I left the house feeling… I wasn’t even sure how to describe it. Disappointment? Resignation? Annoyance?
That wasn’t fair. Father had tried his best, but his advice had mostly boiled down to people learning to trust each other because they didn’t have a choice. Circumstances beyond ...
2024-11-14 12:05:26 +0000 UTC View PostCrescent Hill was a spiritual site dedicated to Morgus, God of Nature and the Hunt, that had been abandoned by almost everyone a decade ago. Velik didn’t necessarily think that was his fault, but he knew it wasn’t a coincidence that people had stopped coming out to Crescent Hill once the mons...
2024-11-14 02:29:36 +0000 UTC View PostIt took a little over two weeks for the divination blocking wards shrouding the Sanctum of Light to begin failing. During that time, the remainder of Ammun’s army, just over half of what they’d had a month ago, moved back into the tower one group at a time. I’d given serious consideration t...
2024-11-13 12:02:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe problem with setting traps was that they’d be less and less effective each time the army stumbled into one of them. They were already on their guard for another fly-by from me, which greatly increased the likelihood that someone’s divinations would notice anything I left in their way.
... 2024-11-12 12:19:15 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 20
From the day Velik left to the day he returned, three weeks passed by. He didn’t go out of his way to kill monsters on his return trip, but there was still plenty of bloodshed to slow him down, not to mention he needed to practice his new skill. Since he’d acquired it primari...
2024-11-12 01:43:59 +0000 UTC View PostWhile Querit oversaw the experiments I’d outlined, I returned to the jungles around Galdrisa just to do a bit of quick scrying and mark down the locations of any other vine-encrusted plant monsters nearby. I wasn’t interested in harvesting them right now, but I did want to make sure there wer...
2024-11-11 13:12:41 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I'm still not quite far enough ahead of the RR release to do a single Monday chapter drop like I said I was planning. Soon, I hope.
- - -
Of course it’s not over. This thing is a champion. Why would it be so easy that I could solo kill it...
2024-11-08 13:06:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe more time I spent talking to Bakir, the more I became certain that he was only at stage five or six. That didn’t automatically disqualify him from the title of archmage, as it was more of an indicator of skill and knowledge than of raw power, but it did make me question the strength of his ...
2024-11-08 13:02:48 +0000 UTC View PostBakir’s eyes glittered with amusement as he surveyed the meeting room I’d constructed, but he kept any comments about my security to himself. I guided him to his seat and claimed the one opposite of him, then settled back and let him start the conversation.
“I confess to some curiosit...
2024-11-07 13:07:02 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 9
Velik didn’t know the man’s name, but that wasn’t unusual. He looked vaguely familiar – tall, lean, and muscled, with dusty tan skin and thick black hair. He stank of horses and beer, which meant he was probably part of the group standing near a produce cart with a ragged ...
2024-11-06 20:22:46 +0000 UTC View Post“Querit,” I said, “Did we have visitors while I was away?”
I stood in the middle of the valley on my teleportation platform and frowned as I felt out the foreign node of mana embedded in my wards. My assistant was in the lab, peering over my shoulder through the scrying mirror I’d...
2024-11-06 13:42:49 +0000 UTC View PostThe closer I got to the source of the beam, the harder it was to dodge it. That might have been a problem if I wasn’t already so familiar with the spell, but I’d been on the receiving end enough times to have a good idea of both the spell’s and the person controlling it’s limitations. Sev...
2024-11-05 13:05:19 +0000 UTC View PostAs a spur of the moment decision, I decided to
2024-11-04 14:08:32 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 18
I didn’t even keep track of how many places I destroyed, let alone how many people I killed. All I knew was that it was a lot, and that I’d almost certainly ended the lives of a significant number of people who didn’t deserve it. That did not stop me from moving on to the n...
2024-11-04 14:00:34 +0000 UTC View PostAs was typical, Father was out of the house when I got there. More unusually, Mother and Nailu were also gone. Then again, with the town grown significantly from what Old Alkerist had boasted at its peak, and with the advent of magical knowledge making everyone’s lives easier, people found them...
2024-11-01 13:02:34 +0000 UTC View PostAfter making a few more samples for Querit to play with, I left him to his work. There were a few other things I had to catch up on, namely checking on what Ammun was doing up on the moon and helping Grandfather confirm everything was fine so he could do whatever it was he was planning. After tha...
2024-10-31 13:09:57 +0000 UTC View PostNo mage, not even me, had the mental capacity to weave a mage’s shadow on their own. It was just too complex a task to be done without assistance. That was why the sixth stage was the forming of a genius loci and binding it to my mana core. It helped focus my magic, allowed me to pull off feats...
2024-10-30 13:37:16 +0000 UTC View Post“Keiran, it’s time to stop.”
I ignored Querit and started preparing the reagents for the next experiment.
“Keiran! Please.”
Force magic chopped the herb into thin slices, then did a second pass to dice them into cubes.
“Keiran…” Querit reached out to grab m...
2024-10-29 13:58:54 +0000 UTC View PostI’d offered to make extra potions. I’d offered the town storage crystals packed full of mana. I’d offered them a teleportation platform – though to be fair, I’d given a few dozen of those away already, so that last one wasn’t much of an offer.
Shel had declined all of that. She ...
2024-10-28 14:25:40 +0000 UTC View PostI had an audience waiting for me when I landed, a full twenty familiar faces from the beginning of my new life in Old Alkerist. Shel was there, along with six other Arborists. A few random villagers I hadn’t had much interaction with also stood below, watching me. There were four children, none...
2024-10-25 13:04:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe villager—he looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to his face—blinked at me slowly. “Shel?” he repeated. “She left years ago.”
“Left?” I asked. “Left where?”
The man just shrugged, but then a suspicious look came over his face. “Who’re you, a...
2024-10-24 13:14:58 +0000 UTC View PostIt ended up taking me three weeks to find what I was looking for, including a two-day side trip back to Ammun’s tower to place the rest of the mysteel generators. Those would take years to produce what I pulled out of Galdrisa, which was itself barely a quarter of what I’d found beneath Derro...
2024-10-23 12:38:08 +0000 UTC View PostWith the temple fully secured against troll incursions, I set Senica to work disposing of the vegetation. We ignored the stuff out near the edges that lacked metallic thorns in favor of the rooms near the core. A constant, moderate heat was enough to incinerate the vines, though I did end up havi...
2024-10-22 13:30:13 +0000 UTC View PostRemoving the core was a delicate process, but with a bit of patience and plenty of mana, I managed to extract it without killing the thing. When I finished severing the connection, every single vine in the room went limp all at once, and my scrying revealed that the rest of the temple stilled as ...
2024-10-21 13:04:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe mystery of the mobile tree would have to wait. I’d left my scrying mirror down by the plant core in my rush to bail Senica out of trouble. Taking her back underground with a teleportation spell wasn’t really feasible, not because it was impossible, but because the quick combat versions di...
2024-10-18 11:18:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere wasn’t a single inch of bare stone to be found. Instead, layer upon layer of vines coated everything, even the ceiling. I wasn’t sure how exactly they clung to the stone, but my guess was some sort of magic rather than the physical methods non-mobile vines used.
There were surpris...
2024-10-17 13:29:31 +0000 UTC View PostI floated along behind my sister as she flew through the air, moving like a particularly acrobatic dancer to avoid the barrage of rocks the trolls were hurling at us. More and more of the monsters were showing up, and there was plenty of loose stonework to serve as ammunition. Senica spun around,...
2024-10-16 13:57:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere was a backpack sitting just inside my bedroom door, presumably packed by my sister. It was the first thing I saw when I teleported to my parents’ home. I chuckled softly; Senica had probably been obnoxiously impatient all evening while she waited for me to finish up everything else on my ...
2024-10-15 12:57:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe wastes were a bit unusual for a desert climate due to one simple fact: there was plenty of water. Hundreds of streams came down from the mountains, and near their banks, short grasses or scraggly bushes did often grow. But without mana from the world core, nothing was vibrant. Nothing was hea...
2024-10-14 13:40:48 +0000 UTC View PostWe’d tested plenty of smaller enchantments, measured their efficiency and their output, and confirmed our theories. Everything worked as expected – they had higher initial mana costs, but then they recycled all but the tiniest fraction of their expended mana, increasing their lifespan by near...
2024-10-11 14:21:37 +0000 UTC View Post