Once Michael and Jasmine had finished watching several hours of porn and satisfying each other, the little cat-girl transformed into a ball of slime and ‘reintegrated’ with the Nephilim’s body. He really needed her help searching for some sort of ‘Player’ or ‘Companion’ information sheets, but the kitten decided to take a nap instead.

“Oh, sweet, there’s actually a few of these things… and tablets?” Not all of the magical devices were filled with copious amounts of pornography: only half of them. There were two ‘Whisper Boosters’; the one that Elina and Talia shared, mostly contained artistic photographs of various interesting magical-beasts, sightseeing or pictures of friends and family.

As for the ‘Mana-Tablets’, Inari’s was all games, Jasmine’s had comic books and hentai manga, while Alice had loads of voyeurism videos. Fortunately, the last one was mostly used by Sarah.

Michael muttered “Holy necrophilia fetish! Woah, damn it, I’m getting turned on again… Nope, I need to stop masturbating and focus on unlocking my OP-ness.” There were plenty of gory sex-scenes between the Nephilim and goblin-girl, but there was also a cacophony of ‘Umbra News Network’ reports on the two of them. There was also a decent amount of footage on the other five members of their ‘party’ as well.

“I kinda remember this shit… This was my first battleground, then there’s our first Dungeon, that one time Talia accidentally murdered a shota, the Long Dong fuck-fest, a really short holy war, some more battlegrounds and… Talia settling her mommy-issues through violence. It’s weird, like I know they happened, I just can’t remember them vividly. Hmmm~, well whatever, all that matters is that I vaguely know what I ‘should’ be able to do…” After talking to himself, he shoved the magical cell-phone back into his inventory and sat cross-legged again.

Focusing on his right palm for a few minutes, he finally managed to make a fluffy cloud-tattoo appear. Channeling a bit of mana into it, a four-foot long, glass-like, thin and transparent straight-sword materialized in his hand.

He snickered, “Oh wow, this is ridiculously light… Almost weightless actually.” Tossing it into the air, it slowly fell downwards, like a helium balloon that was almost deflated.

Michael causally took a deep breath and then blew onto the hilt, which caused the weapon to soar away, right out the open window. It took a few seconds before he yelled “Fuck my life~! Goddamn it, get back here you bastard!”

The flying sword was practically invisible, but it was connected to his mind by a string of mana, which he could easily see. Aside from that, it was also extremely loud and traveling less than twenty miles per hour.

“Shitballs!” He noticed that it wasn’t slowing down and even started picking up speed, as it was blown around randomly by the wind. Thus, he quickly jumped off of the bed and climbed out the window, leaping onto the grass into a halfhearted ‘roll’ and immediately standing up. The northern edge of the fence was demolished and no one had time to fix it yet, so he had to run barefooted through sharp nails, wooden splinters and metal fragments; the crater wasn’t too deep, but it was too wide for him to simply jump over.

After that, he had to push the giant cornstalks out of the way, as he sprinted through the field. Michael grumbled “Ugh, I hate running! Why can’t I just fly like a normal person?! I should at least be able to teleport, right?!” Unfortunately, his telekinesis, giant angelic wings and various other magical abilities weren’t available at that moment; he had decided to start off with learning something ‘safe’, like summoning mysterious and potentially uncontrollable weapons, which he didn’t know how to use.

“Seriously, stop moving!” No matter how much he tried to halt the transparent sword, it was just being carried away into the slowly darkening sky. The worst part was that he could hear the crackling of lightning in the northern distance and knew that if it continued heading that way, it would likely be carried away by the thunderstorm.

“Ow, shit-fuck-cunt-bitch-whore-twat-cock! Grah~!” It wasn’t long before he stubbed his right pinky-toe on the broken helicopter rotor. The blade sliced straight down the middle and stripped a decent amount of the flesh from the bone; he tripped and almost fell face-first onto a sharp, jagged hunk of warped steel.

However, his reaction-speed was fairly quick and he was able to reach out, stopping his fall with his left hand. Even though he really needed to catch up to that sword, he knew that it was impossible on foot.

Michael also needed to sit down and concentrate on swiftly regenerating the nearly amputated pinky-toe. As he watched it rapidly heal, he muttered “I can’t believe I went twenty-three years without this awesome superpower… Well, I guess if I was always like this, I’d never truly be able to appreciate how amazing it is.”

Then he stared at his feet and wondered “In the videos, all of us had shoes except for Inari, but she didn’t really ‘need’ them. The question is, which pair should I use? Mine and Alice’s are for Tanking, so that’s probably a bad idea. I don’t really like ‘heels’ so I should probably avoid Talia’s leather boots. Flipflops wouldn’t keep me from getting my toes cut off and they aren’t really meant for running. Hmmm, I feel like I’m going to regret this, but ugh…”

Adorable blue-kitten tattoos appeared on tops of his feet, which swiftly transformed into bright-pink sneakers. He casually stood upright and murmured “They’re actually super-comfortable… but the question is, can I use them without dying?”

A pair of pure-white jeans also materialized, though he was contemplating wearing Talia’s magical ‘misty’ skirt on top of that. Unfortunately, every piece of equipment required him to supply it with mana constantly, so the more items, the harder it would be to keep up.

The most important factor was that the farther away his invisible sword flew from him, the more power it required to maintain its connection to his body. Michael was afraid that it might either be lost forever, or actually disintegrate into nothingness, if he stopped channeling mana into the ‘Soulbound’ weapon.

In Arcana, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about such things, but he was in a different universe, where the ‘System’ didn’t exist. He had to rely on his own nonexistent understanding of magic, if he wanted to accomplish anything.

Taking a deep breath, he gazed up into the beautiful bright-red sky and clenched his fists. He shouted “JJ rocket-shoes go~!” and jumped off of the charred dirt with all of his strength.

Amazingly, jets of blazing blue fire erupted from his heels and he was sent soaring up into the air several dozen meters in a single second. Yet, he continued to accelerate as his bulky body tumbled around violently, spiraling and occasionally falling, causing him to scream “Agh~?! Fucking shitty-kitties! I don’t like this! I don’t like this at all!”

With Jasmine’s tiny and lightweight frame, along with her superhuman ‘cat-like’ agility, it was extremely easy for her to control the rockets and maintain her balance in the sky. Michael was only at a state slightly above human at that moment, so it would have been strange if he was able to use those shoes on the first try.

However, there was also another very important factor involved: His equipment didn’t have ‘stats’. His body could become stronger, but there was no ‘System’ to alter gravity or provide him with an external ‘power-up’ from wearing some magical clothing.

“Miguel! What in Aeris’ name are you doing?!” A gorgeous and totally nude High-Elven woman wrapped her barely corporeal arms around his neck and waist, holding him tightly against her body. With all of the power she could muster, she managed to manipulate the wind around him and stop him from soaring headfirst, towards the highway.

Michael gently embraced her, and whispered “I’m sorry Tali… I kinda-sorta lost your sword.” As the jet-boots started to run out of power, his ‘wife’ slowly lowered him onto the street and glanced out into the northern distance.

She sighed, murmuring “You fool, you should have called me out sooner… Do not worry, even if the weapon was thousands of miles away, I would still be able to feel its presence. It is over there, at the heart of that cyclone which has just formed.”

The Nephilim stared at the tornado and grumbled “I guess I’m gonna be doing a bit of storm-chasing, huh?”