“Take me there!”

“Girl, you gotta be more specific.”

“Just, open up a portal and let’s go!”

“Are you sure about that?” Xenos smirked and watched the ‘little’ woman’s cringing face, “Teleportation is expensive.”

“How much gold?”

“Gold?” He shrugged his giant shoulders and snickered, “Verna, I live in a goddamn palace made of gold. My last gig, this dude summoned me to prevent some giant asteroid from hitting his planet. Turns out the freakin asteroid was made of gold! Hahaha~! Well, it wasn’t ‘all’ gold, but just imagine a ball of gold, nickel and iron about seventy miles wide!”

*Slurp~!*

Xenos cringed and leaned back, “Ew! Are you seriously drooling right now?!”

“What?! If you’re so rich, then why did you sign a contract with me in the first place?!” Verna licked her golden lips and glared at the massive man who was still much taller than her, even when he sat on the bed.

“Why not?” He spread his hands and laughed, “I’m a simple Asura. This world has plenty of people to kill and lots of high quality Souls to collect. It’s a little dangerous here, but as long as my parents don’t find out, it’s fine.”

“How many Souls to teleport us to Verde?!”

“It’s not that far so… Maybe one or two?”

That red ‘portal’ from earlier, transformed back into a white and gold coin with a golden chain. But the size was much, much larger than before. Now it was big enough for the 3 meter tall giant man to wear like a normal necklace. However, he had to take it off again in order to create a new bloody portal.

“Alright, let’s go. Don’t worry, I’ll just add this to your tab. You can sacrifice some virgins to me later.”

“You’re going to kill them and eat their souls?” Even Verna felt a little hesitant for a moment, “I’ll try my-”

“I’m not a monster, for freak’s sake.” Xenos sneered at the ignorant ‘brat’ as he pulled her through the portal, into the smoky hellscape that used to be Verde Village.

“The God of Chastity is my sister… Or cousin? Uh, my family tree is more like a bunch of weird vines meshed together. The point is that virgins are an important resource. The older the virgin, the more valuable. My brother is a Lust Devil and he likes virgins too, but his standards are pretty high. You basically gotta be a full-blown protagonist for him to be interested…”

“No…” Verna’s beautiful blue eyes were already filled with tears the moment she arrived and she felt like she was going to throw up, but she couldn’t even gag. She saw her shop engulfed in flames, there were charred corpses all over the square, severed limbs and digits, but she didn’t recognize any faces… There were a lot of dead bodies that were wearing black. Most of their corpses were completely distorted though. Torn apart and partially eaten. Others were so badly rotted that they only left behind some black slime, white puss and/or bones.

“Is anyone still alive?”

“Hmmm, nope.” Xenos shrugged, but then he pointed to the west, “The Necromancer went that way. Wanna go catch up and kick his ass?”

“Klein didn’t do this…” Verna shook her head and sniffled, coughing a few times from the smoke and her draining sinuses, “These bastards must’ve done it! Can you capture and interrogate their Souls?!”

“Only if their Souls were still around…” He looked around a bit and frowned, “Weird… It feels like… This mountain is kinda scary. I mean, aside from the radiation, there’s definitely something else going on, but I just can’t figure it out. Gives me the creeps though. We should get outta here.”

“No! What about Oliver and Peridot?! They should be in the mine to the northeast!”

“Northeast? Oh, I do see someone! A little girl!”

“Peri?!”

“Uh…” Xenos narrowed his glowing golden eyes and asked, “Does Peridot have black hair? I thought she was a skinny little blonde chick? I don’t know, you humans all look the same to me.”

“It’s not Peri…” Verna frowned and shook her head, “Where is she? Maybe we can figure out what happened if we ask…”

“Sure. Come on.” He reached out and picked up the ‘tiny’ woman under his muscular arm, then two huge fluffy white dove-like wings burst out of his back! With a violent flap, the two of them shot up into the sky! Another few flaps and they were nearly a kilometer to the northeast…

“Aaah! Wait! Wait! No!” She screamed desperately as they dove down into the forest and crashed through a few unfortunate trees. Then they plunged straight through the earth and stone, penetrating straight into a wide-open tunnel!

“Shit! Damn it! You bastard! Do you know how much money you just cost me?!” Verna wiped the dust, dirt, leaves and branches off her naked body, then conjured up a yellow dress and brown boots.

“Whatever. It’s just a few worthless gold coins. I’ll give you some real gold coins later.”

“Really?! I mean, you better! Hehe~!”

“Verna?!” Ivy coughed from all the dust and was almost blinded by the bright light reflecting off that gigantic naked golden body, “Verna! And umm… Xenos? Why are you naked?”

“Shit! These freaking conjured bullshit clothes are so useless!” As he said that, Verna pouted and conjured up a new t-shirt, bathing suit and flip-flops for the annoying ‘Angel’.

“Ivy! What happened to Ollie and Peri?! The whole village was destroyed!”

“What?! How?! Why?!” Ivy, who just finished crying her eyes out over her husband was already about to have another mental breakdown, “What happened?!”

“I don’t know! Some bastards attacked and Klein killed them, but I don’t know how many people survived…”

“Not many.” Xenos shrugged, “That necro-I mean, ‘Doctor’ Klein, a little baby human girl, uh, maybe a few other random humans. Most people turned into soulless zombies though. Sorry for your loss?”

A few minutes of hysterical crying later, Ivy finally calmed down enough to say: “I… I don’t know what happened to Ollie and Peri… But Barry… Barry died.”

“Let’s hurry up and find them then! They might be dying and you’re wasting time here?!”

Unlike Verna, who could sacrifice ‘money’ to avoid injury, Ivy wasn’t so powerful. So the giant golden angel had to carry the two of them in his arms ‘gently’ as he jumped out of the hole and flapped his wings slowly to reach the secret waterfall entrance to the base. Of course, the little girl who had never flown anywhere was freaking out the entire time.

“It feels like I’m losing a lot of money, really fast!” Verna frowned as she looked down into the dark tunnel.

“Hmmm… This place seems… What the hell? Wait, what the freak is this, a nuclear power plant?!”

“What’s wrong?!” Ivy asked, “What about Ollie, Jade and Peri?!”

“Who cares about them?!” Xenos retorted angrily, “Get away from the door! If you go down there, you’re dead!”

“Calm down, Xenos! Tell me whether Ollie and the others are okay!”

“Nope! Nope! Shit! We gotta go!” The golden giant picked up the two girls and flapped his wings, flying away towards the city in the southeast, “Damn it! My parents are gonna be so pissed if they find out that I got irradiated after sneaking out!”