I spread my wings, trying to catch myself as I fell, but they weren't responding correctly. Or perhaps it was the air that wasn't responding correctly; I was having to fight to breathe. Despite taking deep, rapid breaths, I felt like I was suffocating, and my skin and lungs were burning. Was there no oxygen down here? What was there instead?
With repeated, desperate flaps, I managed to slow my descent enough to land safely, but I was going to need to adjust my earlier opinion that I'd b...
2021-12-29 06:38:20 +0000 UTC
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Cluma scrambled up a smooth, vertical tree trunk as easily as if it was a ladder, vanishing into the canopy above. There was some rustling, followed by a brief rain of snakes.
Large Grass Snake, level 1 (Dead)
Despite the 'large' label, they were half a metre long at most, slow moving, and didn't look at all threatening. The 'grass' didn't make much sense either, given that they appeared to live in the trees.
"How can snakes climb trees?" complained Cluma from far u...
2021-12-28 06:22:55 +0000 UTC
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I spread my wings and took off from the street with a powerful flap, shooting ten metres into the air before my upward momentum petered out. Another, lesser, flap propelled me forward, my extended wings allowing me to glide until I came to a gentle landing on my targeted rooftop. Long gone were the days where every flap of my wings sent me careening uncontrollably into whatever solid surface happened to be nearest. I was finally as at home in the air as I was on the ground.
"Oh, it's yo...
2021-12-27 06:24:28 +0000 UTC
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"Hey, it's time to wake up," I said, giving Cluma a gentle shake. "I need to get you back home."
"Mreow?" she moaned as she stretched widely, punching me in the face in the process.
"...I think I preferred you when you were sleeping," I complained.
Cluma blinked a few times while her brain rebooted, before bolting upright, headbutting me in the chin.
""Ouch!"" we both yelped.
"Yup, you were definitely safer asleep."
"Why was I sleeping? What time is it? Ah!...
2021-12-24 05:39:05 +0000 UTC
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With Christmas activities, chapter releases are slipping a little later than normal, but I’m not planning on missing any. If they get too delayed, I’ll start scheduling them.
I struggled uselessly against my silk bonds, doing my best to roll out of the way of a particularly industrious beetle that seemed utterly determined to land on my face. Could I roll all the way back to the crevice? Beetles could still get in, but it would at least give me some shelter. I coul...
2021-12-23 06:56:26 +0000 UTC
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I hadn't won that fight, but at least I'd got a good crop of skills from it. Nevertheless, I felt I should concentrate more on winning than skills. I needed to beat a hundred of those demons to afford the single experience potion, never mind everything else I wanted to buy, while I'd have all my skills maxed in a few dozen fights at the rate things were going.
I could probably farm those giants by hitting them with a burst of flame breath the moment the fight started. It wouldn't net me...
2021-12-22 06:48:48 +0000 UTC
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After breaking my personal best speed record for teleporting—earning both a skill and class level in the process, and hence raising my opinion of snakes by a good few notches—I made my way to the bar to pick up Cluma. Our village had ramped up production of spirits over the past season, and while they weren't exactly widespread, the guild was buying up whatever it could. As a result, the bar had grown even louder recently.
They still tasted like crap, of course. Hopefully, in a year...
2021-12-21 06:35:39 +0000 UTC
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Cold nullification advanced to level 25
"Is that all you've got?" I taunted the demon I was fighting, something called a daemonium grando. A giant, horizontally slitted eye, set in the centre of a floating ball of blue flesh, surrounded by a ring of tentacles each with a mouth at the end. The mouths spat frozen air filled with tennis ball sized lumps of ice that made the spider queen look positively warm and cosy by comparison.
That was a funny thought. I'd dodged the spi...
2021-12-20 06:07:03 +0000 UTC
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I apologise profusely for the chapter title, but somehow, once I’d written it as a bad joke, I couldn’t bring myself to change it. >.>
There was paperwork. Of course there would be paperwork involved in switching our primary guild branch. Why did I expect anything different? Why did the delvers guild turn out paper like a printing press when pretty much the entirety of the rest of society operated without it?
There were all sorts of...
2021-12-17 06:01:14 +0000 UTC
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I know I said 2 chapters a week for the rest of December, but I spent less time getting the e-books out than expected, so we're back up to 3.
I teleported to the second floor, the shrine still in the middle of a small patch of clean stone in the larger area of scorched and barren rock. The staircase down was completely unguarded, defence left to the shrine's barrier, not that dupliKatie would launch an attack even were it totally undefended.
Actually, that was an...
2021-12-16 06:17:04 +0000 UTC
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"Good day, Katie. How may I help you?" politely greeted the storekeeper of the weapons shop as I walked in.
This place was the best evidence I'd found that this town was not anything like, at least, the carnes multiformis settlement. The weapons store in their town sold nothing that I could use, all of it being designed for creatures with twelve arms and two elbows. This shop sold stuff that I could actually wield, but to the average daemonium brutum I'd seen, would serve as little more...
2021-12-15 06:27:50 +0000 UTC
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Puberty had made it obvious, but even now, I knew my thought processes were still slightly off. I may have the memories of another life, but they were being processed by a child's brain. Despite all my claims, I wasn't mentally in my forties. I simply had forty-something years of memories, which was not at all the same thing. To put it politely, I'd been impulsive. Less politely, I'd been an utter imbecile. I'd done some damn stupid stuff when I was younger, and I still had my [Self-Destructi...
2021-12-14 05:53:29 +0000 UTC
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Evolution conditions met: Sword proficiency ranks up to sword mastery
Swords may come in many different styles, but the general idea of getting a long bit of metal and sharpening one or both sides is about as ubiquitous as weapons can get. There's a reason why they're so popular; they work. In fact, they work well enough that you were able to take down a natatio sideralis, daemonium spina and daemonium brutum with one. This skill greatly increases your competence and damage when attack...
2021-12-13 05:44:48 +0000 UTC
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Here's volume 2 of fetch quest, covering chapters 39 to 71. Contains only typo fixes compared to the individual chapters.
2021-12-08 09:11:40 +0000 UTC
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Here are the collected e-books for unbound soul parts 1-5.
Parts 3/4/5 are minimally different from what's here/on royal road. Parts 1 and 2 have some structual changes compared to royal road, mostly to rewrite everything to be from Peter's POV and to shift other characters to side stories.
2021-12-08 09:07:33 +0000 UTC
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This epilogue is a short one, so I've thrown in the part 6 prologue too. Remember there's no chapter posts next week.
Epilogue
High up on a mountainside, above the Emerald Caverns, the area's tundra was interrupted by a region of unnaturally smooth stone. A completely flat, semicircular area was set in front of a cliff-face, which itself held a cave with an unnaturally rectangular opening, as if it were a window looking out over the lesser mountains nearby, and...
2021-12-05 06:00:03 +0000 UTC
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This is the final regular chapter of volume 5. There's just a small epilogue to come tomorrow before it's done.
I teleported back to the ark entrance, still lost in my thoughts. Erryn had admitted that she didn't understand people, but I had to admit I was just as clueless as she was. Starting from the day I was born, when I'd failed to see how badly my own mother was terrified of me. Utterly misunderstanding Lord Reid. Blaming Camus for sundering his family when the o...
2021-12-04 06:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Chapters 132, 139 and 141 have been tweaked to correct a continuity error in Cluma's hair colour. Camus was the one with black hair, while Cluma was a dark orange. She now gets her black hair as part of her race evolution instead. Not a hugely important difference, but worth pointing out to avoid confusion when she complains about Peter dyeing her hair later. Cheers to Silerus for spotting that error.
"What is it?" asked Cluma.
"It's the core of a dungeon," I ans...
2021-12-03 06:17:47 +0000 UTC
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My biggest concern was Cluma or Krana walking into a room containing something they weren't allowed to see and getting stuck. Would I have to blinker them to get them out?
Cluma immediately relieved me of part of that concern by declining to search by herself, sticking with me instead. Given that she had no idea where we were or what we were looking for, that seemed like a perfectly sensible decision to me.
Of course, what I was looking for wasn't the same as Lily and Krana. They ...
2021-12-02 06:00:03 +0000 UTC
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"That's not a plushy," I pointed out, glad that Krana was bound by the Law to not act anything like a stereotypical dragon and, for example, eat Cluma for her pure audacity.
Cluma blinked and looked more closely at what she was holding. "Oh," she said, eventually. She had [Inspection], after all, so she should at least be able to see his name and race. "Hi! Nice to meet you. I'm Cluma! I've never seen a dragon before. You're smaller than I expected."
"Well met," he responded. "Now...
2021-12-01 05:58:08 +0000 UTC
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I came running out of Cluma's room, only to find her trying to shove Camus away as he fussed over her. "You're sure there was no damage or discomfort?" he insisted.
"Of course there was discomfort!" exclaimed Cluma. "Did you miss the bit where I said it feels like being buried alive? At least it doesn't feel like I'm on fire anymore, and no, I didn't take a single point of damage."
I picked up my left hand from where I'd left it on the table and glued it back on, leaving ...
2021-11-30 06:07:01 +0000 UTC
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Fetch Quest Part 1 has finished its prison term on kindle unlimited, which means the return of the e-book here. :)
It covers chapters 1-38 and the first four side stories. There's only minor edits compared to the previous version.
2021-11-29 10:03:14 +0000 UTC
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Release schedule for December is going to be front-loaded with unbound soul, to ensure patreon completes volume 5 before RR completes volume 4. Next week will have 6 unbound soul chapters, starting on Tuesday, then I’ll be taking a week's break to prep the next unbound soul and fetch quest e-books, and then the rest of December will be 2x unbound soul and 2x fetch quest.
Despite living in the town, Camus was still working as a farmer, tending ...
2021-11-26 06:28:51 +0000 UTC
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This is the final chapter of fetch quest volume 2. (And the e-book afterword, which I don’t normally post on patreon, but might as well this time since I’ve written it already.)
Release schedule for December is going to be front-loaded with unbound soul, to ensure patreon completes volume 5 before RR completes volume 4. Next week will have 6 unbound soul chapters, starting on Tuesday, then I’ll be taking a week's break to prep the next unbound soul and f...
2021-11-25 06:23:41 +0000 UTC
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Katie lightly leapt over another one of the pulsating, orange vines, once again noting the direction in which the mana flowed. How strange, she thought. It was obviously a single giant organism, rather than something like her own swarm that was made of countless individuals, but whatever was it doing with that much mana?
She continued her search of floor four, discovering the crystal collectors, and at least a part of what the mana was being used for, in the fleshy, disease producing fr...
2021-11-24 06:15:06 +0000 UTC
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ding
For your research into the nature of mana, [Researcher] awards 2 soul points.
That didn't come as a surprise. I'd made some rather interesting discoveries today, after all. And, kneeling on the floor in the institute's lobby, being stared at by the passers-by, with Cluma standing guard in front of me to ensure I didn't run away, I was soon going to pay for them.
"What's taking them so long?" complained Kari, who was kneeling next to me. "Can't we get this...
2021-11-23 06:10:02 +0000 UTC
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"I'm still not convinced this was a good idea," complained the white-haired, yellow-eyed young woman as she hopped over another thick vine, her way lit by a burning black torch she was carrying. "I know I said you should take that class, but I wasn't being serious."
The vine behind her started darkening as she passed.
"I know, but I made you, so I'm taking responsibility," said the second young woman, identical in every way to the first, except for the crown she wore. The queen an...
2021-11-22 06:24:00 +0000 UTC
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ding
Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 9
Without managing any further words, Cluma lost consciousness. Her mana circulatory system was going haywire, but it didn't look damaged. In fact, it looked better than new. That was where the good news ended, though. She was still breathing, thank goodness, but it came in disturbingly shallow, irregular breaths, and she was still shaking even while unconscious.
"Let's get her to hospital," I said, not looking forward...
2021-11-19 06:02:01 +0000 UTC
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This is the final regular chapter of volume 2. Next week will be a trio of what-if side stories.
Evolution conditions met: Void tolerance ranks up to void resistance
Sight is one of the most common senses, which also makes it a popular target. Saying that, normally people would simply turn the lights out, and not magically break through regular darkness and out the other side, where there is not merely an absence of light, but the true darkness of the Void itsel...
2021-11-18 06:18:29 +0000 UTC
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Wow. That's a lot to unpack. Starting from the fact the demons didn't immediately attack me, middling on the fact they have some sort of monetary system and ending with the fact they know who I am, along with my respawn ability.
"You were betting on me coming back?"
"Nah, on your chances against our pet hydra. I bet it would kill you. Grallax over there was convinced you'd escape."
"She did escape," muttered the demon presumably called Grallax. "It didn't kill her; she commi...
2021-11-17 06:41:14 +0000 UTC
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