Tsaimath

Chapter 1100

The ritual to transform Murray could only be classified as a great success. I wasn’t sure if it was because the guy was a superior specimen compared to the somewhat mediocre examples of humanity we had access to in Idiot-ville or thanks to the modifications inspired by the ritual I had been given by Lady Hecate and without additional tests, it...

Chapter 1099

Sadly, while the process of imbuing the attributes of an animal into a human shared by Lady Hecate was an incredibly interesting one, I also knew I was far from capable of pulling off the feat on my own. There simply were too many variables to keep track of and too many different functions to perform at the same time. It was clearly something me...

Chapter 1098

It took Jack, Jonas and Murray a few days to return with their decision. They had gone and met with the idiots in their village, a meeting I had decided to observe using the Oculus and a scrying construct or three, allowing me a front-row seat for the entertainment. It turned out that neither Jonas nor Murray were good at talking to the people t...

Interlude: Prices of Power

“What do you think about the offer?” Jack asked, looking at his two companions as they were walking away from Jademoon Tower, having just received an offer to have their bodies permanently augmented by the somewhat weird Morgana family who had built said tower.

“It’s tempting, I’ve got to admit it,” Jonas shrugged, “And they ...

Chapter 1097

For two days, I remained in the shrine, sorting through the dense package of information I had received from Lady Hecate. As with so many things with Her, the entire thing was a remarkable combination of homework, headache and boon, all mixed into a painful delight. If it wasn’t so useful, I would reconsider setting up shrines in Her name, and...

Chapter 1096

“Other than possible mental influences, the enchantment works fine, doesn’t it?” Lia asked, looking at the various notes we had taken during our experiments with a curious eye.

“There are probably some edge cases in which the enchantment will fail, some people who are incompatible with it or something like that, but generally, it w...

Chapter 1095

When we returned to the Idiot-ville with Blaise, now a successfully enhanced human, though one with far more empowerment than regeneration, I could only shake my head in disbelief. Two of our earlier experiments either had a grudge match or were sparring in a way seriously detrimental to their environment, their strength enough to break rock and...

Chapter 1094

After the first attempt worked out just about as well as anyone could hope, we didn’t have trouble getting the next person to agree. Hel, there was a queue of them, all interested in getting the enchantment once Joshua aptly demonstrated the tangible benefits. Everyone wanted it, and they wanted it as soon as possible, even after Joshua descri...

Chapter 1093

The procedure used to put the enchantment on Joshua was incredibly exhausting for everyone involved. For Joshua, it meant lying down, completely immobilised and in terrible pain as I literally carved the runes into his flesh while he had to endure. For Luna, it meant keeping the person I was working on, or torturing as some might describe it, al...

Chapter 1092

Somehow, we were met with only very mild suspicion when we offered the people in idiot-village, as we had come to call the community of lucky fools who had been hanging on despite their, objectively, horrible decisions, complete lack of planning and general incompetence. It was as if these people had some sort of divine blessing of luck, but onl...

Chapter 1091

There was something slightly surreal about realising just how much one’s actions managed to influence the local creatures. It was one thing to notice they reacted to the tower and the Oculus to a lesser degree, but it was an entirely different beast to realise how their population shifted and moved because of our test-subject acquisition. We h...

Chapter 1090

Looking at the crimson substance Lia had delivered to me, I couldn’t help but be impressed. I could easily sense the power held within the liquid, similar to the way I had started to sense places where Divine Power was concentrated, places where dungeons might form and even areas where the air was saturated with Astral Power and could easily t...

Chapter 1089

“Now, Mother, to summarise your explanation, the problem with placing these Blood Rune enchantments on others is that they essentially run out of control, draining the bearer of Astral Power until they have nothing more to give and at that point, they drain away their vitality to power it a little longer, any glaring mistakes in that?” Lia a...

Chapter 1088

For once, Lia and I weren’t trying to accomplish anything of our own. Instead, the two of us were out and about, keeping an eye on our respective students as they were trying to raid one of the higher-levelled areas we had previously explored but decided to ignore. In a way, it was supposed to be an exam, allowing Lia and myself to judge their...

Chapter 1087

Another location we decided to explore further was the Foothold, the dungeon beneath Cheyenne Mountain. Once again, we were moving as a group of five, first to see if the dungeon was replenished between subsequent explorations and if it was, we had a bit of hope to get additional materials from it. The big thing, at least to Lia and Alex, were t...

Chapter 1086

Sadly, the creation of my wings was the last major accomplishment I achieved in regards to my draconic body during the winter. Trying to create my breath was met with repeated failure, despite the faint glimpse at the deeper truths of magic I had managed to take while observing Lady Hecate at work. Even now, almost two months after the Longest N...

Interlude: A tale of two Sams

• AN: Chapter-Title born from the fact that it has taken me this long to realise that my main character (Samantha Jade Jacobs) and the character I based this one on (Samantha Carter) share their first name... In my defence, she was always Morgana or Jade to me. 

In a few of the quiet moments of the day,...

Chapter 1085

A part of me wanted to use my wings to fly back to my tower, though given that I’d have to land up top unless I wanted to show anyone who might be looking far more than I wanted them to see, I wasn’t certain if that was a good idea. Even without the possibility of giving an intimate show, there were a few practical considerations, as well as...

Chapter 1084

Flying was, without any doubts about it, one of the most enjoyable things out there, especially when it came to activities I could perform without Sigmir. Once she was back in the mix, things would shift a bit but until then, it ranked at the very top of my list, alongside delving deeper into the arcane mysteries of the world.

Sadly, even ...

Chapter 1083

After a fairly short day, filled with sleeping, meditation and contemplation, I was back on the frozen river, sitting near the edge of the waterfall. Down below, the valley opened into a basin with a fairly sizable open area in the middle, most likely a frozen lake, currently covered in snow. Thanks to the open geography of the basin and the far...

Chapter 1082

It was about an hour after dusk that I started my work, sitting in the middle of the frozen stream, right where it originally tumbled across the edge and down the cliff, though given its frozen state, there was very little tumbling right now. Just a cliff of ice, sculpted in a flowing and natural fashion where water sticking to the rocks below h...

Chapter 1081

• AN: Mucked up the posting, this is the correct chapter for tonight. Enjoy.

After the celebration of the Longest Night was over, regular life at Jademoon Tower resumed. By now, the name for my tower had stuck to the point that even I, the ‘Jade’ in the name had started to think of it by that nam...

Chapter 1080

By the time dawn announced itself by sending a painful spark of Light Magic through the window I used to project the Astral River into reality, I was quite exhausted. Staying awake throughout the night wasn't all that bad, not only was I used to it, I was superhumanly tough to boot, but that didn’t mean channelling that much power for that lon...

Chapter 1079

Even without actual, active magic, there was something deeply magical about the enthusiastic fervour everyone displayed during the shortest day as the final preparations for the longest night were made. Food was prepared, some of it special, like the hog Murray and Jack had brought back to roast for the night, others were fairly ordinary, like t...

Chapter 1078

It was fascinating just how focused people could become when they had something new and exciting to work on. Leaning magic had, in an odd twist of fate, lost some of its lustre during the time everyone had spent at the tower, a jaded sense of normality soon replaced the initial excitement as it became just that, the norm. For many people, it was...

Chapter 1077

Finding out the actual date of the ‘Longest Night’ to celebrate turned out a lot more complicated than expected, though by the time I ran down my list of ideas, the solution was a lot easier than anyone would think. 

My first idea was to look at the length of each day, though I quickly realised that doing so would need accurate cl...

Interlude: This is Halloween

• AN: This counts as the fourth (Saturday) Chapter for this week. Enjoy

The Bearers of Lady Sunna’s Word were hunting the Arch-Heretic, seeking to purify her with their Lady’s light. It was their solemn duty, to prevent humanity from falling into the darkness, they needed to...

Chapter 1076

“Mom, when’s Christmas?” Luna’s oh-so-innocent question threw me for a momentary loop, as I tried to come up with a good, satisfying answer. By now, thanks to the chaos after the Change, I had lost any real grasp of the date, mostly because it had simply ceased to matter. Dates were only needed to coordinate with other people and now, af...

Chapter 1075

Looking back at the work I had managed in the last two months, I could only feel pride. Sure, I hadn’t done all that much when it came to levels, only gaining six thanks to teaching various people magic and managing to make a few breakthroughs when it came to enchanting, but the levels hadn’t been what I had focused on. However, I received a...

Interlude: Life at Jademoon Tower

If anybody had suggested that they’d be living in a nice cottage next to a newly constructed high-rise building just six months before, that person would have been deemed insane. The world had just broken, burned in impossible flames, and everything was turned on its head, technology failing, people changing and dying, nobody would have deemed...