Lloyd mumbled as he watched Albert disappear from sensor range and approach the Pillar. Something had disturbed the sensors, before it too disappeared into the alien structure.
“There it is. The third party. SpaceOps just arrived.”
“That’s not good.” Samantha said.
“...
2023-07-06 15:44:05 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert began to perform the sequence of mental procedures necessary to successfully teleport. He went through them all with incredible speed, quicker than he had ever managed to, or even thought possible. However…
[Teleportation denied.]
The shield was back online. ...
2023-07-05 12:40:51 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert watched it all unfold in slow-motion. The dragon roared, and its breath attack was unleashed upon the BSA camp. The military was shooting everything they had at it, but the breath simply obliterated anything in its path. It was made of countless sharp stones, held together by brown swirlin...
2023-07-05 12:40:33 +0000 UTC View Post“It’s a stupid plan. It might work.” Lloyd said. “Do it.”
Albert laughed. He took out the rocket launcher, both it and its explosive missiles having been upgraded as much as possible with [Magical Item Creation].
“Wish me luck.” He said, and teleported.
He appeared...
2023-07-03 13:42:52 +0000 UTC View PostSamantha and Lloyd Cromwell both sat in the control room, watching the live video feed coming from a series of cameras embedded in Albert’s combat gear. He had been given every possible tool they could think of, basically everything short of nuclear weaponry was available to him in his inventor...
2023-07-02 12:20:43 +0000 UTC View PostAfter seeing that there had been no naturally occurring daily quest for more than a day, Albert literally tried blackmailing the system into giving him one. The system did not budge. Which meant that, with no daily quest, the only things he could tackle were old dusty quests he had been procrasti...
2023-06-30 14:03:39 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert arrived at the Lair before noon. He found his mother working on the computers in the newly retrofitted Control Room, connecting a multitude of devices and rearranging the many things in there with the help of the sentient building. As soon as she spotted him coming through the door to chec...
2023-06-29 22:48:31 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert decided to walk his way back to the Lair instead of teleporting. A lot happened and he needed some alone time to unwind, to come to grips with all the new changes and, honestly, to regain a sense of connection with reality itself.
There was also another reason, actually. The forest. ...
2023-06-28 18:21:02 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert felt the cold, wooden arms of the last surviving dryad wrap around his body from behind like a deadly embrace. He barely had time to realize the predicament he was in before the dryad began to crush him in a death grip, and Albert felt his internal organs shift and his bones strain under t...
2023-06-26 23:34:39 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert saw reality recede back from him, the world growing distant as if he was driving backwards into a long, dark tunnel. He felt tired. He wanted to sleep.
No.
Not like this.
He was supposed to learn from his mistakes.
Fuck it.
He grit his teeth, letting go of his...
2023-06-24 16:48:30 +0000 UTC View PostElvenhome village and the Lair were located at the two opposite ends of a narrow valley between tall impassable mountains. The valley itself hosted a variety of ecosystems. There was a conifer forest of tall, imposing trees and sparse underbrush, permeated with the smell of sap and pine needles. ...
2023-06-23 15:44:17 +0000 UTC View PostSamantha Cromwell was, until recently, a woman of two opposites.
On the work side of things, she was ruthless and merciless. She never stopped at anything in order to achieve her goals, no matter how deep down the path of evil the depravation of her acts brought her. She was willing to make...
2023-06-22 11:01:28 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert paced around the Lair, nursing what must have been the worst and most persistent headache he had ever had. If this was what happened after only one use of an unstable skill, he didn’t even want to begin thinking about what would happen when he inevitably would have to use more o...
2023-06-20 16:41:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe car ride seemed to stretch on forever. The bland, flat fields devoid of any natural life after the strange freezes of the last few weeks were brown and barren. The road was bumpy and the asphalt uneven, not yet fixed by the slow machine of bureaucracy in charge of maintaining the roads.
Nobody knew of the existence of the biolab.
“You sure it’s safe?” Albert asked.
“Yep.” The Lair replied through the phone, in a similar way to how it used to communicate with Samantha when it was still the Quadrangle.
“Okay then, just wake me up if you need me. Analy...
2023-06-15 20:24:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe heavy slab of concrete began to move after a loud hiss signaled that the mechanisms inside had awakened. Lloyd Cromwell took a step back from the keypad and stared at the moving door with a surprised look on his face, unwilling to accept the fact even as it happened.
“Unreal.” He gr...
2023-06-14 16:00:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe day Albert dreaded finally arrived.
“What should we watch?” He asked, fiddling with the hard drive plugged into his television.
Marc was sitting on the sofa, staring into nothingness. Albert had been warned about his friend’s… condition, as Marc’s roommate put i...
2023-06-13 17:05:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe fundamentals of the new skill the system wanted Albert to learn, Dodge, were all about being fluid like water. About emptying the mind and letting the unconscious take over, trusting one’s instincts.
“I know that you think you are all set now.” The version of the Albert who always...
2023-06-12 12:10:28 +0000 UTC View PostThird chapter of the pre-weekend burst of three!
***
Since he had time to waste before having to return home, Albert decided to move on to the other item in his agenda. Considering that he didn’t need to study the teleportation device anymore, he was free to use his daily charge of ...
2023-06-08 20:23:18 +0000 UTC View PostThere was an office on the 92nd floor of one of the tallest buildings in Temalas City. And inside that office was a large man, built like a tank yet wearing a blue suit and tie, standing by the window and sipping a glass of bourbon. His guilty pleasure. He needed the booze. He didn’t usually dr...
2023-06-08 20:22:46 +0000 UTC View PostQuest: Coreful Setup Complete!
· The Quadrangle core is now in your possession, but after it was removed from its cradle it fell into a dormant state. It will need additional materials in order to be awakened from its dormant stat...
2023-06-08 20:22:07 +0000 UTC View PostNew Quest: Leviathan Diversion II
· Acquire AM-III glass.
· Reward: Minor ring of protection upgrade.
“It’s a very particular kind of glass made of carbon.” Albert’s mother said, after he told her about the quest. ...
2023-06-07 20:27:08 +0000 UTC View PostThank you to all new patrons ^^
Quest: Leviathan Diversion I Complete!
· Acquire 25 kilograms of pure elemental iron.
· Step 1/?? for the construction of the Time Severed Containment Field to ...
2023-06-06 16:19:45 +0000 UTC View PostThere were memories, tucked away in a remote corner of Samantha Cromwell’s mind. Memories of a childhood she could not remember, and of which she always thought little. Save for the vague recollection of having had a loving father, a missing mother, and some sparse friends, she always thought h...
2023-06-05 20:35:31 +0000 UTC View PostSamantha Cromwell sat on one of the tall kitchen chairs, perched on it like an angry vulture, slowly sipping a glass of whiskey. She was not one to drink, and the first sip of alcohol in several months didn’t feel nearly as good as she had hoped it would.
Who was she kidding? She hated wh...
2023-06-04 15:49:42 +0000 UTC View PostSometimes there are habits, customs that people follow, thinking them as absolute rules that cannot be broken, bent or negotiated. Ignoring that, in most cases, what are thought to be ironclad rules are simply assumptions one makes about their situation. It’s a bad habit, so to speak, of the br...
2023-06-03 12:22:08 +0000 UTC View PostDungeons are a strange place. Are they natural phenomena, born out of mana, or are they put there by higher powers? Are the cores sentient? The Quadrangle surely looks like it is, but nowadays AI has shown us that it doesn’t matter whether it looks like something is sentient or sapient or at le...
2023-06-02 14:46:43 +0000 UTC View PostDarkness cleared, and vision slowly returned. There was a magical density to the air, on this side of the portal, that was missing in the real world. Its taste was, just like on the other side, similar and yet different from the magic the surrounded Tryte. If Albert had to guess, this was an astr...
2023-06-01 13:25:41 +0000 UTC View PostFlight Oceanic 416 was several hours away from its destination of Singapore. And, it appeared for a good moment that it was destined to never arrive there. Not in one piece. Vibrations shook the cabin and the passenger space, as screams and yells of terror were drowned in the noise. The metal of ...
2023-05-31 11:44:20 +0000 UTC View PostPeople walked about. They moved like a herd of chaotic animals, going here and there, occupying whatever spaces they were allowed to and queueing up in interminable, long lines whenever a new gate opened. Albert had never been to an airport before, but he didn’t find it confusing. He thought he...
2023-05-29 20:35:12 +0000 UTC View Post