tobiasbegley

PSTH: Chapter Forty-Two

Why do Primals have the urge to bud their essence, when essence hearts are perfectly capable of producing a Primal from seemingly nothing but time and ambient essence – the very thing they produce? The answer is simpler than you may expect. Primals, like humans, can’t live forever. Outside of suspended animation like an egg, most Primals liv...

PSTH: Chapter Forty-One

Gifts are a fascinating topic. All biological organisms on record – billions in total – have the same gift, the ability to aspect their core to a different sort. It’s fairly useful as gifts go. Nothing staggering, but useful. But let’s be real. The slide on your augpads says ‘Essence Heart Basics’, so we all know what I’m about. Ne...

PSTH: Chapter Forty

Storage gems. Common, but interesting, magical items. They rely on the fact that Primals have no biological tissue whatsoever in order to operate, bending essence in such a way that the Primal is able to recover faster and remain in a semi-conscious state, like the liminal state between sleeping and wakefulness. It’s quite pleasant. Now, the m...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Seven

“What do you mean you’ve never done clap pushups?!” Liz asked, her voice holding back a mix of disbelief and laughter. “What’s the point of having superhuman strength if not to use it?”

“My full-gates infuse the created spell circuits with energy from it. The strength is really more of a byproduct of more efficient and powerf...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Six

The orb rose into the air, and I began clashing with my opponent. For better or worse, I’d definitely been right about the state of my mana senses, as I was able to force the orb back quickly, but they were also fundamentally unstable. Every half second or so, they practically turned off entirely, letting her push the orb back in my direction....

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Five

If I failed now, it might be fine. But it being fine was predicated on the idea that I would easily win future events, which there was no guarantee of. Worse, what if I was in another situation like this, arguing if I needed to strain myself? Better to push myself early in the tournament, in a situation where I’d be working with a team, than i...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Nine

I was nothing before the arrival of dungeon hearts. When magic came back, I thought… well… I thought I’d be a hero. I thought that my military background would make me special. That instead of being stuck in a dead end job working for a boss who makes in an hour what I make in ten years, I'd be the one who went out conquering dungeons, sla...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Eight

Greed is a poison. Oh, certainly, everyone needs to have their needs met. More than that, people want to live well, not just to survive. But the creeping desire to have more and more and more, with no mind for the costs to the people beneath you on the ladder of wealth or power or whatever else there may be? That is a sickness. And for the life ...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Seven

Immortality. The goal of countless Obsidian Kings, research groups, and wood magians. But is it actually possible? Even if you look at the issues with biological immortality, such as telomere shortening, there are issues with the ousia. It begins to fray into threads that require constant maintenance after roughly a hundred and fifty years. The ...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Four

Okay,  so the event ‘Sensory Sphereoids’ might not literally be tug of war, but to my mind, it was basically tug of war. The event was one of the ones that could potentially net me the training time needed to keep Ikki and Orykson around for a bit longer, and I’d signed up for it immediately. I was actually going as Malachi this time,...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Three

I spent that night processing the golden soul potion, which helped condense my mana slightly. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as the first time I'd drunk one, not after having taken so many drops of destiny and advanced so far, but the following morning, my mana definitely felt denser. After a couple of morning chores, Dawn, Dusk, Ed, Liz, and her ...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-Two

“I’ll be training, probably,” I said, waving a hand. I knew that I needed to find where the Sekhem earring had gone, but I could use every bit of training right now if I wanted to get far enough to potentially enter the top eight and earn some personalized prizes like a spellbinder rose. 

And frankly, I felt like a spellbinder r...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Six

Voice One: What’s the deallll with four core slots? You’re telling me that– Oh. You actually have an answer? I mean, this isn’t really th–

Voice Two: Well, think of the core like a cell. The ‘organelle’ of ousia within the condensed core that serves to link the pneuma and anima pools is almost perfectly cuboidal. With the poo...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Five

Why don’t Primals eat?! This does not make sense at all! I’m… What do they subsist on? I know that their bodies are made purely of ousia structures rather than atomic structures, and they sustain themselves on essence, either through cultivating, or through battle. Great! Fine! Lovely! No problems! But then, what happens when they eat? The...

Possible (Probable) Delay in Chapters

Hello everyone! For the last few days feeling a bit under the weather, only for it to worsen today, and it's going into pneumonia. I'm now on some medication, as well as a nebulizer every four hours, so I should hopefully be on the path to recovery.

I had been hoping the poor writing days earlier in the week wouldn't be an issue, as I'd b...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Four

And so, we come to the end of our miniseries! So sad to see you all go… But we’re going out with a bang. Or maybe I should say, going out with a flash? Hah! Radiance, also known as light, transcendence, celestial, and a handful of other things, is a strange one. It covers light magic, meaning it has its own versions of illusions and such, it...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty-One

Thankfully, the Patriarch didn’t take long to dismiss us, as he quickly turned to talking to the crowd and trying to build up hype around the fights, pointing out several of the key individuals in the fight: the mysterious blood mage, seemingly capable of completely shutting off someone’s magic. The woman with the bonded blade whose speed al...

The Third Step: Chapter Sixty

For some reason, the first thing that flashed through my head was that I felt sorry for the people broadcasting the match. They’d have to either broadcast Kamal’s foul language, or try to bleep it out mid-broadcast. Could they do that? 

Then I didn’t have time to think of anything else as he revealed just what his fourth gate ph...

The Third Step: Chapter Fifty-Nine

In response to the question, I flung a hand out, as if offering a handshake. That probably had been a mistake, as the summoner tensed, fingers crackling with lightning, before he relaxed. 

“My name’s Mal, what’s yours?” 

“Dario,” the summoner responded. 

“Any relation to the Amethyst Mask?” I aske...

PSTH: Chapter Thirty-Three

Where do essence hearts come from? We don’t know for sure. They're clearly solidified essence, and made of the same stuff as an essence stone, but what does that actually tell us? Measurements of essence levels in areas that have formed an essence heart don’t decrease. In fact, they actually increase! It seems to be a violation of the conser...

Updates, Future Roadmap, and Holiday Breaks!

Hello everyone! Thank you all for taking the time to read and support me, as always. I wanted to lay out a few minor changes as they pertain to work.

First, I wanted to let everyone know The Restored is out now! You can purchase it 2025-10-25 00:35:00 +0000 UTC View Post