Michael turned around and saw a three-meter tall, androgynous, green-barked dryad. Its eyes appeared as glowing, bright-blue, crystalline orbs, while it had long flowing black vines for hair. The blooming flowers appeared similar to violet irises, and were littered across the squirming tendrils.

He noticed that ‘it’ was more like Chaos, than the other ‘Goddesses’ he had encountered. It smirked at him, “Yer wonderin why ya can’t see my name, even though this avatar is physical… right?”

The Nephilim snickered as he stretched his newly regenerated wing, and healed right arm. Then he asked “Naturae, I assume? Hmmm~, nah, I was just curious if you’re here to convince me to pick you as my next Affinity?”

“Pft… Hah, naw, I’m good. I ain’t interested in dudes, especially not guys like you. Heh-heh~, course, I can’t really speak for my other avatars though. Ugh~, I’ll give ya another piece of advice… Don’t get too involved with that crazy bitch. Chaotica is a total slut, and that’s just when she’s not goin nuts or destroying shit. Damn, I gotta go; Luxia’s little brat just nuked my goddamn garden… See ya later, kid.” Before Michael even had the chance to say anything, the huge dryad was sucked into the ground and the tunnel she had created, immediately vanished.

After sighing loudly, he muttered “Good talk… Now that my arm has been de-gimpified, and my Stamina is back to full, I guess I should keep farming? Although… Yeah, I don’t know how long ‘temporarily’ is, so I should go store these monkey souls first. If there really are billions or trillions of souls out there, then it doesn’t really matter how many I collect, hopefully.”

Instead of using Astral-Step, he activated the ‘Return Home’ feature. Thus, in that moment where he was being teleported, the Nephilim was forced to wait for an entire hour.

However, he had a valid reason for choosing that option: aside from laziness. Pulling out ‘Protectors of Light,’ Michael swiftly opened the scroll and went directly to the Class which had the most abundant healing techniques.

He complained “Ugh, now that I think about it, is there some limit to the amount of spells I can learn? Well, probably not, and if there was, it would most likely be based on Intelligence or level. Huh, either way, I’ve still got like, three pages filled out in my ‘Spellbook’ at the moment. Not that it’s an actual, physical book, but there most likely is some sort of limit.”

Warrior Clerics were mainly Healers, then Support, and lastly Tanks. Compared to the other five Classes, they focused the least on dealing damage.

Watching videos of people casting a variety of spells, he began attempting to copy what he was seeing. However, the concept of ‘chanting’ had always confused him. Even when he yelled “In the name of Lux, the Great Goddess of Light, I bestow upon you: Blessing of Health!” nothing happened.

When he channeled his mana into his voice, it didn’t change the fact that nothing significant happened. Thus, he concluded “Fuck this shit! Chanting is for pussies!” and began attempting to manipulate his aura properly.

Every Element was radically different in many ways, but also very similar. As he appeared in his living-room, he immediately Astral-Stepped to the top of that mountain again.

With so much open space around him, he attempted to see the maximum range of his Light aura, but noticed that it was the same as Arcane. It was as if a huge transparent barrier was being unintentionally created at a radius of twenty-three meters from his body.

Another thing that he noticed was that the Light wasn’t able to pass through the ground, yet his Arcane mana could. Michael murmured “Huh~, so that’s why there’s an aversion to combining Affinities… or at least it’s another reason. Well, while I can’t send the white-mana out of the invisible force-field, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing~.”

In the videos, Warrior Clerics with Pure-Light Affinity, had to go through a lot of effort to learn how to manipulate their auras. Even with low Aura stat, the mana would simply fly off in every direction, with very little concentration.

Thus, spells like Blinding Radiance were incredibly easy to cast, but creating a condensed field of solar radiation, would be much more difficult. Yet, he was able to learn the Guardian technique, Aegis of Light, almost instinctively.

Of course, it was obviously much easier to gain skills which belonged to his own Class, than those from the other Classes. Noticing the irritating problem, Michael went to the section that covered Guardians, and began watching some of the ‘healing’ abilities.

After a few minutes, as a dark cloud passed overhead, he put away the scroll and sat down onto the ground. Gazing out into the eastern distance, he took a few deep breaths and drew that invisible barrier of Arcane aura towards his body.

It wasn’t particularly difficult, but required a decent amount of concentration. When it finally reached less than a one-meter radius, he started to feel a mental strain: similar to a migraine headache.

“Ow, ugh~, humm~, okay~, almost got it~!” The moment that he compressed the Light-mana completely within his body, he felt as if his internal organs were on fire.

His Health actually began falling rapidly, and since he wasn’t inside of the house, it wasn’t being regenerated automatically. Five HP per second was being drained as he was experiencing excruciating pain, yet he didn’t stop; though he did scream “Cunt-sauce! Shit-balls! Monkey testicles! Argh~!”

Once he reached 185/370, the agony ended and a strange sense of euphoria began coursing through his mind. A huge ‘+185’ suddenly appeared above his head, as his HP was instantly restored to full.

At the same moment, he let out a long sigh, and received a new spell: “Guardian’s Sacrifice Level 1: The caster compresses their Light mana inside of their body, and burns away at their lifeforce until their Health is reduced by 50% of their maximum; afterwards, they release a pulse of healing light onto one target. Heals the target for 50% of the caster’s max HP. Range is dependent on the Aura stat. Charging speed is five HP per second.”

Michael grumbled “Yippy~… completely fucking useless.” as he continued to circulate the aura that was contained within his body. Unfortunately, he couldn’t learn any of the actual ‘self-healing’ abilities, because he didn’t actually have any physical injuries in the first place.

Once the cloud passed, and the bright sunlight shone down on his angelic wings and silver hair, he received another notification: “Arcane Affinity has reached level-five.”

Letting out another sigh, he released his compressed aura and sent out his wisp, reaching inside of that large black orb within his ‘workshop’ and activating ‘Astral-Step.’ The moment that he arrived, he heard a loud high-pitched scream “Let, me, out!”

He witnessed the familiar scene of a person desperately attempting to channel their mana through the mysterious symbols on the ground. Talia immediately noticed the Nephilim and glared at him, while saying “I’ve done as you’ve asked, now allow me to become your Companion.”

The naked High-Elf had been trapped within that giant white-room for what seemed like two whole days, for her. She had a similar fear as Michael did: what if there was a time difference between the inside and outside? Obviously, even if he had come to free her only moments later, thousands of years might have passed within that prison. Fortunately, they were both wrong.

Michael yelled “Holy cunt-monkeys! You actually cleaned everything! Wait, I completely forgot that you were in here! Hahahaha~!” He leered at her exposed genitals for a few seconds, before asking “Are you sure ya really wanna become my Companion? It’s not like you can’t choose to abandon me eventually… but once you go around with the rest of us, I can pretty~ much guarantee, that lots of people are gonna hate ya. Even your own family and childhood friends will probably turn their backs on you. Well, if you wanna quit eventually, it doesn’t mean ya can’t still be a ‘Resident’ within my territory. I just wanna know; are you absolutely certain that you’re willing to start down this road to hell? Cause, I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’ll probably end up going to a few of those, hahaha~!”

Talia stared into his golden eyes and nodded her head, as the system asked him “Would you like to accept ‘Talia Aeris Ramirez’ as your sixth Companion? Warning: You may only have a maximum of six Companions.”