Letting out a sigh, I focused on my magic once more. It had been about a little over a week since the survivors at Apple Gate Farm had started to try killing off the Undead, a task they had achieved limited success with. Lia had ventured out most nights, even on those I remained behind to experim...
2023-05-19 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostThinning out the ranks of the Undead was a massive undertaking. I hadn’t truly conceptualised their numbers, not actually pictured what it meant that there were only about four hundred people holed up at Apple Gate Farm. There had been around half a million people living within the city limits,...
2023-05-17 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostPlans had been made in the morning, plans to destroy as many Undead as possible while leaving as many Shattered as possible behind. It wasn’t that we liked Shattered better but, as far as I had seen, there were two factions competing for control over the basic Undead. One faction was composed o...
2023-05-15 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post“Are you being serious right now?” Cassie asked once I finished telling the leadership of Apple Gate Farm about ...
2023-05-14 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostJust a little over a month ago, Jason would have been out partying on a Friday night. Drinking, dancing, having fun with his buddies, and doing his best to get lucky at night's end. Just one month ago.
But then, like they said in one of the old animes he’d watched as a kid, everything cha...
2023-05-13 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostGiven that we didn’t manage to get back to our lair, we were trapped near the edge of the city, hiding out in a basement to pass the day by. Without my notes on alchemy and general crafting, I couldn’t really work on those, so I decided to spend the day doing something almost as interesting. ...
2023-05-12 16:00:28 +0000 UTC View PostUltimately, escaping the Undead’s encirclement wasn’t a significant problem. By noticing it early enough, we had managed to avoid the original encirclement and once we were on the move, the Undead simply couldn’t keep up.
That didn’t mean we had been able to simply traipse off into ...
2023-05-10 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostBack on the ground, we reunited with Silva and Alex, both of whom had opted to remain on the ground. Silva for purely practical reasons, a dog wasn’t that good at climbing ladders, especially not steep ones, while Alex had taken up an observing position, possibly to make sure no trouble found u...
2023-05-08 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostOnce again, I stood on my balcony. There was a part of me that felt amused at the familiarity of the location, the sense of belonging that welled up within me as I stepped onto it, looking into the night as I had done hundreds, maybe even a thousand times before. The odd thing was, everything had...
2023-05-07 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostWatching Lia work was quite fascinating. I could see how her magic was charging the circle she had drawn and watched as faint lines of it began to sink into the trapped racoon. Her attempt at turning it turned what was a battle between the strange influence of necrotic energy and the vital energi...
2023-05-06 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostIt was amazing how easy it was to turn a room full of destroyed junk, with nothing functional beyond its physical shape, into a well-equipped campsite. The only thing previously present in the room we truly used was the grate in the floor, allowing water that spilt from the laundry machines to dr...
2023-05-05 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostFor once, there was nothing I could really do but remain hidden, watching my companions fight. It was, strangely, quite interesting, not to fight alongside them allowed me to focus on observing them. I could see a rather impressive difference in Lia’s performance, compared to our usual training...
2023-05-03 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostLooking at the familiar neighbourhood, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. There were parts that hadn’t changed at all, they looked almost like they had before the change hit, with only minor damage from the past thirty-odd days. Other parts were simply gone, the houses nothing but blackened r...
2023-05-01 16:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post“So, what do you think those creatures you’ve seen yesterday might have been?” I asked Lia, as we took a break from training. She only shrugged in response, trying to control her breathing. After a little while, she managed to respond verbally.
“Whatever they were, there were four o...
2023-04-30 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostLooting the tea store was even more worthwhile than I had ever imagined.
As soon as we reached our lair after the successful looting, I decided to brew myself a cup of tea. I wanted to see just how good a tea needed to be to command such a, at least in my eyes, ridiculous price. Maybe it wa...
2023-04-29 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe night after talking with the leadership of the local survivors, Silva, Lia and I were once more heading into the city. Not to actually hunt more ...
2023-04-28 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post“This was…” Arlan began, only that his sentence never finished. His voice simply trailed off, unable to find the right words to describe the emotions he felt.
“Scary? Awe-inspiring? Discombobulating? Intimidating? Incongruous? Unnerving? Take your pick, I think they all fit quite we...
2023-04-26 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostListening to them describe their retreat from the city was quite interesting. It certainly demonstrated just how carefully they had planned, for things to go off as smoothly as this, especially for a retreat in the middle of the night. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to coordinate a group o...
2023-04-24 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostAs usual, the first indication Lia and I got to alert us of our visitors was a series of loud, resounding barks. Silva had her pack well trained, making sure that nobody could sneak up on the brewery during the day-time and in return, I made sure to heal any injuries the dogs incurred and let the...
2023-04-23 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post“So, want to head back to our place or to the Farm and give the people there an idea of what the city is like right now?” Lia asked as we made our way across the fields away from town.
“We probably should give them a warning, just to be on the safe side. We might have to spend the day...
2023-04-22 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostWe might have underestimated just how many Undead would be drawn to our little battle. Instead of maybe a dozen or three enemies, as we would have drawn while Shattered roamed the streets, there were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand. After a little over an hour, no more enemies managed to ...
2023-04-21 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostOur battle on the rooftop had started in a rather anticlimactic way, after preparing our defences, I had stood at the edge of the roof and started launching hailstones at the undead shambling around down in the streets. I even managed to get one Shattered with a nicely placed Icicle, putting just...
2023-04-19 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostGetting to the edge of town was trivial. The beasts that had roamed the fields during prior nights were gone, they likely fled during the night and when we reached the town, I realised I really couldn’t fault them for it. When we left the city, the smell had started to get truly bad. Not bad en...
2023-04-17 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post“You should have the other dogs start to accompany the people at Apple Gate Farm. Getting them used to humans is the smart thing. I’ve got little doubt that humans, or at least culture-making races, will regain their superiority in time. Hitching your fate to them from the start will likely b...
2023-04-16 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Lia and I theorised what might have happened with the wave, we did the only intelligent thing. First, I fed Lia, then we went to bed. The feeding was still a somewhat surreal experience, somewhere between what I imagined nursing a baby would feel like, feeding a pet and caring for a child, ...
2023-04-15 16:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I returned to the brewery, things were weirdly...
2023-04-14 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostAN: I was tempted to name the chapter "Elfin Lied", to honour Guardevoir's elven appearance, but decided against it. Not my best title, but eh...
Humans could get used to anything. In this case, the people living at Wu’s Gym had gotten used to the earthquakes, despite the fact that earthquakes hadn’t happened where they lived. Sadly, the change, as some called it, had, well, changed that. No longer did they enjoy tectonic stability, in...
2023-04-12 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post