Forty-Eight – Now Hiring
The shop was bustling with activity, even though I was hearing more and more rumors about Aspirants poking around the various doorways scattered about the floors. It didn’t seem to be stopping anyone from venturing into the storefront—not ...
2023-11-02 17:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone, James Hunter here. We're dusting off an oldie but a goodie. I wrote MudMan in early 2016, back before I'd even started dabbling in LiRPG. It's dark, gritty urban fantasy with a whole lot of blood, gore, and action. We took this book down several years ago for a fresh round of edits ...
2023-10-31 22:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Seven – The Prize Booth
The prize booth was exactly what it sounded like.
There was a long, glass fronted cabinet filled with smaller, less valuable trinkets, while the bigger high-ticket items hung on the wall, grouped by price. Perched on top of the counters...
2023-10-31 20:30:07 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Six – Fun and Games
The four of us spent the next nine hours grinding through murder game after murder game, each more interesting and bat-shit crazy than the last. We started with Whack-A-Mole, which cost a Gold Loot Token to play. The price tag seemed awful steep,...
2023-10-26 19:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Five – Jungle Gym Jamboree
Stepping into Funtine Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree was like plunging into another dimension entirely.
This place wasn’t a simple mall arcade, like the place Croc and I had raided on the third floor. Nope. The Jamboree was a neon-d...
2023-10-24 19:10:22 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Four – Mana Displacement Effect
It took us the better part of a day to get to the Funtime Frank's Jungle Gym Jamboree—though between Jakob, Temperance, and Unerring Arrow, I’d never had an easier or more stress-free trip. Temperance seemed to intuitively k...
2023-10-20 15:45:01 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Three – Gear Up
The plan was simple, elegant, and as insane as it was ballsy.
Head over to Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree and grind the lesser blight infected Dwellers who lurked within, until eventually we were strong enough to take on Frank and his an...
2023-10-18 15:45:01 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Two – The Assignment
“Obviously, I don’t want to contract cancer- rabies or whatever in the fuck Blight actually is,” I said. “But I’m willing to listen if you think there’s a way I can strike a deal with the Hold.”
I briefly considered the golde...
2023-10-16 15:45:00 +0000 UTC View PostForty-One – Old History
I lounged in the breakroom across the cheap, circular table from Temperance the Murder bunny.
The gentle hum of voices drifted in through the open Employee’s Only door, accompanied by the squeak and scuff of distant feet. The store was busy...
2023-10-13 15:45:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe Ravenous Slender Essence was already up in the Soul Index and ready to go, but Clay didn’t trigger it. He couldn’t afford to throw away his one shot at breaking free of this attack just because he’d been too hasty.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. The thought flashed throu...
2023-10-12 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostForty – The Odd Couple
The burning blue shield vanished in an eyeblink and suddenly there was a bowie knife clutched in the Cendral’s hand. Jakob gave the blade a quick twirl, then drove it through Mohawk’s palm, pinning his hand to the floor.
“If you want to ...
2023-10-12 15:45:00 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Nine – Knight in Scaly Armor
My health was critically low and though I’d regained about eight points of Mana during the tussle, that wasn’t even enough to fire off a single Drain-O Bolt. The Sterilization Field vanished but the golden protection granted by the ...
2023-10-11 15:45:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Stop them!” Merciful Shepherd roared, letting the half-strangled Joe drop to the dirt, choking and holding a throat covered in livid bruises.
Half the guards attacking Alex split off to take on the oncoming horde of released prisoners. Multicolored flashes of magic lit up the night, ma...
2023-10-10 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Eight – Killing Blow
Croc and I needed a game plan before barreling in there like reckless morons.
I mean, we were morons for not just running away, but we could try to avoid being reckless. As my Dad always used to tell me growing up, if you’r...
2023-10-10 15:40:26 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Seven – The Red Hands
Early on the third day of what was beginning to feel like a doomed quest to nowhere, Croc and I blundered into a large school locker room, filled with rows of lockers, slick, mildew-covered tiled floors, and wooden benches that had probably en...
2023-10-05 19:06:19 +0000 UTC View PostA hundred times during weapons training at the dojo, Alex had warned her students about the “dog with a bone” trap—that instinctual urge to get into a tug-of-war with your opponent over a weapon—and she’d sworn to herself a hundred times that she would never get caught by it. But the se...
2023-10-05 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostClay stopped outside the unmarked door the squidhorse guard had taken him to just hours ago. Switching over to his Reptilian Infrared Detection, he scanned the interior. Two hostiles inside—the standard red body temp of a human and the green-yellow of an Inconceivable Cosmic Security Officer. T...
2023-10-03 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Six – Goosey Goosey Gander
After looting the corpses, I planted my VIP Doorway Anchor and popped into the store to distribute my five new Enhancement Points and swap around some Relics. The Doodles dropped a variety of Common and Uncommon Shards, but each one carri...
2023-09-29 20:39:06 +0000 UTC View Post“Ow!” Joe cupped his bleeding face in his hands. He turned huge, shocked eyes on the Dark Sentinel. “What the hell, guy?”
But Alex had already figured it out. She reset her feet, holding the combination kusarigama-thurible at the ready.
She’d been stupid not to use that heli...
2023-09-28 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post“This way,” Shifty said, waving for Clay and the others to follow him up the steel stairs to the ground floor. “First door on our right.”
The tower’s curved hall was deserted, but when they came to the door marked Control Room, it was locked and they could hear muffled vo...
2023-09-26 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Five – The School Zone
Hammer firmly in hand, Croc and I slipped out of the dilapidated classroom and into an equally rundown hallway with green walls, so pale they were almost white. Rows of rusty lockers adorned the wall to the right, a few of them closed, while ...
2023-09-25 18:39:33 +0000 UTC View PostClay jumped when the klaxons started going off. He had hoped his Beguiling Whisper had gotten out, but so long had passed since he sent the message that he was starting to wonder. Either it had worked and Alex and Joe were on their way in or this was one hell of a coincidence.
Boots and cli...
2023-09-21 17:00:56 +0000 UTC View Post“…and that, dear viewers, is the tale of how Lumberjack Joe and the Jaeger squad defeated yet another menace to wasteland society while he was drinking his juice in the IZ,” Joe concluded.
Alex checked her shotgun, then Clay’s Wyrd West revolver, making sure for the hundredth time t...
2023-09-19 17:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Four – The Seventh Floor
“You know, I like that Jakob,” Croc said as we exited through the sliding glass doors by the front register.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I replied. “You like everyone.”
“That is true and a fair point, but this ...
2023-09-15 17:30:43 +0000 UTC View PostClay caught Griff’s sharp one-eyed gaze. They hadn’t planned for a cell full of people, but if they were going to get out of this prison, they would need everybody in their cell on board. Or at least not actively working against them.
“What if I told you we were breaking out of this p...
2023-09-14 17:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post“I can’t believe our stream isn’t blowing up,” Joe grumbled, face lit with the gray-blue glow of his suit’s arm screen. “I filled in all the keyword slots—big government conspiracy revealed, cool squad saves the day, David and Goliath fight of the century… We’ve only got one vie...
2023-09-12 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Three – R & R
I handed over a duffel bag worth of Elixirs to Jakob and he headed off to one of the tents in the back—compliments of the house—for a peaceful night of rest and relaxation, while I spent the next few hours sorting through the enormous pile of ...
2023-09-12 15:33:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe passenger window in the seat in front of Clay whirred open, letting in sand and hot air and one sweaty, pissed-off Triple S agent.
“What the hell, man?” he snapped, plopping into his seat. “Just gonna fucking leave me back there?”
“I said ‘abort,’” the jerk in the ...
2023-09-07 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostUPDATE FROM JAMES: Hey everyone. I am SOOOOOO sorry for the irrgular posts. DragonCon messed me up good and I thought I'd be able to get some writing done, but nope. Not one word. But I'm back home, feeling great, and super excited with where the story is headed. Expect regular p...
2023-09-06 21:03:43 +0000 UTC View Post“I can’t believe I let you idiots talk me into this,” Alex said, shaking her head. “I look like a doofus.”
“You’re the only one of us who could fit into Rhett’s clothes.” Clay leaned over the back of the dune buggy seat to give his wife a nudge with his shoulder. Not obvio...
2023-09-05 17:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post