Michael muttered “Shit, I hate having to make these kinds of decisions… Well, I can have a maximum of seven, so it isn’t too bad. Even if she doesn’t tell me all the specifics of every Element, I can pretty much guess what they’re like, based on pretty much any RPG I’ve ever played. It makes sense that Space and Time aren’t included, since all magic has spatial and temporal aspects: Sarah can teleport for fuck’s sake.”

After she read the semi-transparent message box that had appeared before the naked man, Elina yelled “What?! You actually get choose your affinity?!” The fact that he was complaining about it, made the situation even stranger.

He snickered and casually asked “Hey, what’s the rarest Element? I’m gonna end up getting everything but Darkness and Chaos, so aside from those two, which is the hardest to find?”

She shouted “Did you miss the whole speech about how you should stick with only a single Element?!” Once she managed to calm down a bit, she ‘calmly’ said “Fine, whatever, just don’t complain to me later. The problem with what you’re trying to do, is that there are a decent amount of dual and triple affinity magical-beasts. They aren’t usually that picky about it, and just try to evolve as fast as possible. When there’s more than one Element present in a mana-core, it’s up to your Luck to decide what you get from it. Arcane would probably be the hardest to find.”

Michael smiled at her as he made his decision, and was suddenly enveloped by a blinding radiance. When it stopped, there was a notification: “Arcane Affinity Level 1: Increases mana and health regeneration dramatically, inside of dungeons.”

He snickered for a few seconds and then told her “Yeah, that’s the one I picked. It seems pretty intense too… hehe~, definitely the best choice for a hardcore raider like myself.”

It was at that point when he finally reached down and grabbed the squirming Bloodworm-Goblin. Even though she could breathe through her skin, that particular skill was only at level-one, so she was actually starting to drown.

She still had lungs after-all, and they were completely filled with water, so he decided to pull her over to the shore and… remove it. Surprisingly, Sarah was still conscious, even after suffering for so long, Michael told her “Calm down kid, stop squirming around. This is definitely not an excuse to touch your nonexistent breasts, so cut it out. Heh~, telekinesis is so overpowered…”

With one hand on each side of her chest, he channeled his mana through her skin, muscle and bones, before shoving it into all of the fluids that were drowning her. Then he turned his head away from her, and slowly pushed it all out of her lungs, up her trachea, and out of her mouth.

He gagged a little, then grumbled “Eww, so gross, ugh, good thing I have soap, or I would be really fucking pissed right now.”

After coughing a few times, Sarah screamed “Bastard, how the hell is this worth two stat-points!?” Her health was down to 13/30, but it wasn’t continuing to drop, because of her relatively high Vitality.

Michael sighed, and told her “Well, it’s about the same as leveling-up… but yeah, it’s pretty fucking horrible. You’ll probably have a stroke or heart-attack after surviving this part, and die anyway.” before picking up the ‘paralyzed’ girl, and carrying her into the water again.

He noticed that her body had become significantly heavier after taking that mana-core, and figured that it involved her muscles and bones becoming denser, since her physical size didn’t actually change. After dropping the worm-girl in the shallow water, he continued towards where Elina was floating and said “I thought cats hated water… Ah, was that racist?”

While gazing up at the starry sky, through the jungle canopy, the Priestess sighed and muttered “We’re closer to Humans than actual cats…” Her drenched white-robe was almost completely transparent, so he couldn’t help ogling.

Elina turned her head towards him and asking “Are you enjoying the view?” which caused him to start snickering. Then he pulled a bar of orange soap out of his bag and began using it to furiously scrub away all the slimy liquid that Sarah had spewed on him.

Michael dove underwater and after surfacing, he told her “I’ll admit, one of the main reasons I decided to make the two of you my Companions, was for the view. I can’t really masturbate to this one…” as a dog-sized, Triple-Tailed Fox materialized in his arms.

Upon being summoned, Inari immediately squirmed out of his grasp and splashed around in the water, while yelping loudly. Obviously, she was very confused by the strange situation; the last thing that she could remember, was being in front of that inn.

The Priestess looked at the pure-white vixen and exclaimed “Aww, she’s so~ cute~.” as she stopped floating and stood up. Both of them were fairly similar in their attraction to adorable animals.

He snickered as Inari ‘doggy-paddled’ around his body, while being excessively noisy. Elina asked “Are you a Beast Tamer?” while examining the fox with her ‘Identification’ spell.

Michael sighed at her, and said “You already know the answer to that, right? It would be kinda pointless for me to pick a Class like that… Well, I guess there would be a bunch of benefits to my magical-beast Companions, and I could probably be really lazy. Anyway, I’m starving, and so is the little puppy; do you eat meat?”

She nodded, and then commented “Adventurers can’t really be picky about their meals. Although, before my first mission, I used to be a vegetarian. Back in the Convent, they didn’t let us eat anything but sanctified rice, sacred fruit, blessed vegetables and we only drank holy water.” as the two people, and one fox, slowly made their way to the riverbank.

He started laughing hysterically, and then felt something slimy wrapping around his ankle, causing him to fall forward and almost smack his face into some jagged rocks. However, he was able to use his hands to avoid being blinded, and immediately turned to the culprit, while yelling “Seriously, what the hell’s your problem?! Aside from being a ‘mostly’ blind, worm-girl, suffering from horrible, agonizing, and unending pain.”

Her ‘paralysis’ debuff had disappeared, and her health was already up to 19/30, so she was just barely able to stand. Sarah growled “You tricked me again!” while snarling at him, but she couldn’t even vent her anger by killing him anymore.

Michael sighed, as he stood up and said “How? The first time, you stole the mana-core from me, after cutting my head off. That rank-F Bloodworm was really hard to kill, ya know? Anyway, I didn’t trick you; I just neglected to explain the exact side-effects. Okay, so what what kinda meat do you guys want? I’ve got field-mouse, crocodile, cougar, rabbit, cobra, and umm… human: specifically, me.”

In each of his outstretched palms suddenly appeared a hunk of writhing, bloody, muscle-mass. He had taken a little bit from each carcass, excluding his own corpses, and ended up with a bright-red mash-up of raw meat.

Seeing that, Elina immediately grimaced, while gagging, and yelled “Dear Goddess… what is that?!” It was actually fairly similar to Michael’s first reaction, but after doing it a few times already, he had already gotten used to the grotesque scene.

Inari immediately jumped up and knocked the ‘meat-ball’ out of his right hand, quickly starting to eat it off of the vine-covered ground. He scolded “Bad girl! Ugh, I’m kinda glad I didn’t try to turn this brat into some sort of furry fox-girl. Besides, that would be way too cliche…”

After that, he grabbed a big clump and threw it at Sarah’s face. Since it contained a large amount of mana, she was able to see it, but when she tried to catch it, a large portion escaped her grasp.

She grumbled “You are such an asshole…” as she began ferociously devouring the bloody meal. As for Elina, he simply handed a glob of the practically living muscle to her.

Unfortunately, even if she wasn’t picky, she still didn’t want to eat something quite that ‘raw.’ When he told her “Sorry, but I don’t know any fire-magic.” she remembered all the times her sister used to cook food for them, and light the campfires at night.

Considering that less than eight hours before that, both of her siblings had died, it was completely natural for the cat-girl to be rather depressed. However, then Michael said “Oh yea, I can’t believe I actually forgot about that…” before taking back the clump of meat and activating ‘Electrocution.’

Both the smaller and larger balls had quickly turned from a bright, juicy crimson, to a light-brown. It obviously stopped twitching and instead, hardened into a solid form: leaking boiling grease all over his palms.

He hyperventilated a few times while ignoring his health dropping by a few points, and asked her “Is it okay now? Normally I would use a bunch of sweet teriyaki sauce when making burgers, but this is about the best that I can do under these circumstances.”

Elina bit her lip, and took the cooked meat-ball from his hands and blew on it a few times, before taking a small bite. She replied “Thank you for the meal, it’s very tasty.” while smiling faintly, and trying not to cry.

Next Chapter!