28

O(I)O(I)

Pief despite being a ghost still felt tired the same way she did when she was alive, made her wonder if all ghosts slept during the day so they could haunt at night.

Finally closing her eyes was hard with the adjacent winged-giggling monsters, the gargoyle and the harpy. They were always yammering about their lives to each other. Some of it was useful while the rest was just loud prattling.

"Do harpy's ever fly with their talons first for a man's groin before clutching on it till it bleeds?" Kaylyn asked.

"Heck no, we need human male sex organs to reproduce...we save that for after the deed is done."

Pief sat pensively through all of this. It was nice to see different species getting along; she just wished they weren't so obnoxious about how they have fun.

Suddenly, two girl-ghosts around her age appeared hedged to her.

"How would you like to ditch those two and go where the nice baldy went?"

Without even looking at the two she replied "I'd be ecstatic."

She held out a scroll and yarb tea still roiling out hot steam from the cup. Pief couldn't drink it and she preferred smelling oranges when she needed a stress relief, but it was perfect for nostalgic reasons.

"Should we ask them if they want to join us on our quest?" Lauve asked.

The three stared at the girls fluttering miles off the ground with their arms conjoined, pointing out at the sunset. Pief smiled.

"I think it's best we leave them to themselves."

O(I)O(I)

Darilyly was under a consignant with the vampire. He was a ghost with a dark seal embedded in his right arm. So long as the crest was still glowering with a bloody scarlet ray he couldn't fly away or phase through him; not that he would leave his khoug behind. A khoug was a trapezoid structure trinket made of steel tenfold stronger than the metal nailed in the bottom of horse shoes. It had runes in gaped black circles and it had intricate tribal drawings on the sides.

This khoug he played was a miracle for another father estranged from his daughter—his life as sorrowful as the discolored sky.

His daughter was bedridden in a medical facility with a handsome yet battle hardened man watching over her bedside. He came and he left. The vampire allowed him to observe all of this while engorging the blood of his dead nobles behind a tree—and why those nobles didn't turn into ghosts was unknown even to him.

He soon stopped his drinking and returned to the king. His eyes crusted red like rusty shields with tiny cracks in his eyeballs. In a fleeting moment those tints of red were gone and his normal hazel human eyes returned.

"Tell me...do you think monsters could someday walking into an adventurer's guild like all your hopeful young bloods?"

Darilyly aghast at this bloodsucker trying to speak as if he had some cogency.

"I didn't pass down the law beings with sentience couldn't become adventurer's, but I'm intuitive enough to know a barrier warding demons out wouldn't be needed if most of you weren't genocidal beasts."

"There is a sweet abound of erroneous in what you just said, but yes there were violent tendencies keeping us from becoming adventurer's—how would you like me to become the first...like I should have been if reincarnation didn't lead to the same pebbles you trip over as your first life."

O(I)O(I)

Saitama could run a mile in less than a minute, taking nine just to reach one was a downgrade for him. The farmers were seeing him with star-esque eyes with dawning respect for him for reasons he didn't know.

"This road is a straight path yet there's so many sounds paths on our side." Gava beamed.

"I think an animal—in the distance that—sounds like baby Pyn's-drinking their mother's milk. Yep. Baby Pyn's are drinking their mother's milk." Nolb told them.

"Just because their the size of a ferret doesn't mean they won't be agitated if you come near them; might even give their mother a heart attack." Baragon told the curious farmer. "Now that you've had some experience with the mundane of the road why don't you just close your ears and look ahead—don't let curiosity fringe in that delicate head."

Gava and Nolb were both pouty. Then Gava furrowed her eyebrows, squinted her eyes and sucked in a small breath of air in before exhaling it out.

"There is no church up ahead in this road and no crossroads, intersections that guide us to it. We need to walk more. Maybe my magical sensor will pick it up the closer we trail down."

Saitama knew life wasn't like the movies. If it were something would happen ironically and they would deter from their original objective to settle it. Instead, they kept walking with Nolb holding his wife's shoulders as her eyes changed purple. It was just one minute later, Saitama wondering if he could approach a cat on the front deck of a neighbors house when she stomped her foot so hard it was making a thunderous fissure.

"There is a chapel to our right side just a mile away. Let's frolic to it, hun. And come join us you two...stern angry-looking boys."

Saitama knew being flamboyant wasn't akin to being gay but the way the couple frolicked was laughably whimsical. Saitama crouched down—back facing Baragon.

"We can beat them to the church if you get on me and let me jump there."

Baragon shivered in uncertainty.

"Go ahead. I don't know how Covergence will respond when its in the stratosphere."

"Covergence? Oh, your halberd. Well I guess see you in the church."

Saitama hopped high off the ground doing nothing but a simple jump. The sky was so crepuscular and there was the beautiful view of a sunset, but on the ground a caliginous of purple smoke roiling heavenward in the direction of the church. Saitama's first idea was to ignore it, but what if it was an actual threat to the couple? He decided to land around it and confront it.

His nostrils inhaled the unquenchable smoke causing a pain to sear up inside of him roughly the pain of doing eighty-five push-ups, but Saitama was used to it. While not feeling any second thoughts or fright from all of this he noticed a silhouette in the smoke that started to move its arms like those propped plastic skeletons with strings that moved in a creepy way.

And it soon followed with the emergence of a bony face and eerily violet eyes.

"I am the primordial of the myriad of lost lives. Your stupidity has revived me..."

The skeleton opened his mouth in surprise reaction so wide his jawbone nearly feel off, saw Saitama's face. Seeing it was him he didn't wait five seconds before taking out a long rod with an amber orb on the tip. It glowered.

Saitama swat his hand with enough force to knock down a tree. This turbulent motion matching how much effort a mosquito uses to flap its wings times one hundred if not more dispelled all the smoke from the area. Niaz wasted no time after losing his smoke teleporting high into the air. He raised his left hand over his head, flames of pink flashes emanating from his palm, and he enchanted a spell.

"Magma Rain!"

Two long whips of hardened red magma emerged from his staff and came straight towards Saitama. Before they could hit the ground they collided and exploded like two wrecking balls collided. When these wrecking balls were destroyed magma rained down like a flurry of water going through a rapid river.

Saitama stood still till the last second then he moved so fast while the magma splattered on the floor leaving only the residue of skin melting heat, and he came back completely unscathed. Niaz followed it up with his staff glowing from green than to yellow.

"Arcane Barrage! Void of Endless Despair!"

Many small green comets shot out of his staff and came at him like a volley of meteorite remnants. He just let them hit him hurting as much as a declawed cat trying to scratch him. He was sucked into a purple four sided prism but even though he looked sucked in he still appeared right where he was before Niaz conjured his spell.

Niaz had the magical aptitude and high amounts of mana to come at him with even more spells. He stood ideally through an onslaught of his high tier spell.

And then-he disappeared like a small animal only faster without even moving his feet to get away.

Niaz was on-guard scanning the forest for any signs of the troublesome baldy.

"Magic sure is a wonderful sight to behold in real life."

Ninz looked up and there was the baldy right overhead. Niaz reacted to this holding one hand up while the other enshrouded in purple flare clenched his hand. He soon held his hands together and unleashed an almost subatomic level of an explosion purely light green the size of City F back in Saitama's world.

Niaz put all his mana into this blast but like a flying object hitting the back of someone's head, he was punched and dismantled; Saitama found this fight to be very anticlimactic.

It would be one thing if he was a common burglar but at the rate of his casting he thought this would be challenging. The bones bounced off the ground after they fell. Then the bones sank into the ground. Saitama was a little curious about this letting himself plummet right where the bones had sank. His curiosity was met with an eruption of purple mist and bone silhouettes abound.

"I wasn't born as the martyr of both humans and monsters alike, I gave up more than my own life to reach where I am right now. I may be seen as a monster but as monsters go I've had some sympathy towards you humans. But now...I'm not holding back, I will do anything to-"

Saitama cocked his fists back to his torso like a boxer about to throw a punch. Just bones were what faced him. Then they loped skyward, every bone conjoined completing a whole skeletal/eldlich structure.

The complete eldlich seemed to still have aches all over its body which Saitama discovered as he pulled on his collarbone, wriggled his tendons, and bent over until there was a breaking sound. Even though he was an undead he felt a bit lethargy resurrecting himself.

"I can't kill you and you can't harm me. Want to just call it a day and go home?" Saitama suggested.

"Don't act so smug, human. It should come as no surprise I am the pinnacle of all monsters. Let me go and I shall raze this world with my legion of monsters and my world-ending magical-"

Saitama just flicked his rubber gloved fingers at what was his right breast shattering him back to pieces.

And then—he came back into his true form only his upper half seemed to be bigger and much more enraged from before.

"Dammit, it was my turn to speak!"

In this vexing human's eyes was a gleam of mischief. It delighted him to see him enraged. Once the eldlich could handle numerous gold ranked adventurer's—maybe even prestigious Rhodium ranked if he powered up before facing them.

"Look, I am not from here. I don't know when these monsters will show up, but if you want to be a Sonic about losing I'll fight you anytime. Now that that is settled...I'm going to run at you—I need to get back to my original mission—if you don't move you'll break."

Niaz knew he was strong but that was a trifle exasperated.