Tsaimath

Chapter 1181

No matter how powerful I was as an individual, the raging storm outside reminded me that I was still an ant compared to the actual forces of nature. A glacier could exert magnitudes more force than I could, tides could erode any rock if given enough time, and the torrential storm was stronger than the burned land, at least on the surface.

...

Chapter 1180

Sitting in my newly established underground lair, I could only laugh at myself and shake my head when considering just how easily I had let myself get distracted. The idea of the underground lair was a sound one, even the Burned Land with its Bitumen and artillery beasts would need some time to burn through some thirty metres of earth and rock, ...

Chapter 1179

Dreams could be decidedly weird; there was no question about that. Not only were there instances of Lady Hecate using dreams to communicate with me, pulling me into Her realm so we could have a conversation, but there were also recurring dreams about Neyto, or rather, about the Crystal Forest surrounding the small village and the Nexus at its ce...

Chapter 1178

Talking with the Chief was incredibly interesting. When it came to his speciality, he was just as adept as Mrs Wu, and a part of me wanted to watch these two face off in some sort of sneakiness challenge or something like that. While the Chief never outright explained what he had been doing in the military, the way he readily spoke about covert ...

Chapter 1177

As it turned out, the “Chief” was present in the small town, though the expression of worried annoyance on his face made me think that he didn’t really want to be. When Catherine and I turned up, the man was quietly talking with a few other guys, and a woman or two, all of whom had the appearance I had come to associate with people adept a...

Chapter 1176

It was quite impressive how quickly the otherwise nearly mundane woman could move when thinking that her child might be threatened. While I didn’t use Observe to confirm her level, the rest of my senses could give me an estimation that she was below level twenty and a lot closer to ten than twenty, meaning she was just about as weak as she had...

Chapter 1175

The first realisation I had when looking at the people we were about to meet closely was that their skin and skin colour were quite interesting. Since the Change had introduced attributes to people, skin condition had improved to a certain extent, as a lot of environmental factors, things like harsh wind or sunlight, were apparently considered �...

Chapter 1174

• AN: I'll be gone the coming week (17th to 25th) but unless something goes wrong, Dragon-Patreons should get the chapters as usual, while the Wolves will get four chapters on the 17th, to last them until I get back from vacation.

If there was one person who was truly ecstatic about the prospect of...

Chapter 1173

With the information given to me by Lady Hecate, I started to look for the people apparently calling out for aid. Given that they were supposedly in fairly close proximity, I used some scrying constructs during the day, when we couldn’t hunt for Bitumen in the burned area, to scout things out from the air. If there was a decently large populat...

Interlude: Livin' on a prayer

Looking back, Jenn was, once again, wondering how she had managed to get from point A to point B. Just about two years ago, she had prepared to give birth to her first child, while her husband had celebrated a promotion at the bank he had been employed, making both of them deliriously happy. That is, as long as the pregnancy hadn’t been kickin...

Chapter 1172

“Good evening, my dear.” There was only one entity I knew who spoke with three voices at once and, as it happened, that particular entity was also the one who had repeatedly pulled me from my dreams, inducing the fairly discombobulating sensation of being aware without being awoken, the human mind not quite equipped to handle going from slee...

Chapter 1171

After the initial experiment to acquire a core from one of the Bitumen was an abject failure, I tried a few more things, but none of them worked as I wanted them to. Sure, I learned quite a few interesting, and some fairly disgusting, things in the process, but ultimately, I wasn’t able to confirm any of my suspicions.

What I was confid...

Chapter 1170

Sneaking into the territory of the goop men was somewhat nerve-wrecking, but at the same time, it was necessary. I needed to know what exactly the terrain these creatures spread did, whether there were any additional effects we would suffer under just from walking across it, if there were some sort of early-warning system included that may allow...

Chapter 1169

Readying myself for the next experiment was just a little odd, as the situation was both similar and dissimilar to the one I had been in the night before. The biggest similarity was that I had positioned myself on a hillside and was planning to poke a fairly large bear. Granted, this particular bear had an affinity for waves of burning sludge fi...

Chapter 1168

Even after we returned to our camp, it took me almost another hour to remove the various shards and splinters from my body, a process that ultimately left me exhausted and with a bit of lingering soreness, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t able to discuss the entire issue with my daughters. And there were a few things we needed to discuss, mainl...

Chapter 1167

My awareness returned slowly. At first, I was barely able to hear Lia and Luna’s voices, mainly Lia explaining what had happened while they likely made their escape from the fallback point, just in case more attacks were incoming. It was quite amusing to listen to them, despite the worry I could hear in their voices, I couldn’t help but rela...

Chapter 1166

Channelling vast amounts of power was always an intense experience. A faint feeling of omnipotence, stray thoughts intruding on my mind, suggesting just what I might be able to accomplish with that much power, alongside an aching pain in my body and a buzzing in my mind, it was incredible. Yet, at the same time, there were small parts of my mind...

Chapter 1165

After my constructs were dispersed, I realised just how interesting this area might be. Even from above, it had been difficult to determine how large it actually was. The smoke continued to obscure my constructs' vision until they got high enough to be above it, which was just about where the clouds sat, continuing to block said vision, so no lu...

Chapter 1164

When we saw the mess we were heading towards, the first thing we did was stop. Even from afar, we could see that there was a lot going on there, but without getting a lot closer, we couldn’t tell what that entailed. So, instead of running in like fools and finding out what dangers were there by using our bodies, we got comfortable, and I conju...

Chapter 1163

Seeing smoke on the horizon could either be a very good or a pretty bad thing; it completely depended on the amount of smoke one could see. If there was a little smoke, rising in a somewhat distinct column, it usually meant one was seeing a singular, likely controlled, fire, often lit by another sapient presence. That went doubly if the column w...

Interlude: A matter of perspective

As so often, while the spirit and even the flesh were willing and eager to accomplish their stated goal of tearing down the edifice of wicked darkness, reality was not so accommodating. In fact, the entire tower stood defiant against all their attempts, the doors of heavy stone not even budging, the walls not taking a single crack despite their ...

Chapter 1162

Title gained

You gained the title: Spirit Binder

You bound a spirit of nature into a physical form, allowing you to harness its primal power for your needs. Those sensitive to these elements can recognise your deed, shaping their perception of you. 

While it only took me a...

Chapter 1161

For a minute or two, I simply observed the invisible entity with my Soul Sight. It wasn’t idle, thrashing around, causing gusts of air to blast against the walls and redistribute the air within the crystal cage I had created. The crystal-lined earth all around it was easily strong enough to withstand the blasts, though I could see that a bit o...

Chapter 1160

While we hadn’t managed to figure out a whole lot about our current opponent, at least not in confirmed facts, we had enough pieces of the puzzle to make some fairly educated guesses about its nature. One, it was wind-aligned, and I was confident of that as I had seen its soul. Two, it was invisible and, likely, intangible, interacting with th...

Chapter 1159

“Fascinating,” I heard Luna mutter behind me, as I was still trying to see what had spooked me to turn a stretch of forest into a mess of broken branches and uprooted shrubbery. “Something was there, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what that ‘something’ was. Just a presence, natural but not quite, magical but also not really, just, s...

Chapter 1158

The first indication that something was wrong came to us in the form of a strange sound. It sounded almost like a moan and, if not for Sasha’s immediate and fairly strange reaction to it, we might have ignored it as simply a trick of the wind blowing through the trees. Nothing but a form of auditory pareidolia, the phenomenon making people see...

Chapter 1157

• AN: I finally got to use the snicker-inducing thought that spawned the entire Sasquatch-plotline: The Saskatchewan Sasquatch

Standing atop one of the local mountains, I had a realisation. While I wasn’t entirely certain where we were, thanks to the effects of the change partially randomising geography on...

Chapter 1156

It was with an angry snarl that I threw my latest project away from me, my patience and self-control finally overwritten by a long, continued string of failures. Trying to make a magical item that allowed its user to fly was complicated. Incredibly so, if one of the things said item needed to do was work regardless of elemental affinities. It wa...

Chapter 1155

Sasha was a study in contradictions, making observing her as we travelled a fascinating experience. On one hand, she was intensely curious, which manifested in her constant desire to explore the world around us, though only in a somewhat limited radius, using her own senses. In that, I could easily see myself in her actions, just that she was us...

Interlude: Tower(ing) Offense

For the five bearers of Lady Sunna’s Word, the winter hadn’t been an overly pleasant experience. Sure, Lorgar was able to keep the worst of the weather away from them, the powers bestowed upon him by his Lady enough to accomplish that, but there was a vast difference between allowing them to endure the weather and preventing the weather from...