Luke was so exhausted that he didn’t think he could fight back even to save his own life. The necromancer might have been content to ignore him since he wasn’t a threat before the crossbow incident. Now the black-robed man was staring daggers at him, and Luke was wondering if there was anythi...
2023-08-23 13:26:14 +0000 UTC View PostThere was no time to think, not with the bolt all the way in the air. If she had, Zea never would have tried to stop it with her whip. The bolt was so small, and moving so fast. It would be impossible to hit it out of the air, even with her perception of 21 helping her follow its path.
She ...
2023-08-21 13:43:22 +0000 UTC View PostThe man who stepped out of the wagon wore a midnight blue robe trimmed in silver. He had long, dark hair pulled back from his face and tied into a braid that was thrown over one shoulder, and pale, sallow skin. A sneer rode on his lips and he regarded the exhausted trio with anger in his eyes. 2023-08-18 14:35:34 +0000 UTC View Post
“Fuck that,” Zea said. “You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t retreat.”
“I’ll be alright,” Luke said.
Zea glanced pointedly at his hip, where blood was staining his pants and the armor that Wellind’s spear had pierced. The armor was digging into his skin...
2023-08-16 11:59:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe chain’s magic held through the volley of bolts and Luke charged up the length of the caravan at top speed. Guards fell one after another, but they Luke paid for the momentum. He couldn’t dodge all the bolts, probably not even most of them, and he wasn’t trying to. What he was doing was ...
2023-08-14 14:22:43 +0000 UTC View PostThere were countless skills in the system, including those that helped with crossbow use. The one that concerned Luke was called [Rapid Reload], which helped the user pull new bolts, place them, and reset the crossbow far more quickly than they otherwise could. Between that and a...
2023-08-11 13:36:59 +0000 UTC View PostRuca watched, his hands clenched tightly around the hilts of his swords, as the slave caravan approached. The mounted guards at the front caught sight of the tree and called a halt well back from it. Ruca silently cursed as the front wagon came to a stop a few hundred feet away. The tree over the...
2023-08-09 13:58:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe caravan consisted of twelve wagons. The one in the lead was completely enclosed, more like a huge, overgrown carriage than a wagon, with two men sitting on the bench on the front. The next two were the ones Luke pictured whenever anyone said words like ‘pioneer’ or ‘prairie,’ the ones...
2023-08-07 11:36:22 +0000 UTC View PostFrom the author note on today's update:
Bonus Chapter!
Why a bonus chapter when I just reduced my posting schedule to catch up my backlog? Well, because I just hit my milestone goal for my first year as a writer. On September 1st, 2022, I lost my job. I had a nice long Labo...
2023-08-05 17:37:24 +0000 UTC View PostTwo people stepped out of the bushes. Both had the silver-white hair Luke was seeing everywhere now, and both were well-armed. Luke counted four swords between the two of them plus a pair of belt knives. One of them had a sheath strapped to his leg with another knife, and the other had her hair u...
2023-08-05 17:36:11 +0000 UTC View Post“First, I want to revisit my initial assumption. Can my family be brought back from the dead?” Luke asked.
“They can,” System confirmed.
“And I could do that right now, if I were at the command console of the God Machine?”
“That is correct.”
“I don’t ne...
2023-08-04 11:45:30 +0000 UTC View Post“Ooooooh shit,” Luke said.
Nobody in the crowd was panicking or screaming, so obviously they’d been expecting something like this. Blood spurted into the air, and a chorus of voices rose up, all saying the same thing. Then the man on the stage died and his murderer’s lips moved in s...
2023-08-02 12:33:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe first thing they did upon disembarking the Silk Lady was to take a few minutes to just wander around and get a feel for the most prominent language. Neither of them had any first-hand knowledge of the eastern continent and only had System’s insistence than the locals spoke a langua...
2023-07-31 12:33:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe last two months of Luke’s life had been beyond boring. There was really only so much of staring at empty, open water he could take, and he’d hit that limit weeks ago. Other than a brief break from the monotony when the Silk Lady had docked at an island port to make repairs for a ...
2023-07-28 12:47:17 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is the final chapter in book 2.
- - - - -
Zixin appeared in the nothingness that surrounded her brother’s domain. She could have manifested herself right in front of him, of course, but that would be rude. There were niceties to ...
2023-07-27 13:10:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe chain was set to protect the ship as fully as possible rather than do the bare minimum, which meant it wasn’t going to last more than a few minutes at the rate Luke was hammering on it. Zea winced each time the echo of another impact reverberated through the wood and the mana in the chain d...
2023-07-26 12:09:13 +0000 UTC View PostZea wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around her. The sailors were doing their jobs, Luke had fucked off to somewhere else and left her to her work, and she was entirely focused on compensating for the gentle rocking of the ship as she carved tiny runes into the steel. Unlike an...
2023-07-25 10:54:34 +0000 UTC View PostThe simplest place to put AP was into stats. He had more than enough to drop 30 into every stat and just completely overpower Lath in terms of raw capabilities. Of course, that didn’t guarantee a victory. It had been a painful lesson that had been beaten into him repeatedly, but he was finally ...
2023-07-24 12:27:37 +0000 UTC View PostLuke spent the next hour or so using [Analyze] on every sailor on the ship. None of them were over level 20, and in fact only one of them was a higher level than the Captain herself. Even then, it was only just barely, and that guy’s skill set was so obviously geared towards be...
2023-07-21 12:25:30 +0000 UTC View PostWhile the ship was much smaller than the Averast, once Luke was actually on it, it seemed plenty big. Still, to go out into open water, to cross the entire ocean in it… It felt like the entire cargo hold would have nothing but food and water in it. Maybe he was overestimating how long ...
2023-07-20 12:08:31 +0000 UTC View PostIt was far too easy for the people of Aros to see in the dark, even on a moonless night, which this wasn’t. Thus, the goal wasn’t to avoid being seen by hiding in the darkness. It was merely that despite everyone having stats to see better in the dark and reduce their need for sleep, most peo...
2023-07-19 15:01:38 +0000 UTC View PostHello,
It's been a busy summer for me, and August is shaping up to be the most crowded month yet. As such, I will be changing to a M-W-F update schedule next month. I hope to resume my normal Monday to Friday schedule in September once things have calmed down.
As always, thank you for...
2023-07-18 11:25:11 +0000 UTC View Post“Everything alright there?” Zea asked as Luke barged back into their camp.
He looked a little wild in the eyes, but whatever he saw must have reassured him since he quickly calmed down. “Sorry, System pointed out to me a little bit ago that we had no evidence that Lath is still being ...
2023-07-18 11:22:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere was no way to keep Zea from gaining XP along with Luke, not as long as they were using [Ghost Script] to make the bombs. If she made them the old-fashioned way, there was enough separation between her as the enchanter and him as the wielder of the bomb to assign all of the ...
2023-07-05 13:13:36 +0000 UTC View Post“125 AP,” Luke said. “Just slightly more than what I have available, because of course it is.”
Despite that, he wasn’t upset. Just knowing that there was an option for [XP Cycle] now was enough to take a lot of stress off him. Gaining a single level before he coul...
2023-07-04 14:14:43 +0000 UTC View PostZea took the news that their plans on using a bloodline skill to strip the inquisitor of his stats wasn’t going to work about as well as Luke did, though with considerably more swearing. After giving her a few minutes to get it out of her system, Luke said, “There’s still the possibility of...
2023-07-03 14:48:07 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t so much the chanting that set the ominous mood as it was the chanting done just as the sun was setting and the lighting of the fucking wood on fire while he was standing inside the circle. Luke could not possibly stress enough how much he wasn’t a fan of that idea. He’d b...
2023-06-30 13:15:15 +0000 UTC View PostThe inquisitor staggered to one side at the same time as Luke, leaving both of them vulnerable. But Luke had more stamina, and [Life Surge] was still pumping him up. He recovered before the inquisitor did, and he used that window of opportunity to turn his stagger into a heavy, p...
2023-06-29 15:40:59 +0000 UTC View PostThe hardest part of the plan was finding a spot with no one else around. They didn’t want to kill some random person who just happened to be walking by. Thankfully, Zea had built in options in the enchantment that would let her trigger them remotely or with a timer, but the range on remote deto...
2023-06-28 15:04:22 +0000 UTC View PostThey walked out of the inn and started heading for the edge of town, with Luke throwing out an [Analyze] every few seconds at random people to help him spot any mercenaries tailing them. They seemed to have fallen back for some reason, or else they’d gotten better at avoiding h...
2023-06-27 12:25:47 +0000 UTC View Post