Area Message: The second boss of the Seared Wilds Tower has been defeated. The remaining bosses grow stronger. All bosses gain the Elite status. Further boss kills will lead to further power increases.
Boss Defeated: The Queen Tyrant
Level Up!...
2025-03-18 15:39:37 +0000 UTC View PostArea Message: The first boss of the Seared Wilds Tower's second floor has been defeated. The remaining bosses grow stronger. All bosses gain the Elite status. Further boss kills will lead to further power increases.
I stared at the message for a moment. I’d only just fini...
2025-03-17 13:02:28 +0000 UTC View PostTier Three Dungeon: The Seared Wilds Tower (Floor Two)
Objective: Complete Three of the following objectives:
Objective: Defeat Ursa Prime (0/1)
Objective: Defeat The Cosmos Unleashed (0/1)
Objecti...
2025-03-16 13:00:36 +0000 UTC View PostTime Limit: Eight Hours, Seven Minutes
The six of us—the twins, Jessica, Calvin, Tori, and I—stood on a boat next to the final boss of the Tour de City dungeon—a greenish water elemental that had risen from the Chicago River and promptly exploded under the combined at...
2025-03-15 15:16:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe first skill, Remote Voltsmithing, looked like a solid option. It’d be especially powerful if I worked with the same people a lot, or if I could give and take Creations from people between fights or dungeons. The problem I saw was that other than Tori, I didn’t team up with the same people...
2025-03-14 12:57:57 +0000 UTC View PostTori absolutely won the boss drops, and I couldn’t help but feel jealous of her luck. She’d claimed the purple-glowing item, and even though I wanted it, I couldn’t help but admit it’d be good for her.
The Queen’s Blessing (Epic, Charge 10)
+5 Body, ...
2025-03-13 13:10:15 +0000 UTC View PostThe Queen Tyrant: Level Fifty-Eight Elite-Plus Dungeon Boss
Current Difficulty: Extreme
The Queen Tyrant remembers ruling with an iron fist—a tiny one, but an iron fist nonetheless. She was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Cretaceo...
2025-03-12 13:06:28 +0000 UTC View PostThe Trial was overwhelming.
With Tori and the twins taking care of the Reliquary of Bones’s first boss, and with Calvin’s promise that he had teams who could handle The Void, The Field of Warriors, and The Watery Grave, I had time to sit down and work. But the puzzle in front of me felt...
2025-03-11 13:20:40 +0000 UTC View Post“That…that could work,” Jessica said, when Calvin finished talking.
I wasn’t so sure. There were a lot of moving parts, and just like in an engine, every part needed oiling, and every part was a point of failure. His plan felt more complex than it needed to be, but as I went through...
2025-03-10 13:03:55 +0000 UTC View PostHello. I'm so tired. This book launch has been incredibly stressful, and I wanted to thank you all for your support and for reading. It means a lot to me. Thanks.
Tori sat on top of a massive stone statue, legs crossed and hands on her knees. She stared out over Lake Michigan as t...
2025-03-09 16:40:04 +0000 UTC View PostI stood in Cindy’s Automotive’s empty garage, admiring everything we’d accomplished. Every car—except the forest-green Ford Explorer—had been Pulled into the street, Crushed, and stacked on top of each other to form a crude wall. The lifts had been lowered manually, with Calvin mashing ...
2025-03-08 14:30:07 +0000 UTC View PostWe emerged, still soaking wet, from the Watery Grave and into Museumtown. From the Shedd Aquarium’s entrance, everything seemed to be more or less in order. I nodded to the two Level 20-somethings who stood on either side of the dungeon entrance. “Should be clear in there. We got one hu...
2025-03-07 13:59:58 +0000 UTC View PostThe Contingent Cast I’d picked was a messy one.
I hadn’t had many choices, after all. Iron Body, another Contingent Cast, and what few spells Bobby had picked up.
Worse, he hadn’t been interested in giving them to me. I’d had to trade, and I only had one thing he was intereste...
2025-03-06 14:00:55 +0000 UTC View PostTori woke up eventually, and I managed to get a few hours of sleep before she shook my shoulder. An ominous orange glow filled the Howling Moray’s rock tunnel maze—a glow that hadn’t been there before—and I closed my eyes as the searing light redoubled the headache I’d picked up last ni...
2025-03-05 16:31:07 +0000 UTC View PostAfter ten minutes of pondering the tome, I realized something.
This wasn’t going to work. Not the way I wanted it to, at least.
My initial plan had been to decipher the spell, convert it into the Spellcode I needed for the player-piano-looking Spellcode Scroll-Reader, and simply str...
2025-03-04 13:55:53 +0000 UTC View PostChurch bells rang in the distance.
I’d never been the most into Church. None of us had, really, but Cozad’s bells had rang at noon every day whether we were in town or not, and they were a good indicator that lunchtime was coming up at school. The teachers knew, even if they refused to ...
2025-03-03 14:15:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe compass spun wildly in the half-second before a pair of massive jaws clamped down on my arm; the Autoplate Pauldron and Voltsmith’s Grasp took the worst of the crushing bite, and I felt needle-thin teeth shattering and snapping, but though the armor held, a few fangs plunged into my arm lik...
2025-03-02 13:44:47 +0000 UTC View PostRose-Tinted Compass (Common, Charge 20)
+4 Awareness
This compass points in the general direction of living foes.
Sharkskin Diving Suit (Rare, Charge 20)
+4 Body, +2 Awareness
Saltwater erupted in a massive circle, and the glass barrier shattered behind Tori and me as a gigantic steel cage crashed into the pool we’d just climbed from. It pressed down around Bobby, pinning him under the water with only a tiny air pocket at the very top of the dome-shaped bars; he coul...
2025-03-01 00:22:35 +0000 UTC View PostTier Two Dungeon: The Watery Grave (Floor One)
Objective: Defeat The Blood in the Water (0/1)
Objective: Defeat The Howling Moray (0/1)
Objective: Survive (0/1)
Completion: 13%
When Calvin finally showed up, I couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
Before Bobby and I could deal with the Shedd Aquarium, I had so much to do, and Calvin was exactly the person I needed to help me do it.
The three of us—Calvin, Jessica, and I—sat on the Field Museum’s steps, w...
2025-03-01 00:22:32 +0000 UTC View PostJessica woke up early.
That in itself wasn’t unusual; if she was anything, it was an early bird. She’d planned on being up by four thirty—or as close as she could get—every workday, and by five or five-thirty on days she didn’t spend at the Field Museum.
But this time was di...
2025-03-01 00:22:30 +0000 UTC View Post“Absolutely not,” Jessica said as Bobby and I walked into her clinic.
I’d used the point in Body, but it hadn’t healed everything. Bobby was beat up, too; he hadn’t taken as many hits as me, but when he did get hit, he didn’t have the same level of armor I did—or...
2025-03-01 00:22:29 +0000 UTC View PostHello, Patrons,
I'm attempting to break through onto the front page on Royal Road's rising stars list, so expect a few chapters over the next couple of days to make up for the difference. Should be a total of 1 for today, 1 for tomorrow, plus (hopefully) five extra over the nex...
2025-03-01 00:22:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe crowd went wild.
Bobby started laughing. “This is the most Bears thing ever. Fourth down, at the fifty-yard line, and they go for it? Unbelievable.”
I readied the Trip-Hammer and tried to clear my head a little more as Da Bears got themselves back into a formation at their for...
2025-02-28 14:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostOlivia Rodriguez was tired.
She’d been trying to say something—anything—for days. Ever since Paul had disappeared. But she couldn’t even move her mouth, much less make anything but sounds.
On the other hand, she was a soldier. Not just any soldier, but one of the...
2025-02-28 14:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostSoldier Field had always been a curiosity. I’d visited it once before, but not for a game—just to see it. Its glass-and-steel bulk rose from the inside of the old stone brick stadium like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon, while the fake Greek facade down below helped it blend in with t...
2025-02-27 14:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWe exited the dungeon a few items—and another Rank One Voltsmith’s Box—wealthier. Nothing the boss had dropped was particularly interesting, but the Voltsmith’s Box had three unique items in it. Taken together, they had the potential to change how I thought about my class—and about the ...
2025-02-26 14:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t a boss.
It was crabs. Lots of them.
With knives.
Knife Crab: Level 14 Monster
Individually, not one of them posed a threat. A single rail gun shot could take out two or three, and Tori’s magic would easily handle a half-dozen in a single cast...
2025-02-25 14:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy augs were at their worst between twelve and thirteen years old.
It turns out that there are all these settings in a set of augs, and that they need to be adjusted. Constantly. Like, every six months, ideally. If they’re not, the augs don’t grow with you, and they end up the wrong siz...
2025-02-24 14:56:59 +0000 UTC View Post