“Oh for fuck’s sake! How the hell have any of you survived this long?! You’re worse with money that I am! Ugh, Alice I can kinda-sorta understand at least… I mean, she’s a junkie dragon-girl who lived in a cave for her entire life! Her buying a magical bong for thirty-gold is fine, whatever, at least it’s something she could use! Talia, what was the point?! Why did you decide to spend ‘all’ of your money on dresses and shoes?! They’re only Rares! They don’t even give you any stats but Charisma! They aren’t indestructible! You have a ton of magical, transformable, Epics!” Michael and the others were sitting around a large dining table in the ‘Tasty Dragon’ restaurant, ‘calmly’ discussing their purchases.

The Huntress retorted “I did not spend ‘all’ of my money! If I recall correctly, ‘you’ stole six-hundred gold from me already! Besides, do not admonish me for purchasing clothing for myself with my own money! How can you stand to wear the exact same outfit everyday?!”

Sarah screamed “Oi, both of you shut the fuck up! What the hell’s takin so long anyway?! Hey foxy bastards! Cook faster! We been waitin for hours here!”

Elina glared at her, “Stop being so rude! It’s been less than fifteen minutes and they came to work today especially for us! Ugh, I’m just glad that there aren’t any other people here, or we’d probably get kicked out for making too much noise…”

Jasmine was quietly reading a comic book on her tablet, when she started yelling “Nyahahaha~! Gunsmith just shot a stupid Human in the pee-pee! Meow~, I wanna eat sushi~! Mikey~, can you make me some sushi? I don’t want stir-fry anymore~! I~, want~, sushi~!”

“Arf-arf, woof~! Yip-yip-yip~!” A beautiful young fox-girl suddenly entered the restaurant. Her skin was light-brown, breasts were small, and her muscles were lean, but slightly defined; the young-woman’s short and spiky green hair was sticking upwards, but it wasn’t able to obscure those huge triangular ears on the top of her head. Those bright-blue vulpine eyes were radiating light and four gigantic, fluffy tails were wriggling around behind her back.

As soon as Michael saw her appearance for the first time, he asked “Inari… is it really necessary to have that much pubic hair? Well, whatever, another one for the furry-pussy club, I guess? Oh yeah! That reminds me of something important… Oi, Naturae! You owe me a fucking mana-core, damn it!”

The adorable fox-girl abruptly shrunk from five-feet tall, until she was less than six-inches. Then she casually jumped from the floor, onto the Nephilim’s left shoulder and started rubbing her naked body against his neck, “Yip~, arf~, grrrr~, awoo~!”

As the absurdly small ‘teenager’ began ‘chattering’ directly into his ear, Michael noticed that the Grand Matriarch and a few others came into the restaurant and sat down. Most of them were women, but there were a few men as well.

Meihui smiled at him, but immediately turned her gaze over to the growling man on her left, using her right hand to gently caress his fluffy yellow ears. Then she purred and one of her tails began wrapping around a certain part of his body and he seemed to calm down.

“Unlike you bastards, I actually have shit ta do, ya know? Goddamn, I ain’t been round here in ages~!” A three-meter tall, bright-green, androgynous dryad materialized behind Michael’s surprisingly durable ironwood chair.

Naturae casually sat down in the empty seat to the Nephilim’s right and placed a rank-D mana-core into his hand. Talia bowed her head, “Goddess, it is a pleasure to meet you again!”

Her shout brought the attention of everyone in the room, but they immediately lost interest. The dryad sighed, complaining “Damn Girl~! Ya can’t jus yell dat kinda shit in public! Sides~, I ain’t even really here! Heh-heh~, ya crazy assholes sure fucked me over today! Wasn’t enough fer ya ta break da teleportation ‘System’… Ya even started a war between those dick-heads! Well, it was gonna happen ventually, so I’ll forgive y’all.”

“Nyah~! Mikey~! I wanna eat sushi~!” Jasmine could obviously see the Goddess of Nature, but she simply didn’t care.

Sarah screamed “Shut the fuck up, you annoying little bitch! Damn it! What the hell are those bastards doin anyway?!”

Michael sighed, grabbing the miniature fox-girl on his left shoulder and placing her on the table. Then he shoved the mana-core into her tiny mouth, and she happily swallowed it.

Her body immediately began transforming into her ‘natural’ shape, but maintaining her ridiculously small size. Suddenly, all of her four fluffy green tails combined into one, and then separated into five.

“You have successfully evolved Inari into a rank-D, Quintuple-Tailed Nature-Fox. Base stats have increased dramatically: +25 Aura, +7 Strength, +7 Agility, +5 Perception, +4 Charisma, +3 Luck, +3 Wisdom.”

Aside from that, her ‘Nature Affinity’ finally reached ‘Intermediate’ and she also received a new Passive: “Natural Disaster Level 1: Increases the damage of all Nature magic by 10%.”

Naturae sighed, “Kay then, since ya asked so~ nicely, I’ll tell ya when dat whole Battleground thing is gonna be up and running again! Bout three days… Ah, case yer wonderin, dat big-ass pagoda is one uh my old ‘Nature-Gates’. I can’t jus give it away to ya, but if ya do a Quest~…”

“What the fuck?! Do you see that bullshit?! I have no idea what ‘Kung Pao Chicken’ is, but I ordered it twenty minutes ago! Can I please start killing these fox-cunts?!” Sarah was outraged that the Grand Matriarch was receiving preferential treatment, and unsheathed her wakizashi, while emitting a terrifying aura of Darkness.

Michael glared at her, “Seriously, calm your tiny twat! You probably wouldn’t know this, since you lived in a shitty Goblin village for most of your life, but ‘normally’ people order entrees first. See, look, they got a couple salads and light soups… On the other hand, we all picked meals. Alice ordered ten servings of ‘Giant Roast Duck’, I picked ‘Panda Fried Rice’, and Elina chose the ‘Hundred Vegetable Delight’… Jasmine, you ordered the goddamn ‘Seafood Surprise’ so shut the fuck up about the sushi! Talia, you should share some of your ‘Shrimp Lo Mein’ with me.”

The Goddess of Nature sighed again, before shaking her head and vanishing into thin air. “New Quest: The Shrine of Huxian was once a territory belonging to a Player, but was abandoned when they left planet Arcana. While the mountain itself wasn’t very valuable, the Temple of Huxian was created to house and protect a truly ancient Golden Bonsai Tree. It is small and inconspicuous, but is one of the Seven Great Natural Gateways throughout the continent; meaning that it possesses the power to open an interdimensional portal, connecting to one of the other Natural Gateways throughout the continent. However, without an owner, it is simply an old, immortal, potted plant.

“Naturae has decided to give you the opportunity to ‘earn’ access to the Golden Bonsai of Chu Xu. By killing the son of the Long Dong Sect’s Patriarch, you have incited yet another disaster. Protect the Shrine of Huxian against the ruthless invaders! Reward: A Great Natural Gateway, +5000 Nature Favor, +1000 Experience to all Companions, +500 Gold.”

After reading that, Michael groaned, petting the adorable vixen’s head and taking the ‘Lesser Water Dragon’ from her inventory. He removed one of its mana-cores and held it out for her to swiftly devour.

The tiny fox had to struggle with all her might to avoid growing, but she still expanded until she was the size of a tiger and covered the entire table. She sprinted out of the restaurant at full speed and the Nephilim yelled “Let’s go! Shit’s about ta hit the fucking fan… again!”

“Nyah~! JJ’s too hungry to shoot peoples~! Mikey~, I wa-umf~!” Before Jasmine even had the chance to speak, Michael removed a chunk of raw dragon meat from his bag and shoved it into the little girl’s mouth. It took her a few seconds to chew and swallow it, but she rubbed her literally bulging abdomen and giggled, shouting “Un~, so tasty nyah~!” before belching uncontrollably. Elina sighed, chasing after her ‘husband’ and the rest of her party, while carrying the lethargic kitten in her arms.

When they reached the outside of the building, what they witnessed was an unreasonably large fox. It was sitting down upon a huge swath of grass, and howling up at the moon; the height of its body in that position was easily over fifty meters.

A massive bright-blue fin began growing out of her spine, running from the back of her neck, down to the base of her six enormous tails. Each of her gargantuan toenails became azure and matched her glowing irises.

Suddenly, she stood up onto her hind legs and her body started transforming into her ‘natural’ humanoid form. However, she immediately fell down onto the grass, but surprisingly didn’t create much sound from the impact.

The reason that she couldn’t stand, was because her legs and six tails had conjoined together and turned into a gigantic green-scaled fish-tail. The huge bright-blue fin remained, and the fingers on her hands became webbed, while large gills opened up along the sides of her neck. However, her fluffy fox-ears and light-brown skin remained the same, along with her vulpine facial features.

Michael muttered “Terr-fucking-riffic, it’s the colossal kitsunemimi mermaid… This’d probably be really inconvenient if she wasn’t a shapeshifter.”