B3 Chapter 360: Obstinance, pt. 8 – B3 Chapter 364: Obstinance, Finale
A/N: complaining sometimes does work
2025-08-02 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Bacon Macleod posts
B3 Chapter 359:
Kaius only had a couple of seconds before the drawing would flash on the parchment.
Everything he had was leveraged towards capturing as much of it as he could. He leaned heavily on Truesight, straining his vision until he could see every pressed fibre of the paper. His Glass Mind was churning, aiding him in recording as much of his sensory experience into memory as was possible.
With his Intelligence, his mind worked twenty-five times faster than bas...
2025-08-01 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 358: Obstinance, pt. 6
His ragged gasp tore at the air, bitter dread cutting through Kaius’s fugue and the pounding of his heart. The phantoms were still there. The light, boiling his blood as it cut through his flesh like a scalpel.
The swirling.
His bones seperating; falling to pieces. The slow, encroaching darkness that swallowed him whole.
Kaius doubled over, his eyes still scrunched shut as a wracking shudder rolled through him. He held on to his legs, keeping himself anchored — and r...
2025-07-31 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 357: Obstinance, pt. 5
Kaius snapped back awake, shaking his head to rid himself of the lingering fatigue that always came with a Skill vision. Coming back from the bloody things always felt like getting jolted awake in the middle of the night.
He’d chosen Compel Obsession in the end. Ultimately it came down to the fact it was useful in so many situations — both in combat and out of it. Unfortunately, that did not include this situation.
Two new spells, and neither of them...
2025-07-30 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 356: Obstinance, pt. 4
A/N: if you missed it, I posted a second, extended version of the previous chapter. It is over 2x the length, and was my best attempt to mush the two cut chapters into something vaguely acceptable to me. It's one block of new content, with a tag half way through to show where the og version starts.
Thinking through his spell selection some more, Kaius decided that Bound Maelstrom would be the most helpful to him.
Even with Rapid Adaptation 2025-07-29 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
(V2 ultra deluxe supercut double length edition) B3 Chapter 355: Obstinance, pt. 3
A/N: saw some people were a little meh about the jump, so I did my best to salvage content from the cut chapters. It's basically another chapter before the start of the previous one. Mostly focused on his progress through the trial.
A/n 2: I've tagged where the old chapter started, which is approx halfway through.
Kaius was confident as he walked down the open path. Oh, he was still cautious — but he trusted in his reaction times and h...
2025-07-29 08:50:19 +0000 UTC View Post(old version, read next chapter) B3 Chapter 355: Obstinance, pt. 3
A/N: I decided to cut two chapters since they were sorta just a play by play of kaius running through obstacles without forwarding the plot enough. Might miss a few call outs to things happening in those chapters, so if you spot one point it out.
Crunching his way through an apple, Kaius looked at the next obstacle with a pensive expression on his face.
The piece of fruit was a rare treat, both for getting over a particularly difficult wall and for ...
2025-07-28 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 354: Obstinance, pt. 2
Spider-webbing cracks spread out across one wall of the obstacle course, the only evidence of the lethal trap that had almost taken Kaius’s head off. He eyed the shattered stone suspiciously, flicking between it, the path where he had been standing, and the wall where it must have been shot from.
There had been no warning — not from his Skills, or the trial itself. If the very first trap was so lethal, so well hidden, then he needed to be careful — plan.
Th...
2025-07-27 22:32:01 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 353: Obstinance, pt. 1
The portals inside of the Crucible were odd: they lacked the twisting disorientation he’d grown used to from Depths portals, and their initial entrance to the challenge. There was no mindbending yank through a direction perpendicular to conventional geometry.
He just blinked.
And then he stood in a stone room. It was blocky and plain — square unadorned walls and ceiling made from dark grey masonry bricks half as tall as he was. The quality was good, a finely ground polish that...
2025-07-27 04:55:55 +0000 UTC View PostNext chapter might be late
I am mid mid-winter Christmas party, and I have realised — at midnight — that I haven’t queued tomorrows chapter, and any editing I make after my Nth mulled wine and Nth whisky may or may not be fucking terrible
Sorry, here’s a photo of a panther with a candy cane in its mouth
2025-07-26 11:57:00 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Interlude 14: Flagellation
Old hinges creaked as Arc pushed open the heavy doors to the Temple of Grandbrook.
Even with his natural might and a generous serving of Strength, the doors had a weight to them. It went beyond the simple inertia that he could feel tugging at his grip as he forced the door to slow without slamming — it was a holiness, an intensity he could feel in his soul.
Inside, the Hall of Gods opened up before him. Thirty longstrides wide by a hundred long, it was an immense space with an a...
2025-07-25 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 352: Authority, Finale
After being half-warned about the pitfalls of his display of instinctive stubborn aggression, Kaius grappled with the amused, almost-violent, smile she now gave him.
If anything, he felt a little embarrassed. He had zero memory of the moment she mentioned. Killing three challengers at once, one with his teeth? It was a little gratuitous. Still, the embarrassment itself left him a little off balance.
Why would that bother him — knowing that he could say...
2025-07-24 23:26:24 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 351: Authority, pt. 1
Awareness socked him in the mouth.
The challenge!
Kaius slammed upwards, his heart racing as he ripped his blade free of its scabbard into an aggressive high guard, spinning as he looked for his next opponent. His primal instincts were inflamed, the cutting edge of adrenaline coursing through him as he prepared himself to fight. To live.
Only to find himself standing in the middle of an empty ballroom.
Lowering his sword in confusion, Kaius kept hi...
2025-07-23 21:17:33 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 350: Perseverance, Finale
Kaius screamed as the axe bit into the back of his right hand. It’s honed half-moon edge cleaved through flesh and bone with equal ease. Blood spurted from the open wound as he jerked back — his blade slipping from his grasp.
It glinted in the light as it clattered to the blood-red arena floor — joined by three fingers and most of his palm.
Biting off his howl, he clenched the remnants of his fist, pain and exhaustion leaving him reeling.
It was a moment of distr...
2025-07-22 21:26:54 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 349: Perseverance, pt. 2
Kaius gasped, his body aching with a fire that sapped his strength. Half an hour of battle. Half an hour of slain challengers and spilt blood. That was all it had been. Just a few minutes, yet already his body ached with a weakness that he hadn’t felt since he was a boy.
Not even his experiences in his first delve came close to this unstoppable march of weakness. Even when he had fought on with empty stamina as an unclassed, he’d still had his natural stamina...
2025-07-21 21:19:58 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 348: Perseverance, pt. 1
The first thing he felt was a gust of warm wind against his skin — everywhere.
Kaius grit his teeth, ignoring the absence of his armour’s comforting pressure as he got his bearings. He still had his blade, its heavy weight tugging at his grip — that was enough.
He was in the middle of some sort of amphitheatre — hot sand doing its best to scald his bare feet. The pit that held him was easily fifty longstrides wide, encircled by a tall wall of stone. He judged t...
2025-07-20 22:07:54 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 347: Entrance, Finale
Kaius eyed his reborn blade with a mixture of trepidation. The changes that had been wrought upon it were marvelous — beyond all he could have imagined — but the cost to advance it further was just as weighty.
An Epic material of the second tier — how in all of the forsaken hells was he supposed to manage that?! Even the Wyvern Bone that had been set aside for him was a stroke of luck, and that was only in the first tier!
He couldn’t exactly go dragon hun...
2025-07-20 02:19:04 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 346: Entrance, pt. 5
Kaius blinked away the notification of his changed blade, smiling deeply. Silver veins still pulsed within its glassy depths, twining around the faintly glowing glyphs and runes that hung suspended in the base of his fuller.
A change, but not the change.
There was still more to come. Silver blood beat faster in time with his rising anticipation.
As if it could read his emotions — sympathised with his plight — Kaius felt A Father’s Gift pulse...
2025-07-19 05:11:52 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 345: Entrance, pt. 4
Shoving his notification to the side of his view, Kaius stared at the phial of shimming liquid and struggled to grapple with the proof that hung right in front of him.
Legendary?! He’d heard whispers of such things — artefacts of immense power from times of old. The sort of thing that cities warred over, that the truly strong of Vaastivar would leave their hidden abodes to desperately seize from their competitors. Things of myth, one and all — the Hyperial Blade,...
2025-07-17 21:42:01 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 344: Entrance, pt. 3
Kaius stared up at the floating ascendant in confusion, trying and failing to grapple with the implications of what Xenanra had said. That they were on a path — to what? Ascendancy? Surely she must have been metaphorical — men did not become gods, and even with ten-thousand levels, Kaius refused to believe that it would let him become something so…supreme.
Xenanra simply floated, looking down upon them from her throne of suede and lacquered wood. A smile...
2025-07-16 21:31:34 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 343: Entrance, pt. 2
The weight, the power that pressed down on him from every angle, burning away at his inadequacies and threatening to shatter him at the slightest turns; he knew what it was. What it represented.
Her station. Her existence.
Kaius pressed himself low, prostrating as he pressed cold obsidian tight to his head. There was only one thing the unknown woman could be.
Another ascendant.
He heard his team do the same. Porkchop, he knew, had recognised wha...
2025-07-15 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 342: Entrance, pt. 1
The obsidian obelisk thrust up towards the distant sky, an out of place spear of black. Awe filled Kaius’s gut as he walked at the head of his team — he craned his head, taking in the full breadth of the structure.
After a full four days of recovery, they were finally here. The wait had been agonising — a black needle that taunted him from the horizon while he inscribed Redoubt over and over and over.
It was only now that he could truly appre...
2025-07-14 21:41:30 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 341: Backlash & Rewards
Without its supporting magic, the manticore collapsed in on itself — falling into little more than a pile of blood and roughly hacked meat. Kaius crowded around it with his team, feeling the ache of his lingering wounds as he stared at the carcass. It had fought well — with the strength and persistence worth its station. They had still bested it, proven their worth on the field of battle!
Kaius collapsed with a grin on his face. Without the immediate threat of death, his soul fl...
2025-07-13 22:12:09 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Interlude 13: Relief
Rieker stomped through the catacombs of a dead empire, a scowl on his face and his hammer gripped tight. Blood was splattered across his shirt; his heavy-plate would have only slowed him down, and nothing down here was a true threat to him.
Bronwyn had sent a runner for him; the delver said he had something interesting for him, though the Iron he’d sent in his place hadn’t been able to share anything about what.
Hardworking bastard he might have been, Bronwyn had always ...
2025-07-12 21:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 340: Crucible Guardian, Finale
a/n: my b, stayed up way too late playing tarkov and messed up the timing of my queueing
Drowning beneath the weight of something beyond him, Kaius stood rooted and shaking. The world slowed, his mind boiling as a symbol of impossibility demanded everything he had to give and more.
The sigil was all he could see, all he could smell and touch. It whispered to him, low and crooning — secrets of strength, promises of conviction. Titanic angles pulsed like a living ...
2025-07-11 23:52:32 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 339: Crucible Guardian, pt. 3
Successive booms shattered the air as the manticore tore across the ground, every footfall driven forwards by another detonation.
Kaius’s pulse spiked — there was no time to lose. Still sliding across loose soil and frost covered tussock, he reached for Aelina. Mana showered from the glyphs on his feet as he cast another Expedient Shunt directly in front of him. The explosion threw up a cloud of dirt, obscuring the Guardian as he shot back — gaining dist...
2025-07-10 21:19:54 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 338: Crucible Guardian, pt. 2
The manticore honed in on Porkchop with a razor focus. Flames flared higher, searing the air as mana swirled in its body, building to a fever pitch.
Kaius cut right, Slip Step tugging him through the skin of the world as he circled to the flank.
It was concentrating mana in its legs, pulsing brighter by the moment. Kaius’s Glass Mind roared to life, his second mind racing through hundreds of memories of mana flows — the way his kills had used an endless va...
2025-07-09 21:41:54 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 337: Crucible Guardian, pt. 1
Kaius held his mana in a tight grip, weaving a thread into the final sequence of runes he needed to complete his final inscription of Hateful Nail. It snapped into place, the tightly spiraled weave crystallising and isolating the mana he’d used in its construction.
It had been the last spell he'd needed — his pool almost completely reserved, spread between his Drakthar, Aelina, and Eirnith spells. He still had a little bit free — a bare five-hundred in c...
2025-07-08 22:23:36 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 336: Late Night Talks
Night had long since fallen over their foothill camp, and the cold mountain air was crisp against Kaius’s skin. It sunk into his scalemail, penetrating deep into his body — though thankfully with his Vitality it was barely more than a slight discomfort.
He still pulled his heavy wool cloak tighter around him, enjoying its comforting weight as he peered out into the night. With Truesight his vision was unimpeded, his view of the obsidian obelisk clear as it had been...
2025-07-07 21:25:58 +0000 UTC View PostB3 Chapter 335: Descent
Kaius's blood ran hot and sang loud as he forced back yet another ridgecharger that came screaming over the edge of the cliff — literally, the herd had started howling like banshees the second they had caught the scent.
It was the morning of their second day of descent, and after making their way down a long slope of scree, they’d been forced to make their way across a thirty stride wide ledge that cut directly through the middle of an immense cliff. If that wasn’t bad enoug...
2025-07-06 21:38:31 +0000 UTC View Post