154 - Sharing (your stats) is Caring
The way forward was to crawl further onward through the hive surrounding us. It took an hour to convince Etja to dive back inside the tunnels, but she relaxed once we realized that most insects had hidden or fled. Whether that was due to our completion of the objective or Varrin and Co’s relentless week-long slaughter, we didn’t know. Either way, we were only forced to squash a few lingering bugs. None of them were pushovers, but neith...
2024-07-22 16:28:57 +0000 UTC
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MT 153 - Lonely Langhrey
I gave everyone the rundown on what Nuralie and I had faced, then began sharing the item descriptions. I opened with the Wand of Boundless Night since it felt dangerous to even hold on to. I pitched the idea of leaving it in the care of Sam’lia, and no one was opposed to ridding ourselves of it. Xim once again entered a pensive stillness while we discussed the wand, but whatever she was thinking, she could share it in her own time.
“Despite its ...
2024-07-20 12:30:01 +0000 UTC
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MT 152 - Mystery of the Insectoid Society
No sooner had Varrin commented on our reunion, than a series of System messages appeared.
You have successfully defended against the Doomed Aspirants!
Your Dimensional Magic skill has increased to level 32!
Your Mystical Magic skill has increased from level 17 to level 19!
Your Physical Magic skill has increased to level 22!
2024-07-18 17:27:53 +0000 UTC
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MT 151 - Chips, Loot, & System Warnings
Bankrolls.
Cash money.
Scrooge McDuck levels of legal tender.
I actually didn’t have that much. I mean, I had more notes than most people, but in comparison to my total liquid wealth, it was a very small fraction. What I did have was an unreasonable amount of chips, especially after dealing with the bug brigade.
Your party has slain Quiet Solitude, the Doomed Aspirant: Abomina...
2024-07-16 03:12:09 +0000 UTC
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MT 150 - Diptera Fatalis
Animate Object
Spiritual
Cost: 20 mana reserved
Cooldown: 1 minute
Requirements: CHA 20, Spiritual Magic 20
You extend your will into an inanimate object, causing it to spring to life and act according to your wishes. Animated Objects gain a flying speed equal to your CHA, and you can communicate with the Object telepathically so long...
2024-07-13 17:29:09 +0000 UTC
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MT 149 - Death Sequence
Kill the healer.
It was age-old wisdom, passed down from elder homicidal vagrants to their soon-to-be murderhobo progeny. Varrin had probably been laid to bed as a child with cheerful tales of the underdog swordsman turning the tide of battle by expediting the enemy cleric’s journey toward their final destination in the embrace of their god. I expected that Lil’ Var had a colorfully illustrated guide on kill priority right next to his pillow, tuc...
2024-07-11 16:27:30 +0000 UTC
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MT 148 - The Four Bugwomen of the Apocalypse
Once Explosion! had been countered, a lot of things happened very fast.
Fly was flanked on three sides by allies in a triangle formation, a gruesome menagerie of insectoid bodies. Their frontliner fell while facing me and wasted no time charging.
The creature was a hulking woman covered in a dark brown carapace. Her body was wide and oval in shape, with sharp horns growing from her skull. Before she’d even landed, broad w...
2024-07-08 13:47:49 +0000 UTC
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MT 147 - A & N Exterminators
It was frustrating that the System, the Delve Core, or whatever was running this place hadn’t given us an express time limit before we’d gone into our individual challenges. It also seemed arbitrary that we were suddenly facing a countdown a few hours after Nuralie and I emerged from the loop. Had we barely scraped out a victory just before we would have failed a hidden objective? Or was there something else going on?
It wasn’t normal,...
2024-07-07 00:22:51 +0000 UTC
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MT 146 - Anty Bodies
Nuralie and I had eaten our fill and then separated into our own corners of the room to pursue our individual interests. Nuralie had taken several clippings of the thickly growing ferns and picked several of the glowing mushrooms for study. She had flora samples from across the Delve lined up in front of her on the table, cleared of its dirty dishes, and now covered in a portable alchemy set.
She cut into one of the large fruits we’d found on the cath...
2024-07-04 20:06:38 +0000 UTC
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MT 145 - System Addendum #3
*****
SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: [ERROR: REDACTED]
ADDENDUM NOTE: 5 months before the awakening of the first monolith
*****
Tavio examined ...
2024-07-01 18:00:08 +0000 UTC
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2024-07-01 17:00:11 +0000 UTC
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2024-07-01 17:00:11 +0000 UTC
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MT 144 - Two Places at Once
Once Nuralie reluctantly agreed to the strategy, I spent 3 days experimenting with my Dimensional skills. Nuralie took the time to study the threads, growing intimately familiar with their composition. She even learned to look deeper upon the thread that sought to move through an unknown spatial dimension without suffering mental trauma. Not much trauma, anyway.
Volume 4 of Dimensionalism and You was a little off with its guidance. ...
2024-07-01 15:33:19 +0000 UTC
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MT 143 - Dimensionalism and You
I studied the loson carefully, mindful of her emotional state. I knew that she’d fully realized her first revelation while within the Training Expo, but she hadn’t yet discussed it with us. Given her history with the three churches, none of us had been willing to press her on it and so far we’d made it through the challenges without issue.
“Mind telling me what it does?” I asked.
Nuralie took a deep breath, then turned to meet...
2024-07-01 00:40:20 +0000 UTC
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MT 142 - The Cathedral
The air around us was cloying and thick. I grew short of breath as my lungs worked in rapid, short bursts. I was reluctant to draw in too much of the repugnant scent and what atmosphere I managed to inhale seemed thin of oxygen. The space in front of the cathedral was an empty field of flat, wet dirt; gray in color and flecked with spots of dark blue. Combined with the awful smell, it reminded me of used kitty litter. It was even damp and clumpy.
The ...
2024-06-29 20:21:46 +0000 UTC
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MT 141 - The Basilica
Nuralie and I waited for an hour in case our allies were on some sort of time delay, but moved forward with the assumption that the party had been split. Even though the Delve had no express time limit, it didn’t mean that individual sections weren’t conditioned on completing them quickly. It was better to use the time and scout at least.
When I checked the party interface everyone’s names were grayed out except for Nuralie. I was still paying th...
2024-06-27 16:50:55 +0000 UTC
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MT 140 - The Winding Path
The first part of the Delve was a maze, naturally. To be honest, the maze part was easy. Etja’s Total Recall allowed us to make sure we never backtracked unless necessary. Coordinated Thinker allowed me to keep us oriented spatially so that we always understood where we were relative to where we’d been. Finally, there were nodes hidden in the walls attuned to divine magic, which Nuralie could spot with her Inquisitor evolution. The nodes didn’t exa...
2024-06-24 15:49:06 +0000 UTC
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MT 139 - Becoming a C’thon in 1 Easy Step
“Go for it,” said Xim, looking up from where she’d sat to meditate while I reviewed my evolutions.
“More limbs are better!” said Etja, raising all four arms like she’d just won a prize fight.
Nuralie watched and listened to the others react, but voiced no opinion.
“Evolutions for additional limbs can be tricky,” said Varrin, throwing a bucket of ice water over Etja’s enthusiasm. The mage’s arms droo...
2024-06-22 14:58:59 +0000 UTC
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138 - You Get an Evo, and You Get an Evo, and You Get an Evo!
After taking a moment to appreciate Shog’s existence as a barely contained entity of malevolent destruction, Etja decided to go next.
“I got Wisdom to 40!” she said with a bright smile. “I put the 2 other points into Luck.”
“Luck?” I said. “Why Luck?”
“I wanna see what the level 20 evolutions look like.”
“Hmm, good enough for me, I suppose.”
“I have several volu...
2024-06-20 15:43:12 +0000 UTC
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Author's Note: Hello! This is chapter 137, which begins book 3. Book 1 is available on Amazon Kindle, KU, and 2024-06-19 21:06:34 +0000 UTC
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MTB2 - Epilogue
***
SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: [ERROR: REDACTED]
ADDENDUM NOTE: Nine months after the disappearance of Fortune’s Folly into Deijin’s Descent
***
Brae’ach guided his long, sharp fingers slowly over the monolith, creating delicate swirls of mana-rich color that etched into the stone’s surface. Jakom had been watching his work over the past hour as the tall man’s artistry created...
2024-06-15 16:59:19 +0000 UTC
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MT 136 - Entry Requirements Met
I minimized the notification for my amulet to check on my allies and ensure we were truly out of danger. The Pit had gone completely still, most of its tendrils destroyed and the rest unmoving. The remnant’s remaining eye gazed out toward the sea, unfocused. The rain and wind continued, but nothing was presently attempting to murder us.
Etja, Xim, and Varrin were all unconscious, but the entire party was benefitting from the full suite of p...
2024-06-13 23:56:57 +0000 UTC
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MT 135 - We are Arlo
I began to think that pushing Reckless Shortcut to its maximum distance had been a mistake.
My eyes bulged as the delayed onset agony of my body being thrust through a dimensional blender and spat out through a hole in reality that was several sizes too small caught up to me. Unlike the last time I’d used the reforged spell to extend the teleport’s range, I currently had my entire brain available to process the consequences. However, my knee-jerk de...
2024-06-11 16:46:31 +0000 UTC
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MT 134 - Danger Close
I pulled earplugs from my inventory–acquired after my last dance with deafness from the spell I was about to supercharge–handed a pair to Etja, then quickly shoved my own in. Hopefully, everyone else was far enough away to keep their hearing. I shoved my helm back on and began chanting.
“The Goliath and the ancient, in due time they all crumble!”
Etja’s flight seamlessly transitioned into the graceful rhythm of...
2024-06-08 16:03:21 +0000 UTC
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MT 133 - Dumping (Not Just for Stats)
Like any good member of the well-to-do, one of my most reliable methods for solving difficult problems was to throw money at it.
Back in the Creation Delve, our party had stumbled across an immense field of poison essences that we happily stuffed our pockets with. The only thing that stopped us from taking more essences than we had was the size of said pockets. At that time, my inventory had yet to become the self-perpetuating growth ma...
2024-06-06 13:17:53 +0000 UTC
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MT 132 - Stacking DOTs
Etja caught Xim, Nuralie, and herself with Siphon shortly after the floor collapsed. Varrin’s fabulous cloak billowed out with sparkling fury as he flew to meet them, while I stood upon Gracorvus and quickly closed the short distance. Shog and Grotto floated like usual, their inherent ability to fly without cost sending a flash of envy through me.
The storm had begun to pelt us with small, icy droplets, carried on the wind with enough force to...
2024-06-03 11:29:29 +0000 UTC
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MT 131 - It’s too Big for Us to Handle
There was the sound of scraping stone and the obelisk rose from the pile of broken glass that was once Kaleidoscope. Its runes lit up and beams of energy connected to our bodies, distributing our stats. I dutifully confirmed that I now had 8 points banked, then closed the screen without distributing them. Everyone else took a moment to drop them where they wanted and we got a loot notification soon after.
Your pa...
2024-06-01 11:51:15 +0000 UTC
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MT 130 - Kaleidoscope
It began as a tranquil blush of iridian luster rising from the dark like a warm morning star. A crystalline structure at the center of the room caught the light and its endless facets glittered, casting trails of color across the floor. The 12-foot-high gem had replaced the dark pillar of the Delve obelisk. A warmth bloomed at its center, pulsing with the on-and-off rhythm of a firefly.
The edges of the space remained lost in inky darkness. The ceiling...
2024-05-30 16:48:41 +0000 UTC
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MT 129 - Clockwork II
I used Oblivion Orb to destroy the wire and disentangle my legs, doing my best to ignore the insistent voices. I hopped back onto Gracorvus and checked on my allies.
The wire embraced Varrin’s entire lower half, but the big guy ignored it, swinging at the machine with ever-increasing haste. The moving plates were shredded after a dozen strikes, and their movement stopped. The gears above continued to turn and none of the effects ended, but Varrin nev...
2024-05-27 23:00:06 +0000 UTC
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MT 128 - Clockwork
Chunks fell away from the ceiling above, crumbling down on us like the ancient structure had suddenly felt the weight of its age and given up. Hunks of stone, some larger than the Lardigrey, crashed to the ground as we all strafed and dove to avoid being crushed. We were all heavily resistant to mundane damage, but no one wanted to test how effective that was against the tons of rock threatening to squash us.
Fortunately, we all had the benefit of maxed-o...
2024-05-27 19:15:05 +0000 UTC
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