Chapter 9: Damsel in Distress

The day of our next war came. This was an important day, and we had to win. Our portal had switched to another barren planet, and we had to wait another 2 days for it to switch again. By then, our stores of food would be depleted, and Morbid was most likely going to start eating the Spawns.

In preparation for this one, we researched all our closest neighbours and found out that some of them were also losing protection today. Unfortunately, none of the ones losing protection were the type of prey I was interested in.

Although this place is dog eat dog, and everyone is fighting to create their own world, that doesn’t mean that everyone is completely uncivilised about it. Most people are actually quite happy just with their domain and have no ambition to create a bigger world.

Those kinds of people are numerous, and they are more or less the majority amongst the Domains of every rank. The people with ambition also weren’t completely lawless and usually waged their battles in a mostly fair manner.

The type of people I was looking for were those backstabbing bastards who simply wanted to gain as much as they could as fast as they could. I was also looking for people that dropped in on other people’s raids right when victory was near so they could claim the win.

These type of people would race over as soon as they spotted a battle start then create a bridge and rush forward to kill everyone. Because the two forces locked in battle had depleted each other, it wasn’t unusual for scavengers like these to appear.

They very frequently ghosted domains they knew would be dropping protection soon and then quickly raced in after the war started. This allowed them to force the primary raider away before they could take the victory and gave them close to a free meal. They were despicable.

The other main type of nefarious Controllers I was looking for were the people who swooped in after a battle to an undefended domain before the protection could restart. That way they could claim a raid bonus and steal some land.

This was slightly more difficult, but there were certain domains that specialised in it. As long as they ‘docked’ with the defending domain before the primary raiders left, then they could claim raiders rights and stole a little extra percentage of land as spoils.

These domains usually had hardly any land to begin with, so they had the huge speed boost. They would then go and ‘lose’ a raid to sell the land to someone else for experience points.

This was how Juwan had lost his domain so quickly. All three times he was attacked, he was killed, and his territory was swarmed by vultures before the raiders had left.

This sort of unfair playing style, although very much not against the rules, was nonetheless dishonest and something I was not a fan of.

It was one thing if they were weaker Controllers teaming up to try and take down a huge opponent, but if they were just going to be vultures and pick apart the corpse of someone else’s foe, that was unsporting. At least in my opinion, which in the end is the most important.

Perhaps that may seem arrogant, but I had long since accepted that if I planned to try and be a hero and help people, I couldn’t please everyone. As long as it felt like I’d done the right thing, that was what mattered.

Heroes of one people are the devils of others.

In another sense, helping someone is always going to have selfish motives. I admit that my desire to help others is also for the selfish motive of making myself feel better. If I’m going to be selfish in helping others, then I may as well accept it and help people as selfishly as I damn well please.

It took a while, but with the help of some of my Clever Spawns, we compiled a list of potential targets. Most of them were still in their protection period after finishing a raid, but they would no doubt be eyeing the Domains that had just lost protection.

The target I had in mind for this raid were a pair of domains that always worked together to gang up on smaller domains. They also often had a group of vultures mulling about them. They would send in a Vulture with speed to lock down the enemy domain till they could close in.

They would then strike from two sides with greater forces and overwhelm them. After the raid, they let the vultures dock to steal some extra land and then bought it from them after the battle. Usually leaving the target domain in shambles and having lost more than 30 or 40% of their domain.

For the moment, we were following them as they closed in on a fresh domain that just lost protection. From our information, this domain was actually brand new, and this would be their first battle.

To not be detected, we had to set the light on our domain to nothing, so everything was engulfed by darkness. Although we could sustain this for a while, after a day, it would start costing experience to remain ghosting. Now that our targets were moving in on a domain though, we wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Not that we could afford it anyway.

It happened just as we’d expected. A vulture domain raced forward to freeze the fleeing domain, and the other two moved in to try and dock. Which was about the same time that we decided to reveal ourselves.

The moment they’d split apart and were about to dock, we flicked the lights on, and a handful of ballista bolts shot through the sky locking one of the raiding domains down under raid status.

The fresh domain looked like a yellow safari grassland and had some form of humanoid Wear-lions as inhabitants.

The two raiding domains that we were hunting were both like mirror images of each other. They had biomes similar to a dark and eerie forest. The trees towered above the domain and inside was filled with darkness.

The inhabitants of these islands was another pet hate of mine. Forrest Goblins. Sinister and evil little bastards at the best of times. Give them a domain and let two of the creatures meet up, they would follow their natural instinct and band together to gang up on weaker creatures.

The two goblin domains were both larger than the defending domain and even my domain. Their radius was probably close to 4 or 5 kilometres each. They were also swarming with Forest Goblins. The moment chuckles Ballista struck, he and the dozen Shadow Spawn all used concealing arts and blend into the darkness of the forest.

I controlled the domain to fly in and dock so that we slid into the gap between the raiding domain and the target domain. Unfortunately, we could only directly dock with one enemy domain and defending domain. That said, I wasn’t planning to leave the defenders high and dry.

I planned to simply send Seelie into the forest mounted on a little saddle I made for Morbid. It was probably going to be somewhat gruesome which is why I heroically led the rest of the spawn into the grassy plains.

The first thing we met was the Wear-Lions. A huge Wear-lion stood at the front of a pride of about 90 other Wear-lions. They clearly didn’t have the numbers to properly defend themselves. But they did have power. Just from a cursory glance, I could tell they would most likely be able to give my Spawn Army a run for their money based on their stats.

If my army wasn’t so diverse, I might have had trouble if I had to fight them. Luckily, they had shit resistances so the poison, curse and luck demons would take the advantage in the end. However, this time around we weren’t here to fight them.

Luckily I’d brought along my diplomat. I may despise his silver tongue, but even I couldn’t deny that it had its uses.

Juwan stepped forward looking very gallant and heroic in a shiny silver armour that the Spawn all converted and had tried to steal numerous times. His plus 43 charisma stat, which was almost as high as my endurance stat, came to the fore as he described the situation.

“Lion man, I am Juwan of Murphy’s Domain. We are hunting the nefarious Forest Goblins that have been plaguing the freshly spawned domains and request your assistance. You may not trust us, but I assure you we are here to help.

“Right now, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you try to fight us off, you will only exhaust yourselves and make it easier for our prey to escape. If you let us assist you, we will let you escort us around the edges of your domain and remain as distant as possible from your Lion den.”

To my surprise, the leading lion talked in a manner I could easily understand and communicate with.

“ ... talk so much ... what do you want?”

I stepped forward to take over these discussions seeing as it was sometimes a bad thing to have too much charisma.

“ ... gonna kill the goblins ... let us through...”

“ ... sure...”

Ahh. Things are so much easier when everyone has a shared understanding. Turned out Juwan was completely useless and I should have just left him at home.

Things rapidly developed from there. The lion leader and I hit it off straight away and had a long conversation as we raced to the other side of the domain to help his kin.

“ ... goblin hunters?...”

“ ... sure ... Wanted help ... right?...”

“ ... sure ... not gonna? ... you know...”

“ ... nah...”

It was very informative for the both of us, and we understood everything, which was great. It was rare to meet someone I found it so easy to talk to. When we reached the other side of the plains, the Spawns didn’t even wait for orders as they just raced forward banging their shields with their little black daggers while screaming war cries.

Curses were being launched everywhere and a few recent evolutions, Alchemist Spawn, were busily throwing explosive potions all over the place.

The green-skinned goblins were shocked to discover that they were suddenly being pushed back. The sudden reinforcement was very much against their expectations. Soon the raid status from the goblins was gone, as they were forced back onto the bridge.

The moment we reached the bridge, I saw a particularly fat and ugly goblin turn and start wobbling back into the woods. I could tell he planned to break the bridge and run. With me here it essentially maintained raid status on the lion domain so they wouldn’t be able to disengage my domain and pursue.

Seeing him hobbling off. I called a few Curse Spawn over and a couple Shadow Spawn. I then received a number of strength buffs with various negative effects, both from my own spells and also my curse spawn.

I then started picking up shadow spawn and launching them across the bridge like missiles. The goblins clearly wouldn’t let that happen and started firing arrows into the sky to try and kill them in flight.

The only problem was, one of my Shadow Arts was missile deflection. It was something that the Spawn trained in daily because they all get some sick sense of enjoyment out of trying to hit each other with arrows.

The goblins clearly weren’t the most skilled archers, and the few arrows that got near were intercepted by deft dagger slashes and wild body movements. Even I was curious how they were moving around like that in mid-air.

Some of them even had a skill I didn’t, that let form a mist of shadows which they could dive through and teleport nearly 10 meters. In a few minutes, I had about 10 shadow spawn blending into the shadows of their forest, letting me set raid status so they couldn’t escape.

Thanks to them desperately trying to hunt down my underlings, the bridge defence lost some focus, and we started pushing even more fiercely. Spawn daggers were flicking about like little black blurs. The Wear-lions, seeing the unexpected reinforcements going absolutely ballistic and ripping into the goblins, refused to be outdone.

They all started releasing some kind of innate ability. Their bodies grew in size, and all their muscles bulged out like taught springs. Every swing killed numerous goblins. The green little bastards were starting to feel the heat, and after half an hour of bloodshed from both sides, the goblins were finally pushed onto off the bridge completely and fell back into the forest to regroup and defend from the more advantageous terrain.

Seeing this, I let out a loud whistle and all my Spawns starting running back towards the bridge as if their asses were on fire.

Seeing this, the lion leader gave me a look but seeing me give him a reassuring thumbs up, also pulled his forces back.

My little Alchemist Spawn all flicked their hands. Having been given semi-player status because they were citizens of my domain, they naturally received some of the perks. For example, they each had a player inventory.

With the flick of their clawed little hands, strange little suits started falling onto the ground, and they quickly started equipping them. The suit looked like some kind of miniature hazmat suit and had an odd little container on the back with a spray nozzle.

These had cost me a bit to get my hands on, and they were actually designed by and for dwarves. But they suited my needs perfectly, and when I discovered the Alchemy Spawn, I purchased them. It was due to expenses like this that I now had no experience points left.

As soon as my spawn and the wear-lions retreated to the bridge, the Alchemy Spawn stepped forward and started pumping a little handle connected to the container on their backs. After which, a strange green mist poured out.

As soon as the mist touched the grass, trees or shrubbery, a huge explosive green flame came out of nowhere and started engulfing the forest. As it spread, the Alchemy Spawn followed behind it lighting up more of the forest to keep it going.

Everyone watched on as the huge forest was slowly enveloped in one of my most devious and cruel potions. The Burning Acid. Those huge green flames let off no smoke or heat, and instead just seemed to slowly disintegrate everything.

It didn’t last forever of course. The further the flame travelled, the weaker it got. That was why the Alchemy Spawn kept moving along keeping it going in their little hazmat suits.

The glorious forest became like a huge green torch. Domains far off in the distance were horrified when they saw an entire domain suddenly light up in green flames that spread their eerie, sinister light like some kind of declaration.

Saying; “come over here ... and die”.

I watched on, quite impressed with how fast the Burning Acid was working. I knew it could dissolve a corpse in less than a second. But I didn’t expect it to dissolve something the size of these trees in such a short time.

Making it even more vicious than a normal fire, was that unlike climbing the tree and trying to burn it all in one go, it dissolved the truck first making the tree fall into the forests, spreading the fire even faster.

The little Alchemy Demons had to run just to keep up with it. It was a tough job seeing as there was only about 20 of them.

After watching this unsettling scene for about half an hour, more than half the domain had been obliterated and become a barren wasteland. The Spawn had run out of juice and returned to let everyone else march in and finish clearing the enemies.

The rest was very anticlimactic. Half of the remaining population had been eaten by the corrosive flames of the Burning Acid and with our overwhelming firepower and numbers, clearing out the last of the goblins was quick work.

We had essentially won the raid when more than half of the forest had been burnt away. Long flat landscapes were the hunting ground of lion type beasts, and the Spawn were so adaptable the last bit of forest was easy for them.

At last, the raid was cleared, and we stood at the centre of the Domain looking at a hole in the ground that was presumably the cave which was home to the Controller Goblin.

When we entered, it appeared he’d either died in the fires or escaped through a portal to avoid losing time and experience when he died. What he didn’t realise though, was the reason I picked him first as my target.

He had 3 portals. Which was rare for such young domains. Presumably, he and his friend had also been selling land for experience to higher rank domains, which was why they had no qualms buying it cheaply from the low-rank vultures.

Two of the portals were random cycling portals similar to the one I had. The last was a fixed portal and led to a huge quest world called Six Star. It was formed from 6 smaller worlds joining forces to make a coalition and later leaving the Warz together to form a single planet with 6 Controllers.

The most important part though, was that this world was very rich in raw materials and game. And something that stroked my fancy was that it was covered in all sorts of sinister types. It apparently had all sorts of black markets which dealt in things like land, assassinations and all manner of underworld trade.

It wasn’t that I wanted to particularly interact with them, but more that ... well ... the spawns had to eat something, right?

Apart from the portals, it looked like most of the rest of the good stuff had been stuffed into the Controller’s inventory and taken with him to prevent it being looted. That didn’t matter though. I took off my left glove and reached out my hand towards the swirling blue mist.

The mist then started to coagulate and form into a sparkly light. Slowly, it all started surging forth and soon became a little crystal in my hand. My deprive skill was truly monstrous sometimes. With it already at level 6, I could deprive more than just mana now.

If I used enough mana myself, my deprive skill could take nearly anything from someone. It was almost like an overpowered ‘steal’ skill. If I put in the effort and mana, I could take just about anything. Even the special traits and attributes of enchanted weapons and equipment could be stolen and stored into a gem.

I couldn’t use them myself yet because to use the gem I needed something like the Imbue skill. Luckily I had Seelie, so those few times I’d accidently deprived my gloves of their trait she could re-imbue it. Otherwise, a great many terrible accidents would have happened by now.

I then reached out and stole another portal. Once I was done, I took a mana potion and then tried to steal the last random portal. Turns out, there are still some things I can’t steal. Even after pouring all my mana into the skill, I couldn’t take the portal that came with the domain.

I felt it starting to loosen, but I just didn’t have enough mana. Instead, I sent myself into Mana Depletion, and all my special traits kicked in. Even now, after training my endurance so high, pain from the soul was almost unbearable.

Luckily, as my soul seemed to be tearing apart from complete exhaustion, Please Sir started patching it back together, and my Mana Demon title sped it up to 4 times the normal speed. Fortunately, the process was quicker than it used to be and I was guaranteed not to die from it. Unfortunately, I now had disordered mana, and it would be fluxing all over the place for the rest of the day.

With the portal stones in hand, and having regained my senses once the withdrawal was over, I turned to the lion leader.

“ ... thanks ... don’t need the rest ... seeya...”

“ ... sure ... next time...”

“ ... sure ... no problem...”

“ ... seeya...”

I then called all my Spawns and quickly returned to make sure my domain hadn’t been invaded. What I saw when I arrived left me slightly stunned. Almost like the other goblin domain, half this domain had been demolished.

Morbid was still running around chomping heads off panicking goblins, and Seelie was occasionally pointing at stuff only for it to explode into flames or huge vines to grow out of the grounds and squeeze everything to death.

He repertoire of magic spells was almost endless. I even watched on horrified as a goblin got a lucky shot with his bow only for the arrow to stop motionless in mid-air less than a foot from the back of Seelie’s head. The horrifying part wasn’t her omnipresent sixth sense or ability to freeze an arrow while still casting another spell.

The horrifying part was when she turned her attention to the goblin, and I witnessed someone casting a Spell Model for the first time. I’m not sure what the original spell was, but the results of the full Spell Model was a huge flaming meteor suddenly forming out of nowhere and falling directly onto that goblin.

The shockwave proceeded to completely disintegrate his nearby companions, and the entire domain seemed to drop slightly in space from the force. It was like having two floating boards nailed together in water and dropping something heavy on one of them. My domain was also dragged down slightly as if following a wave motion while floating in the sea.

The whole domain was engulfed in a huge dust storm, and bits and pieces of debris from stones and trees were shot everywhere like bullets. She was absolutely godlike in her casting abilities. It was too abnormal.

I could also cast a spell model, but it was only the Ain’t No Rest curse which would most likely only send a single person insane forever. I wasn’t sure though because I’d never actually tested it. Just the curse from the chant or spell pattern was already so cruel I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. If I actually used the full spell model, who could say what exactly would happen?

It wasn’t long before the dust cleared and I saw Seelie sitting atop the huge silhouette of Morbid, like some kind of queen of destruction. She looked valiant and powerful, and for the first time without her giving me an implant, something stirred.

Which I quickly stamped to death, lit on fire and spread the ashes into the four winds. Those sorts of feelings. I didn’t deserve to have them.

Juwan stood beside me and gazed off towards the powerful and regal looking Seelie with an odd look in his eyes. He then looked at me with even stranger eyes, after which a shiver went up my spine. Whatever he was thinking about was beyond me.

If he planned to do anything to Seelie, even if I didn’t have the powers of the system, I would kill him.

Things on the goblin domain calmed down, and all the spawns excitedly rushed in and started looting everything that wasn’t obliterated by the flaming rock. I also went and looted the spare portal this domain had, which was made increasingly difficult by my fluxing mana.

With our raids finished, we pulled back to the castle.

The Spawn all threw a huge blood festival which was quickly followed by a huge fertility festival. Before we broke away, the Wear-Lion came to visit us.

“ ... create party ... for land spoils ... then ... bye...”

“ ... sure ... later...”

Our fluent and precise method of communication left Juwan and Seelie both looking at as in a strange manner. We didn’t care though. We understood. I entered my Domain Control Space and looked through all the domain options.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but the lion man seemed to because I received an alert for a domain alliance. After accepting, we both broke off from the goblin domains. All the vultures nearby seemed to want to come in and steal a piece of the pie, but after the green flames and meteor, they decided against it.

Even if we couldn’t catch them with our domain. We could just drop a big flaming rock on them from a distance. On top of that, they’d just seen us swoop in and rescue someone from two huge domains twice the size of us. They weren’t willing to piss us off just for some quick gains.

As we broke away, a huge chunk from both domains disintegrated into dust and swirled through space like a stream before building up along the edges of our domains. We both gained just over a kilometre from the two domains.

In an instant, my domain had doubled in size. Space seemed to distort weirdly, and the biomes all seemed to grow and shit in a very strange manner. The altar and the buildings all seemed to stay where they were relative to the biome they were in.

The Green grassy hill became a bit taller and wider covering nearly a kilometre in radius. The sinister land grew wider to about 600 metres, and the smog had the smallest growth in width but the most in actual square meters reaching 400 meters in radius.

The twisted trees and tail flowers all seemed to rapidly multiply to fill the new space as if by magic, which presumably it was. With all the new dead stuff in the smog, it seemed to grow even more potent and vile.

After testing it, I discovered that the more the biome grew, the more poisonous it became. Before I could just barely withstand it. Now, it was actually almost painful. I determined that I’d slacked off in my training lately and hadn’t bothered much with my own skills and stats since we moved to the domain.

A new addition to the domain was a stream. It seemed to be some kind of magical spring that started in a little pond near the castle and flowed through all three biomes down towards space, where it just poured off the edge.

After some investigating, I determined it poured off the edge and then seemed to become mist that was sucked back into the huge rocky spike that was the base of the island which was our domain.

Unsurprisingly, it seemed to become more and more corrupt the further it got from the castle. The moment it entered the sinister lands it started to become slightly murky. It was like catnip for the Spawn though. They went swimming the moment they discovered it.

By the time it reached the Smog Marsh, the water had become very vile looking. After it left the smog biome, it looked like toxic waste. It actually glowed as it floated out into space and evaporated, which I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t normally be doing.

Just out of curiosity, I tried some at the very edge before it went into space. Turns out, even my endurance can’t handle everything. After spending nearly 7 hours in the castle slowly dying, I was logged out and slapped with my first 12-hour suspension.

I’m not sure who got experience if I accidentally killed myself. I half expect it to just go straight into the communal account of the Domain, since technically, the domain killed me. At least, that was the case when the tail flowers all planted themselves everywhere and started eating scorpions.

More importantly, I’m not certain how exactly I died, seeing as I can’t die from poison and I should have some immunity to sinister mana attacks. That could only mean the mixture of the two things had created something else? It’s probably something like a disease or virus if I had to guess.

With having died, Murphy was now trapped on earth for 12 hours before he could log back in. That meant that Seelie was now in charge and had to take care of everything while he was gone. Which was probably better since she was a little more level-headed than Murphy and didn’t just stare off into space now and then.

It had been a while, so she ended up deciding to take Morbid out for a walk. She saddled him up and called chuckles and Juwan over. Unlike Murphy, Seelie didn’t seem to think too badly of Juwan. She knew Murphy was guarded against him though, and definitely wouldn’t want him left here alone in his domain without someone keeping an eye on him.

Certainly, the Spawn could probably do it, but they had a pension for distraction, and all it would take is one Curse Spawn firing a curse somewhere, and a festival of fertility would suddenly explode on the island.

That being the case, she didn’t have much other choice than to bring him with her. Chuckles, of course, had long since expressed the need for him to accompany her if she ever left the domain without Murphy. He understood that the two people cared for each other in different ways and Murphy would definitely be displeased if he failed to protect her while she was walking the dog.

Morbid, being saddled up, immediately knew that he was going to get to go for walkies and so his excitement was unquantifiable. He almost couldn’t stop himself from jumping around madly as Seelie put his saddle on.

Chuckles pulled together a contingent of 2nd evolutions with Shadow Arts to join him in protecting Seelie. This group of 24 was Murphy’s most frequently used group when he chose to move about and quest for experience. They had a variety of different evolutions, some Curse Spawn, some Clever Spawn and even an Alchemist Spawn and 2 Luck Spawn.

But each one of them had Shadow Arts as their other evolution, and it made them perfect for hiding away and protecting the Queen from harm. Queen being the title they gave Seelie themselves. After all, Spawn weren’t complete animals and could at least pick out the most obvious of signs.

Which says a lot about where Murphy’s head space was at in regards to this topic.

After some preparing, Seelie chose the fixed portal. They now had 3 portals, with one of the plundered portals still in crystal form because it was another fixed portal to Six Stars Planet and they planned to sell it. Of the three they had, two were random, and following Murphy’s luck, 1 was still stuck on barren lands, and one was on a lava planet.

Just as they prepared to leave, two fat goblins walked out from the fixed blue portal, obviously not expecting to find themselves face to face with a giant Hell Hound on someone else’s domain.