The centipedes practically stood still while he killed them, offering no appreciable resistance to his spear strikes. The moment they were dead, he was in the air, rising on a powerful jump and spear in both hands to swing the bladed edge through an arm like a lumberjack felling a sapling. It was...
2025-01-01 00:55:00 +0000 UTC View PostWhen he’d been a child, Velik had learned some basic woodcraft from a transient woodsman who’d come through the frontier. His parents had quickly and loudly objected to their son spending time with a vagabond, no matter how good natured the man was. Velik had never seen him again.
The c...
2025-01-01 00:54:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe first indication that he wasn’t alone was a peculiar plopping sound that Velik had first heard a few days ago in the upper reaches of the flesh caves. His eyes snapped over to the entrance, but of course there was nothing to see. There hadn’t been last time, either.
He’d only been...
2025-01-01 00:53:41 +0000 UTC View PostI took a few seconds to just breathe. It was over. Ammun was gone. His soul had been released from its phylactery and passed into the reincarnation cycle. Someday, it would return as a new person, one without all its memories from over a thousand years as a lich. That was probably for the best, a...
2024-12-31 13:50:45 +0000 UTC View PostBones were a lot more fragile than people gave them credit for. Comparatively, they were stronger than skin and muscle, but in the grand scheme of things, there was a reason nobody built tools out of animal bones when they had other, better resources on hand.
That was before magic came into...
2024-12-30 13:48:44 +0000 UTC View PostHi guys, I meant to put this as an author's note in today's post but forgot. I'm taking a week off from DB so I can focus on the last few chapters of my other story, and also because it's both the holidays and because I am very sick right now. Next chapter will be Monday, Jan 6th. Sorry about the...
2024-12-27 14:25:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe fleshy coating on the walls wasn’t uniform in any way. It had varying texture, smooth in some places and rough in others, and a smattering of scars. There were long, jagged slices that had healed into puckered scars and small circles from where it had been stabbed or punctured all over. Vei...
2024-12-27 13:38:05 +0000 UTC View PostA band of force girdled my stomach, serving as a tourniquet to put pressure on a wound I couldn’t really feel. It was serious enough that had I still had a normal human body, it might have been the end of me, but as things currently stood, it was more of an annoying distraction that happened to...
2024-12-27 13:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostMuch like the scorplings, the monsters that the system called stone leg centipedes attacked with the strength of numbers and a venomous bite on their side. Unlike the scorplings, however, they were easily able to cling to the walls and ceiling while skittering around at full speed.
Velik’...
2024-12-26 15:14:13 +0000 UTC View PostAmmun’s shadow rejoined the fight about twenty seconds later, which, while entirely expected, didn’t make things any easier for me to deal with. Suddenly, I had twice as many spells coming at me, with a disproportionate number of them being attacks on my mind. That was a losing strategy on Am...
2024-12-26 15:12:26 +0000 UTC View PostVelik paused in front of the corpse of the scorpling brood mother. There was less of it there, somehow, like the dungeon itself was slowly reclaiming it. He didn’t have time to stand and watch, but he imagined an invisible mouth taking tiny little bites out of the monster, just nibbling away un...
2024-12-25 14:42:38 +0000 UTC View PostI was willing to bet that Ammun hadn’t felt pain in a thousand years or more. His soul might be writhing in tortured agony every moment, but the copy of his mind that piloted that skeleton didn’t feel any of that. Getting lit up by a mana burn spell was not the way to gently ease someone back...
2024-12-25 14:40:26 +0000 UTC View PostSildra had been impressed with Jensen’s work. He was quick, decisive, and devastatingly accurate with that bow of his. When the monsters had threatened to overwhelm them, he’d magically pulled something out of nowhere to turn the battle around. She’d been quite taken by his performance.
... 2024-12-24 14:28:39 +0000 UTC View PostUp to this point, we’d mostly been testing each other and buying time. At first, I’d thought that Ammun was just stalling to give his worker golems more time to build his control silo, but as soon as I’d applied any cursory amount of critical thinking to that idea, it fell apart. It didn’...
2024-12-24 14:25:07 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: As of today, the $10 tier is fully online and is 20 chapters ahead of RR (15 chapters ahead of this tier).
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Velik ended up spending another hour taking care of the remaining scorplings. Rather than fight them in the cavern, he retreated to the tunn...
2024-12-23 12:38:59 +0000 UTC View PostI’d done my best to keep this conversation going now that I was here, not because I wanted to talk to my former apprentice, but to give my shadow time to break the first ward stone. As soon as that happened, the fight was guaranteed to kick off, and I’d have to hold my own against Ammun, his ...
2024-12-23 12:36:28 +0000 UTC View PostAs far as defensive traits went, sheer size was a good one. Even with a vulnerability identified and in reach, Velik lacked the range to give the brood mother a deep, fatal wound. The champion elite was by far the largest monster he’d ever fought. The fake Velik was a close second, but it just ...
2024-12-21 02:20:14 +0000 UTC View PostAs many scorplings as he’d killed, Velik didn’t have much trouble keeping up with the waves chasing him down. He was nimble enough to keep them from reaching him in groups larger than two or three, but there were some issues avoiding the champion elite. It still hadn’t focused its attention...
2024-12-21 02:19:55 +0000 UTC View PostVelik felt the exact moment the sun went down, even though he hadn’t seen the sky in going on three days now. A measure of weariness sloughed off his limbs mid-fight, and the scorplings he was slowly cutting his way through all of a sudden felt slow and clumsy to him.
[You have ad...
2024-12-21 02:19:36 +0000 UTC View Post“And then I spent about twenty thousand decarmas storming the building and killing the corrupted seed bearers inside,” Jensen said. “We got everyone we could out and retreated into the forest, but it’s been slow going with… well, look around and you’ll see why.”
“Injured, ch...
2024-12-21 02:19:14 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I finally got my backlog far enough ahead tonight to bring mid-tier online and offer an additional five chapters. Next goal: reach twenty chapters ahead of RR for high-tier subscribers.
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Veilk sat with his back against the wall, his spear laid out...
2024-12-21 02:18:49 +0000 UTC View PostThe assassin scorpling was proving to be more worthy a hunt than Velik had given it credit for. It had been close to an hour now, and the amoral giant bug had stayed ahead of him by leading him on a merry chase through piles of its allies. He’d lost track of how many monsters he’d killed purs...
2024-12-20 12:21:13 +0000 UTC View PostAmmun’s shadow fled the battle immediately. I let it go; there was no point in chasing after it. Destroying it would have done nothing but allowed him to reform it at his side once more. That might have cost him more mana than simply letting it return, but it wasn’t likely that he was going t...
2024-12-20 12:18:22 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Accidentally posted chapter 57 again. Here is the correct chapter.
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Velik kept the monsters at bay for another few moments with [Phalanx] while he tried to figure out what to do. The first priority was removin...
2024-12-19 16:57:50 +0000 UTC View PostIt was beyond obvious that Ammun was controlling both of the undead dragons, but I suspected he’d split the workload between himself and his shadow. In a way, that was good for me, since it meant this battle was tying up more of his resources, but it did make things harder. Both monsters worked...
2024-12-19 16:54:58 +0000 UTC View PostAnd that’s eight… nine… and ten. How many more of these damn things are there?
The scorplings weren’t so bad one at a time, but the last batch had been three of them, and they’d come at him from both sides. Only his enhanced agility had kept him safe from being caught in ...
2024-12-18 14:33:18 +0000 UTC View PostHistory books weren’t entirely clear on whether it was the moon beam firing down on Manoch or the mana draw from Ammun’s reprisal that had caused the death of the world core. The only one who knew for sure was Ammun himself, and even then, I wasn’t willing to bet that he’d ever bothered t...
2024-12-18 14:31:25 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I'm finally getting far enough ahead on the backlog that I can keep 5 chapters in front of the RR release, so expect daily updates Mon-Fri for this story now. I'm considering alternatively releasing 5 chapters at once every Monday, and I wouldn't mind some feedback about ho...
2024-12-17 14:55:22 +0000 UTC View PostIt didn’t take long for Ammun to make an appearance. Or rather, it didn’t take long for the next prong of his assault to manifest. Despite my best efforts to clear Ralvost of people and deprive Ammun of his army, the old lich had one secreted away anyway. He’d just needed to dig it up, firs...
2024-12-17 14:49:02 +0000 UTC View Post“Why now?” Mother asked. “He never showed any signs before.”
We were gathered around the kitchen table. I’d gone to fetch Father, and Mother and Senica had gone home with a now-soundly napping Nailu in tow. Once the whole family had reassembled, we’d sat down to have what I was ...
2024-12-16 14:36:26 +0000 UTC View Post