The deepest part of a being’s magical core was normally meant to be filled with a swirling mess of orbs of power, one for each rank, with the more simple components of one’s power flowing through the space in between.
“Stats” for humans using a System, the various ways to allocate t...
2024-06-09 17:16:55 +0000 UTC View PostWell, that just happened. But at least he had a new dragon pattern.
Thomas spent a few minutes reinforcing his dungeon just in case there was immediate retaliation, then summoned the creature.
Tried to, at least.
“Where is that damn pattern?” he muttered, barely even aware o...
2024-06-08 15:16:09 +0000 UTC View Post“Either that thing is lying, or … or one of the nastiest beings in existence just returned from the dead,” Elias said slowly. There had been no need for Thomas to relay the dragon’s pronouncement, that was how loud it had been.
“No long time for long explanations, give me somethin...
2024-06-05 15:31:23 +0000 UTC View PostApocalypse Redux 6 is being released in two weeks and the book has been fully edited and formatted.
I'd greatly appreciate anyone who left a good review on Amazon when it does come out, but that's not what this post is about.
If anyone is interested in reading this book on Kindle, or...
2024-06-03 18:08:13 +0000 UTC View Post“Elias, System’s glitched again!” Thomas called out, but by the time the fairy showed up, he was laughing hysterically.
“What’s so funny?” Elias frowned.
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand, it’s … it’s an Earth thing,” Thomas told him.
It was ridiculous, but th...
2024-06-02 22:01:13 +0000 UTC View PostCameron Jones normally wasn’t one for computers. They were fragile, finicky, and you practically needed to be a rocket scientist to use even their simplest functions.
But this “System” malarkey, even if it looked exactly like those computer games his grandchildren kept w...
2024-05-30 21:00:51 +0000 UTC View PostEwart Jones had been in the service of his country in one way or another since he’d graduated college, though most of that had been spent as a part of MI5.
The world might have changed, his loyalty would not.
And here and now, he had something that would catapult this great nation t...
2024-05-22 17:49:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe human body was weird. In fact, in some respects, it could be downright schizophrenic.
Particularly when it came to taking damage.
Humans had fallen from airplanes and survived, and yet, simply stumbling could lead to someone winding up with an intracranial hemorrhage and that woul...
2024-05-22 17:08:13 +0000 UTC View Post“Do we look for the village?” Smith asked.
“Absolutely,” Jaclyn said. “We know Fields isn’t there right now, and he might attack us on sight if he sees us snooping around.”
“Let’s go then.”
***
It had been easy to follow Fields’ trail. He hadn’t cov...
2024-05-22 16:23:00 +0000 UTC View PostName: Jaclyn Abrams
Race: Human
Class: Anima Monk
F-Rank, Level 10 -> 16/20
Class Abilities
Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)
Statistics (0 points available)
Body: 40 -> 60
Magic: 0
Mind: 20 -> 40
Spirit: 19 ->...
2024-05-22 10:14:06 +0000 UTC View PostJaclyn sighed as they began to advance into the corridor. She’d lost her gun, dropped while she’d been flung around like a ragdoll, and they hadn’t found it even after an exhaustive search. Chances were, it had wound up down a grate somewhere, or gone through a window, sadly. Explaining tha...
2024-05-20 17:52:29 +0000 UTC View Post“How do you think they’re doing out there?” Smith asked, once again driving the car.
“Might be going well, might be going horrible,” Jaclyn shrugged.
“The kid seemed pretty confident, and if he’s read Robinson Crusoe, he might even have the right idea,” Smith shrugged....
2024-05-18 19:06:39 +0000 UTC View PostIt was at this point that the Landwyrm finally began to move towards the Dungeon. It was just as big as the first of its kind to enter the Dungeon, but it was completely free of any of the injuries that the first one had suffered at the hands of Thomas’ wyverns.
The final challenge. Every...
2024-05-15 18:57:26 +0000 UTC View PostDinosaurs had an undeniable coolness factor, they were big and powerful beasts of ancient times that inspired fear and awe millions of years after their deaths.
Even so, they weren’t nearly as dominant as Thomas felt they should have been. The scutellosaurses and the camarasaurus in parti...
2024-05-14 22:18:20 +0000 UTC View PostThomas had thought the jungle was insane before, but that had mostly been due to the fact that it had held a lot of big and nasty creatures. Lesser dragons, both in the sky and on the ground, magical rodents with hair that could turn razor sharp and be shot like arrows, lizardpeople, and the coun...
2024-05-13 20:11:02 +0000 UTC View Post“Do you really think we could have taken out that sabertooth with a rocket launcher?” Jaclyn asked.
“We could have probably killed it, but it’d have been a terrible idea. I mean, we couldn’t have gotten more than what, thirty meters from the tiger when we fired it, and at that poi...
2024-05-11 18:51:11 +0000 UTC View Post“That cop was a cultivator, wasn’t she?” Thomas finally asked once everyone was out of the Dungeon. “Crazy physical strength, but no obvious magical powers.”
“Cultivators don’t progress that quickly, they need time to pack all the energy they get into their cultivation method....
2024-05-08 19:48:57 +0000 UTC View PostTheir armored personnel carriers spread out before the car in a semi-circle, half the guns aimed out at the jungle, the other half pointing up towards the museum’s roof.
Then, Jaclyn’s borrowed radio crackled to life.
“The orc says that the museum’s a Dungeon, some kind of mon...
2024-05-08 12:01:24 +0000 UTC View PostGetting up in the morning was rarely fun.
Getting a six-year-old to get up was a nightmare … under normal circumstances. And the current circumstances were a mess.
… Which was why Jaclyn decided to shelve standard parenting and let Eve have a full English breakfast on a weekday. A...
2024-05-02 18:14:42 +0000 UTC View Post“Morning!” Teddy called out when he caught sight of Elias at the cafe’s entrance. Apparently, he was a bit of a morning person.
And judging by how she was eyeing a nearby coffee cup, seemingly on the verge of chucking it at her “roommate’s” head, Bethany was decidedly not 2024-04-29 21:14:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Kids were living paradoxes. Anytime they wanted you to do something, by the time you got around to doing it, they wanted the exact opposite.
Most recently, that had manifested in Eve literally falling asleep on the way to the hotel and having to be carried the rest of the way, yet exploding...
2024-04-26 19:14:30 +0000 UTC View PostNaturally, the first thing Thomas did was replace most of his defenders, though he didn’t re-summon the insane number of boomslangs all over the place.
And immediately after that, he increased his domain to include the dinosaur section and added a new wall in the corridor between the two ...
2024-04-23 19:26:53 +0000 UTC View PostThe first thing to do had been to have all his creatures get into positions that couldn’t be seen from the door to ensure the wyrm couldn’t just snipe everyone without even going inside.
And the second would have been to start swapping out existing creatures, but in the end, he didn’t...
2024-04-21 14:49:31 +0000 UTC View PostAs it turned out, making hot coffee was damn hard. So hard, in fact, that Thomas would up setting a jaguar on fire.
The idea had been simple, heat up coffee in an appropriate container, then somehow scoop it out with a cup, and then absorb that cup.
Putting that into practice...
2024-04-18 19:06:43 +0000 UTC View PostLeaving the jungle felt almost as surreal as entering it had been as much of the noise normally associated with civilization returned with a vengeance.
Shouting, demands and pleas for help, cursing, general sounds of discontent … on any other day, this would likely have been deemed a riot...
2024-04-17 14:48:26 +0000 UTC View PostThe woman, who’d introduced herself as Bethany Miller, wound up spinning a rather terrifying tale of a cataclysmic disaster.
Thomas hadn’t been awake for any of that, but she and her daughter had lived through it.
A gigantic crack had appeared in the sky and then, a massive jungle...
2024-04-14 21:08:34 +0000 UTC View Post“I need an avatar to talk to people directly, right?” Thomas asked. Having Elias share all his knowledge meant he should have theoretically gotten all the information he possibly could have needed, but in practice, he’d only properly retained a tiny part of the fairy’s teachings. He had v...
2024-04-12 19:48:08 +0000 UTC View PostJaclyn was already moving before she’d even noticed the incoming attack, twisting to the side as she brought her gun around to aim at the thing that tried to flay open her back with its claws.
Its skin was mottled various shades of brown and green that seemed to fail as camouflag...
2024-04-10 17:41:09 +0000 UTC View PostLondon’s city center should have been a ghost town. In many ways, that would have been less terrifying than the reality of the situation.
No one knew how the city had been turned into a jungle, or anything about it, really, save the fact that it had, in fact, happened and that the effect ...
2024-04-09 13:04:02 +0000 UTC View Post“Pick the wall-climbing power,” Elias said immediately. “That increases the number of spots they can attack from and gives them a chance to reach spots they normally wouldn’t be able to. Hidey-holes are too obvious and you can get stealth from proper Dungeon design. Wall climbing, on the ...
2024-04-07 19:36:51 +0000 UTC View Post