system and had an old gothic style. This was quickly remedied by the Spawn though. They blew the pointy top off it and replaced it with a huge magical flame that burnt constantly and bathed the little township in the constant flickering firelight.
The last interesting guests amongst my new player residents were those foolish enough to move out into the poison fog. It was rare to not see them rapidly pursuing the lightning fast little luck demons around, screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs while they glowed like Christmas lights in the smog.
It was lucky for them that I’d recently poured a bottle of miracle water into the stream. It caused a drastic change to the nature of the stream in the grassy hill area, making it capable of curing almost anything if you bathed in it at the source pond.
Unfortunately, it still didn’t change the waters nature after it reached the edge of the domain and if anything only seemed to make it worse. For a rare change, I was actually a bit afraid of testing it.
While all of this was happening, a few other players appeared that were somewhat out of the ordinary for the kind of people attracted to my domain.
The first one, who appeared the day after the huge battle, was a sweet little girl with huge watery eyes. She was perhaps the cutest little girl in the world, and was Seelie’s little sister. I don’t let her cuteness fool me however, she was absolutely merciless and vicious with her words.
If honest, I was slightly frightened by her. Mostly because her words were very stinging and especially when she brought up topics like Seelie and I being together. She and Juwan hit it off straight away, and both pushed the issue frequently only to be completely ignored by me as I zoned out, or directly used some powerful shadow arts and disappeared.
The last new addition to the domain was Uncle Calligso. He loved everything about this game. He especially adored the methods with which he could observe growth in his status, and the skills were just like icing on a cake.
The moment he completed the tutorial, he waited for me to log out to complete my school exit exam, which I did the day after the battle. He then had me form a party so he could respawn in my domain. When he appeared on the domain, he started challenging all the strongest looking players to battle.
Turned out he was even more of a monster than I was. His battle prowess was absolutely unstoppable, and the only creature in the entire domain that could put him down was Morbid. Even then it was like watching two titans savagely beating each other to death.
Morbid seemed to take a special liking to Calligso, and it wasn’t rare to see the two of them wrestling around everywhere or playing tug-a-war. Fetch was the most bizarre to watch, as Calligso would pick up a huge dragon bone and launch it across to the other side of the domain like a toy, only for Morbid to excitedly be racing after it a second later.
This wasn’t the only thing we did in out protection period. We were well aware that we had poked a hornet’s nest and we were likely going to be heavily pursued by the factions which those 6 domains we’d taken down had belonged to.
For tyrants and bandits like them, what we did was basically a huge slap in the face. They would send out little domains from their faction to track and pursue us, which we actually welcomed if anything. They were too slow to catch us, and as long as they kept sending little ones, we would eventually be big enough to turn around and consume them.
If they wanted to try and bully us, we would destroy them.
To prepare for that, I started designing cannons. Although they are an archaic form of combat in my world, most races in this world wouldn’t know what they are. Apart from perhaps other races like dwarves and gnomes who specialised in things exploding, and maybe some human factions, there weren’t too many other races that had more advanced methods of combat that I had seen.
If I had to guess as to a reason why, then it would probably have something to do with the fact that on their planets they are most likely a species that is the dominant predator and hasn’t evolved to the point that their civilisation is beyond simply killing each other to become boss.
This was made apparent by the fact that most of the races we’ve faced in battle so far were all led by a creature that was bigger and meaner looking than the rest.
As opposed to my domain, which is led by me and has people walking around with swords the size of their bodies or bodies the size of a house and didn’t need anything apart from that. Even the race with the most numbers, which could easily overthrow me, was instead loyal to me.
Many races seemed to lose track of the fact that being the domain controller granted you a great deal more power than simply being bigger or stronger. My status as a controller is what gave me the right to lead these people, not necessarily my combat prowess. Which in my own humble opinion probably now ranked 3rd on the island, after Calligso and Seelie.
Anyway, the point is I started to take advantage of the ignorance of others. Although methods were available in the domain store for many of the things I’d planned out to protect my domain, it seemed few people actually took advantage of them and instead focused all their resources on manpower and personal strength.
Cannons were just the beginning. When I went to visit Alton, the half cast dwarf/elf and proposed some of my design ideas, he almost fell out of his chair before declaring them impossible. When I started explaining how I expected them to work, and how I understood how they should work, he started to get a little excited, took my drawings and quickly kicked me out of his workshop.
After the 5 day protection period finished, Seelie cast the Spell Model she’d developed to hide our domain, and we started to scout out targets for our next raid.