“You know, I really need a better name to call you than ‘gestalt,’” Will mused, dashing upwards through his own darkness. “Too much of a mouthful.”
Predictably, the gestalt did not give him a verbal response, though a slight shift in its aura indicated that it had heard him.
Will’s next sentence was cut off by Grimle Br...
2024-07-04 16:07:16 +0000 UTC View PostOn vacation with my family in Singapore. Thought I would be able to get some chapters out. Nope. Instead I am very tired and in no state to produce a chapter that is up to par. Posting will resume July 5th-6th, depending on your timezone. Thank you for your understanding.
2024-07-02 15:36:34 +0000 UTC View PostProgress to [Eternal Throne]: [37/1000].
None of the elves Will had systematically annihilated so far had been gold rank. As such, each of them contributed one skull to the throne of death he was slowly building. Will didn’t want to become the type of person who could easily boast a kill count of over a thousand, but thi...
2024-07-01 17:27:41 +0000 UTC View PostAs it turned out, it was significantly harder to track down the source of the Hunter’s Mark affliction when they were actively trying to avoid detection.
That wasn’t to say it was impossible—far from it. Since it was an active condition and not a fire-and-forget one like corruption or poison might be, it constantly pinged the Users w...
2024-06-30 07:39:13 +0000 UTC View PostAlan didn’t have many beans to spill on the subject of his boss apart from his name, though even that wasn’t much to go off of.
The Contractor. Will had sent a few messages out to his connections around the world, asking to see if anyone had heard of him. So far, he hadn’t had any luck. Liam had said that Hua might know something mor...
2024-06-28 13:39:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe sudden departure of the necrotic wyrm was the turning point in the battle for what had formerly been Washington DC. The city was almost certainly no longer going to be livable after this, not unless a concerted group of silver-rank builders focused all their efforts on putting it back together.
Just the damage done by the wyrm ha...
2024-06-27 05:39:50 +0000 UTC View PostOver in Amelia’s ship, the bronze-rank Pilot was gradually realizing that the elf in the back had not, in fact, taken a parachute pack.
“Uh, it was Caiyeri, right?”
“That is my name,” the elf said. She sounded distracted, like she was talking to someone else. She probably was. “Is something wrong?”
“You don’t ...
2024-06-25 05:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostFor the majority of her life, Caiyeri’s life had been the same. Deployed as a rapid-growth clone into a corrupted area, she had little scenery to look at but the strange, dangerous caverns beneath Arcadia.
The last two months had been a vast change of pace for her. In that timespan, she’d seen far more of another planet than she’d ev...
2024-06-23 09:55:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe item was an interesting one. It was gold-rank, but it wasn’t as flashy as Will had expected a gold-rank item to be.
Then again, he supposed that to some people out there in the cosmos, gold-rank items were to them as regular unformed-rank equipment was to him. It made sense that there would be some more mundane, less combat-focused i...
2024-06-21 15:55:11 +0000 UTC View PostMaybe hanging from the bottom of a magical fighter jet by literally holding onto its gun hadn’t been the best idea. Will and the man he’d accidentally knocked unconscious with his phantasm had been in a rather precarious area with little cover, and it was only thanks to the last-second intervention from the pilot he’d contacted that had ke...
2024-06-20 15:53:18 +0000 UTC View PostNew York City had been a noisy, chaotic mess before dimensional rifts had summoned in city-wiping threats from other worlds.
Humanity was no longer in the same state it had been a mere two months before, but that didn’t mean it was less of a disaster. Not everyone who had survived the tutorial had thrown themselves fully into the new wor...
2024-06-18 08:19:44 +0000 UTC View Post“A full summoning,” the Hunger said. “I should have realized this sooner.”
“It is not the strongest one that could have been summoned,” the Elven Mother replied. “It is worrying nonetheless. It is powerful enough that reverberations could affect us. Your champion is speaking to it, is he not?”
“For a certain value o...
2024-06-15 15:47:24 +0000 UTC View PostWhile most of the cultists had turned to funneling their energy towards the summoning ritual, a good portion of them remained on duty to guard the stunned Users and kill those who broke free of it. For the time being, though, the only ones who were even close to capable of doing so were the ones that Will was manually freeing. Nobody else had th...
2024-06-14 05:36:51 +0000 UTC View PostThe trial of the champion had begun with 2,938 members. During the course of the tournament, there had been one single addition in the form of Nathan, but there had also been a few hundred who’d died either during the tournament or in the inevitable disasters after.
All told, there were somewhere around 2,500 competitors remaining, give ...
2024-06-13 02:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe cultists, of course, had not been idle. Ataraxis’ sect had been listening into the conversations through various means, and though they had not gained perfect information, they understood enough to know that they would be returning into a trapped venue.
Ondrel Arctree, priest of corruption, was a Gold 6 with the Clone skill. At extre...
2024-06-11 13:25:13 +0000 UTC View PostThis was the first time in the tournament so far that Will had received rewards and not immediately thrown into a waiting room. His Equilibrium Mantle kept him and Osiris from being affected in the vacuum as they walked, and Will was keenly aware of the other man’s presence as he examined his rewards.
“You know,” he said, “I didn...
2024-06-10 11:43:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe teleportation this time was as smooth as it had ever been. Facilitated by Nynn, it avoided the bulk of the traps and knock-on effects that the cultists had laid for them. Will was glad for it.
Things were coming to a head, he knew. There were still going to be four more rounds of tournament, each of which would continue restoring the p...
2024-06-08 03:57:49 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t want trouble,” Natalie lied. “There’s a far greater threat to deal with right now than the likes of you.”
The latter half of her statement, at least, was true. While the gold-rank elf of the Abyss nation was being a bit of a pain in the ass, she hadn’t actually done anything yet.
“You are aware of th...
2024-06-07 11:00:17 +0000 UTC View Post“This isn’t the end, is it,” Will said, checking for the fifth or sixth time with Sen’s eyes that the restraints Nynn had used on Ingrid’s now-defenseless body were still intact.
“You can relax on checking those,” Nynn said. “Items are significantly less subject to the whims of plausibility than Users. These restraints woul...
2024-06-05 10:51:57 +0000 UTC View PostEach time Will entered the Beyond, it felt more natural than the last. This time was no exception. His nightly ritual with the Hunger had continued even while they were on and around the Sentinel, and he was slowly but surely getting to the point where he could almost think through the unbearable pain.
Already, he was capable of e...
2024-06-04 01:38:29 +0000 UTC View Post“The cycle is faltering,” Sadareth commented, looking down far below. “A shame, especially seeing how many of my champions made it so far. Yours, too.”
“Don’t remind me,” the Hunger sighed. “My ‘champion’ seems to believe that our relationship works the other way around, with him the god and I the mortal. Frustratingly,...
2024-06-03 10:26:35 +0000 UTC View PostOliver Turner was having a terrible month.
It had all started well. The R/V Sentinel had been deployed on its maiden voyage. As an oceanography vessel, it had been unparalleled. Oliver’s life’s work, a project to maintain and regrow barrier reefs, had been ready deploy for the first time on the ship.
They’d been ten da...
2024-06-01 00:49:30 +0000 UTC View PostSilver 4 wasn’t a massive barrier broken, but Will would take it. He put both of his unused points into Soul, knowing that he was going to rely on Sen’s sight to make up for the lack of his own Perception, which was still a measly Silver 0.
After that, he checked his new skill.
Skill: [Wail of the Forgotten]
<... 2024-05-31 00:44:34 +0000 UTC View Post“Where do we start?” Ayla sighed.
“Probably from the beginning,” Will suggested. “I’ve gotten a lot better at handling this, but I can’t hold this forever.”
“Have you received outside assistance?” Nynn asked suspiciously.
“Yeah. From you. Is that banned?”
“Not from me. Both Dreamer and I gave up ...
2024-05-29 09:59:03 +0000 UTC View PostParticipants from the First Trial of the Champion of Cycle [REMOVED] advancing to the Top 16 by Sigil
[Kadael, the Hunger] and [Vyx, the Crown]:
William Li-Brown
[Sadareth, the Elven Mother]:
Thalia Brooksoul
C...
2024-05-28 09:24:05 +0000 UTC View Post“Cards on the table,” Ash said. “You’re a bit of an asshole, Five.”
“Five?” Will asked.
“The fifth in the order we can see,” she explained. “I figure you’re the type who likes to put names to faces.”
“Ash is definitely not your name, and I can’t see either of your faces. I’ll take a descriptor, tho...
2024-05-26 10:05:53 +0000 UTC View PostWill had heard about the sponsors prior to this point. They’d been mainstays of the leaderboard since about a week or two after the apocalypse had begun, and Lev had brought them up a time or two. They’d never contacted him up until this point, so he’d largely put them at the back of his mind.
He did know that Hua and Haoyu had both ...
2024-05-25 10:42:06 +0000 UTC View PostNymlera Brooksoul was newly gold rank, and she knew that she was the most powerful participant remaining in this tournament.
Thalia, her daughter, had promise, but she relied on external factors to turn battles in her favor. Her advancement was not directly fueled by monster cores, but she had tainted many of her weapons and connections wi...
2024-05-23 08:16:17 +0000 UTC View PostWill had to give it to the corruption cultists. As terrible a selection of people as they were, it was them who had broken into the tournament so thoroughly that Will had been forced to face the facts.
After a few rounds of abnormal but otherwise relatively normal challenges, he had nearly forgotten what this world was now. Gods sent their...
2024-05-22 08:37:26 +0000 UTC View PostWill reappeared in a familiar divine domain. A god waited for him within, its presence making its overwhelming power clear but no longer pressing it upon its sigil-holder.
The Hunger had intercepted Will’s teleportation.
That was new. Normally, the god was only able to drag him into his domain when he was unconscious, whether that ...
2024-05-21 09:16:02 +0000 UTC View Post