I’d made something of a promise to my parents, my father specifically. One could argue the semantics, that I’d merely said I couldhelp them ignite their cores, not that I would. But I wasn’t so petty as that. The real hold up was that I needed to finish constructing my mana crystal...
2023-11-20 12:33:40 +0000 UTC View PostIt was no surprise to me to see Malra heading our way within twenty minutes of getting back home. Father left for work and Mother started her daily ritual of feeding her mana to the plants in our garden in a doomed attempt to keep them lush and healthy. If the garden had been a third of the size ...
2023-11-18 12:36:55 +0000 UTC View PostThe thing about emitters was that they needed to be regularly cleaned out in order to keep them operating at full capacity. A tiny bit of mana crystallized during the emission process, and if no one ever came along and took care of that, it built up until the emitter was useless.
The emitte...
2023-11-17 12:25:27 +0000 UTC View PostThe tension was palpable. My parents had retreated to one side of the hut and were whispering back and forth rapidly while Senica sat at the table and angry-cried. It wasn’t hard to guess what was causing that. Cherok had been himself, but our parents were unintentionally making it worse.
The next few days of my life was a mixture of awkward tension and peaceful, uninterrupted work. My mana crystal progressed by leaps and bounds, so much so that I had to revise my initial estimates. Mother had been let in on the secret and, while she was initially more wary than Father, she was no...
2023-11-15 12:35:24 +0000 UTC View Post“I love you,” I told my father.
He smiled back and said, “I love you too.”
I wondered if he’d still say that ten minutes from now. I hadn’t truly replaced his son, but the difference might be academic to Father. Gravin was practically an infant when I awakened, far too you...
2023-11-14 12:50:54 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is not a repost of
2023-11-13 15:24:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Keiran of the Night Vale has staved off death for two thousand years, but even he’s reached his limits. His body is old, worn out, and failing. While the flesh fails, however, his mind and his magic re...
2023-11-13 12:30:21 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I decided to do a double post today rather than break up the last chapter and the epilogue over the weekend. On Monday, I will start posting chapters of my new story to this tier along with a note about future plans.
* * * * *
Luke felt...
2023-11-11 12:37:58 +0000 UTC View PostAt first, letting System work through him had been a sight to behold. It was like watching his own hands put together a jigsaw puzzle so fast that they were a blur, but he could somehow not only still follow every move, but process all the information his eyes were giving up about which piece wen...
2023-11-11 12:34:04 +0000 UTC View PostThere was an easy, obvious solution to the problem. Luke needed what System could do, and System needed what Luke could do. If they combined their abilities, they could reinforce the system with demonic essence and settle the God Machine back down around the trapped god. They’d been trying to f...
2023-11-10 12:42:49 +0000 UTC View PostZea appeared behind the screen, where Luke was waiting for her with some clothes. She took one look at him, flinched back, and stumbled.
“Easy there,” Luke said. “You’re okay. Everything’s fine now.”
“Okay, why am I naked? What happened to your face? And where the hell a...
2023-11-09 12:19:34 +0000 UTC View PostLuke grimaced internally, but he had too many skills folded into [Omniscience] to give away a facial expression he didn’t want to now. He’d expected this was coming, but hoped he’d get to skip it. Lizzie and Curt could be overbearing at times, especially when they thought h...
2023-11-08 12:23:55 +0000 UTC View PostThe man who appeared in front of the Bennet children did not much resemble the father from Luke’s memories. For one thing, he would have been about sixty years old at the time of his death judging by the journals he’d left behind, but Bill Bennet didn’t look to me much over thirty-five. His...
2023-11-07 12:32:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Everyone!
New Year, new link!
As always, there is a book wyrm channel in the discord server (https://discord.gg/PGGQyckvdW) that has the link to the folder and gives updates whenever I add new chapters. ...
2023-11-06 12:42:46 +0000 UTC View PostIt took Luke over two weeks of work before he stopped finding new demons to catch and destroy. The first few days were non-stop, just scooping them up and pulping them for demonic essence, but after that, it started getting harder. All of the simple demons that wanted nothing but rampant destruct...
2023-11-06 12:36:30 +0000 UTC View PostLuke just stared blankly at System. “What does that mean?” he finally asked after the apparition remained silent.
“In the short term, the entity imprisoned in the God Machine will consume all life on Aros in order to regain its lost divinity. After that, it will chase after the fleein...
2023-11-04 13:03:43 +0000 UTC View Post“They tortured us, Aldrick,” Zammin’s shade moaned, referring to Luke by the alias he’d used when he’d met the dwifkin arena fighter. “Came in, killed a hundred people, captured twice as many, and took us to the cells. Your fault. All of us in agony because you came into our lives.”...
2023-11-03 11:37:57 +0000 UTC View PostSystem hadn’t been lying when he’d told Zixin that there was a possibility that killing Luke Bennet would result in the entire system collapsing. Redundancies had been placed after-the-fact once the Pantheon was not actively trying to contain the prisoner, but those had never been tested. She...
2023-11-02 11:38:46 +0000 UTC View PostIt took a few seconds for Luke’s brain to unscramble. When it did, he realized he was about half a mile away from the cathedral out in the open plains, balanced on his knees with Zixin’s hand around his throat.
“I would like to take a little time to gloat, but honestly, you’ve got t...
2023-11-01 11:19:58 +0000 UTC View PostSystem stood frozen in place next to Luke while his red doppelganger started working. It—he?—ignored Luke. A new system window popped up, this one red to match the doppelganger, and he started working in it.
Whatever language it was in, Luke didn’t recognize it. The text was also scro...
2023-10-31 11:31:20 +0000 UTC View PostLuke stood in front of the doors leading into the cathedral. Each one was a sheet of what could easily be mistaken for gold, but which he could tell wasn’t. It was impossibly smooth, the entire thing one featureless plane like he’d never seen. Real gold had texture to it at a microscopic leve...
2023-10-30 11:41:28 +0000 UTC View PostGetting through 100 stamina was no joke, even for Luke. Sheer mass also factored into the equation, and despite hammering the dragon with more than a dozen hits infused with [Power Strike], it was still alive. Not only had Animar survived the poison Luke had given it with
Luke was expecting to find some sort of scaled foot or claws to be pressing down on him, but when he twisted his head to look, there was nothing there. Whatever was holding him down had his arms pinned to his side and was pressing on his back hard enough to dig his mace into his skin. Luke was st...
2023-10-26 11:43:41 +0000 UTC View PostElectric blue sparks rained down overhead as imps tore up the enchanted anti-spider mesh. They provided the only light since the imps had blotted out the morning sun, and in those flickering sparks, Luke saw the trainees struggling against a hundred imps. They were arranged in a triangle with the...
2023-10-06 11:25:24 +0000 UTC View PostLuke had an hour left until sunrise, and he still needed 3000 XP. That was pretty much a non-starter by itself, but he also needed to backtrack to the hunting lodge to leave with everyone else, which meant he had about twenty minutes before he was out of time. Unless he got extraordinarily lucky,...
2023-10-05 11:28:34 +0000 UTC View PostWith about ten hours on the clock until they departed, Luke didn’t think he could scrape together the last 11,000 XP he needed to level up one more time, not unless he got lucky with another cluster of high level spiders attacking all at once. He was almost eager for that to happen, just so he ...
2023-10-04 11:29:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi Everyone,
Book 1 of The God Machine is live on Amazon today in ebook (including KU), audiobook, and paperback varieties. In celebration, I'll be doing a bonus chap...
2023-10-03 12:30:09 +0000 UTC View PostAfter the incident with the crystal fang widow makers, Luke started paying a lot more attention to what was going on behind him. He’d been a sloppy idiot for his first week when he thought there were no dangers to someone with his level in the forest. A hundred spiders, or even a thousand, coul...
2023-10-03 12:23:27 +0000 UTC View PostOne thing that Luke really, really liked about the spider forest was the trees. More specifically, he liked how much space there was between the trees. It was far more open than the almost jungle-like density he’d pushed through in other forests on the western continent, even if those openings ...
2023-10-03 12:23:22 +0000 UTC View Post