Luke backed away from the tree slowly while Zea scrambled to stay low on all fours as she fled its reach. Twice more, branches that had just been normal, bark-covered limbs suddenly sprouted razor thorns and became as flexible as willow switches. They slashed through the air at him, but weren’t...
2023-05-15 13:49:44 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Tomorrow's chapter will be the final update for this story.
* * *
He felt… hollow, empty, without purpose. For so long, for sixty years, if Rizin was to be believed, Nym had been struggling to escape from under two titans before he wa...
2023-05-15 13:31:08 +0000 UTC View PostThey rushed straight north as fast as they could, using System as a pseudo-compass to make sure they didn’t get too close to the absolutely massive cluster of hundreds-foot tall trees jutting up out of the forest like some great wooden mountain. Luke had taken the time to climb up to the top of...
2023-05-12 13:31:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe mountains loomed in their vision, blocking much of the eastern and northern sky and forcing them to push farther and farther west in an attempt to circle around them. Since that was an expected complication to their journey, Luke hadn’t thought much about it initially.
That was before...
2023-05-10 13:44:47 +0000 UTC View PostLuke ranged back and forth in a zig-zag pattern while Zea marched straight ahead. Every few minutes, he’d loop back and check in before starting another lap. They kept this up for days, and without the XP split or the slow pace, he quickly jumped up from level 26 to 29. Of his 84 new AP, 30 wen...
2023-05-08 13:58:44 +0000 UTC View Post“First things first,” Luke said, “System, how do I make it so that Zea can see you too?”
“You will first need a skill that lets you modify other people’s systems called [Remote Access],” System told him. “It will cost you 15 AP, and is necessary for any othe...
2023-05-05 14:16:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe ritual itself was kind of boring, at least from Luke’s perspective. Zea did all the work, which included walking around the circle repeatedly, chanting something that sounded ominous at first but which quickly became kind of boring and then a bit annoying as she droned on over and over, and...
2023-05-03 14:19:22 +0000 UTC View PostBy early afternoon, they’d walked ten miles and picked a few fights with various monsters. Luke had just finished extracting his mace from the skull of a badger-looking thing the size of a grizzly bear when Zea said, “That did it. I’m level 17 now.”
“Nice! Do you want to take a br...
2023-05-01 14:05:17 +0000 UTC View PostLuke’s back slammed into the tree hard enough that he felt the wood crack. The whole trunk groaned and shifted, with a few roots popping up out of the ground when it tilted backwards. Stars flashed across his eyes, blinding him, and he did the only thing he could think of. He reached down and g...
2023-04-28 14:58:31 +0000 UTC View PostLuke sat next to Zea by a small campfire and tried to pick the tufts of hair out of the flanges of his mace. Normally it wasn’t a problem to clean it out, but his latest kill had hacked up some sort of glue-like snot ball at him, which he’d batted aside with his mace. And now everything was s...
2023-04-26 13:50:19 +0000 UTC View PostZea was quite satisfied with her shopping trip. Not only had she managed to find everything she needed both for the ritual and her own enchanting needs, she’d even negotiated free use of an enchanter’s workbench to make the masking enchantment for her slave runes. It was currently bound up in...
2023-04-24 14:35:48 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 87
“Someone down there?” Luke called out.
“Gedin? Nenda?” Avlir added. “You two alive down there?”
Silence stretched on, broken only by the sound of debris shifting as it settled into its new position. Luke scanned the basement, even looked through a few of t...
2023-04-21 14:19:52 +0000 UTC View PostThe modifications went well. They weren’t terribly dangerous, but mistakes could have unacceptable delays, so Nym was glad to have performed them all properly in the first attempt. More accurately, he was glad to have not made any irreversible mistakes. It took him more time than he wanted, but...
2023-04-21 14:09:34 +0000 UTC View PostThat little vacation had done wonders for Nym’s mental health, but now he was back in the box. Rizin had given him some valuable hints, and he was determined to milk them for all they were worth. First, he was planning to resume his attempts to crack the membrane to the seventh layer and withst...
2023-04-20 15:03:25 +0000 UTC View Post“A favor?” Luke couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah.”
“Why would I do a favor for you after you made me chase you to get back what you stole from me? Just because you stopped running?”
“Well it’s not like I was really planning on taking it! If I had been, you wouldn...
2023-04-19 14:29:04 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t understand,” Nym said.
“You don’t need to understand to do it.”
“But-”
“Are you willing or not?”
“I mean, sure, it’s not a big deal. I just don’t get why.”
Rizin just stared at Nym, his lips pursed and reminding him disturbingly o...
2023-04-19 14:25:41 +0000 UTC View PostThe cage didn’t work. Despite everything he’d done to reinforce it, it seemed to lack the weight needed to withstand the arcana. As soon as the first fissure opened, it got blasted around every bit as easily as Nym himself. It wasn’t a physical weight either. It didn’t matter how dense th...
2023-04-18 14:18:49 +0000 UTC View PostNow three coppers lighter, Luke stood on the inside of the gate and took a deep breath. The city smelled, well, if he was being honest, it smelled awful. Maybe the wall prevented fresh air from circulating through, or maybe too many people were dumping their chamber pots in the street at once, bu...
2023-04-17 14:41:52 +0000 UTC View PostNym didn’t trust any of the other ascendants at this point. Niramyn would no doubt send new hunters after him, and if Myzalik ever learned that someone had witnessed his god killer spell, Nym was sure he would immediately jump to the top of the priority list there. Even supposedly neutral ascen...
2023-04-17 14:36:31 +0000 UTC View PostLuke didn’t understand why they needed a silver bowl inscribed with a circle, or an athame of obsidian and blood silver, or anything else that the ritual called for. Zea assured him that most of the expensive objects were tools that they’d only have to buy once, and that if the ritual failed,...
2023-04-14 13:56:32 +0000 UTC View PostThere were only a handful of ascendants at the twelfth layer, powerful enough to be called Exarchs. Of those, there were only two who would be actively hostile towards Ferro and Valicin. One of them had a blanket hatred towards everyone and would attack anyone who got too close to him on sight. B...
2023-04-14 13:51:58 +0000 UTC View PostNym promptly abandoned the sanctuary he’d constructed for himself. He also abandoned the front he’d built, a sort of decoy sanctuary that he gave out as the place to go in order to see him. The copy that manned that returned to him, as well as all of his other copies. Nym washed his hands of ...
2023-04-13 14:05:39 +0000 UTC View PostLuke had gotten a look at a map before he’d left Valtira when he was preparing to walk, and he hadn’t much cared for what he’d seen. There was a giant blob of mountains blocking off a chunk of the coast, which limited access to the sea so much that Valtira was the northernmost port on the s...
2023-04-12 15:35:53 +0000 UTC View PostFrom what Nym understood, advancing to the next layer after ascending wasn’t a simple matter of finding a fun new way to manipulate a conduit so that it was stronger or more flexible. What exactly he did need to do was still up for debate. That was the kind of information no one seemed to want ...
2023-04-12 15:30:46 +0000 UTC View PostNym sat at the table with Kazie while Analia fended off the Earth Shapers’ combined affection. “So, do you like this kind of work?” he asked.
“It’s alright. I don’t have the passion for it that Nomick does, but I’m capable, and it lets me contribute. How about you?”
...
2023-04-11 14:55:47 +0000 UTC View Post“I- Thought- You- Were- Dead,” Zea said, punctuating each word by throwing handfuls of the gold and silver coins at Luke.
“Hey, stop that. Stop! You’re making a mess.”
Luke caught as many as he could, but he couldn’t snatch dozens of coins out of the air in only a few seco...
2023-04-10 14:53:33 +0000 UTC View PostAnalia stayed in Nym’s sanctuary for a week. When he’d finished his work and allowed her to wake up, she was as physically healthy as she’d ever been, more so than when he’d started even. Analia had run her body into the ground repeatedly for years and done very little to protect it. Nym...
2023-04-10 14:45:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe guy in charge of the bandits wasn’t physically imposing. He was a few inches shorter than Luke with a slim build and a thin, dark mustache over his lip that matched equally thin, dark hair. If Luke had to describe the feeling of the XP coming off him, he would have said it reminded him of s...
2023-04-03 15:28:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe bandits were already scrambling to their feet before Luke showed up, but he buried them before they could organize any sort of defense. The first bandit took a mace to his ribs and was smashed backwards into the wall. The second one got kicked in the knee hard enough to cave the joint in and ...
2023-04-03 15:27:40 +0000 UTC View PostLuke knew he sucked at sneaking around, that he lacked the skills to hide his XP, and there was only so much agility and [Stealth]could do to help. His current strategy was just to get as close as he could and then close the distance without giving a target more than a second to ...
2023-04-03 15:27:18 +0000 UTC View Post