DarkTechnomancer

My Own Best Friend 29 - Octopodes Nuts

I’ve had my ups and downs since I woke up in this weird place. I’ve struggled with loneliness, frustration, anxiety, and depression, but even if I’m not exactly happy about it, I’ve gotten used to this as my new normal. At least I thought I had. Right now, though, between my constantly aching body, Maggie and ...

My Own Best Friend 28 - Ankle-Biting Worms

I know it was my idea, but trying to babysit this disgusting worm creature while patching up my ankle is a real pain in the booty! It may be slow, but it’s also very determined, and its gross wiggly body makes it difficult to handle without getting bitten. You’d think the trick is to hold it close to the head like Vi was doing, but while tha...

My Own Best Friend 27 - Big Part of the Ecology

This sucks! I’m freezing cold, soaking wet, sore all over, and I’m stuck in front because Allison has no spine and Violet—

I don’t know what her problem is, actually. She’s just mopey for no reason, I guess. I’ve also got a splitting headache from the World Engine spitting out a giant ACCESS DENIED at me for trying to use my ow...

My Own Best Friend 26 - Guard Rails

My newest tool is far from perfect. The waterskin is hard to fill, awkward to carry, has no cap to prevent spillage, and leaves a slightly acrid aftertaste when I drink from it. Violet says that last bit probably means it needed a more thorough wash, but it beats raw snail flesh any day of the week. I think I also need to retie the knot at the b...

My Own Best Friend 25 - Good Work

Maggie is kind of weird. Okay, really weird. She’s moody and abrasive, hard to get along with even for me, but also?

Holy marshmallow fudge balls is she smart!

She figured out how to use magic, supercharged one of our skills somehow, and even came up with a slightly gross but clever solution to our water problem. I th...

My Own Best Friend 24 - We Really Need Some Shoes

“I still can’t believe you managed to climb this,” I mutter, peering over the edge of the cliff where the tunnel connects back to the Twisting Cavern.

“Aaah! Don’t look down, frick!” Allison curses. If you can even call that a curse.

“I guess I didn’t inherit the fear of heights from you two scaredy-cats,” ...

My Own Best Friend 23 - We All Want to Survive

Marching down the seemingly endless tunnel gives me a lot of time to think about things. Things like “Why is the stone here so flat and smooth?” and “How damn long is this tunnel supposed to be, anyway?” Mostly, though, my thoughts keep drifting back to the argument earlier.

I don’t know why I’m wasting precious brainpower on i...

My Own Best Friend 22 - Calm Down for a Second

Allison and Maggie are quiet while I carefully butcher the dead lizard. In hindsight, it probably would have been smarter to remove the guts before draining it, but hopefully that won’t cause too many problems. Things seem to decay slower than I expect in this world. It took a very long time for the meat we’d scavenged to start...

My Own Best Friend 21 - I Suggest a Compromise

Things are pretty tense after all the arguing, and even though we’ve only been awake for a couple of hours at most, I’m exhausted. I pull our cloak around me and curl up against the cave wall.

“I’m going to get some rest,” I say. “Whatever you guys did really took it out of us, and we need to wait for the carcass to rest anyway...

Art Update - System Lost Concept Art and Covers

Announcement - Volume 7 ebook and print now available!

Art Update - Volume 8 Cover

It's been a while since I did one of these. I promise that it's not because I stopped commissioning artwork for Fates Parallel! It's just that pieces like this one take a long time to finish. Tsuu really knocked it out of the part one last time to give Fates Parallel the sendoff it deserves. This isn't the last illust...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 5 - A New Era

The night sky was easy to take for granted. It was a beautiful expanse of brilliant lights, colorful cloud-like shapes, and constellations, all presided over by the silvery illumination of the moon. It was always there, even when obscured by the sun’s rays or cloud cover. For a long time, Jia hadn’t even noticed how much more of it she’d b...

Epilogue 4 - The Center of the World

If asked where the center of the world was, most would answer Jiaguo. The city, not the empire. The empire had been short-lived, but Jiaguo remained an important location to the institutions that came after. A coalition of nations, independent but joined together, with no central authority to oversee everything. At the center of this coalition, ...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 3 - Family Drama

It wasn’t always easy to find one’s place in life. It was an inevitable challenge for any young adult, and often even well into adulthood. Some went their entire lives without finding it. Some, either by birth or circumstance had one assigned or forced upon them. In such cases, it was common to rebel against the role given—to strive for so...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 2 - Shattered Masks

It was an odd feeling, being back in the Grand Academy. When Fujikawa Ayumi was last there, Jiaguo didn’t even exist, and now it was the biggest empire in the world. For a long time, she’d felt lost—maybe even forgotten. Her friends had all grown distant, getting married, starting families of their own, or leaving to become founders of the...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 1 - A Meeting of Mothers

It always felt a bit awkward, visiting larger cities. Fang Xiu had grown up in a remote village where there were no buildings taller than a single story, the only point of interest was an unusually large tree, and trading for goods outside the village meant sending a group of able-bodied young men and hoping at least one of them made it back wit...

Fates Parallel Chapter 617 - Respite

The Dragon Lord had no idea how to respond to her, simply staring in mute incomprehension. Long Xiaofan was likewise dumbfounded, so it fell on Yoshika to elaborate on her audacious confession unprompted.

“It’s not as convenient as it sounds. The future is...really big. Impossibly big. It hurts to look at, even if I try to narrow it do...

Announcement - What Comes Next?

In just two weeks, Fates Parallel will be over. It'll take a couple of months for that to reach the public platforms, and longer still for Amazon to catch up, but here, for those of you supporting me directly, the story will be complete. It's a bittersweet feeling, finishing a series. There's so much more I could write about that w...

My Own Best Friend 20 - Call Me Maggie

“So are you ever going to explain what just happened?” Violet asks testily.

I roll my eyes while I start sorting out the candles they brought. They’re mostly identical, but now that I know what to look for, each one is a little bit different. Not physically, of course, they just have different amounts of energy.

“Wasn’t pla...

My Own Best Friend 19 - High School Biology

I wake up without remembering ever going to sleep. Again. That’s probably not healthy, but nothing about my life is healthy. I’m just glad I woke up at all.

Going to check my wounds, I find that my hand is stuck to my side by congealed blood. I carefully pry it loose, wincing as the scabbing comes apart, but aside from a little bit of ...

My Own Best Friend 18 - Something That Is Red

This new tunnel is markedly different from either the caverns or the Worm Tunnel. The floor is unnaturally smooth and flat—which is honestly a relief after everything our poor feet have gone through in these caves—and the walls form a perfect arch. It almost seems man-made, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. Why would someone build such ...

My Own Best Friend 17 - Well That Sucks

Hunting is an entirely novel experience for me, and even if it weren’t, what little I know about hunting involves tracking animals through forests and then shooting them. Something tells me that I’m not about to find a gun any time soon, so my knife will have to do.

I wish I could make traps or something, but there’s nothing down her...

My Own Best Friend 16 - Now We're Cooking

“So...” I muse, turning the candle over in my hands. “I guess we can boil water now?”

“In theory,” Violet agrees. “But we need a smaller, non-flowing source to test it on. Like a bowl or something.”

“We needed that anyway,” I point out. “Maybe we can find a natural rock basin somewhere.”

“I’m sorry, ...

My Own Best Friend 15 - You Should Be a Scientist

I giggle a bit at Violet’s resigned sigh.

“Look, just hear me out,” I say, trying to suppress my laughter. “I actually have a good reason for this. Look at the class...”

[Tier 0 Candle Enthusiast]*

A keen observer, seeking to discover the truth about candles.

Skill - Can...