Velik’s mana reserves were dry. He’d blown it all super-charging that [Dread Lance]. He was hurting, too, having done more to harm himself than Zelamir had managed the entire fight. Now was not the time for someone else to interfere.
Snarling, he resisted the newcomer...
2025-08-12 12:21:28 +0000 UTC View PostAll divine beasts shared a single quality, regardless of what powers they had or shapes they took. They were all arrogant, self-conceited bastards. Zelamir was no exception to that rule. If anything, he was even more full of himself than usual.
“Oh, excellent. I already have a baseline fo...
2025-08-11 11:56:17 +0000 UTC View PostEvery second was precious, but Velik still spent them studying the man. He was a divine beast, after all, and it would be the height of stupidity to expect something that old and that powerful to be felled by a simple ambush. He undoubtedly had ways to protect himself, and Velik needed at least a...
2025-08-08 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Gold Spire was cold and silent on the outside, but once Velik breached the threshold, it burst with life. There were hundreds or even thousands of creatures living inside it, all of them going about their lives. They made noise. They had smells. They breathed and moved and spoke words Velik h...
2025-08-07 14:25:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting the world into the shadows of twilight. Velik could feel [Sun Eater] empowering him, though differently than [Duskbound] had. Instead of a massive rush of strength all at once, he started feeling the effects about...
2025-08-06 11:37:05 +0000 UTC View PostVelik stood atop the corpse of a monster the size of a small castle. Its body was layered in plates of organic metal, thickest across its back, chest, shoulders, and skull, but all four of its legs were well protected as well. Even the inside of its mouth was durable, the leathery flesh having me...
2025-08-05 11:46:14 +0000 UTC View PostAs it turned out, [Blood Toxin] was gross overkill for the average monster. Most of them didn’t survive the first blow, similar to Velik’s time on the frontier hunting things that were half his level and only gaining a level every six to eight months because of it. Being effi...
2025-08-04 11:55:59 +0000 UTC View PostAs far as Velik could see, there were two routes forward. One was to consolidate his essence configurations into as few skills as possible in an effort to be efficient with his resources. Ten separate skills were probably costing him five times as much essence as one skill with ten components. Or...
2025-08-01 12:04:49 +0000 UTC View Post“Experiment—Velik—you should know the hierarchy among the divine beasts,” Eslaka said. “Despite our great age, we are not equals. There are centuries of time between the oldest and the youngest of us, and some have invested their essence wisely. Others have frittered it away.
“T...
2025-07-31 12:44:07 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t want your help!” Tesir bellowed up at the sky. “This is my fight. Go back to hiding.”
In response, a twister descended from the clouds and plucked him off the ground like a man picking up a bug. Lightning flared in every direction, tearing through the winds and reaching o...
2025-07-30 11:34:00 +0000 UTC View PostVelik’s first thought was a simple, Why is he in that form?
His second thought was, Oh shit, he’s moving really fast!
Then there was no time to think. His body reacted to danger the same way it had a thousand times before, by moving and fighting back. It was a pr...
2025-07-29 12:07:46 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t possible. Velik knew monsters. He’d spent most of his life hunting and killing them. He lived in their territories. He knew how they thought, how they reacted to the mere sight of other monsters or humans, and what they were capable of accomplishing. Building huts was beyond their c...
2025-07-28 12:02:44 +0000 UTC View PostThose stupid tiger statues had no essence in them, just like the golems from the sky bridge. That was fine, except that more and more of them just kept showing up. Velik hadn’t kept careful track of how many he’d reduced to piles of broken rock slowly liquifying in the magma that had spilled ...
2025-07-25 10:25:41 +0000 UTC View PostI need some sort of heat resistance skill, Velik decided as he scaled the side of the mountain.
It wasn’t just the molten pools of lava, though those certainly didn’t help. His physical stat was more than up to the task of keeping him from cooking himself whenever he had to run...
2025-07-24 11:42:11 +0000 UTC View PostThere was a huge difference between monsters that flew with wings and monsters that used magic to defy gravity, and that difference could be summarized as either a need for or lack of forward momentum. Magic-users could do things like hover in place, fly backward, or even fly upside down. Things ...
2025-07-23 11:42:55 +0000 UTC View PostThe man had a mane of dark hair rising out of his skull and spilling down his back, and deep, sunken eyes that stared down a sharp beak of a nose. His skin was pallid, almost sickly, and his mouth parted to reveal sharp little triangular teeth.
He studied Velik while he waited for a respons...
2025-07-22 11:26:45 +0000 UTC View PostThere was absolutely no doubt in Velik’s mind that the scent trail was deliberate. Before, he could have dismissed it as Tesir being lazy. The tiger divine beast had only hidden it for his trip across the desert, presumably to prevent the metal monstrosities there from attacking him. Before tha...
2025-07-21 12:21:39 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t exactly the same, but after a few hours of screwing around with stuff, Velik managed to get the LPS to show him something that was at least somewhat familiar. A few categories had vanished—things like decarmas and unspent free points—but at least he understood the scale of his sta...
2025-07-18 12:17:09 +0000 UTC View PostIt had been two days since she’d lost that little shit, two days of searching and two days of failing to find a trace of him. She’d used magic to track him. It hadn’t worked. She’d quietly seethed while she repaired her wings, then taken to the air to scour the landscape with eyes so shar...
2025-07-17 10:49:28 +0000 UTC View PostVelik instantly adjusted his plan. Making a break for it wasn’t going to work when Eslaka knew he was planning on it. He’d already seen how fast she could fly in her true form, and he doubted he had a reasonable chance of escaping her notice if she was actively on guard.
Bet ...
2025-07-16 11:38:07 +0000 UTC View PostShe sent tendrils of mana into the sky bridge’s control platform while watching the baby divine beast out of the corner of her eye. Something about him was disturbing, but she couldn’t place her finger on exactly what it was. It wasn’t the suicidal drive to test himself against his b...
2025-07-15 11:05:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe only way to know if the power Morgus had given him was going to be enough was to try. This divine beast wasn’t Tesir, but if she wanted a fight, Velik was more than happy to test out his abilities on her. All the talk aside, his goals were clear. It was the same as always: hunt monst...
2025-07-14 13:14:46 +0000 UTC View PostIt turned out that, while he couldn’t actually run across the sky with [Air Walk], it was a hell of a lot more versatile than he’d initially given it credit for. Velik made it up five hundred feet of stone in a minute, mostly by leaping straight up and clinging to the ...
2025-07-11 12:23:24 +0000 UTC View PostEven cut into three different segments, the millipede was still forty feet long. Wings flickered across its back as it skimmed across the sand, bearing down directly on Velik. He met it on a wide, flat stretch of desert. Mandibles flashed as it reared up and tried to slam down on him, the ...
2025-07-10 11:16:01 +0000 UTC View PostWhile [Air Walk] had been one of his most used enchantments, Velik had a wide variety to choose from when it came to duplicating his old gear. Another one that stuck out to him was [Mana Drinker], but he wasn’t sure how useful it would be to create an es...
2025-07-09 12:03:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe massive bird that had grabbed him was practically invisible to his senses. If not for the fact that he could feel its talons circling around him, he wasn’t sure he would have known it was there. No wind cut across its feathers. It didn’t smell like anything. Even the essence and ma...
2025-07-08 11:23:56 +0000 UTC View PostMindful of the fact that there was an unknown presence stalking him, possibly a divine beast, Velik didn’t just stand there tinkering with the new limited personal system interface. He took off a good clip while he tried to figure out what changes being disconnected from the full system ...
2025-07-07 12:24:39 +0000 UTC View PostIt was an hour or two before midnight. The moon hung full overhead, an auspicious sign according to Sildra, and Velik was finally ready to pass beyond the boundary. He’d removed all of his gear, extracted a backpack of supplies and his new spear from his Traveler’s Bracelet, and handed...
2025-07-04 11:51:21 +0000 UTC View PostUnsurprisingly, there were no parasitic monsters hiding in the rank-and-file soldiers. Even the officers were clean, as were most of the nobles. The way Velik understood things, it was simply that Sildra was not the first, second, or third druid to sweep the gathered armies here. The ones ...
2025-07-03 11:37:33 +0000 UTC View PostShe almost couldn’t believe it when he finally walked into town. For months now, she’d been living in disguise among the humans, waiting for
She almost couldn’t believe it when he finally walked into town. For months now, she’d been living in disguise among the humans, waiting for 2025-07-02 11:23:44 +0000 UTC View Post