Chapter 63: Sweet and Sour
A fruit boasting multiple hues, shifting across its surface in the manner of a rainbow was naturally something quite hard to forget. I’d kept it at the back of my mind, and would have dealt with it earlier if not for two things. Initially, there was the matter of a mild compulsion effect the fr...
2024-11-17 07:44:04 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 62: Peace In Our Time
Given the circumstances, I wasn’t entirely successful at controlling myself, and eventually burst into a fit of nervous laughter that lasted for the better part of five minutes. By the time I managed to recover myself, I was left with a mildly sore throat, and Harvey’s bemused expression.<...
2024-11-17 06:06:24 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 61: Thief of Souls
[Contacts
Amelia Dawn - Level 30 Necromancer
Harvey Miller - Level 9 Thief of Souls]
Amelia being more than a simple healer came as no shock to me, as I’d suspected something was up ever since she added me as a Contact, seemin...
2024-11-16 07:40:07 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 60: Dawned On Me
Truthfully, I didn’t entirely believe what Harvey was telling me. Oh, the broad strokes of the history was likely rooted in fact, and even the motivations were believable, but the entire explanation felt like a very high level overview, the kind of thing printed on training pamphlets handed to in...
2024-11-16 06:06:19 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 208: Austerity
“Have we met?” Emma asked rhetorically, tilting her head in acknowledgement.
Emma wasn’t sure how the Magus found her, or how much he knew, but either way, she wasn’t going to volunteer her side of the story to a virtual stranger.
“We’re speaking here and now, are we not?” A...
2024-11-16 04:48:07 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 207: Speaker of the House
Emma summoned Epitaph, driving the blade into the ground and holding on for dear life as the world swayed around her. It wasn’t painful, nor did her instincts warn of any danger, but it was immensely uncomfortable, like a sudden and extreme bout of motion sickness, or being caught on a p...
2024-11-15 05:09:20 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 59: Saintess Summons Skeletons
“Why? That’s a question with many answers,” Harvey grimaced, cupping his chin in thought. “In return, let me ask you a question in return. Can monsters think?”
My first reaction was to reply in the negative: of the admittedly limited selection I’d encountered so far,...
2024-11-15 03:27:34 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 58: Dead to Rights
Nothing else bothered us on the way back, granting a rare moment of reprieve to mark the end of our search. We’d been going in a large circle, rounding up one group at a time, so we weren’t actually that far from camp, and arrived back where we began in less than ten minutes. The mission tall...
2024-11-15 02:11:24 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 57: The Wild Hunt
A wounded animal is the most dangerous of all. That old saying was a popular one in the corporate world, typically rearing its head in discussion around mergers and acquisitions, but just as applicable in a hundred different settings. That said, I doubted my old managers ever envisioned a scenario...
2024-11-14 05:45:41 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 56: Horsing Around
[Horsedra - Level 7 Demon]
It would have been amusing if it weren’t mildly terrifying. To reiterate, I grew up in the suburbs before moving to the big city at a young age: before this, the largest animal I’d ever had charging in my general direction was someone’s angr...
2024-11-14 04:19:44 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 206: Crystal Clear
Crystal cut a distinctive figure, wearing a dress that lived up to her name: ten thousand fractals that somehow maintained both cohesion and by extension her modesty, even as they constantly moved, rearranging themselves into kaleidoscopic patterns of blue and white with each passing second. It w...
2024-11-14 02:30:56 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 55: Blood Money
I wasn’t sure if the lone driver would make it back at all, given the lack of an escort, but there wasn’t anyone we could spare, so he’d simply have to hope for the best. We’d thinned the herd in terms of predators, at least, though who knew if our efforts would be enough to keep him safe? E...
2024-11-13 03:41:29 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 54: Something’s Not Quite Right
“I’m happy to talk specifics, once we’re back on the road,” Harvey promised, returning to his feet. “For now though, let’s get the rest of the horses back, before anything else makes a meal out of them.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that, as the more I s...
2024-11-13 02:07:50 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 205: Space
Elizabeth appeared rather reluctant to talk about whoever was on the other end of the call, not even relenting after a minute of Emma staring disapprovingly at her. That was when Emma remembered two things: firstly, that the effectiveness of this strategy was probably diminished when she had a helmet ins...
2024-11-13 00:27:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 53: A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course
Six horses had been recovered, and three confirmed dead; with nine left to go, the search continued. As we continued due East, signs of life began to make an appearance. Far from the emptiness from before, field mice, rabbits, voles and more scurried by, paying little he...
2024-11-12 04:18:26 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 52: Dawntrail
Harvey had gathered all of the drivers together, huddled shoulder to shoulder like a football team in the moments before the game started. As I approached, the two nearest to me parted slightly, allowing me to see the star of the show: a crude map one of the drivers had scratched into the dirt with a ...
2024-11-12 03:06:33 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 204: The Great Filter
Thankfully, the number of messages Emma had to sort through wasn’t actually as bad as the top line suggested. While there were indeed 1121 individual messages, most of them were automated messages from the administration, repeating at one minute intervals and reporting the same thing: a tota...
2024-11-12 00:38:45 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 51: Popcat
[Mask (Cat) upgraded.
Processing. Please wait.]
Nobody ever enjoyed being told to wait, and I was no exception to the rule; I could be patient, certainly, but I didn’t particularly like it. That being said, I was still rather happy to see this particular no...
2024-11-11 03:42:12 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 50: Shades of Grey
Somewhat predictably, I ended up slumped in my chair inside the carriage, completely failing to fall asleep. I wasn’t that tired, as whilst the night time skirmish had been intense, it had also been very brief. Even the backlash from Last Stand had faded after digging into some emergency ration...
2024-11-11 01:59:32 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 49: Ice Ice Baby
Harvey had wrapped up his discussion with the drivers, while I was preoccupied with the System. Each of them were heading back to their respective carriages, climbing back into blankets and sleeping bags to snatch what sleep they could. On one hand, that was a reasonable course of action, since the...
2024-11-10 02:50:44 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 48: Rule of Three
[Level up!
Will Swindell
Class (True): Level 3 Soldier of Fortune
Class (Public): Level 3 Soldier
Title: [Empty]
Experience: 311/500]
I took a moment to look ar...
2024-11-10 01:22:12 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 203: Malcontent
Given how much the Solstice had dominated her thoughts as of late, Emma’s first reaction was bemusement, as she watched finely dressed servants flit to and from between tents, carrying everything from wooden support teams to trays laden with tea and crumpets. The morning was bright, with not a clo...
2024-11-09 02:30:38 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 47: Ghostbusters
Bereft of their supernatural compulsion, the Wispen weren’t particularly threatening. Sure, they could levitate, which let them bypass the earthen stakes around our encampment, but their maximum speed capped out at a brisk jog, and their movements were well telegraphed, in the manner of amateurs ...
2024-11-09 00:49:33 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 46: Whisper on the Wind
I only stayed on the ground for a little bit: the stars, while impressive to look at, were not known for their being quick to change, so the novelty ran out before long. Even the pale blue flames that flitted around in the distance couldn’t keep my interest for long, so back to mundane aff...
2024-11-08 23:06:13 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 202: Will of Stone
It was a bright and sunny morning, on the 14th of June, when Emma returned to the Decision Tree with her immediate family. Last time they’d used this path, it had led to the Sherwood Gallery, for a very confusing day of shopping. On this special day, however, all paths had been reconfigured to ...
2024-11-08 00:43:09 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 45: Watch Out
It was difficult to sleep, after the excitement that had punctuated my third day on the road. Part of that, I knew, was down to the residual adrenaline coursing through my body. I’d barely fought, but even so, the evolutionary traits behind the fight or flight response were hard to overcome. The oth...
2024-11-07 23:07:36 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 44: Bottom’s Up
The problem with facing an enemy coming from underground, is that I had no way to see them. An obvious statement, perhaps, but no less true for it. I had no way of going on the offensive, so even after Pumpkin’s warning, all I could really do was to wait for the enemy to move, and then mount a c...
2024-11-07 22:01:52 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 43: Foggy Bottom
The fog definitely wasn’t obeying the laws of physics I was used to seeing, as it wrapped around our convoy like the smothering hand of a government regulator, smothering all individuality within a thick, formless morass.
[Water stored.]
The sole saving grace wa...
2024-11-07 16:40:41 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 42: Violence is the Answer
You’d think I’d be worried, facing the prospect of actual combat for the first time. I wasn’t necessarily counting the sparring matches back in Allensward, against baby monsters and people who’d never fought a serious battle in their lives, but even whilst killing the latter, I’...
2024-11-07 10:32:31 +0000 UTC View PostBook 2 start!
Chapter 201: The Last Supper
Emma, knowing there was unlikely to be any once she arrived at Stonehenge, followed Edith’s advice and took a week off to rest and recharge. No combat, and barely any crafting: only making batches of ordinary candles, as that was what was most in demand. Ironically, the re...
2024-11-07 07:23:16 +0000 UTC View Post