The palisade which normally surrounded the Temple of Asura, had been destroyed in many areas by raging gigantic Ogres, Orcs, and even massive Chaos Treants. In fact, Michael actually recognized a certain colossal panther, who was happily munching on a huge wyvern carcass.

Essentially, there was no ‘safe’ exit from the town. It was practically suicide to try using brute force against a couple hundred Tanky Paladins and Crusaders who were standing outside the entrance, so he needed to decide on his exit strategy.

At that moment he gazed up into the sky and squeezed the Arcane Orb tightly in his left hand, while muttering “This is such a terrible idea…” When he pitched the ball, it smacked against the left leg of a three-meter tall, beefy, rank-E, level-twenty Lesser Angel.

He was fighting to the death against a flying Ogress with four arms and gigantic bat wings coming out of her shoulder-blades. Unfortunately, Michael’s plan failed, because when he activated Arcane Pull, the nearly weightless man was yanked out of the sky and impaled onto his giant Siegeblade.

The Paladin had so much Health, that even as he coughed up copious amounts of golden blood, and had a massive blade jutting out of his abdomen, he still didn’t die. In order to fly, Angels and other similar creatures, needed to use magic to reduce their weight or have extremely high Agility, but low Strength, Endurance and Vitality.

Michael used his left fist to punch the back of the man’s huge neck, and easily crushed his spine, putting him out of his misery and into his thirteenth bag-slot. A giant two-handed, pure-white sword, and some broken armor had fallen to the ground, but he wasn’t able to keep any of it.

However, he did notice something interesting; every time he stored a corpse that had gold, silver or copper coins on them, the money would be sent directly to his currency-tab. Combined with his winnings and stealings from Avarice, he had obtained a small fortune.

[Currency

Copper: 95
Silver: 71
Gold: 212]

Michael wasn’t exactly in the mood to celebrate though, since he was still surrounded by psychopaths, monsters, and religious fanatics. He grumbled “Ugh, it’s so fucking noisy, and smelly, and why the fucking fuck can’t I fly?!” as he pitched the ball in his left hand randomly into the sky.

After a few seconds, it latched onto something and his whole body was lifted off of the ground and launched westward. He screamed “Holy shit! No-no-no, why!?” as he was soaring towards the tail of a massive Nature Dragon, which was coincidentally leaving the area.

It was a level-sixty, rank-C magical-beast, and noticing that something was gently tugging on its tail, it nonchalantly twitched and launched Michael like fishing-lure. As he was flipping around through the air, above the jungle canopy, his Arcane Orb had somehow managed to return to his left hand.

Even though he was shouting loudly, he was far too small and weak for any of the gigantic Bosses or Elites to care about. He quickly cast ‘Stat-Boost’ and raised his Strength, Endurance, Agility and Vitality up to twelve each, dropping his MP down to 31/60, but that was still enough to cast both Arcane Force and Pull at the same time, on himself.

Before he could smack into the relatively soft jungle soil, he first cut his weight in half, and then reduced it again by fifty-percent. However, the strangest thing about pushing and pulling his airborne body at the same time, was that his momentum was somehow completely destroyed.

Falling from a height of five meters with a weight of less than forty pounds, with thirteen points of Defense Rating, he didn’t even receive any damage as his face smacked into the dirt. Of course, by casting both of those spells on himself at the same time, it was as if he was trying to tear his body apart.

Thus, both of his arms were dislocated and once he turned over onto his back, Michael groaned “Ow~, a-huh-huh-huh, shit~.” Not just his shoulders, but also pectoral, trapezius, latissimus, abdominal, and just about all of the muscles on his torso were severely damaged.

Unable to use either hand, the two Arcane weapons began floating above him, as he struggled to move. He was only a few hundred meters away from the Temple of Asura, so he could still hear the roars, screaming, and other loud noises; yet, in the jungle, it was very difficult to actually see that far away.

Michael only had to lay there for a few minutes before his injuries had recovered enough for him to at least be able to stand and walk, very slowly. Constantly whining and groaning, he somehow managed to eventually travel two miles to the west.

However, even if his Health had managed to fully recover, he still had a slew of debuffs: ‘disabled,’ ‘sore,’ ‘bruised,’ and he was even ‘bleeding’ internally. If it wasn’t for the fact that his death actually had consequences, the suffering immortal probably would have just drowned himself in the river.

After staring at the huge rock-wall for half an hour, Michael sent a ‘Whisper’ to one of his neighbors: “Hey Kyle… I know we just met the other day, so this might be a kinda extreme request, but can you come down to the bottom of the waterfall and carry me up?”

Both of his weapons suddenly became translucent and stopped glowing, as they were Unequipped. Suddenly, he saw a gigantic red-scaled and naked lizard-man standing at the top of the cliff, and heard a booming voice yell “Damn, what the hell happened to you?! Did ya get in a fight with a Ogress on her period?!”

Then the giant casually jumped into the deepest part of the river and quickly walked out of the water. Michael sighed dramatically and told him “Nah, I kinda did this to myself… Anyway, do you hear all those explosions and screams? Well, there’s a pretty fierce shit-storm blowing around over there, so you guys should be prepared for the aftermath soon.”

The ground was constantly quaking and thunderclaps could be easily heard, but the sky was completely clear and the sun was shining brightly. Kyle said “Yeah, I can tell… From the top of the waterfall, it’s kinda hard to miss the huge swarm of dragons, ya know? It feels like the fucking world is ending, but it’s not the kinda thing you can run from. Well, if any of those bastards try to fuck with us, Julia and I will just tear em apart! Hahahaha~!”

While laughing heartily, the giant man grabbed Michael with his right hand and then started rapidly scaling the cliff. Compared to his six-meter tall body, the steep rock-face was still fairly high, but it only took him three minutes to reach the top.

When the two of them arrived in front of the two-story log-cabin, a gigantic, naked lizard woman was leaning against the roof and talking to a nervous cat-girl. Elina was standing on the front balcony, and when she saw the bloodied, bruised and extremely haggard Human, the Priestess immediately cast ‘Flash Heal.’

As the blinding light enveloped his body, Michael could feel that all of the internal injuries and muscle-damage was being rapidly recovered. The various debuffs vanished and while he was still completely filthy, he felt refreshed.

He smirked and told her “Thanks Meow-Meow… Ah, guess what? I brought you an awesome present!” as he pulled a level-eighteen, rank-E mana-core out of his inventory, and telekinetically launched it at her face.

However, before it was able to smack into her left eye, a barrier appeared and a monotonous feminine voice announced “Friendly Fire has been averted.” Elina quickly caught the falling, bright-white bead in her right hand and used ‘Scan’ on it, before gasping in shock.

She yelled “This is from an Angel! Wait, did you kill it, or just find it?!” as she gazed out at the swarms of flashing lights, and gigantic monsters. It had been several hours, yet there was still a massive battle raging not that far away.

Michael snickered and said “Yeah, did you wanna play with the corpse?” while he made the completely intact and pristine, angelic body appear in his arms. Leering at the naked, large-breasted woman, who had a surprisingly peaceful expression on her incredibly pale face, he noticed that she felt surprisingly light.

Elina shouted “Stop it, I already know what you’re thinking about doing, and I won’t let you!” as she quickly ran inside the bedroom. However, he just made the corpse vanish back into his inventory, and started walking towards his front-door.

Then he turned around and said “Ah, thanks for giving me a lift, heh~.” to Kyle, who was standing next to his wife.

Julia told him “Don’t worry about it, we’re neighbors after all… Well, we did eat our last neighbors, but those guys were assholes.”