Chapter 6: How to Magic

Before I left the room, presumably provided by the witch, I checked my stats and skills. I was quite happy with the amount of progress I’d made in training my skills during my journey to the Witch’s Tower.

The most surprising were the sudden huge jump in my Mana Capacity and Mana Regen. It seemed the ordeal of sucking up more than half the Witch’s Mana had greatly boosted my Mana stats.

It was only a pity that Mana was the thing I was least interested in. Although magic was cool and all, it was generally connected with boring things like reading endless books and researching boring things. Personally, I preferred the idea of fighting dragons with nothing but a shield, my body and a good sword.

Using only my wits and skills to defeat my enemy instead of relying on some overbearing spell that would most likely have huge repercussions and ruin endless innocent lives along with my target.

Unfortunately, I could only do my best with what I had, and right now I had so much Mana I couldn’t possibly use it all even if I tried. I was regenerating nearly 20 Mana an hour, and my maximum mana had reached nearly 80 points.

After some more checking, I found my Athletics, a skill I generally ignored, had progressed rather quickly thanks to stacking my inventory with rocks. Having to try and move around properly when being so encumbered had greatly improved my co-ordination.

Adding to that, my strength, endurance and agility were all rather fast in growing. My strength had reached 14, and my agility had reached 8. My endurance was a whopping 30.

From what I understood about stats, that was something akin to my strength being 14 times stronger than the average strength of every player and race when they first create a character.

My endurance was now high enough to basically be on the same playing field as a creature made entirely of rubber.

Not only had my stats and skills evolved, but my two spells had also both levelled up once.

Demon Spawn seemed to gain experience both from the summoning as well as the growth of my demon spawns. Although my spawns had only grown about half an inch in height since I summoned them, their strength and other body stats had increased by half of what they were born with.

I was pretty sure that if they kept growing at the same rate, then they would outgrow even me in a matter of weeks. From what I could tell, the only bonus to having the spell at level two was that I could now spawn 3 more demons, giving me a total of six.

I then checked my Curse spell. It appeared to have levelled up thanks to my casting it on my spawns. I guessed the shock from the mana surge earlier had dispelled the curse diagrams in my body and released the demons from the curse, which was why the lazy buggers had been sleeping instead of guarding me.

Without hesitation, I cast it on them all again. Unlike what a person would usually expect, the demons all started making delighted ‘yah rah raw!’ noises and dancing around when the curse came back into effect.

Their eyes filled with a dim red glow, perhaps indicating that they were powered up by the curse somehow? To be honest, I had no idea what the curse did to them.

I only knew that apart from them seeming to love it, no negative reactions happened. Even after nearly a full game day, which is about 96 Earth hours, the demons didn’t show any negative side effects.

However, unlike the last time I cast the spell, I now realised what the side effects were on the demons. After only a few moments of the spell being cast, the demons all started being very randy with each other and very quickly the once tidy clean bed of silken sheets was turned into a depraved demon love nest.

It only now struck me why the demons always seemed to insist on doing naughty demon things with each other. It was because my curse was acting as some kind of perverse demon aphrodisiac. I wanted to dispel the curse but the moment I tried the demons actually started getting upset.

So I was then stuck between a rock and a hard place. I could have cute rational demons that were good and loyal, but a little bit randy, or ugly irrational demons that were angry and violent. The decision was very difficult for me, considering I was the one who had to suffer as they insisted on remaining within line of sight with me.

If I tried to leave and let them do randy demon things, then they all stopped doing randy demon things and followed after me. If it even remotely looked like I was about to sit down or stop for a while, then they would immediately start doing the two backs ... or in this case three backs demon dance.

Only making the scene more disturbing was all the ‘YAH! YAH! RAR! RAHW!’ sounds they made while in the act.

I decided to ignore it and continue checking my inventory and status. Usually, they finished after a little while and then raced up to me like loyal little minions wanting to follow me everywhere and waiting for orders.

If not for the debaucherous and randy actions between one another now and then, they would have appeared rather cute.

As I continued to check through the inventory, I remembered a spell tome I’d picked up from the sweet old lady/witch that I’d killed in front of the academy.

After some thought, I decided to try my luck. Originally I’d intended to leave this tome with Seelie, but she declared she didn’t need it. Her ability to learn magic from the books of the academy meant that she didn’t require the use of a tome from the system.

I, on the other hand, had no ability to make heads or tails of those confusing books and so desperately needed the memory implanting ability of system skill books more.

With a little trepidation, and having checked my surroundings to make sure nothing could disrupt me this time, I decided it was safe enough and touched the book to identify it. After closely scrutinising it, even after a few minutes, the overlay didn’t change from ‘Unknown Spell Tome’.

With no other choice, I could only tentatively open it and absorb the spell to find out what it was.

‘Ping! You have learnt a new spell in Sinister Magic. Curse: Rampage!’

I wasn’t even surprised anymore. I’d simply assumed by now that everything I picked up would most likely be some kind of trap set up by the system to drive me further towards evil magic and cruel traits.

After quickly checking the spell description, I could only sigh bitterly in my heart. Very quickly though, I corrected my thoughts. Even if the skill was sinister, it was just like all my other skills. Only the method of use was sinister. If I used it properly, it would definitely be a force for good.

By nature in a game, Murphy wanted to test the skill straightaway. He turned to his busily rutting demon spawns and then cast the Rampage on all three of them with 15 Mana each.

The moment the curses activated, the three demon spawns stopped their rutting and suddenly started to bulk up. All their skinny, wiry little muscles became bulky and powerful looking. This bulking up was especially pronounced in very specific muscles of the little male demon spawns.

In addition, that strange red glow in their eyes flashed and then dimmed back to a slightly brighter red glow than before.

In an instant, the rutting of the three demons became frantic and unstoppable. Their need to copulate became so powerful it looked like if they didn’t make babies with each other within the next second, then they were going die from exacerbation.

As if to reinforce this image, the two male spawns ‘expanded members’ started firing nonstop. It amazed Murphy that it was possible for them to even store that much liquid in their tiny little bodies. The depraved love nest that was once a beautiful, classy bed quickly became even more feral, and the entire room soon followed.

It was like two fire hydrants had suddenly exploded in the middle of the room. Murphy had to dodge into the closet to hide from the friendly fire that was just a little bit too friendly.

Just as Murphy hid himself away in the closet, the door of the room opened, and the maid girl from earlier walked in. As opposed to the last time he’d seen her, the maid was cleaned up and had no marks on her. The only thing still remaining was the shackles.

The moment she entered the room, she encountered a face full of friendly fire from the demons. Suddenly, the three demons glowing red eyes all turned and focused on her simultaneously. Murphy was forced to close his eyes out of fear he was about to witness some heinous crime.

15 minutes later, all sounds in the room became quiet, and Murphy peeked out to check if the coast was clear. What was once the bed had been shredded apart, and the entire room was in a disorderly mess.

Lying in the middle of the floor of the room was the maid who seemed to have passed out with a very pleased expression on her face. Surrounding her were the three demons who were looking around somewhat confusedly for Murphy.

The moment he stepped out from the closet they all quickly ran up to him while making excited ‘YAH YAH RAR!’ sounds. As if they were very pleased with Murphy’s new spell.

Seeing the little demon spawns jumping up and down covered in some gloopy clear liquid, and noticing the state of the room which was also almost entirely doused in clear gloopy liquid, Murphy had no chose but to smile very bitterly.

He then glanced at the naked body of the maid who was moaning in her sleep and had all sorts of fluids covering her or leaking from her. Murphy then decided that a quick escape would be best and made to leave what could only now be described as a crime scene.

After escaping the guest room, he began to explore the tower. All the walls were covered in thorns that seemed to follow his movement. Every stop he took the thorns would align perfectly so that if he bumped into the walls, they could stab him.

Out of curiosity, he even reached out and touched them. The moment his finger made contact, all the little thorns and spikes suddenly enlarged and tried to skewer him. Instead of hurting him, the thorns seemed to be like a stalk of grass trying to push against a rock.

They were simply bent back from trying to extend from the wall and then snapped. They couldn’t even break through the simple barrier that was his skin.

Having then lost interest, Murphy continued on. It wasn’t long before he came to a room with a window overlooking the world from the top of the tower. The room was filled with books and looked something similar to a study.

Sitting in a chair was a somewhat lonely seeming silhouette. It was the Thorny Witch. She sat in a chair of bones and looked out of the window at the landscape below.

As Murphy entered, she glanced back at him and made a somewhat disgusted face.

“Sighh ... so another freak has come to my tower. If you’ve come to kill me, get it over with. If you’re like the other one and came for ‘Punishments’, I’m afraid I haven’t got the temperament to entertain you.”

Murphy simply looked on, trying to decide how he should proceed. Eventually, after a long and awkward 10 minutes of staring at her as she looked out at the world, he spoke.

“ ... the game master ... tutorial quest...”

“What?”

“ ... tutorial ... quest...”

“Pardon?”

“...”

The Witch, Elizabeth, gave him a scalding glare as if telling him to just spit it out. It was bad enough that she couldn’t kill him even after trying, but he seemed to have some kind of brain aneurysm from the mana overload and couldn’t even form sentences properly.

With a wave of her hand, a curse was suddenly cast, and Murphy felt his ability to properly structure a sentence increase a hundred fold. Which was just enough for him to be able to form a complete sentence.

“The Game Master Jasmine ... sent me here to complete ... a Magic Tutorial.”

As if it had suddenly completely depleted all of its energy just helping Murphy form that single sentence, the curse suddenly shattered like glass made of sinister mana.

The Witch watched on stunned. That wasn’t just some little curse. It could cause even quiet introverts to become so talkative everyone would hate them. It was a curse designed specifically for tormenting anti-socials who hated interacting with other people.

She cast the spell again, this time with double the mana.

“So, I came here because ... I thought you were evil or something ... but the quest ... and you seemed alright...”

Shatter

The spell shattered again. This time lasting only a little bit longer than the previous one. Elizabeth’s curiosity was now piqued.

‘Does he have some kind of Curse resistance? Curses are a rare magic though so not many people would be able to build up any sort of tolerance for them. Hmm ... perhaps he has Sinister Magic Arts as well? That would explain why he summons those little demon creatures... ‘

Elizabeth stood up from her chair and started walking out of the room. Just as she passed through the archway that was the entrance to the study, she beckoned for Murphy to follow.

“Come along then, if you’re to be my pupil, I’m going to need to train you from the beginning.”

Murphy, somewhat still unsure of what actions he should be taking, decided to just go with the flow for now. If this beautiful woman really was evil, he could just kill her later on.

Ahh, what a strange tower. I wish I could go and fight an evil wizard in a tower like this. Save a damsel in distress who’s all like, “Oh my hero! Let me reward you!”, kiss, kiss, kiss...

... or something like that...

“Oh, it’s the Hero! Please punish me! Wait! Let your demons punish me some more!”

Of course ... there is something like a damsel in this tower ... sort of. Oh, there they go again. Not sure what the little demons have against that maid girl but they don’t seem to let up whenever they see her.

Hmm, I wonder where that elf lady is taking me. Oh, a library? Oh ... it’s a library. Great. So I’m going to have to spend my time reading after all. What a cruel game. Please let my next tutorial be a combat tutorial.

“Since you have summoning magic, then you should start with these books. Then go and learn these books on sinister magic arts since I’m pretty sure you have that as well. Hmm, also you should learn about demons since you seem to have a special sort of bond with them. Is there any other magics I should teach you about?”

... another type of magic I want to learn about. Well, in all the old stories people with holy magic and stuff were the best. More importantly though, that sort of magic has healing properties. If I learn that kind of magic, I can help everyone!

“ ... Holy?”

Oh, she’s giving me a weird look. Is that ... pity?

“Heh. Young man, if you’ve already started on the road of sinister magic arts, learning holy magic will be very difficult. Nigh on impossible. If you really want to learn holy magic now, you’d need some kind of special trait.”

Ahh ... of course it’s that way. I shouldn’t even be surprised. The damnable game system! It’s so cruel! So evil! I swear! One of these days I’ll break through this game system! I’ll make it to the top, and I’ll find the evil bastards that created such a thing! Then I’ll punish them!

“OK, well, that should do for now. Read through these quickly then come to the top of the tower. I’d teach you magic outside, but some strange poison fog showed up, and I can’t go out from the tower anymore. Even that strange girl can’t seem to survive in the fog and dies every time she goes out.”

Oh ... she’s giving me another strange look. Does she suspect me? Please don’t blame me beautiful elf lady. It wasn’t my fault. Ahh damn. It’s showing on my face. The guilt is written all over my face.

Quick avert my guilty eyes. Just nod politely and pretend to listen.

Hmm, it’s been almost 12 hours. I wonder if the tower has any food in it? Let’s go ask that maid girl.

Ahh ... Let’s see...

“Rar rar rar!”

Oh? The demons can smell her? Well then, lead the way, little buddy.

Ah ... what a strange room. Oh, what’s that? An automated whipping machine? Did she make that herself?

Hmm, is this a torture room? This is definitely a torture room, right? Oh? What’s that ... oh Sage! What is she doing to herself! How is that even possible! Is she okay? She looks like she passed out in that state? Why are her hips still doing that?

Ahh. Who cares! I don’t want any more contact with this freak than necessary.

“Oh, it’s the Hero! Have you come to let the demons ravish me again? Please say you’ve come to give me some demons of my own! Please please please!!”

... how am I supposed to respond to that? Hmm, the little demons definitely don’t seem enthusiastic about the idea.

How do I ask if they have food? It’s somewhat rude to ask for food, isn’t it? I mean, I’m sort of just a freeloader now, right? Should I have brought my own food? Hmm, what if they don’t want to share any food with me...

“Growl!”

Uhp! Never mind. Looks like my stomach has taken it upon itself to express its opinion. Whew, that’s lucky. I really didn’t want to have to try and explain what I was looking for. Man talking to other people is so hard!

“Oh. The hero is hungry huh? Well, there’s nothing to eat in the tower. All our rations were finished yesterday. Ever since the weird poison fog, we can’t leave the tower. It’s such a strange fog that even the Lady Elizabeth can’t dispel it long enough to escape.

“Oh, that’s right! Didn’t you come in through the poison? Wah! You’re body’s so powerful! I wish I could go out and enjoy the poison but even for me, it’s just too strong. I can’t stand it at all! Welp, I guess that just means you’re going to have to go out and get food for us all Mr Hero! Good luck!”

Hmm ... how did I suddenly become responsible for food? It’s not my fault your tower was in the range of my Poison Marsh! How was I supposed to know some weird poison smog was going to bust out of that flask! I mean, I only changed one damn ingredient!

Whew! Calm down. It’s OK. Hmm, I really want to leave here as soon as possible, but I’m going to have to study all those crappy books first. I wonder if...

“Little demon guys. Why don’t you go out and hunt for some food for me?”

“Yah yah yah! Rar rar!”

Oop. And off they go. That was surprisingly easy. Oh, one of them stayed behind? I guess they must be really protective of me huh? Hmm ... should I have given them some more specific instructions? I don’t want them to go and start stealing someone’s cattle or something...

Oh well. I’m sure it will be fine. No one even lives all the way out here anyway. At most, they’ll find some forest beasts that we can cook up.

Hmm, maybe I should do some more study about the demon spawns first. It would be better if I could understand enough about them.

Ok, let’s see... ‘How to summon a demon’ ... hmm, I can already do that. Umm... ‘Demi-Demons, a controversial investigation into subspecies derived from demon’s cross breeding’ ... well, I might need that later ... my demons tend to be quite ... promiscuous.

Ah! Here we go! Creatures of the Demon Plane 101. Let’s see, Grotesquery, Demon Hound, Black Dragons ... umm ... is that supposed to be a succubus of some kind? Is this a graphic novel? Why is the drawing so ... you know what, let’s avoid summoning one of those ... I’m only human after all. Even my self-control can only take me so far.

Ah! Here we go.

Murphy was forced to swallow as his throat suddenly became somewhat dry. Somehow, he had gotten a creature that was on the verge of going extinct in the demon realm and had even found a way for them to start procreating.

An entire species’ future could be decided by him personally. Or more accurately, an entire species’ survival was resting on his shoulders.

He now had a few choices to make. If he simply summoned all the Spawns to this plane, then they would all go into a mad frenzy and kill each other. He could essentially wipe an entire Demonic Race out of existence.

At the same time, and more in line with Murphy’s personality, this was an opportunity to help an entire race of beings evolve and at the same time teach them some of his own philosophy. Such as not indiscriminately killing everything in sight, which was probably one of their current major flaws.

He looked over at the demon spawn that had remained behind to guard him against danger. It was currently scurrying around on all fours and sniffing books on the table or pointing at pictures and screaming “Rar rar Yah!” while jumping up and down.

It was hard to believe this little imp like creature had so much hidden potential.

While he busied himself with some more books, he suddenly had a huge rush of experience mist surge into him. Quickly following that the system gave him some prompts.

Initially, Murphy felt sadness. Learning of the death of one of his Demons upset him quite a bit. Then he felt a slight bit of comfort in that Chuckles had somehow survived. He hadn’t been aware his demons even had names.

He glanced at the Spawn nearby and used identify.

So it turned out not all of his Spawns had pleasant names like Chuckles or Snappy. That aside, Murphy was stunned at the status of BitchTits. From outer appearances, she didn’t seem to be pregnant. She still seemed to be the same red skinned skinny little demon from before. Only a little taller now that she’d grown a bit.

Murphy then grew somewhat confused ... what was a dungeon? And why the hell were Chuckles and Snappy in a dungeon when he’d only sent them out for food. Not to mention, that was only a few hours ago, how did they suddenly get into so much trouble?!

He decided he’d just have to wait until Chuckles came back and hope his charade skills were up to par.

About 5 hours later, Chuckles returned and the smog parted around him as he approached the tower. Being hauled behind him was a cart he’d stolen from somewhere which was filled with all sorts of creatures.

Bears, foxes, goblins, bandits, rabbits. The crowning Jewel to the cart was a faceless man in black robes and had a sinister looking spell tome swinging from a chain on his belt. Still attached to the man’s lifeless corpse was the lifeless corpse of Snappy who appeared to be biting a hole through the man arm and had it severely restricted.

Among the corpses were various trinkets and shiny things that had been looted from the dungeon. When he pulled the cart up to the door of the tower. He stood proudly and started screaming “Rar rar rar!” at the top of his little voice.

Murphy came out with BitchTits to see Chuckles standing very valiantly with the cart behind him. He was markedly different from when Murphy had sent him off. The first thing was a huge burn scar he’d presumably received from some kind of fireball spell.

On top of that, he was now more than a foot taller and reached up to just past Murphy’s waste. His usually wiry and skinny body now had some muscle mass, and his red skin had changed to a strange purplish red colour from its normal shiny red colour.

The crowning jewel to his evolution was a strange barb dripping with what can only presumably be poison on his tail, and his two little horns had grown a tad bit longer and more pronounced.

Murphy was impressed. He couldn’t hide it, and he knew that some positive reinforcement was needed. First, he checked to make sure his main fear hadn’t come true and upon seeing that Chuckles hadn’t brought back the bodies of any civilians, he walked up and patted his head like he would a dog.

“Good job Chuckles. You’ve done well. Do you want a reward?”

The moment Murphy finished asking, Chuckles started jumping around excitedly while screaming “Rar Yah Rar!” Everywhere.

He then went and grabbed two bandit corpses from the top of the cart and dragged them up to Murphy. He then pointed at one while going “Rawr Raw rAr” and then he pointed at himself and BitchTits.

“You want to eat the bandits yourself?” Murphy asked curiously. He was pretty sure that his demon spawns knew by now that Murphy didn’t eat other human creatures so they would be getting to eat the bandits later anyway even if they didn’t ask.

Chuckles shook his head then started pointing some more while going “Rar rar yah!”

It took almost an hour for the creatures with more social talent than Murphy but couldn’t talk to explain to Murphy who had no social talent whatsoever but could talk, what they wanted.

It turned out, the one whose charades skills weren’t up to par was Murphy as any other normal person, with an hour of miming from the two Spawns, would have been able to guess what they wanted.

It finally clicked when Chuckles started pointing at BitchTits stomach area. As such Murphy pulled out his spell tome and cast the De-Summon on one of the corpses so they could go back home for a while.

Before they left, they both rushed up to Murphy and grabbed his hand while putting it on their heads. They then pointed at the spell tome in Murphy’s hand.

Murphy was little quicker on the uptake this time and used all the manner in his body to recast his Insomnia Curse on the duo before they rushed into the portal that formed out of the exploded bandit corpse.

Murphy then looked over at the other corpse Chuckles had dragged over and realised Chuckles was telling him to summon more Spawns so that they could evolve and receive a sex drive. He wanted Murphy to act as a sex hotel for his kin.

Murphy, being weak to the whole species is going extinct thing, didn’t even need to consider. He walked up and started using deprive to drain whatever little bit of mana remained in the corpses on the cart. Once he had enough, he quickly re-opened the summon gate using 12 Mana and 12 little spawns came out.