Throughout Amara, every few seconds a loud ‘bang’ noise would ring out and reverberate across the walled city. A few loud explosions marked the end of what little military force the fortress possessed, and the entire population of nine-thousand or so citizens were holed up in their homes, hiding under their floorboards, and quite a few people were kneeling in the streets.

They had no idea what was happening, but every time that sound occurred, at least one person was certainly dead. It didn’t matter if they were behind sandstone-brick walls, iron shields, or even the heavily fortified keep; no one was safe.

From the ramparts near the southern gate, across the entire town, black-mithril bullets continued to be fired from Demil’s assault-rifle. With the length of the barrel, amount of gun-powder used in each round, and the fact that her gun was designed to kill demons; even penetrating an inch of steel armor would have been fairly easy.

Every time she pulled the trigger, the tigress groaned “Ugh, there goes another five silver…” but then she would hear a ding, and purr “Hehe, it’s okay, I can just exchange the favor for gold later.” Each person she executed gave her anywhere from five to a hundred points.

When she nonchalantly killed the ‘Pharaoh’ and his level-twenty court magi, along with several other officials of the city-state, she actually received a total of twenty skill-points. After that, it was mostly just a monotonous cleanup of everyone who had even the smallest bounty on their heads.

Demil didn’t care about liberating the oppressed slaves and commoners, nor did she have any interest in taking any of the insignificant material possessions of her targets. Real gold was a valuable resource in Alfirin, but she preferred actual bills; even if she went through and ransacked the treasury, there wouldn’t have been anything worth the trouble of collecting.

Mana-gems were incredibly useful, yet regular jewels were typically worthless. Going into town and killing people with magic and a combat knife would have saved her a lot of money, but ultimately would have required way too much effort.

She couldn’t actually see through the buildings, so she did occasionally miss or require a few shots to hit her target; the holographic markers were pretty accurate though, so it was rare for her to accidentally murder someone. Her alignment never became ‘Chaotic,’ because it wasn’t intentional, but she definitely went from ‘Good’ to ‘Neutral.’ ‘Evil’ was reserved for players who purposefully massacred thousands or millions of relatively innocent NPCs.

Demil also noticed that every time she killed someone, depending on how powerful they were, she gained a few ‘experience-points.’ Eventually, when all of the holographic bullseyes were gone, she had reached level-forty: though she wasn’t able to edit her stats.

Obviously, in a city of ten-thousand, the majority of those people were essentially peasants or slaves, so it wasn’t like she eradicated the entire town… just most of their military, all of their rulers, and anyone who ever raped, enslaved, or murdered. The grand total was at least five-hundred or so, but the amount of favor she earned was an amazing twelve-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-five: not including what she gained from that first batch of random guards.

Well, she did take a few breaks and she needed to clean out the barrel of her assault-rifle periodically, so by the time her minor-massacre was completed, the sun was beginning to set. Geb was using his talent in earth-manipulation to gather up all of the expended shell-casings; they were mostly made out of mithril-aluminum, so it would have been incredibly wasteful to leave them there.

The tired tigress heaved out an exaggerated sigh, while muttering “Well, I only spent about forty gold… but the bigger problem is that I’m going to run out of ammo at this rate. Hmm~ what the hell?” Suddenly, the ground began rumbling, and a terrible screeching noise resounded throughout the town; many of the sandstone buildings crumbled, even the walls were on the brink of collapse.

As the rather large keep on the northern end of the city was crumbling, a colossal, silver humanoid arm erupted from the rubble; three more emerged soon after that. Then there was a deep bellow “Hahahaha~ finally! It’s been so~ long since I was allowed to use this body! You little squirrel bitch! Did you think that our fight was over?! Hehehe, I bet you’re feeling real~ satisfied with yourself about now!”

Demil immediately packed up her folding-chair, slung her mithril-plated assault-rifle behind her back, and then yelled “Nope, not my problem! Stop fuckin around and lets go!” as she grabbed Geb’s bags and started sprinting along the ramparts. He didn’t understand what was happening, but since his ‘Goddess’ gave him an order, obviously he wasn’t going to question it.

Their running speed wasn’t that fast, but luckily, the forty-meter tall, silver golem didn’t even notice their presence. It had a relatively feminine, humanoid appearance; there were fox-like ears on the top of her head, and an incredibly long, snake-like tail extending from where the coccyx would be… if she actually had bones inside her nearly hollow body.

No orifices of any kind could be seen on the giantess’ metallic flesh, and even nipples were absent from her rather significant bust. All of her facial features were identical to the assassin, Eirene, and her bright-red eyes were essentially massive crystal balls; her lips were merely decorations and her mouth didn’t actually open when she screamed “Gah! Where the hell did I put those damn swords?!” while digging through the town-square with four ridiculously large hands.

Fortunately, Demil and Geb were able to board Angu and ride him northeastward at over eighty miles-per-hour. The terrified fox-man asked her “Wh-what was that creature?” while looking back at the beautiful monstrosity, as it tore apart what was left of the city.

However, the tired tigress sternly told him “None of our business. It definitely has nothing to do with us.” as she calmly continued to strap-down all of their bags. She completely ignored the burning sensation in her right hand; she definitely wasn’t willing to fight against some colossal spirit, even if the rewards for killing it probably would have been enormous.
Millions of miles away from Earth, on a hellish crimson planet of a nearly identical size, a gathering was taking place. It was a world that went by many names, but the most common were ‘The Morning Star’ or ‘Venus.’

The atmospheric mana-density of the entire surface was level-four as a baseline, and reached all the way up to nine in some places. Demons of all shapes and sizes littered the volcanic and unstable lands; there were plenty of strange and violent chaotic plants as well as inorganic elementals.

Dragons were the only creatures with ‘souls,’ that lived above-ground… but below, existed a myriad of rather underdeveloped civilizations. Seraphim, cherubim, dryads and celestial-beasts existed in the millions throughout that world; most of which, were in some way related to the various guilds that controlled entire countries, without their knowledge or consent.

Magic and biology was extremely advanced, but technology was purposefully hindered; creating a hellish environment, where catastrophic battles were everywhere. The power of a person’s body was all that mattered; even though there were families, clans, and other similar social-structures, infighting was commonplace.

Lust, greed, envy, pride, wrath, gluttony, and sloth; they were known as “The Seven Deadly Sins” because anyone who overindulged in any of them, would surely die as a result. However, if a person completely neglected any of those ‘sins,’ they would still suffer or perish.

Without any desires, souls would have no drive or reason to control physical bodies. Eventually, they would simply lose their will to live and either kill themselves or abandon their current reality.

Well, short-lived beast-races like Humans, Dwarves, or Cat-Tribe rarely had to worry about any of that: unless they received some sort of severe trauma. Even most Elves had short lifespans, compared to inorganic elementals and golems, or the ageless dryads, Cherubim, Seraphim and divine-beasts.

Those creatures could easily survive on nothing but mana, and assuming that they had high enough affinities, they could survive pretty much anywhere. If they needed air to breathe or nutrients to support their bodies, unconscious creation-magic would solve those problems automatically.

That was the real purpose for such a seemingly cruel world to have been created. There were five main ‘factions’ that technically ruled Venus: Hell’s Legion, The Seven Sins, The Righteous Seraphim, Dryadic Alliance and Dragonic Supremacy.

They didn’t exactly have the most creative names, but their power certainly wasn’t a joke. Each of those huge entities had a decent amount of guilds, which consisted of smaller parties, and individuals who acted alone.

Before that whole ‘Obliteration War’ nonsense, there were literally billions of ‘players’ throughout the Solar System; well, things change over time, and most of the factions only had a handful of players left. Those who remained, had come up with ways to ‘beat’ the system without technically cheating.

Several miles under the surface of Venus, within a truly ancient, colossal golden domed-palace, there was a relatively small conference hall. Gargantuan dragons and gigantic monstrous apes in equally large armor, were wandering the halls and inhabiting the rest of the building; they were going about their business as usual, and didn’t even know about the meeting that was taking place in their basement.

Sitting around a round table were seven humanoids; each of them were extraordinarily powerful beings. At the northernmost point of their seating arrangement, was an angelic little-girl with Elven-ears, long and wavy blond hair, bright-blue irises, pure-white skin, which matched her six dove-like wings; she was a Seraphim, wearing a pure-white sundress, and her voice was harmonious and beautiful as she said “Beli-chan is responsible for cleansing Northern Alfirin, Deus-kun is playing around in the west, Mammy is busy in the south, so Amomo will have to go to the dungeon.”

Hearing their faction-leader butchering their names so dramatically, made the four archdemons cringe. However, the bronze-skinned, incredibly muscular woman quickly recovered, and asked “Lady Helel, have you made your decision yet?” in a deep, raspy tone. Her eyes were completely black, she had short and curly crimson hair, and from her back grew two huge, golden-scaled, draconic wings; she was completely clad in a thick suit of silverish-red plate armor.

The little girl had an innocent smile on her face, while her blindingly-bright aura started tearing the mithril table, chairs, ceiling and floor apart. Then she calmly responded “Hmmm~ Daddy is still being protected by those three fucking brats… It’s best if we stay away from Lorthon Forest for now. Well, the most pressing issue is the upcoming ‘Millennial Purge.’ This is going to be the finale; if we don’t reach the favor-cap first… Sigh~ Yuri-chan abandoned us the moment she met ‘Him’ and those Righteous assholes managed to snag Raffy before he was even born. Hopefully Rael-kun and Sarah won’t show up, but seeing as everyone else is out there, I doubt that wish will come true.”

A pale-skinned, large-breasted, and completely naked woman with two large black wings coming out from behind her shoulder-blades, suddenly stood-up and screamed “Graah! Michael, I’m going to fucking kill you! Do you hear me, Bastard?!” as she smashed her delicate-looking fists, against the mithril table: leaving two large indentations. On her face was a blank, white mask, and she had medium-length, straight, ebony locks; although she had long and pointed ears, they stretched outward, rather than straight-up.

Directly across from her was a relatively bulky, golden-armored man; he had six arms, though his entire body was completely obscured by the elaborately designed equipment. He snickered loudly, and calmly told her “Belial, sweetie, just give up on him already. It’s literally been an eternity, and you’re still holding grudges?” in a deep, but effeminate tone.

The angelic woman’s well-toned skin began rippling with pitch-black veins, which pulsated and carried unreasonably dense mana, through her circulatory system. As she breathed in and out several times, a dark-red haze surrounded her, and then she finally managed to calm down a bit; she retorted “What about you and Gabriel?”

A serene and harmonious voice reverberated through the room “Well, I’ve sown the seeds, it’s up to the rest of you kids to harvest the crop…” Out of the seven guild-masters, Belphegor was the only person who didn’t even bother to show up to the meeting in person; well, none of them were actually there in their true forms, but his attitude was definitely related to his particular ‘sin.’

Well, anyone can become rather lethargic after being around for so long. Hell, Amon hadn’t fought a battle in over a thousand years, Gluttony’s avatar was a starving old Dark-Elven man, and Asmodeus… he or she couldn’t even remember the last time they had sex.

In fact, they had to replace Leviathan with Belial, because they couldn’t find him. Although, considering who that envious dragon represented, it wasn’t that surprising for him to be absent in that reality.

Helel sighed dramatically, then quietly spoke “Yep, only a few more months until we can activate our super-gate. Our main target this time… is the continent of Aeglos. Now that Daddy is in Lorthon Forest, the corruption level will likely be far too low anyway. Fortunately, he’s still an NPC, so we should be able to farm from northern, western, and eastern Alfirin without his intervention. Hehehehe~ I bet those self-righteous assholes are the only ones foolish enough to go anywhere near ‘His’ territory.”

The Seven Sins faction was technically at war with Michael, but their hostile relationship was someone decided mostly by their underlings’ actions. They didn’t even care about the dungeons that were being created, because their scheme was far more elaborate and large-scale.

Luna gave ridiculous amounts of favor for killing those who broke her rules; yet, there were still so many people who continued to commit those crimes. Aside from the fact that there simply weren’t that many players anymore, there was a much more fundamental problem: incentive.

Bounties were such an amazing source of power for all of the major factions, so they devised a method for ‘farming’ the inhabitants of Earth. If they had directly caused such evil to flourish, then even Terra wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to their ‘cheating.’

However, there was no rule against simply ‘helping’ a few untrustworthy individuals, and leaving them to their own devices. What would an ambitious Red-Goblin sex-slave do, once she had been freed and given a ridiculous amount of power?

The answer was almost always, get revenge by massacring and enslaving the humans and anyone else she had enmity with. As a result of committing so many atrocities, her bounty would obviously rise to an absurdly high amount of favor; not to mention, the millions of demonic servants would be worth an awful lot as well.

If you allow people to have true freedom, they will always find a way to steal it from others. Without proper guidance, there will usually arise rulers, because no one is born or created equal, and those who have power… will do anything to keep it.
Back on Earth, in The Endless Desert, at the midway-point between Amara and Quena, a gigantic silver lizard was scurrying across the dunes. It was fleeing at its maximum speed, but a strange, metallic, four-armed woman was chasing after the frightened proto-dragon, while screaming “Where the fuck do you think you’re going!? Hahahahaha~ I love killing newbie players the most! Did you seriously believe that I would let you little brats escape?!”

Sitting on the back of that scampering creature, were obviously a black-robbed, obsidian-skinned, Fox-Tribe man, and a white-furred tiger-girl, who was wearing nothing but a pink bikini. They had been frantically escaping for over an hour, yet the giantess was still following them; it had only taken her a few minutes to find her four colossal golden-scimitars, and begin pursuing the relatively small ‘prey.’

Demil couldn’t use her skill “Advanced Scan” on Eilene… which meant that the monstrous woman was over twice her level. Sure, sometimes the numbers didn’t always relate to combat prowess, but a massive, four-armed, blade-wielding, full-metal psychopath wasn’t something that she was confident in killing.

Even Morneth, the ancient spirit she had become acquainted with nearly a year prior to that, seemed weak in comparison to that silver monster. The tigress heaved out a desperate sigh, as she gazed at the surprisingly composed fox-man: who was sitting by her feet.

She naively believed that she had won the lottery when discovering that small-city filled with bounties. A fortune of over sixteen-thousand favor was enough to purchase a high-end tier-two weapon; it was close to a million, two-hundred and fifty thousand golden Alfirin dollar bills.

Demil could literally be resurrected four-hundred and twenty-two times, but there were things that couldn’t be ‘bought.’ Not to mention Geb, who she needed for a quest, she was rather attached to her original body; dying was terrifying for someone who didn’t believe in the ‘afterlife’ or trust that she would truly be the same person, once her new self was created.

However, there was an even more crucial issue; Angu and the rest of her belongings would certainly be stolen or destroyed if she allowed that colossal golem to kill her. Thus, she had to make a sacrifice; luckily, it was a beautiful moonlit night, so she was able to access the true benefits of her Lunar-Seal.

With tears in her large, silver eyes, Demil glared at Geb, and sternly informed him “You owe me a million gold for this.” Hearing that, he was completely dumbfounded; even if he hadn’t heard of Alfirin Dollars, there was no way he wouldn’t understand the meaning behind her words.

Essentially, she had just condemned him to a lifetime of debt… or so he thought. Then she turned around, towards the hysterically laughing giantess, who was chasing after them at nearly a hundred miles-per-hour; the tigress yelled at her “Lunar Intervention! Destroy that noisy, metal bitch!”

Suddenly, a massive beam of azure light, shone down upon the area within three miles of Eilene: that included the fleeing lizard and its passengers. There was a myriad of ridiculously expensive and devastating abilities that could be accessed, by offering enough favor to The Moon.

Within that brightly illuminated cage of mana, an immensely powerful being descended. Compared to that enormous… presence, the metallic, four-armed giantess seemed fairly insignificant; its outward appearance was merely a meter-tall silverish-blue, feminine manikin, but that didn’t really matter.

Luna-76 snickered, as she gazed down towards the terrified golem, and she eventually stopped falling, thirty-meters above the sands. While she casually hovered there, with no visible weapons or flashy equipment aside from her physical body, she asked “Little Eilene, what’s wrong? Oh my, could it be that you lost your Fox-Tribe avatar? Hmmm~ it’s awfully dangerous to be fighting other players in your true-form, or do you honestly believe that we Observers aren’t allowed to exterminate you children?”

Against such overpowering pressure, the giantess couldn’t even respond to those rhetorical questions; in fact, it was as if entire aura had been drained away, leaving nothing but a beautiful, colossal statue. After all, that was the greatest weak-point to golems; without a steady supply of mana, they couldn’t function at all, and became completely powerless in every meaning of the word.

There was just enough energy for Eilene to remain conscious, and telepathically beg “Please… let… me… live…” to the snickering Observer. Then the bright-red flickering crystals, which typically acted as eyes, became dull and grey; her massive ‘corpse’ limply collapsed onto the sands.

Seventy-Six turned around, and gazed down at the tigress, announcing “She’s dead now, permanently… unless she gets reincarnated, but that’s really unlikely. Anyway, I’ll take the tier-three vessel back with me; unless you were planning on dragging it a hundred and fifty miles, to the nearest teleportation device? See ya later.”

The tigress quickly stood up, while roaring “Wait, take us-” but before she could even finish speaking, the blindly bright blue-light completely faded away. When the illumination ended, only Angu, Geb, and Demil were left in that ocean of sparkling, azure sand.

For a mere sixteen-thousand Lunar-favor, she was able to summon an avatar of The Moon itself… that definitely wasn’t the typical price. In fact, most Observers were former-players who managed to raise their main avatars to tier-three; that was the minimum requirement to retire, but beings like Seventy-Six were essentially at the mana-cap for their physical size.

Of course, the most important factor was that she could draw power from her true body, and perform ridiculously inefficient stunts; for example, teleporting down to Earth and then back again, for a few seconds of entertainment. Eilene had been a player for over ten-thousand years, yet she didn’t even have the ability to activate any of her own emergency countermeasures; thus, she was deleted, just like that.

Instead of continuing onward, Demil decided to stay there in that strange blue desert. Aside from the fact that the three of them were exhausted, Angu seemed to be enjoying himself, feasting on the grains of sand, which had transformed into relatively potent mana-crystals; the density in the air was also at least equivalent to the third-ring of Lorthon, so it was the perfect environment for the tigress to charge some of her runic-bullets.

However, there was something even more crucial that she needed to do… shopping for skills. She had twenty-eight points saved up, and there were tons of incredibly useful spells and techniques for her to buy, or upgrade some of the ones she already had.

There weren’t any rules against fire-mages learning how to control or create other elements, it was simply easier to focus on a singular aspect of magic. For example, anyone who used firearms, typically learned some basic earth or wind manipulation, so that they could swiftly and easily clean-out their gun-barrels; unfortunately, Demil didn’t think it was worth the effort to spend several months studying how to use such a rudimentary spell, when she could just do it the old fashioned way.

Affinities were a lot like muscle-mass, they could be built up over time and were a part of the person’s physical body; there were techniques to raise them faster, but it was still very time-consuming and required a lot of effort. Of course, it was possible to use stat-points to have Luna-76 quickly adjust them in hours, to a point that would take many years of difficult training to achieve.

Geb finally stood-up and asked the distracted tigress “Goddess, what were those strange, metallic creatures?” He was gazing around, at the miles of azure desert, with an expression of shock and awe.

Demil giggled, and then bluntly told him “No idea, they kinda remind me of dryads… but a bit different? Well, whatever, it isn’t something you need to worry about. Oh yeah, why don’t you try to gather up all that blue sand; it shouldn’t be too difficult, just really time consuming and tedious. I mean, you don’t really have to, it’s just a suggestion; ten grains should be worth at least a copper… not that I’m gonna count them all. If you can pile up a few thousand pounds, I’ll consider your debt cleared; how about that?”

He seemed confused, as he asked “What debt?” but then he thought back to all the bullets he used, the fact that she saved his life, and everything he owed her from the past few days, which made him embarrassed. Then he told her “If you give me three days, I can definitely bring it all here…”

However, the tigress immediately stopped him from continuing, and explained “No, we’re only staying here for one night, and I definitely don’t have the power required to utilize that many mana-crystals anyway. Angu might be really strong, but do you honestly think that he can carry around all of that? Not to mention the fact that we don’t have anything to put it all in, so were just going to use what we can, while we can.”

Then Geb realized something amazing; for three miles in every direction, all of the sand had been enchanted. He had obviously heard about mana-crystals before, they were just so incredibly rare and expensive, that he had never been able to see one before then; thus, he didn’t even know what they were used for.

While he was utilizing earth-manipulation to gather-up copious amounts of azure-sand, and Angu was simply wandering around, munching on the ground, Demil was finally investing her skill-points. Beginner wind and water manipulation, only cost her a single point each, but creation was three times as expensive.

After spending eight points, she still had twenty remaining. She was faced with a dilemma: Buy one really overpowered skill, or a myriad of weak, but useful, ones.

With water and wind, creation and manipulation, even if it was only at the beginner level, she would never dehydrate, drown, or suffocate… and she could clean her gun-barrels, with a lot less time and effort. Of course, she needed to build up her affinities, be conscious, and have plenty of mana, so it wasn’t quite that amazing.

There was definitely a huge drawback though; every time she downloaded a large amount of information into her brain, a massive migraine always ensued. For that reason, she decided to stick with expensive, but high-quality skills… or so she had originally planned.

While she was looking through the abilities she already possessed, Demil realized something pretty significant; every skill consisted of many different parts. For example, her “Intermediate Fire Manipulation” was only ten-percent completed.

In other words, she only understood the simplest aspect of that magical technique: increasing temperature. She didn’t know how to decrease it, nor could she control plasma, transform heat into mana, or any of the many facets of that relatively complicated skill.

Even though they were only at the beginner stage, the other four techniques relating to water and air, enveloped every characteristic of those elements. The reason her head was aching so badly, was because of the fact that she had picked ‘complex’ skills: the amount of information was a lot higher than she had intended.

Once she had taken a short nap, Demil began purchasing the other aspects of intermediate fire manipulation and creation, one at a time. In under an hour, she managed to avoid feeling any pain or discomfort.

It was midnight; Angu had stopped eating and fallen asleep already, but Geb was still hard at work: telekinetically moving hundreds of pounds of blue sand at a time. There was a massive pile, taller than the mithril proto-dragon, gathered near the creature’s tail.

He had actually surprised himself, with how easily and freely he could use magic in that strange, mana-rich environment. Normally, he would have been exhausted after a few minutes, but the obsidian-skinned fox-man wasn’t even slightly tired.

The strange thing about buying individual parts of a complex skill, was that less than a point, was often used; for the tigress who didn’t quite understand decimals, it was a bit confusing. Fortunately, it wasn’t a very difficult concept for her to understand; she muttered “I see, it’s kinda like money… Hmmm~ but at least I’m not getting ripped off this way.”

With eleven skill-points left, she decided to prepare dinner; it was the first time since she left Angren, that she actually had to dig into her emergency supplies. Demil yelled “Oi, you’ve done enough! Damn, I highly doubt that I’ll even be able to use all this shit! Well whatever, good job either way; now get over here, I wanna show you something interesting!”

Geb quickly hurried over, walking up the mountain of sand, and directly climbing onto Angu’s back from there. He nervously asked “Goddess, I’m glad that you’re pleased… did you need something else from me?” as she began unpacking a shriveled, brown, dehydrated steak.

She told him “Sit down; you worked hard, so I’m gonna let you have some demonic-python.” Then she began using water creation for the first time: infusing the liquid directly into the relatively large chunk of meat.

It was like magic… Well, even if she just soaked it in a bowl of water, the effect would have been the same. She didn’t need to cook it, but she still used a bit of fire-manipulation to raise the temperature to a suitable degree.

While it wasn’t freshly cooked, the smoked demonic-steak still wafted an incredible aura and scent. Demil was pretty jaded, but Geb was amazed by how pungent the mana-rich aroma was; of course, he couldn’t actually smell it, but simply heard the tempting melody.

He quickly asked her “Goddess, what is this… strange substance? It feels like my entire body is being compelled to devour it!” while trembling, and reaching his hands toward the huge lump of meat.

The tigress snickered, then slapped his filthy fingers away; she pulled out an incredibly sharp and slender, mithril, serrated steak-knife, plus a rather large, steel fork. However, her preparations still weren’t complete; she wasn’t about to eat a meal without any seasonings.

Once she sprinkled some “Essence of Angren” and “Beast Haven Spice-Mix” onto the steaming meat, it was truly finished. Since it was literally twenty-pounds of food, she made sure to only give Geb a fifth: along with the proper eating utensils.

She snickered, as he ravenously devoured that small, but incredibly dense, hunk of re-hydrated demonic-python; even after losing consciousness from the overwhelming mana-density, he still kept eating. If she had given him any more, he probably would have died… In fact, he certainly wouldn’t have survived, if he hadn’t been genetically altered by that magical Rachael-Roach, a few days prior.

Demil made sure to chew slowly, in a fairly refined manner: for a tiger-girl. She savored each delicious bite, and by the time she was finished, a whole hour had passed.

Geb was still sleeping on Angu’s back, across the coffee-table from her, as she gazed over to the giant pile of mana-rich, blue-sand. After creating some water, and boiling it using heat-manipulation, she took out some high-quality chaotic-treant leaves.

Once her tea was brewed, the alluring aroma managed to wake-up the unconscious fox-man, but not the snoring proto-dragon. She took a few ‘sips’ from the steel-pot, and then told him “We’re gonna leave in a few hours, so help me ‘absorb’ this pile of mana-crystals. Obviously, we ain’t gonna eat it… unless you wanna be shitting sand for a few weeks; we just need to touch it, and concentrate on sucking the pure mana, into our auras. Then, we need to use that to cast random, incredibly inefficient spells; trust me, it’s the easiest way to raise your affinities… just really boring.”

It was something she had learned in her runic-magic and enchanting class, at Alfirin Academy. Materials that had been infused with copious amounts of mana, and managed to store it one way or the other, would also be able to lose their charge; of course, it was impossible to completely remove all of the mana, but they didn’t need to do that anyway.

Three hours of monotonous siphoning and casting later, Geb had built a giant, blue sand-castle, completely enclosing Angu: Demil provided the water-supply. However, once the colossal proto-dragon woke-up, he charged through the wall, causing their creation to be completely ruined.

There was something immensely fulfilling about building a huge structure, and immediately destroying it afterwards. While his ‘Goddess’ was cackling loudly, the obsidian-skinned, Fox-Tribe, ex-slave actually smiled and laughed softly; for the first time in over thirty years, he finally felt like he was enjoying his life.

“For a person to truly recognize Heaven, they must first experience Hell.” A mysterious, feminine whisper resounded in Geb’s as he felt an intense, burning sensation on the back of his right hand; there was a glowing azure-tattoo of a Crescent Moon, similar to the one which could be seen near the horizon.

He was sitting on Angu’s mithril-plated back, to the left of the tigress’ demonic-leather couch, when he opened his palm and heard the voice of that tiny silverish-blue golem yell “Congratulations! You are now officially recognized as the ‘player’ Demil’s ‘companion!’ Both of you will share the experience you earn evenly; skill and stat-points will be rewarded individually, but Luna-Terra-Sol favor will all be given to her. When your level reaches your partner’s, you will be eligible to receive favor directly.”

As he was listening to that, Demil was busy reading a message from her boyfriend “Coffee: Just resurrected; heading down to Earth now… well, I’m just teleporting. Where should we all meet-up?”

(Proofread by Thoeberus)