Tsaimath

Chapter 965

Wandering into the primal forest that had taken over what should have been fields was a fascinating experience. Some of the plants were reasonably similar to those we had encountered in the forest near our home while others were, well, they were neither reasonable nor similar to anything I had ev...

Chapter 964

The Charland should have ended my ability to be surprised by the changes brought about by the coming of the Astral River. And yet, despite knowing that the system had somehow brought an entire industrial area into existence before spatially compressing it so it fit in an area far smaller external...

Chapter 963

With the Shrine done, there wasn’t all that much we could do in this area. Sure, the Charland hadn’t given up all its mysteries but I doubted we’d be able to probe them, simply because of their complexity. It was a piece of bloody complicated magic, far beyond my current level, and what lit...

Interlude: Divine Insight

In a seemingly endless, silvery-grey expanse, three figures sat and stared into the void, their eyes easily piercing through layers of reality and allowing them to observe. Far away, their power was channelled by one of their mortal servants, a young child slowly growing into her power and still ...

Chapter 962

Amusingly, there were no dreams that night. I had expected a visitation from Hecate but unless I had managed to forget my experiences in Her strange dreamscape, there hadn’t been one. Instead, I was greeted with a notification that I had completed the quest to build Her shrine, with an added mo...

Chapter 961

Even for a relative novice, the design imparted to me by Lady Hecate had obvious Greek influence. A geometric arrangement of narrow columns to carry the roof, the walls more to protect from the wind and weather than to bear loads, the design was both graceful and somewhat mysterious, greatly arou...

Chapter 960

Luna and I had taken a bit of time to find a good place for the shrine we had been asked to build. The biggest problem was that the area was fairly flat, with rather sandy and unstable soil, meaning we could hardly dig down, as we had done before. There was no useful tree I could use to fortify t...

Chapter 959

Studying the scattered dust didn’t get me very far. There wasn’t anything special about it, at least as far as I could tell, other than its exposure to a lot of Ice Astral Power, something fairly obvious. However, what I considered interesting, was that I couldn’t detect any Life or Death M...

Chapter 958

It took almost an hour of snuggling for Luna to have her fill of physical affection. During that time, she told me in fairly general terms how her time in Lady Hecate’s realm had been, making me realise just how long that had been for her. It sounded like she had experienced at least a year, ma...

Chapter 957

Outside, I could finally focus on actively testing my new ability. While it was fascinating to study my companions with it and draw conclusions from the way the animating power of their bodies moved through them, I wasn’t about to try doing anything with those powers. That sounded like an incre...

Chapter 956

Walking around our shelter, I realised that only Silva was currently awake, keeping guard. A quick, somewhat onesided conversation between us told me that she had received her rewards but when I tried to find out, she only gave me a wide, canine grin and refused to even hint at them. It was just ...

Chapter 955

Projecting my soul outwards was only the first step when it came to perceiving souls. Once I managed that first step, the next was to change the path I naturally channelled it through to the one desired, in my case that meant I had to channel it through my eyes instead of my throat, so I would be...

Chapter 954

The way out of the Charland was comparatively simple, compared to the way in. We didn’t run into any additional large monsters and even the number of smaller critters we had to face seemed to be a little diminished. I wasn’t sure what that might mean. Had we managed to cut down their numbers ...

Chapter 953

“So, what did you find?” I asked Luna, once she was done with her meditation, or maybe calling it a prayer would be more fitting, given that I was fairly certain she had communed with her Goddess while meditating. Now that she was done with it and we were moving out of the area sound the inne...

Interlude: Survivors 602

If one could say one thing about the group of five that had taken over the cave near the lake, it was that they all were incredibly stubborn. Finding out that some strange creature made up of tentacle-like vines was living in the lake had only been the first step. The next was, obviously, to deal...

Chapter 952

The death of the Serpentia Triad coincided with the completion of Luna’s ritual, possibly adding some EXP to the total I gained, and propelling me to reach level eighty. Nearby, I could see Silva relax and dissipate the powers she had called upon to utterly devastate the Triad, shrinking back t...

Chapter 951

It did not take long for the source of the roaring to become visible as it was moving out into the open around the crater. That first glance made me blink in confusion for a moment, uncertain of what I should call the roaring creature. It had three heads, all somewhat different in colour, making ...

Chapter 950

If there was one thing that was absolute proof of the importance Lady Hecate attached to the analysis of the central crater, it was the zone of protection Luna and Silva laid down before Luna started to try to understand the crystal growth in the crater. And the crater itself, the strange Astral ...

Chapter 949

Dealing with the poisoned ground was a chore and a half but it was also fairly interesting. It gave me some fairly interesting insights into the behaviour of mixed Astral Power, something I hadn’t really dealt with in the physical plane, only within the Astral River where I wasn’t bound by my...

Chapter 948

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on your priorities, the two Scorchipedes turned out to be sources of remarkably good resources, meaning we had to take the time to harvest them. Not doing so would have been a complete and utter waste, tough, on the bright side, it also meant I had m...

Chapter 947

As Silva bounded to the side, avoiding the skittering legs of the Scorchipede, its companion wasn’t idle and was already moving to engage. In an attempt to box us in between them and thus limit our mobility, it was moving towards Luna and me, lunging forward with a wide-open maw. For a brief mo...

Chapter 946

The initial parts of our incursion into the central area went remarkably similar to previous trips into the Charland. Sure, we tried to speed things up but ultimately, there was only so much we could do to hurry without taking undue risks. Alone, I had been able to ignore most enemies, simply bec...

Chapter 945

There was a certain irony in the fact that I had taken the longest to prepare for our group excursion into the depths of the Charland, even compared to Alex. Granted, most of that came from the fact that I didn’t habitually prepare large amounts of supplies that I might need, instead relying al...

Chapter 944

“Mom, come on, wake up!” normally, I would have been quietly amused at Luna’s childish exuberance. Far too often, she tried to project a mature facade, far beyond anything a child of her age should have. The facade had its uses, especially when it came to dealing with the realities of our c...

Chapter 943

Two tasks, so simple and harmless when described. Well, one of them actually was fairly simple and harmless, it was just a repeat of previous actions, namely to establish yet another shrine with an attached library. Nothing we hadn’t done yet, just this time, I’d also get a direct reward for ...

Chapter 942

“Greetings, Jade,” the familiar, tritonal voice of Hecate addressed me before I had that important moment to gather my bearings. Before, the Goddess had always given me that moment but now, I felt like there was something different in Her voice. An impatience, or maybe eagerness, I wasn’t q...

Chapter 941

By the time I got back to the others, the Sun was already high in the sky. Without my conjured parasol, I’d be in for a bad time, though my various traits were helping with that particular vulnerability. Direct Sunlight would still make me suffer, especially as the clouds I had used the previou...

Interlude: Survivors 407

• AN: Something went wrong with scheduling the post, my bad. Enjoy an interlude of people covering their backsides. 

To some, the gathering might have looked strange. There was no board room, no grand and elaborate table, no pomp or circumstances. It was j...

Chapter 940

After stepping back from the crater, I explored the area a little further but not for too long. Not only did I need to watch the time I spent before heading back, I also needed to conserve my Astral Power, a difficult task with the strange Astral Power in the air constantly damaging me if I stopp...

Chapter 939

The rest of my marathon through the night was fairly uneventful. A few more monsters tried to get their pound of flesh from me but I managed to evade them all with a combination of speed, stealth and superior mobility. Occasionally, I had to block the odd attack with a bit of conjured Ice but I h...