Your party has gained the blessing of an earth nymph! This blessing persists as long as you remain within the Wandering Woods.
If the first two nymphs had put up a fight in their own ways, getting the earth nymph’s blessing proved to be a breeze -- or whatever the earth version of a breeze was. A pebble? Catching the earth nymph proved to be a pebble.
Another boyish blob of mana, the ruddy brown spirit proved to be much more amiable than his airheaded b...
2024-10-03 18:36:22 +0000 UTC
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In the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t been offered that many quests since becoming a Protagonist. Still, I’d gained and completed enough of them to know that one usually didn’t receive a quest without any sort of inciting incident.
As I read through the quest description, it quickly became clear that this was the case presently, too. With that being said, the trigger was unconventional, to say the least.
The Wandering Woods I
Som...
2024-09-30 12:00:17 +0000 UTC
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The suggestion to brave another region wasn’t overly surprising. It was, after all, kind of the point if we ever wanted to get out of here. To do so without Cal, however, was significantly less expected.
More than that, it was less appealing, too. As the only one of us who could somehow go completely without sleep or food, Cal was a godsend when it came to keeping us safe during longer trips. Considering that Verin couldn’t deal direct damage, either, Cal’s absence would for...
2024-09-26 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Drinking has reached level 14!
“Lady Tess,” Verin choked out, only her Etiquette level keeping her from coughing up a lung. “With all that you’ve built here, one wonders if we might install a still of sorts. Surely we would all benefit from rectifying the lack of quality alcohol, no?” Even after all these months, Verin eyed her moonshine warily, as if it would lurch out of her cup and slap her.
“Just think of it as training!” Cal su...
2024-09-19 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Given that I’d passed all of the thresholds for my stats, I wasn’t expecting anything too strange from the new level. Even so, I read through the notification first, curious to note what stats I’d gain this time around.
Congratulations! You have reached level 16!
+2 Constitution
+1 Strength
+1 Intelligence
+2 Wisdom
2024-09-16 13:37:17 +0000 UTC
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Clear Skies II
Assist the Roc Lord in defeating Din’Ket the Usurper.
Rewards variable based on method of completion.
I was glad that the quest details were brief, as I didn’t have the luxury of settling down for a lengthy read. Instead, I was busy maintaining a death grip on the roc beneath me, hurtling through the air faster than a missile. The other two were behind me, a fact I only knew from...
2024-09-12 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Hi hello, all! It's a very big day for the series!
Book 3 is now live on Amazon. Woohoo!
As most of you will be aware, this book launch is a bit special, as it's the first book I've published since quitting my job to write full time. That also means it's very important for me, as it's going to serve as a good litmus test for how viable it is to keep writing as a career. All that to say: The s...
2024-09-09 12:01:44 +0000 UTC
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Another day passed before we neared the grimy patch of air. Without much fanfare, we waded into it.
At first, we didn’t notice any serious differences. True, the islands we visited were a bit more dusty. Some patches of mud still clung to the island, having survived the journey through the clouds. Save for the change in air quality, there was nothing that wasn’t purely aesthetic, though.
All of that changed when the first notification arrived, however.
You ha...
2024-09-09 12:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Hi hello, all!
Not too much in the way of updates except for one big one: Book three is up on Amazon! You can find it here.
For now, it's just out for pre-order. When I post the next chapter on Monday the 9th, it'll be live.
By virtue of being here on Patreon, all of you are already supporting me a bunch, and I appreciate it more than words can express. Should you also wish to grab a copy of...
2024-09-05 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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As the mud surged inwards, an all-encompassing gurgling sound filled the air, a disquieting precursor to its origin. Even the sound alone felt like it was gunking me up and slowing me down, but in reality, there was a much simpler explanation for my lacking speed.
Wrapped tightly in my arms was Verin’s diminutive frame. While I was fairly fast when I really pushed myself, that was significantly less true while ferrying someone else.
To her credit, Verin seemed to be faring bette...
2024-09-05 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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The very instant the clouds consumed us, my body went haywire.
My feet were the first sign that something was wrong. Despite pushing more fire mana into them, Jet Step failed to activate, sputtering out. The briefest peek at my mana revealed I still had more than enough, but before I could dwell further on the matter, something far worse happened.
I was slowing down.
While, by all rights, I should have been in free fall, Verin and I were rapidly coming to a complete...
2024-09-02 12:00:21 +0000 UTC
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With the benefit of understanding what we were up against, the three of us began to rush through the air region with ease. Each new island proved to be fairly similar to the first, with an aerial gem hidden away and an ensuing fight to charge it.
In terms of finding the gems, Verin’s previous victory turned out to be a bit of a fluke. To start, the gems often were not found in high places. On a few islands, we found long-abandoned structures, usually ruins of small stone huts...
2024-08-29 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Hi hello, all! Still very sick and bleh, but had a few things of note for today.
Firstly, as of tonight, I will have finally finished editing book 3! I plan to send it over to the audio folks later today, and I'm sure I'll soon have updates on when the audiobook will be out. Truly, this took me more than triple the amount of time I thought it would, and it's hard to express just how excited I am to be done with it. At ~230k words, it will be the longest of any of the books so far.
2024-08-26 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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A day later, after all of us were fully rested, we made our way to the end of the labyrinth. In an unexpected twist that made a lot of sense in hindsight, it turned out that the safe room had been placed in the center of the maze. Our trip out was thus just as long as our trip in, and now that we knew the proper route, the entire region would only take us four days to cut through if we needed to again.
That being said, none of us were eager to do so any time soon. When we turned the fin...
2024-08-26 12:00:14 +0000 UTC
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You have found a safe room! No monsters may enter the safe room, and no traps have been set within it. The safe room may contain beneficial effects to help you recover.
This is a permanent safe room. It will not disappear, and there is no time limit for staying within it.
While I’d already seen the notification days before, for Cal and Verin, it was a first. Having carefully led them through the paths I’d pre-cleared, the thr...
2024-08-23 21:59:19 +0000 UTC
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Having sealed me in, the seer wasted no more time, its next barrage of attacks heading straight towards me. The very moment the inky arms burst from the monster, I was moving, a Spatial Step carrying me forward. Its aim fouled, the forsaken shrieked as all five arms slammed into the ground. Not deterred in the slightest, it sent out another wave, and another, and another after that.
With enough warning, though, I was untouchable. At least for the time being. Spatial Step, <...
2024-08-19 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Falling to my death had long stopped being a concern for me, and the very first thing I did when the ground disappeared was activate Feather Foot. Instantly, my fast descent became slow and gentle.
Which, of course, didn’t really solve anything.
A few Jet Steps brought me right up against the black walls fencing me in, and with an overloaded blade of light, I attempted to slice my way back to freedom to little avail. The blade successfully cut through the darkn...
2024-08-15 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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As I stood alone at the entrance to the labyrinth, I turned back, spotting Verin and Cal in the distance. While the prior stood still and resolute, the latter cheerfully waved me off.
The argument to let me explore alone — if it could even be called that — had been far less fierce than I’d expected. Whether that was due to the others’ near-brush with death, their sheer faith in me, or something in between, I wasn’t sure. Regardless, the hardest part of convincing them had been...
2024-08-12 12:00:17 +0000 UTC
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After getting caught in a sandstorm the first time we’d tried to clear the desert, it would have been nice to say that I was prepared for anything now. Naturally, though, this was a lie. I knew that the dungeon could throw any manner of strangeness our way, but in the end, there was no real way to mentally prepare myself for anything.
As the three of us at last crossed the line that separated the desert from the darkness and began to cautiously move forward, I could thus hope...
2024-08-08 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Even with a blank set of class quests and a daily buffet of powerful enemies, leveling was not a fast affair. Our next era lasted longer than all the time in the dungeon before it, as each of us settled into tried and true routines.
While it wasn’t as if I never saw the others, we spent less and less time together, Cal and Verin throwing themselves against as many monsters as they could while I spent more time in my cave. Naturally, I left them plenty of pre-cooked meals whenever I wo...
2024-08-05 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Hi hello, all! Some quick updates and a poll today.
August updates! Having quit my job, I was able to work up a pretty serious backlog of chapters, which let me take off pretty much the entirety of July just to edit book 3 in preparation for publishing it. Wanted to let everyone know that those edits have been going really well, even if (much to my horror) they're still not done yet. Thankfully, I'm in the home stretch -- after doing some larger rewrite sections, I've been editing the r...
2024-08-01 12:02:00 +0000 UTC
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For a time, enchanting was a godsend when it came to keeping me busy. The bulk of the time I wasn’t hunting with Cal or Verin, I was busy making new enchantment matrices, giving every spellform I knew a mud bath. On one occasion, I even recruited Verin to help place a matrix in ice. She was suitably impressed even if the lackluster Illumination spell wasn’t much to look at. As a bonus, the ice had even resulted in a Poor quality item instead of Trash. Truly, I w...
2024-08-01 12:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Despite Verin and Cal’s resounding combat successes, none of us thought that rushing into a new biome was a good idea yet. With low levels and an almost completely blank slate for their class quests, both of the two could easily level a few more times without needing to take that risk.
Practically, that meant two things for me. Firstly, I was forced to go hunting much more frequently. Rather than continue with our old schedule of traveling into the desert once every five days, Cal and...
2024-07-29 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Like most princesses, Cal had never had a particularly strong opinion on scorpion meat. Not until recently, at least. While the first few times she’d tried it had been enjoyable sheerly from novelty’s sake, it had quickly grown bland and boring after so much repetition.
In a strange way, she felt very similar about the creatures themselves. Horrifying and exhilarating the first few times, and certainly not an enemy she could afford to get sloppy around, but nonetheless blandly routi...
2024-07-25 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Frozen time was, in Verin’s opinion, always a strange experience. On numerous occasions, she had witnessed those around her entering their class spaces, or in rarer cases, choosing their class. While those experiences tended to last a while for them, to any observers present, they were instantaneous. In practice, this usually meant watching someone’s entire demeanor shift in the span of an instant.
In rarer cases, more drastic changes would occur. Case in point, it had only...
2024-07-22 12:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Cal, not taking any chances, shot off from the others, making a beeline for the sundering gem. After all, who knew? For all that Verin talked about “etiquette this” and “etiquette that,” Cal wouldn’t put it past the noble not to honor the sacred right of “dibs.”
Then again, she probably didn’t need to worry. With how big the room was, the frail woman would probably be huffing and puffing by the time she got to the center, even if she had some way to match Cal’s Dexteri...
2024-07-18 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Like the other two rooms in my class space, the Arcane Augmenter path consisted of a series of steps leading upwards. Unlike the others, each step in the room was home to only a single class skill, taking the form of a wearable item sitting on a pedestal. Even before I reached my new option, something strange happened.
As I stepped from the fourth tier -- home to my Arcane Storage bag -- onto the fifth, I felt an odd lurching sensation. It felt ever so vaguely...
2024-07-15 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
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“Absolutely not.” Verin was fast to nip the idea in the bud. “Normally I would begin by saying ‘explain yourself,’ but the notion is so far-fetched, I do not believe there is any need. We have devoted almost our entire time here to getting stronger. You would ask us to take what is likely the very singular course of action that would decrease our levels?”
I had to agree with Verin here, but at the same time, I doubted Cal would have brought it up without a good reas...
2024-07-11 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Hi hello!
Mostly just wanted to share that I got the (probably) final cover for book 3 back recently. Title may or may not change if I can think of something better before I release it, but the art beneath the text is definitely final. Decided to go with Tess's Dungeon of Tragedies door. Lemme know what you all think, and a special shoutout to the artist I commission for my covers (nelediel.com)!
Past that, things are l...
2024-07-08 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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For whatever reason, it took some time to warm Verin up to the idea of sleeping on mummy bandages. It didn’t help that once Cal learned of what I’d done, she’d laughed about it for days, only adding to Verin’s trepidations. In the end, though, between a comfortable mattress and a floor, there could only be one winner. As if calmed by the mattress’s comfort, she began to leave her room more, even if only to return to her earlier single-minded training.
If perhaps I did...
2024-07-08 12:00:11 +0000 UTC
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