Haa ... I really hate it when I’m right. I hate it sooo much. I knew this space place was suspicious. So all those stars really are other domains. There’s just so many. Haa...
I knew the day would come, but I definitely didn’t expect the first domain we bumped into was another poison domain! Damnable luck! You’re supposed to be in the positive! Why are you such a huge pain in my ass all the time!
Calm! Calm like a gentle breeze. Ok, let’s see. The guides said we can steer the Domain about. So ... let’s run away. Unless they have some kind of rocket, let’s just see them catch us!
“You cowards! Runnin’ away aye! I’ll bet you’re noobs! Hah! The more you run, the more other domains’ll steer towards you! Then it’s gonna be noob stompin’ time! HAHAHA!”
I wonder how he projects his voice all the way over here. We’re like, 50 kilometres apart. Is that some kind of domain option I haven’t found. Oh ... voice projector? That’s probably what I want.
Hmm ... how does one respond to this situation? Should I taunt him back with something witty? Some remark insulting his manhood perhaps? Or his ancestors maybe?
Oh! I know.
“Morbid. Come. Make the sound for Murphy. Do the sound. Go on. You can do it buddy.”
“FART“
Heh heh. Yeah. Eat it you scorpion bastards. You eat that stink right ... up...
“Great Sage! Morbid what have you been eating? It’s Chuckles, isn’t it?! That little bastard has been feeding you chocolate again hasn’t he?”
“Ruff!”
“Don’t give me that look. The poor Curse Spawn are still flushing out their burrows from the last time. You tell that cheeky little bastard that if I catch him feeding you chocolate again, I’m going to tie him to the ballista.”
“Ruff!”
“Hah! He probably will evolve wings if I started doing that all the time.”
Hmm ... all that aside. What am I going to do about this? Should I set up an observatory of some description to keep an eye on all my neighbours? Arh! What does that matter for now! It’s my Domain’s first battle. I can’t just keep running away like this otherwise it’ll make us look weak.
If we look weak, we’ll become easy prey, and other Domains are just gonna gank the shit out of us. Maybe it’s like those old movies of people going to prison. I need to walk up to the biggest guy in the yard and beat the shit out of him to scare everyone off.
Ahh ... who am I kidding? The biggest bloke in the yard probably has a planet 4 times the size of earth. If I go and start a fight with someone like that it’ll be like asking to get beaten to death on my first day.
Whew ... I wonder what Seelie’s doing ... probably in her wizard tower again coming up with some weird spell. The last one she made turned the tails of half my Spawn into flowers.
Sure, their farts smelt like a spring breeze, but in the end, they grew up with their tails. It’s half their balance. It was like watching a cat after you cut their whiskers off. They just stumble all over the place looking confused. Took nearly a whole game day for them to revert back again.
Oh! That’s it ... Hah! Let’s turn this boat around and give those scorpion bastards a whooping.
----------------------------------------
Murphy played with the controls in the Domain’s Control Space and locked onto the nearest domain. With that, the domain would automatically close in on the scorpion people’s domain and move over to ‘dock’ with it. Which was really just a gentle way of saying it was going to collide with the other domain and form a bridge, which would initiate a raid.
In these cases, the raiding party is usually the side that steps foot on the other domain first. This usually leads to a very bloody and aggressive battle on the ‘bridge’ area until one side steps onto the other.
The reason this was such an integral part of the Domain Battle is that if you’re the raiding party, you can retreat and break off the engagement to run away. If you’re the defending party, your domain is in a locked state and can’t move until you’ve killed all the enemies on your domain or have been successfully raided.
It makes defending very passive, but at the same time, if your defences are strong enough, you can wipe out invaders quickly and then pursue the invader’s domain and initiate a raid of your own.
Normally, a domain’s speed through space is determined by its size. Smaller domains are much faster by a general rule of thumb. There are methods to increase your domain’s speed or slow down other domains, but those are usually very expensive.
The reason this is mentioned is that, after a battle, the raiding domain is slowed down to 2/3rds the speed of the domain they attacked. It meant that if the defending domain cleared all the raiders fast enough, then their domain would be faster and they could counter attack.
Murphy marched out of the still half-finished castle into the little wizard tower. After some searching he found Seelie teaching some weird magic spell to some of the Curse Spawn. Through a few quests, they’d managed to get some Spell Tomes to allow the little tricksters to cast other magic apart from their innate spells.
The problem was that spell tomes were expensive and apart from the initial tome, so they could summon a book, they couldn’t simply give them all more books and let them learn spells how Murphy normally did.
They instead had to learn new spells the hard way. Which was learning about them from reading or another mage and then practising them.
When Murphy arrived, they were busy trying to cast a curse magic that slowed a target’s movements. Murphy used this magic frequently against other monsters, but he suspected the reason the Curse Spawn were learning it was because it had the complete opposite effect on the Spawn.
Instead of slowing them down, it made them hyperactive and incredibly fast. It only had a short duration and required a high mana cost, but when used in the right situation is was very powerful.
Regardless, Murphy didn’t come here for that. He came to ask Seelie about another Curse.
Out in space, the two domains were rapidly approaching each other. One had three rings of different biomes, and the other had only one type of biome. Although seeing multi-biome domains isn’t unheard of, it’s still very rare.
Most others usually only have a single biome. In the case of the Raiders trying to attack Murphy, the biome they had was a sandy desert that continually released puffs of poisonous smoke.
The smoke all accumulated around the floating island that was the domain and gave it a very sinister appearance. A poisonous desert.
The leader in this domain was a huge scorpion that had a human head instead of a scorpion head. All his brethren were similar, in that they were scorpion creatures with human faces. The only difference was, they were about as big as a dog, whereas the leader was about as big as a car.
It was rather clear that the pecking order of this race is whom was bigger is the boss. Either that or this man faced scorpion had some midget complex and only allowed similar raced creatures that were smaller than him to exist on his domain.
He called his brood of man faced scorpions to the edge of the domain and readied to charge forth and do combat the moment the bridge was formed. He then witnessed a somewhat strange sight. Something was shot from the other domain.
At first, the distance was too great, and it simply looked like a glitter of light. It was quickly followed by another, then another and soon nearly a dozen. The leader man faced scorpion simply scoffed. He assumed they were blindly trying to fire arrows at him before he could make contact.
Even if they were elves with their amazing enchanted bows, there was no way they’d be able to fire across the remaining 2 or 3 kilometres before contact. Even if they could, their accuracy would be so poor that they would most likely hit nothing.
He then seemed to become shocked for a moment and his gaze focused in on the glittering specs which were clearly getting closer. Before he could fully comprehend what he was seeing, a huge bolt the size of a tree suddenly fell into his domain.
The moment it made contact, a little purple demon, somewhat dizzy and shell-shocked, cut loose the ropes holding him to the bolt and then started darting off into the domain. Following this scene were a dozen more bolts and then the familiar sound of a system prompt.
‘Ping! Murphy’s Domain has initiated a raid. Your Domain has become locked until all invaders are dealt with.’
Murphy was still in his domain, standing next to a huge ballista that he’d had the Spawn build leading up to the last day of protection. Now that he had to go to war with another domain, he was going to use the rules to his advantage.
By sending some elite special forces suited to sneaking about in poison, he could lock down the enemy domain and claim the initiative in this battle before their two domains even met and formed a bridge. It was an incredibly devious method of battle and was also an original method.
Although there were other races that had tried this, they were usually flying races and travelling through the space between the domains was impossible unless you’d already built up enough force to carry you across. Thus, they usually had to wait until the bridge was formed and then fly across.
After all, there’s no atmosphere between the Domains. Just empty space.
That said, there’s also no gravity, which makes what Murphy achieved even more impossible, seeing as anything he launched out of his sphere of gravity should not have made the seemingly huge arc that the bolts did.
This was more a result of some carefully placed phials of volatile concoction for direction and propulsion ... essentially turning the tree sized ballista bolts into rockets instead of simple bolts.
If he could get the aim of the ballista’s right and properly control the flight path of the bolt instead of just being able to hit the general area of the opposing domain, he could probably just strap a bath tub sized container of concoction onto the tip of a bolt. He would then be able to treat it as something akin to a cruise missile.
Unfortunately, the technicalities and precision needed for something like that was still beyond him. Even Seelie who had the Calculation skill couldn’t properly account for all the variables with their medieval level of equipment.
Anyway, the point is, that man faced scorpion and his brood of angry little scorpions had been cheated of the chance to take the initiative, and Murphy now had a handful of impish little demons running around on their domain.
It was too late to be able to track them down and kill them all, but in the end, it didn’t matter too much. He could just go and kill everything on the enemies domain then come back and clear his. After that, he can just disengage then re-engage. If anything, it just meant that his raid had now become a little bit of a pain.
He wasn’t too worried about them destroying his main base, which was the victory condition of a raid. It was hidden deep under the sands of his poison desert and had structural integrity enough that it would take he, himself, nearly 12 hours just to breach it.
Murphy watched with glittering eyes as the enemy remained standing at their battle front and didn’t pursue his special operatives. This would make it easier for them to complete their missions. He wasn’t too worried about them, even if they had been chased down. Chuckles volunteered to lead the mission, and he could damn near put up a fight with Murphy at this stage.
He was already level 11 and close to another evolution, so Murphy often joked about what his next evolution would be. He was actually quite curious, because over the week he’d spent hunting with the spawns on Newb Planet, he’d picked up and even self-learned all sorts of interesting new skills.
The majority of them he was rather displeased with because they were, by nature, somewhat evil and sinister. But as had become his motto since he started this game, It’s only evil if it’s used for evil.
A perfect example is how well behaved and fun his Spawn’s are. They only eat innocent creatures and people if they’re starving now. Thanks to that, they more often than not go out to complete quests which require them to kill people doing bad things ... because they’re hungry and know Murphy doesn’t like them eating just any random off the streets.
The number of bandits, evil wizards, witches, violent trolls and every other type of villain that has encountered the locust-like Spawn’s and still had a whole body afterwards could be counted on a single hand. Even then, they only had a whole body remaining because they had some weird disease or had blood that was actually considered ‘holy’ as opposed to ‘sinister’.
The demons greatly disliked blessing magic and other magic ‘considered’ to be good magic. While curses and dark spells gave them boosts, blessings and healing magic made them sick or dramatically affected their combat prowess.
Of course, as with most things, that didn’t stop them from eating it. Only the very few that had too much holy energy radiating off it weren’t consumed. This was because it would give them the runs for days, and if all 1000 odd spawns took a bite, then it would probably be worse than the time Morbid first investigated the Poison Smog.
Alas, once again this narrative has digressed. The point being made is that Murphy had made significant gains in the week he spent levelling his spawns, and when Chuckles finally evolved again, there were any number of strange possibilities he could end up with on top of his poison and endurance evolutions.
Most likely, after this battle, he would probably go through his third evolution, and among the Spawns, he was the best choice for the mission Murphy had given them.
Murphy observed as his Domain quickly approached the enemy’s Domain. The moment they were in range, the man faced scorpions started chanting or channelling spells. Creatures of this kind usually had most of their spells develop innately. Meaning chanting or spells tomes were unnecessary. But it wasn’t uncommon for them to learn some new and more powerful ones.
The moment the two domains smashed into each other, a huge shudder shook both floating islands, and the earth seemed to merge into a new biome, and a stretch of about 50 meters on both domains became barren of any biome. Just becoming dirt.
At the same moment, the Scorpions started blindly firing spells into the poison smog that surrounded the outskirts of Murphy’s domain, expecting his forces to be hiding in the dead and twisted trees and marshland.
To their surprise, there was no response from Murphy’s forces. Apart from some trees being obliterated and the smog churning and broiling, nothing else happened. The man faced scorpion was unperturbed though and simply charged forth with his underlings.
After the first 300 metres of smog, they suddenly emerged onto a rocky area filled with black rocks and dirt with only a few twisted and sinister looking trees scattered about here and there. Still, there was no movement from the enemies and apart from Murphy standing nearly 700 metres away at the top and lush grassy hill next to a half-finished castle, there was nothing in sight.
The man faced scorpion couldn’t stop from boasting at his luck.
“Hahah! So you really are a total noob! Apart from some sneaky little imps, you have no other forces than yourself. Hah! Bet you thought you were clever trying to draw us away from the front lines but you’ve underestimated This Scorpion’s strategic mind! HAHAHA!”
As he screamed his laughter, he and his minions all rushed towards the hill in an effort to quickly kill the Controller of the domain then return and clear any threats from their own.
Clearly, strategy wasn’t the strong suit of the man faced scorpion. The moment his horde of scorpions were mostly out of the smog and in the sinister lands, Curse Spawn started popping out from little burrows all over the place and spraying curses onto the scorpions like rain.
The most nefarious of the curses wasn’t any of the ones originally designed to be sinister. It was actually the earlier mentioned Flower Bum curse. It was initially created with nature mana, but when it was cast using sinister mana by the Spawns, it became even more unfathomable.
Scorpions left and right were dropping like flies as their pointy scorpion tails, their signature feature and the part of their body used for pointing and casting, suddenly morphed into a very sinister flower filled with razor sharp teeth.
The tail eating flower suddenly decimated hundreds of man faced scorpions. The strangest part was when the flower finished eating its host, it seemed to find the sinister lands quite comfortable and would instead take root in the hard black soil.
Unlike most magics, when it should dissipate, because it was cast in the sinister lands the magical sinister creature became a permanent sinister creature. They would then start eating any scorpions that were stupid enough to try and move past them, which made them suddenly grow in size.
Some of the flowers went on and absolute rampage and ate enough of the scorpions to grow to nearly 6 feet tall.
The man faced scorpion controller was at first stunned and confused and then quickly became irate when he realised that he’d just walked into a trap. The curse magic used by the Spawn was made a whole magnitude stronger thanks to the nature of the biome.
Even though this was a huge setback, the scorpion’s still numbered in the thousands and continued their charge.
When they started stepping into the lush grassy hill biome, Spawns with all sorts of strange evolutions started popping out of the place with poorly fitted armour they’d looted. There were spawns with endurance evolutions and spawns with shadow arts, or more appropriately, concealment and assassination arts.
There was also a very strange and troublesome evolution which was comparatively tiny compared to the others. It looked like it was small enough to fit in the palm of a grown man’s hand. Apart from its teeny tiny size, it looked just like other Demon Spawns.
The reason it was so troublesome was that it was lightning fast and every time they approached an enemy they would use some strange combat skill and strike nearly a hundred times in a second. Once they’d done that, they would retreat then rush in and do it again.
The troublesome part wasn’t their attack because they were basically as weak as flies. Instead, it was the strange after effects. Weird things would start happening after they struck you with their speedy fists. You would trip on a rock you hadn’t noticed or suddenly get an urge to sneeze for no reason.
You’d chant a spell and suddenly have a slip of the tongue causing a backfire, and all number of other unexplainable bad luck happened. What the Scorpions didn’t know was that these were Spawns that evolved with a few of Murphy’s luck traits.
Thanks to that, he trained them very carefully to help them utilise these normally disadvantageous traits in battle. He spent a lot of experience to find a relatively cheap skill that allowed you to strike as fast as possible in a short period of time. Then he learnt it and taught it to his ‘Luck Demons’.
Unfortunately, as a result of him teaching them how to utilise their luck talents, they became incredibly mischievous by nature. It wasn’t unusual to see them setting random traps all over the place or continuously touching people just to see what happens.
It’s usually those poor unsuspecting randoms on a quest planet that would suddenly meet the luck demons and end up losing out. Murphy didn’t discourage the behaviour as long as they didn’t pick on people particularly and spread the bad luck around to everyone fairly.
This was because every time they stole some luck, he would get a little bit. It helped to keep his luck above the negatives, and it wasn’t rare for him to send them all out on a mission to go and ‘share’ his misfortunes with people he didn’t share his views with. Generally, bandits got the worst of it.
With the sudden army of Spawns with all sorts of strange abilities popping out all over the place, the Scorpions were pulled into a battle at Murphy’s pace. They started dying faster and eventually, the man faced Scorpion leader recalled his troops and ordered a retreat.
It would be better to fall back into the poison where he and his kin would have the advantage.
Much to his consternation, he discovered that the smog of this domain seemed to be alive and avoided all the spawns. From some of the rumours he heard, that was only possible if it was a self-created biome. Which was as rare as unicorn horns and phoenix feathers.
If he knew that Murphy had nearly twenty unicorn horns now, he’d probably spit blood. After all, although Murphy seemed to be running into them everywhere, Unicorns were normally very secretive and reclusive. They were also a breed with a low population, so they are seen very rarely.
Seeing that the poison smog only seemed to be helping the enemies even more, he pulled back again into his own domain’s territory.
It was at this point in time, that a huge ‘BOOM!’ rang out from the middle of his Domain. The next thing he heard was the system prompt informing him that his domains central base had just been breached and that he had been successfully raided.
Chuckles came running back through their poison smoke above the desert with his dozen odd companions all screaming “Yah Yah Yah Yah!” at the top of their lungs.
Murphy, seeing his special operatives returning sooner than he expected, couldn’t help himself from forming a charming grin. He was quite pleased with his first battle. The use of the tail flower spell as a tail-devouring flower curse was probably the most important part along with the idea for his little special agents.
Having his Curse Spawn target any enemies that showed strange magical prowess greatly limited the scorpion army’s ability to rain down any heavy area of effort fire suppression.
That said, he’d probably lost hundreds in this battle. He was greatly displeased with that outcome. As such, he wasn’t planning to simply let the scorpion creature off lightly. He waved an arm, and his loyal Spawns all continued to rush in and slaughter their enemies.
They weren’t as worried about so many deaths as Murphy was. After all, the demon plane was littered with frequent and constant death. It wasn’t unusual for them to lose hundreds if a stronger demon decided one of them looked at him funny.
More so than that, in their inherited memories their ancestors would lose Demon Spawns from tribes and clans by the tens of thousands back when the demon planes were first forming.
Now, they had started to evolve again and were laying eggs like nobody’s business. Even back then when their population was magnitudes greater, they probably didn’t lay eggs as frequently as they do now with the assistance of sinister magic arts.
They just loved battle, and war especially. Thanks to that, they fearlessly charged forth. Now that things had reached this stage, Murphy had originally planned to pull back since the raid was accomplished, but seeing as his forces were as thirsty for battle as he was and they’d done so well, he didn’t hold back.
He too charged into the fray, and every time his sword of sharpness moved, life was taken. His right hand swung his sword, and his left hand remained gloveless as it reached out and sucked scorpions dry of mana left and right.
Occasionally he’d throw out a chant he’d been practising or form a spell pattern for some of the spells he was more familiar with. His time in the Witch’s tower hadn’t been wasted, and he’d learnt quite a bit more than he expected.
Saying that, his magic skills were still sub-par amongst other controllers that specialised in magic. Seelie especially, who had the Scholar class and gobbled up knowledge like a black hole, had magic on a whole other level from Murphy.
The reason he didn’t let her out onto the battlefield was that most of her magic would basically obliterate everything, him and his spawns included. He would only let her out if it were a last resort. Similarly for Morbid. He was an unstoppable force in battle, and if he went on a rampage, he’d decimate everything.
Probably the only thing he wouldn’t kill was Murphy.
That being the case, Murphy preferred to deal with this problem with his loyal Spawns before letting those two cannons loose. After all, you wouldn’t use a nuclear strike while hunting a deer, now would you?
During the battle, Spawns were consuming poison cure potions like breath mints, and instant recovery potions were treated like water. Most of the time the Spawns only used them if they felt they were on death’s door from the poison or an injury but the consumption was still astronomical.
They were quite proud creatures in a way. Preferring to only use them as a last resort, which was why so many had died already.
After about an hour of continuous back and forth battle, Murphy and Chuckles stood facing off against the man faced scorpion controller.
Murphy was about to reach for his sword when Chuckles stepped forward and started ‘rar’ing. Murphy seemed to get the gist of what he wanted and somewhat hesitantly removed his hand from his sword. It appeared Chuckles wanted to earn his evolution, and insisted on doing battle with the scorpion boss himself.
All around them the remnants of the scorpions were being eliminated by Murphy’s Spawns.
Chuckles stepped forward and took a little dagger from his belt, which was, in fact, the Super Pointy Poison dagger. It was a gift Murphy gave him when he evolved the second time, and something Chuckles apparently treasured.
In his other hand, he pulled the crude dagger cut from the black stone of the demon plane. He was dressed in loosely fitting leather armour and had a little metal skull cap that seemed to be a size too big. Murphy was enamoured in trying to figure out how they kept all the equipment they’d been looting on their bodies.
According to physics, that helmet should have fallen off at least a thousand times already but still somehow stayed on.
Regardless, Chuckles looked very heroic as he stepped forward at his 4-foot height and eyed the man faced scorpion.
The scorpion wanted to scoff and ridicule but lost the chance. Chuckles wouldn’t even give it the chance to be bitter in its loss or vent itself verbally. He charged forward with completely abnormal speed. The scorpion was shocked and swung a huge armoured claw out to knock Chuckles back.
Chuckles seemed to defy the laws of inertia as he froze just a few inches before contact with the claw. The swing of the claw seemed to lack Chuckles’ strange defiance of inertia and continued on its path striking nothing but air.
The scorpion shot its tail forth with an absolutely vicious speed that even Murphy had trouble keeping track of. The venomous spike of the tail connected with Chuckles and pierced through his body, injected its vile venom in as it passed through to the other side.
Seeing this, the scorpion finally thought it could gloat, only to watch with disbelief as Chuckles smiled a very grim and sinister grin as both his daggers suddenly swished, and the scorpion’s armoured tail was suddenly sliced apart at the segment of the tip.
Its tail spewed a clearish green blood and wracking the creature’s body with pain. It’s huge claws swung violently, and one of them clipped Chuckles knocking him back a few metres to roll along the sandy ground.
He got up slowly and wiped some blood from his thin lips. With a little ‘rar rar yah!’ he raced forward as fast as he could. Although he had Murphy’s endurance traits, he still wasn’t as perverse as Murphy himself in stats. The wound in his chest slowed him down and the man faced scorpion snarled as his claw shot forward to snatch Chuckles.
With a sly dodge, Chuckles’ little body hit the deck and slid through the sand under the lurching claw of the scorpion. His pointy little dagger stabbed into the armoured carapace of the scorpion’s claw, and he rapidly rolled out to create distance again.
The scorpion roared as his tail lashed out like a whip at the retreating Chuckles. He raised his daggers to block the strike, but it was still powerful enough to knock him into the ground again. He coughed up a little more blood and slowly climbed up as the scorpion loomed over preparing to lash out its claw again.
Chuckles lowered his centre and flicked his daggers in preparation. The moment the scorpion lashed out, Chuckles’ body darted to outside. He lunged forward and his little black dagger sliced through a leg of the scorpion.
As the tail whipped out again, Chuckles jumped back while stabbing both daggers forward. The moment the tail made contact with the daggers, Chuckles flicked a leg and did a strange rotating flip. The daggers spun with the rotation of his body and carved into the exposed flesh of the Scorpion’s tail, digging out a handful more of clear greenish flesh.
The scorpion was enraged further, and the pain was wracking his body. He was starting to get frustrated with this little demon creature. He raced forward to try and catch Chuckles with another claw snatching motion.
Taking lessons from Murphy, Chuckles didn’t let this brief moment of initiative switch back again and rushed forward. He nimbly used the swinging claw of the scorpion to leap up high then dive back down and bury both his dagger into the face of the man faced scorpion.
The scorpions two eyes were pierced through, and it writhed and jerk for a few more seconds before falling to the ground lifeless.
A huge gush of Exp burst forth from the enemy controllers body and split apart, rushing into Murphy and Chuckles. After this, Chuckles’ body suddenly started to crack, and his bones groaned under a sudden strange pressure.
He let out a guttural growl as his body started visibly morphing and pushing the scorpion’s stinger out. His purplish skin tone grew darker and closely approached a very dark purple, so close to black you’d only know it was purple under the direct light of the sun.
His two twisted little horns grew straighter, longer and sharper. His demon tail remained mostly the same, and his black claws grew sharper and stronger looking. Unlike previously, he didn’t seem to grow anymore, but his slightly muscled wiry body bulked up a little bit more, making his little muscles more pronounced.
Murphy watched on as Chuckles evolved in front of him. His eyes scrutinised closely and he observed the changes in Chuckles’ stats and traits. It seemed this time around, Chuckles had gained all of Murphy’s shadow art related skills.
It was mostly things like sneak, concealment and assassination techniques. Murphy didn’t practice any of the assassin techniques, but that didn’t mean to say he didn’t have any. In fact, he had quite a few. Now that Chuckles had just become something akin to a perfect assassin, he would have to be sure to teach these skills to him.
However, perhaps because it was his third evolution, Chuckles didn’t stop here. His two eyes turned a very sinister red colour, and the nails on his two index fingers both turned from pitch black and glassy to white. The last edition to the evolution was a big pair of black leathery wings like a bat.
Under Murphy’s scrutiny, a special demon trait called ‘Commander’ appeared in Chuckles’ evolution bonus’. More or less, it granted Chuckles the innate Demon Spawn Summoning spell. Like most the rest of the talents from evolution, it was the same level as Murphy’s skill, but could level up by itself if Chuckles practised it.
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Seeing the greatest Spawn of their race evolving once again, the other spawns were all screaming and smacking their helmets and shields as they danced around in joy. It was quite a sight watching the hundreds of Spawns all dancing about in a poisonous field of corpses while joyously singing and cheering.
As if to let them all know that he appreciated their support, Chuckles let out a great bellow and then quickly ran up to Murphy yelling “Yah yah yah!” and flexing his muscles like a show-off.
Murphy could only smile then glance over at all the youngest progeny of the Spawns. He then chuckled and pet Chuckles head.
“You better not get cocky Chuckles. You’re already level 12. Your kids were born with your level and evolution. What will you do if some of them step up and overtake you?”
Chuckles didn’t even consider it a problem. From his attitude, Murphy could tell that Chuckles would be ecstatic if his children could step up to the plate and take down their old man. Even though Chuckles inherited Murphy’s trait Will never age, that didn’t mean he didn’t want his children to make him proud.
After all, before Murphy came along, having descendants already looked like a distant possibility for these creatures. Having descendants that could make a warrior like Chuckles proud would be like ... well, there really is no way to qualify or quantify the gratitude he had that there was even the chance for it to happen.
With the battle won, Murphy sent his poison spawns into the enemy domain and looted everything. They had quite a bit of interesting loot. The thing of most interest to Murphy though, was all the crafting materials. Strange ores and priceless attribute gems were hoarded away deep in the tunnels of the scorpions.
After a full game day of looting, Murphy went to his Control Space and disengaged from the enemy Domain. As they slowly broke apart and started floating off, a huge chunk of the enemy domain seemed to disintegrate into dust and flow towards Murphy’s.
He watched on with some amazement as the land of his Domains slowly increased by a bit more. It was only about another hundred metres of radius, but that hundred metres was actually a lot.
He wondered how fast his domain would grow if he successfully raided a bigger domain. If he was only taking 10% at a time, then he needed to take 10% of something bigger if he wanted to make a real impact.
Either that, or take ten percent of lots of smaller Domains, which would probably take forever.
Now that the raid had been completed and he’d looted his enemies, his Domain once again entered into a protection state. This time it was only for 5 days, half the time he had before, but it was more than enough to reinforce his domain some more.
After all, 5 game days was equivalent to 20 Earth-length days.
Thinking of earth, Murphy suddenly realised just how absorbed he’d gotten and that he hadn’t shown his face at home for weeks. His foster father probably thought he’d run away or died. It made him feel slightly guilty for not having bothered to even think of them until now.
He decided that it was time to make a trip home. He was also curious how that huge asshole Juwan was doing. He was somewhat hoping to meet his domain in his adventures and get an opportunity to introduce Juwan to Morbid.
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I can’t say I was psyched about going home but in the end, Uncle Calligso raised me for 6 years and taught me how to survive after the orphanage. If it weren’t for him, I’d most likely have remained trapped in the orphanage and rotted away to nothing while I wallowed in my self-pity.
Seelie also didn’t seem too psyched about going home. She hated her father for various reasons I’m slightly familiar with, but at the very least she loved her younger sister and tolerated her mother. That meant she was more intending to go home and drag her sister into the game to escape her below average family situation.
I’d been quite lucky in that apart from the occasional abuse of Juwan and the loathsome expressions of my foster mother, the rest of the family mostly left me alone. Calligso’s mistress was also somewhat warm to me and the two younger sisters, who were the daughters of Calligso and his mistress, were at least amiable enough to simply act like I didn’t exist.
As opposed to the two older siblings, one of which directly and out rightly hated my guts and the other who was as sly and covert in his hatred as a viper. Striking while smiling and acting as if he was trying to help! The bastard!
That was more or less my family situation, and really the only person I was going back for was Uncle Calligso. Even if he really only brought me into the house because he thought I could carry on his martial arts legacy, he was nonetheless mostly a good guardian who was protective and caring of my wellbeing.
He even seemed to care about other things like school and my social life, which was one of the reasons I was a little worried about coming home now. The last time I missed more than 3 days of school he gave me such a severe ass whooping that even now the thought of it gives me phantom pains.
Even if the Game System had given me all these cool skills and stats, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the man who was my foster father would be able to defeat me in three moves or less. If he started playing, he would probably come into the game with a skill like Martial Arts Mastery at level 10.
After saying goodbye to Morbid and the Spawns and leaving them some tasks to do while I was gone, I logged out ahead of Seelie, who assured me she would be through later.
The moment I reappeared in my room, all sorts of traps started springing. A huge spike suspended from the ceiling lurched forward trying to pierce me, arrows shot out of crossbows set up in every corner of the room, a flame thrower suddenly sprang to life from under my bed, and the entire carpet was filled with mats with nails nearly half a foot long sticking out.
Not just that, 3 grenades suddenly dropped right on top of me with their pins dangling from a string on the roof. My bedroom had turned into a war zone and was trapped up to the shithouse. I didn’t even have time to react before the pendulum-like spike stabbed into my side.
Or ... should have stabbed into my side, would be more grammatically correct. Seeing as it just seemed to bounce off me like it had struck a metal wall. The crossbow bolts struck me and ripped my clothes but apart from that simply bounced or deflected off.
The flame thrower made a pretty good effort, I actually felt quite warm, and all my clothes were burnt to cinders. The grand finale, the three grenades, all exploded simultaneously spreading shrapnel like bullets and releasing a huge explosion completely obliterating my corner room.
Juwan’s room, directly above mine, had the floor completely blown out and collapsed in while I was blasted through the wall and shot out into the street in a trail of smoke and debris. My room’s floor collapsed as well, and everything for three floors piled down into the bottom floor in a huge shitstorm of debris.
Nearly a quarter of my foster families villa was obliterated in one go. I too wasn’t impervious to explosions from 3 grenades at point blank range. It was almost like the time I first discovered the volatile concoction. Only this time I was slightly better off, with only a few broken bones, some charred flesh and a handful of bleeding wounds from the shrapnel.
Also ... unlike last time, my clothes were completely obliterated, so my naked ass shot through the sky like a bright reflective moon. The landing was also a little less severe, and after about 20 minutes, I was able to pick myself up.
I’d been shot out into the neighbour’s shrubbery by the explosion, and by the time I got up, emergency services were already crowded around my house like flies, as they tried to put out the fires.
When I reached the front of the house, Calligso and Juwan were both standing on the street as my two younger sisters were rushed into ambulances and most the rest of my family sat nearby a little worse for wear.
My foster mother and elder sister were both missing though, presumably having been out shopping or something. If I remember correctly, today should be Freeday. One of the days of the week when most people don’t work or have school and stay home.
I felt my heart wracked with guilt as I saw my two sisters being rushed off in the ambulances. If I’d never come home, then my family wouldn’t have suffered. That, of course, wasn’t a certainty though.
If I’d ever died in the game, I would have been forced back to the real world and have to suffer 12 hours of not being able to log in. As I approached the burning house, a few Protectors noticed me, covered in ashes and charred in places, so they rushed forth to ensure I was alright.
They all had rather strange looks when they saw me holding the Dimension Key and my body still rapidly healing wounds right in front of them. That then led to the awkward situation of trying to explain who I was, which I was rescued from by Uncle Calligso.
The moment he saw me, two things happened. The first was, he rushed up and gave me a great big hug which put some stress even on my durable bones. The second, he put me down from the hug, looked at me hard, then slapped me on the back of the head so hard I was worried my eyeballs were going to pop out.
“The hell you been you little shit?! Huh? You run off to go playin’ games in some multi-dimension? Don’t even tell ol’ Uncle Calligso and left me here worryin’ ‘bout you all fuckin’ day? And what about your school you little bastard?
“Think I send you there to keep you out’a sight or somethin’? I send you there to get educated, so you don’t end up stupid like me you dipshit! You damn well better ‘ave been studyin’ somethin’ while you was off in your game world cause first thing you’re doin’ now your back is your fuckin’ exit test. I ain’t letting you go back till you done at school!
“And what the hell is all this ‘bout aye? You fucking castin’ that weird game magic in your room? Huh? Your little sisters got hurt! Now go put some fuckin’ clothes on. After this mess is sorted, it’s time for some lessons! See if you’ll ignore ol’ Uncle Calligso and fuckin’ go gallivantin’ bout in other dimensions without tellin’ ‘im again!”
This was a standard conversation between foster father and son. Calligso knew I couldn’t talk well with others around and so he generally did most of the talking and read my facial expressions. Apart from Seelie, the only person capable of understanding much about me was Calligso.
The Protector’s took statements from everyone which was a painful experience for them when they got to me, and once the house was mostly cleaned up, the family went to a huge fancy hotel and booked out some rooms for a few days. Although Uncle Calligso wasn’t the smartest man in the world, he was quite rich.
When it came to money the man was a miser. Even the house we lived in had most of the building costs paid for by various clients of his. Mostly rich men paying him to go and tutor their snobbish sons or daughters.
Once we were settled in at the hotel, I found out the wife and daughter pair had buggered off about 4 days ago on some holiday in another Colony. I wasn’t going to start jumping to conclusions, but that didn’t stop me from automatically concluding that it was Juwan and them leaving was just a coincidence.
Juwan was clearly displeased with my cool traits in the game and decided to just end my life outside the game and not have to worry about it. Besides, apart from being somewhat snobbish and openly hostile, that duo didn’t have the know-how for something like this, and I didn’t believe they hated me that much they would resort to blowing the whole house to pieces just to try and kill me.
It’s the ones that are always smiling and pleasant that you need to watch out for. Juwan always puts on that kind hearted act, but I can already tell it was him based on how he keeps asking how injured I was and remarking on how durable I am.
He even went so far as to solemnly vow he would find out who perpetrated this whole thing and get justice for our younger sisters and me. I almost vomited seeing how incredible his acting skills were. I was so close to falling for his act I had to try and stab myself to wake up.
Unfortunately, that only led to a very bent hotel knife and some concerned questions from everyone. We hadn’t settled down for long before Uncle Calligso came to collect me and we went half way across town to his dojo.
His Dojo was quite impressive and very old style. It was modelled after very similar styles of Dojo from before the new order. As soon as we were in the dojo, Uncle Calligso was throwing a live katana at me.
The thing was made with the toughest alloys and sharpened to a molecular level with lasers and all sorts of other fancy science things that are beyond me. The point is, I wasn’t sure I’d survive if that thing actually cut into me.
Luckily, Uncle Calligso wasn’t trying to kill me. He was simply testing my reflexes. I still remember when I first came to his dojo and he had me trying to catch throwing knives. I still have a scar on both sides of my hand from that one time I got distracted.
Although the katana rapidly flying towards me was just a test, the test was a trap! If I try to deflect or catch to the sword, Uncle Calligso will be a half step behind it launching a punch at my face. If a person places too much focus on the sword hurtling towards them, then they’ve failed as a close combat martial artist.
As such, my focus remained on Uncle Calligso, who was walking towards me slowly. I simply stepped back twice, so I was in position and caught the sword! It was a no-no for me to catch it, so naturally, Uncle Calligso wasn’t going to go easy.
At almost the same moment as my hand grasped around the hilt of the sword, Uncle Calligso seemed to blur and just as my fingers were tightening onto the sword to stop it’s spinning, a fist that felt like it covered the world appeared in front of my face.
I had long since been expecting this. My head dropped, and the katana used the force of the throw to swing around my body, using the motion to counterattack in the same breath as dodging.
Uncle Calligso didn’t even seem to flinch. His rugged old face calmly remained locked on me as he took a simple step back and flicked a leg up causing the sword to deflect up into the air. The force behind that kick was mind boggling.
I was pretty sure he almost just snapped the sword. I had thought my strength would be enough to keep hold of the sword, but it seemed that the nature of the kick was more devious than I’d thought. As the force caused the katana to fly up, his foot slid down the blade and smacked into my wrist, instantly disarming me.
He was fencing against a sword with his feet! I could only smile bitterly as in the very next motion, my sky was once again filled with a fist. Although I could probably dodge ... making him have to work harder to teach me a lesson would only eventually make it harder on me.
Unlike all the times before, the fist stopped. Normally, Uncle always followed through. He didn’t allow weakness in any of his students, most especially his children. He pulled back his fist and the look he gave me ... felt so heavy on my heart.
It was filled with disappointment. It was filled with ... unhappiness? I’m not sure what he was so upset about. It had been nearly a year since our last direct sparring lesson together, and the last time we sparred, I couldn’t even last his first move.
Finally, though, he voiced his thoughts, and I somewhat understood in the beginning.
“You holdin’ back wit your ol’ man boy? Not given me any face and fightin’ like a coward? I know what you’s was like before I took you in. I expected you to learn it all and overtake me in a few years. What the fuck you doin’? Huh? You fuckin takin me for some fuckin soft hearted charity?
“You my fuckin son now! What the fuck happened aye? You fuckin had potential but you just been getting weaker and softer with every year. I thought sending Juwan to spar wit you every day would give you some fightin’ spirit back, but you just become even more meek!
“You takin’ your ol’ man for a fuckin fool now too? Huh? Fuckin just givin’ up? That’s it, Murphy, you little shit! This time, your ol’ man’s not holdin’ back at all. If you don’t give it your all, this ol’ man’s gonna kill ya! And then ta spite ya dead ass, I’ma go find that little girl o’ your’s, and she’ll follow ya inta ya grave!
“I shoulda left your ass back in that shithole! I now understand why your fuckin’ parents left you there. Cause they was fuckin disappointed in ya!”
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Murphy’s Uncle Calligso had always been many things. Demanding? Most certainly. Brash? Perhaps. A little arrogant? Sure. But Calligso had never actually been angry. For the very first time, Murphy felt his uncle getting angry. He felt the air around him became strange, as if the pressure from his uncle’s glare was freezing the air and making it became stale.
All of the hairs on his body suddenly stood up in alarm as what little danger sense he’d cultivated lately suddenly went into overdrive. Warning him that there was something nearby that could definitely kill him.
However, despite these blaring warning signs, Murphy couldn’t back down. Calligso had touched a nerve this time. Said something he shouldn’t have said, and should never have even thought to say. Murphy’s usually slightly bent back straightened out. His face became placid and calm, as if he’d suddenly just disconnected from reality.
The aura he gave off changed from his reserved and introverted self to a composed but overbearing nature. As if he was a king or mighty lord who looked down on all life.
At this moment, even Calligso was slightly surprised as his body suddenly had a similar reaction to what Murphy’s had a moment before. He felt as if death was staring at him. What worried him the most was that when he’d done it to Murphy, he didn’t actually plan on killing him, but he could tell without a doubt that if he slipped up for even a second, Murphy would most definitely kill him.
He didn’t have time for such considerations though. Murphy’s body leant forwards and just when it seemed like he was about to fall flat on his face, his body moved. It was some bizarre running method Calligso had never seen before.
That didn’t matter though. What mattered was that it was fast! Murphy was like a bullet as he appeared in front of Calligso. His fist struck out, feinting for the head. His body rotated, and a kick struck against a sneaky counterattack from Calligso.
A crack was heard, and Murphy fell back slightly. Calligso felt it. Murphy’s foot definitely just broke! However, it seemed somebody should tell Murphy that because he used it as his pivot foot for another strike and didn’t appear to be limited by it in the slightest.
The next moment, Calligso and Murphy went all out. They traded dozens of blows in a minute. Kicks and punches were like rain. Calligso was actually starting to get a little worried now. Murphy had become absolutely relentless in his attacks, and it was almost like his life was worthless in comparison to avenging whatever slight Calligso had made.
He flicked out a kick to the hip and unbalanced Murphy only for the boy to use a strange stepping pattern and borrow the force to flick his leg around and bring an axe kick towards Calligso’s head. Calligso, for the first time in battle, backed off a step.
Just as quickly, he shot back forward and flicked a palm out deflecting a punch downwards and then having to directly block an elbow that came from the deflected punching arm. He felt like his life was definitely being threatened, and his arm flicked out like a bullet as it struck Murphy’s shoulder.
A sickening ‘click’ resounded and Murphy’s shoulder was clearly dislocated. It then very unnaturally gave another ‘click’ as it pulled itself back into place. The same happened every time he tried to disable Murphy with dislocated joints.
He then tried to break his arm, only for Murphy to whip it about a bit and it set itself while he was still using his other 3 limbs and even his head to continue the battle.
He felt like he was fighting against some kind of sickening immortal.
At the same time, he was excited! He’d never fought a battle like this in his entire life! He was only 42, and he’d spent every waking day of his life thinking and practising martial arts. This was the first battle he’d ever had where he felt the pressure.
It was his first chance to go all out, and he wasn’t going to pass it up. The duo’s battle grew more intense as they started throwing killing strikes as if they were going to take the other person’s life. The most frightening thing was the rate they were improving at.
It was like they were some kind of martial arts monsters and the longer they battled, the more skilled they became. In the end though, as powerful as Murphy’s endurance was, it wasn’t a match for Calligso’s skill.
Although Murphy could fight without thought for his own life, Calligso had far more experience and skill and at the end of the day seemed to have an even more frightening stamina than Murphy could have possibly expected. Especially since Calligso hadn’t joined the game system and was supposed to just be a regular human.
After nearly an hour of constant fighting, Murphy felt himself growing tired beyond his special traits ability to keep up. Calligso finally wore him out enough to finish the fight, and got him into a choke hold before knocking him out.
Come morning, Murphy would wake up fine, but Calligso would be covered in bruises and sore muscles. He had even broken a few ribs during the battle. That said, he never felt more alive than right now, and his happiness at Murphy’s progress was through the roof.
He was beyond ecstatic. Although ... he’d have to try and calm Murphy down somewhat in the morning. The killing intent he felt coming off Murphy had been palpable during the fight, and he was sure something like that didn’t just disappear overnight.
To his shock, the next morning, Murphy kneeled down like a good disciple to his teacher and meekly apologised for his outburst the night before. It was like whoever that was that had fought him the whole night had disappeared and was once again replaced with the young introverted Murphy he’d known for so long.
Murphy had actually come back to himself half way through the fight. He understood Calligso’s feelings, and he understood that his foster father was just trying to bring some fight out of him. Calligso knew some of Murphy’s past, and it was also the reason he expected so much from him.
At the same time, Calligso apologised for being so overbearing. He realised that Murphy had some things that he had trouble dealing with. Whatever was going on with him and Seelie was one of those things, and his parents were also a somewhat sore spot.
Now that he’d seen it though, Calligso wasn’t going to let go. This was the son he’d adopted, and he’d known before this what kind of monster he’d brought into his house. As long as he was strong enough to keep some control over him and help him grow into the right kind of man, it didn’t matter much what his past was.
That said, Calligso immediately dragged Murphy back to the dojo to pick up his training again. He wouldn’t let this chance slip by. Now that he’d forced Murphy to show his prowess, he wasn’t going to let him continue pretending to be such a meek little kid.
The most important thing he felt that he needed to teach him was how to harness that part of himself that had come out last night. That little bit of darkness in his heart. All things need balance, and the human heart is no different.
After a whole day in the dojo, Calligso made Murphy a deal.
Schooling in the new age is a little different from before the Holocaust. The primary aspect is that they foster self-learning. They’ll give you the help and materials you need, but most of it you’re expected to learn yourself.
After all, if a child wants to learn they will learn, if they don’t want to learn, who can force them? Therefore they spend more focus at school trying to foster a desire to learn than on trying to push kids through like lemmings.
Thanks to that sort of set up, time spent in schooling varies. Grades aren’t divided by age groups or year. Grades are determined based on academic merit. Each grade you have to complete a standardised test to move to the next.
It’s not uncommon for some people to still be doing Grade 12 schooling even after they’ve started working full time. It’s not uncommon to see children only 13 or 14 finishing grade twelve. Thanks to that sort of system, a person’s schooling revolves solely around their own merit and desire to learn.
Murphy, at this stage, only had a single exam left before he could be considered graduated. Since Calligso felt it was important, he made Murphy promise to finish that final exam before the end of the month.
While at the same time, he made him promise to take up some form of extracurricular studies after. Something like engineering or robotics, he could even do agriculture or something. It didn’t matter to Calligso, as long as Murphy kept learning something. Even if he was in another dimension most of the time.
Murphy, in turn, made Calligso promise to join the game. Sighting it as a potential source to train himself fully. In truth though, he wanted his stupidly powerful Uncle to come and join his Domain. It would be like adding another warhead to his current arsenal of two nuclear weapons.
Before he had the chance to go and track down Seelie and head back into the game, he received a message in the data stream from Seelie saying she’d meet him back there. He then spent a full night memorising all of his study materials, and he’d just mull them over in his head in the game.
The next day, before he could sneak off to find somewhere to go into the game, Juwan pulled him aside. Murphy wasn’t in a big rush. He figured Juwan was going to make some jibes at him for having taken so long to finish the tutorial while sounding sincere and worried.
To his surprise though, Juwan wasn’t his usual snake oil salesman self.
“Murphy ... I think that ... huu ... you know what, it doesn’t matter yet. Rest assured, I will find out who tried to attack you!”
Murphy stared back dumbly for a moment then cocked his head. Juwan sure was acting strange today. Before Murphy could walk off, Juwan brought up something else.
“Little Brother. How is your domain going? Is it still up?”
Murphy simply nodded his head. He was a little irritated and half tempted to just warp back even though he was in the middle of a hotel.
Juwan seemed to be considering something for a little bit but finally seemed to resolve himself and ask something that Murphy had most certainly not been expecting.
“Little Brother. Do you think you could take this pathetic older brother into your Domain as a citizen?”
Murphy didn’t know exactly what to think of that request. For starters, he firmly believed Juwan was planning something devious. If he actually let him into his Domain, how would he reconcile himself after he was assassinated or something by Juwan?
At the same time, Murphy felt that having your enemy somewhere you could see him would be better than letting him run about doing Sage knows what in the shadows. More importantly though, he was curious why Juwan would give up his domain to Join Murphy’s.
Juwan seemed to know what Murphy was most probably thinking.
“You are probably curious. I have lost my Domain. I received 3 consecutive attacks which I lost, and my Domain was reduced to nothing. I am now just an ordinary player. Unfortunately, that means I am more limited now and can’t travel to other Quest Planets. I’m stuck on the one I spawned on until I join a Domain or a random portal spawns.”
When he said this far, his face became somewhat gloomy. Which was a rare sight to see on his normally handsome and smiling face.
“The main problem is that most other Domains ask you to sign some game system contract which essentially hands over your life to the Domain Controller. I refuse to live in servitude to somebody I don’t know or trust. Please let me join your Domain until I can find a Domain Stone.”
Murphy’s eyebrows jumped. He searched the numerous memories Seelie had left behind in his head of all the game guides she purchased from the store. It seemed as if nearly 30 percent of those memories were rather inappropriate and a slight blush crept onto his cheeks while rapidly skipping those ones.
Finally, right after a certain memory that was slightly more graphic than the rest, Murphy found what he was looking for.
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Domain Stone.
Player’s that have lost their domain can gain a chance to restart a domain provided they find one of these mystical stones. Every Quest Planet usually spawns at least one of these stones and provided a player is skilled enough or strong enough, he can get his hands on it.
Unfortunately, this stone is highly coveted. The Game System forces a player to keep hold of the stone for at least three game days, and they cannot leave the planet of its origin until the stone unlocks. Only then can they create a new domain, and attempt to build a world of their own again.
While the stone is activating, any domains connected to the planet will turn red, alerting everyone that the Quest Planet’s Domain Stone has been discovered.
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Murphy considered for a short moment whether it was worth it to let that creeper into his home. He believed that even if he let Juwan onto his Domain, he wouldn’t be able to get up to too much mischief. He was confident that Juwan wouldn’t be able to turn his loyal Spawn against him and it was 50/50 odds whether or not Morbid would just eat him on first sight.
He then considered how Calligso had said that it was him who sent Juwan to beat on him regularly. Although Calligso was a very tough love kind of guardian, he wouldn’t endorse hitting Murphy with a car and he most likely investigated after the incident.
Murphy only now started questioning his belief that perhaps Juwan wasn’t who he thought he was.
The only problem with that is, pre-conceived notions and prejudices don’t pass overnight. Even if he’d started to question his last year or two of suspicions, that didn’t mean he could just wake up the next day and not still have those feelings.
Although, since Murphy was so dense, perhaps he could just wake up and forget about it but simply didn’t want to. In the end, after nearly 15 minutes of Juwan patiently waiting and watching Murphy’s face go through a multitude of indecipherable expressions, Murphy nodded his head.
“ ... how to bring you... ?”
Juwan was exuberant. For as long as he could remember, this little brother had always been so distant and lonely. It was the first time he’d agreed to do something that wasn’t sparring. Juwan actually didn’t expect anything more than a blank staring face for 10 minutes and then Murphy just walking off.
“It’s easy. We can just form a party, and I will automatically respawn in your domain. You can then grant me citizenry through the Controller Space.”
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This was even better than I’d hoped for! I never once expected him to accept my request! He’s always so closed off and guarded it’s impossible to get anything out of him. But now I have my foot in the door. I have to be careful though, or it’ll end up just like 2 years ago when he was just starting to trust me and then suddenly became distant again.
That threw everything up in the air. All my plans were shot down in a matter of days. Making it harder was dad forcing me to spar with him. I thought I could just go easy and let him win, but he was too strong. I can’t say my pride wasn’t stoked like a little ember in a fireplace when I started losing to Murphy.
Then he suddenly just became docile and became even more distrusting of me. I couldn’t not beat him if he left himself open while sparring. If I did, dad would kick the shit out of me for failing in my duties as an older brother.
After the thing I’d planned at the house failed, I didn’t hold much hope of him still willing to let me near him, but now is my chance. I have to find out where he plans to log in.
“OK, well, let’s decide where we are going to log in. After what happened at the house it would be better if we do it somewhere no one will know about, to protect you and the family.”
Very suave. Smooth. Give a charming older brother smile. Perfect. Murphy may have talents in martial arts, but I’ve always been better at talking.
“ ... No need. Let’s go from here, I’ll set you as citizen ... and come back.”
Damnit! He’s going to go off and find somewhere by himself? Murphy you fool! You think that will stop me? You have to come back out to the real world eventually. When you do, I’ll just log out and follow you! I’m not going to let my fail yesterday happen again.
This time when I succeed...
We will be able to do brotherly things together like fishing and going to a theme park and getting drunk while picking up girls. My dreams will become a reality, and I will have a real relationship with Little Brother!
Most importantly, no matter what! I will protect my little brother!
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Before I left, I had to pay a huge amount of experience to pull something back out of the game world. I’d come to learn that it was possible to purchase something called the ‘dimensional hook’. Which is more or less a huge pain in my ass.
It doesn’t simply let you pull something out from your inventory on the other side, but instead, makes you go fishing for it through some portal thing. Juwan seemed particularly enthused about joining me to go fishing in my inventory, making me even more suspicious of his motives.
Most likely, he wanted to scope out what sorts of things I had stashed away in there. I didn’t decline though. ‘Fishing’ wasn’t completely unscientific. As long as I envisioned what I wanted there was a high chance of catching it.
In the end, I took nearly an hour of catch and release pulling out all sorts of things like boots and body parts. Finally, I managed to get my hands on what I needed. A single bottle of Miracle Water. It took me a great deal of effort to find the super rare potion that I’d initially used when I created this for the Bear King.
The reason I needed this was because Uncle Calligso was having some issues after our sparring the night before. I was honestly surprised that he hadn’t already had his insides turned into mush from the number of times we traded blows.
I’d forgotten that my touch is quite literally toxic. He’d done remarkably well in keeping up appearances for an entire day and night, so I didn’t really notice until he turned green. That was when I realised that he most likely was suffering from my 5% chance of poisoning on contact.
The bonus of the miracle water is, since my negative luck is considered a negative status effect by another player to the system, Miracle Water will cure it. Unsurprisingly, it’s not that easy though. This is about the only stuff apart from some bizarrely high level holy cure magic I have found that can remove the negative luck curse.
Anyway, the point is that I’d nearly killed Uncle Calligso even after I regained my sanity and stopped myself from doing so. Not that it mattered since I couldn’t beat the tough old bastard even when I’d gone all out anyway.
When his skin turned back from the clammy green colour, I was reassured the Miracle Water had worked and quickly took that back stabbing viper-faced brother to my domain. The citizenry was actually rather easy. I set him to the second lowest citizen status, which was something like a squatter and only better than a slave. Then came back to Earth.
I carefully found a dark alley out of sight from everyone and after repeatedly checking that Juwan that... ‘probably’ sinister fuck, hadn’t followed me, I logged back in. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Juwan still standing in the exact same spot he’d been when I logged out.
Surrounded by hundreds of menacing looking little Spawn and with a huge towering Morbid standing over the top of him growling and...
‘Hold on ... is he petting my dog! Where are the Spawn? Oi! Morbid you bastard traitor! You’re letting that viper-faced scumbag touch you? I thought you were supposed to be a good judge of character?! Where the hell is Chuckles? I told him to keep an eye on Juwan.’
“Tsk!”
That was about the limit to which I voiced my dissatisfaction. I then travelled around to check out my Domain. I’d been gone a whole day and night, so I needed to inspect my Spawns progress with the tasks I set them.
As expected, my loyal spawn really were industrious little fellows. Thanks to having our portal in that city for a few days, we managed to get certain resources we normally have a little trouble getting. Iron for example.
With that and some guides and blueprints we bought, we managed to teach a few spawns how to become metal smiths. Creating tools was important because before now we’d been cutting wood and stone with swords and daggers looted from the corpses of enemies.
With some real tools, the Spawn’s construction speed sped up. Unfortunately, we’d now used all the resources they’d managed to pull through the mist portal and the portal was currently on a barren planet with nothing but dirt and dust storms, so it was difficult to harvest anything from there.
The Castle, which I had originally designed to be about a quarter the size it had become, remained only half finished. Unlike my castle, other important buildings such as a few smith workshops, a tailor, carpenter workshop and a few other necessities had been finished.
Everything was designed by the Spawn. Among the evolutions were spawns which inherited skills and traits relating to my mind stats. Things like design, memorisation, stratagem, wood work and metal work. They generally took charge of construction projects.
Everything they made was at a pretty high standard and looked structurally sound. They were roomy and built to facilitate expansion and upgrade later down the line. The only problem was ... the spawn seemed to have a pension for somewhat evil looking designs.
Everything had spikes and flames. It was usually painted in something that I’m pretty sure was the blood of our enemies, and creature heads and bandit skulls were sort of just ... left lying around the place.
It was as if they felt the skulls of enemies they’d killed were somehow similar to artwork. It seemed there was actually a profession among the Spawn who specialised in putting the perfect sword or axe marks on a shiny white skull to make it look appropriately artistic enough to be left lying in the dirt near the smithy.
From what I could tell, the castle they had designed wasn’t too different. It was hard to tell for the moment because it was only half finished, but from the huge spikes that filled the foundations of the castle, it gave me that impression of the fortress of some orc warlord or evil king.
Despite my urging, they were of the opinion that anything less would belittle my image as their master and they refused to build it if it didn’t at the minimum have 400 odd spikes sticking out of it and huge flaming torches everywhere.
I managed to talk them out of putting something similar to gallows hanging out on a beam from each of the turrets of the castle.
The last main addition to the Domain was in the sinister land and had everything. Spikes, heads, bodies hanging from nooses, painted in blood. It was like the pinnacle of Spawn ‘feng shui’.
Making me a little more uncomfortable was that the thing had a huge statue of me in it.
It was essentially an open circular stone court with stone seats and huge stone columns sitting around the outskirts for no apparent reason apart from supporting a noose or numerous pointy spikes. The courtyard was about 50 metres in diameter, so it stood out in the only 400 odd meter length of the sinister ring.
At the front of the courtyard was a big stone altar, which from the looks of it was for sacrifices of some form. Standing behind this altar and looking down with a very serious and stoic looking face, was me. It was a statue in my visage and was actually a remarkably well-made product. I’m pretty sure they’d had it done on the last Quest Planet at the city by someone else.
This was actually an incredibly important place for the spawn. It was their respawn point in the game. Although I didn’t have the experience points yet, there is a scroll I can buy that sets a landmark or place as a respawn point for citizens of my Domain.
It was incredibly expensive and requires nearly 100,000 experience points, but I let the spawn build this place ahead of time because they are still tribe like, and I’m sick of them having fertility festivals in the castle.
If you’re wondering, try to imagine hundreds of little spawn all getting together and then having Curse Spawn firing off every curse in their arsenal like throwing confetti. It’s like the scene when I first learnt the Rampage spell ... only 100 times more disturbing.
I went to the Domain Controller Space and checked the status of the domain. It had all sorts of neat tools for keeping an eye on everything. The population of the Spawn was surging and after the latest batch of eggs had hatched there were nearly 1400 spawn again. By the time we get attacked, they will be approaching adulthood and ready to battle for their new home.
It seemed we had low food stores because of the current Quest Planet we were connected to. There was basically nothing there but dirt so we were having trouble hunting and scrounging up resources.
From what I understood, it wasn’t rare for a quest planet to be ravaged by active Domains if the Controller dies. At that point, the planet basically becomes a free for all and because the Controller is dead the ‘magic’ or something of the planet stops helping it survive the constant depletion of resources.
This led me to think about what my Domain needed the most right now. We needed a fixed portal destination. This was also a rather expensive purchase, and a fixed portal at the price I could afford soonest was random in its destination.
That had two major problems. The first being that my luck was truly unscrupulous in its timing. Even with positive luck, Murphy’s Law didn’t always cause lucky accidents. If anything, positive luck only reduced bad luck chances and gave a small chance for lucky accidents.
Although, if I’m being honest, a lot of bad luck accidents have actually turned out really lucky in hindsight. My Deprive ability, for example, is absolutely monstrous in its power, and the trait I spite the most, Hurts So Good, is actually almost invaluable in critical moments.
Anyway, the point is, I may just end up with a portal to another ‘dead’ quest world. Which would more or less be useless to me.
The second problem was that even if we got lucky, chances are that a single portal wouldn’t be near all the resources we needed.
It was at this point, when I was considering all the bad luck I’d had before now, that I had an idea. If I was likely to be unlucky, then what I needed to do was rely on someone else’s luck.
Thus I left for the makeshift observatory atop the wizard tower, where I found Seelie peering off into the distant starry sky.
“Hey ... I need a place that looks ... developed ... with bad looking...”
I stopped my request at this point and considered what my Domain must look like to other places. After thinking deeply about the perceived view people have of certain things, I changed my request.
“Is there a way ... to ... find out information about certain domains?”
Seelie stopped looking through her telescope and approached me with a slight blush. Then reached out and touched me to initiate a memory implant. I somewhat hesitantly accepted and worked very hard to ignore the first few bits of the implant.
Seeing the sly smile on Seelie’s face when she was finished, I could only assume she was still punishing me for something. I’m not sure what I’d done wrong to receive all this mental abuse. It was a good thing my mental fortitude was so solid, or I might have embarrassed myself by actually asking about it.
Anyway, from what she knew, which I now knew, you could buy information from the Domain Store about battles waged by other domains. Apart from who they target and who they’ve lost to, it’s also possible to find information on resources stockpiled in the domain, number of portals, population, type of inhabitants and other interesting things.
Thanks to that, I quickly escaped from Seelie before her ire for whatever I’d done grew, and she insisted on giving me another implant. I then spent the last of the experience points I had saved up as I started investigating other domains near my location and scheming some mostly innocent schemes.