*Michael’s Perspective*

Once Lorelei and Ailyn finished puking, we all started walking southward, past the huge central tower and over to the arena beyond it. Even though the wall was over thirty-meters high, it was still easy to see the roots that towered above to the east and west. Yeah, remember when I said that I raised barriers around each ring? Well Angren was literally on the edge of the Fourth Ring, so the largest and strongest roots were present there. Which were also connected to a myriad of treants, dryads and other plant-like demonic creatures so they provided even more defense than the hundred meter tall root-wall.

Even though I saw it plenty of times from the view of a World-Tree, I wasn’t very familiar with the coliseum itself. Not to mention that they changed a ton of things since then, so I didn’t know that there were multiple other entrances aside from the obvious giant gates on the northeast and southeast sides. It was like a triangle pointing towards the huge central tower, so most people entered through those large, but much smaller entrances in order to conserve power and save time. However, there were some people who needed a bit more space… Like Morneth.

“Die! Foul beast!” There was a deafening roar, followed by a massive explosion and a huge dust-cloud that flew up into the night sky. We couldn’t actually see her, since she was only about the same height as the wall and we were standing in front of it, but I could recognize that voice anywhere. I mean, how many thirty-meter tall giants could have shown up in Lorthon since I was gone?

“Open the door, it’s me…” Lorelei stood on her toes and barely managed to reach a small intercom button near the left side of the southeastern gate. Immediately after she spoke though, the huge silver gate fell down into the ground and we were able to see what was happening inside.

“Holy mother of fucking sexy giants! Hey Yuri, are you sure there’s no way for me to grow a dick or tentacles or something? This world is filled with so many beautiful women…” I heard Mike talking, while carrying the dizzy armored Dwarf on his left pauldron.

“What’s the point in that?” Ailyn grumbled, “You’re perfect the way you are! I have no idea why you would want to do this but… If you really wanted to, you could create a virtual skin with your nanites acting as hologram and force field emitters. I don’t really know what your programming is like, since I obviously didn’t make you, but it looks simple enough. Honestly though, you don’t have nearly enough armaments. Why don’t the two of us go back to my workshop and I can take you apart-er, ‘fix’ you. I’ll just have to open up your skull and take a peak around. We can figure out how to get your tactile sensors up and running too…”

Morneth was about as tall as I had remembered, but well, not naked. She didn’t wear heavy plate armor, but some full-body leader and scale gear. There wasn’t a single part of her skin that was being shown, so Mike definitely wasn’t talking about her…

“Ka Ra, tara sakla Mao Gah!” Screamed the massive fifty-meter tall snake-woman from one of her two remaining heads. There was a burnt and bloody hole where the central head would have been and plenty of other wounds covering her golden-scaled flesh. She had three out of six of her arms remaining and half of her tail was amputated. 

The chopped off side was flapping around in front of us like a dying fish, until Mike rushed forward and grabbed it while complaining “Goddamnit! She has a dick… Well, had a dick… Two snake-dicks.”

It was comical to see how the creature’s genitals were actually bigger than his entire body, but even more impressive that he was able to lift the gargantuan tail and throw it to the side so easily. Sure, I probably could’ve done the same thing, it’s just the principle of the matter. 

Weird things are weird. No matter how old you get or how much shit you see, you’ll still find yourself cackling madly to the dumb things that people do… And robots, mostly cats though.

“Morn, stop. Don’t kill that kid. The rest of you brats, hold your fire too.” I didn’t shout, but my voice echoed in the minds of everyone there, paralyzing them momentarily. Including that oversized ‘Lamia’. Although most of the people who mutate in the Fourth Ring lost their sanity along the way, there were still some who were lucky enough to keep their mind working properly. Of course, that couldn’t account for the psychological effects of living in that hellhole for a prolonged period of time.

Besides that, the two out of three headed Lamia was speaking a language. I could somewhat understand it, but obviously I didn’t memorize it after all this time. She was begging for mercy and surrendering. Hell, you could tell that even if you just looked at how she laid down on the ground with her stomach facing upwards or the river of acidic green tears pouring out of her four pitch-black eyes.

The fact that she could survive in such horrible condition was proof of how powerful she was, so it would’ve been a waste if they just killed her like some random demonic beast. That probably sounded a little harsh, but keep in mind that I didn’t feel too bad about accidentally wiping out hundreds of thousands of ‘probably innocent’ Wood Elves in Salvation. However, like I’ve mentioned many times before, it’s ultimately up to Karma to decide on punishment and rewards once someone’s already kicked the bucket. I’m just an executioner.

“Michael?! Is that really you?! Have you truly returned?” Morneth was the first to break free from my simple illusory spell. She only needed to take a few steps before she could kneel down and kind of see me, with her giant glowing golden eyes. She wore a black metallic skull-shaped helmet, one of Ailyn’s creations, which only really revealed her eyes. It wasn’t until that moment when I noticed that her huge pauldrons didn’t have spikes on them, but four small artillery cannons. Each being manned by a tiny Rat Tribe soldier.