*Michael’s Perspective*

The horde of immigrants weren’t particularly moving very fast, since there were tens of thousands of them. Gathered from all over the desert. Many were liberated slaves or just refugees for various reasons that I won’t get into. Put it this way, the desert was a shitty place to live at that time.

Even commoners weren’t living much differently from the slaves. Most of their systems of government were garbage. Usually a king or chieftain of some sort that made horrible decisions on a daily basis, with no one to stop them… Well, until Coffee and the rest probably killed half of them. I couldn’t reach my tendrils out to see exactly what was going on over that far away, but I did watch as they slaughtered tons of assholes that were in towns and villages, close to Lorthon.

“Damn, you’ve gotten a lot stronger Kid!” I shouted out to the approaching earth dragon, which had a shoulder-height of five meters. As the group got closer, it was easy to tell that the people they were escorting included humans and elves, though they had brown skin. It was enough for them to consider themselves vastly different from the pale-skinned Wood Elves and humans from Lorthon but… In reality, they were almost exactly the same, from the perspectives of most other Races. They had a stronger affinity towards Earth, rather than Nature or Water, but even that depended more upon the environment that a person was raised in, rather than genetics. Hell, even genes could be played around with by Yuri.

“Michael?! Is that really you?!” The huge armored bear roared and then jumped from the back of the slow-moving lizard, sprinting towards us at a pretty quick pace. He didn’t wear a helmet and his blue plate-mail on his body was fairly thin, but streams of water were constantly floating around his head and limbs. There were even tubes inlaid within the pieces of gear, allowing for a constant flow.

I took off my helmet and smiled at him, asking “Can you recognize my face? Maybe I’ve changed too much?”

“You elves all look the same to us, but your mana is definitely something that I’ll never forget…” He seemed happy to see me, though he didn’t try to hug me or anything like that.

“This is my biological mother and her girlfriend, Haniel and Angela.” I started introducing all of the ‘people’ around me, “This is Lorelei Fleisher the President, Silvia the Unicorn and Mike the Dickless Pervert who has no relation to me whatsoever.”

By that time, the huge group of immigrants finally closed in on us. Although they mostly kept their distance, some of the ‘chieftains’ or ‘matriarchs’ of some of the villages were a lot bolder. They introduced themselves to us, though I can’t remember any of their names now, or even their faces… For that matter, even their races are hard to recall: Desert Foxes, Crocodile Tribe, Sand and Obsidian Elves are obvious, but there were some races that probably don’t exist anymore.

“So yeah, we’re gonna go eat somewhere… Well, I ain’t eating anything, unfortunately, but they’ll be…” Mike eventually spoke up, “Do you four wanna come with us? It’s gonna be a big get-together or reunion type of deal. Probably gonna end in a bloodbath or apocalypse of some sort, hahaha~!”

“Haha~, count me in as well then, Handsome.” A beam of light shone down from the dark and starry sky, landing right next to the giant silver robot. He jumped away from it at first, but then we all started at the tiny ‘creature’ that appeared. It was a metallic blue golem, about a three feet tall. There were no facial features, aside from the empty eye-sockets that radiated golden light.

Although it didn’t have any secondary or even primary sexual characteristics, the golem did have a high-pitched and feminine voice. She chuckled and slowly approached Mike, who finally spoke: “Holy shitballs! You’re… Er, wait, I know this… One of the Lunas but I… I can’t remember your name. Damn it, my memory has been fucky ever since I woke up.”

She stopped in front of Mike’s left shin and started gently rubbing it, making a horrible screeching noise. Then she said “Luna-76, but my friends call me ‘Seventy-Six’… My enemies, heh~, they don’t call me anymore. Get it? ‘Cause they’re dead.”

“Pft~, hah~!” Mike looked down at the tiny golem and asked “Wait, were you seriously hitting on me? I don’t think anyone has ever hit on me before… No, there was probably someone… Why can’t I remember her name?”

I sighed and explained “When you get to be our ‘age’, memories… Don’t last long. Especially through reincarnations, resurrections, transmigrations and the other shit that we go through eventually… We always lose a lot more than we gain.”

“Indeed…” Silvia murmured, then I teleported our group out of there. Including Coffee and friends, along with Luna-76. As for the immigrants, they would be guided to White Mithril by some border guards in the area, so I didn’t worry about their safety. Some were sick or injured, but there were plenty of doctors and nature mages in White Mithril. Besides, Yuri’s disciple would have cured any illness that was severe enough to endanger their lives, long before they arrived at the edge of Lorthon.

Our next destination was Ael Tol, the capital of Beast Haven State. Yeah, around that time, the country was being split up into states. White Mithril was the capital of Dwarfland, which encompassed the whole northeastern area of the First Ring. Black Mithril was the capital of Loreheim, the northwestern part of the First Ring of Lorthon. Angren was technically a City-State of sorts, same thing with the Nexus.