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Chapter 23
Panda eventually convinced me to rescind my order for the Humanbus to fling us into a bottomless pit, but I was feeling pretty upset about losing a reward I had completely forgotten about until now.
Did that say something about me and the overabundance of rewards?
Possibly.
But after seeing what Bee had gotten from her trophy, it was hard not to feel like I’d been cheated.
[‘Fungal Fortress’ x ]
Ability
Compounding the strength of afflictions will eventually lead to something like a simple cold becoming a weapon of mass destruction.
I hope your friends got their booster shots.
Raise a fortress of poisonous and hallucinogenic mushrooms around you.
Afflictions are twice as effective while taking place within this area.
Cooldown: 1 hour
Duration: 5 minutes
Nothing about the Humanbus had changed after we’d completed the Safe Zone event, but when I approached the front where the brain took up the entire driver side on the left, a menu appeared. It was less crazy than the one for the mall had been but still had quite a lot of options and info.
[Safe Zone Terminal x ]
Owner: ‘Gambit’
Type: MOBILE
Selected Area: ‘Madeville Humanbus #1’
Player Occupants: 3
GAME Coins Inserted: 0
Overview — Monitor the status of the Safe Zone
Insert Coins — Transfer GAME Coins to the Safe Zone
Upgrade — Use GAME Coins to upgrade the Safe Zone
Transfer Ownership — Change Owner of the Safe Zone
Destroy — Initiate self-destruct sequence of the Safe Zone
I made the mistake of clicking ‘Overview’ and a dozen screens all popped up. It was the same stuff that I’d encountered with the mall terminal, with one screen dedicated to just listing every little smudge and dirt stain, along with counting the pieces of trash and litter inside the bus.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, the sheer amount of information was giving me a headache.
“Bee… Please take over,” I said.
She’d clearly been expecting this, since she stood right behind me, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet excitedly.
I clicked the button to transfer ownership to her.
[Ownership Transferal Confirmation Required]
You are about to transfer your Ownership of the Safe Zone:
‘Madeville Humanbus #1’
To Player:
‘Bee’
Do you wish to proceed?
YES — NO
I clicked ‘Yes’ without a second’s hesitation.
SAFE ZONE ALERT!
You are no longer the Owner of the Safe Zone: Madeville Humanbus #1
Method of Ownership Transferal: Abdication
New Owner: Bee
[OOOOH, THAT TICKLES!]
Bee made a happy little squeal and started swiping through unseen menus in the air.
“I need more Coins,” she immediately said.
I checked my inventory and realized I had 1228.01 on me now.
“How many do you need?” I asked her.
“5000,” she replied. “At least.”
“What!? Why??”
Panda hopped from my shoulder and onto hers.
“I see,” he muttered, able to observe the screens too. Then he pointed and said, “I think we should prioritize these for now.”
Bee nodded thoughtfully. “Then I just need 750 more Coins,” she said.
“That’s a lot less,” I commented.
“It just means we won’t get the private quarters, infinity pool, arcade center, Shiba Inu petting café, ritual chamber, Idol Meet-and-Greet, and horse track.”
I blinked. “What?”
“We’re getting the communal bath, Dust-and-Grime Destroyer 8k, bunk beds, marketplace, and dimensional extension,” she continued. “I still had my 3000 Coins from the last dimension, and with the extra I’ve been able to pick up since then, we can afford those at least.”
Panda nodded. “I think all those are good. Interestingly, since the Humanbus is alive, it can level up based on how many people use it, so we should try and pick up more passengers.”
I looked towards the back of the bus. There were maybe enough seats for forty people in total. “Will they be able to fit?” I asked.
“With the dimensional extension, the interior of the bus will expand to fit as many people as needed,” Bee answered.
[DO IT, CAPTAIN! UPGRADE ME!]
I handed her the 750 Game Coins, feeling like they were being put to good use.
“We also need to come up with a better name for the bus,” Bee continued.
[OH YUMMY, A REAL NAME!]
“Teddy, Lord of Buslandia,” Tina suggested.
“Me-ow!” Lordie shouted.
“That is wildly offensive,” I told the hand-spider. “I know you’re literally made of sin and what not, but there are some lines you just don’t cross, young man.”
“Meow…”
“Apology accepted.”
“Bee & Gambit’s Funbus,” Panda suggested.
I had to furiously swallow down the bile that rose in my throat.
“That’s a horrible suggestion,” Bee told him, not holding back in the slightest.
Panda looked down in shame.
[LOCO MOTION!] the Humanbus yelled.
“How about Route 666?” I asked.
“Too derivative,” Bee replied. “You’re all terrible at this.”
“Then you come up with a name!” Panda told her, his tone making it obvious he was still hurt about her comment.
“I’m bad with names,” she immediately replied.
“The Steadfast Steed of Destiny!” Nina exclaimed. As she spoke, Tina’s white feathers took on a sick greenish sheen.
“Meow!” Lordie suggested, but it was too horrible a string of words to even deign with a response.
“Brock has an idea,” my balloon sleeve said.
All of us paused to listen, and Brock let the silence stretch on for almost half a minute to build up tension.
“The Queenslander,” he then said.
I sighed.
“We’re getting nowhere with this,” I muttered.
“I’ll just pick something we can all be happy with,” Bee decided.
Then an announcement rolled through the bus.
SAFE ZONE ALERT!
The name of the Safe Zone has been updated.
New name: Greg, Lord of Buslandia and Destiny’s Destroyer of Queensland
Tina nodded appreciatively. “Perfect.”
“You change that this instant!” Brock squealed. “To wage war on Queensland, is to wage war on all that is good and pure!”
SAFE ZONE ALERT!
The name of the Safe Zone has been updated.
New name: Greg, Lord of Queensland
“Better?” she asked.
“Perfect,” Brock said.
Tina frowned, clearly about to argue, but then she spun around, looking directly towards Castleburg. “I have to defend my territory,” she announced. “Gambit, give me the Foie Gras.”
“What do I get in return?” I asked.
Tina handed me two Lucky Dice.
“Where did you get these!?” I asked her, surprised.
“Hurry,” she replied.
I handed her the Swan Foie Gras and took the Lucky Dice into my inventory, putting my total at four, which was one short of the five I needed for the Cheater’s Gloves that Shellby had shown me the schematic for.
[‘Cheater’s Gloves’ x ]
Schematic
A Wandering Smith’s schematic for the Legendary item ‘Cheater’s Gloves’.
Components required:
5x ‘Lucky Dice’
3000x ‘GAME Coins’
‘Fusion Gum’
‘High-quality gloves’
‘Deck of cards’
No sooner had I given Tina the Foie Gras than she consumed it and two wings immediately sprouted from her back.
“Greg, open a hole in the ceiling for me,” she demanded.
[YES, MA’AM!]
The moment the ceiling opened up, Tina flapped her wings once and took to the air, quickly flying off towards Castleburg and Serenity Park within.
I managed to appraise her just before she vanished into the horizon.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 2 — ‘Tina & Nina’ — Player
“The seven-headed Hydra Swan is the Herald of Chaos.”
Class: Hydra Swanling
Main Attribute(s): Strength & Vitality
WARNING!
This Player is suspected of being a System Hacker! Please report them to the nearest REPD Agent!
ERROR!
Cannot retrieve background information.
She knows when you’ll meet again.
This Player possesses the following Unique/Rare:
—Skills—
‘Magic 8 Ball’
She had the same unique skill from when I’d seen her in the last dimension, and I wondered just what exactly it did. Somehow, she was also considered a System Hacker in this dimension, and I got the feeling there was a lot more to her than we knew.
I shared the appraisal with Bee to get her opinion on it.
“Maybe some Absolute is responsible for the ‘Nina’ personality,” she said.
“That would explain how she’s able to know things she shouldn’t and have items like the Lucky Dice just like that,” Panda agreed. “One thing is for sure though, we haven’t seen the last of her yet.”
“I just hope she doesn’t kill Samantha and Camilla, now that I worked so hard to keep them alive,” I commented.
Bee finally bought the upgrades she’d talked about, and a blue glow rolled through the bus, extending the back by eight additional rows of seats and adding two closet-sized rooms in the middle of the bus. Both had closed doors.
A black round ball popped up from the floor in front of me, rapidly growing mouths all over and sprouting seven long triple-jointed bone legs. Tongues lolled out from the mouths on the ball, and then it started crawling along the floor, walls, and ceiling, licking everything.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“The Dust-and-Grime Destroyer 8k,” Bee answered. “It’s like a Roomba.”
I frowned as I watched it work. “It’s not like a Roomba at all,” I replied. “What happened to the ones the mall Safe Zone had? Weren’t they available?”
“It’s probably just thematically appropriate,” Panda guessed.
“I’m suddenly worried about this ‘communal bath’,” I said. “Is it just a pit full of tongues??”
“I think it’s a normal bath,” Bee replied.
I sighed.
“Whatever, let’s just get going. We’ve got an otter to find.”
“We should stop by and pick up Chris and James first,” Panda said.
“Oh right, I forgot about those two, to be honest,” I replied.
“I thought Chris was supposed to be your best friend?” he jabbed.
I ignored him and went to investigate the two closet-sized rooms. When I opened the first door, it led directly into a Roman-styled bathhouse, with everything built from marble and hot steam wafting out.
“Okay, the bath is not a room full of tongues,” I announced.
I opened the other closet, and it led into a room with three bunkbeds. Hopefully it would expand as more people joined, otherwise we’d have to take turns sleeping.
Speaking of sleep, I was starting to feel pretty exhausted.
“You haven’t slept since the last dimension,” Panda pointed out, back on my shoulder again.
“I’ll take a nap after we pick up Chris and his brother,” I replied.
Bee put in the directions for Greg the Humanbus and off we went, our new mobile Safe Zone running through Madeville on its many legs.
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Chapter 22
With our combined strength, the three of us were able to get the Humanbus back upright. As soon as it was back on its many feet, a door opened in the side of its head, and we all got back on board.
No sooner had we entered than the bus took off, opening holes in the walls and ceiling for us to get back into our turrets.
[THE FUZZ IS ON OUR TAIL, WE GOTTA SKEDADDLE!]
I climbed into the same flesh pod as before, finding my ballista once again aiming towards the shops on the side of the street. More of the frogs were coming in hot, but the Humanbus picked up speed immediately, leaving our pursuers in the dust.
In the distance behind us came a loud roaring buzz, like that of a jetliner flying overhead.
Then I saw it.
It was a large four-winged ship with a long tapering body and the front of which was like an enormous head. It was shaped like a dragonfly but was as big as the Metro Train, if not bigger.
“Gambit, that’s not a ship,” Panda said. “That is the Dragonfly Defender.”
“Why is it so fucking enormous!?” I exclaimed, firing a shot off at a frog that’d gotten close and skewering it to a billboard.
“They fight Voidspawn,” Panda replied, as though that explained everything.
Although I supposed that maybe it did, given that some of the Voidspawn we’d encountered had been the size of moons. By that measurement, the Dragonfly might even be undersized.
“It’s not gonna chase us, is it?”
Panda shrugged. “Let’s hope not.”
I nailed another frog mid-leap and sent it spinning. Then the Humanbus jumped around a corner, startling a group of Players nearby before thundering ahead.
“How long do we have left of this Safe Zone event?” I asked.
“Like 3 more minutes,” Panda replied.
I was glad it wasn’t as long as the mall event had been, but I guessed the tradeoff was that the mobile Safe Zone would be way less spacious. Hopefully it would still give us access to vendors and such.
“What’s the deal with Tina? Do you know what’s up with her?” I asked, hoping she couldn’t hear me.
“I’ve seen it before,” Panda replied, surprising me. “It’s like she’s undertaking a challenge run. I think you should give her the Foie Gras you have, she’ll need to collect seven of those.”
“A challenge run?” I asked, but Panda was suddenly gone.
Then Tina’s status screen hit me.
[Status x ]
Level 1 — ‘Tina & Nina’ — Swanling
INSANITY GAUGE: 100%
STATS
Health: 20 — Stamina: 30
Armor: 12 — Carry Weight: 200
Top Speed: 13.5 km/h — Mana: 4
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 10 — Dexterity: 4
Intelligence: 2 — Vitality: 10
Athleticism: 4 — Perception: 2
Wisdom: 2 — Defense: 6
ABILITIES
Reckless Charge
PASSIVES
Inanimate Voices
Insanity
Menacing Aura
Territorial Dominance
Her attributes looked really strong for a level 1, but I guessed there had to be some demerit if it was meant to be a ‘challenge run’ like Panda had said.
I looked through the skills to find the answer.
[‘Reckless Charge’ x ]
Ability
This is the kind of power I can get behind.
Who cares about planning and self-preservation when you can just throw your body directly at a problem.
Many of the Players in the country of Spain are dealing with enraged bulls that have this kind of mindset, and it’s not working out well for the Players.
Those bulls look tasty though.
I might have to go pay them a visit.
Instantly accelerate from 0 to 60 in a chosen direction until you collide with something or have traveled 100 feet. Collision damage gains a 5x impact bonus while active.
Deals double damage and goes twice as fast while flapping your wings.
Cooldown: 5 minutes
[‘Menacing Aura’ x ]
Passive
Swans are one of those animals that gain a +100 point boost to their natural intimidation.
Now so do you, little Swanling.
People become less inclined to attack you, especially if you have wings.
[‘Territorial Dominance’ x ]
Passive
Status: Active
Territory: Serenity Park
Swans are territorial creatures known to go up against monsters twice their size just to defend what they deem to be theirs.
But defending your homebase from intruders is an onerous task.
While your territory is clear of invaders, you gain a +5 boost to your Strength and Vitality Attributes.
Defeating World Boss Swans will add their territory to your collection and increase the Attribute boost.
All Swans within your current Region are naturally drawn to your territory.
Panda reappeared on my shoulder.
“Tina says she’ll trade you for the Swan Foie Gras,” he said.
“Her powers look pretty strong,” I commented.
“She has to constantly protect her territory though,” Panda said. “And there’s the whole becoming a magnet to other swans. It’s not so big a problem now, since I think there’s only one swan per region at the moment. However, once we complete the second Great Game Event, then the Regions expand.”
“So she might be strong now, but she’ll end up having to constantly defend Serenity Park… I don’t know, that doesn’t seem that bad.”
“She can only evolve if she fights other swans for their Foie Gras, so I think the challenge lies in finding a way to defend her territory and traveling far to seek out other World Bosses. I don’t know how many are in the United States, but she might have to go abroad to fulfill her task. And the swans will just get stronger and stronger as time passes.”
“I see,” was all I replied as I turned my focus back to the defense of the Humanbus
I shot a frog in the leg, pinning it to a randomly-placed tree on the street, but another two were right behind it and I couldn’t reload fast enough to get them in time.
A bolt skipped off the top of a lamppost and then skimmed along the roof the frogs were on, tearing through both of them with terrifying precision.
“Nice shot!” I yelled.
“I don’t have any more things to kill back here!” Bee shouted back from the rear of the bus, sounding disappointed.
Suddenly my flesh pod pulled me back into the bus, setting me down on a seat. On the other side Tina was placed back inside as well, and a moment later Bee ran up to me, her purple soul wing glittering with excitement.
“Did we do it!?” she asked.
Her answer came in the form of a System message.
WORLD FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT!
Player ‘Gambit’ is the first person to establish a Safe Zone in the GREAT GAME!
ERROR
Could not retrieve additional announcement info!
“What the hell?” I muttered.
“Great, you broke it already,” Panda deadpanned.
A blue glow rolled across the interior of the Humanbus, and I received an achievement.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]
‘World First Safe Zoner’
Created the first Safe Zone in the GREAT GAME.
I’m supposed to berate you for creating a Safe Zone before it’s even possible.
Apparently, they had not loaded up the announcement information yet, so that’s why it bugged out.
Speaking of bugs, I hopped over to the Accounting Department and tried out one of the caterpillars that work there.
I wasn’t really a big fan of the taste and now my teleportation power has been confiscated.
The big bossman doesn’t seem to mind though, so I’m sure I’ll get it back.
Anyway, since you’re the first to make a Safe Zone, you get a special reward on top of the standard stuff.
Although, I have to inform you that your level up is locked until after the next GAME Event, since you’re already level -20.
Rewards: +1 Level, 100x ‘GAME Coins’, & ‘Key to the City (Castleburg)’
[‘Key to the City (Castleburg)’ x ]
Item
Rewarded to ‘Gambit’ for establishing the first Safe Zone in his Region.
By squeezing the key tightly, the wielder can teleport to any place within their Region.
Uses remaining: 3/3
Weight: Approximately one
“That’s the same key that Samantha got last time,” Bee said as the large golden key appeared in my hands.
“Huh, I didn’t get the MVP this time,” I said.
“Well, Bee did most of the work,” Panda replied.
“Wait a minute…” I said suspiciously. “I never got to see what the MVP trophy did from the last dimension.”
Panda blinked. “Huh, you’re right. Where did that trophy go? I don’t remember seeing it in your inventory.”
“What the fuck!” I exclaimed. “I got scammed!”
“So that’s why I got two of them,” Bee commented. “I was really confused for a second.”
She handed me a small trophy shaped like me, but from how I’d looked back in the previous dimension when I’d cleared the Safe Zone event with Samantha and Bee. She was holding one that was sculpted to look like her current self. Both of the trophies had a small round stand with a plaque that read, ‘You’re the best!’
“How the hell did you lose that?” Panda wondered.
“I didn’t lose shit!” I replied. “It clearly just vanished from my inventory!”
I inspected the trophy, wondering if its description would hold any clues.
[‘Safe Zone MVP Trophy’ x ]
Item
Rewarded to ‘Gambit’ for [REDACTED]
You won’t believe where I found this thing.
That’s right, in the Accounting Department!
It was standing on someone’s desk next to a picture of his family.
So anyway, I ate him and brought this back for you.
Funny timing, right?
But yeah, apparently the Accounting Department is one of the few agencies that ignore dimensional magic, probably because they have to be on top of all the taxes and such.
It is, unfortunately, no longer a functional reward.
Due to dimensional dissonance, this item has no effect.
Weight: Approximately one
“Are you fucking kidding me,” I grumbled.
“I got a new amazing ability!” Bee exclaimed.
I sighed.
“Humanbus, take us to the nearest bottomless hole,” I said.
[AYE AYE!]
“Gambit, no!” Panda yelled.
The Humanbus started picking up speed.
-----------------------------
So, yeah, I did honestly forget about the Safe Zone MVP Trophy from the end of book 1...
Anyway! It's clearly canon that the Great Game agencies are bad at their jobs.
Couldn't be me.
Couldn't be me...
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2025-07-11 00:35:34 +0000 UTC
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Aaaand we're back!
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Chapter 21
“—king kidding me!” I yelled.
[UH OH!] the Humanbus exclaimed.
My flesh pod was suddenly spun around so that my ballista pointed backwards, and the whole thing moved along the side of the bus until it reached the back.
I had no idea if the other monsters would continue to assault us, but the World Boss waddling after us rapidly was obviously a much greater concern.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 25 — ‘Serenity Park Swan’ — World Boss
“IRATE HONKING”
Everyone knows geese are assholes. But have you ever wondered who geese consider assholes? That’s right, swans. They’re territorial and mean, even when they aren’t protecting their young, and will bully geese who are themselves notorious bullies.
This swan believes the entirety of Serenity Park belongs to him, and he will chase away all those who touch its grassy lawns or murky ponds.
If you’re thinking, ‘Hold on, Serenity Park is in Castleburg’, then you’re absolutely right!
However, since you are wearing a cape made of swan feathers, it has been locked onto your location for the last several hours, running along the congested highway in a blind rage to come find you.
Fun fact!
If two World Boss Swans meet, they will fight to the death and the winner will evolve into a Hydra-Swan. We highly encourage you to make this happen!
Tina and Bee were already blasting their ballista bolts at the giant swan, but it was using the wind generated by its wings to divert the trajectory of the projectiles.
[DO NOT LET IT PECK ME!] the Humanbus squealed. It was somehow not that surprising that it was scared of the swan.
“I can’t hit it!” Bee complained. “It’s cheating!”
I joined in with shots of my own, but it just flapped its wings and sent my bolts off into the shops on the side of the street, without a single one hitting anywhere close to its feathery body.
Bee was trick-shotting off of abandoned cars, the pavement, and even lampposts, but none of the impressive shots hit their mark, since the swan was quick to flap its wings defensively.
“Nina says we must take the fight to it,” Tina announced.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I told her. “It’ll literally slap you to death with its wings. It’s way stronger than it looks.”
“I’ll stay back here while you deal with it,” she replied.
“What do you mean by that?” Bee asked.
“Bus driver! This here is my stop!” Tina yelled.
[ACTIVATING EMERGENCY BRAKES! MISSING A STOP IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!]
“Oh shit,” Panda muttered.
The Humanbus screeched to a halt by digging the nails of its chubby feet into the pavement, spinning 90 degrees and exposing its broadside to the incoming swan that clearly had no intentions of slowing down.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck!” I exclaimed as I quickly climbed out of my fleshy pod and dropped onto the ground.
Bee followed suit and I caught her as she hopped down.
“Come on, Brock!” I yelled as I ran towards the swan.
Lordie made a strange sound and vanished into his transport cage.
Bee was right behind me, but Tina was still in her ballista pod, firing bolts over our heads at the enraged boss while cackling like a maniac.
Then the swan rushed right past us, only realizing that the target of its ire, i.e. me, was no longer on the bus. I watched as it scrambled its webbed feet on the pavement to try and stop its momentum and turn, but its mass and speed made that impossible.
The Humanbus cried out in pain and Tina screamed with laughter as the swan collided with the sentient vehicle and sent it airborne for a couple of seconds. As the bus slammed back down, it landed awkwardly on its left legs and tipped over onto its side.
[OH NO! AN ACCIDENT! I DO NOT HAVE ANY INSURANCE!]
The swan stretched its large wings and flapped them once, sending a buffet of wind in our direction.
“I’ll take it down,” Bee said confidently. “You just have to distract it.”
“Uhh…”
HONK!
“I don’t think you’ll enjoy this,” Panda told me.
“Brock, please! I need you right now buddy!” I exclaimed to the balloon sleeve stubbornly refusing to turn back into a gauntlet. My right hand had already fully healed, but I knew the swan was a tough son of a bitch and I’d recently lost a lot of my firepower, so I really needed Brock to make up for what I was missing.
Bee patted me on the shoulder and then sprinted out of the way.
The swan completely ignored her and ran right for me, lowering its massive head towards the ground while lifting its wings and flapping them as it charged.
I swallowed hard and ran to meet it, figuring the worst that could happen was that I died.
“Use your cape!” Panda yelled.
It had a long cooldown, but that thought barely registered as the monster opened its orange maw, preparing to snap me in half.
“Honk!” I shouted.
SKILL TRIGGER!
Swan-feather Cloak’s ‘Indestructible’ Skill Activated!
Somewhere, a Swan takes notice of your power.
The Swan-Feather Cloak fully enveloped me in a bubble of velvet-soft fuzz. Even though I could tell I suddenly went airborne and upside-down, I didn’t feel any of the attacks against me. I bounced once against something and then came to a standstill.
Loud muffled honks came from somewhere below me, and then the protective cloak unfurled, and I realized I was on the roof of a two-story building on the side of the street.
“I’m alive!” I exclaimed.
Just then a massive orange beak rose up from below the edge of the building, reaching for my head.
“Oh s—!” was all I managed to get out before the enormous swan fell back down.
A loud splat and crunch sounded from the street below me, and I ran to the edge to look down at what was happening.
The giant swan was slumped against the side of the electronics store I was on the roof of, and before my eyes it aged a hundred years in an instant, its feathers turning grey and old. At the same time, its body lost its structural integrity as its bones turned to mush, and its flesh and organs rotted into nothingness.
The World Boss collapsed into a heap, but soon even its seemingly-indestructible feathers decayed and became mulch. A carpet of mushrooms sprouted all over and around it, but they too vanished as quickly as they came, at the end just leaving a dark spot on the street and up against the building. A wisp floated where it had been and a few feet away stood Bee, a smug expression on her face. With her new horns and the wing hanging from her back, she had kind of a menacing villainess-in-the-making look about her.
“Is it weird that her new powers scare the shit out of me?” I asked Panda.
“I was just about to say the same thing,” he replied.
“Do you need a hand to get down?” Bee yelled up at me, while Tina hopped out from her turret pod, which she’d been inside of even as the bus went onto its side. The lunatic ran over to the wisp even though she hadn’t contributed shit to the fight and clearly looted a bunch of stuff from it.
“Hey!” I yelled down at her. “We’ve gotta split those!”
“Only five more remain! The Hydra of all Hydras shall be born!” Nina exclaimed.
Then she started to glow.
“Please tell me she didn’t do what I think she did,” Panda muttered.
I suddenly remembered the item I’d gotten from the first time I’d killed the swan.
[‘Swan Foie Gras’ x ]
Item
Rich and buttery, with an aftertaste of animal abuse.
Feed to a World Boss Swan to evolve it into a Hydra-Swan or consume it yourself to force a spontaneous Class Evolution.
Weight: Approximately one
As the light vanished from Tina’s body, she was suddenly covered in feathers from her feet to her neck. All her clothes were gone, but the shape of the clothes were imitated by the feathers covering her, which was… odd.
Then a large swan head appeared over Tina’s actual head.
She shared the item tooltip, which surprised me, but then again she seemed to have a strong handle on the System Commands thanks to Nina.
[‘Swan-feather Helmet’ x ]
Armor
Aww, you killed it.
Can you grab me one of its legs, or maybe a wing?
I have just discovered a new type of human food magic called ‘deep-frying’.
I would like to test it out.
Wearing this armor imbues you with the following effects:
- You become literally waterproof
- You no longer experience cold
- If you are within a hundred miles of a World Boss Swan, it will automatically seek you out
You receive the ‘Sonic Honk’ ability, allowing you to project your voice far into the distance or to use it as a sonic weapon to cause madness, confusion, and discombobulation. 10-minute cooldown.
Weight: Approximately eight and two quarters
“How is Billee still talking about food??” I muttered.
“She is the child of someone often referred to as the Devourer of Suns,” Panda replied. “Eating is like the core of her being.”
I hopped down from the roof, landing on my feet on the street below, leaving a small crater thanks to my heavy skeleton.
I stuck my hand inside the wisp to see if there was anything left.
Leftovers of World Boss ‘Serenity Park Swan’:
80x ‘GAME Coin’
‘Swan wing and drumstick combo set’
I wasn’t sure how the boss was able to drop food made from its own body given that Bee had used her rotting power and fast forward to turn it into nothingness, but I didn’t question it. Although it was suspicious that it was the exact thing Billee had asked for, which made me wonder if she had the power to affect loot somehow. It was possible that her new job announcing item tooltips meant she had access to item creation.
[‘Swan wing and drumstick combo set’ x ]
Consumable
A deep-fried combo meal made from a plucked swan wing and leg marinated in a special blend of salt, garlic, and MSG. Seasoned with eleven herbs and spices.
I’m salivating!
Bring it to me!
NOW!!!
Eating this combo set will probably make a certain insatiable Absolute Spawn quite mad at you.
Weight: Approximately two and a half
“Does she have the power to change tooltips?” I asked, slightly horrified by the implications.
Before Panda could respond, a pitch-black child-sized shadowy figure appeared right in front of me, arms outstretched.
“Billee!” Bee exclaimed.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Panda told her.
“Gambit, give me the food. Right now,” Billee demanded.
I quickly pulled the combo set out of the Leftovers wisp and handed it to her. It came in a brown paper bag and smelled awesome.
“That smells good,” Bee commented. “Can I try some?”
To my surprise, Tina put her hand on Bee’s chest, stopping her.
Billee clutched the paper bag against her shadowy torso like it was her baby. She’d probably fight anyone who tried to get close, which made me grateful for Tina’s intervention.
WARNING!
A Dragonfly Defender from the Voidspawn Defense Force is coming to investigate signs of Voidspawn activity!
All Players in the area, please do not approach the Dragonfly Defender while he is working!
Interference will be punished!
“Oh snap, it’s the fun police!” Billee said. “Gotta go!”
With that, she just vanished.
“I didn’t know she could just teleport here,” I remarked.
“She’s really not supposed to be able to,” Panda explained. “Anyway, we should go. Those Dragonfly freaks can probably detect me.”
Tina, Bee, and I hurried over to where the Humanbus lay on its side, wriggling its many feet and crying out for help.
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2025-07-10 14:03:34 +0000 UTC
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I will be focusing on writing Madman this week, since I dedicated all of last week to Loopshard.
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Chapter Seventy-Two
Adam led their barriers down through the centre of the tower, passing by the burnt-out laboratorium, metal slime, and manawing floors before reaching the landing for the mana hoarders’ barracks.
“Jesus Christ,” Gladwyn muttered as they saw what lay in the entrance to the barracks chamber.
Her shoulders and head had been spared, but the rest of Maggie’s body was pressed completely flat, turning skin, organs, and bones into a red smear.
They alighted next to her corpse and looked around for traps. However, it was immediately clear that this wasn’t an ambush like they’d feared.
“She must’ve come into the tower when the Crawler made it down to this floor,” Adam guessed.
James inspected her loot and a moment passed, before he said, “She must’ve killed the kid.”
Adam brought up Maggie’s loot as well.
< < Loot — Maggie Brown Adams > >
< Blood Mage Choker (Epic) >
< Tainted Helmet (Epic) >
< Captain’s Cape (Rare) >
< Duellist’s Glove (Rare) >
< Forlorn Cuirass (Rare) >
< Purple Slime Glove (Rare) >
< Vigilant Fighter’s Vambrace (Rare) >
< Shard of Blood >
Her Stone Bracer is gone and she has the teen’s Relics…
Adam inspected the Shard of Blood.
< < Quest Object > >
< Shard of Blood — The crystallised lifeblood of Marcus Ferguson >
She killed the kid to get this…
“I’m going back to the Sanctuary,” Adam told his party.
“Why?” Gladwyn asked.
“Maggie killed the teen, I’m sure of it. His name must’ve been Marcus Ferguson.”
“So why do you need to go back there?” he asked.
“I need to make sure,” Adam insisted.
“We can just wait here,” James told Gladwyn.
Gladwyn frowned, but then nodded. “Alright, but hurry. And don’t get shot down by those bone things on the tower.”
Adam quickly fused two of his barriers and shaped it into a sled with a handle he could hold to avoid falling off. Meanwhile, Gladwyn and James went through the loot, seeing if there was anything they wanted.
Adam had thought to triple-fuse his barriers, but even if he could gather the concentration to pull it off, the result would be too fast for him to handle and he’d no doubt slam into a tree on his way to the Sanctuary, killing himself in the process.
He flew out through the large tower gate, his remaining barrier orbiting him like a shield as he shot out from the structure at high speed. The Bone Creepers on top of the tower hardly seemed to notice him since he stuck close to the ground. When he reached the treeline he lifted up over the canopies, flying just shy of the treetops and keeping an eye out for any ambushers like the first Creeper they’d run into.
This Stage has honestly been such a mess…
At least next Stage I’ll be working alongside Emelia, which should go a lot smoother.
Adam wondered just how many Points he’d end up with at the end of this. He was hoping for five figures, though he had no way of really knowing. Emelia said she was able to reliably hit 9000 Points from Stage Six, but she hadn’t known about the Avatar or the Chimaera Stone, and she said she usually didn’t lose any Players on her team. Since the rewards for objectives were scaled to the number of Players in the team, the three of them would essentially get double Points at the end, since half their team was gone. That alone would make a big difference.
If Emelia had been more ruthless, she would have killed off her teammates before the end to get the maximum amount of Points possible.
But that wasn’t her way. Even though it put her at a disadvantage over those with no scruples, she focused on saving people, believing it would benefit everyone in the end.
Adam hadn’t seen enough to know if she was correct, but he truly hoped so.
The giant tree of the Elphin Sanctuary came into view, followed shortly by the stone walls surrounding the city. Adam aimed his barrier down towards the ritual site where they’d all arrived together.
He had a good idea of what he would find when he got there, but he hadn’t expected to see all the dead Elphin that filled the city streets on the way.
Maggie did all this…
Some of them had fought back, but most had been defenceless, especially the children.
He ground his teeth. They weren’t real people, but he had fought to protect them by sparing Belamouranthe’s life and not throwing them away needlessly in Stage Four. She had taken all his hard work and ruined it, and the sight infuriated him.
As he spotted the hole in the centre of the city, he lowered his barrier all the way down to the ground, coasting along it before reaching the top of the steps.
At the bottom of the ritual site lay a pale body with dark hair. It was covered in cuts and stab wounds.
Adam went down and inspected it.
< < Loot — Marcus Ferguson > >
< — — — >
He didn’t even get to leave the starting point…
I should’ve been more insistent on him coming along.
I should have realised that Maggie’s behaviour was suspect.
Adam sighed and got back on his barrier. It was too late to do anything about it now.
“So?” Gladwyn asked as Adam returned to them.
He just shook his head.
“I figured.”
Adam resummoned his barriers after taking Maggie’s Relics into his Spidersilk Sack. James had swapped his Curse-Giver Necklace for the Blood Mage Choker and equipped the Captain’s Cape, although they would properly split up the loot when they reached the end of the Stage.
He paused for a moment after James and Gladwyn climbed onto the floating platforms, remembering the Secret Relic from Stage Five that was already inside his bag.
< < Map > >
< Golden Map — Follow the trail of this map at thine own peril, but at its end awaits a treasure unlike anything known to thee >
When Gladwyn saw it, he pulled out his own copy. They’d both gotten it from the last Stage.
“I was looking at it earlier and I don’t think it’s for this Stage,” he said.
Adam nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Sounds like it’s related to pirates,” James commented after inspecting the map.
The eight Stage is Moonport, and it sounded like it was a big city. The ninth is where my True Flame’s Icon crown triggers a Secret Boss, so I think it’s related to the Forlorn from Stage Four.
I think Emelia said Stage Seven is like a paradise to many people, so maybe it’s related to pirates somehow? Regardless, I can’t really figure out what the map is supposed to show. I feel like I’m missing something crucial.
Adam stowed the map away.
“Let’s go see what the golden lever activates.”
After returning to the treasure room full of gold, jewels, and finery, they looked around for a good 10 minutes before Adam noticed a short pillar buried in a pile of gold coins. Like everything else in the chamber, he was unable to actually pick up the coins, since they just slipped from his hands. The top of the pillar had a slot in it and after Gladwyn brought him the golden lever, it fit inside it perfectly.
A click came from the golden wall nearby where a small panel had opened.
Inside was a large key made from bone and embellished with veins of gold. It had four ‘heads’, each of them slightly different.
< < Secret Relic Obtained > >
< The Slugwhale Key (Rare) — A large key made from the temporal bone of a Slugwhale >
“What the hell is a slugwhale?” Gladwyn wondered.
“Isn’t the temporal bone part of the skull?” James asked.
Adam lifted the key. It was almost half-a-metre long and surprisingly heavy.
“There’s only one,” he said.
“If I can keep the Cape and Choker, then you can have it,” James replied.
Gladwyn looked at the soul blade hanging from his hip. He clearly wanted the Secret Relic, but he probably also felt that he’d received a lot from the Stage already. Adam had gotten a Legendary Relic though, so he asked, “Rock paper scissors?”
“Just take it, Adam,” he said. “As they say, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. Besides, there’s no telling what the next Stage will be like or what kind of group I’ll get. Since you and Emelia will be on the same team, you might as well take it if it benefits you both.”
“It might not be for the next Stage,” Adam replied.
“Just take the damn key,” he said with a grin.
They reached the library after finding the Slugwhale Key and James finally got the chance to set fire to the large bookcases. Adam tried to help out with his barriers, but the 10% bonus fire damage from his crown only managed to char the wood, so he and Gladwyn just watched the pyromaniac do his thing.
As flames roared and black smoke billowed up through the tower, Adam took them to the landing for the study. Just as they dismounted their barriers and prepared for what they’d encounter inside, the announcement for the library arrived.
< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >
< Destroyed the Library >
“How much time is left?” James asked his cube.
[10 hours 36 minutes.]
“If we’re able to keep going after completing the main objective, do you want to continue looking around?” Gladwyn asked.
“I honestly think we’ve found everything we could find,” Adam said. “Aside from trying other rituals, which isn’t possible anymore, I don’t think there’s anything we could’ve missed out on.”
“I think Adam is right,” James agreed. “We looked everywhere.”
Gladwyn didn’t seem entirely convinced, but then he sighed. “I guess I’m ready for it to be over as well. I’m starting to feel the exhaustion.”
He pulled open the metal door with the upside-down anchor sigil.
Or maybe it really is an umbrella?
As Adam and James followed him in, they were surprised by what they found on the other side.
It was not a study like one would have imagined. It was not even a chamber.
Adam looked back at the door. It was just an open doorframe placed in the air impossibly.
Alepheria’s ‘study’ was a cliff covered in knee-high grass with a dense treeline of dark-blue trees behind the doorway. The cliff rose up towards a point where a canvas stood on an easel and a table next to it held paints and a brush. Past the cliff was a sheer drop to a beach full of sharp stones and beyond the shore was an azure expanse of ocean.
Gladwyn looked around. “I don’t see a boss anywhere, but stay on guard.”
They followed him up the cliff, which narrowed as it reached out over the drop down, like a finger reaching towards the gold-tinged clouds and the endless sea.
The long grass swayed back and forth with a gentle and warm breeze, and the salty smell of the water below was deeply calming.
The door to her study is not a door at all. It’s a portal.
And those trees, they’re the same trees in the forest around the Sanctuary and Tower. This must be a real place beyond that forest. Maybe it’s even possible to travel here and ignore the tower altogether.
Adam paused and looked back at the forest behind them. He couldn’t see the Crooked Tower or the Sanctuary’s massive tree.
We’re probably super far from either of those places.
He wanted to take to the air and explore, but like Gladwyn he was also tired.
James and Gladwyn had already made it to the canvas, and when Adam ran to catch up he realised it was actually massive. The easel itself was at least six metres tall and four wide, supporting the enormous painting on it.
As he approached, James reached out to touch it.
Golden light suffused his body and he was instantly pulled into the painting.
“Wait!” Gladwyn shouted, reaching out to grab him, only to get pulled in as well.
“Shit!” Adam exclaimed and ran up, but both of his friends were gone.
Touching the painting must end the Stage immediately!
He looked up at the giant canvas and what was depicted on it. He wondered if Alepheria was the one who had painted it.
Perhaps the Tome Keeper was wrong to assume she perished. She might have been pulled into the painting as well, vanishing from the world.
It was a fantastical image depicted and it moved as he looked upon it. The wandering eye on his necklace was also locked firmly on what it showed, indicating it likely held a lot of Mana or some other form of power.
The painting depicted a sea made of golden-tinged clouds where massive islands floated impossibly in the air, not too unlike Interim Island. Under his gaze, the clouds moved past his perspective as though showing a live feed from some elevated vantage point, and there were vessels travelling through this golden cloud sea.
Airships, Adam mused as he realised what they were.
Turns out James was right about pirates.
As he watched, two of the airships, which were like wooden ships from the Age of Discovery retrofitted with propellers and strange fins, pulled up alongside one another and started blasting each other to smithereens.
Now I understand why Emelia called it a paradise.
It looks so inviting, and I can imagine it would be quite exciting to fly around in an airship like that.
He was about to touch it and complete the Stage too when he noticed the round table next to the painting. The paint on top of it looked normal, as did the brush. But one of the table’s three legs was clearly a telescope, which was strange.
Adam touched the object.
< < Secret Relic Obtained > >
< Navigator’s Telescope (Uncommon) — Peer into the horizon of gold and find what your heart desires >
Wait a second.
Adam pulled the improvised leg free from the table and it tumbled down the slope, spilling its paint all over the grass.
He spun the metre-long telescope around in his hands to look at the large round lens at the end. It was the exact width of the round map with gold flecks on it, and its description seemed like a clue.
Adam pulled the map out of his Spidersilk Sack, but then he paused.
Oh shit… We didn’t split the loot!
Man, Gladwyn is gonna be pissed.
But then he started laughing.
To be fair, they were to blame for that. Not my fault they couldn’t wait.
He put the map over the telescope’s lens and it fit perfectly into one of the grooves around the edge of the end-cap.
This has to be how the map is used.
Adam lifted the other end up to his eye and realised he could see straight through the canvas map, with the golden flecks the only thing visible. He panned around, looking at the clouds and forest, but then he noticed a faint golden string that led to the painting in front of him. Surprisingly, he was able to peer deeper into the painting with the scope and it revealed a trail of golden light that curled through the air, leading somewhere.
He removed the telescope from his eye.
Alepheria must’ve been using this to study her own painting perhaps.
Adam considered spending a while longer looking at the things the image showed him, but he felt confident that the snapshot of the sea of clouds was only a small portion of the coming Stage, especially considering that it would last three days.
He folded the telescope and it became the height of a coffee cup, though still as wide as a plate.
Wait, if this was the last Secret, then that means Gladwyn and James probably won’t get that bonus reward…
Adam could only imagine how upset his friend would be when he realised what he’d missed out on.
Still, I’m taking no blame for that.
Adam reached out and touched the painting.
Golden light ran up his fingers to his arm, before enveloping him and pulling his body into the painting.
< < Stage Complete > >
< Tallying Score >
< < Score > >
< 13 Hours 37 Minutes Completion Time >
< 3 Players survived 600 Points >
< 0 Players slain >
< 4 Elites slain 400 Points >
< — — — >
< Main Objective Completion 2000 Points >
< Defeated the Avatar of Alepheria 2000 Points >
< Defeated the Cell Warden 1200 Points >
< Completed the Ritual 1000 Points >
< Destroyed the Laboratorium 800 Points >
< Destroyed the Library 600 Points >
< — — — >
< 1500 Point Most Valuable Player Bonus added >
< 1500 Point Secret Boss Bonus added >
< 1000 Point Flawless Bonus added >
< 800 Point All Objectives Bonus added >
< 800 Point Eradication Bonus added >
< 450 Point All Secrets Bonus added >
< 300 Point Plunderer Bonus added >
< — — — >
< 0 Damage Received >
< 14950 Points Awarded >
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2025-07-07 21:10:09 +0000 UTC
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I'm working 72 right now, but it may not go up until tomorrow, since I don't want to throw up the unedited chapter.
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Chapter Seventy-One
“How much damage did that ring attack do?” Adam asked as they moved back down to the study.
“60,” Gladwyn replied and James nodded.
“Wait, you both took 60 damage?” Adam asked, confused.
“Yeah, it was true damage,” Gladwyn said. “It bypasses Defence…”
“Fucking hell,” Adam replied. “If I hadn’t had my Stone Mask, I would’ve died.”
“How much Health do you have?” James asked.
“Exactly 60,” Adam replied.
“You both need more Health,” Gladwyn told them.
Adam frowned. “I’ve been stacking Defence, but that seems like a bad idea now.”
“You’ve got a debuff now, right?” Gladwyn asked.
“Yeah, I’m Withered, so damage against me is increased by 50%.”
“How long does it last?” James asked.
[The Wither affliction lasts until the end of the Stage.]
Adam frowned. “Of fucking course…”
“I do think we could have avoided the attack though,” Gladwyn said.
“Like by jumping?” Adam replied.
“You’d have to jump really high then,” James remarked.
“I might have been able to do it with my boots,” Gladwyn said.
They reached the study landing and The Summoner’s Wandering Eye necklace immediately snapped on to the door with the upside-down anchor engraving.
“I think we should go back down and do the ritual first,” Adam said.
“Do you think the Stage ends if we find the Godstone clue?” James asked.
“It’s a possibility,” Gladwyn replied.
“Let’s go to the ritual chamber first then,” Adam decided.
“Are you sure?” Gladwyn asked. “One bad hit and you’re dead, right?”
“Well, considering that the study isn’t likely to be undefended either, I’d rather focus on just getting as many Points as possible,” he argued.
“Should we start with the library?” James asked. “I can set it on fire.”
“I think we should do the ritual objective, then the three landings we skipped, and then we destroy the library and return to here,” Adam said.
“What about that scream we heard earlier?” Gladwyn asked.
Can’t believe I already forgot about that…
“Do you think it was Maggie?” James replied.
Adam frowned. “That actually makes a fair bit of sense. Alright, let’s do it like this: before we destroy the library, we’ll fly down the tower and see if we can find the source of the scream.”
Gladwyn looked poised to argue back, but then James said, “We’ll split her loot if she’s dead.”
“She only had Rare Relics,” Adam said.
“If she really came here, she must’ve killed that teen who didn’t want to go,” Gladwyn said.
“Unless he’s here too,” Adam replied.
Gladwyn shook his head. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time. Regardless of whether they came here or not, we should prioritise the objectives before we go off exploring.”
“Alright,” Adam and James both agreed.
They continued down from the study, using Adam’s barriers to fly down through the middle of the tower between the ramps to reach the landing for the ritual chamber.
After walking through the metal door, they were met with the strange heptagon-shaped chamber again. Emelia had given them the ‘recipe’ for a simple thing they could summon, which in turn had been given to her by Arturo, but Adam was sure that the ritual could also summon a Secret Boss.
After all, why would there only be one Secret Boss in this Stage?
Emelia said that the Nightwing’s Heart was used for a ritual, and she probably meant this one. Not sure what the other two ingredients would be, though.
She hadn’t said anything about it, which frustrated Adam, but given that the chamber was much smaller than the one they’d fought the Avatar in and that he didn’t have one of the required ingredients, he figured it didn’t matter.
Still, if the Avatar dropped a powerful sword, then I can only imagine what the summoned Secret Boss would give.
Aside from the Chimaera Stone, we also haven’t found any Secret Relics, which seems odd.
Gladwyn was already gathering the three items they needed, while James went around the room, looking for secrets.
The requirements for the ‘easy’ ritual summon that Emelia had given them was: a bouquet of honeysuckle flowers, the hollow husk of an enlarged bee, and one of the bowls which was full of translucent golden honey.
“What are we summoning?” James asked.
“It’s supposed to be a large humanoid bee,” Adam answered.
“Bumblebee,” Gladwyn corrected him.
“Like Yenna?” James asked.
“More or less,” Adam replied. “He’s supposed to be quite sturdy and has an attack to create a cloud of pollen, as well as a stinger that can be dangerous.”
“Don’t only female bumblebees sting?” James asked.
Adam shrugged. “No idea.”
“Ready?” Gladwyn asked, having already placed the flowers and insect husk. He was holding the last ritual ingredient, the bowl of honey, next to the last of the three obsidian pedestals.
“I don’t think there are any secrets in this room,” James said.
Adam had looked around a little bit and more or less concluded the same. The ritual could only be performed once, according to Emelia, but Adam felt confident that it could probably summon a lot of secret stuff if you knew the ‘recipes’.
James came over to where Adam stood near the entrance to the chamber.
“We’re ready,” Adam said.
“Don’t forget the plan,” Gladwyn told them. “We can retreat out of the door if necessary.”
“We won’t have to,” Adam replied.
Emelia had said the summoned mini boss couldn’t be attacked until it was fully coherent, so they needed to time their attacks well. But, if they nailed the timing, they could effectively kill the boss immediately. Especially Adam, who had insane damage potential on his first hit, thanks to his two First Strike Earrings.
Adam had already fused two of his barriers together, and was waiting to fuse the remaining one.
“Alright, here we go,” Gladwyn said and placed the bowl onto the last pedestal. Then he moved back to where they stood, holding his shield in front of them.
The air thrummed with power and a golden light came down through the hole in the ceiling.
Okay, not a chimney, Adam realised.
As he had expected, the wandering eye immediately locked onto the beam as it consumed the circle in the middle of the ritual chamber. Gladwyn tensed up, preparing for a fight, and James held the Scope of Insight in his hand.
Adam grinned while concentrating and triple-fused his barrier. Once all three barriers were combined, he shaped the result into a spike.
He induced a spin in his projectile and the air around him began to hum, competing with the noise the summoning made.
Then the golden light cut off and left behind a patch of grass with flowers upon which stood a two-metre-tall humanoid bumblebee. Two of its six legs held it upright and supported its weight, and the other four were splayed out and ready, large pods of pollen sticking to the top two. Its head was nestled into its armoured and fuzzy neck, and its whole body was covered in ‘fur’, making it almost look like an alien bear.
The golden glow completely left its body.
Fire.
The loud whine and hum of Adam’s barrier turned into a strange zipping sound that would’ve been comical if not for the massive hole it left in the centre of the large bumblebee’s torso. The sloped floor behind it suddenly had an opening that just led into pitch black nothingness.
[Elite enemy defeated.]
“I will never get used to that,” Gladwyn muttered. “It’s like a goddamn gauss cannon.”
“It’s effective,” James said.
“Very effective,” Adam agreed.
< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >
< Completed the Ritual >
Something strange suddenly happened. As the bumblebee fell, it turned into golden light that morphed into the shape of a chest. A fuzzy black and yellow chest.
“Emelia didn’t say anything about this…” Adam muttered.
“It looks like it might be a thematic reward,” Gladwyn said.
Adam went over and opened the chest.
A single hologram appeared from within.
< < Relic Available > >
< Bumblebee Coat (Epic) — Reduces damage from slashing attacks by 20% | Reduces damage from afflictions by 25% | Reduces Dodge chance by 25% | When hit, release a cloud of pollen causing momentary blindness to anyone within 5 metres. 90-second cooldown >
Four effects. Damn. Although one is bad and the last one might also affect the wearer.
“Only one?” James remarked.
“I want it,” Gladwyn immediately said.
Adam and James shared a glance, and the Spellhand nodded.
“All yours,” Adam told him.
Gladwyn grabbed and immediately equipped the fuzzy black and yellow coat. It covered his entire torso and bulked out his frame quite a bit, much more than the fuzzy black slothling coat that Adam wore.
“You two match,” James remarked. “Adorable.”
Adam sniffed the air. “You smell like beeswax and lavender,” he told Gladwyn.
He completely ignored their comments and just left the room, but Adam could tell by the way his tail swished around behind him that he was happy with the acquisition.
James is right though, he looks pretty huggable. Like a human-sized teddy bear. Not really something that’ll strike fear in the hearts of our enemies. But maybe it’s a good thing if the enemies want to hug him?
As they followed after their tank, pollen trailed behind him and James suddenly started sneezing.
Then Adam’s eyes began to itch. All three of them.
The pair immediately started coughing, sneezing, and making complaints.
Gladwyn stopped outside on the landing and looked back.
“I think I love this thing,” he said.
After working their way down to the library, clearing the three separate landings between the ritual floor and there, they experienced the unique pollen cloud effect from Gladwyn’s armour four separate times. It turned out that when the enemies hit his shield, they triggered the effect.
Despite their best attempts to persuade him, he would not take it off.
The effect was quite debilitating to everyone except the wearer, because it induced blindness in friends as well as foes. Gladwyn, with his now 75% resistance to afflictions, only got red eyes, while James and Adam coughed, sneezed, and scratched their eyes, which for Adam almost completely negated his ability to control his summons.
Fortunately, the winter dancers and his barriers could operate on simple commands, thanks to his obsidian hand’s power.
Adam had also thought that the last floor before the ritual site would have been trouble, but he was able to snipe the chimaera guarding its entrance, and there were only two more of them inside the strange vivarium chamber they guarded. The creatures were smaller versions of the panther serpent mini boss, and their experience with that boss helped them a lot against its smaller cousins.
The upgrade reward went to James, and though they searched for almost ten minutes, the only thing they got from the vivarium floor were more of the sun crystals that had no other worth than to power James’ Mana thanks to the Mage Aspirant’s Cowl he wore.
The following floor was only guarded by four creatures, and these were disturbing monstrosities of amalgamated humans, which looked like messed-up sea urchins with arms instead of spikes. Their chamber was made entirely out of flesh, as was the Upgrade Chest, which went to Adam.
< < Upgrade Selected > >
< Health (Epic) >
He used one of his Reroll Dice to get it, but it gave him a definite sense of relief to have his Health raised above the instant death range of the Avatar’s true damage attack, even if they had already defeated it.
They easily worked their way through the last landing before the library, thanks to Adam’s barriers shooting the skeletal bird men out of the air. The chamber itself was like a strange cylindrical aviary that showed clouds and floating islands beyond its metal cage, even though it was clearly fake, which Adam’s barriers revealed when they damaged the walls of the tall room.
Although they searched through the aviary from top to bottom, spending almost 20 minutes since it was much taller than the other floor chambers and full of nooks and roosts, they ultimately failed to find any secrets.
It was Gladwyn’s turn to grab an upgrade, and he chose to use his new soul blade.
Adam had a flashback when he saw the choices available.
< < Upgrades Available > >
< Soul Bond — Bond with the soul blade >
< Soul Bond — Bond with the soul blade >
< Soul Bond — Bond with the soul blade >
Gladwyn was pretty upset with the result, doubly so when Adam explained to him how the sword Gram had the same type of upgrades. It was likely that, once the soul blade had fully evolved, it would turn into the same kind of greatsword that the Avatar of Alepheria had possessed, but it was a big investment, since it would cost 8100 Points.
They left the aviary and returned to the library floor. From there they continued downwards. It was clear that, if Maggie or the teen had come here, they were dead, because the trio had taken their time going down. Not to mention, they flew down the middle of the tower, making them easy to spot, and all three of them were on the lookout for whoever had screamed loud enough for them to hear all the way at the top of the tower.
I hope they’re both just waiting for us to complete the Stage back at the start, but I highly doubt they would wait around for us that long.
While they’d been in the aviary, the cubes had announced that they’d reached the halfway point of the timer for the Stage, meaning they’d been at this for 12 hours. None of them felt particularly tired, but Adam had a feeling he’d crash hard when he returned to Interim Island.
The three guarded floors between the library and laboratorium were quite simple. Even the menacing brutes guarding a treasure room were defeated quite handedly. Gladwyn made good use of his soul blade’s special skill to just cleave through the groups of enemies, and any survivors were cut down by James, while Adam took out the biggest threats and his winter dancers slowed them all down.
Although they had lost Hahn and been at basically half strength thanks to the two quitters early on, the trio had grown quite comfortable fighting together. It was just a shame that they would not meet again in the following Stages.
Besides the treasure room with the brutes, which was full of gold, jewels, and finery that they physically could not loot, there was also a room full of water and octopus-like creatures similar to the Cell Warden but much smaller. The last room was entirely made of wood and had a creepy workshop atmosphere to its interior. Puppets of various sizes sat on shelves and in displays, and their glass bead eyes seemed to track them as they moved through the room, which was deeply unnerving. Once they reached the back, all the puppets came to life, but Gladwyn’s new special attack cut most of them down with ease.
They found a gold lever inside a large wooden brute after Adam’s barrier projectiles tore it open, and it was clear that it would fit somewhere in the treasure chamber. However, they agreed to continue down before they went back up to investigate what secrets it would reveal.
Adam grabbed the Upgrade Chest in the puppet room, since James had accidentally triggered and opened the chest in the water chamber when it spawned right next to him, breaking the order they’d agreed on.
Maybe it’s a good thing there’s only the three of us.
I can’t imagine sharing loot would be easy with more people than this.
The tower would be awkward with five or six Players, since rewards would be very unevenly distributed. And not everyone was as agreeable as James and Gladwyn.
< < Upgrade Selected > >
< Manipulation Effect (Rare) >
Adam brought up his status after getting the upgrade for his weapon and putting it at level 15.
< < Player Status > >
< Adam >
< Fusionist >
< Level 38 >
< Stats >
< Health — 70 >
< Stamina — 75 >
< Mana — 200 >
< Damage — 100% >
< Defence — 165% >
< Dodge — 10% >
< Speed — 85% >
< Luck — 26 >
< Attack Speed — 125% >
< Upgrades >
< Luck +21 >
< Dodge +10% >
< Crush +15% >
< Damage +40% >
< Defence +40% >
< Health +20 >
Only three levels gained from this Stage so far…
Still, we are racking up Points, and I haven’t taken any damage so the Flawless bonus should be mine.
There weren’t anymore floors left for them to go through after this, so it was really just the study they needed to worry about now.
As they walked out onto the landing near the last floor before the laboratorium, Gladwyn looked at them and asked, “Do you really want to go down and check? It could be a trap.”
“I want to make sure that scream we heard wasn’t some new freaky monster sneaking up on us,” Adam said.
Gladwyn shook his head.
“If it was Maggie, then we should get her loot,” James added.
With that it was decided. They would venture down to investigate.
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2025-07-07 02:40:40 +0000 UTC
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B-b-b-boss fight!
-----------------------------
Chapter Seventy
Adam tripled fused his barriers and fired the projectile at the Tower Crawler floating in the middle of the glass chamber.
The projectile zipped through the air, but swerved around the giant eye at the last moment before flying down in to the ramp they’d followed up, piercing it and then continuing through the Tower’s wall.
On the opposite side of the chamber, Gladwyn was shaking James, trying to get him to return to consciousness after his weapon skill had bled him dry of Mana.
Adam resummoned his barriers just as the black cosmos beyond the glass walls pulsed with a purple-pink light again.
Then the floating eye shot out six tendrils, one of which struck the small spherical chamber holding the Dimensional Splinter.
It’s using it for energy!
Adam immediately ordered his barriers to attack the tendril while shaping them into sawblades and inducing a spin so that they could cut through anything, but they passed right through.
“I can’t hit them!” Adam yelled to Gladwyn. “I have no idea what’s coming, but stay on guard!”
James was finally coming to, but Adam knew from experience that the hangover following Mana Exhaustion was brutal. He’d triggered it so many times while training on Interim Island that he had built up a slight resistance to it, but he could tell James hadn’t been quite as diligent.
The cosmos pulsed again and this time the purple-pink light flew through the tendrils and into the eye in the centre of the chamber.
Then the glass walls exploded under and around them, and they all plummeted into the black cosmos, getting pulled in the same direction as they fell. Adam spun head-over-heels while he heard James shouting behind him. He managed to get his barriers to stabilise him and wrap around his body like a protective pod.
Adam spun around to see where they were flying to after realising they were leaving the top of the tower far behind. The glass flew alongside them in large square panes, and ahead, like a guiding light, was the Dimensional Splinter. It was now inside the giant eye of the Tower Crawler.
I think we fucked up by fighting the boss inside the hidden chamber… Adam realised.
Suddenly the eye came to a halt and the glass all came together to form a large platform that Adam was pulled towards, his barrier pod slowing his fall while his two friends fell down next to him, landing with grunts of pain, though he was fairly sure they hadn’t taken any actual damage.
The eye floated above the platform, staring down at them menacingly.
Then it lowered down and hovered three metres above them before purple-pink light rushed through it and started forming a body below it, the eye serving as the head.
< < Secret Optional Stage Objective > >
< Defeat the Avatar of Alepheria >
Oh shit, we triggered the Secret Boss, I think!
Adam removed the barriers from himself and positioned them in front of him and his friends. James was on his knees, but had the fragment from the crystal he’d damage in the hidden library chamber, and as Adam watched he consumed it using his Cowl, regaining Mana and powering up his Spellblade.
“It’s a Secret Boss,” Adam told Gladwyn.
“Emelia didn’t mention anything about this,” he muttered.
“We must have triggered it somehow. There’s no way she didn’t know about the glass chamber,” Adam replied.
“Alright! We’ve gotta focus here,” Gladwyn said.
James got to his feet with their help.
“I see a lot of Mana within the boss,” he said and Adam turned to look at it.
The eye had manifested most of its body and it looked humanoid, although it had two arms on either side of its narrow torso, as well as two tails like the one Gladwyn had, and a pair of wings. It looked like it was using several of the Grafted Relics from the Stage.
As they watched, energy floated through its body, coalescing within the two left arms and turning into a greatsword in its hands. The handle was long enough for four hands to hold and the blade was wide and two metres long, although thin like a wafer and lacking a crossguard. It glowed pale white, and a purple-pink fist-sized tadpole swam through it like it was water, bouncing back and forth within the blade.
“They really like to use the word ‘optional’ when we don’t have a way to leave,” Gladwyn commented, moving out in front of them and readying his shield.
The Avatar finished forming and put its four hands on the handle of the greatsword, before immediately leaping forward with a rising slash.
A strange thrumming sound came from Gladwyn’s shield as he absorbed the strike.
“That’s right, focus on me!” he taunted.
The Avatar paused, inclining its eyeball head at him curiously.
“You are nothing before me.”
James surged around Gladwyn and sliced his yellow-orange-glowing blade through the Avatar’s right leg, severing it. Its body was made of the strange purple energy, but it was clearly susceptible to physical and magical attacks.
Before the boss could turn on the Spellblade, Gladwyn launched forward, slamming his shield into it and knocking it back.
The Avatar stumbled a step, but then its leg instantly regrew.
Adam shot all three of his barriers at it, having quickly shaped them into cones.
Instead of trying to cut them out of the air, the boss seemed to allow them to pierce its head and torso.
He didn’t take the opportunity for granted though and immediately unfurled his barriers, exploding its body. He commanded them to reshape into cones and fly through the body again, but even as the boss staggered it managed to slice through two of them, immediately destroying the barriers.
James went in for another attack, cutting through both of its legs, as well as its two tails, and knocking it to the ground. Before they could take advantage and pile on the damage, the Avatar flapped its wings, lifting into the air and immediately recovered all the damage.
Adam shot his remaining barrier at its head where it once more pierced and unfurled to destroy the eye, but like before, it recovered a moment later and destroyed the barrier by grabbing and absorbing it somehow.
“It’s not working!” Adam exclaimed.
“I can see that!” Gladwyn fired back, moving in with another shield bash, followed up by his sword.
Just like their magical weapons, his sword did a lot of damage to the Avatar, but it immediately healed it back. Then it went on the offensive.
The air thrummed as its glowing blade struck Gladwyn’s shield again and again, but it seemed to at least be focusing on him, which helped James and Adam attack it from the sides.
Adam resummoned his barriers and fused two together. Since the wandering eye was locked onto the Dimensional Splinter inside the head of the Avatar, he could concentrate enough to carefully fuse his barriers.
While he prepared his next attack, James performed a grasping gesture with his hand and absorbed some of the purple-pink energy into himself and his Spellblade. It turned his sword ethereal like the boss and made it immediately switch its focus to him.
“Oh shit,” he muttered, before going on the defensive, blocking and deflecting a series of strikes with his sword, but he was pushed back with every attack, the edge of the glass platform under them rapidly approaching.
Adam finished his triple-fusion and shaped his barrier into a sword like what the Avatar carried, and then commanded it to attack the boss. Since he didn’t fire the barrier off like a bullet, it didn’t shoot away from him at the command, but it did move insanely fast. Fortunately, the handle portion of the blade was relatively slow as it swung, keeping the barrier within Adam’s range of control while the blade zipped through the air.
James expelled the stolen energy from his sword in a slashing attack and the Avatar immediately lost interest in him, flapping its wings and leaping for Gladwyn with and overhead strike.
He caught it on his shield, while Adam’s sword carved through the boss repeatedly, causing it to collapse, only to rebuild itself around the sword, over and over.
Even though the boss was focused on Gladwyn, it kept a watch on Adam’s sword, continually manoeuvring its blade out of the way of it.
That’s weird… Adam thought.
But before he could put two-and-two together, the Avatar stabbed its greatsword into Gladwyn’s shield, knocking him back several metres, before turning and taking to the air, flying to the exact centre of the glass platform and hovering five metres off the ground.
“Witness my power.”
The Avatar swooped up into the air, lifting its sword directly above its head with all four arms holding the handle, before spinning around and flying down tip-first, striking the platform.
Oh shit!
A ring of white energy shot out from the centre of impact and expanded out to hit all three of them.
The Stone Mask on Adam’s face exploded into dust.
[You have been afflicted with Wither. The damage of the next attack dealt to you is increased by 50%.]
Gladwyn and James both let out gasps of pain, and the Shield Wall quickly downed a healing potion before running over to the Spellblade and giving him the last one he had in his Potion Belt. The Sanctuary Defender’s Robes he’d worn were gone, since it only took two hits to destroy the Relic and this was the second time he’d taken damage since equipping it.
Adam himself had only one healing potion remaining, but it wouldn’t matter, since the next hit might be fatal. As Emelia had said, the attack would just have to deal 65 damage to kill him.
“How much damage did that do!?” Adam yelled to his friends while sending his sword-shaped barrier back in to occupy the boss. The sword had a large crack in it, but the ring attack hadn’t dealt enough damage to it to trigger Fervour.
With a gentle motion, the Avatar cleaved through Adam’s barrier with its white blade, destroying it immediately.
It lifted its greatsword into the air.
“No more of this. It is time for me to return to my tower.”
The glass platform rumbled under their feet and suddenly some of the large panes just fell away into the black cosmos.
“Move!” Gladwyn shouted, and he and James basically threw themselves off the square they’d been standing on, just as it fell away.
Then the entire platform started to fall away piece by piece.
Shit, we’re running out of time!
Adam focused on the epiphany he’d been so close to grasping.
He summoned three new barriers, feeling Mana Exhaustion creeping up on him. He had lost count of how many times he’d summoned since his last break, but he could tell that he only had enough Mana in the tank for one more after this.
The way it was moving its sword was strange…
There’s gotta be a reason for it.
The sword was clearly the way the Avatar manifested its unique power. The eye and the rest of the body kept regenerating every time they damaged it, but it was possible that they just needed to do it enough times to really kill it.
The glass under Adam’s feet started shaking and he hurried to the one next to it as it fell away.
No, there’s something weird about the sword.
Gladwyn was defending against the Avatar and James continued his hit-and-run strategy, though he clearly didn’t dare absorb its energy again, since that pissed it off.
Wait a minute.
Adam fired a lance-shaped barrier at the Avatar, aiming for its sword, while keeping the other two in reserve.
The boss pulled its blade out of the way, allowing itself to be pierced by the projectile rather than let it hit its weapon.
I got it!
“Guys! Target the sword!” Adam yelled.
Then he did something foolish to give them the chance to do what he couldn’t.
He fused his barrier with its energy.
The lance embedded in its large eyeball head turned into purple-pink energy and Adam recalled it, sending forth the other two barriers, aiming them for the white-glowing sword as well.
Predictably, the Avatar lost interest in Gladwyn and immediately focused its attention on Adam.
But before it could leap at him, Gladwyn’s tail wrapped around its leg, stopping it. James loped forward, slicing a fiery blade through its slender four-armed body, cutting through the arms and making it lose the grip on its weapon.
“I will turn you into simpering slaves!” the Avatar roared in indignation.
“It’s Alepheria’s soul that’s in the sword!” Adam yelled, directing his barriers down into the greatsword, while hopping from his glass platform to the next as it started shaking.
The Avatar’s body quickly regenerated the damage, but Gladwyn shoved his shield into it and used his Spring Boots to launch them both away from the sword.
“No!” the boss screamed.
Shit! Gladwyn won’t survive that!
Adam diverted one of his barriers away from its repeated stabs into the greatsword, sending it off towards the Shield Wall flying for the edge of the glass platform, while shaping it into a simple hand that could grab him. At the same time, James absolutely smashed the shit out of the Avatar’s blade with his own magical sword.
Each hit was like a hammer on an anvil, producing white sparks and echoing loudly across the black cosmos.
Adam’s barrier hand grabbed Gladwyn just as he fell down below the platform, quickly lifting him back up. The Avatar had recovered and was using its wings to fly towards James and its sword.
The energy-fused purple barrier didn’t seem to do any damage to the sword, so Adam commanded it to intercept the furious Avatar. It flew off and smashed into the boss’ right wing, sending it off-course and down through one of the holes in the platform. The Avatar healed the damage quickly and flapped its wings to get back up, only for its other wing to be clipped by Adam’s sentient spell on its second pass.
The barrier carrying Gladwyn deposited him right next to James, and he didn’t waste a second joining in on beating the shit out of the white greatsword.
“I will kill you!” the Avatar screamed, its voice distorting and warping.
Then James’ sword struck that strange purple-pink tadpole that seemed to swim around the surface of the blade, and the sound was like all the windows in the world exploded all at once around them.
< < Secret Objective Complete > >
< Defeated the Avatar of Alepheria >
The Tower’s illusions have all been dispelled.
Adam blinked and was suddenly on the floor of a small spherical chamber with the ramp to the corkscrewing stairwell leading down nearby. He sat up and saw that James and Gladwyn lay on either side of him.
“We should’ve definitely just gone for the painting,” Gladwyn deadpanned. “I lost my Armour Relic for that…”
“Look,” James said, drawing their attention to something that lay on the floor near them.
“It wasn’t all for nothing,” Adam said with a grin. “We found you a new sword.”
< < Secret Weapon Obtained > >
< The Avatar’s Shattered Blade (Epic) — Soul blade formed from the dying essence of a mad witch >
< Unique Skill ( Soul Resonance ) | Summon an expanding ring of soul energy that bypasses all defences >
“It’s not even my birthday yet,” Gladwyn joked and lifted the sword off the floor.
It was half the length of the Avatar’s greatsword, with the other half of the blade snapped off unevenly, producing a strange jagged edge at the tip rather than a single point. The handle was still long enough for four large hands to hold, which gave the weapon a strange look. The tadpole or whatever it had been wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but Adam was beginning to realise it was somehow the thing responsible for keeping the Avatar alive. Although it was quite obvious in hindsight, he hadn’t expected the weapon to be the boss’ weak-point.
Adam looked around, the Dimensional Splinter wasn’t anywhere to be seen and even his wandering eye had lost track of it, seeming to once again be looking around aimlessly, while occasionally staring at James. It apparently didn’t care about the soul blade, which was curious. There also weren’t any chests in sight, which was a bit disappointing, but if the Avatar had truly been a Secret Boss, then they were likely to get a lot of bonus Points and perhaps some kind of extra reward at the end of the Stage.
“How much time is remaining?” Adam asked his cube.
[13 hours 49 minutes.]
Gladwyn had a shit-eating grin on his face and was holding the new sword in his hands.
“Shall we?” he asked, indicating the ramp down.
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2025-07-04 03:21:56 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 70 coming later today.
-----------------------------
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The landing itself was the same as the two before it, but the walls were completely barren, and the only indication of the objective was a metal door set into the wall half-way between the ramps going up and down.
They dismounted the barriers and went over to the door.
“I think we should keep heading up,” Adam said.
“We have enough time to investigate,” Gladwyn argued.
James looked frazzled.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked him.
“The whispers… they’ve returned again.”
“Ah fuck,” Gladwyn muttered.
“If it’s another mimic, then we’re running,” Adam told them.
Gladwyn cast James a worried glance, no doubt thinking about how the last mimic had nearly killed him. But then a calm came over him and he pushed aside the metal door.
As Adam followed him in, he noticed how the door was etched with a seven-pointed star, a heptagram. A ring surrounded it and connected all seven points, and the grooves looked to be filled with blood.
The metal door led them through a wide hallway for a few metres before opening up into a room shaped like a heptagon, each of its four corners marked with a pillar holding up the four-metre-tall ceiling. The ground sloped down to a flat circular spot in the middle of the room. The circle was filled with red sand, and three cylindrical obsidian pedestals, each about the width of a dinner plate, were placed in a triangular pattern in the centre of the sand. The entire chamber was built from red bricks, and in the dome-like ceiling was a circular hole directly above the one made of sand. Adam immediately assumed that it was a chimney, but he had no idea where it led, since the outside of the tower hadn’t had any such protrusions.
Small alcoves sat between each of the chamber’s seven corners, and James immediately walked towards one of the ones opposite the entrance. The alcoves were full of reagents and materials, though one held nothing more than blooming flowerbeds, while others held stacks of bones, preserved organs, and even caged animals that peeped and whined at their arrival. There were also polished and oiled weapons and armour, as well as vessels and bowls filled with liquids. Some looked viscous like tar and tree sap, and others were clearly just blood and mercury.
I don’t see anything that could be a mimic.
Unless those caged critters are just pretending.
But then he saw what James was looking at.
Adam frowned.
The Spellblade came over, holding his Quest Object. It was literally just a skinned face.
“What the fuck is that?” Gladwyn asked.
“A Face Given Willingly,” he replied.
Even though Adam didn’t want to know more, the description appeared unbidden.
< < Quest Object > >
< A Face Given Willingly — The skinned face of a joyous adherent who willingly peeled it from his own skull in a ritualistic offering >
“That’s fucking grim,” Adam remarked.
“The whispers were pointing me to this,” James said. Then he rolled up the flap of skin and stuffed it in his pocket. “They disappeared when I picked it up.”
Gladwyn looked around. “We should deal with the Tower Crawler before we try to do this ritual thing.”
“Let’s keep going up before we decide on whether we fight the boss or not,” Adam replied. He was pretty sure they would lose James if they attempted his insane plan.
They left the strange ritual chamber behind, though Adam definitely wanted to return to look for secrets later.
When they were back on the landing, he brought his barriers out and they climbed on board again, before continuing up, following the ramp while James looked over the side to track the Tower Crawler.
“I don’t see it,” he told them.
“We should try and go to the top,” Gladwyn then said. “Maybe there’s something there to help us fight it. It would be weird if it’s only possible to defeat using a specific Relic or the Secret Weapon.”
I didn’t even consider that.
“Good call,” Adam replied.
They continued spiralling upwards for the next five minutes, but there were no landings and enemies on the way up, which was odd. They reached another ringed landing, and an announcement followed.
< < Stage Objective Updated > >
< Find a clue to the Godstone inside Alepheria’s Study >
The floor was similar to the ritual chamber below. There wasn’t anything here except a metal door, although it didn’t have the heptagram engraved into it. A different symbol was etched into the door and filled with black paint, but it just looked like a simplistic umbrella or an upside-down anchor.
The way that this floor and the previous one were barren, and how the path between them were likewise clear, probably meant that players were meant to encounter the Crawler around here after completing the laboratorium and library objectives.
Strangely, the wandering eye was completely fixated on the door leading into the study, not looking away.
“This is where the painting should be,” Gladwyn commented.
“Painting?” James asked.
“It has the clue to the Godstone,” he replied. “Not sure how though, but it should be in here.”
They stepped off the barriers and Adam commanded the spells out in front of himself, shaping them into spikes.
“No way this is undefended,” he said.
Gladwyn readied his shield. “Are we doing this or continuing?”
All three of them looked up. The ramp spiralled onwards towards an unseen ceiling from the landing, but Emelia had said the objective was at the top of the Tower, so Adam assumed there wouldn’t be that much further to go.
“If we do have a fight ahead of us in the study, then I think we should continue up,” Adam said. “You were saying that maybe something was waiting for us there, giving us the key to fight the Crawler. We’ll need to deal with it if we want any hope of going through the tower to search for secrets and chests.”
“If I’m wrong, the boss might reach us and force us into a fight,” Gladwyn replied.
The fact that they both knew that the end of the Stage was within reach was tempting. Neither wanted to die, but they were also aware that the more they managed to do in this Stage, the stronger they would come out on top. And that in turn meant they would survive longer in the following Stages that were sure to be much harder.
“I’m with Adam on this,” James said. “Even if there’s nothing up there, we can use my Cowl and the Blue Shard to try and fight the Crawler.”
Gladwyn looked between the ramp up and the door.
“Alright,” he said with a sigh. “Onwards and up.”
Adam lowered his barriers and unfolded them into sleds for them to sit on, while James returned from the edge of the ringed floor. “I don’t see any sign of the Crawler, so it’s gotta be really far below us.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t reset back to the top when it hits the ground floor,” Gladwyn replied ominously.
“I didn’t even consider that possibility…” Adam said.
They hopped onto the barriers and, though they could not see the Crawler, Adam once again made the barriers follow the ramp as they flew up. He felt it was better to play this safe, just in case the boss had some kind of hidden move and could quickly close the gap to them.
They continued up for five minutes without reaching a ceiling or another landing, and then another five, but just as Adam brought them to a halt and was about to tell them to turn back, James gasped.
“The ceiling!” he exclaimed. “It’s made of Mana!”
Adam craned his neck. It looked like just an endless spiral, as though the ramp corkscrewed up through a tunnel to nowhere.
“Keep going,” Gladwyn told Adam, and then, from one moment to the next, they moved through the image of the endlessly spiralling stairwell and emerged into a giant round chamber.
It was like a sphere placed at the top of the Tower. Its walls were made of thick glass, behind which was a cosmic black with glowing dots and distant galaxies. At the very top of the sphere, what might be described as the ceiling, was a glass pole with a small sphere attached and something that glowed vibrantly within.
Adam had a bad feeling about the thing inside the ceiling bulb, but he took them up to it. As they moved, the gravity shifted and pulled them towards the curving walls.
I think we were meant to walk on the walls to reach this.
Adam moved them away from the middle of the large chamber and made the barriers follow the wall, tilting them along with it so they wouldn’t slide off and go flying.
When they reach the ceiling, they were completely upside-down from where they’d entered and could look up through the entirety of the Tower. For some reason, looking through the floors from here made them able to see the distant Crawler. It had spun around, and its large eye was looking right at them. And just like James had described it, it was a bone-like body with many arms protruding from it. Perhaps because of this chamber, they were able to see it how it really looked, without the invisible veil it coated itself in as it travelled through the Tower.
“It’s coming back here fast,” Gladwyn remarked, also looking up at the Crawler which was technically below them.
Adam pulled his attention back down to the sphere at the end of the glass pole poking out from the floor. Inside it was a tiny fingernail-sized shard of multi-hued glass. He knew what it was before the description popped up.
< < Quest Object > >
< Dimensional Splinter — A tiny fragment of a dimensional core, yet powerful enough to maintain the reality-warping nature of the Crooked Tower >
That’s the same thing that’s inside me…
But it’s a Quest Object, so which Absolute is this tied to?
Then he remembered how the Watcher had told him that the dimensional core inside the cube was a ‘borrowed power’. The same power that made him able to go back in time when he died.
Adam reached out to touch the glass sphere it was hovering inside of, but James caught his hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want it,” Adam replied honestly.
Gladwyn looked at the sphere and the splinter inside, then he turned to Adam and smacked him in the back of the head. It wasn’t hard enough to do any actual damage, which was good, since that would’ve triggered the Stone Mask Relic that Adam was wearing.
“Are you a fucking idiot!?” Gladwyn scolded him. “You’ll kill us if you remove that!”
Adam blinked.
He’d already known that was a possibility, but in his mind he had rationalised it by telling himself it was okay because he couldn’t really die.
What was I thinking?
“Get your shit together, Adam,” Gladwyn said. “The boss is coming, and our chance to leave has passed.”
Adam looked up just in time to see skeletal hands of varying sizes and lengths emerge into the spherical glass chamber. It was almost like an octopus in the way that the Crawler shoved its arms through the opening first before its main body followed.
Adam immediately fired his barriers at the boss, but they hit their range limit after travelling just slightly past the middle of the spherical chamber, plummeting towards the Tower Crawler without any way for him to control them.
They struck its body, but left only minor dents.
That’s a good sign though. Means I can actually hurt it.
The wandering eye was locked firmly on the Dimensional Splinter, completely ignoring the Crawler. But that served him just fine, since it would make it easier to concentrate on fusing his barriers together.
“Give me time to power up my attack,” Adam told the others.
Gladwyn and James shared a glance.
Then Gladwyn braced himself and used his Spring Boots to fire his body at the Crawler, shield-first. He flew through the air before slamming into one of the skeletal hands that shot up to catch him, breaking two of the fingers free and pushing through to its main body.
James ran along the curving wall, switching to his crystal sword and holding it out to his side while the aura around it quickly grew. Adam realised he was activating the weapon’s special skill.
I suppose I should go all out as well.
He grabbed a Relic from his belt that he’d been looking forward to trying.
The Fetish of Sloth glowed with a malevolent purple light as he squeezed it in his hands.
Then that light shot out around him, manifesting into three rapidly-growing shapes. Their outlines were similar to the Slothling Imps, but they were twice as tall and more angular, not to mention they all had two horns.
“What are those?” Adam asked his cube as the evolved lesser demons manifested in full.
[These are Minor Demons called Slothling Dervishes.]
They had the same fluffy black spherical body as the imps whose coat he was wearing. However, their white legs and arms were freakishly-long, and the claws on them were like daggers. Their white round heads looked super sinister, especially since their horns were like those of real demons.
Adam had expected the imps to evolve into ogres, but this was much better.
He pointed at the boss above them.
“Kill that thing.”
The three dervishes cackled and then launched from the floor, zipping through the air like missiles and spinning as they flew, making it clear how they’d gotten their name. They were each met with skeletal arms trying to stop them, but they tore right through, continuing towards the main body. The flame effect from Adam’s crown created red flashes every time their claws connected.
Gladwyn had been pushed aside and was in the middle of defending James from the arms as they swiped at them relentlessly, with some of the bigger ones trying to crush them. Adam had missed it, but the Spellblade had used his special skill to cut two of the arms clean off from the Crawler’s main body, but it seemed that new ones kept sprouting from it whenever any were destroyed, kind of like the heads of a hydra.
The dervishes took the pressure off of them for the moment, but all three of the slothlings were now glowing red after having triggered the Last Stand’s Fervour effect. The boosted speed and damage were making them a serious threat to the Crawler though, and it was using almost all of its arms to try and keep them from reaching its main body.
Adam summoned three new barriers and smashed them all into the ground repeatedly until they cracked and turned red. Then he fused the first two together, before carefully fusing them one more time, producing an angry red-glowing panel of magic glass that he did his best to shape quickly, mentally counting down the seconds in his head.
He spun it up and then immediately shot it at the Crawler, but as it zipped through the air, three arms came up to meet it.
Damn, it reacted way too fast.
The wind from the rapid projectile slapped him in the chest like an aftershock, and though the arms blocked it, they were pulverised by its passage. The barrier continued down the length of the arms, unravelling them, but it missed its mark and ended up leaving just a shallow groove along the right side of the Crawler’s main body.
However, the boss had put all its focus into defending against him that a Slothling Dervish managed to push through to its main body and tear large holes and rends in it before timing out with its two twins.
Gladwyn and James were also able to take advantage of the distraction and push close enough to the main body for James to deliver a strike with a powered-up crystal blade.
The moment he carved his blade through the tear-drop-shaped shell around the giant eye, he immediately collapsed to the ground, and Adam knew he must’ve hit Mana Exhaustion.
He only activated his special skill twice, but it must eat a lot of Mana.
However, the sacrifice was worth it, because the Crawler fell into two pieces, the main body cracking open to release the eye as though it was the yolk inside an egg. All the arms connected to the body went limp and started to disintegrate into white dust.
“We’re not done!” Gladwyn yelled while trying to swipe for the eye as it floated away from him. If his Spring Boots hadn’t still been on cooldown, then he might have been able to get to it, but instead it floated to the centre of the chamber and just hovered there in the air.
Adam summoned up new barriers and hurriedly fused them together.
The cosmos outside the glass sphere pulsed with a purple-pink light.
It’s entering a second phase!
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2025-07-03 21:10:12 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
The first book of Isekai Exorcist just went live on Kindle and Audible, and I'm really hoping it does well.
It's published by Aethon and narrated by Todd Menesses.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, he's a brief synopsis:
---
After Ryūta is suddenly transported to a new world, his bad luck only gets worse as he is assigned the role of Exorcist, the most dangerous of all adventurer classes.
In order to survive, Ryūta reluctantly becomes the apprentice of a suspicious older Exorcist, who turns out to be a ruthless teacher, and he soon realises that his new career will be fraught with danger and terrifying monsters.
In his journey to master his role, he must form pacts with supernatural entities and learn how to use their powers to exorcise evil apparitions.
All the while, corrupt adventurers scheme to destroy everything he is trying to protect.
---
If you're interested, then you can check it out here:
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DZ8N4MYG
Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Isekai-Exorcist-Audiobook/B0F84Y971P
2025-07-01 11:33:47 +0000 UTC
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Tomorrow is the launch day of Isekai Exorcist book 1. Pretty anxious about how it'll go (. _. )
Anyway, I will have a post on here about it tomorrow.
Update: chapter 69 will arrive Thursday 3rd with chapter 70. Currently not at home, so I can't edit and post it.
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Chapter Sixty-Eight
They hurried down the ramp, sliding more than running, with James quickly falling behind since he kept glancing back over his shoulder.
“I can see its arms!” he called from behind them. “The Crawler is very slow and I think we can defeat it if I absorb the Mana it coats itself with!”
“There’s no way!” Gladwyn yelled back.
Adam summoned new barriers and had them all hop on board.
“We’ll go down to one of the floors we’ve already completed and wait for it to pass!” he told them.
Handprints, big and small, appeared all over the ramp and walls as Adam commanded their barriers down through the middle of the Tower. His necklace’s wandering eye was locked onto the giant one floating above them, making it difficult to concentrate and forcing him to rely on Alepheria’s Mandate to issue commands.
It was deeply unnerving the way that the Tower Crawler’s giant eye just followed them at a steady pace while its unseen hands pressed against the walls and ramp, pulling it down after them. But what truly made it terrifying was the fact that it was utterly silent.
We’re so screwed!
Think! What else did she say about the boss??
There has to be something that I’m forgetting!
Adam was surprised to find himself panicking. So far they had overcome all the challenges in front of them, but somehow he’d known it couldn’t be that easy. It was true that Emelia had underestimated him in the other Stages, but maybe she had taken him seriously this time, which didn’t bode well for their chances against the Crawler.
If only the Stage hadn’t started off with two people immediately bowing out…
Gladwyn joining my Stage Six is definitely a new feature, but I’m sure that if something like two team members not participating had been a regular occurrence for me in the past, then Emelia would’ve mentioned it.
Some changes, either by me or happening as a consequence of Emelia’s help spreading to people, must have altered the dynamic of our group.
They fled deeper and deeper, flying past the floors between the library and the laboratorium, pulling away from the Crawler, although it seemed inevitable that it would catch up to them.
The ideal way to do this Stage would be to start with the optional objective at the top of the Tower and then go downwards. It’s probably worth doing all the optional objectives even if we don’t fight the Crawler.
As far as I can tell, we don’t actually need to kill it to win, and Emelia insinuated that too.
[15 hours remaining.]
“Shut up,” Gladwyn told his cube, although all three of them had spoken up at once.
“Let’s hide inside the tunnels of the laboratorium,” Adam told them. “If it’s really patrolling the whole Tower, then we should be able to wait for it to pass and then slip by it and go up higher.”
Since none of them argued with his plan, he set it into motion, steering their flying barriers to the side of the tower in order to use the spiralling ramps to block them from the Crawler’s eye. Adam was fairly sure they needed to go deep enough into one of the chambers in the Tower’s walls that its arms could not find them.
After a couple of minutes, they reached the ringed landing of the lab and he immediately deposited them inside the burnt-out operating room they had used to flee the explosion and fire. All three of them quickly dismounted the barriers and ran through the chamber and into the tunnels that would lead them to where the enormous Master Flesh Smith had been.
The laboratorium smelled of burnt flesh and hair, as well as soot and ozone. When they emerged into the large chamber they found the blackened remains of the spider-like monstrosity, most of its arms completely reduced to ash by the intense heat and flames that setting it on fire had produced.
“If it can reach us in here, then we’ve got no way to escape,” Gladwyn said.
“There’s a lot of space, so we could probably fight back,” Adam replied, “especially if James was right about being able to absorb the Mana protecting it.”
“The only problem is that I’ll have to get close to its hands,” he said, “but I think I’m right.”
“What does it look like with the Cowl?” Gladwyn asked.
“It has a bunch of three-fingered skeletal hands with arms that have several joints all connecting back to the eye, which itself is inside a tapered tear-drop-shaped shell with a mouth at the front. The bones and body are all midnight-blue like Adam’s barriers, but they’re wreathed in this squishy-looking ‘flesh’ that has a pinkish purple transparent hue.”
“Wait, it’s entire body is made of Mana then?” Adam asked.
James nodded. “I think so.”
“Didn’t the special skill of the Blue Shard weapon say something about absorbing ambient Mana?” Gladwyn asked. “You should try to use that on it.”
James looked at his cube. “Can you tell us when the Crawler has moved past our floor?”
[No. Such information would be considered an unfair advantage.]
“It should take 10 to 15 minutes for it to reach us,” Gladwyn said. “It was moving at maybe a fourth of our speed as we went down, and it took us 3 to 4 minutes to get here.”
“Set a timer for 15 minutes,” Adam told his cube.
[Understood.]
“Let’s take a breather. Once the timer has passed, I will check if it’s outside or not,” Adam said.
“I should be the one to do it,” James insisted. “I can see it much better than you.”
“Fine, but make sure it doesn’t see you,” he replied. “By the way, there was something I wanted to ask you about. Emelia knows a lot about how I usually perform in this Stage, but things have been very different so far, and I’m trying to figure out why.”
“I don’t think I was meant to survive Stage Five,” Gladwyn said honestly, having the same realisation that Adam had reached already. “That might have made a difference.”
“Could it have something to do with the mimic that was caused by me picking Nharlla?” James asked.
Adam shook his head. “No, according to Emelia I normally pick Nharlla, and she said we always have to fight the mimic in this Stage.”
“Isn’t the answer obvious then?” Gladwyn replied. “Since you usually pick a different Patron, your new one must be the catalyst for the change, right?”
“Unless one of the other Players like Maggie or that kid had their fates changed by something Emelia did,” he replied.
“You absolutely can’t tell us who your Patron is?” James asked.
“He didn’t explicitly say so, but that was the sense I got, yeah,” he replied. “His domain is knowledge, so I’m pretty sure he’d know everything I tell you, and I don’t want to be Scorned.”
“What’s his weakness?” Gladwyn asked.
Adam paused. “I don’t know.”
“Mine was the mimic,” James reiterated. “Which I suppose makes sense if Nharlla is the father of mimics and his whole thing is transformations, like swapping my stats around. Gladwyn said he had the Guardian, who was… what was it again?”
“Some kind of God associated with patience and resistance,” Gladwyn replied. “But I don’t know the weakness tied to him. It doesn’t seem like an obvious one.”
“If you don’t normally make it here, could it be that your weakness is the reason for Maggie and the boy refusing to participate?” James asked.
“It could also be due to Adam’s Patron,” he argued.
“What kind of thing could it be though?” Adam wondered.
“If it’s a pantheon of Gods, then they likely don’t all get along,” James said. “Look at the various pantheons throughout time. Think of Gods like Veles and Perun.”
“Who?” Gladwyn and Adam both asked.
James gave them a disapproving stare. It seemed he was quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing.
“I do think a rivalry between Gods makes some sense,” Gladwyn said. “But whether their dislike of each other bleeds into the weaknesses bestowed on us or just in their general interference, like with the strange whispers you described hearing, is hard to say.”
“So you think that Maggie has a Patron that told her to mess up our group dynamic because of the Absolute you or I worship?” Adam replied.
“Could also be the kid,” he said.
“What Gods do you know of?” James asked them. “I only saw the Void, Nharlla, Messimer, and Morrligt.”
Adam quickly explained all the ones he knew of, except for the Tome Keeper.
James took on a contemplative expression. “So we’re missing some pretty significant archetypes then. The Void, despite its power literally killing anyone who worships it, seems to not be a specifically evil force, but more of a law of nature, like Death. The All-Mother and the First Light both seem centred around saving people, benevolence, blessings, and peace. They could easily be argued to be forces of good. Nharlla seems like a trickster, which are usually neither good nor evil. Messimer, the Eternal Serpent, and the Guardian all sound like they represent forces of nature as well in some way, like Time, the concept of sight, and the concept of resisting change. Morrligt strikes me as a kind of warrior God perhaps, like Ares, Týr, and so on. And the Masked Courtesan could be a Goddess of love like Hathor and Venus.”
Adam nodded. “This all makes sense.”
“The knowledge-based God you serve also fits in, and if he’s searching for hidden knowledge, then he strikes me as a type of collector God. This is perhaps both good and evil, since, like a trickster, he works for his own cause and not something greater.”
Damn, this guy is pretty sharp.
I hope the Tome Keeper doesn’t suddenly pop in to ask me to silence him for knowing too much…
“But what are the missing archetypes?” Gladwyn asked. “Evil?”
James nodded. “Evil and chaos. Those seem to be missing.”
“There are two I didn’t mention,” Adam said, “one because I don’t know what she stands for, but she’s called The Flayed Lady, and the other because he frankly scares the shit out of me. He’s called Nwetrou and his whole thing is sacrificing Players. Permanently. Like deleting them from the timeline sort of sacrifice, in order to fight back against the God who created the Trials, known as the Watcher.”
Gladwyn looked at Adam, seeming surprised about how much he was willing to share.
If James is as knowledgeable about this stuff as he seems, then his insights could benefit me a lot going forward.
“The Flayed Lady’s name reminds me of Xipetotec, an Aztec God also known as ‘The Flayed Lord’. His sphere is warfare and agriculture, and he was not evil like his name makes him sound. The All-Mother already covers that sphere here, but it would not be out of the ordinary to have two separate Gods in a pantheon connected to sustenance. However, it seems that the ones in this pantheon don’t have a lot of overlap, so perhaps the Flayed Lady is another type of warfare God, or maybe connected to something like torture. Nwetrou does fit into the role of evil though, since his goal sounds like it is made to harm as many as possible,” James went on.
“He’s also associated with black holes,” Adam added.
James smiled slightly. “That would fit him into the ‘devourer’ role that so often exists in other pantheons, such as Apep from Egyptian Myth, or Sköll and Hati from Norse Mythology.”
Adam frowned.
“What?” Gladwyn asked.
“That’s the name of his envoy,” he replied. “Skǫll.”
“Fascinating,” James muttered.
“Does that cover the chaos role too then?” Gladwyn wondered. “Chaos and evil often overlap, don’t they?”
“They do,” James replied, “but there are still three Gods unaccounted for, and I would bet that one might be chaos personified, since Nwetrou’s goal seems very single-minded.”
I wonder what it could be.
Once we’re done with this Stage, I’ve gotta introduce James to Emelia. She’d get a lot out of talking to him about this stuff I think.
[15 minutes have passed,] Adam’s cube said after a few moments of them talking about what the last Gods could represent.
James got up from where they’d sat within the burnt remains of the Master Flesh Smith’s operating theatre. “I’ll be back shortly,” he said.
As Gladwyn watched him leave, he remarked, “Doesn’t the black guy always die first in horror movies?”
Adam laughed. “Stop, don’t say that, I’ll feel bad for letting him go alone.”
They had neither seen nor heard any sign of the terrifying Tower Crawler while waiting in the depths of the laboratorium, and each moment was excruciatingly long as they anticipated James’ return.
Then the sounds of running footsteps caught Adam’s attention and he readied his barriers, hoping he’d be able to at the very least use them defensively against the boss.
James emerged from the narrow hallway leading to the chamber.
“We’re good,” he announced, “it’s already down below the laboratorium.”
“I was worried you weren’t going to make it,” Gladwyn said.
“I know, I heard your joke,” James replied, his serious expression causing Gladwyn to pause mid-step.
“I’m so—”
“Do you have any idea how nerve-wracking that was!?” James exclaimed.
Gladwyn laughed.
Adam went into the tunnel and they followed behind him at a brisk pace. When they emerged into the burnt-down operating room, they slowed and cautiously exited out through the portcullis. James pulled out in front and kneeled at the edge of the ringed landing, looking down and gesturing for them to come over.
Gladwyn stayed by the portcullis, clearly not interested in seeing that the Crawler was below them and just trusting that James was right.
Adam knelt next to James and followed his hand, spotting the giant eye below them, the only part of the boss that was visible to him. It was down by where the metal slimes had been, and large blue handprints showed that its invisible arms were rummaging around the landing, perhaps looking for them.
He shuddered and pulled back from the edge, bringing his barriers over and shaping them into sleds.
Without a word, they all got on and he commanded the barriers to take them up by following the ramp, since flying through the middle of the Tower was likely to get them noticed.
They flew past the three floors they’d passed twice already and the monsters were still alive and standing guard, making it clear that the Tower Crawler only targeted Players.
A shame. I was hoping it might help us out by killing the enemies so we could loot whatever is inside their chambers.
They eventually reached the library, but Adam didn’t stop and carried them onwards and up. The next floor after it had more of the humanoid bone birds, and a couple flew after them when they passed. None of them dared fight back lest they alert the Crawler to their location, so they continued up, outpacing the birds after a minute. The next two landings held more unsettling creatures, with the last having a large scale-covered chimaera standing outside its chamber.
Even if we manage to kill the Crawler, clearing these remaining floors is going to be difficult.
I have no idea how people are supposed to normally reach the top if they can’t fly like me.
As the next ringed floor came into view, a loud scream echoed up through the tower, making Adam nearly slip off his barrier in surprise.
“What the fuck was that!?” Gladwyn exclaimed, breaking the silence.
“I kind of don’t want to know,” James replied.
“Yeah, I’m with James on this one,” Adam said.
The ramp led them up to their third ringed landing and, as expected, an announcement hit them.
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Complete the Ritual >
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2025-06-30 23:54:30 +0000 UTC
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Meant to have this out yesterday, but had quite a lot of real life stuff happening all at once so got super delayed (. _.)
Working on 68, but it won't be out until tomorrow. I'll do my best to get 4 chapters done next week to make up for the one I missed this week.
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Chapter Sixty-Seven
Gladwyn moved forward to meet the chimaera, catching its leaping strike against his shield with a reverberating clang. The impact had enough power to send him backsliding a couple metres. Before he came to a halt, it had already surged around him and aimed for James.
Holy shit it’s fast!
The wandering eye on Adam’s necklace was locked onto the creature, making it easy for him to focus. He shot all three barriers at the panther serpent before it could turn the Spellblade into mincemeat. The spikes hit its scales and knocked it aside so that its claws barely missed James, however they failed to pierce and small cracks formed along them from the impacts, indicating that the chimaera’s scales were incredibly tough.
As it tumbled away from James, Gladwyn slapped his Grafted Tail into the floor to get its attention while also banging on his shield and yelling, “Look at me! I’ve got your tail, scaly!”
Despite the situation, Adam couldn’t help but laugh. Then the chimaera turned on him and leapt.
“Oh fuck! Your taunt’s not working!” he exclaimed, summoning new barriers in front of himself and stacking them on top of each other. The chimaera bounced off after striking with both front paws, but it managed to crack all three of them and trigger Last Stand’s Fervour.
At least I was right about Fervour still being able to trigger despite the necklace’s negative effect.
Adam immediately separated the barriers and sent them into the panther serpent, shoving it away from him. James didn’t waste a second and moved forward with a downwards slash of his crystal sword. The aura around his blade grew as he pumped Mana into it, and he managed to clip the chimaera’s left hind leg, even though it dodged out of the way. The scales broke where he’d cut through them, but no blood was spilled.
With a loud crack its scaly cat-like tail snapped forward, striking James in his leg and knocking him to the ground with a yelp of pain. The chimaera pounced forward, but before it could sink its claws into him, Gladwyn suddenly came flying, smashing his large shield into the creature and slamming it into the bookcase behind it with enough force to knock several tomes out of the shelves.
As the books rained down around him and the monster, he shouted, “My taunt’s not working on this thing! Focus on defending yourselves when it’s aggroed onto you!”
Gladwyn chopped his sword down at its neck, but his blade bounced off the durable scales, leaving just a slight groove. Then the panther serpent pushed its feet against the wall and shoved him away, immediately moving around his shield and swiping its claws down his back. It moved with fluid motions and its speed was not to be underestimated.
Blood spattered the floor and hideous rends in Gladwyn’s back were visible through his damaged robe and shirt.
“Argh!” he exclaimed and swung his shield to bash its head in, but the chimaera disengaged before he could reach it and surged towards James again.
“Use ice magic to slow it down!” Gladwyn yelled.
James skilfully dodged around the panther serpent’s leap and swung his fist into its side just as it landed, triggering his Blood Fist Ring and shooting a spike of blood through the middle of its torso. Against a normal animal it would have been fatal, since both lungs and the heart were immediately destroyed, but the chimaera was anything but normal.
Still, it staggered from the attack and its blood ran down its underside, dripping from the edges of the scales covering its body and down onto the floor. James didn’t waste a moment, switching to his Spellblade and performing a flourish that made ice crystals form along its edge.
Adam hadn’t just been standing idly by while they fought, and he fired off his triple-fused barrier before James could swing his enchanted sword at the injured chimaera.
The sound was like a whistle as it shot across the round chamber, zipping through the front of the chimaera’s body and exploding out its back. The barrier continued through one of the bookcases behind it and vanished from sight.
Not to be upstaged, James swung his frost-coated sword down through its ruined neck, decapitating it.
Its large body and head collapsed to the floor would a thud and clunk.
[Elite enemy defeated,] announced their cubes.
Gladwyn came over and looked at the body and how it had been ruined by Adam’s spell.
“That was tough for a mini boss,” he remarked.
“How’s your back?” Adam asked.
“Already mostly healed,” he replied, patting his Potion Belt where one potion was now missing. Gladwyn looked at James’ leg and asked, “How much damage did you take from its tail whip?”
“30,” he replied. “I’ve got 36 Health left, so I should be fine.”
Gladwyn looked unconvinced.
“I thought you said you only had 50 Health,” Adam recalled.
“I made sure to get more Health upgrades after using Nharlla’s power,” he replied.
“I still think swapping your Health and Mana was a bad idea,” Gladwyn said.
James nodded, not arguing the point.
Adam went towards the dark opening that the chimaera had emerged from. “Let’s see what it was guarding.”
The other two quickly followed after him.
“How long do you think we have before the Tower Crawler gets here?” James asked.
“No idea,” Adam replied.
“Still, let’s not waste too much time,” Gladwyn advised.
As they walked past the opened bookcases and into the hidden area, they found that it was actually a dark hallway that lit up with small blue crystals in the walls and floor at their approach, the effect seeming strongest around Adam and James.
The hallway curved to the left and led to a strange chamber, the front part of which was a study full of books, with a workbench stacked with alchemical reagents and tools, a surgery slab stained with blood and other secretions, and vials and tubes full of oily fluid arranged on shelves. Within the oil floated organs and tissue, as well as dismembered limbs. There was also a cabinet entirely reserved for bones, each meticulously organised by size. The chamber was lit up by a light coming from the back half of the room which was like a vivarium designed for a giant lizard. The open door in the glass wall, which separated it from the study, made it clear that the chimaera had lived inside. Sand littered with bones took up the left side and a carpet of blue moss covered the right and had a rock over it to block the artificial sun, which was represented by a big round crystal in the ceiling of the vivarium.
Adam looked around, absolutely certain that this was the place where he was meant to find the transmutation notes.
“This tower is crazy,” Gladwyn muttered to himself.
James nodded.
Adam looked at the workbench, which had a dark residue left inside several glass tubes in a wooden holder, as well as the aftermath of some particularly messy experiment that had caused a fine brownish-white powder to coat many of the tools. After moving some of the things aside, he found six pages with detailed diagrams and lots of text.
This has to be it.
The moment he touched the pages, the description popped up.
< < Quest Object > >
< Chimaeral Transmutation Notes — Detailed notes about the process of transmuting living creatures together to form a chimaera >
Adam frowned as he gathered up the pages. He couldn’t read any of the text, and the diagrams and drawings didn’t make any sense to him. The letters used to write the notes seemed like a mix of two alphabets, with one consisting of simplistic block and the other having strange curly shapes that hurt his head when he looked at them.
“Found them,” he told the others.
He turned around to find that James was inside the vivarium, standing atop the shading stone above the moss and using his sword in an attempt to break the crystal sun free from the ceiling. Gladwyn was helping him by holding onto his legs to prevent him from falling.
Adam shook his head. “Come on,” he told them.
With a grunt of effort, James managed to chip off a small fragment of the yellow-orange crystal but fell back-first into the sand behind him as a result, since Gladwyn had let go of his legs.
As Adam left the secret chamber with the chimaera notes in his hands, trying to make sense of what was written on them, Gladwyn walked next to him and looked down at the pages.
“Looks like there’s something special inside the chimaera,” he commented.
Adam scrunched his eyebrows, trying to see how he’d come to that conclusion.
“I genuinely don’t know what I’m looking at,” he replied.
Gladwyn took one of the pages from him and pointed with his index finger at a diagram on it. It was like a cross-section of a four-legged animal, though it looked more like a dog than the panther serpent thing they’d fought. There were rings around the side-view of the figure, as well as ones inside its head and its body. The text for the two circles was different.
“This letter here is repeated again up here,” Gladwyn explained, pointing at the text inside the circle within the body and then at the strange notes higher up. The word was circled in the middle of the text, perhaps describing what it meant and did, and Adam was starting to understand how Gladwyn had reached his conclusion.
“Are we cutting open the chimaera?” James asked after catching up to them. He was holding the crystal fragment in his hand.
“Is that thing special?” Adam asked him in return, indicating the fragment.
“It has Mana inside it,” he replied. “I think it’s sun magic that’s powering it.”
“Just like the ceiling crystals in Stage Five,” Gladwyn commented. “And yes, we’re cutting open the chimaera.”
He handed the page back to Adam, who put it and the other five inside his Spidersilk Sack. It wasn’t the best way to store paper without crinkling it, but the pages seemed sturdier than normal A4.
Although James was eager to be the butcher, Adam ended up being the one to carve open the chimaera, using a double-fused barrier made to spin like a rotary saw in order to cut through the impossibly-tough scales. Once he completely opened the belly scales, he shaped his barriers into blades that he slowly sheared through the inner meat with.
After a couple minutes, he had split the chimaera open to the point that he could use the two barriers to pry it apart, almost revealing a similar cross-section to the one in the notes. And just like the notes, in the middle of the torso, behind the stomach, heart, and lungs, was a strange and heavy sphere. It was the size of a fist and had tunnels carved all along its surface, as though they’d been made by stone-eating termites.
Adam pulled the sphere out of its body.
< < Secret Relic Obtained > >
< Chimaera Stone (Epic) — Once consumed, the transformation quickly takes hold >
“That sounds ominous,” Adam remarked.
“Sounds like it’ll turn you into a monster,” Gladwyn said, his new tail curling around his leg as if he wasn’t already halfway there.
“Do you think it’ll turn you into a lizard?” James wondered.
“That does actually make some kind of sense,” Gladwyn replied. “After all, the chimaera had the body of a panther or lion or whatever, but was covered in scales. It was only the head that was different.”
“So if any of us consume it, we’ll gain a lizard-like head, but remain human-ish?” Adam responded. “That sounds freaky.”
“It probably makes you super fast,” James guessed.
“Yeah, it might be strong,” Gladwyn mused in agreement. “It’s Epic too.”
Adam eyed the stone. It was somehow spotless despite having resided inside the body of the chimaera, not even a speck of blood on it. “I don’t think any of us could swallow this stone,” he then said.
Gladwyn seemed to consider it for a moment.
“It says ‘consume’,” he replied. “That probably means you don’t have to swallow it whole.”
“Could be you that’ll end up consumed,” James joked.
“I’ll store it away for now,” Adam said, putting it in his silk bag.
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Defeat the Tower Crawler >
All of them froze.
So far, none of the optional objectives had appeared without them being in the vicinity of one.
Gladwyn and Adam slowly looked up. The eye on his necklace stopped wandering, as if it too were frozen.
Emelia had told them that the Stage Boss was creepy and highly dangerous.
They hadn’t really understood what she meant.
She had said it had many arms that it used to crawl through the Tower with, but they hadn’t been able to imagine the picture she’d painted for them.
And she had warned that, if it did find them, they had to run away as fast as they could, unless they were confident they could win. It was susceptible to magic, but actually damaging it was quite difficult.
Adam hadn’t truly understood until he looked up above the library and saw the enormous eye floating there in the middle of the air right where the floor ended and the ramp continued spiralling up. It was the same size as the hole between the ramps and the one in the ringed landing they were standing on. The eye had a tiny pinprick pupil within a strange golden-white iris that was made with several different rings that all had a black colour, while the sclera of the eye was grey. Most bizarre of all was that the eye was partially obscured by invisible teeth, as though an enormous unseen mouth waited above and its eye peered out at them from within.
But the reason it earnt its name was not because of its freaky eye. No, it was called the Crawler because of the unseen giant hands it used to drag itself up and down the Tower with. These were only noticeable in the enormous pale-blue handprints they left everywhere they touched.
James pushed Adam aside, sensing something he could not.
Then a loud wet crunch came from where they’d stood, as an invisible hand landed on top of the chimaera, pressing it so flat it became a paste. Its tough scales didn’t stand a chance and that was despite Adam not even noticing the attack, which had been almost gentle.
For once, he believed in Emelia’s advice about a fight he could not win, but that didn’t stop him from sending all of his barriers directly up into the floating eye.
They passed right through and vanished as though consumed.
“Run!” Gladwyn yelled.
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Chapter Sixty-Six
“Don’t we get a reward?” Gladwyn asked, looking around before answering his own question, “Ah, over there!”
There were two chests waiting next to the ramp leading down and the three of them went over to them.
“You should take the Relic Chest, Gladwyn,” James said. “I’ll take the Upgrade Chest.”
The Shield Wall nodded and gestured to Adam, “If you wouldn’t mind blessing my dice roll with your luck.”
“Of course,” Adam replied with a grin.
The chest was made from stitched-together flesh with seams bound by coarse black string. Not wanting to touch it, Adam kicked it below the lid and it popped open. It showed a hooded robe of the same material as the chest, the torso of one of the Mana Hoarder constructs they’d killed on the first landing, and lastly a scaly dark-green tail.
< < Relics Available > >
< Flesh Smith’s Skin-Robe (Rare) — Reduces damage from elemental effects by 40% | Reduces Dodge chance by 15% >
< Mana Hoarder’s Torso (Rare) — Increases Mana by 10 and restore 5 Mana with every kill | Increase Defence by 25% | Drains 5 Mana every minute and prevents passive Mana regeneration >
< Grafted Tail (Epic) — Grows a tail on your body >
Adam thought it was weird the Skin-Robe was named after the Flesh Smiths which hadn’t worn any clothes.
Gladwyn looked at the options, and James quickly came over after picking his upgrade.
“That Torso armour is quite good,” he commented.
“It’s only Rare,” Gladwyn replied. “And I don’t use Mana.”
“That’s good. It means I can easily pick it up after the Stage in the shop, if I don’t find it in another chest here,” James said.
“None of the armour pieces have a durability effect,” Adam noted.
“I think I’ll pick the tail,” Gladwyn said and reached out to grab it.
It immediately appeared from his lower back, pushing aside his Sanctuary Defender’s Robes. It was a lot longer than Adam had expected, reaching at least a metre and a half.
“That’s a strange feeling,” Gladwyn muttered.
The tail swished about, even coiling all the way in front of him which was a lot more dexterous than Adam had expected it to be.
“It should help you balance and climb,” James said.
Adam reached out and touched it with his obsidian hand. A zap rolled through his arm as soon as his finger-tip connected, and Gladwyn instinctively pulled his new tail away.
“What did you just do!?” he asked, backing away from Adam.
He couldn’t respond, because he was in the middle of reliving the memory of the grafted tail, seeing the monstrous creature it had once belonged to. The memories washed over him as though he was standing under a waterfall, until suddenly he saw the final moments of the tail being chopped off by a grinning lady with a large butcher’s blade and a body covered in sores.
Adam gasped.
“I think Alepheria’s Mandate has a hidden effect,” he said.
“It felt like you just pinched me,” Gladwyn replied.
“Sorry.”
“What’s the effect?” James asked, staring at Adam’s black hand.
“It lets me see memories. Like, the memories of things I touch. I felt it too when I touched the crystal sword embedded in that tree. I could feel how long it had been waiting there.”
James offered his hand. “Try it on me.”
Adam hesitated for a moment, but then reached out and put his index finger on James’ dark skin. Another zap shot up his arm and James pulled his hand away, shaking it like he’d just touched a live barbwire fence.
Adam saw hazy moments starting from the first Stage of the Trials, all of the memories focused on James’ hand and how it had been used for holding a shield as he fought the slimes, and how in the following Stage he’d used the shield to pummel the goblins to death. He saw random moments in-between the Stages too, and how he always ordered the same drink at the Tavern and used his left hand to hold it. The memories sped up and blurred together, leaving Adam with just a vague sense of the fights James had been through.
“You okay?” Gladwyn asked him as Adam took a step back and shook his head.
“It’s a really bizarre feeling,” he replied. “Also, you drink a lot of chai latte,” he told James.
The Spellblade laughed.
Gladwyn swished his tail around. It seemed to respond to his emotions somehow, which was strangely adorable, in an absurd body horror kind of way.
“Let’s continue,” Adam said, resummoning his barriers.
“According to Emelia, the Tower Crawler appears at the top of the Tower and works its way down,” Gladwyn told James.
“We should be quick then,” he replied.
Adam shaped his three barriers into simple sleds. “Get on,” he told them. “The next special landing should be the library, and it’s quite open, so we wanna get to it before the Crawler.”
“What about the floors we’re skipping?” James asked.
“We can come back to them later,” he replied.
They trusted each other enough at this point that there was no need for him to convince them, and they got onto the barriers without a fuss. Adam commanded the barriers to carry them up through the middle of the tower, without following the ramps. It was riskier, but they were able to pass the next three landings without triggering any of the enemies.
Adam only saw what awaited them on one of the floors and he was glad they were skipping it for now, because there were four armoured and armed brutes guarding the doorway to some kind of treasure room, and they seemed likely to put up a serious fight.
When they reached the library, it was similar to the laboratorium in that the landing ringed around the entire floor, hugging the Tower’s walls. Bookcases at least fifteen metres tall covered the walls and the ramp was cut off until the top of one of them, accessible only by a series of strange criss-crossing ladders, unless Players could fly like Adam.
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Destroy the Library >
“This should be simple enough,” James said and hopped off his barrier, landing on the wooden floor of the ring.
Gladwyn and Adam dismounted as well.
Before James could set fire to his sword and burn down the whole library, Adam stopped him. “My Patron item should be here somewhere,” he said.
“If we complete more optional objectives, it will empower the Crawler,” Gladwyn added.
“Are we going to try and avoid that?” James asked.
“I think that’s for the best,” Adam said, “there’s only three of us, after all.”
The Spellblade nodded. “What are you looking for here?” he asked, but before Adam could reply, Gladwyn moved in front of them and slapped his shield with his sword.
“Incoming!”
Adam hadn’t noticed them until now, but humanoid bird creatures made of bone and wearing black hooded robes moved around the bookshelves above, meticulously organising the thousands of books, though their attention quickly fixated on the three of them.
He couldn’t help but draw strong parallels between the Tome Keeper’s domain and Alepheria’s Tower, and it seemed like she had been a student of the Absolute somehow, copying many of his areas of interest. Still, her tower and creations were like the work of a child imitating their parent.
Gladwyn slammed his shield again, taunting the bird men as they swooped down towards them.
[These are Alepheria’s Librarians,] Adam’s cube announced.
He shaped his three barriers into simple spikes and commanded them to strike the birds in their wings. It proved to be a very effective way to deal with them, since they were all laser-focused on Gladwyn due to his taunting Relic.
As they crashed down around them with loud snaps and cracks, James moved between them and finished them off by chopping their heads from their bodies. Soon Winter Dancers emerged from Adam’s lantern and then the slaughter truly began, as the summons danced through the air and froze the Librarians’ bodies, sending them crashing to the ground and shattering on impact thanks to the ice turning them brittle.
Once nothing but headless and shattered humanoid birds were all that remained, the three of them looked around for clues to Adam’s Quest Object.
“They’re notes on Chimaeral Transmutation,” he told them, though none of them knew what that would actually look like.
“There must be like ten thousand books here,” Gladwyn remarked. “No way we’re finding one book amongst all of these.”
“I thought for sure the item would stand out,” Adam said.
Gladwyn’s Quest Object had been pretty obvious in hindsight, but it had also been slightly out of the way and they’d only noticed it thanks to James.
“You know, I think this floor might be a trap as well, somehow,” James said. “It would be quite easy to burn it down, but given that everything including the floor is made of wood, I think we’d end up collapsing this whole area and potentially blocking the floors below.”
Gladwyn nodded.
“Also, doesn’t it seem weird to keep special research notes just on a random shelf?” James continued.
“Not to mention,” Gladwyn continued, “if I was a megalomaniac wizard who lived in this tower, I would keep my special books somewhere out of the way.”
“Like a hidden chamber?” Adam replied, thinking the same thing.
James spun around, holding his telescope Relic to his eyes and looking for clues.
After a moment he said, “Some of the books have different colours.”
Adam looked around as well. Although he didn’t have the benefit of the telescope, he quickly spotted a book with a green embroidered cover sleeve. Most of the books were grey, brown, or black, so it stood out, but since there were so many books, it wasn’t immediately obvious at a glance.
He used a barrier to fly up to where it was positioned six metres off the ground and reached out to grab it.
The green book didn’t pull all the way out, but just tilted and produced a click. It was like a switch.
Adam looked around to see what it had opened, but there was nothing.
“There’s a red one a bit down and about eight metres to your right!” James called from below.
He followed his instructions and flew towards the book he’d indicated. When he pulled on it, it produced another click. The first book he’d pulled out tilted itself back into the row of books, as though triggering this second one had reset it.
Adam flew back down to his friends and they both got on separate barriers, allowing him to lift them up into the air with them to make it easier to spot other books.
After a minute, Gladwyn noticed a blue one that was all the way at the top of one of the bookcases. When Adam flew over and pulled on it, the red book tilted itself back into its row, similar to the green one.
“Hmm,” Adam hummed contemplatively.
“There’s gotta be some kind of order to them,” Gladwyn said, his barrier floating right next to Adam’s.
“I see an orange book all the way at the bottom over there,” James said, pointing off to their left. “And a purple one a bit above it and further to the right.”
They flew over to these and Adam pulled on them as well, resetting the previous ones every time he activated the next in line.
“There’s a white one almost at the top on the opposite side,” James said. “I don’t think there are any others besides those.”
Adam flew them over to it, but Gladwyn immediately frowned. “If they are only activated once and its some special sequence, then there’s a six factorial number of combinations.”
“That’s… 720 combinations,” Adam said.
“We don’t have time to test all those,” Gladwyn replied.
Not before the Crawler gets here, that’s for sure.
Emelia hadn’t said anything about how fast the Stage boss moved, but Adam guessed it wasn’t super-fast, since they had neither seen nor heard any sign of it. Still, it was better if they got to choose where and when to fight it, rather than letting it get the jump on them.
“Maybe we go according to the colours,” James guessed. “Or maybe top to bottom or something straight forward.”
“I’m guessing they wouldn’t make it ridiculously complex,” Adam commented, “after all, people who can’t fly should be able to do this. Or I’d at least assume it’s balanced that way.”
“Is there anything special written on the books?” Gladwyn asked.
Adam hadn’t actually checked but he reached out and pulled on the white book in front of him.
Click.
There was nothing on the front and back of the book nor on the spine.
“Nada,” he replied.
“Float us back to the middle,” Gladwyn told him and Adam obliged.
“Let’s see,” he mused while looking around.
Adam followed his gaze, from top to bottom the colours were: blue, white, green, red, purple, orange. He noticed the spacing was weird as well. From the floor to the books, the spacing of each colour was: 0 metres from the floor, then 2, 4, 6, 10, and lastly 16 metres off the floor from the very top.
“It can’t be related to the floors below,” Gladwyn muttered to himself.
Adam agreed, it didn’t match the pattern they’d seen, since there had been nine simple landings and two special ones between them and the ground.
Perhaps James was onto something by looking at the colours.
I’m willing to bet that the white book is either the first or last in the sequence.
Depending on which way you look at it, the combination for the rest could be: green, blue, purple, red, and orange. Or it could be in reverse.
Orange might be the first, since it’s at the bottom of the floor.
“I’m gonna try something,” Adam said and flew them down to the floor.
“I’ll wait here,” Gladwyn said and stepped off.
“Me too,” James added. “It’d be difficult to concentrate while you fly around.”
“Exactly,” Gladwyn agreed.
Adam stepped off the barrier and crouched to pull the orange book.
Click.
He got back onto the barrier and floated up towards the red one.
Click.
The first book pulled itself back in.
Damn, maybe this isn’t right…
Unless they always reset themselves when the next is triggered.
He flew down to the purple book, then the blue at the very top, and finally the green.
Just the white book now.
It seemed fitting to start with the orange book at the bottom and finish with the white near the top. When he looked at how the criss-crossing ladders were placed, going between the books like he had done was one of the many possible routes. Granted, that also meant it could work in reverse.
When he flew up and pulled on the white book, it produced a loud click before pulling itself back in.
Adam waited a moment but nothing happened.
Still, that’s a good sign. I think that means there’s a time element I didn’t fulfil before, since it didn’t reset itself, but the order is clearly wrong.
“Try that same pattern but in reverse!” Gladwyn called from below. “The ladders draw a path between them.”
“Oh, you’re right,” James realised.
“I was just about to try that,” Adam yelled back.
He pulled on the white book and it produced a normal click.
Then he flew back down to the next, and then up again, and so on, until returning to the bottom where the orange book was.
Adam stepped off his barrier and crouched to pull on the book.
A loud click echoed through the library.
Then the books clicked and pulled themselves out in the reverse order he’d activated them, until reaching the white book and producing another loud echoing click.
“I think that did it,” Gladwyn said excitedly.
Opposite from where the orange book sat at the very bottom of its bookcase, a loud scraping of wood-on-wood drew their attention.
Where two bookcases met was now an open seam and they continued to swing outward, cut off from the rest of the shelves about eight metres up the wall and revealing a dark hole.
Two glowing eyes stared back at them from within.
As the bookcases parted, the creature in the darkness stalked forward, its yellow eyes growing bigger and bigger until the light of the Tower fell on its head as it emerged from the hidden chamber. It had large snake eyes with slit pupils, the head of a serpent but with slightly strange proportions, and the body of some large feline although covered in dark-green scales. It was the size of a polar bear, but quite a bit longer.
[This is Alepheria’s First Chimaera.]
“You don’t reckon I’m wearing its original tail, do you?” Gladwyn asked with a horrified expression.
The chimaera immediately leapt across the ringed floor, sailing through the air towards them.
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2025-06-27 22:58:54 +0000 UTC
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I'm finally free from exams \o/
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Chapter 20
[WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT THING?] the Humanbus asked as I stalked closer.
“I’m gonna turn you into a Safe Zone,” I replied.
[THAT SOUNDS YUMMY!]
“Do you know how I activate this thing?”
[STICK IT INTO MY BRAIN FLESH AND I WILL DO IT.]
I glanced to where Panda sat on Bee’s shoulder. She was standing behind me with Tina.
“If it’s lying, we’ll just kill it,” Bee said before Panda could open his mouth.
[I WANT TO LIVE! LIFE IS YUMMY!]
“This had better not break the sphere,” I muttered.
Since my right hand still hadn’t fully healed, despite Bee’s assurances that it should’ve been done by now, I held the sphere in my left.
I pulled my arm back and rammed it and the sphere inside the Humanbus’ brain. It was warm and squishy, producing a loud slurp as my arm sunk all the way up to my shoulder.
[OWIE!]
I pulled my arm back out with another slurp, and my hand and the sleeve of my Unicorn Suit were covered in pinkish goop.
I gagged at the smell of it.
“I need a towel to wipe this off,” I complained. My Suit quickly started to clean itself by absorbing the sticky film covering it.
Nothing happened for a few moments, and I thought for sure I’d just been scammed by the Humanbus, but then a blue pulse rolled through the interior and then back over the exterior before returning to the brain.
[OOOH, THAT TICKLES!]
WARNING TO ALL MADEVILLE PLAYERS!
Player ‘Gambit’ has activated a Safe Zone Sphere inside a Humanbus!
For the next thirty minutes, Enemies and Bosses in the area will be drawn to its location. If they make it to the Sphere, they will destroy it and prevent the creation of the Safe Zone.
Players in the area can choose to aid or obstruct ‘Gambit’ in his goal of establishing a mobile sanctuary.
Rewards for participating in the successful establishment of the Safe Zone:
100x GAME Coins & +1 Level
Rewards for participating in the destruction of the Safe Zone Sphere:
300x GAME Coins & +3 Levels
Time remaining:
29 minutes 59 seconds
“30 minutes, huh?” I muttered. “That’s not so bad.”
[OFF WE GO!]
“Wai—!”
Before I could protest, the Humanbus shot forward with tremendous speed and we all fell backwards, though I managed to grip onto one of the seats and catch Tina and Bee before they could hit the back wall.
“Slow down!” I yelled
[NO CAN DO, BOSS! BOGIES ON OUR SIX!]
A hole opened in the ceiling of the bus and outside a tumorous growth sprouted around the opening and formed a small seat below.
“Is that a turret!?” Bee exclaimed excitedly, immediately launching herself towards it.
With the bus’s tremendous speed she was destined to fall back and strike the back wall, but I caught her by the waist while standing diagonally against one of the seats. Then I lifted her up towards the opening.
“Be careful!” Panda told her.
“Oh my god, it really is a turret!” Bee said with a happy squeal.
Another hole opened in the right wall, then one to the left. Seats from inside the bus shifted and moved to the outside, while fleshy growths surrounded them and an honest-to-God bone ballista formed in front of them.
“I’ll take the left side,” Tina said and hopped past me.
I maneuvered over to the hole in the right wall and basically fell into the seat. The ballista had two handles and a trigger on the right one, but only the first digits of my thumb and middle finger had grown back, so holding onto it was super awkward.
Behind the bus were eight rapidly-approaching lion-sized rats. As soon as I noticed them, two were taken out by large bone stakes shot from Tina and Bee’s turrets. The moment they were hit and tumbled to an abrupt halt, manholes burst open in the road, six more leaping out to join in with the rest chasing us.
I took aim and fired, the ballista kicking back with enough force to shake my seat.
“God, I really hope this thing doesn’t snap off the side of the bus,” I muttered. I’d only just recovered from a face-slide across the pavement, so I didn’t want to do that again.
The Humanbus jumped around a corner, and I managed to fire off a bolt while we were mid-air, hitting a rat in the head at the perfect angle, pinning it to the pavement while its forward momentum carried its body past its head and decapitated it.
“Nice shot!” Bee yelled just as we landed and the whole bus bucked wildly.
[KEEP SHOOTING! BOGIES ON OUR THREE AND NINE!]
My seat suddenly pivoted to the side so that I was facing the buildings of the street we rushed past.
Enemies jumped between rooftops to get to us, and I was pretty sure the range of the Safe Zone Event was way bigger than the one for the mall had been, probably because we were a moving target.
A child-sized creature leapt from the roof of a café with a ruined shopfront, aiming for the front of the Humanbus, and I instinctively turned my turret and shot it out of the air. Two more quickly followed, but fortunately the ballista reloaded quickly.
I fired again, striking one of the jumping creatures in the back leg and sending it spinning away. Before I could fire a second shot, the other one hit the side of the bus.
[EWW! IT IS STICKY! GET IT OFF OF ME!] the Humanbus squealed.
My seat didn’t pivot, and I couldn’t turn the ballista far enough to hit it, so I got up from my seat and swung my right fist to strike it with an airburst.
But nothing happened.
“Brock, for fuck’s sake! I need you to quit your whining and go back to being a glove!” I shouted at the balloon sleeve on my arm.
He just whimpered in response.
Instead of forcing him to get his shit together, I used my right hand ‘claw’ and pinched off a bit of the bone ballista, chucking it at the creature attached to the side of the bus at the front.
The bone fragment struck it in the head, and it immediately peeled off, bouncing off the pavement and into the air, flying past me as we continued speeding down the streets of Madeville. As I saw its rubbery skin glistening in the sunlight, I realized the creatures were frogs.
“Kevin must be around here!” I exclaimed excitedly.
Panda was suddenly back on my shoulder. “Gambit, focus,” he told me.
“How are the others doing?” I asked as I slid back into the seat and immediately shot another leaping frog in the head before it could jump towards the bus.
“Tina is keeping her side clear of some large pigeons flying towards us, and Bee is doing trick shots to kill the rats on our tail,” he explained.
“Trick shots?” I asked and looked towards the back of the bus, just as a bolt struck the pavement at a forty-five-degree angle and splintered into four pieces that each skewered a rat. “Damn, she’s good.”
“Bee wanted you to link her the description for your cape,” Panda told me.
“What, why?”
“She had a ‘hunch’, she said,” he explained.
I sent the tooltip her way with a mental nudge.
[‘Swan-feather Cloak’ x ]
Armor
I haven’t tried swan yet, but I’ve heard humans like to torture them before eating them.
Torture improves the taste of Demons, and from what I can gather, swans are a kind of Demon in your world.
Can you catch me one as a souvenir?
I’d really like to taste one.
Don’t worry about torturing it, I can do that myself.
Anyway, this is a cloak made from the feathers of a particularly-sturdy swan.
It’s apparently possible to collect a whole set, like a feathery knightly regalia.
Wearing this armor imbues you with the following effects:
- You become literally waterproof
- You no longer experience cold
- If you are within a hundred miles of a World Boss Swan, it will automatically seek you out
You receive the ‘Indestructible’ ability, allowing you to survive a fatal hit once by saying ‘Honk!’ 24-hour cooldown.
Weight: Approximately four
“Thank you!” she yelled back.
“You don’t think the swan is gonna come here, do you?” I asked, worried.
“So, ehh, Bee said that, according to her calculations, it would arrive soon.”
A loud honk cut through the air.
“Are you fuc—!”
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2025-06-25 22:45:32 +0000 UTC
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Gotta prepare for my exam on Wednesday, but I might have another Madman chapter out this week.
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Chapter 19
At the next stop, a guy breathing heavily and sweating profusely was the first onto the bus. He was holding his suit jacket in his arms, exposing his drenched baby-blue shirt. He had clearly run here to catch the Humanbus. Unlike the obvious Skinstealer seated behind me, he seemed normal.
[Ticket]
29 — ‘Stewie Johnson’ — Advertising Consultant
Blue — Pastrami Sandwich
Periwinkle Ave — Bubba
3612 — No
Besides the jacket in his arms, he wasn’t carrying anything, but Tina still had him spin around.
“Could he be Gllarhtna the Soft-Skinned?” Panda wondered. “He seems a bit too normal for this crowd.”
“What’s that in your back-pocket?” Tina asked suspiciously.
“It’s my inhaler,” he replied.
“Inhaler!” she exclaimed, shocking him.
[OH NOES! NO PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS ALLOWED! INHALE THIS!]
A hole opened in the side of the Humanbus, and a powerful gust of wind sent Stewie flying outside. His head bounced against the metal roof of the bus stop, and he collapsed onto the pavement like a sack of potatoes.
The next person in line was a twitchy cockroach humanoid.
“Urgh,” I groaned in disgust.
He had a reddish-brown carapace, and a wing case covered his wings. His antennae brushed against the ceiling of the bus and his mandibles and strange mouth arms kept moving erratically, like he was nervous.
“He’s not on my list,” I said.
Tina had him spin around and open his wing case to show his wings, but he wasn’t hiding any prohibited items inside.
I leaned over to see the ticket he’d given Bee.
[Ticket]
2 — ‘Poop Stench’ — Bartender
Brown — Detritus Smorgasbord
Something Stinks Drive — Sniffles
0210 — Yes
“He’s clean,” she concluded.
“Do we really have to let him in?” I asked.
“Don’t be racist, Gambit,” she replied.
“But he’s part of the Great Game! There’s nothing racist about it!”
“I’m just following orders,” he said nervously.
I frowned. “Of course you are.”
“Cut him some slack, he’s just a bartender,” Panda said.
“Fine!”
“Good Passenger!” Bee exclaimed and he walked past us to sit at the far back
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
1/5 remaining.
The last person in line looked like an honest-to-God witch. She had a wide-brimmed hat with a tilted peak at the top, a long crooked nose, and robe-like clothes covering her body. In her right hand was pink candy floss wrapped around a paper cone.
“Messy snack!” Tina immediately exclaimed.
[EWW! GET IT OUT OF HERE! NOT YUMMY!]
A hole opened in the roof of the Humanbus and the section of floor she was standing on shot her up like a powerful spring, sending her flying with a squeal into the air.
I didn’t see how she landed, but from the sound she made I could guess it wasn’t pretty.
The door and the ceiling hole both closed and we continued bumbling down the street. I had no idea where in Madeville we were, but I also didn’t know the town that well, aside from the area around the town hall, which the Twine brothers had turned into a Safe Zone in the previous dimension.
“Just one more and we win,” Bee said excitedly.
“This will definitely be the part where they try to trap us,” Panda commented.
The Humanbus took a corner so fast that only the legs on its left side touched the ground, and all of us had to brace against the walls and seats. As it slammed back down, it quickly screeched to a halt next to a bus stop.
Three new passengers got on.
The first one was a woman with messy and fiery red hair, as well as colorful splotches on her face and clothes. She wore a grey apron over a denim onesie. Her irises were like tiny pinpricks in her blood-red eyes, and she was foaming at the mouth.
“I think this is Feral Freya,” I said.
“Spin around for me,” Tina said, clearly enjoying her power, which surprised me.
As the woman turned on the spot, I saw a paintbrush with green and blue paint on it that were clearly still wet.
“Bad Passenger!” I exclaimed.
One of the bus seats disconnected from its row and hopped towards Feral Freya, its human-skin cushion opening to reveal a mouth. The Bad Passenger turned to run out, but a tongue shot out from the open maw and coiled around her waist before pulling her into its mouth and chomping down.
Crunch! Crunch! Splat! Crunch!
I shuddered. It was not lost on me that this could be the fate of one of us if we got the next guess wrong.
The second person stepped forward. He wore a dark-blue suit, and his black tie was slightly disheveled along with his brown hair. He carried a suitcase like the Skinstealer behind me and Tina had him open it. Inside was a bagel.
Tina nodded. “No seeds on that bagel, so it’s not messy.”
The guy also didn’t match any of my Bad Passengers, but he seemed a bit too ‘normal’ to fit in with the characters that’d been allowed to enter, which raised my suspicions.
I leaned over to look at his ticket.
[Ticket]
42 — ‘Grant Hall’ — Salesman
Dark-blue — Hamburger
Main Street — Manfred
1415 — No
“He seems like he’s a Go—” Bee started.
“Me-ow!” Lordie exclaimed, interrupting her with his deep Morgan Freeman voice.
“Really?” I asked.
“What?” Panda and Bee asked simultaneously.
“He’s saying Grant Hall is Gllarhtna the Soft-Skinned,” I translated.
“Nina said nothing about that,” Tina commented.
Bee looked back down at the ticket again, scrunching her brows in contemplation.
“Wait!” she then said excitedly. “Grant Hall is an anagram of Gllarhtna!”
“Bad Passenger!” I shouted.
“Aww shucks, ya got me,” Gllarhtna said, his voice like a thousand screams deep within his body converging to form the words.
Before the Humanbus could grab and devour the Absolute Spawn, his suit, body, and suitcase all popped and turned into baseball-sized balls of flesh with four bone legs. They all landed on the floor and skittered out through the open door, the Humanbus unable to catch any of them.
[I WILL GET YOU NEXT TIME, YOU TICKET CHEATER!]
Outside the window of the bus, the skittering flesh balls came together to reconstitute themselves back into a humanoid, although this time it was a pale-green face with three eyes on the left side stacked above one another and an angled S-shaped mouth on the right side.
Gllarhtna lifted a four-fingered and clawed hand and waved at us, then he just disappeared.
“I guess he had to be outside the bus to actually use his special abilities,” Panda remarked. It explained why he’d left the vehicle first instead of just teleporting out from inside.
The last person in line stepped up to our desk like nothing had happened. She had a swaddling cloth around a hissing possum. The right side of her face was scarred from a chemical burn, and she had no eyebrows. Her eyes also glowed green, and she had an upside-down crucifix carved into the skin of her pale forehead. She wore a nun’s robes just to really drive the theme home.
“Is that possum baby feral?” Tina asked, returning to business as usual.
“Peter is very kind,” the woman said.
Peter the possum hissed loudly in agreement.
I sighed. “She’s probably fine,” I said.
“Her ticket checks out too,” Bee added.
Just to make sure, Tina had her spin around, but she didn’t have any prohibited items on her.
“Good Passenger!” Bee said excitedly.
The weird Satanist nun found a seat two rows behind us.
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
0/5 remaining.
You have completed “Tickets, Please”!
The Humanbus immediately came to a stop and the door opened in the side of its head.
“We did it!” Bee cheered.
“Good job, everyone,” Panda said.
“Lordie really saved our asses,” I replied, patting the hand-spider on my head.
“Me-ow?” he asked.
“Not a chance,” I told him.
The desk, list, binder, and ticket template all vanished, as did the Good Passengers, leaving just ghosts behind.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]
‘Tickets, Please!’
Completed a Humanbus puzzle game.
I hear Gllarhtna likes to participate in this Game.
That guy always shirks his actual duties.
When you meet him next, make sure to kill him, no matter what he says.
Also, I’m supposed to commend you for not losing a single person on your team and beating the Game without cheating.
It says you already got this reward, but I don’t see any skills associated with it in your possession, so that must be a bug.
Rewards: ‘Humanbus Brain’ & 150x ‘GAME Coins’
[‘Humanbus Brain’ x ]
Item
The brain of a Humanbus. An ember of sentience still swims around within this pink ball of flesh.
In order to access the power trapped within, you have to give it a name and kiss it on its forehead.
Weight: Approximately one
[Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]
‘Kneeling at the feet of the Absolute’
Met an Absolute face-to-face and survived to tell the tale.
You were supposed to receive this achievement immediately after returning from the All-Mother’s Garden, but since you caused a disruption that made all the employees flee the office, the guy in charge of pressing the ‘send’ button failed to do his job.
They punished him by sending him to my new office.
Turns out that Lordie was right, cicadas are quite tasty.
It says I should talk about how lucky you are to have survived meeting an Absolute, but from what I understand the All-Mother isn’t one of the ones whose very presence obliterates everyone in the vicinity.
Of course, it’s still quite easy for her to kill everyone around her if they’re not careful, so I guess you were lucky in a sense.
Rewards: 500x ‘GAME Coins’
A gooey brain landed in my lap, as well as the laps of Tina and Bee.
“Did you get the Absolute achievement too?” I asked them.
“I did,” Bee replied.
“Me too,” Tina added.
“You’re getting quite a lot of Coins already,” Panda remarked. “I thought you weren’t meant to get those until after the first Game Event.”
“I don’t care whether we’re supposed to get them or not,” I said, “we need Coins for the Safe Zone.”
“Should we use the brains first?” Bee asked.
Tina was turning it over in her hands. Even though she had Nina feeding her information, it was still her first time seeing an item that was supposed to unlock a skill. Her ability to just play along with everything was quite commendable, but I supposed that was just the kind of person she was. Nothing much really seemed to faze her, after all.
“It’ll only give us movement or transport skills,” I said. “Let’s save them.”
I put the brain into my inventory and approached the front of the very-much-alive bus. I had a suspicion that we’d received the brains without needing to kill the Humanbus because of Billee’s interference. Every other transport monster’s brain I’d received so far had been after killing them, not before.
Still, I wouldn’t let the opportunity go to waste.
I pulled out an item from my inventory as I approached the brain that took up the driver side at the front of the bus.
[‘Safe Zone Sphere’ x ]
Item
An object capable of transforming almost any place into a Safe Zone. The duration of the Creation Event is based on the area chosen to be transformed.
During the Event, Enemies and Bosses within and near the area will be attracted to the Sphere, seeking to destroy it.
Status: INACTIVE
Weight: Approximately one
“Here goes nothing.”
-----------------------------
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2025-06-23 21:18:27 +0000 UTC
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Anyone here ever play "Papers, Please" ?
-----------------------------
Chapter 18
“Shit,” Panda muttered. “If we make a mistake, one of you will die.”
“I wonder if you’re counted as a passenger as well,” I said.
He froze. “Don’t say stuff like that!”
“Don’t worry, Panda, I won’t let you die,” Bee said. “I’m good at games like this.”
[ARE YOU READY!?] the Humanbus exclaimed.
[OFF WE GO! YUMMY-YUMMY!]
A desk had appeared in front of where we sat and on top of it were a photo of the front and back of a ticket, a list of prohibited items, and a binder of names and short descriptions but no pictures.
[Banned Items]
The following items are banned inside the Humanbus:
- Snacks and candy that leave a mess -
- Hotdogs -
- Asthma inhalers -
- Living animals -
- Feral babies -
- Beautiful Singing -
- Children of Absolutes -
I looked at the last item on the list. “Are you gonna be okay, Panda?”
“The bus can’t detect me, so don’t worry,” he replied.
“Why are living things on this list?” Bee wondered. “And what’s the issue with hotdogs?”
[NO HOTDOGS ALLOWED! THEY WILL STAIN MY UPHOLSTERY! NOT YUMMY!]
The ticket template was kind of like a stripped down status with the attributes swapped for weird personal details.
[Ticket Template]
Age — ‘Name’ — Occupation
Favorite Color — Favorite Food
Childhood Street — Childhood Pet’s Name
Credit Card Pin — Cannibal?
“What do you think that last thing means?” Bee asked.
“Seems like a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question,” Panda guessed.
I frowned as I looked through the Banned Items. “There’s nothing that says cannibals aren’t allowed here…”
The binder contained the names and descriptions of four people.
[Bad Passengers]
‘Feral Freya’
A former kindergarten arts teacher who was banned from the Humanbus for drawing graffiti on the seats.
‘One-Eyed Jack’
A pirate with a missing eye and a hook for a hand. Banned for his beautiful sea chanties.
‘Stabbie’
A stab-happy vagabond with knives for hands who was banned for stabbing and eating seven Good Passengers.
‘Gllarhtna the Soft-Skinned’
A Spawn of Nharlla notorious for his shapeshifting power. Banned for evading the rule barring Children of Absolutes by pretending to be a Good Passenger.
“What a great selection of individuals,” Panda mumbled sarcastically.
“Jack sounds nice,” Tina said. “I like sea shanties.”
“Me too,” Bee said.
[YUMMY-YUMMY! FIRST PASSENGER COMING UP!]
I looked out through the windows of the Humanbus and saw a bus stop coming into view. Piled-up and abandoned cars were shoved to the side by the bus’s ridiculous strength before it rolled to a stop and its door popped open.
A figure shambled up the steps and into the bus before stopping in front of our desk.
“Ticket, please,” Bee said.
She was predictably quite excited about the Game, which I hadn’t realized until now was something I had missed. I needed to sit down and have a proper talk to her though, since our reunion had been so brief. I also needed to figure out if the All-Mother’s fusion of her two dimensional selves had caused any issues.
Tina grabbed the Banned Items list and looked at the figure. I lifted the binder with Bad Passengers and scanned through it again.
The creature in front of us was humanoid, although half its face was missing, exposing the skull, and it was impossible to tell if they were a man or woman. Its left arm was shrunken and tiny, and its right was quite muscular. It wore a jacket made of turkey feathers and a cowboy hat.
“I don’t think this is a banned passenger,” I said.
“Spin around for me,” Tina told the figure.
They obliged, turning on the spot slowly. A severed hand poked out from a back-pocket of the creature’s cargo shorts.
I tried to use my Appraising Eye on them, but it didn’t work.
“Does a hand count as a snack?” Panda wondered. “And if so, is it messy?”
“It’s not,” Tina said confidently. “They’ve got no banned items.”
I leaned over to look at the ticket Bee was inspecting.
[Ticket]
21 — ‘Yellowtooth’ — Gourmet
Crimson — People
Eater’s Corner — Clive
0780 — Yes
“Their ticket is good too,” Bee concluded
“We’re really gonna let a cannibal in here?” Panda asked.
“I don’t make the rules,” she replied.
“Good Passenger,” I said.
The cannibal walked past us and sat down directly behind me, breathing heavily into my left ear.
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
4/5 remaining.
“Nice,” Panda said.
We continued for half a minute before reaching the next stop where two people got on.
The first was a woman with a bald head and a snake around her neck. She wore a black t-shirt that said ‘Ask me about my pet snake’ in green letters that, when I looked closer, were written with cartoon snakes. She also wore white jeans and scale boots that I was fairly sure were made from snakeskin.
“No animals allowed,” Panda said.
Tina shook her head. “It’s dead, so it’s okay.”
Once again, the passenger didn’t match any of the banned people on my list.
Bee compared her ticket to the template.
[Ticket]
33 — ‘Charlie Charlatan’ — Snake Collector
Green — Reptiles
Brown Street — Ssslayer
3333 — No
“Come on in,” she said, and the creepy snake-eating snake collector walked past our desk, sitting down next to the cannibal.
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
3/5 remaining.
The next passenger was a literal wolfman wearing clothes made from fluffy white sheep’s wool.
“I feel like this is a clue,” Panda muttered.
Tina had him spin around, but aside from a bushy tail he wasn’t hiding anything behind his back.
“Bad Passenger,” Bee said, “his ticket is wrong.”
[Ticket]
12 — ‘Sheep McSheepson’ — Sheep
White — Sheep Food
Johnathan — The Farm
1234 — Yes
Before Tina and I could argue, tendrils shot up out of the floor and pulled the wolfman down into the bus. Sheep McSheepson growled and screamed as his body was consumed.
“Holy shit!” Panda exclaimed.
“That was pretty brutal,” I agreed.
The door closed and the Humanbus continued its journey like nothing had happened.
“It doesn’t seem like we get to know if someone was a Bad Passenger or not,” Bee said.
“The rules didn’t state that we’d be punished for getting that part wrong,” Tina replied.
“Maybe it’s because the Humanbus gets stronger with every person it eats,” I guessed.
“So it’s incentivizing us to feed it,” Panda said. “That’s kind of smart.”
“Do you think it matters what level it is when we turn it into a Safe Zone?” Bee asked.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter I think, but let’s just focus on beating this game. Don’t forget your lives are on the line here,” I said.
“Your life too,” she replied.
“Nuh-uh, I’ve got a respawn to save me,” I said with a smug grin.
“Ehh, Gambit, your passives don’t work in here,” Panda reminded me.
“Oh fuck… Let’s do our best then, okay?”
“You weren’t doing your best?” Tina asked me, a dangerous look in her eyes.
“I were! I promise!” I immediately replied.
Her gaze didn’t leave me for a few seconds, but then we heard beautiful singing coming from outside.
“Heave ho! Thieves and beggars! Never shall we die!”
“Oh no, it’s Jack!” Tina exclaimed, suddenly distressed.
“Quick! Scare him off!” Bee said. “Don’t let him get eaten!”
The bus stopped and One-Eyed Jack got on, his beautiful sea shanty resonating deep in my chest.
“We can’t let him on,” I told them. “He’s a Bad Passenger.”
Tina and Bee had no time to respond because a long tube-like mouth shot out from the Humanbus’ brain in the driver seat, clasping onto the one-eyed pirate’s face before coiling around his body and pulling him into the brain, his shanty morphing into cries of agony until suddenly replaced with silence.
“What the fuck, Gambit!” Bee exclaimed.
“It’s not my fault!” I shot back. “If we’d let him on, one of us would’ve died!”
“I would have sacrificed myself for him,” Tina said, tears in her eyes.
“Me too!” Bee exclaimed.
“You two are out of your minds,” Panda remarked.
“His sea shanties must’ve been like a siren’s call to women,” I said.
There were another two people waiting for our verdicts, but both Tina and Bee seemed to have given up. Since they weren’t participating, I took it upon myself.
I looked over the first one. He was a completely normal man in a suit and with combed-back hair, holding a briefcase.
“Show me what’s in your briefcase.”
The guy opened it and inside was a brown banana and a packet of bubblegum.
“Are you planning on chewing that bubblegum and sticking it onto the seats?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“What about the banana? Will you drop the peel on the floor after you’ve eaten it?”
He shook his head again.
“Alright, show me your ticket.”
[Ticket]
25 — ‘Human McHumanson’ — Human Man
Beige — Human Food
Human Avenue — Human John
0000 — Yes
I pinched the bridge of my nose. This guy was clearly a Skinstealer, but there were no rules against that as far as I could tell.
“Panda, are Skinstealers considered children of Absolutes?” I asked.
“It could be argued that they are, but since they’re not direct offspring, I don’t think it counts here.”
I sighed. “Alright, come on in…”
Human McHumanson grinned, the corners of his mouth reaching his ears.
I shuddered in disgust as he walked by and sat down next to the other two passengers in the row behind us.
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
2/5 remaining.
The last person waiting was like a surfer dude with tan skin, dirty-blonde hair, and a loose flower shirt and yellow swim trunks.
“Hotdog!” Panda exclaimed.
Sure enough, the guy had a hotdog in his left hand.
“Hotdog!” I repeated.
[OH NOES! NOT YUMMY!]
The floor under the surfer dude opened and he fell down onto the street below with a thud. Then the door closed and the Humanbus moved forward, trampling him underneath and making the bus bounce slightly.
Bee and Tina both seemed to snap out of it as they looked around wide-eyed and confused.
“What happened?” they both asked.
“One-Eyed Jack nearly got you killed, that’s what!” Panda scolded them.
Tina’s voiced dropped several octaves as Nina took over, “Beware the scallywag and his luring song!”
“Bit late for that,” I muttered.
The Humanbus continued towards the next bus stop.
-----------------------------
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2025-06-22 13:05:59 +0000 UTC
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Since Book 1 of Loopshard just wrapped on RR with chapter 58, I went and generated a new cover for Book 2 using Niji-Journey.
2025-06-20 10:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Last Loopshard chapter of the week, tomorrow I'll continue on Madman book 3.
-----------------------------
Chapter Sixty-Five
“Ah shit, another optional objective,” Gladwyn muttered.
“It might be worth skipping it,” Adam said.
“Why?” James asked.
“Emelia, the time-looper Gladwyn mentioned, she said that if we complete two optional objectives, then a really difficult and dangerous boss will appear,” Adam explained.
“That Tower Crawler thing that was mentioned once we killed the Warden?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“But we get Points for doing this, right?” he continued.
“We do,” Adam confirmed.
“You know,” Gladwyn said, “I think Emelia underestimates us a lot. I say we do the objective and kill the damn boss. How scary can it really be?”
“Famous last words,” Adam joked. “But I agree. I think the three of us can take on pretty much anything.”
James looked around. “Where do we start?”
The fourth landing was a ring that hugged the walls of the Tower and had six different chambers embedded into the brickwork. Two of them were rectangular chambers with vats and flesh sacks that wriggled with inner life and which were fed by snaking tubes running along the ceiling, leading deeper into the lab. The next two were operating rooms with simple portcullis gates through which could be seen stone slabs. Creatures and constructs lay atop these slabs, and strange many-limbed humanoids performed vivisections on them and reworked their bodies. The last two chambers were covered by translucent skin on the wall facing them, providing a blurry image of the other side. It seemed like they were used for storage.
Adam flung his barriers into one of the translucent walls, but they broke on impact, just like with the cells in the basement prison.
“We have to go through one of those,” Gladwyn said, pointing to the two chambers with the wriggling flesh sacks. “I think they’re connected to the rest by tunnels.”
“The layout of this tower is quite bizarre,” James muttered.
Adam let Gladwyn take the lead while he ordered his three barriers to stab and slash at the vats and flesh sacks, killing the lifeforms within before they could pop out to ambush them. Each kill sent a soul essence into his lantern, and he managed to summon six Winter Dancers before they’d worked their way through the rectangular chamber. The summons floated behind Adam like his entourage until they found an opening that led into one of the operating rooms with a many-limbed surgeon inside. It looked like a man, though he was missing his lower body and ten arms sprouted from his back like the limbs of a messed-up spider, lifting him off the floor. Each of the arms had seven-fingered hands.
[This is an augmented humanoid called a Flesh Smith.]
Adam frowned at the name and sent his dancers to target the vile creature.
“You’re disrupting my work!” he screamed with an unnatural voice.
This chamber was full of operating slabs and half-completed constructs similar to the Mana Hoarders, as well as hybrid monstrosities like the animals they’d encountered in the prison. Despite their incomplete states, they charged for Adam and his party.
The enemies themselves weren’t dangerous, but it was difficult to fight in a confined space like this. The moment they killed the Flesh Smith, they suddenly had more half-finished surgery experiments coming from the next chamber, as well as half-formed humanoids sneaking up from the way they’d come, dripping with embryonic fluid from the vats and sacks.
Adam sent two of his barriers to guard their back, while James went to town with his new crystal sword, carving through everything in his path.
“Toss me one of my crystal cores!” he yelled as the aura of his blade died down.
When Adam threw one into his awaiting hand, James immediately drained the mana from it using his Cowl. Adam thought it was a waste, but James was free to do whatever he wanted with his share of the cores.
With renewed Mana, James switched to his Spellblade weapon and performed an elaborate flourish, coating the blade in fire before swinging wildly to launch flames at the vat-born humanoids. To their collective surprise, the embryonic fluid dripping off of them was highly flammable, and the malformed creatures quickly succumbed to the fire as it engulfed them.
“Watch out!” Gladwyn exclaimed as one of the burning half-formed humans lunged for Adam.
He quickly shoved a barrier into it and pushed it away before it could grab him, somehow also managing to fuse the fire on its body into the midnight-blue pane of magical glass. The creature was extinguished and crumbled into a heap of foul-stinking burnt meat. Meanwhile the fused barrier lost all physicality and became a square wall of fire.
Adam didn’t waste the opportunity and swept it through the other vat creatures, setting them ablaze.
“Push through to the next chamber!” he yelled to Gladwyn.
“You’ve got it!” he responded and crouched down behind his large shield. It was just barely smaller than the doorway they’d be moving through. On the other side the constructs and surgery patients pounded on the metal.
With the sound of shattering bones and a woosh of air, Gladwyn activated his Spring Boots and launched himself and his shield forward like a semi-truck, absolutely obliterating whatever was unlucky to be trapped between him and where he was going.
The operation chamber was quickly consumed by flames and James and Adam ran through the corridor in the enemies Gladwyn had made, killing every creature still alive and writhing on the floor.
Once the two of them passed through the doorway to the adjoining operating room they quickly pulled a heavy surgery slab in front of it, blocking the remaining vat-born monsters from following them in as the conflagration spread. Meanwhile, Gladwyn kept them safe from the few constructs remaining in the chamber, as well as the Flesh Smith furiously slamming his spidery limbs into his shield while screaming that his research was ruined.
The dancers were already tearing into them, six of the summons having followed Gladwyn without Adam’s explicit command.
James switched back to his crystal sword and tore through the unfinished constructs while Adam resummoned his barriers and dispatched the Flesh Smith by driving two lances through his gangly body.
No sooner had they cleared the room than an explosion from behind them rocked the floor.
“Get down,” Gladwyn told them and moved between them and the barricade they’d made to the previous room.
Adam manoeuvred his barriers out in front of the Shield Wall just in time to save him from the flames that rolled through the lab and into the operating room they were in. As the fire touched the barriers, Adam fused it all into them, preventing the flames from rolling over Gladwyn’s shield and burning him.
Once the threat had passed, they all took a breather and looked around the laboratorium. There was no simple passageway into the remaining two chambers with the strange translucent skin walls, but at the back of the operating room they were in was a hallway leading deeper.
“In hindsight, it was quite dumb of me to step in front of the flames,” Gladwyn said.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll block fire anytime soon,” Adam replied.
“Never say never,” he argued. “Might be my next evolution, who’s to say?”
“Good thinking about using your barriers,” James praised Adam.
All three of them had turned into burning square panes and were letting off quite a lot of smoke even though they weren’t burning anything. Adam resummoned them but had to steady himself against a stone slab as his Mana dipped low again.
“Mind if I take a moment to get my Mana back?” he asked them.
“Sure,” Gladwyn replied.
“Is there a way to do it faster without potions?” James asked.
Adam looked around the floor until he found a spot that was relatively clean and sat down. He tapped the floor next to him with his left hand. “If you sitting, you regenerate 4 points of Mana per second instead of just 1,” he explained.
James sat where Adam had indicated. “I had no idea that was a thing,” he replied.
“Isn’t it something you learn when you start with a magic-based weapon?” Gladwyn asked.
He probably knows about it because of Beck, Adam realised.
“Maybe it’s different because I evolved my weapon into one that’s magical?” James replied.
Adam nodded. “That kind of makes sense.”
While they sat on the floor of the operation chamber, Gladwyn looked around between the blood-slick stone slabs and dead bodies for secrets. He also kept an eye on the fire raging in the other room, although there wasn’t too much stuff that could actually burn, aside from some cabinets and a few of the tools that used wooden handles. The rest was either stone or metal.
With a click, the portcullis to their chamber opened and produced a screech of metal-on-stone.
“I found a button,” Gladwyn said.
Adam had almost regenerated all of his Mana and got back to his feet.
The ‘button’ was actually a small metal lever hidden between the wall of the portcullis and a large cabinet. Inside of the cabinet were glass vials and bottles full of organs and strange alien bits of flesh floating in oily fluid.
“I don’t think there are any other ways to go than through that back hallway,” Adam pointed out.
“Regardless, it’s nice to have somewhere to retreat if we need it,” Gladwyn remarked.
“That’s true.”
“I’m back to full,” James said.
He must’ve been quite low on Mana if it took him this long to refuel.
Maybe he doesn’t get affected by Mana Exhaustion as significantly as me, or maybe he just handles it better?
Gladwyn moved in front of them as they followed the stone hallway that went even deeper into the Tower’s wall. It was uncomfortably narrow, not allowing them to walk side by side, and instead forcing them to go single file.
I hope we don’t have to fight in here…
After a tense minute in the narrow space, they reached a new chamber. It was a square room with the opening for another hallway on the right of where they emerged.
“Shit,” Gladwyn muttered.
In the centre of the room was a bizarre and disturbing creature hanging upside-down. It reminded Adam of a spider because of the large abdomen at the top near the ceiling and the many long arms spreading out from a round body below it. The arms were like those of a human, but they had a second joint and were absurdly long. Each one had a seven-fingered hand and was working independently from the rest, moving around above vats, flesh sacks, surgery slabs, and workbenches with disassembled constructs on it. The round body the arms grew from was just like a knot of flesh, and there wasn’t any head visible on the creature.
“What the fuck is that?” Adam asked, frowning in disgust.
[This is an augmented humanoid called a Master Flesh Smith.]
“We should target its abdomen, it’s full of the same fluid as the flammable vats,” James said.
Adam looked at the top of its body and realised he was right. He also noticed that the cables for the flesh sacks and vats in the other chambers all led to this thing.
“If we do that, it’ll fill the room with flames,” he replied.
“It doesn’t seem like its interested in us,” Gladwyn remarked. “Let’s go through to the next two chambers before we deal with it.”
Adam nodded. “I don’t think there’s an exit in those, so we probably have to set fire to this thing and then run like crazy back the way we came.”
“Just say the word,” James replied with a glint of arsonistic glee in his eyes.
They spent a few moments looking around the spider’s creepy chamber, but aside from the many projects it worked on, there was nothing of interest to them, not even the disturbing thing James had to find for his Patron.
Adam was fairly sure his Quest Object wasn’t in the laboratorium either, since they didn’t seem to be keeping notes anywhere and also didn’t produce chimaera here, not to mention the fact that it was the personal notes of Alepheria.
I’m more likely to find them if we locate her private lab or study.
After all, I’m fairly sure we’re still quite far from the top…
They moved through the hallway from the Master Flesh Smith’s operating theatre to the last two chambers, but when they reached the end of the tunnel they discovered that the two rooms with the translucent walls were actually joined together, since the wall between them had been knocked down.
The smell in this room was so bad it actually made Adam see stars, almost like his brain was malfunctioning.
“God that’s foul,” Gladwyn muttered between gasps.
Around them lay the discarded remains of surgery experimentations and there was not a single bit of flesh here that wasn’t in some advanced stage of decay. However, there was a chest in the middle of the room.
“It’s an Upgrade Chest,” James mumbled while covering his nose and mouth with his right arm.
“My turn,” Adam said and stepped forward.
The chest was made from bone but was full of holes big enough that he could fit his fingers in them. Somehow, the sight freaked him out a bit, causing a bit of trypophobia.
He kicked it and it sprung open.
< < Upgrades Available > >
< Barrier Efficiency (Rare) — Reduces barrier summoning cost by 15% >
< Manipulation Speed (Rare) — Increases manipulation speed by 35% >
< Mana (Epic) — Increase Mana by 10 >
Hmm, I feel like I can get pretty insane speed with my triple fusion, so I don’t think I need that.
The question here is really whether 15% reduced cost is better than 10 extra Mana.
My starting summoning cost for the barriers is 50 Mana. It’s already reduced to 40 by the 20% reduction I got from picking two Efficiency upgrades before, but with another 15%, it would be down to 32 or 33, depending on whether it rounds up or not.
With 200 total Mana, I can summon six times in a row at a cost of 33 Mana.
With 210 total Mana, I can only summon five times in a row at a cost of 40 Mana.
The choice was obvious.
< < Upgrade Selected > >
< Barrier Efficiency (Rare) >
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Gladwyn said, dry heaving after inhaling the smell.
Adam followed after them as they returned to the chamber with the spider hanging from the ceiling. As they walked through the narrow tunnel, he pulled up his armament info.
< < Weapon Status > >
< 1 >
< Spell-Tome >
< Rare Quality >
< Level 14 >
< Stat Upgrades >
< Barrier Durability 90% >
< Barrier Efficiency 35% >
< Manipulation Effect 130% >
< Manipulation Speed 55% >
< Manipulation Range 20% >
< 2 >
< Wand & Wraith Lantern >
< Rare Quality >
< Level 8 >
< Stat Upgrades >
< Spell Damage 35% >
< Spell Speed 110% >
< Casting Effect 35% >
Still 4 levels before I can evolve the spell-tome a third time.
After they returned to the chamber with the creepy Master Flesh Smith, James asked, “How do you wanna do this? I can shoot the flame effect from my Spellblade at the sack from about five metres away.”
The wandering eye on Adam’s necklace tracked the sword in his hand as he gestured with it.
“You’ll definitely be too close,” Gladwyn said.
“I think you should let my barriers handle it,” Adam told him. “I’ll use one to puncture the sack and spill the flammable fluid into the chamber and then use a second one to ignite it. And I can be up to 12 metres away while I give the command.”
He could technically be further away, but when the barriers left his range he lost control of them, just like what had happened the last two times he triple fused his barriers.
James nodded. “That’s a better idea. Do you want me to produce a flame for you to absorb?”
Adam grinned. “Thanks. Beats having to run back out there to get it from the other chambers.”
Gladwyn returned through the hallway first while James set fire to his sword and allowed Adam to fuse the magic with one of the three barriers. Although it made his head feel like it was doing cartwheels in his skull, he managed to shape the two normal barriers into lances, while the third flaming one remained in its large square shape.
“Go on, I’ll be right behind you,” Adam told James.
The Spellhand clapped him on the shoulder and took off running.
As he left, the wandering eye panned around before fixating on one of the operating slabs where a dead woman lay, most of her body flayed of its skin and the spider’s arm methodically removing the rest.
Adam commanded the two normal barriers to strike the large pouch of embryonic fluid. They shot through the air of the chamber and easily tore holes into the Master Flesh Smith’s abdomen, producing a sound like tearing canvas.
The arms didn’t stop what they were doing, even as the oily fluid cascaded out from its body through the holes he’d made and sloshed all over the experiments beneath.
It’s like it can’t even feel pain or anything… Creepy.
Adam focused on the last barrier.
“Wait 3 seconds and then fly towards where the enemy is tethered.”
There was no sense that the barrier understood his command and he was a bit worried it might be too complex, but he didn’t waste a second running after James and Gladwyn.
The sound of his boots on the stone floor of the narrow tunnel echoed loudly in his ears.
Fwoosh!
An explosion of wind and warmth brushed past him and he instinctively resummoned his barriers, positioning them behind himself and using them to move his body even faster.
Adam came skating out of the hallway and into James, grabbing him as he flew towards the open portcullis outside of which Gladwyn waited for them.
They both skidded across the landing, while Adam redirected his barriers to cover the open entrance to the operating room, just in time to stem the roaring flames that chased after him.
“That’s way worse than I thought it would be,” Gladwyn said, holding his shield up in front of them, just in case.
James was breathing heavily.
Adam focused his attention on the barriers blocking the doorway. Since the flames could not push through them, even though they dealt enough damage to crack them and trigger Fervour, the fire moved down the other opening in the room, trailing devastation back into the three chambers that’d already been severely burnt by their previous ignition of the vats and flesh sacks. As the roaring flames reached their finale, a tongue of fire emerge from one of the rectangular chambers where the vats had been, charring part of the landing.
The barriers expired, but the danger had passed, only hot air blowing out through the open portcullis.
“I feel like we were meant to die to that,” James said.
Adam nodded. “Definitely a trap.”
< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >
< Destroyed the Laboratorium >
The Tower Crawler has awoken.
A shiver rolled through the Tower’s walls and the floor of the landing.
That can’t be a good sign…
-----------------------------
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2025-06-20 01:19:26 +0000 UTC
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3 days, 3 chapters. Feels pretty good this current rate of chapters, but I've got an exam next week so that'll probably slow me down. Still, if I can keep up this rate for a couple months, then I'll have quite a decent backlog by the end of it.
-----------------------------
Chapter Sixty-Four
“Wait!” James yelled and stepped in front of Hahn, forcing Adam to stop his barriers.
Gladwyn levelled his sword at him. “Adam is right, move out of the way!”
“Based on what!?” James retorted.
“Based on the fact that the real Hahn lies dead in the room we just came from!” Adam said.
“I’m not a mimic,” Hahn protested. “I just got lost in the Tower. I didn’t realise you went down instead of up.”
Adam shuddered. “Shut up! You’re not real!”
“How do we know that the real Hahn is the one we saw die!?” James retorted.
Why is he being so stupid!?
That Cowl must’ve fucked with the logical part of his brain!
“That makes no sense,” Gladwyn replied.
“I’m real,” Hahn said, lifting his bow with the Fiendbarb equipped as proof. The Spring Boots and Forlorn Cuirass were equipped to his body as well.
Adam frowned. He has all the same Relics as the real one… If he’s able to use that Fiendbarb we might be screwed.
“Emelia told us about this,” Gladwyn said calmly, though he kept his sword pointed at Hahn. “If you pick Nharlla, you bring a human mimic into one of the Stages between Five and Ten. You must’ve seen that the Altar called Nharlla the ‘Sire of Mimics’.”
James’ posture softened as Gladwyn’s argument seemed to register in his mind. “Who’s Emelia?” he asked.
“She’s a time-looper,” Adam said. “She’s been helping us with the last few Stages. We knew about the lever to the underground prison because of her.”
James looked at Hahn and then back at us.
“If she told you about what was going to happen here, then why did you not know about the Warden’s arms?” he asked.
Adam frowned. “She didn’t mention anything about that fight…”
She might be so strong at this point that she kills the Warden so completely that the arms never get a chance to fight back, he thought. After all, if her weapon combo was as powerful as she claimed, then it would explain why she didn’t really know the patterns and special moves of a lot of bosses, like the Nightwing, Ezral, and now the Warden.
Emelia had warned them about the Tower Crawler, saying not to engage it unless they had a full group, but letting them know it would appear if they completed at least two side objectives. Killing the Cell Warden had been one, and Adam suspected more would appear as they climbed higher.
“James, step away from the mimic,” Gladwyn said.
“I’m not a mimic,” Hahn replied.
The Spellblade still looked torn, but obeyed the order.
Gladwyn wore the Reckless Warlord’s Cape, the red fabric of which clashed starkly with the Sanctuary Defender’s Robes he wore. Adam was amazed the robes hadn’t been destroyed yet, since the Relic could only take two hits before breaking.
He slapped his sword into his shield. “Come on, you freak,” he taunted.
The bow in Hahn’s hands melted into his body as though being reabsorbed.
“Don’t kill me,” he whined while stalking down the ramp towards them, his pleading voice and aggressive posture completely at odds. His fingers elongated into claws and everything except his face turned black like tar.
“Fucking hell,” James muttered.
Adam shot his barriers forward, each shaped into a simple cone. The wandering eye on his necklace was locked onto the mimic for some reason, making Adam worry the monster had a lot of magical power.
Emelia only warned me about the human mimics. She never actually said how they fight…
The mimic leapt forward with a spin of its body, narrowly passing between the barriers mid-flight and striking Gladwyn’s shield.
The effect of his Nose Ring triggered and staggered the mimic, allowing James to surge forward with his magical sword engulfed in flames. The burning blade passed through its right shoulder, separating the black limb from its body.
But the mimic quickly recovered with an acrobatic backwards leap, flinging its left hand out into a whip and grabbing its severed limb, reabsorbing it into itself.
The face still mimicked Hahn’s and cried out in his voice, “You’re hurting me!”
“Shut up!” James yelled.
The mimic regrew its right arm and swiped its claws at his face, but Adam’s barriers quickly lanced through its back, knocking its strike off course and leaving it open for James to decapitate it with his still-burning sword.
The head fell to the floor with a clunk like metal, but the mimic was unfazed and spun around while swinging its left whip arm out, catching James across the cheek and drawing a shallow line of blood.
“I’m okay!” he yelled as he backed away.
“Over here!” Gladwyn taunted, slapping his shield.
Adam kept trying to deal a killing blow to the mimic’s body with his barriers, but after only a couple impacts they all cracked and triggered Last Stand’s Fervour.
Fortunately, Gladwyn was focusing its attention on him and managing to score quite a few hits every time it was staggered by his successful blocks.
With the added speed and damage from Fervour, Adam was able to dig his barriers into the mimic’s body and let them unfurl explosively, creating big craters in its torso. It switched its ire to him for a second, but then Gladwyn taunted it again.
“I don’t think fire is effective against it!” Adam called as he backed away and resummoned his barriers.
“I’m gonna try ice,” James said, backing off so that he was close to Adam and hopefully preventing the mimic from hearing them.
“Good idea,” he replied. “It might slow its transformations and turn its body brittle, like with the Warden.”
James performed the invocation and special flourish, coating his blade in frost.
Meanwhile, Adam took the opportunity of the wandering eye’s fixation on the mimic and Gladwyn’s distraction to attempt to fuse the three barriers.
I need more speed and power to deal enough damage to it, he thought.
He shut out all the sounds of the fight in front of him and carefully fused the first two barriers into one. The midnight-blue colour darkened and it felt way faster than past fusions. He attempted to fuse the stronger barrier with the unfused one, but it didn’t work.
Wait, I think I need to do it the other way around, he realised.
Instead of imagining the stronger barrier absorbing the weaker one, he flipped the idea on its head, since the stronger had already used up its fusion while the weaker one hadn’t.
It felt like his brain was squeezed inside his cranium by the mental pressure he exerted, but with an echoing slurp the stronger barrier was absorbed by the weaker one, combining to become even stronger.
Holy shit, it worked!
Gladwyn grunted as the mimic, which had at some point regrown its head, smashed into his shield with its arms melded together into a larger hammer. Although his big shield absorbed the blow, he was pushed back from the impact.
Frozen cuts covered the mimic’s body, making it clear that James’ ice attacks were effective. But the Spellblade wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Adam looked around until he found him slumped on his side on the curving ramp, his back to the wall. His right arm and shoulder were a mess, but he was still breathing.
Shit!
Adam ran over to him and pulled a small healing potion from the Potion Belt on his right forearm, pouring it into James’ mouth while the triple-fused barrier floated in front of them like an impenetrable wall.
James coughed and sputtered, but the healing quickly took hold.
“Stay here,” Adam told him and focused his concentration on the barrier, shaping it into as narrow of a lance as possible, before inducing a spin into it with a command.
“Gladwyn, get down!” he yelled.
The Shield Wall smashed his shield into the mimic and pushed it back, before throwing himself down the ramp, skating a few feet on his Spring Boots.
The barrier lance spun so fast that the high-pitched sound it produced was impossible for Adam’s ears to pick up, although he could feel the powerful vibrations it generated in his body.
Fire!
The mimic, perhaps sensing the threat, spun to face him, but even its inhuman reactions were too slow to avoid the barrier.
It crossed the distance between them in an instant, moving so fast that it was impossible to steer and kicking back such a powerful burst of air that Adam was pushed into the wall next to where James lay. The sound was like that of a 50 calibre sniper and made his ears ring painfully.
The mimic’s body was hit almost directly in the middle of its torso and the explosive impact sent its four limbs and head in separate directions.
Adam knew it was dead because the wandering eye lost its fixation and started panning around, focusing mostly on James again. He guessed that the mimic was much like a slime, in the way that the destruction or separation of a large part of its body was sufficient to kill it.
“What the fuck was that, Adam!?” Gladwyn exclaimed, coming over to them. “That felt like heavy ordnance!”
He looked around for his triple-fused barrier, but it had just left a hole in the ramp behind the mimic and was now completely gone from sight.
“Let’s just say that the Legendary Relic and Wandering Eye necklace were quite a massive boost in power for me.”
“I’ll say.”
James got back to his feet. “Thanks for saving me. Again…”
“Don’t mention it,” Adam replied.
“I’m sorry I hesitated,” he said. “This place is messing with my head. I kept hearing these strange whispers.”
“Whispers?” Gladwyn asked. “Like what?”
“They’ve been on-and-off since I selected Nharlla as my Patron,” he said. “But they got more insistent after we came down into the prison area. I thought maybe it was because the Quest Object I need is here, but I think it was because of the mimic. They’ve gone quiet again, now that the mimic is dead…”
“That’s creepy,” Adam remarked. “But it’s good to know, since it’s kind of like a warning system.”
“I guess,” he replied vaguely. “They kept saying I couldn’t trust you, that you were lying. They said the same about Maggie.”
“I mean, I suppose we were lying to you,” Gladwyn said. “You asked how we knew about the lever and Adam’s answer was basically a lie.”
“Are you okay to continue?” Adam asked him.
“I have a medium healing potion that I’ll use once the toxicity wears off.”
“What do you think happened to Maggie and the kid?” Gladwyn asked. “You think the mimic got to them first?”
“Given that it can transform, it might have been able to get here quickly,” Adam theorised, “so it’s possible it could’ve started off in the Sanctuary and then made its way here.”
“Should we go back to check?” Gladwyn asked.
I could fly there with my barrier, but unless all three of us go, they would be exposed.
Not to mention, the Bone Creepers might shoot us out of the air…
“I don’t think it’s worth it. If they’re dead, we’d at most get a few hundred Points from their gear,” he replied, before realising how messed up that sounded a second later.
“Even if they’re alive, they’d probably just start a fight with us, thinking we were forcing them to join us,” James said.
“How about this,” Gladwyn said, “if we find the Stage Objective with a lot of time to spare, then we could go check on them.”
“I’m okay with that,” Adam said.
James nodded.
Gladwyn turned to his cube. “How much time is left?”
[18 hours and 6 minutes.]
“Damn, we’ve already been here 4 hours?” Adam muttered in surprise.
“No time to waste then,” Gladwyn said.
They moved up the tower ramp, each atop their own barrier that Adam carefully controlled. It was much faster than walking and more efficient than running. They went past the barracks where they’d fought the Mana Hoarders, before stopping by another spot like it, although this one had different enemies guarding and the design was like that of a cave.
Bear-sized bats came out to attack them, each of them with blue-glowing crystals embedded in their foreheads like crude horns. The cube called them Manawings.
James realised he could drain the Mana from their horns, which severely debilitated them and boosted his own reserves, though he used the power of the Aspirant’s Cowl sparingly to avoid the Mana Euphoria that had made him charge head-first into the barracks.
With Gladwyn drawing the monster’s attention and Adam and James working together to kill them, they were able to quickly work their way through the cave, especially once three Winter Dancers manifested from Adam’s lantern and lent their aid. Thanks to Gladwyn, the creatures’ natural fixation on magic wielders was greatly mitigated, which made things a lot safer for them and allowed his expert defence to shine.
[Encounter cleared.]
“Whose turn is it?” James asked when they stopped in front of the Upgrade Chest they were rewarded for their efforts.
“Gladwyn’s,” Adam said. Although he really wanted to evolve his spell-tome to see what the final evolution did now that he had Alepheria’s Mandate, he knew it was best to stick to the rotation they had decided upon, especially since he’d already gotten two Relics and the other two had only gotten one each.
They got back on Adam’s barriers after quickly looking through the cave and finding nothing, then they continued up along the ramp. As expected, the next landing had yet another encounter for them.
This time they were dealing with slimes, but instead of stones inside their bodies, they had blue crystals. Their jelly bodies were made of translucent grey metal that they could manifest into metallic weapons like swords, spears, claws, shields, hammers, and so on.
Gladwyn had trouble defending against them, but since he focused them all together, Adam and James were able to come at them from the side, striking them before they could harden their bodies to protect their cores. Like with their last two encounters, ice magic was highly effective, but Adam was also able to kill one that got too close by using his Blood Fist Ring, spearing it with a blood spike and destroying its crystal core.
When Adam’s Winter Dancers manifested, the horde of metal slimes were quickly turned to popsicles, allowing the three of them to methodically break their bodies into chunks to extract the crystals within.
< < Collectible Relic > >
< Crystallised Mana Core (Uncommon) — Mana condensed into a crystal that can power contraptions and sustain simple lifeforms >
They managed to collect four of them before pushing deeper into the third landing’s strange chamber. James held up one of them and sucked the Mana right out of it. The core turned to blue dust in his hand.
“Stop that,” Adam told him, “we can sell those to Lucca.”
Since three Winter Dancers were still active, Adam sent them into the chamber recessed into the Tower’s wall. Then they followed them in.
It was a round room where everything was made from metal like the slimes, but it resembled a miniature version of Stage One, with the walls shaped like the trunks of densely-packed trees and an apple tree in the centre of the chamber. There were four slimes inside with two cores and sixteen of the single core ones they’d already fought.
“Watch out!” Gladwyn said, stepping in front of Adam and James just as the four big ones fired a barrage of metallic projectiles, producing a familiar sound.
Plop-plop-plop!
Thanks to the special effect of the Shield Wall, all of the projectiles found their way to Gladwyn’s shield and momentarily staggered the ranged slimes because of his Nose Ring.
Adam sent his dancers through the crowd of slimes hopping towards them, while he and James repeated their manoeuvre from before.
“Focus on me, you brainless pudding wannabes!” Gladwyn taunted and the slimes turned their attention to him.
He needs to work on his insults…
The four in the back launched another barrage, while Adam’s dancers tore into them. He sent two of his three barriers to attack their cores, while focusing on using the third to kill the slimes attacking Gladwyn up close.
As soon as the second trio of dancers appeared, the first set expired. Adam sent the new ones towards the four in the back again, but when a third trio was summoned, he used them to tear through the single core slimes, allowing James to extract the cores while he focused on dealing with the ranged ones.
A few minutes later, frozen metallic slime chunks littered the metal floor of the strange chamber and they had extracted eleven more cores successfully.
[Encounter cleared.]
“Since James drained a core, he gets four and we get five,” Adam said.
The Spellblade didn’t argue about the fairness of that, which Adam appreciated.
“I’ll carry them in my Spidersilk Sack,” he told them, and they seemed grateful, since they didn’t have deep enough pockets for all the baseball-sized cores.
“How do you get a convenient bag like that?” James asked as the three of them were looking around the chamber for clues. Him and Gladwyn were checking the walls, while Adam stood atop a barrier and searched the apple tree’s canopy.
“I got it from a secret vendor called Weaver,” he replied.
James nodded. “I found her too. I didn’t realise she could make bags, but she made my clothes,” he said.
“Even the shoes?” Gladwyn asked, tapping the carved tree trunks of the wall with the pommel of his sword.
“Those I already had,” James replied, “but my original suit was ruined during Stage One.”
“Same thing happened to me,” Adam said.
He lowered himself back down and then brought his three barriers out in front of him and focused as he fused them together. Meanwhile the other two continued checking the curving wall for false panels and hidden buttons.
“I’ve got nothing,” Gladwyn said after a minute.
“Me neither,” James added.
Adam had managed to triple-fuse his barrier again and shaped it into a simple axe.
“Step back,” he told them, “it’s pretty hard to control the spell when it’s like this.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Gladwyn replied as he jogged back out onto the landing. James quickly followed after him.
With a mental nudge, Adam swung the barrier into the metal trunk of the apple tree. It chopped through with ease and continued going, producing a sound like that of a car crash thanks to all the protesting and screeching metal.
James and Gladwyn poked their heads into view behind him.
“Goddamn, Adam,” his friend remarked.
He cast them a grin. “Woops.”
A massive hole now adorned the wall of the chamber, but instead of showing the world outside, it just showed a star-specked darkness. Cold wind blew in from the hole and Adam was so fascinated with it that he didn’t even realise what he had uncovered within the trunk until James said something.
“What is that?”
Adam looked back at the chopped-down metal tree, seeing a blue crystal sword poking out from the severed trunk. It had somehow survived his barrier chopping through it. Its placement was clearly a nod to how Gram was hidden inside the tree in Stage One.
He went up and put his right hand on it, feeling an electrical jolt up through his arm and a strange sense of how many decades the sword had been waiting for someone to find it.
< < Secret Weapon Obtained > >
< Blue Shard (Rare) — Crystallised sword of Mana >
< Unique Skill ( Mana Blade ) | Draw ambient Mana from the environment to perform a slashing strike of pure magic >
James’ eyes lit up as he touched it as well and Adam withdrew his hand.
It feels like it would suit him perfectly.
“Can I take it?” he asked them. “I have the Second Sheath already.”
Adam nodded.
“Sure,” Gladwyn said. “I’ve been looking for a back-up to my sword and shield, but I think I’d prefer a purely physical weapon.”
“You didn’t want Solbor from Stage Five?” Adam asked him. Gladwyn had found all the Secrets there, so he would have found the spear as well.
“I tried it out, but it’s not really my style. I’ve been thinking of getting the normal Lancer class, since you can evolve it to have a parry shield.”
Adam almost said, “I’ve tried it and it’s not bad.” Fortunately, he managed to bite his tongue and stop himself from revealing that he was a time-looper.
But would it really matter if Gladwyn knew?
And besides, at this point I don’t really have a leg up on anyone, since I know as much as he does about this Stage.
James swung his new crystal sword through the air, producing a strange hum.
“This feels really good,” he muttered.
He swung it a few more times, and suddenly a blue aura appeared around it, making the blade longer and sharper.
“How are you doing that?” Adam asked.
“My Cowl allows me to see the Mana inside the sword,” he replied, “and I can apparently manipulate it with my thoughts.”
“Sounds similar to my spell-tome,” he remarked, surprised at how quickly James had picked up the manipulation skill.
Perhaps it’s easier with the Mage Aspirant’s Cowl?
“I don’t think there’s anything else to find here,” Gladwyn said. “Let’s continue up.”
Adam looked around. “I guess we don’t get an Upgrade Chest this time?”
“Perhaps the cores and Secret Weapon are meant to be the rewards?” Gladwyn guessed.
“That seems like a hint. Let’s keep that in mind if we find other chambers that don’t give rewards,” he replied. “After all, Emelia said nothing about the Secrets in this Stage.”
“I wonder why,” Gladwyn said.
“Maybe she didn’t know?” Adam speculated.
They left the chamber and Adam resummoned his barriers, since the triple-fused one had been flung into the black void beyond the Tower’s inner walls. Then they continued going up for the next few minutes until reaching the fourth landing.
Unlike the previous three, this landing covered the entire floor in a ring, leaving just a hole in the middle, but they were still able to move across the floor and take the ramp up if they wanted.
Several chambers were recessed into the walls and looked like they went quite deep, even though there had been nothing on the outside of the tower indicating these rooms existed, just like the previous chambers.
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Destroy the Laboratorium >
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2025-06-18 23:34:09 +0000 UTC
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Took a while longer to wrap this chapter up, so I didn't get it done last night. Still, I'm having a lot of fun with this Stage. Initially I struggled to find the element that would make it stand out, but now I think I've managed to give it it's own feel. The idea I have is that each Stage should be distinct enough that you can recall them based on either the theme, main enemy type, or some other element.
Fun fact: Alepheria is actualy a character I came up with for the next story I'm working on, called "Oil Tongue" (taste test here). I won't give away her true nature here, but I'm sure a lot of her "essence" can be gathered from the state of her Tower and the denizens residing within it, not to mention her connection to the Tome Keeper, who himself is quite a fan of fleshcrafting.
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Chapter Sixty-Three
“It’s not optional if they lock us in here…” Gladwyn muttered.
“Maybe one of the levers works for the door,” Adam suggested.
“I don’t think we’re getting around that thing,” he replied.
The Cell Warden was still lowering itself down from the hole in the ceiling, revealing a massive squishy body like that of a cephalopod, except instead of its head was a squishy ball with a giant eye on it that eight arms sprouted from. The arms didn’t have any suction cups, but there were tiny spikes all along their undersides that Adam feared were venomous. Its body was off-white with tiny red rings randomly dotting its skin.
“What are you waiting for!?” James protested. “Let’s kill it before it gets all the way in here!”
Hahn didn’t waste a second and fired off his bow, the Fiendbarb yet again back on his weapon.
But the projectiles failed to pierce the octopus monster’s hide, bouncing off and clattering to the floor instead.
Gladwyn moved forward, smashing his shield into the nearest arm and producing a strange hum from the Warden. James performed a flourish of his blade and sent a vertical crescent of sheering ice at the same arm, which left a shallow cut in the hide.
“Aim for the wound!” he yelled to Hahn.
Adam moved along the wall and shot his barrier lances towards the main body repeatedly, each impact creating small holes where they struck and scorching the flesh, which turned it grey and brittle. But he was unable to dig the barriers deep enough to deal significant damage, since the Warden’s flesh was bouncy, which aided in its hide’s defence against projectiles.
He recalled them after making several holes for Hahn to aim for, and then he fused the barriers together to create something he hoped would be powerful enough. The fused barrier gleamed as though moonlight hit its midnight-blue body and Adam shaped it into a drill-head.
It needs to be able to grab on to the springy flesh and dig deep, he thought and added tiny teeth along the shape. It was difficult to maintain coherence for the complex design, but it helped that he was able to just give the commands to move it, so that he could focus on keeping the design consistent in his mind’s eye.
With a prompt, he made the drill-head spin as fast as it could go. The air around the barrier started to pulse before turning shrill and high-pitched.
James cried out as the Warden swung an arm into his leg, knocking him down and lifting him by the mid-section, driving the spikes on its underside through his clothes and into his skin. Hahn scored a hit on the arm where James had left a weak spot for him, and the arrow dug in deep enough to trigger the Blood Burst effect, causing the tip of the arm to sheer off like broken glass, releasing the Spellblade in the process.
But even released from its grip James lay unmoving on the floor.
“He’s paralysed!” Gladwyn yelled after moving in front of his body to defend him.
Adam’s barrier had reached its top speed and with a simple nudge, he told it to fly into the Warden’s head.
The sound was bizarre. It was like the whine its rapid rotations produced was stretched out unnaturally as it fired across the round chamber.
Without pausing, the barrier zipped right through the Warden’s head and embedded itself in the wall behind it, leaving such an explosive exit wound that the octopus stumbled and dropped to the ground, momentarily immobilised from the damage.
Hahn didn’t waste a moment and launched a barrage of arrows into the gaping hole that Adam had made, quickly crystallising the boss’ head and killing it completely.
Or so they thought.
The moment the archer stopped to celebrate, one of the arms slapped him with such force that he skipped once across the floor and then struck one of the stone slabs with a loud crunch before tumbling head-over-heels and landing in a heap.
“Fuck!” Adam cursed. “The arms are still alive!”
With a forceful command, he pulled the barrier projectile out of the far wall, managing to pierce it into one of the other arms, but then it disappeared, no doubt because the Last Stand’s Fervour had been triggered when it hit the wall and now the effect had run out of time.
“Gladwyn! Move away from the entrance!” Adam yelled as he summoned two new barriers and used them to scoop up James and Hahn, bringing them towards the back of the chamber.
“What are you planning!?” he called back, while defending against the arms as they tried to grab him. Thanks to his Patron, he would be much better off if the spikes stabbed him, but he wasn’t immune, so he was fighting very cautiously.
Adam hopped up onto the podium and immediately pulled all the levers.
An ungodly cacophony came from the hallway outside the chamber as the cells opened. One of the levers also lifted the portcullis that locked them in the chamber.
“What the fuck, Adam!?” Gladwyn shouted as he joined him and the two unconscious Players by the podium.
“Stay here and protect them. Also, see if Hahn is still alive, he hit that slab pretty hard.”
With that, Adam hopped off the podium and landed on a barrier like it was a surfboard, using the other to protect him from the Warden’s arms that swung for him. Thanks to Fervour’s invulnerability effect none of them were able to break through the barriers and get to him, even after cracking it.
He hopped off his improvised surfboard as he reached the chamber’s entrance and resummoned his barriers. He felt a tinge of exhaustion from the repeated summonings, but knew he was still somewhere above 30% Mana.
Outside the chamber the different creatures fought each other, which, although not what he had expected, greatly helped his plan. Soul essences flew into his lantern, quickly summoning Winter Dancers until six of them were spinning around the mass of creatures, humanoids, and monstrosities, aiding Adam’s barriers in killing as many as quickly as possible.
When there were only a handful of the prisoners left, Adam spun on his heel and commanded all the dancers to fly into the chamber.
In the back near the podium, Gladwyn was fending off two of the arms, but when Adam’s summons entered the fight, the octopus monster quickly slowed down. With its skin becoming brittle from the dancers’ freezing magic, Adam’s barriers and Gladwyn’s sword had a much easier time dealing damage.
During the next thirty seconds, they defeated the remaining arms, but then had to switch to fighting off the prisoners that had survived the impromptu melee outside. Two of them were smaller versions of the Warden and the other five were red-brown panther-like animals with wings grafted to their backs and two horns sprouting from above their eyes.
Adam and Gladwyn quickly dealt with them.
< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >
< Defeated the Cell Warden >
The Tower Crawler stirs.
“That was rough,” Adam said with a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, no wonder this was designed for a group of six,” Gladwyn replied, leaning on his large shield.
James was slowly coming to, but Hahn wasn’t moving.
Adam looked at the archer. “Is he…?”
Gladwyn nodded. “Yeah. I think he must’ve broken his neck.”
“Fuck,” Adam muttered. Since Hahn wore the Forlorn Cuirass it made his head a major weak point, which seemed to extend to the neck.
If not for that Relic, he might’ve survived.
James groaned as he sat up. “That was very unpleasant,” he said. “I could feel everything, but I couldn’t move. Thank you for saving me.”
He apparently hadn’t heard what they’d just said, because when he stood up and saw Hahn’s unmoving body next to him, he cursed.
“Are we going to be alright with just the three of us?” he asked.
“We don’t have a choice,” Adam replied and went over to Hahn’s corpse. “Loot.”
< < Loot — Seung-Hwan Hahn > >
< Fiendbarb (Epic) >
< Forlorn Cuirass (Rare) >
< Rapid-Fire Bracer (Rare) >
< Slothling Spring Boots (Rare) >
Gladwyn and James both watched him as he looked through the archer’s Relics, but neither of them said anything. They both knew that necessity meant they could not afford to leave anything useful behind.
Adam inspected the Bracer since he hadn’t seen it before.
< < Relic > >
< Rapid-Fire Bracer (Rare) — Doubles your draw speed for the next 5 seconds. 2-minute cooldown >
“You should take the boots,” he told Gladwyn.
“What about the rest?” James asked.
“I’ll carry them for now, then we can split them at the end of the Stage,” Adam replied.
“What do we do with the body?” Gladwyn asked after Adam had put the Relics into his Spidersilk Sack.
“We leave him here,” James said.
Adam didn’t like the idea of just abandoning Hahn’s body down here, but it was even creepier to carry it with him, he thought.
“I agree,” he said.
Gladwyn looked like he wanted to argue, but then he just looked towards the centre of the room where the Warden was slumped over the chests they had seen earlier.
“Let’s get it off of the rewards and get the hell out of here. This place creeps me out.”
Adam nodded and got to work pushing the dead octopus monster away from the central dais. Somehow, the vats in the left side of the room were all still intact. The creatures inside were unmoving and probably in some kind of coma or maybe just dead.
After a couple of minutes using his barriers to shove the Warden, Adam managed to free up enough space for them to access the chests.
“Your weapon seems really strong,” James commented.
“It’s hard to get used to,” he replied, “but once you learn how to use it, it’s very versatile.”
“Spellblade isn’t super difficult to use, but every spell consumes like 50 Mana. Without using Nharlla’s power, I would literally get Mana Exhaustion after every spell.”
“Don’t the upgrades help you make it more efficient?” Adam asked.
“No… It’s apparently still a mainly physical weapon, with the magic stuff meant to be used as a finisher or something. I don’t really understand why.”
“One of these is an Upgrade Chest,” Gladwyn commented. “Whose turn is it?”
“Let’s see what the Relic Chest has first,” Adam replied and opened it.
The gem on his Choice Ring glowed as the three options appeared. There was a crimson cape with white fur and a gold clasp, a strange bone and flesh necklace with an eye on it, and a square blue metallic quiver.
< < Relics Available > >
< Reckless Warlord’s Cape (Epic) — Reduces Defence by 25% | Verbally taunting foes makes them inclined to attack you >
< The Summoner’s Wandering Eye (Rare) — Increase Summon count by 1 | Summons die in one hit >
< Magical Quiver (Rare) — Contains 3 arrows of ice, fire, and lightning magic. Once all 9 arrows have been used the Relic is destroyed >
I need that necklace!
“It’s like they’re doing this on purpose just to be cruel,” Gladwyn remarked as he saw the last option.
Adam frowned. “You’re right, it would have been the perfect Relic for Hahn.”
“Troubling that we’re still getting options for his weapon even after he died,” James remarked.
Gladwyn shot him a glare.
“I need the necklace,” Adam said, “and I think Gladwyn should take the cape.”
“Give me the Fiendbarb and the Upgrade,” James said.
Adam looked at Gladwyn. He nodded.
“Sure, let’s do it like that,” he replied, pulling the Fiendbarb out of the sack tied to his belt and tossing it to James.
< < Relics Selected > >
< Reckless Warlord’s Cape (Epic) >
< The Summoner’s Wandering Eye (Rare) >
The organic necklace appeared around Adam’s neck, while the cape landed in his arms. Instead of immediately handing the Relic to Gladwyn, Adam froze as a horrifying realisation hit him.
He could see out of this new eye…
Unfortunately, he couldn’t control it.
“You okay, Adam?” Gladwyn asked, taking the cape from his outstretched arms and equipping it.
“This is deeply uncomfortable,” he replied as his vision was mixed with that of the wandering eye.
“Weird, that necklace has the same eye colour as you now,” James commented.
“I can also see through it…” Adam said. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Can’t you close it?” Gladwyn asked.
“No.”
“Damn,” he said with a small chuckle. “This place is so fucked up.”
For some reason, the wandering eye kept looking over at James. Adam wondered if it was attracted to magic like the many monsters in the Tower. Still, it was an amazing Relic, because it allowed him to summon three barriers now.
I’m sure I can get used to the third eye…
Probably…
Since the necklace was Rare and the True Flame’s Icon was Epic, Adam was pretty sure that the one-hit debuff from the necklace couldn’t overrule Last Stand’s Fervour, given that there was a rarity hierarchy to buffs and debuffs.
He didn’t get to see what upgrades were offered to James, because he quickly selected one while Adam was trying to not get disoriented from the change to his vision.
“Let’s go,” James said.
“One moment,” Gladwyn replied. He was looking around near the tube vats, no doubt searching for the object he had to find for his Patron.
James left the chamber to search through the hallway and cells, meanwhile Adam summoned his three barriers and tried to fuse them together. The wandering eye was making it difficult for him to concentrate, which in turn made it hard to visualise what he was trying to do in his mind’s eye.
Gladwyn came over after failing to find what he was looking for.
“Come on, Adam,” he said.
Adam left the Warden’s chamber with him and together they waded through the corpses of the prisoners. A lot had died thanks to Adam and his Wraith Lantern, but many of them had also killed each other.
“Over here,” James called, standing in the opening of a cell door.
“What did you find?” Gladwyn asked him as they came over.
The cell was much like the rest, a square hole in the wall with sturdy steel bars and a door much the same. Adam found that he was still unable to slip his barriers between the bars, meaning there was some kind of invisible protection in place. Inside the cell lay the body of a man with two additional arms and a tail grafted to it. The body was crystallised into obsidian glass, similar in appearance to Adam’s hand, but its face was still human, making it the only thing here that hadn’t been fully warped.
Gladwyn went inside to look closer while Adam continued messing with his barriers. He needed to get used to the wandering eye before he had any chance of really attempting the triple fusion, but the possibilities of what he could now accomplish made him giddy with excitement.
Thank God I got Alepheria’s Mandate. Without this Relic, I wouldn’t be able to use the necklace at all.
“Found it,” Gladwyn announced, holding up a kidney made of black glass.
Adam inspected it after he left the cell.
< < Quest Object > >
< Resistant Organ — An organ that prevented the transformation of its host >
That’s a new category of item.
I was worried for a moment that they’d be considered Secret Relics, since that would mean there would be at least fifteen of them to find…
Still, Emelia said nothing about the Secrets in this Stage, so they must be hidden well.
She also didn’t mention the trick for the Warden… If we’d known then Hahn would’ve survived.
Gladwyn put the item in his pocket and they finally left the underground, returning to the ramp and going up.
We got some useful Relics out of it, but we lost a person in the process… I don’t think it was a good trade.
If the two other Players hadn’t bowed out at the start, then Hahn’s death wouldn’t have been as impactful, but now they were down to just the three of them and Emelia seemed to suggest that Stages scaled based on the number of Players in it.
We might be screwed.
James was at the front of their formation as they reached the ground floor, but he froze at the top of the ramp and Gladwyn nearly bumped into him.
Before Adam could ask what was wrong, he saw the figure waiting for them at the top.
“Hey guys, what did I miss?” Hahn asked.
“What the fuck?” Gladwyn muttered.
Adam immediately commanded his barriers forward.
“It’s a Mimic!” he yelled.
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2025-06-17 12:38:35 +0000 UTC
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Apologies for the long delay. I dedicated most of last week to writing on Madman, since I've gotta get at least 80k more written on that story before September.
That being said, it was not my intention to forget about Loopshard, but my weekend ended up way more busy than expected, so I will be trying my best to finish four chapters this week, if not more.
I should hopefully have Chapter 63 up later today.
-----------------------------
Chapter Sixty-Two
They stood before the gate to Alepheria’s Tower. It was a massive thing, large enough that her creations could pass through, which made Adam wonder how the inside of the large tower must look. Standing at the foot of it, he doubted that his earlier estimation of its diameter was correct. Wood and metal had been wrought together to form the two doors of the gate, but it wasn’t exactly the most complex creation, though its size was just absurd. Nevertheless, they went two to each side and pulled where they could dig their fingers in, with Adam’s barriers lending their power.
Although the gate doors were heavy, they slowly opened under their combined effort, which was a relief.
“Thought we weren’t gonna get in for moment there,” Gladwyn remarked, out of breath like the rest of them.
Adam resummoned his barriers and moved them in front of himself while shaping them into shields. “Let’s be careful when we enter.”
Thanks to Emelia, they knew about the containment facility in the basement, but it had a hidden lever on the first landing above that they needed to get to. Unfortunately, like with the outside of the tower and its location, it was always slightly different, so there was no telling what monsters awaited them in the entrance.
Gladwyn went in first with James next to him while Adam and Hahn brought up the rear. The archer cast a worried glance back the way they’d come, but there was nothing to see there. He was no doubt expecting an ambush.
But I get it. There’s no telling what happened to the other two.
Maybe they’re just checked out and refusing to participate.
Maybe they formed a pact to kill us.
Or maybe one of them killed the other and the survivor is now coming for us, biding their time to strike.
All of those possibilities were there, but Adam knew better than to worry about things he had no control over.
“Come on,” he told Hahn.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he replied.
Gladwyn and James stopped only a few metres past the giant threshold, and when they caught up, Adam realised why.
A massive ramp, big enough to fit three trucks side-by-side, moved up along the rounded walls of the tower. The scale was absurd. And he had the uncanny sense that the interior of the tower was somehow bigger than what the outside showed.
Perhaps the ‘crooked’ part of the tower’s title is actually a reference to some magical fuckery going on?
The spiralling ramp screwed up into the air, with maybe about an eight metre wide gap in the centre. They all moved over to the gap to look up.
James cursed.
“What the hell?” Gladwyn said, frowning.
Adam suddenly doubted that his idea of flying to the top of the tower would’ve worked, because when he stood there looking up, he saw that the screw-shape stairwell just went on-and-on for what looked like kilometres.
“Will we be able to make it to the top?” Hahn wondered.
“We’d best get started,” James said.
Adam nodded. “Let’s get going.”
Gladwyn spared him a brief glance. Although Emelia had told them about the areas of the tower she knew about, she hadn’t said they should seek them all out.
It’s starting to all make sense though, Adam thought. I was wondering how the hell you fit a lab, prison, library, and all that other stuff in here…
No wonder they gave us a full 24 hours to finish the Stage. I bet the Speedrun must be like 6 or 8 hours, and that’s probably with non-stop running.
Gladwyn took the first steps up the ramp and the rest of them filed into formation. The walls were a bizarre amalgamation of brickwork, wooden panels, metal braces and beams, and solid stone. The ramp was more uniform however, as it was made from colourful bricks in earthen hues like light-and-dark browns, reds, and greens. Somehow, despite the crudeness of the construction, the ramp was perfectly smooth with not a single brick out of place or a gap anywhere to be seen. It was like a chaotic type of perfection that Adam was sure could only be achieved with magic.
They followed the ramp up without pause for 10 minutes before they reached the first landing. Recessed into the wall on their right was an opening for some kind of barracks build from grey bricks. No sooner had they set foot on the flat part of the stairwell than humanoids emerged.
Although they were shaped like humans, they were made of bone plates and had blue-glowing cables visible between the gaps, making them look like some kind of armoured robots in a way.
Gladwyn moved forward, while James assessed the enemies with his telescope Relic.
“Target their torsos!” he shouted. “They’re similar to the Statue Elementals!”
[These are constructs called Mana Hoarders.]
That sounds ominous.
As if to point out why they had such a name, the constructs surged around Gladwyn and aimed for James and Adam.
Hahn had taken off the Fiendbarb and fired arrows that ricocheted between the targets but dealt minimal damage.
James used his new Hood almost immediately, sucking the blue energy out of a hoarder that went right for him. It collapsed to the brick floor with a clatter and his sword lit up with the same energy, but also made him laugh like he’d gone mad. He immediately went on the offensive, moving past Gladwyn’s attempts to guard the rest of them, while carving his glowing blade through the constructs, shearing them apart.
The enemies kept pouring out from inside the barracks though and Adam was unable to keep track of James, since he was too busy fighting off the ones targeting him. His barriers whistled through the air as he commanded them simultaneously, both shaped like narrow lances. With their speed and damage, they tore right through the centre of the constructs without slowing down, piercing the strange pumps that served as their facsimile hearts and kept the constructs alive.
He couldn’t tell if they were sentient, but the fact that they specifically targeted magic users was worrying and reminded him of Yenna’s warning.
If not for the fact that Gladwyn was holding a lot of the enemies back through sheer effort and aggressive defending, as well as them focusing on Adam and James, then Hahn would have easily been defeated. Despite his amazing contribution against the Discarded Golem, he was absolutely useless the moment the enemies had any kind of meaningful armour or weren’t made out of flesh and blood. Adam couldn’t help but think that Hahn had only survived Stage Five by getting lucky, since there was no way he would’ve even been able to defeat the statues.
The soul essences of the dead constructs flowed into Adam’s Wraith Lantern and soon a pair of wraiths were summoned.
Except, they weren’t wraiths.
They were like pale-white dancers covered in translucent shawls with glowing white eyes and smiles. Glittering snowflakes trailed after them while they moved through the air, floating a few centimetres above the floor as they pirouetted across the landing, slashing with their long and deadly nails as they passed through the enemies. Unlike the normal Winter Wraiths, they did not trigger the Last Stand buff until after their third attack. Although their swipes didn’t instantly kill the constructs they hit, the cuts they made froze immediately and partially immobilised the bone creatures, slowing them down.
Once the Last Stand’s Fervour did kick in, they became like whirling dervishes of ice and spite, causing only more of the soul essences to fly back into Adam’s lantern, creating more of themselves.
He looked down at his new right hand. This Legendary Relic is amazing!
When the fourth pair of Winter Dancers were summoned, Gladwyn and Adam had already pushed into the barracks. The place was a lot bigger than they had realised, having several branching rooms connected to its main one, and the constructs which had been stationed there were activating in batches as they went deeper.
Adam resummoned his barriers after cracking one of them by striking a construct at an odd angle. The dancers were moving off into the different chambers at Adam’s command, obeying his orders just as easily as the barriers did.
Hahn caught up to them when they reached the last room, inside of which James was finishing off the final construct by draining its energy using the power of his Hood. The tall black man shuddered as the blue energy suffused his sword.
“What the hell was that!?” Gladwyn scolded him once it was clear the danger had passed.
“Yeah, running off like that could get you killed,” Adam said.
James turned to look at them, some of the blue energy lighting up his eyes as well, which was worrying.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “The Mana within the constructs is especially pure and consuming it seems to have made me quite reckless, I now realise. It was a debuff called Mana Euphoria. I had almost double the Mana I normally have and I was able to just use my spells over and over!”
He was talking faster than normal and his expression was slightly crazed.
Christ… Even getting too much Mana is a problem??
Adam was a bit disappointed he hadn’t been able to see what James’ spells looked like, but by the time he had gained control over the situation the Spellblade had already vanished from sight. Still, there wasn’t a scratch on him, so he had to have fought well, Adam thought.
“Sorry, guys!” Hahn said.
Before anyone could respond, their cubes all spoke with one voice.
[Encounter cleared.]
“Do we get a reward?” Gladwyn asked his cube.
[Yes. An Upgrade Chest has been made available in the main chamber.]
“Can we all use it?” Adam asked.
[No. Chests may only be used by one Player. It is advised that you decide who amongst you is most deserving of it.]
“Adam and I already got rewards, so the next one is Gladwyn’s,” James said.
“I’d rather wait until we find a Relic Chest,” Gladwyn replied. “I think Hahn should take it, he needs more damage and penetration for his bow.”
Hahn lowered his head. “Sorry,” he said again.
“Hopefully we can find a Relic that’s useful to you,” Adam added.
Gladwyn looked around the chamber they were in and Adam knew he was searching for the lever that opened the tower’s basement. But it wasn’t in here.
After they returned to the main room and let Hahn open the bone chest that awaited them, Adam and Gladwyn went through the side chambers until they found what they were looking for. Adam called the others over before he pulled down the lever and made a tremor roll through the tower.
“Did you know this was here?” James asked. “And what did that just do?”
“I just figured they’d be hiding stuff from us,” Adam replied.
“It sounds like something opened below us,” Gladwyn commented.
The two of them weren’t doing a great job of hiding the fact that they knew more than they should, but Adam figured it was at least slightly more believable since they were both in on it.
Hahn returned to the Upgrade Chest, which he had already opened. None of the choices gave him additional penetration, but he had both Projectile Damage and a general Damage upgrade available. There was also a Draw Speed upgrade that made him able to fire faster, but it didn’t affect the speed of the arrows. Since the general Damage upgrade was Rare and the other two were Uncommon, Hahn picked that one.
They went through the barracks once more before leaving, finding nothing besides the remains of the constructs they’d fought.
James went over to the edge of the stairwell landing and looked down.
“You were right, Gladwyn,” he announced. “Something opened up down there.”
“Let’s go investigate,” Adam said.
“Shouldn’t we continue going up?” Hahn countered.
“I have to find something for my Patron,” Adam replied.
“Me too,” Gladwyn added.
“We all do, I’m sure,” James said.
“I have to find an Eye That Has Witnessed Its Own Death,” Hahn said.
That’s gotta be the thing Emelia said was in the laboratorium.
“I have to find some notes or a book,” Adam announced.
“Mine’s a face given up willingly,” James said with a frown.
That’s creepy as hell…
“I think my object was called a Resistant Organ,” Gladwyn added.
“Is it really worth searching for them?” Hahn asked. “We might lose too much time.”
“Lucca told me that the Relics from Absolutes are worth three times the normal rate, so I think it’ll be more than worth it to finish our gathering quests,” Adam replied.
“If we end up unable to find them all, then we will just give up and keep climbing the tower,” Gladwyn added.
“What even happens if we run out of time?” Hahn asked.
“We die,” James said with utter certainty. “I saw it happen in the last Stage.”
“Really?” Adam asked, surprised he had witnessed such a thing.
“Yeah. I had claimed the Altar but there were still 3 minutes remaining when the timer ran out. Someone was running towards me while I stood within the Altar and as the timer expired they collapsed to the floor, instantly dead. It was like the light in their eyes just vanished.”
I wonder if there’s a way to survive such a thing, like with the Cheat Death Relic or the Hobgoblin Pendant.
“Come on,” Gladwyn said and they followed him back down the ramp.
It was faster down than up, but mostly because Adam used his barriers to speed up the process, resummoning each time their Fervour ran out. What had taken them 10 minutes going up, took only 2 going down.
If I fuse them together, I should be able to carry at least three of us, he realised. Since there’s a hole in the middle of the tower, it would be easy enough to make an elevator sort of contraption with the barriers.
Although that’d require them to trust me to not drop them…
At the bottom of the stairwell, where the outside was visible through the large gate, was a new ramp leading down below the ground floor.
Gladwyn once again went first and after following the new stairwell down for a few minutes, they reached a subterranean prison, although Emelia had called it a containment facility. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of light-grey bricks and from the ramp a large hallway led them towards a chamber. Along the walls of the tunnel were locked cells full of various creatures. Some of them were humanoid and called out for them with pleading voices, but the rest were twisted animals born from vile experiments.
The four of them stuck to the middle of the hallway, not daring to get close to the creatures for fear of what might happen.
Adam thought it might be worth trying to slip his barriers into their cells to kill the monsters before they could escape, but when he tried it, some sort of magical protection destroyed his barriers without even triggering Last Stand’s Fervour.
It was clear they had to just keep going, but when they reached the large chamber, a cacophony of voices, screams, and roars trailed after them, and Adam feared they might be overrun if the cells were to be opened before they could leave.
Maybe coming here was a mistake, he thought.
Still, there was no going back now.
The moment Hahn crossed the threshold of the chamber’s entrance, a portcullis fell down, blocking their escape route.
“Shit,” Adam muttered, moving his barriers out in front of himself.
The chamber was quite big and the walls were curved like an arena. Stone slabs with manacles took up the right side, looking like some kind of setup for experimentation, though Adam knew the real laboratorium was higher up the tower. The left side of the chamber held vats within which floated creatures and humanoids, suspended in oily blue-ish fluid. In the back, opposite from where they had entered, was a raised podium with various tools and instruments, as well as several levers that no doubt opened the cells they’d passed on the way.
But what they all focused on was the hole in the ceiling from which came strange squelching sounds. Directly below the hole was a slightly raised dais with two chests on it, but none of them were foolish enough to move any closer.
“Fucking hell,” James cursed as something appeared from the hole.
It was a large yellow eye tinged with blue energy.
The eye moved down into the chamber and the rest of its body followed.
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Defeat the Cell Warden >
-----------------------------
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2025-06-16 14:15:48 +0000 UTC
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Last Madman chapter of the week, but managed to crank out 4 chapters, which is pretty great I think.
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Chapter 17
Thanks to Brock’s damage-amplifying nature, the explosion of my right hand was powerful enough to fling me backwards with such force and speed that I skipped across the pavement, friction burn tearing away my skin and leaving red skidmarks.
Garold the Skinstealer was reduced to a pair of smoking free-standing legs, the rest of his body obliterated.
Bee ran over to where I landed halfway down the street.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Somehow Panda was on her shoulder, having apparently gotten away just in time to avoid the explosion.
I groaned as I sat up.
Bee winced as she saw my face.
Tina walked over as well and, when she saw me, she gave me a thumbs-up and said, “Nice skull.”
I sighed. “Not again…”
I couldn’t actually feel the pain of what had happened to me, but the absence of feeling in my face clearly meant that a lot of bits were missing.
“What happened to Brock?” Panda asked.
I looked down at my right arm. The hand was totally gone. But unlike the last time this had happened, Brock was stretched up the entirety of my arm’s remainder like a sleeve. For some reason, he prevented my Unicorn Suit from repairing itself, giving me quite an odd look, since I now had a stump right arm with a balloon pulled over it.
“You okay there, Brock?” I asked him.
When he didn’t immediately respond, I feared he might’ve been seriously injured.
Then he whispered, “That was traumatic. And not in a good way… Brock’s feeling like he wants to stay as a tube sock until he works through what just happened.”
“You can’t do that,” I told him. “I need you to be able to fight.”
“Don’t force him if he doesn’t want to,” Bee scolded me.
“Also, you can’t really fight without your hand,” Panda added.
“Eat this,” Bee said, handing me a large strawberry.
[‘Peach-nana-berry’ x ]
Consumable
A fruit grown in the bountiful gardens of the Absolute known as the All-Mother.
Eating this fruit has a restorative effect.
Weight: Approximately half of one
“Where’d you get this?” I asked her.
“It’s from one of my new skills,” she replied.
I bit down on the strawberry and a flavor of peach and banana quickly dispersed through my mouth, before the purple curse’s eggplant taste overpowered it. Whatever Absolute was behind Brock’s curse, it was clearly at war with the All-Mother. A war taking place inside my mouth…
Slowly, the skin on my face started to knit itself back together.
“You’re recovering about 0.2013% every 3 seconds,” Panda announced, “which means you’ll be healed back to full in about 7 or 8 minutes.”
“What are your new skills?” I asked Bee. “You said you got a new Class too, right?”
Instead of explaining it to me, she shared her status.
[Status x ]
Level 20 — ‘Bee’ — Afflictionist
INSANITY GAUGE: N/A
STATS
Health: 12 — Stamina: 18
Armor: 16 — Carry Weight: 40
Top Speed: 14 km/h — Mana: 36
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 2 — Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 18 — Vitality: 6
Athleticism: 5 — Perception: 6
Wisdom: 14 — Defense: 8
ABILITIES
All-Mother’s Fruit Basket
Moth Dash
Rotting Touch
PASSIVES
Affliction Master
All-Mother’s Chosen
Inanimate Voices
ULTIMATE
Fast Forward
I looked through the skills, curious what they all did.
[‘All-Mother’s Fruit Basket’ x ]
Gifted Ability
Gifted to Player Bee by the All-Mother.
How can I receive a power like this?
Food-delivery magic is hard to come by, so I’d really like to know.
Manifest a fruit from the All-Mother’s Garden specifically suited to your current situation.
Cooldown: 15 minutes
[‘Moth Dash’ x ]
Ability
Disengage from any situation by manifesting a pair of moth wings and dashing up to 20 meters away, becoming temporarily invulnerable to damage.
This Ability taps directly into your soul to summon a pair of wings, which is cool.
Like with teleportation skills, rapid movement plus invulnerability can lead to a lot of bad situations, especially if used to move through something.
So, use with caution.
Cooldown: 10 minutes
[‘Rotting Touch’ x ]
Ability
I knew a gal with this kind of power.
All she wanted to do was grow flowers, but everything she touched decayed in her hands.
I’m personally not a fan of rotten food, since it ruins the taste, but I’ve heard your kind likes to spoil food on purpose before eating it.
I can’t say I approve.
Inflict Rot on an organic being by touching them.
Cooldown: 1 minute
[‘Affliction Master’ x ]
Passive
Simple and powerful.
Soon enough, you will become quite a terrifying little girl.
Woe be to any who draws the All-Mother’s ire.
Increases the effectiveness of afflictions by 10% for each affliction active on a target.
[‘All-Mother’s Chosen’ x ]
Gifted Passive
Gifted to Player Bee by the All-Mother.
It’s rare that the Absolutes choose a mortal to champion them.
The All-Mother has never done it before now.
I’ve heard she’s quite scary when she’s mad, so I pity whoever has angered her enough to make her take such a drastic measure as to appoint a Chosen.
Your defense-oriented Attributes are raised, and you become immune to Insanity and its effects.
[‘Fast Forward’ x ]
Ultimate Ability
Quite an insidious power if you know how to wield it.
Normally, this kind of power lies in the realm of the Timeless Dragon, but I suppose the Absolutes enjoy drawing inspiration from one another.
Indicate a target and accelerate them, increasing the speed of time their body experiences by 100 times.
Cooldown: 1 hour
“Looks like you’ll end up being a damage-over-time type Class,” I said. “With just Rotting Touch and Fast Forward alone you should be able to kill any organic enemy we come up against, since Rot doesn’t look like it has a cooldown.”
“I told you the All-Mother is scary…” Panda muttered.
“What do we do now?” Bee asked.
“We have to find Otto,” I said, “but he could be anywhere, so we need to get transportation, since neither of you have movement skills anymore.”
Bee’s eyes lit up. “Is it finally time!?”
I grinned. “Yeah, let’s go catch a Humanbus!”
“First,” Panda said, stopping me from taking off, “activate your Rules of Anarchy.”
[‘Rules of Anarchy’ x ]
Fusion Passive
“Fuck the law! Fuck the rules! Fuck the authorities!”
“I make the rules around here now!”
Pick a new rule that only applies to you from the following options:
- Respawn Once -
- Fuck Gravity -
- Fall Guy -
- Commuter Pass -
Your choice can be altered every hour, but you cannot go back to an option you already used.
All options recharge at the start of the following day.
“The Commuter Pass won’t work,” Tina said. “We have to defeat it properly to use the Safe Zone Sphere on it.”
I frowned. “Damn it.”
“At least activate the respawn passive,” Panda advised.
“Rules of Anarchy(Respawn Once),” I said obediently.
Rules of Anarchy Activated!
Passive Selected: Respawn Once
Description:
Upon death, respawn at the beginning
1 Use
“Are you sure it won’t respawn you back in your original dimension?” Bee asked, giving me a new fear I hadn’t even considered.
“Uhh…” I replied.
“Come on,” Tina said. “I know how to get the attention of the Humanbus.”
She immediately took off running, leaving Bee and I to catch up.
After a few minutes of running Bee was out of Stamina, so I carried her on my back while she pointed past my head to guide me.
“Why is she so fast!?” Panda muttered in confusion.
Eventually we found Tina standing next to an intact bus stop. It was an angled metal roof attached to a single wall with a bench under it. Next to it was a pole where the different bus lines and their destinations would have been listed, but now it just said “666 Madeville Circuit”.
I set Bee down on the ground and tried to catch my breath.
“You’re fast,” I told Tina.
Instead of replying, she said, “I need a bus.”
“I really hope this works,” Panda said pessimistically.
“It will work,” Tina stated confidently.
We waited for half a minute, and then the voice of the Humanbus rang out across the industrial area we were in.
[YUMMY-YUMMY! PASSENGERS ARE ABOUT TO ENTER MY TUMMY!]
“I think I can kill the Humanbus with my new ability, since it’s mostly organic,” Bee said.
“We’re not killing it,” I told her.
“I know. But I’m just saying.”
The ground rumbled under our feet and then the large sentient bus monster appeared down at the end of the street, its crazed foglight eyes staring right at us and its mouth full of buckteeth grinning ominously.
Despite Tina’s confidence, I took a step back and clenched my right fist.
Except, it still hadn’t grown back…
“Fuck,” I muttered as the Humanbus came all the way down to our bus stop. Its many feet made tapping sounds as it moved across the pavement.
Its eyes stared at us while we approached it, then a hiss of steam and air emerged from the side of its head to reveal a door.
Tina was the first to enter, then Bee, and finally me.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now we have to win its Game,” Tina said with a cheerful smile.
We moved past the brain filling the driver’s side up front and found three seats. The chairs were just like those of the previous bus I’d used after dying to the CPS and losing Bee. Tufts of hair poked out of the large stitches in the human skin fabric, but the chairs were surprisingly soft.
Sitting in some of the seats were ghostly images of people, no doubt those that had been unable to escape the mouth of the Humanbus. Still, there were only five in total, which I thought boded well for how many had survived so far.
The door closed with an intake of air and then a chime rang through the bus, followed by its voice.
Thank you for choosing to use your local ‘Bus’ service!
You are currently riding the 666 Madeville Circuit line.
It is now time to play “Tickets, Please”!
The participants must work together to decide if passengers are allowed to enter by using the tools available to them.
These tools include: the ‘Passenger Blacklist’ to keep bad-bad boys from entering; the ‘Ticket Template’ to check if a passenger’s ticket is real or not; and the ‘Banned Items’ list.
Should you allow a Bad Passenger to enter, one of the participants will be consumed.
The GAME ends when either five Good Passengers have boarded or no more participants remain.
Player Abilities and Passives are disabled for the duration of the Mini GAME.
You may only disembark once you have beaten the Mini GAME!
Good luck!
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2025-06-14 13:41:08 +0000 UTC
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Perhaps I'll have one more Madman chapter tomorrow, but I need to also finish two Loopshard chapters before the end of the weekend. Anyway, I've got a good rhythm going finally.
-----------------------------
Chapter 16
Water Wizard’s Wonderland came back into view as we returned to the outskirts of Madeville where we’d initially teleported from. Tina, Bee, and Panda appeared behind me.
Ahead of us, maybe ten yards away, stood a man in swim trunks with a donut pool float around his waist and a snorkeling mask strapped to his face.
“Cool outfit,” Panda joked.
“Maybe he just came from the dungeon?” Bee asked. I still wasn’t sure if she was back to her normal self or not, but she at least showed no signs of change, which was comforting. Although, having two versions of herself spliced into one was kind of disturbing, though it was still better than one or the other dying, like when I’d arrived in this dimension.
“The water park is level 13,” Tina said. I remembered that she had checked it earlier. Unless the guy was cheating, there was no way he’d beaten the dungeon already.
Lordie wriggled atop my head. “Me-ow…”
“Already!?” I asked him.
“Is it a Skinstealer?” Bee asked.
“That’s what he says,” I replied.
“I’ve got new skills, let me try them on him,” she said eagerly. I hadn’t realized her transformation had changed her Class, but I supposed it made sense, given that she was no longer an insectoid.
I put my hand out in front of her. “Let me, I’ve got something I need to do anyway.”
Bee frowned, but didn’t argue.
The Skinstealer suddenly noticed us and started waddling in our direction. His movements were constrained by the pool float around his midsection.
I didn’t waste a second and skipped towards him, swinging Brock eagerly as I prepared to obliterate him.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 1 — ‘Garold Smith’ — Player
“Let’s go swimming!”
Class: Puddle Boy
Main Attribute(s): Wisdom
Turns out that Gary was short for “Garold” all along. Who would have thought?
Anyway, this is Garold, or Gary if you’re on friendly terms, and he loves swimming.
Before the GREAT GAME started, he regularly visited Water Wizard’s Wonderland and was on first-name basis with all the employees.
If you can get over the chlorine smell that sticks to his skin and breath, then he’s a nice enough guy. Just don’t ask him about his opinion on flippers, because then shit’ll get weird.
He wants to go swimming with you.
I paused mid-step as I read through the information.
“Are you sure he’s a Skinstealer?” I asked Lordie.
“He doesn’t have the obvious tell in his appraisal,” Panda agreed.
“Meow…”
“I’m not doubting you,” I said, “but his appraisal is normal.”
“I wonder what his opinion on flippers is?” Bee asked after I shared the screen with her.
Garold continued waddling towards me, and when only five feet separated us, he halted as well.
Then he suddenly screamed, “HELP!!”
I frowned, realizing it was the same trick that the Skinstealer in the Pool Rooms dungeon had used to lure me closer.
Garold’s zipped open down the middle, even splitting the pool float as a massive mouth was revealed beneath his flesh.
Before he could lunge for me, I skipped forward and smashed Brock into him. “Punch.spinTheWheel( )!”
“Get it!!” he squealed.
Time froze the moment the balloon gauntlet touched Garold’s skin. A golden wheel of fortune descended from above, arriving to the right of me.
Then came the voice of the announcer within.
Hello, everybody watching at home!
We’ve got quite an exciting show for you today!
For those of you of Knight-Lord rank or equivalent power, welcome back!
For the rest of you who are seeing this for the ‘first’ time, here’s what is happening:
Player ‘Gambit’ has triggered a Lottery Ability and now has to test his fortune against Lady Luck!
And let me tell you, she’s a fickle mistress, unless you’ve got yourself a Greed Demon tweaking the odds!
*Audience laughter*
“Mammon!” I exclaimed. “I got the Contract of Servitude from Breezy!”
A small trap door popped open in the top of the wheel and the bronze-colored hairy imp appeared.
“How in the Saint’s name did you manage to go back in time!? I’m not even supposed to be powerful enough to retain my memories across dimensional timelines, but somehow I still remember!”
“You can thank Panda for that,” I told him. “Anyway, I’ve got the Contract on me. It’s in my pocket, but you need to grab it since I’m frozen.”
“I can’t believe you actually managed to score me that gig! Appreciate you doing me a solid,” he replied, crawling down from his wheel to land on my body. “That being said, you’ll have to watch out for Gargalob. I owe that son of a bitch a lot of moolah, if you know what I mean.”
“What!? You didn’t tell me this!” I protested as the imp crawled down the front of my body and stuck his grubby fingers into the right pocket of my suit pants. He was maybe half the size of Panda, but his hands and head were proportionally bigger than the rest of his body.
“Don’t get upset with me, you fool,” he replied. “You’re the one who wanted to free me, for some reason. I didn’t ask you to.”
With a yank, Mammon pulled the Contract ring out of my pocket. It was almost big enough to serve as a crown for the imp.
Suddenly Panda was on my shoulder, looking down at the Greedling. “What are we getting in return for landing you a better job?” he asked him.
Mammon paused his fascinated stare at the ring to address us. “Alright listen, I ain’t an ungrateful bastard. I know you pulled a miracle out of your ass with this one. I’ll try and swing Breezy’s opinion of you two in a more favorable direction.”
“He already loves us,” I told him.
“Well, I’m a gold-tongued bastard, so I’m sure I’ll be able to get him to look away the next time you pull some kind of bullshit.”
“That would be useful,” Panda said.
“I want my skills back,” I complained.
“Don’t know that I can score something like that for you, but I’ll try.”
“First you’ve gotta prove you can survive even being near an Adjudicator for more than a few minutes without imploding,” Panda remarked.
“Don’t you worry yourselves about me,” Mammon said and flashed us a saw-toothed grin.
Without as much as a goodbye, he slipped the ring over his right arm where it immediately resized itself into a bracelet that fit snugly against his skin, and then he disappeared with a wet pop.
Time was still frozen, but it was clear the Spin the Wheel event had been interrupted, since there were no options on the wheel and no way to get it to spin.
I looked around for a way to unfreeze us. “Ehh…”
“Give it a second,” Panda said.
Suddenly, the golden wheel transformed into a slot machine.
“What the hell?”
SPONTANEOUS SKILL EVOLUTION TRIGGERED!
You have evolved ‘Punch.spinTheWheel( )’ into ‘1-armed_Bandit.exe’.
[‘1-armed_Bandit.exe’ x ]
Golden Fusion Ability
This Ability suddenly became a lot less interesting, since there’s no longer a little Demon inside the machine getting tortured every time you use it.
I really liked that.
Did you know?
Torturing Demons makes them taste better.
Every time you activate this Ability, a Slot Machine will spin to determine the outcome of your next attack. These range between everything from devastating impacts, monetary wins and losses, self-inflicted damage, and environmental effects.
Every outcome you land on is removed from the Slot Machine and replaced with something else, such that you never know what to expect!
Cooldown: 10 minutes
This Ability appears on your Appraisal!
The slot machine had four icons on the screen below the three wheels that would spin when the lever was pulled. At the top was a blue fist which read “My arm is an orbital laser!”, then a green rain cloud icon with “Messimer staring contest”, followed by a yellow treasure chest reading “moneySucker( )”, and lastly a black skull that said “Demon Incursion”.
“They still haven’t given up on that Demon Incursion thing,” I muttered.
“Your odds are better this time at least,” Panda said. “Three good options and one bad.”
“It’s really bad though, right?”
“Oh yeah, we’re probably screwed if you hit it.”
I sighed.
“Alright, let’s do it.”
Nothing happened.
“Pull that lever!” I exclaimed, faking enthusiasm.
Still nothing.
“Panda, can you do it?”
He gave me a look. “Seriously?”
“I’d like to be unfrozen soon, my neck is starting to hurt,” I told him. Bee and Tina were frozen behind me as well, and if the freeze effect worked like every time before, then they would be fully conscious but unable to speak.
Panda started stretching on my shoulder where he stood.
“What are you doing?”
“Warming up,” he replied.
“Why?”
“You want me to pull the lever, right?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then shut up and let me finish what I’m doing.”
I patiently waited 10 seconds.
“Alright, hurry this shit up Panda, I wasn’t kidding about my neck.”
He frowned but then jumped from my shoulder and onto the slot machine’s lever. He was just heavy enough to pull it down.
The three wheels started to spin while an upbeat jingle played.
It took another 10 seconds before the wheels started to slow down, and I could actually see the icons cycle through.
I had no idea if I needed to get three of the same symbol to get the effect, but if that was the case then I would have quite a high chance of getting no effect at all, which was definitely a downgrade from the skill’s previous version.
The icons cycle through one last time before they came to a stop, showing a black skull, a blue fist, and a yellow chest.
“Damn, it’s a dud,” I started to say before I was interrupted.
Result: 3 Colors!
Random effect triggered.
“My fist is a grenade!?”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Then time unfroze and my right hand exploded.
-----------------------------
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2025-06-13 00:09:11 +0000 UTC
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I might have more chapters for you again tomorrow or Thursday. Trying to get the ball rolling on book 3, since I want to have it done before September.
-----------------------------
Chapter 15
I landed on my feet in a silver-blue field of grass. In the distance were children running around, and there were trees and plants everywhere. It was like a forest that surrounded me, except every single branch was laden with fruits and flowers, and the whole area was like a kaleidoscope of colors.
Tina appeared next to me and then came Bee with Panda on her shoulder.
“Are we going to have to fight?” Bee asked. “It said it was a level 99 dungeon.”
“I’m kind of wondering the same thing,” I said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Panda told us confidently. “Absolutes can’t just pop into the Great Game, since their very presence would tear apart the fabric of reality and cause a dimensional and logical collapse of everything.”
“I’m worrying more now,” I said.
“If you’d let me finish,” he replied sternly. “Dungeons are a way to encapsulate their boundless power, so it doesn’t affect your world. But I don’t think it works like the dungeons we know.”
Tina looked around with a strange expression on her face. “There are a lot of children here. This might be a good place to bring Irene and Adam.”
Behind where we’d landed was a path of pearl-white stones leading up a hill. At the crest was a small wood-and-stone hut and a large weeping willow shading it with its canopy.
“I think that’s where we have to go,” Bee said. “I have this weird feeling pulling me there.”
We started walking up the path, and I shared a worried glance with Panda.
“If it turns out to be a trap, I’ll do whatever I can to protect you,” I said. “No way I’m losing you a third time.”
“Nina says we can trust the All-Mother,” Tina said.
“Didn’t seem so sure before,” I remarked.
“Not like it’s simple to predict the intentions of an Absolute,” Panda commented.
Despite Tina and Panda’s assurances, as well as what Breezy had told us, I couldn’t help but tense up as we neared the top of the hill with the willow and hut.
Past the hut the hill led straight down into an orchard with a steep drop, and on that edge teetered a round wooden table two chairs in front of it. Seated in the chair on the right was Bee. The one from my original dimension.
In the other chair sat a tall woman with pale-grey skin, long silver-blonde hair, and large antler-like horns growing from the right side of her head. A long ethereal blue wing hung down from her back and draped along the ground. She wore an armored suit of gleaming-white bone.
New Bee, the one standing in front of me, looked across the hill at her other self. Even though she had the appearance of a humanoid moth, it was clear she recognized herself in her.
“You didn’t tell me I turned into an insect in your world,” Bee said.
“I guess I forgot,” I muttered.
Moth Bee got up from her chair and ran towards us. The tall horned woman got up as well.
“Oh shit,” Panda whispered.
Before I could ask him what was wrong, Bee threw herself forward with a buzz of her moth wings, slamming into me with a hug. Thankfully, my Silver Skeleton made me unable to fall over.
[‘Silver Skeleton’ x ]
Passive
Become highly-resistant to Crushing and Impact damage, at the expense of your body getting five times heavier than normal, requiring a lot more Strength and Vitality to move around.
Warning: by accepting this Skill, you grant the GREAT GAME and its employees the right to repossess your skeleton after you die.
“You came back for me!” Bee exclaimed.
New Bee took a step away, clearly surprised to encounter her other self. I imagined it was quite weird for her.
I peeled the moth girl off of me with a grin and said, “So, ehh, I went and found your other self from the new dimension I went to. I couldn’t beat the Queen of the CPS, so Panda sent us back in time to a different dimension.”
Moth Bee looked at her other self. “Nice t-shirt,” she said.
“Thanks. Are you supposed to be a Xylocampa Areola?” New Bee asked.
“I think so.”
“This is very confusing,” I said.
“It’s a beautiful reunion,” Tina remarked.
“You’re really not meant to meet your other dimensional self,” Panda explained. “The timeline really doesn’t like that. It gets all paradoxical and stuff.”
The tall woman strode over to us. Seeing her face, she reminded me of an elf in a way, although the antler horns and strange wing were obviously different. Still, she was otherworldly-beautiful.
Panda swallowed hard.
“Thank you for bringing this lost child to me, Gambit,” the woman said, and I immediately recognized the voice.
My Appraising Eye activated on its own, and I felt sparks fly around inside my eyeball while my vision flickered, which was kind of unpleasant.
[Appraisal x ]
Level ????? — ‘All-Mother’ — Absolute of Sustenance and Fertility
What the…
…
I’m sure I’m not reading this right.
…
…
No, you really are standing in front of the Absolute herself.
How the hell did you manage that??
Well, if you wouldn’t mind, my wife and I have been trying to have children for quite a while, but we’ve been unsuccessful. If you could ask the All-Mother for her blessing, we’d really appreciate it.
Anyway, whatever you do, be kind to the children in her care, and eat anything she gives you.
And try not to get killed, I suppose. You never know with these Absolutes, although I hear she’s one of the nice ones.
She wants you to do something for her.
“Your majesty, we’re so sorry for intruding in your domain,” Panda started, immediately supplicating himself to the Absolute, bowing his head where he sat on New Bee’s shoulder.
“Why did you want me to bring Bee to you?” I asked the All-Mother, refusing to imitate Panda’s pathetic display.
“I wish safeguard all children in my garden,” she replied.
I frowned, realizing she wanted to keep Bee and New Bee here.
“I’m not a kid,” both of them replied simultaneously.
They looked at each other, which was kind of bizarre, since they were like reflections of themselves, but one with a goth aesthetic and the other with a moth cosplay.
“We’re not letting you keep Bee or New Bee,” I told her.
The All-Mother fixed me with her emerald-green eyes. I felt a shudder run through my entire system. With her standing before me, it was easy to forget that she was at least as powerful as Messimer, if not more. Absolutes didn’t have to play by the rules of the Great Game, because their sheer cosmic influence could just allow them to walk right through any barriers in their way.
“I will allow my children to accompany you in exchange for two favors,” she said.
“Shit,” Panda muttered.
“But first,” she started, raising her right hand. In her palm lay two translucent-orange berries, similar to gooseberries. Without asking what they were for, Moth Bee took one. Then New Bee copied her and grabbed the other.
I didn’t even have time to ask what they were for, since both of them popped the berries into their mouths and bit down.
A floral scent filled the air.
Then New Bee and Moth Bee glowed brightly and walked towards each other. Their hands met like they were touching each other through a mirror, and then their bodies started to fuse together. Panda quickly hopped over to my shoulder before he was pulled into whatever was happening.
It only took a few seconds, but it was really trippy and kind of disturbing to imagine what they were combining into. I also wondered what would happen to their personalities and memories, since they had not been exactly the same.
Children had run up behind us and were standing a few feet away, watching the transformation. There was an astounding amount of different species represented amongst them, with humanoid insects like beetles, ants, and even cicadas, as well as orcs, goblins, and other elf-like kids similar to the All-Mother. There were also humanoid animals, like bears, owls, squirrels, and so forth, not to mention creatures that looked like they belonged in the ocean, such as jellyfish, crustaceans, and colorful sea slugs.
The light died down and I looked at what my friend and this dimension’s version of her had turned into. She looked more or less like she had before, taking most of the traits of her human self, i.e. the black hair, round face, and apple cheeks. However, her skin had become pale-grey like the All-Mother’s and she now had small white horns poking out from the left and right sides of her head. A large purple and translucent wing also hung down from her back.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I feel weird,” Bee replied. “I have memories of two different lives. They’re mostly the same, but still, it feels… weird.”
“Do you remember what happened before you came here?” Panda asked.
She nodded.
“I remember the previous dimension, as well as everything I did with Gambit in this one.”
I grinned and ruffled her hair.
“You have horns now though,” I told her.
“So do you,” she replied.
“Horns are cool,” Tina whispered.
“Indeed,” the All-Mother agreed.
I looked at the Absolute, and asked, “What are the favors you wanted?”
She pulled out a letter in a black envelope with a golden wax seal. “I need you to bring this to the man who resides in the Fleshcrafter’s Abode. There is a portal in front of the asylum.”
“What’s inside?” I asked, turning the envelope over in my hand. It was clearly a letter of some kind.
“That is private.”
“Can you tell if we open it?” Bee asked.
“Yes.”
“Why would you ask her that!?” Panda scolded her.
Bee reached over and patted him on the head, immediately placating him. “I missed you guys.”
“Me-ow!?”
“And you too, Lordie,” she added.
“Oy!” Brock squealed.
“And you, Brock.”
“Don’t ever leave us again!!” he pleaded. “Gambit is not the same without you!!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him.
“My second favor,” the All-Mother said, cutting off the exchange, “is for you to bring down the Child Protective Services after the First Game Event has concluded. You will use my weapon to ensure that the liberated children find their way to me instead of the new moon. I will take better care of them than anyone else.”
The way she said it, and the fact that she wore a suit of powerful-looking bone armor, made me realize that the All-Mother was more than capable of protecting her realm and the children within. Also, as I looked around after the kids quickly dispersed, I realized that the Children Zones aboard the CPS hive ship were no doubt modelled after the All-Mother’s Garden to some extent.
“I’ll make sure this numbskull fulfills those two favors,” Panda assured the Absolute.
“If not for the fact that my intervention would spell the doom of your world, I would already have dealt with that vile queen-pretender,” the All-Mother said. “Alas, I must resort to relying on you.”
Panda stiffened on my shoulder and even I felt kind of intimidated. She wasn’t using me as her errand boy because she wanted to, but because she needed to, since her power was so great that even her weakest attack might obliterate Earth in the process of defeating the Queen of the ants.
“When we free the children from the CPS, will you take good care of my Adam and Irene?” Tina asked the Absolute.
“Of course. All children will be able to play and have fun in my care. They shall never know hardship and trouble so long as they are within my embrace.”
Tina looked like she was on the verge of tears at the response, but I supposed it was quite a relief for her to know. I could imagine how distraught she felt, because I’d been searching for my Kevin this whole time as well. I just hope he was doing well, wherever he was.
Panda sighed. “That’s not the same,” he told me.
“You should be on your way now,” the All-Mother said. With a simple gesture, she opened a portal in front of us. I hadn’t even realized the other one had vanished, but I guessed it didn’t make sense to leave an open hole to the cicada-filled Achievement Narration offices.
“Take good care of my precious child,” the Absolute said to me.
Then with another gesture she sent all of us through the portal.
WARNING!
Now exiting ‘The All-Mother’s Garden’!
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2025-06-11 00:09:47 +0000 UTC
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Rejoice! Got two chapters for you today.
-----------------------------
Chapter 14
The figure straightened itself to a total height of maybe four foot six inches. With a loud slurp, it swallowed the entrails of the beetle guard it’d been devouring.
Then it walked towards us.
“Be careful, Gambit,” Panda warned me. “I think I know what Absolute spawned her…”
“Hey guys!” the dark creature said excitedly.
Even as she came closer, the darkness about her didn’t dissipate, in fact, I realized her body was made from it, with tiny constellations visible in it. It was like a dark night sky given form. The two round glowing-white eyes set into her body were fixated on me, but I didn’t let her intimidate me.
“Are you my new Narrator?” I asked her.
“That’s right! They normally don’t like having people like me around, but they were short-staffed after you scared off their other Narrators.”
“Think I can see why they wouldn’t allow spawn like her in here,” Panda remarked.
In a blink, Billee crossed the distance between us and snatched the plushie from my shoulder.
“Let me go!” he protested.
“You’re a real sourpuss,” Billee said.
Bee tensed up behind me, but Tina seemed relaxed for some reason.
“I wonder how you taste,” Billee remarked, lifting Panda up into the air above her.
A wide gaping hole appeared in her shadowy body, looking like a white bottomless pit.
I quickly pulled Panda out of her grip.
The child-sized entity lowered her arms. “Aww.”
“Spawn like you are why the rest of us get a bad name!” Panda scolded her.
“It’s not my fault everything is sooooo tasty,” Billee replied.
“Am I gonna stop getting achievements because you killed so many guards?” I asked her, keeping my left arm tight around Panda to free up my right in case we had to fight back.
“Don’t worry, Gambit! My boss said I could stay. He’s kind of fun,” she replied. “I also got jobs at the Skill and Item Departments, so I am narrating those on your behalf as well.”
“I did think it was a bit weird she was narrating the Traceback skill,” Panda muttered.
“What does it mean that she’s a Spawn of an Absolute?” Bee asked. I had shared the appraisal with her, but she’d stayed silent until now.
Billee’s blazing-white eyes locked in on Bee. “The All-Mother says I can’t eat you, but you look tasty too. I haven’t tried human yet.”
“Stop that,” I told her, “you’re freaking people out when you say you wanna eat them.”
Panda sighed. “A Spawn of an Absolute is a creature that’s created by the power of an Absolute, which is a powerful cosmic entity that can literally scour this planet if they sneeze in its direction. Billee here is probably the child of Nwetrou, if I had to guess. A big appetite runs in her family.”
“Nwetrou?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Remember Skippy? The fish-thing that ate the Pawn and left a black pond behind? That’s another of his spawn.”
“Skippy is my big brother,” Billee said. “He’s the one who told me about you.”
“Nina says the Narrator has something for Gambit,” Tina said.
Billee’s eyes shifted to her. “You don’t look tasty.”
“Meow?” Lordie asked.
“Hmm, that’s a good question,” Billee replied. “I think it’d have to be Void Whale. For now.”
“Me-ow!”
“Twizzlers? What kind of creature is that?” she replied.
“You understand what he says?” Panda asked her.
“Of course.”
“What was the question?” Bee asked.
“He wanted to know her favorite meal…” I translated.
“Me-ow,” Lordie told me.
I sighed and puzzled out a bag of Twizzlers and gave it to Billee. “Here.”
She swallowed the bag whole.
“Not bad,” she commented. “But I prefer when my food screams and wriggles. I heard the slugs stay alive for a long time while you eat them, so I’m looking forward to trying those.”
“Meow!” Lordie told her.
“Lordie, stop giving her meal suggestions,” I scolded him.
“Did he ask her if he’d tried cicadas?” Bee asked.
“He did,” I confirmed.
“How did you guess that?” Panda asked her.
“Intuition,” she replied.
“Aaaaanyway,” Billee started. “Papa wanted me to tell you to save the otter mascot. I’m not sure why. Maybe he mistook him for an octopus. He really likes those for some reason.”
“I knew Otto was important,” I muttered.
“Are you going to stay here?” Bee asked Billee.
“No, they’re giving me my own office from now on,” she said. “But I’ll be narrating your achievements, skills, and items from now on as well. Everyone is quite scared of you two and what you’ll do to them, so they told me to take over.”
“What about Tina?” I asked.
“She’s not tasty,” Billee replied as though that was explanation enough.
“It’s probably because Bee is protected by the All-Mother and you’re on the warpath to kill anyone who even slightly annoys you,” Panda said.
Billee suddenly looked up at the ceiling. “Seems I’ve gotta go,” she explained. “Boss is calling.”
“Who’s your boss?” Panda asked.
“He just goes by Jay, as far as I know,” she replied. “I’ve never met him face-to-face, but I think he’s one of the big boys running the Great Game. He always sends a masked brute on his behalf.”
“An Absolute is in charge of Achievement Narration Inc.?” he asked, confused.
“Seems like it,” she replied. “Alright, I’ve gotta go. Byeeee!”
With a poof Billee vanished from the hallway.
“I told you we need to find Otto,” Tina said.
“Yeah, this was a waste of time,” Panda agreed.
“What are you talking about!” I shot back. “I got the Bad Catchphrase button!”
“Meow?” Lordie asked eagerly.
“No, no more cicadas for you young man!” I scolded him.
“Me-ow…”
“How do we get out of here?” Bee asked. “Can we use Gambit’s skill to go back again?”
“Oh… I didn’t really think of that,” I replied.
Panda sighed. “I don’t think we have any other choice than to pay a visit to the All-Mother.”
“Should I use the flower?” Bee asked. She seemed hesitant.
“We’re not gonna trade you in for your other self, no matter what,” I promised her.
“Nina says… she’s not sure if my presence will be tolerated,” Tina commented.
“Doesn’t the All-Mother care a lot about children?” I asked. “She’d probably be fine with having you visit, since you’re a mother.”
“Maybe she can even help us deal with the CPS,” Panda said.
“Alright, I’m doing it,” Bee announced, pulling out the flower from her inventory. It was the size of a dinner plate and had dark-blue petals with the edges dusted in silver. It kind of looked like a magnolia.
[‘Flower of Conveyance’ x ]
Gift
Gifted to Player Bee by the All-Mother.
The All-Mother loves fruits and flowers.
I prefer flesh.
Although, I have heard that some of her fruits taste like meat.
If you find some when you go visit her garden, please bring me a souvenir.
Placing this flower on the ground creates a portal to the All-Mother’s Garden.
Weight: Approximately one
Billee was already back to work narrating, which was honestly impressive, but maybe a being like her was able to do her narration job parallel to eating anyone unlucky to stumble into her vicinity.
“Does she also ask for a souvenir in the description when you look at the flower?” I asked Bee.
She nodded. “It has said that since I got it. I didn’t realize Billee was the one narrating it though.”
“Let’s not keep the All-Mother waiting,” Panda said. “Chop-chop.”
Bee placed the flower on the floor of the hallway and we all instinctively backed away.
The dinner-plate-sized flower grew to reach the walls.
Fwoosh!
A portal immediately appeared above it like a projection.
“Woah,” I muttered.
It had a slight wind pulling us towards it, which reminded me of the level 99 portal in front of the asylum.
“I’ll go first,” Bee said.
“You should probably go last, actually,” Panda told her. “I bet it closes the moment you pass through.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll go through first then,” I said and didn’t waste a moment hopping into the portal.
The whole world was pinched at the seams and pulled apart, flinging me through a swirling tube of colorful lights.
WARNING!
Now entering level 99 Dungeon ‘The All-Mother’s Garden’!
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2025-06-10 23:43:43 +0000 UTC
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Finished my second exam last Thursday with an A, pretty chuffed about that. I've been dealing with influenza for about a week though, so it took me a while to get this chapter to a place I was happy with it.
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Chapter Sixty-One
Almost the exact moment the four of them broke from the treeline, the humanoid creatures atop the scrap wall took notice of them. Ten immediately leapt from its top and down onto the barren ground before charging towards them.
“They don’t have a lot of armour,” Adam told Hahn, and the archer seemed to immediately understand what he meant, because he reequipped his Fiendbarb.
Gladwyn moved out in front, with James close behind him and Adam just a few paces after.
The enemies were like hairless baboons that walked upright and wielded simple weapons and clothes. Their pale skin was stretched tight over their emaciated frames and their heads had protruding snouts full of blocky teeth. While the Goblins and Lesser Demons had been quite haunting to look at, these creatures were by far the scariest Adam had encountered. They fell into a category of ‘not quite right’ owing to their uncanny resemblance to humans and it was deeply unsettling.
[These are Alepheria’s Wildlings,] the Eye announced after Adam prompted it.
Before the first of them could reach Gladwyn, six lay dead from Hahn’s arrows which he sent skipping along the ground. Fifteen more were already leaping from the wall to reinforce their numbers.
Gladwyn bashed his large shield into a wildling, producing a sickening crunch and killing it. James followed right behind him with a wide slash that decapitated another. He wasn’t using any magic, since these enemies were quite weak.
As they died, soul essences flew into Adam’s Wraith Lantern.
< < Relic > >
< Wraith Lantern (Rare) — When an enemy is slain nearby, their Soul Essence is absorbed | When the Relic is fully charged with sufficient Soul Essence, a Winter Wraith is summoned >
Two loud shrieks filled the air and his teammates froze as the ghosts flew away from Adam and through Gladwyn’s defence. The pair were far more coherent than he had ever seen them before, and it was clear that the Bone Creeper’s soul, as well as the souls of the Wildlings, were more potent than those of the past enemies he’d fought.
An orange flaming aura emanated off the wraiths, thanks to the fire effect of his crown, and they quickly tore through the closest set of wildlings. The moment their first slashes had torn the creatures to ribbons, they both turned red from triggering Last Stand’s Fervour, flying off with renewed speed as they aimed for the rest of the enemies coming from the wall.
“It’s a Weapon Relic of mine,” Adam told them before they could ask.
Hahn lent his barrage of arrows to the two wraiths and the wildling reinforcements were shredded before more of them could bolster their numbers.
Gladwyn, James, and Adam were able to calmly approach the barricade while the archer and wraiths went to town. Every fifth kill two more wraiths joined in on the slaughter, and before long six ghosts were summoned simultaneously.
“Your Relic is overpowered,” Gladwyn muttered.
Adam grinned.
When they made it to the wall, they had to climb over the heaps of dead wildlings that lay scattered around it. The wraiths had dissipated once no more enemies were in sight. They had contributed to half of the kills, with Hahn making up almost all of the rest. Gladwyn and James had both just gotten one each.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Hahn commented after he caught up.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Gladwyn told him.
“I’ll open the way,” James said.
He took a step towards the wall and lifted his gem-studded sword up in front of himself. Adam couldn’t tell what was happening, but he got the sense that the guy was seeing something the rest of them couldn’t, because suddenly one of the gems lit up bright-red. Then the edge of the sword glowed hot, and a haze warped the air around the blade.
With three efficient swings, an opening was made in the scrap wall, and the magic of his weapon died down. Somehow, the hole remained open despite the shoddy craftsmanship keeping the wall together. They didn’t waste a moment and hurried through.
Directly on the other side of the scrap barricade was something akin to a slum, and a few more wildlings roamed about, though they had seemingly killed most of them already. The houses here were simple shelters and huts made in the same way as the wall, and it seemed like the strange creatures had lived here until their arrival. Past the slum was a large mound of discarded bodies, though they somehow hadn’t rotted in the sun. Beyond that was a large gate set into the tower itself.
Gladwyn looked around. “I don’t see any golems,” he said.
Hahn was staring at the large mound of bodies. “Guys, that thing is… a monster.”
“That’s impossible,” James remarked.
“Let’s not rule anything out here,” Adam said.
“My appraisal skill says it’s called Alepheria’s Discarded Golem,” Hahn said. “Should we avoid it? It looks like it’s inactive.”
“No,” Adam said. “It might have treasure.”
Gladwyn gave him a look.
They both knew it had a Relic Chest inside it, thanks to Emelia, but they couldn’t outright say that without making the others suspicious.
“Let’s first deal with the stragglers,” James advised, and they spent the next few minutes killing the remaining wildlings hanging around the slum.
Given that the gate to Alepheria’s tower was right behind the mound of bodies, Adam doubted they’d even be able to get in without dealing with the golem first.
Although they defeated nine more wildlings, the wraiths summoned by Adam’s lantern did not fly off to engage with the golem. It seemed that until they ‘activated’ the enemy, it wasn’t considered a target.
Emelia had mentioned that golems and other monstrosities roamed the area beyond the tower, but had also made a point of saying that it was always slightly different, even within her own world. The thing that was guaranteed, however, was that there’d be one boss guarding the tower and that killing it would give a Relic Chest.
I need that chest and the Legendary Relic from this Stage!
The Lucky Stone that he’d gotten all the way back in Stage Two was burning a hole in his pocket, begging for him to finally use it.
< < Secret Relic > >
< Lucky Stone (Rare) — Flip to increase the rarity for the next reward options. 1 use >
Given that his Luck was over 25, which guaranteed Rare quality or higher, he had a real shot of getting the Legendary that Emelia had told him about if he used this Relic.
Adam looked at the others. They had moved past the wildlings’ huts and in the open space before them was the large mound of corpses. If they went left or right around the tower, following the scrap wall, it seemed like they might encounter other creatures, but the tower only had the one entrance before them.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Hit it with an arrow first,” Gladwyn told Hahn. “I want to know if I should even attempt to guard against this thing.”
He had a point. The mound of bodies was probably eight metres tall and twelve wide, so if it was one connected monstrosity, it would be way too big to make sense to fight normally. Even with Gladwyn’s shield, a single hit might be fatal if it was big enough.
Hahn readied an arrow, his Fiendbarb still equipped. After a nod from James, he fired it towards the top of the heap.
Thwack!
The sound was loud and wet, followed shortly after by the crunch of the crystals created by the Fiendbarb. However, the Blood Burst effect was localised to the corpse he had hit, not spreading to its neighbours.
The ground rumbled and the mound shifted.
“Oh fuck,” Adam muttered as the entire thing lifted itself up from the ground.
The corpses shifted and writhed as though pulled by strings, rising into the air and gaining five extra metres in height. Four thick legs made of overlapping and interlocked bodies held up the giant, and its body was like a ball of flesh with five arms sprouting from around it like a pinwheel. There was no head, but it was clear that the main body was the egg they needed to crack.
Adam spun up the lance barrier and fired it into the front right leg. At the same time Gladwyn and James got in close to the left leg and started hacking away. Hahn was doing the most damage due to his Fiendbarb, and the main body was quickly crystallising thanks to him spreading his shots all over its round body.
“Watch out!” Gladwyn yelled and got in front of James as the golem swung an arm down at them.
Adam unfolded his barrier and exploded the right leg, sending the golem’s attack off-course. Its arm struck the dirt five metres away from Gladwyn and shook the ground with enough force to make them all stumble, even Hahn who was standing quite far back.
“Shit, that would’ve killed me,” Gladwyn muttered.
As the right leg detached fully from the golem, eight soul essences flew into Adam’s lantern, filling it enough to trigger it twice.
The corpses all count as individual kills!
Shrieks filled the air as four wraiths flew out from the lantern, tearing into the enormous golem.
It swung for Gladwyn and James again, but this time they were prepared for it and got out of the way.
The large arms swung with enough force to create a buffet of wind that sent Hahn’s arrows flying back towards the wall behind them, but none of them were hit.
Almost as soon as they got back into it, Gladwyn and James were able to cut through the front left leg. The moment it detached, Adam’s lantern was filled up with seven souls and another pair of wraiths was summoned.
The golem collapsed in his direction and he hurried out of the way as it struck the ground with a loud crash, sending a cascade of earth out in all directions.
With six pissed off wraiths tearing into it, and Hahn and Adam focusing their attacks on the main body, the golem very quickly popped open to reveal a large brain-like glob inside its round body. It was connected with synapse-like cables to the corpses, and a single well-placed arrow from Hahn sent a cascade of the Blood Burst effect through those connections. Within seconds, its entire body was riddled with internal crystallisation that poked through the skin of the pale corpses it was made from.
A soul essence the size of a beach ball flew into Adam’s lantern and the Discarded Golem’s body unravelled, leaving behind a pink and fleshy treasure chest.
[Elite enemy defeated.]
“Good job,” Gladwyn said, clapping Hahn on the back.
“The Fiendbarb really came in handy,” Adam agreed.
“I’m glad it wasn’t a waste,” the archer replied.
“It seems we have a well-rounded team,” James remarked.
They shared a few glances between each other and the treasure chest in awkward silence.
Adam pulled out the Lucky Stone from his pocket and approached the chest. “Trust me on this one,” he told them.
Gladwyn was clearly on board, but James and Hahn still looked sceptical. However, they did not stop him. Granted, it might also have been because the corpses strewn around it were rapidly decomposing into dust, producing a foul stench.
Here goes nothing.
Adam flipped the Lucky Stone.
< < Lucky Stone Activated > >
< The rarity of options in the next reward has been raised by one level >
He reached down and grabbed the lid of the Relic Chest. It felt like warm chewing gum that someone had just spat out, but the gross sensation didn’t stop him in the slightest.
Golden light spilled out from under the lid of the chest as it slowly opened. Then it suddenly popped all the way open, making Adam stumble back a step in surprise.
The breath died in his throat as he saw the colours of the options. Purple, purple, orange.
Holy fuck!
It was a brown hood with golden stitching, a wing of bone and sown-together skin, and an obsidian hand with pearl-white nails.
< < Relics Available > >
< Mage Aspirant’s Cowl (Epic) — Allows you to see ambient Mana in your environment and absorb it >
< Grafted Wing (Epic) — Grows a wing on your body >
< Alepheria’s Mandate (Legendary) — Evolves all Summons | Allows for all Summons to be commanded >
“Is that Legendary!?” Hahn asked excitedly, coming over to Adam’s side in a hurry.
He started to reach out for it, but Gladwyn blocked him with his shield.
“Hey!” he protested.
“Adam has the Choice Ring,” Gladwyn said. “He can pick two Relics.”
“I want the Cowl,” James said. “If you pick that one as the second option, then I will give you my Choice Ring. You can then pick two things for the next chest that Gladwyn and Hahn can have.”
Even though Hahn had done the most in this fight, Adam didn’t wait for his approval and grabbed the Legendary. The orange stone on his Choice Ring glowed brightly and he reached out to grab the Cowl as well. With his choices confirmed, the last option vanished and the light in the ring disappeared, not even a glow left behind.
Emelia told me to fight anyone for this if it showed up. And she was right. There’s no way this isn’t super powerful!
The two Relics landed in his arms. The black hand was cold and hard like glass, and the hood was folded neatly.
[You are already wearing a Relic on your available ring glove slot. Would you like to unequip Choice Ring and replace it with Alepheria’s Mandate?]
“Yes,” he said and a cold jab shot up through his right arm like a spike of ice injected through his palm.
Adam could somehow still feel his hand and its fingers, even though it had been entirely replaced. The Choice Ring appeared in his left palm on top of the hood.
James took both and gave Adam his own ring in return.
“What does it do?” Hahn asked, clearly very curious.
Adam flexed the fingers of his new hand. Even though he could still feel everything like normal, there was something off about it, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
He put the Choice Ring into his pocket and pulled out his spell-tome, summoning his two barriers. They were completely different from before, having turned a midnight-blue colour and losing most of their transparency. Even though he couldn’t see their stats, he knew they had to be stronger.
I almost want to use the Fetish of Sloth to see what on Earth the imps would evolve into.
“Your spell is a different colour?” Hahn asked. “That’s it?”
Without needing to use his manipulation, he exercised the power inherent in Alepheria’s Mandate. The two barriers turned into tubes that danced through a pattern in the air in front of him, moving with a kind of precision that would be impossible for him to replicate with one, let alone two simultaneously.
“That’s cool,” James said, already wearing the Cowl. It was clear he was very interested in anything that allowed him to get Mana, but Adam had the sense that there was a lot unsaid in the Cowl’s brief description.
With another thought, Adam made the barriers orbit him while shaping into shields similar to Gladwyn’s. Their movements were quite a lot faster now, before even being fused together, but he couldn’t tell if they had doubled in their stats or gone up by 50% or what.
He had the barriers unfurl and go horizontal.
“Try to sit on them,” Adam said.
Hahn was the first to try it, and to Adam’s glee the barrier held without breaking, meaning it had gained a lot more health.
If I fuse them together now, they should be truly powerful.
Gladwyn and James sat on the other one and it immediately cracked, triggering Last Stand’s Fervour. Unsurprisingly, both of them quickly got off again.
“Does the Relic do anything else?” Gladwyn asked, coming closer to look at Adam’s new hand.
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied.
“This Cowl is quite something,” James said, looking at the red-glowing barrier that was about to expire.
Before it vanished, he reached out and did a grasping gesture.
The barrier was immediately absorbed into him, and his sheathed gem-studded sword suddenly glowed with the Fervour effect, as well as the fire from Adam’s crown.
James pulled the sword out to look at it.
“Fascinating,” he said.
That Cowl is incredibly powerful if it can absorb effects like that, Adam thought to himself. If it wasn’t for my crown, then I’d want to take it from him.
“You should be careful with that hood,” Gladwyn told James.
He nodded. “I was just thinking it may have unintended side-effects. I’ll try not to absorb anything clearly volatile.”
The Last Stand’s Fervour vanished from his blade, but the flame effect was still there.
Ahead of them awaited the gate to the tower, but already it seemed that the power of their team had gone up a lot, all thanks to the Lucky Stone and Adam’s high Luck.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m next on the rewards list and then Hahn, right?” Gladwyn asked.
“Why do you get to go before me?” the archer protested.
“He saved us from the Bone Creeper,” Adam reminded him.
“Oh, right… But after him, it’s my turn. Right?”
“Of course,” Adam replied.
“With Adam’s Luck, I think it’s a good idea to have him open all the Relic Chest,” James said. “The Choice Ring will also let him pick two options again next time.”
Hahn nodded, easily satisfied with James’ solution.
“I wonder what that Grafted Wing was about,” Gladwyn said.
James looked up at the tower. “Seems like body modifications are pretty on theme for this place,” he commented.
“I wouldn’t mind a tail or something,” Hahn said, sounding quite serious.
“Maybe it’s possible to get extra limbs to hold more Relics,” Adam speculated.
“Let’s keep going,” Gladwyn said. “I’m excited to see what else lies in wait for us.”
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2025-06-09 01:38:09 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 3
Vagan grinned to himself. He had actually managed to unlock a skill associated with his oil affinity.
But why is this one based on Charisma as well?
With the two new points he’d gained in Intelligence, he could feel some invisible part of himself expanding to create more room.
He continued practising with a smaller amount of oil for what must have been hours, manipulating and lifting a palmful repeatedly until he felt exhaustion draw near, and then devouring mushrooms to slowly bring mana back through Magical Appetite.
Eventually he unlocked another skill.
< < Skill Unlocked > >
< Mana Capacity >
< Scales with Intelligence >
Makes you able to store more mana in your body.
Finally. This will help a lot.
And it doesn’t scale with Charisma for once.
Still, I wish I had a way to actually see what my mana was or how much each of my actions consume.
Before getting Mana Capacity, he was able to shape and lift a small blob of oil about five times until nearing exhaustion. Afterwards, it was up to seven.
Vagan figured he might finally have enough mana to pull off more than just the simple shape-and-lift trick, but he first took his time refilling his reserves with mushrooms.
It was kind of bizarre and a little worrying how using magic seemed to hollow out his stomach, robbing him off the food he had just eaten, but since he was making progress and food was plentiful around him, he was not too worried about starvation.
Still, if I didn’t have Affliction Eater and Magical Appetite, then this kind of rapid progress would not have been possible.
Not to mention, I’m fairly sure there’s some kind of affliction tied to mana exhaustion, but since I’m immune, I haven’t been reduced to a drooling mess by the repeated blackouts.
Though there was no way to know that this was actually what was happening, it would explain why he was able to spring back so quickly after exhausting himself and passing out. Given the headaches and nosebleeds, it was all but certain any normal person learning magic would severely debilitate themselves following Vagan’s training regimen. The confluence of the Goddess’ gift, Niamh’s curse, and the magically-infused environment she’d left in her wake, provided him with the means to rapidly grow. He just hoped he was not doing permanent damage to himself in the process.
Once he felt full and was sure his mana had replenished, Vagan finally attempted to cast a proper spell.
A small puddle had formed under him from the many successive attempts and he focused his mind on it, quickly pulling all of the oil into a ball the size of his fist. With a beckoning gesture, the ball lifted up to chest height.
The tinnitus reappeared in his right ear and Vagan did not waste a moment, punching his fist forward. The ball of oil shot away from him as though he had physically spiked it, flying eight or nine metres before striking the ground and popping, showering the white grass-like mould with black spatters.
Vagan stumbled back a step, steading his hands on his knees to try and stop himself from collapsing again.
< < Attribute Growth > >
< Intelligence 3 => 4 >
From how Benja had talked about his progress, mainly with Strength and Vitality, Vagan knew that the single-digit progress was quite fast. Still, the most Benja had ever accomplished in a day was a growth of two points. Vagan had already surpassed his record, making him certain that magic was unlikely to be designed for this kind of training.
He continued practising with the oil ball spell until he was able to perform it without staggering afterwards. It took him until the sun was about to set, since refilling with the mushrooms was not that fast. Still, at the end of it he was rewarded with yet another attribute point.
< < Attribute Growth > >
< Intelligence 4 => 5 >
Vagan gathered mushrooms into his lattice net and slung it over his shoulder, chewing on a bright-blue cap while he walked around the ruins of Sirk, looking for one of the detritivores to use for target practice.
All he found were mushrooms and mould however, as well as a few stones that had survived the storm of decay. Most of them looked to be from fireplaces, but there was somehow an entire basement below what had been a tavern that was still intact. He hoped for a moment that he might find people huddled together down there, but it was completely barren, all the inventory rotted away and devoured by the monsters.
Regardless, it was a lucky find. It was the early weeks of Harvest season and thus the temperature could still be slightly cold at night. Having shelter below ground might benefit him, but it would not be warm, so he was still going to freeze.
He thought again about how Niamh had clad herself in mushrooms, and after stashing his net of food, he went around town looking for materials to use as clothes and improvised bedding. The wild nature of Niamh’s power meant that there were a near limitless variety to all the fungus that covered Sirk. Granted, the white mould grass and rust-orange spores were the most dominant.
After an hour, when the sun’s light was entirely gone and the spore cloud became more like a haze, Vagan had found himself a large puke-green puffball mushroom that was squishy enough that it could serve as a pillow. As for clothes, he had no luck, but he had managed to learn that one of the towering types of mushrooms could have their stems unfurled like rolled-up linen, and this would serve as both his bedding and duvet. However, it had the texture of sticky rubber and smelled like spoiled milk.
He looked around at the little hideout he had made himself in the tavern’s basement and felt somewhat proud of himself. He had inserted glowing neon-green and yellow toadstools into the cracks in the stone walls, giving his shelter a tiny bit of light, which helped stave off the night’s all-encompassing darkness.
In Sirk, night time was properly dark. The kind of dark that made you fear leaving the town’s walls. Though, without the light pollution that had been a constant in his previous life, it was possible to gaze up into the sky and see a universe of stars and cosmic bodies. The sight always reminded him of his meeting with the Goddess.
Vagan lay down on his mushroom bedding in the corner of the basement furthest from the steps and put his head on the puffball. As he pulled the duvet over himself, it finally hit him.
He was alone.
Entirely alone.
There were no sounds of people outside.
No sounds of animals.
The wind was barely even audible.
It struck him then that since coming to this world, he had never ever slept alone. Not truly alone.
The orphanage had been full of children and adults, never farther than a shout away, and their voices had always murmured softly through the wooden walls.
Vagan had not realised until this moment how much he had treasured that feeling.
In his past life there had been countless nights where he felt this way, but in this new life it was the first time.
And in the silence, his mind began to churn, replaying everything that had happened.
He curled up under his improvised duvet that smelled of spoiled milk, begging for exhaustion to claim him.
But instead he started to see the images of that storm of decay, of the last undignified moments of his friends, and the hateful woman who had brought the sickness with her.
In his lonely despair, he begged to receive a skill that let him shut out all the bad memories and thoughts, but it was no use.
Vagan awoke with a start, his head buzzing with remnant nightmares that immediately slipped from his mind the moment he tried to recall their events.
Every muscle in his body was sore and he realised that he was lying on the cold hard stones of the basement. His bedding and puffball pillow were gone and only a small bit of his duvet remained. Instead of the fungus was a black puddle of oil around him.
Vagan sat up with a groan.
Am I going to wake up in such a mess every day going forward…?
There was one upside however, and that was the fact that he could be quite certain that his oil was potent as a corrosive and toxic element.
If it can dissolve mushrooms with ease, then I should be able to use it against those giant insects.
But before he went out hunting, he had one last place in Sirk he needed to visit.
The orphanage.
Vagan gathered the net of mushrooms, which he had fortunately put far enough away that it was not destroyed by the oil, and then he left the basement.
Outside was the same sight as the day before. Swirling clouds of rust-orange spores were carried around on the wind and towering mushrooms rose from the ruins of buildings while the ground was covered in the fuzzy white mould grass.
He walked across the town, passing through where buildings would have barred his way before, until he reached the area where the orphanage had once stood.
His home of nearly sixteen years was gone. Not even a speck of it remained and now a cluster of tall white-grey trumpet-like mushrooms took its place. They were like conquerors laying claim to something that was not theirs, and he hated the sight of them.
Perhaps it was foolish, but Vagan spent the next two hours shooting his simple oil ball spell at them, until the entire cluster collapsed and started to dissolve. He gained nothing for his efforts, except the need to refill his net with more food for his mana, but he still felt a sense of accomplishment.
Though the two-storey orphanage had left no trace of its existence, since it did not even have a simple fireplace whose stones had survived it, Vagan still spent a while rummaging through the soft earth for any remnants of his life. He knew from what he had seen that not everything was devoured by the detritivores and decay, and there was one memento he was especially eager to retrieve.
The orphanage had had a basement, but it had been built entirely from wood, and aside from a small indent in the ground there was no sign of it. However, this spot helped Vagan orient himself and enabled him to find his way to Benja’s room which had been on the first floor. Vagan’s original room had been on the ground floor, but after his best friend moved out, he had swapped to his room.
After maybe an hour of mindlessly digging in the spot where his room had been, Vagan finally found a tiny sign of his own existence in the form of a flat polished rock that he and Benja had fought over in the past, but which Vagan had eventually won in a foot race.
Not long after locating the stone did he find the thing he had been seeking. It was a pale ring the colour of seashells and which had a golden pearl attached to it in a socket and fastened with tiny claws.
Vagan held the stone and ring to his chest and wept. These were truly the last mementos of his friend and of the childhood they had spent together.
They had stolen the ring from a Merchant in the market shortly after they had first gotten acquainted, back when Vagan had been eleven. What they had not known until after their robbery, was that the ring was worth more than forty-thousand Regals, enough money to buy two or three houses in Sirk.
The fear of the punishment they were due had made the two boys form a pact together, and they had hidden the stolen ring in a hole in the bottom of Benja’s bed frame, the same bed frame that Vagan used after his friend became a Guard. It was quite literally the thing that had cemented their friendship.
The ring’s owner was long gone now and the evidence of the crime likewise erased. At the time, Lisbeth had rightly assumed Vagan was involved, but her error had been to focus on searching his room and not Benja’s, allowing them to get away with it for all those years.
He got up from the dirt and slid the ring over the middle finger on his right hand. The pearl seemed to almost glow in the sunlight that filtered through the orange spore clouds. He did not have any pockets to store the polished stone in, but he was able to quickly fashion a kind of string out of the roots of one of the mushrooms in his net, and he wrapped this around the middle of the stone, producing a pendant of sorts, which he slipped over his neck.
For the next ten minutes he gathered enough mushrooms to refill his net, and then he set off towards the gate of Sirk, finally venturing beyond the town to find out where Niamh had gone.
He thought for a moment that he could find more jewellery if he rummaged around the remains of the market, but there was no one here he could sell it to, and even if he did find a Merchant, he was unlikely to be able to sell anything with his new horrific appearance.
Vagan reached the town gate and looked at what it had been reduced to. The towering gate had been built from wood and iron braces, and as a result nothing was left behind. The gatehouse above it had collapsed and created a barrier that he had to climb over.
He paused before reaching the top of the obstruction and spared a glance over his shoulder at what his home had become. He had not gone through the garrison in the western corner, but he also knew that he was unlikely to find anything that had survived, since the Guards relied on leather and cloth armour, and used iron weapons. The garrison’s main building had a foundation of stone, but the rest of it was built of wood, so there was little point going there.
But maybe there’s something worth finding in the rubble and dirt, he considered.
After a moment of hesitation, Vagan shook his head.
No, I need to leave it behind me. My true objective lies beyond these walls.
Part of him was simply worried because this was his first time leaving his hometown. He had seen the world outside a few times when he had stood upon the walls, but he had never set foot out there.
Vagan clutched his stone pendant and pushed himself over the rubble, finally leaving Sirk behind.
-----------------------------
That's all you get for now, folks. The first three chapters are roughly 13.5k words combined, but the rest would probably end up around 2-3k long.
Anyway, this story probably won't get new chapters on here for the next few months, unless I end up writing a bunch when time permits.
I'd love to hear what you all thought though, so please leave a comment below.
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2025-06-06 22:29:07 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2
Vagan had never heard of anyone with the Accursed Role before but knew it did not bode well.
That woman called me a misbegotten child of the Goddess.
He spun around, looking for any trace of her, but found no trail.
What he did find, however, was that towering mushrooms rose from beyond the walls of Sirk and everywhere in sight was covered in fuzzy mould, looking like snow and grass mixed together.
Vagan looked down around his feet, the place where Benja and Sam had died. There were no sign of them. Nothing for him to take and bury.
He swallowed down the urge to vomit, tasting the oil that filled his mouth and throat.
When he tried to speak the black liquid dribbled from his lips and down his chin, and he was unable to form coherent words.
His stomach was like a gnawing pit, and he started to wander down what had once been the main street leading from the market to the chapel.
The town was nothing like what it had been. Houses were replaced by fungal growths that created lattices of interwoven mushroom stalks and had wide-brimmed caps casting large shadows on the ground. The dirt underfoot was unseen beneath the mould, but he felt how its texture had changed. It too had undergone a type of decay, becoming soft and finely granulated. Though perhaps the large worms and detritivore insects had been the cause and not the decay itself.
A part of Vagan’s mind thought there had to be a connection between the fungus, insects, and rapid decay. Perhaps the airborne sickness was more than it seemed, and he wondered if this was the effect of some foul magic cast by the woman who had cursed him.
She said I was cursed before she gave me her ‘gift’, but what did she mean by that?
Is it my inability to succumb to this disease that makes me cursed?
If the Goddess is the one who cursed me, did my Role come from her?
But if that’s the case, then why did I receive the Role only after my tongue was turned to oil and my body devastated?
Vagan had so many questions swirling around his mind, but the woman had gone and the Goddess was deaf to his pleas.
He knew he was in a state of shock. The sight of his best friend unravelling before his eyes was seared into his mind. But it did not feel real.
In time, he would accept it as fact, but for now it was disconnected from reality in his mind.
It was not the first time he had experienced such a feeling.
Back before he had become Vagan, when he went by the name Jack Woods, he had accidentally killed a man. He had been a lousy debtor who had lost his family their house to his gambling addiction, and Jack’s boss had been more than willing to step in and loan him more, even though he must have known the sucker would never end up paying it back.
Jack had been sent to collect whatever valuables the man possessed after he defaulted on his loan. But he had fought back, finding some dignity amongst the dregs of his life, and Jack had been forced to defend himself. He had hit the guy a bit too hard with his baseball bat, knocking him into the corner of a table. Blood had been everywhere and Jack had left in a panic. Somehow, the police had never caught him, but he still remembered the feeling.
It was similar to what Vagan felt now. He had not killed his friend, but he had survived without him, and though it seemed so unreal in this moment, he knew the guilt would eventually come and eat away at him.
If only Benja had already gone to Himmelshaft like Sam wanted, he thought.
If only I had taken the bird deaths seriously and urged Sam to evacuate the town!
There was no way to go back and change it now, but it did not stop him from speculating on all the what-ifs.
The sight of the chapel pulled Vagan out of the dark spiral in his mind.
It had been built from sand-coloured stones, same as the walls, but it had not survived fully intact, as several giant mushrooms had broken through its roof and collapsed its square bell tower.
The large door that aspiring youths would go through to receive their Role was rotted away, any remnants devoured by the giant detritivores. Even the iron door handles were gone without a trace.
Vagan walked through the opening and climbed over the collapsed part of the roof, setting his bare feet down on sand. The sensation surprised him for a moment, until he remembered that it had been Thor’s Day, the day before the week’s Role Assignment ceremony was to take place. There had only been one sixteen year old youth who was meant to walk down the path to the altar this week.
It suddenly hit him that he would never again hear Lisbeth’s voice or feel the warmth of her embrace. All the unfortunate orphans would never find their purpose. All the residents with their hopes and dreams… They would never know what the future would have brought.
“I’ll kill her,” Vagan croaked, oil dribbling from his chin and staining the sand under him.
He walked the path to the altar, pretending that he was taking part in the Role Assignment. Only a sparse bit of light came through the ruined ceiling, since the large mushrooms sprouting up through the floor shaded the holes they had made in the roof.
As he reached the end of the path he knelt before the altar. The statue upon it was made of materials that did not decay, though the gold had tarnished.
Vagan looked up to meet the gaze of her helmeted face, but found that her head had been torn from her neck. The statue of the Goddess was locked in a posture that suggested she was reaching out for someone standing in front of her.
That woman took her head, I’m sure of it.
He thought that maybe it was the entire reason she had come through here.
Though her words had carried conviction, Vagan could not understand why she hated the Goddess so much.
“She sought to make you twisted and wrong.”
“She meant for you to become a monster same as me.”
What did she mean by that?
Was I meant to turn into someone like her? To become someone whose existence condemned those around me?
I suppose it would be a fitting punishment, given the way the Goddess spoke of my past life.
And that incarnation of decay sought to prevent that.
Regardless of her motives, it did not change Vagan’s mind. He would kill her and avenge his friends, his substitute mother, the people of Sirk, and the life he would never get to live now.
But that is why she let me live…
She wants me to kill her, but perhaps I am not strong enough to do it yet, even if I am immune to her power.
Vagan pretended that the statue above him was not headless.
He pretended that it was his Assignment ceremony and its gold-veined hand touched his head.
His eyes lit up with a dark light, midnight blue or maybe even black, with gold lettering spelling out who he was down to his constituent attributes.
< < Vagan of Sirk > >
< Accursed >
< Strength — 3 >
< Agility — 4 >
< Vitality — 2 >
< Intelligence — 1 >
< Willpower — 2 >
< Arcane — 1 >
< Charisma — 4 >
< Perception — 2 >
< Luck — 1 >
So this is what Benja meant when he was always talking about his Strength and Vitality.
I wonder why my Charisma is so high.
It seemed like the first three attributes were connected, as well as the middle three, but the last three were hard to see a pattern between.
How would I train Luck? And what is the purpose of Intelligence if there is a Perception attribute as well? Is Intelligence not associated with cleverness perhaps and serves a different purpose instead?
Like magic?
Arcane sounds very magical in nature, and I’m sure Willpower is somehow related given that the order seems to be three sets of three, since otherwise the list would be sorted according to the alphabet or highest-to-lowest.
There was another thing Benja and Sam had always talked about. They called them skills.
He concentrated and the black screen before his eyes scrolled, the golden lettering of his attributes replaced with new text.
< Skills >
< Charm I >
< Endurance I >
< Fleetfoot I >
< Lurk I >
< Swordplay I >
< Thievery I >
Sam told me that I might have some skills to start with because of our intense training, but as expected, they have not progressed at all, since growth is impossible before Role Assignment.
Not sure where I have Charm from though.
The moment he thought about the skill, it popped up with more detail.
< Charm >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Charisma >
Makes you capable of charming people you encounter, earning more beneficial treatment over time by interacting with them repeatedly.
Did I get this because I made people grow to like me despite my appearance?
In his past life, charisma was not something he could have been said to possess. And he was unlikely to charm anyone now that most of his body looked diseased and his eyes, hair, and tongue were warped by the woman’s cursed gift.
Vagan went through his other skills, trying to figure out what he had to work with.
< Endurance >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Vitality >
Makes you less susceptible to fatigue from physical activity.
< Fleetfoot >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Agility >
Makes you faster while running.
< Lurk >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Agility >
Makes you harder to detect while sneaking and hiding in shadows.
< Swordplay >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Strength & Agility >
Makes your sword handling more precise and powerful, and fighting with a sword tires you out less quickly.
< Thievery >
< Rank I >
< Scales with Agility >
Makes your attempts at stealing and lockpicking harder to detect.
Vagan did not see anything about resistance to decay magic nor whatever was causing him to vomit out crude oil.
He tried to think about curses, but it changed nothing about the dark screen and its golden text.
She called it a gift, he then recalled.
That word brought up new text.
< Gifts >
< Affliction Immunity >
< Niamh’s Benevolence >
He pulled up their descriptions.
< Affliction Immunity >
< A gift imparted to you at birth by the Goddess of Light >
Renders you immune to all afflictions.
< Niamh’s Benevolence >
< A gift imparted to you by Niamh’s touch >
Transforms your tongue into oil, providing your body with a magical anchor for the Oil Affinity.
The toxic effects inherent to this gift are negated by your Affliction Immunity.
That woman’s name is Niamh, he realised.
How is this curse supposed to be benevolent though? And what does it mean by magical anchor?
He looked up at the headless statue for answers, but whatever life or power it might have held before was now gone.
Niamh said that her gift would make me strong. Strong enough to kill her.
Perhaps she’s unable to die in her current state, or maybe it is simply that I am the first person to survive being near her and the decay she exudes.
But how is her ‘Benevolence’ meant to save me from the Goddess?
Vagan got back to his feet, sparing the statue another glance before stepping off to the right side of the sandy path and returning to the chapel’s entrance, walking on the side of an adult. Even though it was make-belief, this was as close as he would get to a real Assignment ceremony. His heart pounded in his chest at the indignity of being robbed the chance to have this meaningful coming-of-age ceremony for real.
Niamh will pay for this. All of this.
He let out a deep breath.
I need to figure out how to use this magical anchor and Oil Affinity, but first I must find something to eat.
There were plenty of mushrooms growing all over Sirk now, and with his inability to suffer afflictions, of which disease and decay were clearly included, it seemed likely that he could eat the fungal growths to sustain himself.
Hopefully poison, toxin, and venom are included under the ‘affliction’ term as well.
He climbed over the ruined chapel roof and walked down the stone steps, coming to a stop near a cluster of small mushrooms that sprouted from the side of the building. They were greyish-white and shaped like pencils.
Vagan pulled them out of the crack in the stone and lifted them up to his mouth.
If I’m wrong and this kills me, then I’ll return to the Goddess.
I wonder what she would say and how she would judge me now?
I’ve had a good childhood and was able to start on the journey towards becoming a proper man.
Maybe she would be pleased with my progress?
He had nothing left to live for at any rate, so he chomped down on the mushrooms, shoving them all into his mouth and chewing them to a pulp before swallowing.
All he tasted was the oil covering his mouth and throat in a greasy film.
He waited a few moments, but nothing happened.
His stomach still felt hollow, so he searched for other mushrooms to eat.
Over the next several minutes he located and devoured eight different types of mushrooms. Besides the white-grey pencils, he also ate black bells, dirty-yellow puffballs, straw-brown stars, white-and-blue cones, fuzzy red-brown half-moons, small thin umbrellas with white tops and yellow stems, and translucent-green ones. He even tried eating a handful of the fuzzy grass-like mould.
It was all quite filling but he could not taste anything besides the oil, but at least they did not make him feel sick in any way.
I wonder what Benja would say if he saw me gorging myself like this.
He would probably say it was fitting.
Once, when the orphanage had received a lot of food donations from one of the Merchants, Vagan had snuck into the kitchen and stuffed himself so full of food that he puked. Lisbeth’s punishment had been like the wrath of God and he swore he could still feel the sting of the spanking she’d given him. Benja had laughed his ass off, which had somehow gotten him in trouble as well.
Vagan grinned at the memory.
Suddenly the black screen and gold text appeared before his eyes with an announcement, vanishing a couple seconds later.
< < Skill Unlocked > >
< Affliction Eater >
< Scales with Charisma >
Makes you able to gain sustenance from afflicted food.
Why does that scale with Charisma?
Vagan could not recall Sam and Benja ever talking about the attribute, but he thought for sure it did not apply to something like eating. That seemed more likely to be associated with Vitality.
Charisma is what Merchants use. It must be. They always seemed so approachable, despite all the yelling they did in the market.
I wonder if they had a skill to avoid getting a sore throat.
He thought about how he had been able to inspect his skills and gifts by focusing on them and brought up his attributes again. The moment he focused on Strength, its description appeared.
< Strength >
< 3 >
Governs physical power.
Vagan quickly went through the rest.
< Agility >
< 4 >
Governs movement and physical precision.
< Vitality >
< 2 >
Governs physical health, endurance, and resistances.
< Intelligence >
< 1 >
Governs magical power and mana.
< Willpower >
< 2 >
Governs mental strength and magical resistances.
< Arcane >
< 1 >
Governs magical adroitness, ritual efficacy, and afflictions.
< Charisma >
< 4 >
Governs personal agreeableness and persuasion.
< Perception >
< 2 >
Governs personal astuteness and ingenuity.
< Luck >
< 1 >
Governs personal fortune.
I wasn’t wrong, Affliction Eater definitely shouldn’t scale with Charisma.
If I’m going to use the magical anchor tied to the Oil Affinity, then it will rely on my Intelligence, which is as low as it gets. But since it’s tied to mana and magical power, I should be able to raise Intelligence by training the magical anchor.
He was unsure how to actually do it though, and he had never even heard about oil magic before. It sounded absurd. But he at least knew that he was not in short supply when it came to oil, since his body overflowed with it. Having no other idea on how to get started, he simply spat out a glob of the dark oil that swirled around inside his mouth.
It had a viscosity closer to syrup than water, but still eagerly ran down his hand and through his fingers if he let it. Cupping his palm to stop it from all spilling to the ground, Vagan focused his mind on the glob of crude oil.
Almost immediately it shifted under his gaze.
It’s actually working!
He shut out all other stimuli and concentrated entirely on the oil in his palm. A tinnitus whine filled his ears, but the oil was slowly coming together into a ball.
With one final push, he managed to lift it up into the air, but then it popped like a balloon and he collapsed to his knees, a feeling of immense exhaustion overcoming him.
Something dribbled from his right nostril. It was oil but tinge slightly red.
A nosebleed? Guess it’s good to know I still have blood in my veins, even if it’s also infected…
I think using mana really puts a strain on the mind, he realised, feeling a splitting headache.
The tinnitus slowly died down and he shifted to a cross-legged posture before trying again.
This time he managed to lift a small glob of oil from the ground and half a metre into the air before it popped and a stinging pain shot through his head.
“Argh,” he groaned.
I think the oil made my voice deeper.
I sound like a forty-year-old chain smoker now…
After the headache died down a little, he went for it a third time. Before he could even lift the blob into the air, his vision flickered rapidly and he lost consciousness.
Vagan came to in a puddle of black oil, half his face submerged in it.
His stomach felt hollow and empty, so he got to his feet unsteadily and looked about for something to eat.
Nearby was a tree-sized mushroom with a flesh-coloured triangular cap that had short hair-like tendrils hanging below it. He tore at the thick stem, managing to pull off a large chunk with relative ease. When he bit into it, the texture reminded him of a school eraser, but with some persistent grinding and gnawing, he was able to devour the whole thing.
He was glad his teeth had not fallen out from his curse, since he had an irrational fear of losing teeth, which had made reliving childhood a harrowing experience. The only thing worse than his milk teeth falling out had been the second coming of puberty. Even if he was an old soul trapped in a child’s body, the onslaught of teenage hormones had been impossible to guard himself against.
At least with my Accursed body it now seems to be gone, along with any sense of normality…
As soon as Vagan was done eating, he immediately started to feel better.
Then the black screen and gold text returned.
< < Skill Unlocked > >
< Magical Appetite >
< Scales with Charisma >
Makes you able to absorb a small portion of the latent mana within the raw materials you consume.
Again, why is it scaling with Charisma?
But I suppose this will help me with my practice, since it seems that I am quite low on actual mana, given that two and a half attempts to manipulate oil is enough to make me go night-night.
Since these mushrooms were created by some kind of magic, they probably have a lot of mana inside them, he theorised.
Before he continued practising with the oil magic again, Vagan went about collecting many different mushrooms, using one of the interwoven lattices that grew up against the city wall as a net.
I should find something to wear as well… he thought.
Niamh was wearing clothes made of mushrooms, but maybe those were growing from her body?
There was no one around him though and he got the feeling that beyond Sirk was more of the fungus-infested wasteland, so propriety was the least of his worries right now.
After stocking up on many different mushrooms, Vagan went over to where Benja and Sam had perished. The only sign that he was in the right spot was the large puddle of reflective oil.
He hoped that they were watching over him and seeing how hard he was working to grow his strange new power. He wanted them to know that he would avenge them, even if that was exactly what Niamh desired of him.
Vagan dropped his improvised net of foodstuffs and focused his mind on the large puddle. He reached out with his hands, imagining that they were aiding him in lifting up the oil and forming it into a ball.
Tinnitus filled his ears, a jabbing headache manifested above his right eye, blood drippled gleefully from his nostrils, and his vision flickered.
But the crude oil responded to his command, forming into a ball the size of his head that lifted a few centimetres off the ground.
Vagan’s knees buckled and the floating sphere popped and cascaded its dark liquid back down into the puddle. He caught himself with his hands and quickly stuffed a mushroom into his mouth, chewing and swallowing as fast as he could.
Somehow, he managed to avoid passing out again.
< < Attribute Growth > >
< Intelligence 1 => 3 >
< < Skill Unlocked > >
< Oleumancy >
< Scales with Charisma >
Makes you able to wield and manipulate the Oil element using mana.
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2025-06-06 22:03:51 +0000 UTC
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This is a new Isekai story I've been working on for a few weeks. I don't have any plans to launch it until at least February of next year, but I wanted to show y'all the current draft of the story's intro.
It's meant to be Grimbright, i.e. a dark world with hope in it. It also involves a slightly unusual system, as well as a world based around Roles, similar in a way to F-Tier Assassin. My plan is to keep working on this between other stories when I have time, and have the entire book 1 finished before I release it anywhere, since that's not really something I've done before and it has kind of screwed me over since I haven't had a solid backlog and ended up stressed as a result.
Anyway, I hope you will let me know what you think.
Opened this up to free members.
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Chapter 1
Jack could not move. He could not scream. He could not defend himself from every kick to his stomach and head that rocked his world. His blood drippled eagerly from the many stab wounds in his body. Every beat of silence between the impacts threatened to pull him down into a yawning abyss, only for him to get yanked back to reality by every new sharp explosion of pain.
Shouting came from down the street, but it was like bubbles in water and incomprehensible to his mangled ears. A dull tinnitus whine accompanied the throbbing migraine pressing his brain against his skull, and he knew his life was numbered in seconds.
Jack could not remember why he had come here. The purpose had already slipped from his mind. But he knew that today was not meant to go this way. It had just been another Tuesday.
His three attackers vanished and he started drifting off.
But then a man’s voice pulled him back from the devouring abyss, though his words were just bubbles in water.
It’s too late, Jack thought.
The world skipped and he suddenly saw boots all around him through his right eye. His left was shut and would not open. Something flashed nearby, a strobing blue light. Hands grabbed him and his world quaked as they moved him onto his back.
He wanted to cough, but he was unable. The world through his right eye was blurry, every figure a smudge of movement and every light a long stain.
Jack’s world skipped again and he suddenly had a ceiling above his head. He felt small impacts up through his back, each tiny shock flaring up the pain.
Nearby, something beeped loudly and two voices preceded the arrival of hands grasping him. The beeping started to fade into blissful silence and he could no longer feel the pain in his body.
Finally.
***
Jack shot upright with a gasp. For a split-second he thought he had been dreaming, but then he looked around. The ground was hard and slippery like glass, and in front of him stood a radiant figure, staring down at where he sat.
It was clearly inhuman. Its head was encased in a helmet of yellow bone with a seam running down the middle. Two large horns sprouted from the sides of the helmet and up into the air. Its neck was long and thin, running down to equally-thin shoulders, and its exposed skin was dark-grey and dotted with eyes that had black sclera and golden pupils. The rest of its torso and down to the inverted knees of its tall body were obscured by two large wings, but he got the sense that it was insectoid in appearance. Its arms were skeletally thin with sharp elbow joints and long claw-like fingers. The wings were like those belonging to a moth, and their golden scales glittered like treasure. From the back of the otherworldly creature sprouted four more, splayed out like the fingers of a Godly hand.
Around them were a dark haze like chemical smog, and it was only when Jack tried to stand that it hit him just how freakishly tall the entity was. Then he saw what they were standing on. It was like the entire observable cosmos was trapped below the glass floor. The sight gave him an overwhelming sense of vertigo, as though the yawning cosmic abyss would drag him down. One wrong move and he was certain he would break through and fall into the void of outer space. He suddenly realised that his fate was entirely in the hands of the radiant being standing before him.
Jack had never been religious, a trait inherited from his father no doubt, but he was certain this was the arbiter of his afterlife. All that was missing was a scale upon which to weigh his heart against a feather. He bore no illusions about the odds being in his favour if he was to be judged on the merits of his character.
For some reason, he felt an overwhelming sense of clarity and could now recall the events of his death in detail. It really had just been another Tuesday. He had scheduled a meeting with one of the debtors who owed his boss money. Jack had not brought any weapons with him, which had turned out to be foolish since the guy had brought his friends as backup. Normally he would consider his odds in a three-on-one quite good, even without his trusty baseball bat, but it had been game over once he was stabbed in the abdomen.
It was just part of the risk of what Jack did for a living, and there was certainly a long list of people who had wanted him dead. That it had been some loser with a gambling addiction and bad luck was a cruel irony, but such was the way of karma.
His father had always said, “Tragedy is the flavour of life and joy is a rare spice.”
That phrase pretty much summed up Jack’s lousy experience, but then his father had always been wise beyond his years. Not that it did him much good in the prison he was locked up in last Jack had seen him.
“If you’re going to judge my soul, would you mind just getting it over with?” Jack asked the tall winged creature.
If not because he had just recently experienced death, he might have felt some trepidation about facing down the thing in front of him. But dying had a way of making a man fearless, though it was unlikely to benefit him in the afterlife.
“Jack Woods,” spoke the entity, clearly enunciating his full name. It surprised him that the voice was feminine and honey sweet. He realised then he was looking at a Goddess of some kind. “Thou are a murderer, a sinner, a liar, and a misfortune upon those closest to thee. Thy soul would belong to the Void if not for the kindness thou showed towards children and animals. As thine adjudicator, I have a fitting punishment for thee.”
“I knew it, I’m going to Hell, aren’t I?” Jack replied. He had heard it said enough times to know it was probably true.
“The Hell that thou believe in does not exist. Souls traverse the coil until the Void takes them. Thou will also traverse the coil once more, born anew. The life I have chosen for thee is one of hardship and strife. At its end we will meet again and I shall once more render thy judgement.”
Jack barely had enough time to try and comprehend the meaning of the words before the glassy floor broke into glittering dust. He fell into the universe below his feet, unravelling as he plummeted and shedding his mortal body.
Then darkness ruled.
***
Before he knew it, Jack found himself in the body of a three year old. It was his body, sure enough, though he had no memory of the years that had come before. However, there was some hazy concept of his new world instilled into him through those experience he could not recall. His former self still swam about within his head, and it seemed a cruel trick of the Goddess to allow him to remember his past life.
Almost as soon as he had gained full self-awareness, he realised his situation was rather bleak. He was but one amongst dozens of orphans in an old rundown orphanage overseen by a strict but caring woman named Lisbeth. Other women often aided this headmistress with cooking, cleaning, and breastfeeding the youngest.
Jack was shown little kindness by anyone, apparently owing to his pale skin, black eyes, and black hair. As the Goddess had promised, he was dealt a pretty bad hand. After all, it seemed his unique appearance was a grim omen, though he had no idea why. Traditions being what they were, he was treated as though the merest touch of his skin could impart a lethal toxin, though Lisbeth still showed him a motherly kindness when no one else was looking.
He tried several times to communicate to the adults that he was in fact a thirty-six year old man named Jack Woods, but his pleas for attention were treated as nothing but a toddler’s nonsensical babblings. It was quite a challenge to be taken seriously when he still required a diaper and needed help getting up onto chairs and through doors.
Besides, they all insisted his name was “Vagan”. It seemed a sinister name, and they said it like it was the invocation of some blasphemous curse.
It did not take Jack long to realise that his new home was an unkind place. From what he overheard and saw within the orphanage and outside in its garden, it was clear this world was in a medieval era of some kind. Many of the children around him succumbed to simple diseases every month, but Jack was somehow always spared when it came to illnesses. Even a simple flue was a harrowing affliction that the orphanage’s women treated as a sign of impending death.
When they thought no one was listening, some of the adults spoke of magic, although their tones were wary and frightful. It was clear that the society of his new world was not one of progress and technology, but rather superstition and rigid dogmatic adherence to some form of tradition that shunned anything deemed to not fit in, of which “Vagan” was included.
***
As he grew older, he was allowed more freedom and, aside for curfew and chores, not confined to the orphanage. This meant that he could explore his new world, though it was limited to the town of Sirk within which the orphanage lay. Its sand-coloured stone walls were like an impossible barrier for him to overcome, and his attempts to sneak outside the town were foiled time and again by adults with supernatural senses. They somehow always managed to spot him, no matter how well he blended in with the stream of people coming and going through the large town gate. Even sneaking onto a farmer’s wagon made no difference.
After proving he was up to no good by being escorted back to the orphanage several times in the same week by a town guard, he befriended an older boy from the orphanage called Benja. He was like the brother Jack had never had in his previous life, and the two of them soon became infamous in Sirk for their antics. They stole from the market stalls, pranked the young women preparing their finest clothes for their sixteenth birthday, and drove the guards mad with their daily attempts to escape the town.
It was strange returning to childhood, Jack often thought. The world was so much bigger, the colours so much brighter, and every day with Benja was full of the kind of exhilarating fun that his past childhood had sorely lacked. Jack’s father had been a violent but fair man, but his mother had been a menace. Even though his father was the strongest person Jack knew, even he had been cowed by the woman’s near-daily outbursts. She had been controlling and manipulative, and as a result young Jack had struggled to find friends, since he was rarely allowed to decide who to play with or who could come visit.
When he had gotten old enough to move out, Jack had gone as far away from his home as he could afford. His mother had tried to stop him of course, but at that point she no longer scared him, and his father was locked up for six more years so he could do nothing to stop Jack either.
But even away from his abusive mother, Jack had struggled to find his purpose and keep a steady job. He had been fired and evicted in the same week, ending up homeless for a while and being forced to resort to crime to get by. Eventually he had caught the eye of a local gang, ending up first as their drug courier and later as a dealer. When its leaders were taken down by the police, he narrowly escaped arrest and found a different group to attach himself to, becoming the hired muscle of a loan shark. He had not been a musclebound freak like so many of those around him, but everyone said he scared the shit out of them because his eyes were not quite right.
Then he had been stabbed to death one Tuesday and that was that.
It had not been a life worth living.
But this new life was different. Even though the people of Sirk hated him for how he looked, none of them could hold a candle to Jack’s mother. He honestly felt blessed to be allowed to experience the youthful mischief he had only ever seen in movies. And though petty crime was a fun thing for a young boy to do, he hoped to make something out of himself when he got older, just like his father had always wanted.
And unlike what his old man had often said, joy was no rare spice in Jack’s new life.
One rainy day, when neither Benja nor Vagan had felt much inclined to roam, they sat under the simple awning in the orphanage’s garden. Fat wet droplets spilled down through the gaps in the rotten planks overhead and struck the dirt with loud thuds.
The older boy asked, “Say Vagan, when you’re sixteen, what do you reckon you’ll be? My bet’s on Thief.”
“Me? I’m already a thief, aren’t I? Same as you,” he replied.
“That’s not what I mean,” Benja explained. “The Role Assignment, we’ve all gotta do it. Even us who nobody wanted.”
Vagan knew nothing about that, but he did not want to be teased for his ignorance, so he simply shrugged.
“Me, I think I’ll be a Warrior,” Benja went on.
For the older boy, sixteen was not so far away. Only two more years for him, but Vagan was still only eleven.
“Will you leave the orphanage?” Vagan asked.
“Don’t think Lisbeth will want me to stay,” he replied.
Vagan frowned. Benja was his only friend. All the other children feared him because of his appearance, after all. With him gone, his life would become dreary and bleak.
“Don’t look so sad, you fool,” Benja told him. “Not like I’ll leave Sirk.”
“Don’t warriors go to war?” Vagan replied knowingly.
“Then I’ll become a Guard!” he said. “I’m not leaving you alone in this mudhole.”
Vagan laughed and hopped off the stone steps they’d been sitting on, running out into the rain.
Benja yelled that Lisbeth would be upset if they came back all soaked again, but he still ran after him.
Unsurprisingly, when they made it back home they both got a proper scolding for their foolish antics, as well as cleaning chores to last them the week.
***
When Vagan was thirteen, he finally got to see what a Role Assignment looked like. All the children from the orphanage that were ten years of age or older were allowed to accompany Benja and Lisbeth for the very important day.
Vagan had gathered bits and pieces throughout the years about why everyone’s sixteenth birthday was special, and he had heard the use of strange terms that he felt sure were connected. Still he had no idea what to truly expect. This was all so foreign to his past life. But what he had managed to gather was that the Role Assignment was the great decider of people’s fates in this new world.
In Sirk, this special ceremony was held on every Friday, or Freya’s Day as they called it here. Vagan had never been able to observe a Role Assignment before, since it always took place within the town’s old chapel. He had tried to sneak in once, but for some reason they had guards stationed around the entrance. Lisbeth’s punishment when he had been caught was the most severe he had ever received from the strict woman. The punishment told him that this was quite the sacred ceremony and interrupting it was one of the greatest crimes imaginable.
Today was different, because now he was allowed to accompany Benja and Lisbeth inside. The last child from the orphanage to undergo the ceremony had been before Vagan was ten years old, but Benja had been old enough at the time to see it, which was no doubt why he started talking so much about it afterwards.
From the outside, the chapel’s sand-coloured façade and square belltower were not so exciting, but the interior was quite ominous and filled Vagan with a God-fearing thrill. Braziers ran down the length of a path covered in beach sand which led from the door to an altar at the far end. The smoke from the braziers twirled up into the air and hung about below the ceiling like dark clouds, and the burning scent of the fragrant Spicewood was like a heady incense that made it hard for Vagan’s thoughts to wander.
Lisbeth led Benja by the hand to the start of the sandy path. The young teen, now an adult, was made to walk down to its end, each footfall leaving a trail behind. Meanwhile they all walked down the left side and a priest followed on the right.
Benja reached the altar at the end of the path and knelt in the sand before it. Lisbeth, Vagan, and the three other kids from the orphanage all knelt on old pillows a few metres away. The priest walked up to Benja and said some words that were impossible to hear from where Vagan sat.
The priest stepped back and pulled a black silken cloth away from the altar, revealing something atop it.
It immediately started to move.
Vagan let out a gasp, as did the other kids, when they realised there had been a statue kneeling on the square block of the altar this whole time. Because of the dim light and flickering flames, they had not noticed the black silk covering it.
But it was not any ordinary statue, for it was evidently alive.
Its shape was like that of a naked girl sculpted from granite with veins of gold interspersed throughout. Six feathery wings sprouted from her back, the feathers themselves looking very life-like and dusted with gold. Her face was encased in a golden helmet that sprouted two large horns from the sides.
The sight gave Vagan flashbacks of the Goddess who had sent him here. He knew it was meant to depict her, but the wings were wrong and her figure had not been so pure and beautiful. Still, his feelings about her were ones that were mostly positive.
The Goddess statue reached down to touch Benja’s bowed head where he knelt before her. Vagan saw as his friend became entirely rigid and his eyes glowed with some golden inner light.
A pulse shot outward from the altar, pushing the accumulated smoke away from the ceiling towards the entrance and ruffling Vagan’s hair and clothes.
Lisbeth started quietly praying below her breath.
The statue retracted its arm and straightened its posture, turning its head slightly towards where they were kneeling off to its side.
Vagan froze, feeling as though it was staring right at him and judging all the mischief he had been up to since coming to this world.
Then the priest returned with the obscuring veil and bade Benja arise.
His friend had a strange indecipherable expression on his face and Vagan could not tell if it boded well or not.
The chapel’s belltower sang out across Sirk and the priest had Benja step off the path to his side. It seemed symbolic of how the youth had become an adult. Walking on opposite sides of the path, they all returned to the entrance and exited out the same doors they had entered through, though the priest stayed behind.
Outside waited six other youths and their families.
No sooner had Lisbeth taken Benja off to the side of the chapel’s steps than the next person in line went through the doors.
“What Role did you receive?” she asked him.
Benja blinked as though awaking from a dream and adopted his usual grin. “It gave me Guard, headmistress.”
“Fortuitous,” she commented.
“What do I do now?” Benja asked.
“I will speak with the Guard Captain,” Lisbeth told him. “He will no doubt want to get you started on your training soon. Guards are not so abundant that he can ignore a promising youth such as you. Though he will have to whip that mischievousness out of you, so you had best prepare yourself.”
“Yes, headmistress.”
Vagan wanted to approach and say something. He wanted to congratulate his friend and ask what he had seen when his eyes became golden. But he was unable to move. Even if Benja was staying in Sirk, he was no longer going to be there for Vagan every day. The central figure in his life, who he had looked up to and whose presence made every day fun, even when they did simple chores at the orphanage, he would be gone from this day forward.
He realised he was crying when Benja turned to him.
The older boy put his hand on Vagan’s head and said, “You don’t have to be so sad, Vagan. Mayhaps the Captain will let you train with me.”
“It would do you some good,” Lisbeth remarked. “Goddess knows I have tried, but to tame a wild spirit like yours requires a firmer hand.”
Vagan shuddered at the prospect, but wiped the tears from his face and said, “If I train with you, will I become a Guard too?”
Benja looked thoughtful for a moment. “With your energy, Scout or Messenger is more likely.”
“Anything but Thief and I will be pleased,” Lisbeth muttered, shaking her head. She looked across her flock of children before saying to Benja, “You should return to the orphanage and pack your things. You had better help him, Vagan. Make sure his room is clean before I return.”
“Yes, headmistress,” they both replied.
They returned with the other orphans before going to Benja’s room and preparing for his departure. As Vagan cleaned and Benja packed his few belongings, they talked about what he had seen when the statue touched his head.
Sam, Guard Captain of the Sirk garrison, was a kind man so long as his orders were obeyed to the letter and never questioned. He had allowed Vagan to join in on Benja’s training in the hopes that it would produce another young Guard a few years down the line.
However, his good nature was quickly tested by the pair, since they were as reactive as oil and fire, always getting themselves into trouble and playing pranks on the older Guards.
Vagan was dismayed to see just how quickly Benja outpaced him in every new training session, his supernatural growth spurred on by the Role Assignment. Though he was still the fastest of the two of them, for now anyway.
From how Benja had described it, the ceremony with the statue was like a key to open a door hidden inside everyone’s soul. And once this door was opened, one’s true purpose was laid bare. Every personal skill and attribute was given a starting value, and all of these values could be raised through diligent training involving the specific skill or attribute. Most skills relied on the attributes for power, meaning it was no use training the skills by themselves if the attribute remained low. As an example of this, one of the Guard’s special skills was something called ‘Armoured Endurance’ and it relied on both strength and vitality, the latter of which Benja was struggling to train effectively.
Sam told them that it was normal for people to have an easier time with some training and progression over others, and he warned that, depending on the Role assigned, attributes would reach a point where any further growth became exponentially more difficult to attain.
To Vagan it all sounded quite a lot to keep track of, but apparently the Goddess’ benevolence allowed every person with a Role to track their growth. He recognised this in the way that Benja’s eyes would turn golden and glaze over.
It’s almost like he’s watching a screen, his old self would think.
When he asked his friend to explain what he was seeing, he described it as a golden parchment with black text that unfurled in front of his eyes alone.
Sam warned not to obsess over his growth too much, lest he lose focus and become demoralised when it would eventually stagnate. Even before the point where growth would slow down significantly, it would be a process of diminishing returns, with quick gains early on, followed by further progression requiring more specific training or hand’s on experience.
The times when Benja sparred with the Captain, who seemed to have a surprising amount of time to spare on the pair, the Benja reported that his progress was much faster than before. And this was despite the fact that he never landed a hit on the Captain and always took quite a beating.
This, Sam explained, was because the Goddess recognised that moments of strife, struggle, and life-or-death situations were to be rewarded more than simple training. As a result, the Guards of Sirk often saw the most personal progress when they were called upon to defend the town, though this was an infrequent thing and usually only limited to stray creatures emerging from the Bluewood Wilds. Vagan had never seen the infamous forest, but Sirk was nestled up against it and this reportedly made traversing the road north to the bigger cities a complicated and dangerous affair.
Sam went on to compare the Guards of Sirk to the ones of Laverna, the capital far to the north, saying that because the city was much bigger and often dealt with trouble within its walls, as well as beyond, its defenders were of a much higher calibre and strength.
Benja reiterated that he was fine staying in Sirk, though Sam seemed to think that experiencing different environments was important for the young boy’s growth and told him that eventually he would ask his friend in a neighbouring town to take him under his wing.
Vagan feared when such a time would come, since he would not be allowed to leave Sirk alongside his friend. Still, he was content in the moment, because they were able to continue spending time together, even though Benja no longer lived in the orphanage.
***
After half a year of training alongside Benja, Vagan felt he had become quite strong himself, but his friend was now completely out of his league. He was able to outrun Vagan, his sword swings against the target dummies hit twice as hard, and his endurance allowed him to keep going long after Vagan was completely exhausted.
Sam, perhaps fearing that Vagan would give up his training out of frustration, assigned the boy special tasks around Sirk whenever Benja went on excursions beyond the walls with the older Guards.
One of these tasks was working as a runner delivering messages to the men stationed at various points around the town’s walls, as well as handling mail delivery for the residents, since there were no Messengers within Sirk. Another was gathering information about the road to Sirk from the infrequent visitors to their town, such as the Merchants and occasional Adventurers. And lastly, he was to provide assistance to anyone in town who needed it, usually manifesting into doing small errands, like locating lost possessions, cleaning, and aiding the elderly with chores like cooking.
To Vagan, it was an excellent way to burn off the boundless energy afforded to him by puberty, and to his old self it was a way to finally feel like he belonged somewhere. It was something he had never truly accomplished in his past life, and he was sure his actions back then had only brought ruin to the lives of the people in his community.
One positive side-effect, which may have been the Guard Captain’s true motive, was that the people of Sirk started to appreciate Vagan and treat him like their friend, despite the fact that his appearance was at first startling and ominous to them. Many of the people that he and Benja had terrorised years prior with their antics were now laughing about what mischievous children they had been, while lauding the youths for what upstanding people they had become.
Even the strict headmistress Lisbeth could be heard singing his praises in the orphanage whenever she was trying to get unruly children to behave, saying things like, “You could all do to learn from Vagan’s example.”
Although the Goddess had promised him hardship and strife, she had given him a life truly worth living for and Vagan was nothing but grateful.
***
Two years passed in the blink of an eye, and Vagan eagerly awaited his Role Assignment that coming Harvest, hoping against hope that he would receive a Role that would keep him around Sam and Benja. Although, having spoken to many Adventurers, part of him was excited by the possibility that he might become like them. The stories of their travels filled him with a desire to roam the world, though he felt guilty for dreaming of leaving behind his best friend and his mentor in Sirk.
The Adventurers were a motley group of people, all with different Roles, some even Guards like Benja. They were individuals who had decided to seek fame and glory by travelling the lands and aiding those in need, as well as defeating the dangerous monsters lurking beyond the reaches of civilisation. Despite Vagan often overhearing whispers of magic, none of the Adventurers who visited Sirk ever possessed any such special powers. They were all usually Hunters, Guards, Thieves, Alchemists, and Warriors.
His old self was glad that the Role Assignment did not determine one’s purpose in life, but merely guided it. Some of the Adventurers often talked about the more famous of their unofficial order, with one of the most well-known being a Blacksmith whose clever use of his skills made him quite powerful, especially against armoured monsters that others had trouble defeating.
One of the things he had benefitted most from, thanks to his years spent as an errand boy and messenger in Sirk, was his exposure to the many different Roles the Goddess assigned. Merchant, Seamster, Entertainer, Builder, Official, Tamer, Farmer, Gravetender, and many more Roles were all obtainable, and he was surprised to realise that every person he met seemed to exude a simple confidence in their assigned Role, as though it was purpose-made for them.
Once, he even met a Paladin, who had come all the way to Sirk to meet with the Priest who handled the Role Assignment ceremony. Though they only had a brief interaction, Vagan got the sense that this man possessed a type of magic, though nothing as flashy as what he thought such a power should look like. But he dared not ask anyone about the topic directly, because it was only ever spoken of in hushed tones. He feared his good will with the people of Sirk would tarnish if he sought to pry open this taboo.
One day, when there was less than a week before Benja was scheduled to leave Sirk and travel northwest to the town of Himmelshaft, Vagan was running late to their daily training session because Lisbeth had needed his help with one of the new orphans.
He bounded down the dry dirt streets heading for the garrison in the boots that Sam had gifted him the other day, and greeted those he met along the way. Since he had grown accustomed to helping people, he stopped when he saw a man hunched over something on the street.
“Something wrong?” Vagan asked him.
The man, who was an old Builder, regarded him with a flat-lipped smile. “What do you make of this, boy?”
Vagan looked down at what he indicated, seeing a dead pigeon. The birds were not as abundant in Sirk as they had been in the cities of his past life, but they still showed up often enough. Normally the birds only left the rooftops if they spotted an easy meal, such as spilled grain or discarded bread, since people would catch and eat them if given the opportunity, seeing as meat was not a bountiful resource and their feathers could be sold in the market.
It took him a moment to realise what the old man had meant, because there were some strange growths dotting the areas around the pigeon’s eyes and beak.
“It looks diseased,” he remarked.
The Builder nodded. “It’s the second one I’ve spotted today.”
“I will tell the Guard Captain,” he replied.
The man patted him on the back and off Vagan went to the garrison.
Sometime later, after training with Benja and Sam, Vagan ran through Sirk to deliver a message to the Priest about a potential outbreak of bird-borne disease impacting the town. He had been surprised to realise that the Guard Captain had already received dozens of reports about dead birds landing within Sirk. It was as though they dropped from the sky after succumbing to their unfamiliar illness.
No sooner had Vagan reached the chapel than he saw the Priest outside, overseeing a small body lifted on a wooden stretcher and covered in a black veil. The back of the chapel had a crematorium and it seemed the men carrying the stretcher were taking the body there.
“Vagan, your timing is fortuitous,” said the Priest upon seeing him. “I need you to deliver a message to the Alchemist about a new illness that is afflicting Severin the Baker and his family.”
There were two Bakers in Sirk, but Severin lived up against the eastern town wall with his wife and three children. Vagan frowned as he realised that the body on the stretcher must belong to one of his kids. While death in childhood was not uncommon in Sirk, the coincidence with the dead birds troubled him.
He also had the foreboding sense that the birds had come from the east, but it was not his place to tell the Priest what to do, so he delivered his message from the Captain and went off to find the Alchemist.
His shop was nestled at the back of the market and lay close to the gate in the northern wall, but before Vagan could make it there, he was stopped in his tracks by the high-pitched scream of a woman. Abandoning his task, he ran to its source and found the Carpenter Helene standing over the body of her husband. He was nearly unrecognisable where he lay, as his stomach had bloated from within and something sprouted through the top of his head, clearly having broken through his cranium with explosive force. Sprouting from him were long tapering fungus that reached up into the air like grasping fingers.
No sooner had Vagan been assaulted by the horrific sight than Helene collapsed to the ground with a spasming seizure. He tried to help, but the moment he touched her she experienced the same fate as her husband.
Vagan stumbled back and violently emptied his stomach from a mix of repulsion and fear.
Then more screams filled the air.
The ground rumbled and a house nearby collapsed in on itself as mould and mushrooms sprouted from its wooden structure. The wood itself turned to mulch and lost all coherence, decaying before his eyes as though he was watching a timelapse.
Vagan spun around, looking for an answer to why this was happening.
That was when he saw Sam come running with several Guards behind him, one of whom was Benja.
“Don’t come closer!” Vagan yelled to them, but it was too late.
He watched as their formation crumbled before him. Their polished iron armour rusted and fell apart, the clothes on their bodies shrivelled and broke, and their flesh darkened and sprouted horrific growths.
Benja stumbled a step and hit the ground with a wet squelch, his body unravelling before Vagan’s eyes.
He cried out and ran to his friend’s side, but Benja was already dead, just like the rest.
Dead within seconds from an unseen plague.
Vagan sobbed and spilled his guts once more, looking around helplessly as the entirety of Sirk crumbled to ruin. The sand-coloured stone walls and houses survived, but all organic material fell to ruin, and every metal brace and rivet turned into fragments and dust.
From where homes had been sprouted increasingly-bigger mushrooms, and a fuzzy carpet of white mould spread across the ground. Insects appeared alongside this fungal invasion and grew to the sizes of animals. A woodlouse the size of a bear skittered across the area that had been a market until a moment before, quickly lapping up the decomposing remains of former residents. Snake-sized worms swam through the mulchy remains of houses, and bird-sized dung flies buzzed through the air overhead. Springtails, slugs, millipedes, and many other detritivore insects were taking over the town and there was nothing that Vagan could do.
He looked down at his own body. His clothes hung in tatters and his new boots had become almost like dust.
And yet somehow he was spared the horrific disease.
He thought this was a sick nightmare, but no matter what he did, he could not wake.
A springtail as big as a rat skittered towards him and the remains of his friend and the other Guards.
“No!” Vagan screamed and got up, kicking the insect with all his might.
But it only made the other creatures take notice.
Suddenly he was forced to fight off swooping dung flies and foul slugs, protecting the remains of Benja and Sam from their greedy mouths.
None of the insects tried to hurt him and he was able to keep them at bay for a couple of minutes.
Then the enormous woodlouse returned, barrelling through him and sucking up the remnants of Sam.
Vagan pleaded and begged, shoving at the armoured insect with all his might, but it did not budge in the slightest.
And when it was done there was nothing left behind. Not even bone.
The other detritivores left to pursue meals elsewhere, and the woodlouse did not even bother looking at him as it turned and skittered away.
Vagan screamed all the foulest curses he knew, yelling at them to come back and kill him too.
But frustratingly, they treated him like he did not exist.
Like he was toxic for them to ingest.
He collapsed to his knees in the soft carpet of fuzzy white mould.
Eventually the insects disappeared completely, leaving him as the sole heritor of a town consumed by fungus.
There was no fight left in him. He had not the means with which to claw back his dignity and defeat the monsters that had devoured his family, his friends, and the only place that had ever felt like home to him in this life and his past one.
Around him swirled colourful rust-orange spores on the wind, but even inhaling them did nothing to harm his body.
Movement broke him from his despair and he saw a figure striding towards him.
He knew it was a hallucination of his traumatised mind and did not move as it approached.
“You’re just like me. A misbegotten child of the Goddess,” said a voice twisted by sickness and malice.
Vagan’s eyes met the gaze of a woman. She had purple skin like that of a corpse and her hair looked like blue flames in the gentle wind. Her irises glowed with the same rust-orange hue as the clouds of spores, and she wore clothes made from mushrooms and mould. Something large and golden was held in her left hand, but he was spellbound by her gaze.
She was the incarnation of the sickness that had brought Sirk to ruin.
The moment he realised this, she reached down and forced his mouth open.
She grabbed his tongue before he could put up a struggle.
“This is the only gift I can give you,” she said.
“The Goddess cursed you just like me.”
“She sought to make you twisted and wrong.”
“She meant for you to become a monster same as me.”
“But I won’t let her have her way.”
“Use my gift to grow strong.”
“And when you’ve become strong enough, find me and put an end to my abominable existence.”
Pain suddenly lanced through Vagan’s body. Fire licked across his skin and needles filled his veins.
The woman released her grip on his tongue and he collapsed in a heap, squirming and writhing as agony consumed him.
His vision faltered and his mind could focus on nothing except the pain.
Eventually, in an effort to save his addled mind, his consciousness was flung out of his body and into a bizarre kaleidoscope of colours and absurd shapes.
He escaped the pain and torment by swimming through this abstract sea, and he might have remained there for days until his consciousness was suddenly reeled back in, returning to his body.
When Vagan returned to consciousness, he found himself in the same place he had left, but his body now lay in a reflective black puddle. It stank like crude oil and its vapour made his head buzz.
He stumbled upright, but immediately went into a coughing fit and vomited. But what came out was black like the puddle. Then his senses returned and he could taste it in his mouth and feel it permeate his body.
The touch of the woman had cursed him, made him full of this foul black liquid.
Vagan vomited again.
His tongue felt weird in his mouth and he looked down into the black puddle beneath him, seeing his own reflection.
It was wrong.
His eyes were like oil slicks, shifting through hues of bright colours with no rhyme or reason. The black hair on his head had an oily sheen to it as well, and everything except his face, hands, and feet was purple, just like the woman he had seen.
But most bizarre of all, his tongue had turned to liquid, becoming black crude oil given shape.
What happened to me?
A tremor moved through him and something strange appeared before his eyes.
It did not match the description that Benja had given him, since it was not golden but black. However, its words were familiar to him.
< < Role Assignment > >
< You have been assigned the Role of Accursed >
-----------------------------
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2025-06-06 21:23:20 +0000 UTC
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I've actually been writing a little bit on a new idea for a story I got. Once I've got the intro sorted, I'll probably post the first three chapters like a taste-test for y'all. But with my current plans, I don't have time to actually focus on a new story until I'm done with Madman book 3 and Isekai Exorcist book 4.
Speaking of Isekai Exorcist, I just announced the stub date for book 1 (June 17th) on RoyalRoad today. I'll put up a post on here when it launches July 1st, but if anyone wants to bookmark it or pre-order it, you can find it here.
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Chapter Sixty
They found the carriage they had all used during Stage Three pretty quickly, and one of the Elphin even agreed to take them towards the Tower, so long as they promised to protect him and his horses.
Gladwyn sat on the bench at the front with the driver while Adam and Hahn sat on the roof, since they were ranged attackers and would be able to respond to ambushes the fastest. James was inside the vehicle, since there was no place for him to sit up front and he didn’t want to be on the roof.
“I wonder what would’ve happened if we didn’t save the girl,” Gladwyn said as they rolled down through the forest of dark-blue trees.
There was no path for the carriage and its horses to follow, but that did not deter the driver in the slightest. He managed to perfectly swerve around the trees, leaving a snaking trail in their wake.
“We would’ve had to fight our way out of the city,” Adam reminded him. “And I’m guessing we wouldn’t have been able to hitch a ride. We’re probably saving a lot of time.”
“I didn’t save the girl,” Hahn said.
Adam explained how they’d done it, as well as the Stage variant concept that Emelia had told him about.
“It’s a good thing we’re in your dimension then,” the guy replied.
“I suppose that is pretty lucky,” Gladwyn agreed.
“It’s probably designed to use the dimension of any Player who has triggered a variant, at least for this Stage,” Adam guessed.
He suddenly realised that the Hardmode orb hadn’t appeared this time. It had made sense why he hadn’t seen it during Stage Five, but he was starting to suspect it had a hidden limitation to it that Alivida had not told him about. That being the fact that he probably had to defeat a Stage before he could activate Hardmode. Unless it somehow didn’t work for group Stages. Emelia had certainly made no mention of it, but it seemed peculiar that it might only work for the first four Stages.
I suppose it doesn’t matter right now, since I wouldn’t wanna use it on unfamiliar Stages anyway. But I’ll have to ask Emelia or Alivida about it.
Adam turned to Hahn who sat next to him and said, “You’ve gotta unequip that Fiendbarb Relic.”
The archer nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I wanted to see what kind of enemies we were up against first. Also, I was just…” he started, but then paused.
“You were worried you’d have to fight other Players?” Gladwyn guessed from where he sat below them.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t blame you,” Adam said.
“You know, I don’t think it was a good idea to leave those two back there in the city,” Hahn said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that Maggie girl.”
“You felt that too?” Adam asked.
“She changed her tune the moment the kid said he didn’t want to go,” Gladwyn pointed out.
Adam frowned at the realisation, since he hadn’t picked up on that at all. It had been quite the switch-up from her talking about fighting at the front to suddenly not wanting to go.
“We might have to keep a look out for her,” Hahn suggested.
“You think she’d kill the kid?” Adam wondered.
“Maybe she thinks that she’ll get a lot of Points if she kills us one by one?” Hahn said, sounding quite paranoid.
“Let’s not let our imaginations create enemies out of nothing,” Adam replied. “Even if she does try something, she won’t be able to beat us.”
“It’s possible she just didn’t want to fight, and seeing that the kid was staying, she might have wanted to hedge her bets staying in the city while we take on the bad guys,” Gladwyn theorised.
Hahn let out a deep breath. “Sorry, guys. My Stage Five was rough. I guess it’s still weighing heavily on me. I had to fight one of my friends. He had the Backstabber class like her and he almost killed me when we reached the Altar together.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being cautious,” Adam told him. “But we just have to avoid becoming paranoid. And let’s say that Maggie really is planning on going serial killer on us, we’re already so far away that it’d take her a long time to catch up.”
Hahn nodded.
“What Gods did you two end up picking?” he then asked, changing the subject. “I picked Messimer since I liked the sound of the Appraising Eye skill. I’m able to see basic information about other Players, and I’m guessing enemies as well.”
“What can you see?” Adam asked.
“Your class, your level, and the names of your Relics. It’s quite useful.”
“That does sound pretty handy,” Adam replied.
“I got the Guardian,” Gladwyn said. “His Boon makes afflictions 50% less effective against me.”
Hahn looked at Adam. “What did you get?”
“My Patron doesn’t allow me to tell others about him,” he replied. “Sorry.”
“Is he strong?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Adam replied truthfully.
James’ head poked up from the side of the roof. “I picked Nharlla,” he said. “His power let me switch around my stats. Since evolving into Spellblade from Vanguard gave me 50 Mana, I switched my Health and Mana around, as well as my Damage and Defence.”
“That sounds reckless,” Gladwyn commented.
“Good thing you’re here then,” he replied.
“What’s Vanguard evolved from?” Adam asked. He assumed Vanguard wasn’t the name of a Weapon Type, since he hadn’t heard of one like that. And it was unlikely to be related to the special weapon from Stage Four, since Beck had said it was a two-handed sword.
“It’s Defender,” Gladwyn answered.
“It’s interesting how different our weapons have become, isn’t it?” James said. “Shield Wall is based on the Guardian evolution, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Gladwyn replied.
“How does Spellblade work?” Adam asked.
Before James could answer, Hahn yelled out, “Stop the carriage!”
Adam spun around and saw what the archer had seen.
Thirty metres away and up in the trees was a strange six-legged bone spider. Almost as soon as they’d spotted it and the driver brought the carriage to a halt, the enemy engaged, firing a large bolt from inside its spherical body.
Gladwyn jumped up and pulled out his shield. It was huge, much taller than his short frame. The projectile veered off from its intended target, Adam, and hammered into the greatshield.
The impact was powerful enough to push Gladwyn back against the carriage and shift the vehicle half a metre backwards. He quickly jumped out in front of the horses, and James followed behind him. Hahn stayed atop the carriage and unequipped the Fiendbarb, before letting loose with his rapid-fire arrows.
Adam hopped off the carriage as well, bringing his barrier out in front of him and spinning it up to boost its penetrative power.
Flames licked off the edges of the white lance-shaped barrier and the air hummed the faster it spun.
James spared a glance over his shoulder, while Gladwyn prepared to tank the next shot.
“Shitbox, what is that thing?” Adam asked the Eye.
[This is a construct called a Bone Creeper.]
“Aim for the segments of its legs!” James yelled, holding a telescope in front of his eyes. Adam realised it was the Scope of Insight. If he remembered correctly, the Relic allowed the user to see the enemy’s weaknesses.
I didn’t realise how useful such a Relic could be in a group situation, he thought to himself.
Even if James had seemingly made the irrational decision to flip his Health and Mana values around, as well as his Damage and Defence, he was possibly quite thoughtful about his setup. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of how confidently he carried himself.
Hahn’s arrows did very little to hurt the giant bone spider, but it was also clear that his bow wasn’t as effective in this environment, given that the Quickshot’s main benefit was its ability to ricochet.
“We have to get closer for me to hit it,” Adam told Gladwyn after huddling up behind his shield.
“I’ll take down the trees its clinging to,” James said. “Cover me.”
The three of them surged forward, while Hahn’s arrows continued hitting the construct’s body ineffectively.
Adam shot his barrier through one of the two trees that the Creeper was clinging to. Its spherical body was about the size of a car and each of its six legs was four metres long. The centre of its body just had a large aperture from which it shot out the big bolts that all struck Gladwyn’s shield with loud echoing bangs. It didn’t really make sense that it was able to keep producing bolts to shoot at them with, but at the same time Hahn was also firing off way more arrows than he could possibly keep in his quiver.
The tree Adam had struck had a hole going through it, and James leapt forward with ice coating his gem-studded sword, before slashing all the way through the trunk, sending the tree on a collision course with one of its neighbours.
The Creeper didn’t seem very intelligent, because the moment one of its anchor points faltered, it started slipping down towards the ground, not even trying to slow its own descent by grabbing something else.
“Watch out!” Adam yelled, and the three of them quickly back-pedalled as the large construct hit the forest floor with a loud crash and crunch of its bony body.
No sooner had it collapsed than they all rushed back in and chopped off its six legs at the joints where they connected to the round body.
Adam hammered his lance barrier into the joint of a leg and then unfurled it to explosively separate the bones. When he did it a second time, his barrier cracked and triggered Last Stand’s Fervour, making it momentarily unbreakable and increasing its Damage and Speed by 25%.
But before his barrier could expire, they destroyed the last leg joint, and just like that the central body broke in two. A large soul essence flew out of its body and into Adam’s lantern, but no one seemed to notice.
[Elite enemy defeated,] announced their cube companions at the same time.
“That wasn’t too bad,” Gladwyn said.
Hahn came running over, but he was clearly slowed down by the Forlorn Cuirass he wore.
“Sorry, guys,” he said. “I couldn’t damage it.”
He’s probably lacking penetration power even after unequipping the Fiendbarb, Adam guessed.
“Let’s leave the carriage behind and continue on foot,” James suggested.
Adam nodded. “Good idea.”
“I’ll stay in the front,” Gladwyn said.
“And I’ll bring up the rear,” Adam decided, “which means James and Hahn stay in the middle.”
No one seemed to have a problem with that, so they immediately fell into formation and moved through the forest of dark-blue trees at a brisk pace.
“How were you able to make the enemy projectiles hit your shield?” Hahn asked Gladwyn.
“It’s the Shield Wall’s ability,” he replied. “It pulls hostile projectiles towards the centre of my shield when I’m guarding.”
“You saved my ass,” Adam said. “I’m pretty sure it was aiming for my head with that first shot.”
“You can all thank me by giving me the first loot option,” Gladwyn replied with a grin in his voice.
“Actually, if we find any Relic Chests, you should let me open them,” Adam said. “I’ve got 26 Luck which guarantees all Relics and Upgrades are Rare or higher.”
“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Hahn said.
“Me neither,” added James. “I’d like to see it before I believe it though.”
Although they didn’t blindly trust him, they seemed to at least be open to giving his suggestion a shot.
Thank God. I was worried we’d end up having to argue about this stuff…
Adam inspected Gladwyn’s outfit as they continued forward.
In the Tavern he always just wore a simple white shirt and khaki shorts, but out here he had a full getup of Relics. He wore the Spirited Defence Nose Ring, which staggered enemies on successful blocks and made them take 10% extra damage from follow-up attacks; some pants made with metallic scales; the Glutton Collar to allow him to consume two potions back-to-back; the Potion Belt around his waist with three small healing potions inside; the Sanctuary Defender’s Robes which raised Dodge by 10% and Speed by 25%; and lastly his right eye was completely black, which was probably some Relic Adam had never encountered before.
“What Relic did you replace your eye with?” Adam asked him.
Gladwyn slowed down to answer. “It’s called ‘Slothling Ogre Eye’,” he answered. “It raises Defence by 50% and lowers Movement Speed by the same.”
“You don’t seem that slow to me,” he replied.
“I’ve gotten quite a few Speed upgrades, and the Robes counteract my Scale Trousers.”
“What do they do? The trousers, I mean,” Adam asked.
“They raise Defence by 15% and lower Speed by 25%.”
“How much Defence do you have?” James asked.
“Like 300%,” Gladwyn replied. “My Speed is 120%.”
“Goddamn,” Adam said.
“I feel good about you being up front,” Hahn remarked.
“Me too,” Adam added.
Gladwyn grinned. “Just keep my back safe and kill stuff quickly, and I’ll defend against anything we encounter.”
“Deal,” Hahn replied.
They continued through the forest for about 20 minutes until the end of the trees came into view. Past the treeline the ground was barren, all vegetation entirely gone as though burnt away by chemicals that prevented even weeds from sprouting.
All four of them stopped where the trees ended and gaped in awe and horror at what lay before them.
Half a kilometre out from the treeline stood a wall made of metal and wood, hewn together by unskilled hands and looking like a post-apocalyptic fortification. A few hundred metres past that was the outer wall of the tower. And it was enormous.
Its diameter was easily 40 metres and its height was like that of a twenty-floor apartment block. If not for the hilly terrain of the forest and the fact that the ground of the vast clearing around the tower was sunken down, the tower would easily have been visible from the Sanctuary.
Emelia had not been able to do the tower justice with her descriptions, because Adam had wondered how on Earth so many monsters, locations, and encounters could be packed into the tower, but he understood now.
True to its name, the tower wasn’t perfectly straight, since the top of it tilted slightly and the middle part looked warped and misshapen.
Things just like the Creeper they’d killed crawled around near the top of the tower, making any attempt to fly to the top quite harrowing.
But it doesn’t look impossible if I wanted to take a shortcut, Adam thought.
They shared a few glances.
“I think I understand why they gave us 24 hours to do this,” Hahn commented.
Atop the shoddy fortification walked humanoid creatures and it was clear they were the true first line of defence, with the Bone Creeper being more of an attempt to catch them off-guard.
If Emelia was right, there’d be golems and other large creatures waiting for them beyond that wall, but first they had to get over and in.
“Let’s go,” Adam said.
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2025-06-03 21:03:09 +0000 UTC
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It's pretty late, so I haven't edited this yet, but I will get it done tomorrow.
Anyway, this is the first chapter of book 2. We're continuing off right from where we left it last week, more or less.
I've finished one out of three of my exams, but the one I wrapped last week was probably the hardest. Still, I'm probably gonna do max 2 chapters this coming week since I have some preparations to do for Thursday's exam.
EDITED.
-----------------------------
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Adam and Emelia walked through the moonlit Interim Island after the Dimensional Tavern had closed for the night.
She had explained everything she knew about Stage Six to Adam, Gladwyn, and Beck, but he still felt some trepidation, given that she confessed to not knowing everything.
Adam thought about the Communion Quest that he’d received from his Patron, the Tome Keeper.
< < Altar Communion > >
< The Tome Keeper >
< Adam. I need you to find Alepheria's notes on Chimaeral Transmutation. She made a promise to me that the notes would be mine once her research concluded, but she perished before we could make the transaction. I want them for my collection and study. Though I know much, I do not know where she hid the notes, but they must be somewhere within her tower. >
< Reward: 1000 Points or Relic >
The fact that it mentioned the name Alepheria, when Stage Six was called ‘Alepheria’s Crooked Tower’, made it clear that he was to find the notes in the Stage. However, Emelia freely admitted that she did not know enough to help him. For starters, she was unfamiliar with Adam’s Patron and he was not allowed to tell her anything about him. Secondly, the Stage was apparently massive, requiring the Players to cooperate to even find their objective.
Emelia had already told them that their objective was to locate a giant painting at the top of Alepheria’s tower. As for the tower itself, it lay beyond the Elphin Sanctuary, which they would be returning to. Since all of them had saved Belamouranthe from being sacrificed, they would not be forced to immediately fight off the city’s Elphin, who would normally have been cursed by the All-Mother and turned into zombie-like monsters.
Beck normally never survived this far, so Emelia said there was a slim chance he could end up in one of their Stages as a sixth Player, since the System tended to add Players that normally didn’t survive onto new groups, rather than putting all such Players into groups of their own. Adam had been the sixth member of his Stage Five, which meant that either he or someone else wasn’t meant to survive up to that Stage in the original design, before time-loopers and Nwetrou’s adherents started to meddle.
As for Gladwyn, Emelia was fairly sure he always survived his Stage Five, but she didn’t know for sure, since it was impossible to track the fate of every last person out of the millions that remained.
Still, we’re only done with five Stages and only 29 million of the 600 million that survived Stage One are left…
And that number is going to keep dropping, until only 10 thousand are left by Stage Ten, according to Emelia.
Adam sighed.
“Are you okay?” Emelia asked. She’d been quiet during their walk to the island’s centre as well.
“I was just thinking about everything,” he replied. “More than 500 million people have died just during the introductory Stages.”
“It’s a lot,” she agreed.
“And that’s despite your best attempts to save people,” he added.
“But so long as just one person makes it to the end and wins, everyone else will be saved,” Emelia replied. “All we can do is help as many people as possible survive to reach the end.”
“Do you really believe those who died come back if we win?” he asked.
“If I didn’t, what would be the point of fighting back?” she retorted.
“You’re right. There has to be a meaning behind what we’re doing.”
Emelia touched his arm and he didn’t pull away.
“It’s okay to be worried,” she told him. “But don’t let it consume you.”
“Have you received a Quest from your Patron?” he asked.
“I have,” she replied. “An Envoy of the Eternal Serpent spoke to me when I received my Altar. I have to find an egg that has been frozen in time. That’s all I know.”
“Did Messimer usually give you a Quest for Stage Six as well?”
“He did,” she replied. “I had to find an eye. It was in the laboratorium.”
“Seems like they might all be fetch-type Quests,” Adam commented.
“I should’ve asked Gladwyn what he had to retrieve,” Emelia said. She had been very interested in his Patron, since he chose the Guardian. From what they’d put together, it seemed that the Absolute’s unlock condition was to negate an affliction using the Affliction Ward.
Beck had chosen Morrligt, since he had evolved his Acolyte evolution of Spellcaster into Element Tamer, which allowed him to absorb environmental elements and incorporate them into his spells. He had absorbed the element of one of the glowing gems in the ceiling of the tunnels and used it in a trap that killed another Player. It was apparently considered sun magic, which also counted to unlock the Absolute, probably because he was associated with solar flares.
Emelia had done her best to describe the monsters they would encounter in Alepheria’s Crooked Tower and its environs, but Adam had a hard time picturing them exactly. They were some seemingly-random assortment of cobbled-together golems, test subjects, vat-grown creatures, and chimaera.
They reached the Altar that marked the centre of the island and came to a halt. The moonlight covered all the buildings in a shimmering silver.
Emelia and Adam glanced at each other for a bit, before she spoke up and said, “I will see you after Stage Six.”
Adam nodded. “Be careful. Thank you for all the help.”
She stepped closer to him and he smiled back at her.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” he told her.
“I don’t know how things have changed this time around,” she said. “A lot more people survived Stage Five compared to last time, and it’s bound to change up the dynamic of the coming Stages. Even if you have my guide to go off of, make sure to stay on guard.”
Adam put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “I’ve outperformed your expectations until now, haven’t I? There really isn’t anything to be afraid of.”
She smiled a little. “I hope you’re right,” she said.
Then she suddenly embraced him in a brief hug before stepping away and pulling out her Visiting Stone.
She immediately vanished, not allowing him to get a single word out.
< < Visiting Stone Deactivated > >
< Player Hello, my name is Emelia and I’m a time-looper has left your Dimension >
Adam laughed at the message before realising how fast his heart was beating.
Why did her hug suddenly make me feel this way?
Are the memories from the Scale of Remembrance affecting me?
Or maybe it’s just the nerves?
Adam would be lying if he wasn’t feeling nervous about Stage Six. Teaming up with four or five other Players after everyone just murdered each other the Stage before seemed a recipe for disaster. He pushed the thoughts from his mind and went to his Player House.
When the Tavern had closed, Belamouranthe had vanished, returning to wherever the All-Mother lived, which was kind of bizarre. As a result, he was once again alone in the house. However, when he reached the garden out in front, he saw that Yenna was waiting for him.
“Good evening, Adam,” said the wasp musician.
“Come on in,” he told her, opening the door for her.
After entering and closing the door behind them, she asked, “Are you going to sleep right away?”
“In a moment,” he told her.
He brought up his status as he walked over to his storage.
< < Player Status > >
< Adam >
< Fusionist >
< Level 35 >
< Stats >
< Health — 60 >
< Stamina — 75 >
< Mana — 200 >
< Damage — 100% >
< Defence — 165% >
< Dodge — 10% >
< Speed — 85% >
< Luck — 26 >
< Attack Speed — 125% >
< Upgrades >
< Luck +21 >
< Dodge +10% >
< Crush +15% >
< Damage +40% >
< Defence +40% >
< Health +10 >
His Health was still quite low, but Emelia had mentioned the locations of all the rewards chests she knew of, with most of them being upgrade rewards. He was hoping his group would be able to work out a simple system for splitting the loot.
The idea of having to trust random people and split loot with them was hard to reconcile, since his odds of surviving long-term depended on him growing stronger, but if other Players took upgrades and Relics for themselves then he would be losing out on important power boosts. And if those Players ended up dying, there was no way to reclaim the upgrades from their bodies.
Adam let out the breath he’d been unintentionally holding in.
I can’t worry about all that right now. My main objective is to gather knowledge. Even if I die it’s not game over, and though I need to keep my guard up, I can’t be too paranoid of other Players or start to scheme about how to kill them. After all, Emelia made it clear it was impossible to solo these Stages.
He reached down into the storage and retrieved the Rotmaker Idol and Golden Map. He figured either might potentially be used for unlocking something special in Stage Six.
Yenna watched him as he put the Relics in his Spidersilk Sack and looked through the trophies on the wall. He had all of the trophies for the first three Stages, but was missing two from Four. He also needed the Pacifist, Eradication, and Speedrun bonuses for Stage Five to perfect it.
Six was a different beast though. Emelia had said there were eight trophies to get, with the new ones being Plunderer, Defender, and MVP. They were rewarded for getting all chests, protecting other Players from the most damage possible, and scoring the most Points in the Stage out of the group.
I should aim for MVP at least, since she said it gives an upgrade as a reward.
Adam went over to his bed and laid down.
“This time I’ll be gone for a full day,” he told Yenna.
The wasp lowered her large head slightly.
“Be careful with Alepheria’s creations, they are drawn to those who wield magic.”
Adam blinked. He hadn’t expected to get advice from the musician of all people.
“You know what I’m going up against?” he asked.
“I cannot say any more than that.”
Emelia didn’t mention anything about the enemies being drawn to magic users.
“Thank you, Yenna. I’ll be careful.”
Despite all his worries and many swirling thoughts, Adam quickly fell asleep once the wasp started to sing her lullaby.
***
< < Now Entering > >
< Stage 6 >
< Alepheria’s Crooked Tower >
< 24-hour Timer >
Adam awoke to find himself walking up stone steps leading out of the dark underground. He emerged atop the stone disc at the bottom of the ritual site that lay within the heart of the Elphin Sanctuary.
Around him on the steps awaited a few Elphin guards, but it seemed everyone else had long since returned to their homes and were going about repairing the damage done to their city.
The Eye floated out in front of Adam where he paused at the top of the opening leading into the Forbidden Altar. Then it moved towards the centre and he turned to track its movements.
A tremor rolled through the ground as the large disc spun and closed off the entrance to the Altar.
[For what comes next, you alone will not be powerful enough.]
[With the power of the All-Seeing System, the dimensions shall converge.]
Adam looked at the Eye, wondering how exactly it would go about summoning the other Players he was going to team up with.
Then the air rippled and the disc spun a full rotation in an instant. It moved so fast he almost thought it was just his mind playing tricks, but he had felt the motion in his legs and inner ear.
He blinked and realised there were five figures standing on the edges of the disc now, equidistant from each other.
And he recognised one of them.
The cutscene let go of him and he stumbled a step, as did the other five Players.
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Gladwyn from across the way.
Adam realised that Emelia had been wrong. Normally Gladwyn didn’t survive Stage Five, because otherwise she would have known that he and Adam would be teaming up in Six.
“Do you know each other?” asked a woman to Adam’s immediate left.
He took a step towards the centre, summoning his barriers with a thought and manoeuvring them around behind him. “I’m Adam,” he said. “I’m a magician, kind of. I use barriers.”
The woman to his left gave him a dubious look. “We’re doing introductions?” she asked.
“I’m Gladwyn,” said his friend, taking a step forward as well. “I’m a Shield Wall, so I’ll probably end up at the front taking all the hits.”
The guy to Gladwyn’s right stepped forward. “I’m Hanh and my class is Quickshot.” He lifted a shortbow that clearly had the Fiendbarb Relic attached to it.
That might have been a powerful combo against other Players, but many of the enemies in this Stage don’t have blood…
The guy looked Asian, maybe Korean, and wore a dark-blue hoodie and loose black cargo pants. His black hair was shoulder length, and besides the Fiendbarb, his prominent Relics were the Forlorn Cuirass and Spring Boots.
The woman between Hahn and Adam stepped forward. “I’m Maggie. I’ve got the Opportunist weapon. It’s good for parrying, so I’ll probably end up front with the old guy.”
“I’m not that old,” Gladwyn shot back.
Maggie was white with brown hair and Adam guessed that she was American. She wore a dark-grey tank top and shorts meant for running, as well as pink sneakers. She had the Captain’s Cape Relic hanging from her back, the Duellist’s Glove on her right hand, and the Purple Slime Glove on her left. She also wore the Stone Bracer on her right arm and the Vigilant Fighter’s Vambrace on her left.
I should keep my distance from her, Adam thought. Her setup is basically made to kill Players quickly and the Stone Bracer only works to disable someone else’s Relics…
The Vambrace allowed her to create weak points on anyone she parried, so she could be a good asset in a fight, but her attitude seemed ill-fitted for cooperation.
The next person stepped forward. He was a tall black guy who wore a grey blazer and suit pants along with polished dress shoes. He didn’t have any visible Relics besides the Curse-Giver Necklace, Choice Ring, and Blood Fist Ring. “I’m James,” he said. “I’m a Spellblade.”
His voice had a singsong lilt to it, and unlike Maggie he didn’t immediately seem like a threat to Adam. He didn’t give any descriptions of what a Spellblade was, but he had a sword on his right hip and could probably perform some kind of magic.
I wonder what weapon evolves into that?
The last guy didn’t step forward and had his gaze aimed down at his feet. His hair was black, but it looked like it was dyed since his eyebrows were light-brown. He wore both the Forlorn Cuirass and the Tainted Helmet. His pale face had dark rings around the eyes and on his back hung a large sword. He looked quite young, maybe only 18 years old.
A lot of these people have terrible Relics, Adam thought to himself.
“What’s your name?” Gladwyn asked the teen.
“I don’t know you, I don’t have to tell you,” he replied in a small voice, still looking down.
“We’ll have to work together in this Stage if we want to survive,” Adam told them all.
Before the teen could protest, the Eye in the centre of the disc floated into the air and split into six, returning to each of their sides.
[The timer has begun.]
< < Stage Objective > >
< Find a clue to the Godstone in the Crooked Tower >
Emelia had said the tower wasn’t always in the same spot, and Players were meant to climb the tall tree in the Sanctuary to find it. But Adam had an easier way to check.
He moved his barriers in front of himself and fused them together. Maggie took a step back, and the others watched him closely, even the nameless teen with the big sword. Granted, Adam was also wearing the Stone Mask on his face, so he probably looked quite ominous.
“I’ll be right back,” Adam told them and climbed onto his barrier, shooting himself straight into the air.
The wind rushed past him as he soared higher than the canopy of the great tree and the dark-blue trees of the forest around the Sanctuary.
To the northeast, dozens of kilometres away, was a portion of the vast forest where the trees were chopped away and a spire reached into the air. That was clearly where they had to go.
For a moment he considered just picking up Gladwyn and flying there, but then he thought better of it. Not to mention, Emelia said some of the monsters they’d face had ranged attacks, and Yenna had warned they might be attracted to his magic. Getting sniped out of the air was a pretty easy way to die given that his barrier, even in its fused state, was susceptible to piercing attacks.
Adam lowered himself back down to the ground and got off his barrier, shaping it into a narrow lance that hovered over his right shoulder.
“The tower is to the northeast,” he told them.
“How did you do that?” asked James.
“Magic,” he replied.
The tall guy chuckled. “My magic doesn’t work like that.”
“Is it far?” Gladwyn asked.
“Looked to be quite a few kilometres, yeah,” Adam said.
“We should find some horses or something then. Maybe the carriage from the previous Stage is still around here.”
“I’m staying here,” said the dark-haired teen.
“Me too,” Maggie quickly added, eyeing up the kid.
“I don’t think so,” Adam told them. James and Hahn looked between them, both pulling out their weapons.
“You wanna fucking force us to fight when we don’t wanna?” Maggie shot back at Adam.
He gritted his teeth. “Fine. Stay here. But if you don’t participate, you don’t get any Points. And we’re not coming back to pick you up.”
“Have fun,” she replied in a biting tone.
Adam shook his head and walked up and out of the ritual site, following the steps carved into the sides of the hole. Gladwyn, Hahn, and James followed after him.
“Should we really just leave them?” asked Hahn.
“It’s no use forcing them,” Gladwyn said.
“Maybe they have given up,” James remarked.
“Just means more Points for the rest of us,” Adam said.
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-Previous chapter-
---Next chapter----She immediately vanished, not allowing him to get a single word out.
< < Visiting Stone Deactivated > >
< Player Hello, my name is Emelia and I’m a time-looper has left your Dimension >
Adam laughed at the message before realising how fast his heart was beating.She immediately vanished, not allowing him to get a single word out.
< < Visiting Stone Deactivated > >
< Player Hello, my name is Emelia and I’m a time-looper has left your Dimension >
Adam laughed at the message before realising how fast his heart was beating.
2025-06-02 01:55:30 +0000 UTC
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-Previous chapter-
---Next chapter----
Just found out my first exam is tomorrow, but somehow still managed to squeeze this out today. Hoping to keep the streak going and write more Madman over the summer to hit my goal of book 3 done before September.
-----------------------------
Chapter 13
Bee, Tina, and I appeared on the carpeted floor of an office, directly in front of a cubicle within which sat a strange figure. There were thousands of cubicles spread out across the floor, each with their own occupant, but this one was the only one that mattered.
The creature inside was a child-sized cicada. In front of it was an old off-white and chunky monitor that showed me from above, as though there was a camera glued to the ceiling. Next to the monitor was a box that showed the text ‘Cringe!’ in red. On the desk in front of the monitor, where a keyboard would normally have been, was a large red button with black text on it that said, ‘Bad Catchphrase!’
There was a delay on the monitor, so it still showed me standing outside the water park dungeon on the street.
I stepped forward and reached over the cicada’s shoulder to grab the button.
“I’ll be taking that,” I said.
It spun around in its uncomfortable-looking plastic chair to look at me, seeming just a moment from protesting about my interruption when it realized who I was.
“Oh no,” it said in a high-pitched man’s voice. As our eyes met, my Appraising Eye ability triggered and showed me his info.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 3 — ‘Chiiiiiiiiii Mim-Squeal’ — Associate
“I press the button.”
Job: Achievement Punishment-Reward Associate
Affiliation: Achievement Narration Inc.
Chiiiiiiiiii is but one of untold thousands of cicadas who work for the Achievement Narration Inc., which facilitates narration, rewards, punishments, and other achievement-related activities.
In case you’re wondering, they don’t handle appraisal narration. We’re actually part of the Skill Management department that’s incorporated into the GREAT GAME. For some reason, achievement-related stuff was outsourced to this company.
Anyway, like all other Cicadas, Chiiiiiiiiii is a Button-presser. But that sounds very dreary and bland, so the company calls them ‘Associates’. It doesn’t change the fact that he and all others of his species simply press buttons. Some of the buttons send achievements that are queued up and ready, other buttons give rewards, and some, like Chiiiiiiiiii’s button, deal damage based on a specific trigger.
Considering that he’s been pressing this button and hurting you, he’s rightly very terrified of what you’re about to do to him.
“Have you been pressing this button the whole time!?” I accused him.
“I didn’t mean to antagonize you!” Chiiiiiiiiii quickly replied. “If I don’t do this job, my 387 kids won’t be able to eat! I just press the button when the screen tells me you’re being cringe!”
“That’s very dystopian,” Bee remarked.
“Nina says your new Narrator is around here somewhere,” Tina told me. “We should go find her.”
“Wait,” Panda said. “How does this thing actually work? Gambit unlocked the Bad Catchphrase achievement, and presumably this button, back in the previous dimension.”
“Don’t ask me,” the cicada replied, clearly able to see and hear Panda. “But I’ve been here this whole time, pressing this specific button.”
“Maybe this Achievement Narration Inc. company is able to traverse dimensions?” Bee suggested.
“That raises a lot of uncomfortable questions,” Panda muttered.
“Why are you able to see me on your screen?” I asked the cicada.
He shrugged. “I’m just an Associate. I know nothing except ‘Press the button when the monitor says so’.”
“Do you enjoy your job?” Bee asked him.
He shrugged again.
“I think maybe the footage on the monitor is coming from Messimer,” Panda suggested.
I sighed. “So what’s the point of having the Night Protocol passive? I thought it was supposed to stop them from observing me.”
“It probably only works against the Agencies, but Messimer is pretty close to the power of an Absolute, so I doubt you could stop him even if you wanted,” Panda said.
“Can I have the button back?” Chiiiiiiiiii asked.
“Fuck no!” I told him.
He slumped down into his chair. “Aww, what will I tell my kids?”
“Me-ow?” Lordie asked.
“What? No,” I replied, appalled by the suggestion. “This guy is just—”
Before I could stop him, Lordie pounced from the top of my head and down onto the cicada’s face.
A loud series of clicks, squeaks, and buzzing emerged from the guy as the seven-fingered sapient hand sucked the life out of him, producing the sound of a straw sucking at the last bits of a juice box.
When he was done, Chiiiiiiiiii had been reduced to an empty shell.
“Fucking hell, Lordie!” Panda exclaimed.
“That was messed up,” Bee said, looking at me like it was my fault Lordie was a psycho. “The guy was just doing his job.”
“In the last dimension you kept killing secretaries,” I told her.
She narrowed her eyes. “Secretaries are complicit in the horrors perpetuated by evil companies.”
“Wouldn’t that make this guy complicit too?” I argued, pointing at the cicada’s hollowed-out shell.
“That’s different. He was a low-wage grunt,” she replied.
Lordie hopped back to my head and his status appeared.
[Familiar Status x ]
‘Lordie’
Maturity: 62%
Hunger: Pleased
Favorite Foods
Eau de Tonsil-Stone Eye-Bleach
Cicadas
Twizzlers
Canned Cat Food
“Lordie’s maturity has gone up a lot,” I realized.
“And now cicadas are on his list of favorite foods…” Panda remarked.
Tina tapped me on the shoulder. “Security is coming.”
I turned to look where she pointed and saw large beetles shoving their way through a crowd of panicking cicadas to get to us. I hadn’t even noticed that all the other cubicles had been abandoned in a hurry.
Bee squealed excitedly. “Those are ‘Rhipicera Femorata’!” she exclaimed. “They’re a type of cicada parasite beetles!”
For some reason, the sight of the beetles reminded me of samurai. They were tall insects with broad fan-like antennae combs that curved inward slightly at the tips and their black armored bodies were covered in white dots. They all had their wing casings partially opened, making it appear like dense capes hung from their backs, while their black and translucent wings poked out slightly. Their heads had large mandibles, and their arms were tipped with claws at the end.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 25 — ‘Number 119’ — Security Guard
“Get back to work, Associate.”
Job: Security Guard
Affiliation: Achievement Narration Inc.
Calling this guy and the rest of his unit ‘guards’ is a bit misleading, since they spend most of their days making sure the cicada Associates are not slacking off. They also handle the on-the-spot execution of employees that fail to do their jobs.
I suppose I should also point out that these guards are from a species of beetles that parasitize on cicadas. It’s honestly kind of fucked up using them as the security, but it seems to work, since the cicadas are all very motivated to not shirk their duties.
He and his friends want to beat the shit out of you for impacting company productivity.
Bee lifted her crossbow, but I stopped her.
“Let me handle this,” I said.
I wasn’t sure if Tina had gotten any useful Skills yet, but I knew that Bee’s weapon wouldn’t work against these guys.
“Cooldown Claymore,” I said and strode towards the incoming beetle guards.
[‘Cooldown Claymore’ x ]
Golden Fusion Ability
This Ability is pretty overpowered to be honest, but man is it cool.
Manifest a claymore of crackling golden-orange energy that can cut through anything. Every kill made with the weapon lowers the active cooldowns of all your eligible Skills by 10%.
Ineligible Skills:
—Cooldown Claymore—
—Rules of Anarchy—
—Time Save—
Duration: 30 seconds
Cooldown: 1 hour
This Ability appears on your Appraisal!
The first two leapt forward with a blur of wings and I swung my orange-glowing blade through them, its energy blade crackling and sizzling where their white blood touched it.
As their friends fell into pieces, the other guards paused.
I triggered SPRING_HEEL and shot through their ranks while spinning the sword in my hands.
After skidding to a halt following my landing a few yards past their group, the beetles all collapsed into chunks of exoskeleton and squishy inners, with their white blood soaking into the office carpet.
The cicada employees were rapidly exiting the large cubicle chamber through a small fire escape, many of their fellows trampled beneath the press of bodies.
Tina and Bee walked up to me, with the woman continuing through the sea of cubicles and heading for a small door with a red light above it.
“How’d you do that?” Bee asked, stopping next to me.
“It’s one of my Skills,” I told her. “I got it from killing a pawn of the Flayed Lady.”
“She’s the one responsible for turning those people in the mall into monsters, right?”
I nodded.
“Come on!” Tina called back to us from where she stood next to the door with the light above. Just then, my claymore fizzed out.
Bee and I ran over to where she waited, and I noticed a sign next to the light that read, ‘Do not enter while on!’
Even though it was glowing with a red light, Tina pushed the door open, and we followed her in.
Through the door was a hallway leading to various rooms with glass doors, but the place looked like a bomb had gone off inside, with dozens of the beetle guards splattered against the walls, ceiling, and floor, many of them missing chunks of their armor and flesh.
Down at the far end was a child-sized shape hunched over a body and chewing loudly, the sounds echoing in the hallway.
I stepped out in front of Tina just as the dark figure lurched upright and stared back at us with two round white eyes set into its black body.
[Appraisal x ]
Level 99 — ‘Billee’ — Spawn of an Absolute
“Heyyyy!”
Job: Substitute Narrator
Affiliation: Achievement Narration Inc.
Since you’re seeing this appraisal, it means you’re quite close to this creature. I would recommend you turn around and run, given the Absolute that Billee is spawned from, but you’re unlikely to escape.
She’s very glad you came.
-----------------------------
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---Next chapter----
2025-05-29 18:31:42 +0000 UTC
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