Abrissian Manticore - Level 268:
Crucible Guardian, Depths-born, Beast, Skirmisher
Kaius blinked, staring at the patchwork Guardian as he grappled with what the notification told him.
A Crucible? He’d been suspicious, but he hadn’t thought it would actually be one! As far as he was aware, the guild had been on the lookout for them from the very day of the phase change, yet they’d had no luck whatsoever. At le...
2025-07-05 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostTheir exit from the Godsmaw jungle had led them to a wide ledge halfway up a mountain, joined into a small U-shaped range. Cold air rolled down from the ice-capped peaks above, rapidly cooling the sweat that beaded on his skin from the previous humidity.
It was a biome of grey stone dotted with brown tussock and rare patches of softer dirt — growing more and more common closer to the foothills. Kaius didn’t have eyes for any of it, nor the blue sky, or the immense canyon that encirc...
2025-07-04 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostAt the very edge of the jungle tree-line, less than a league from the cavern wall, Kaius clung to the side of a trunk hundreds of longstrides above the ground. He grinned, enjoying the warm and humid breeze in his hair as he was treated to an uninterrupted view of leagues upon leagues of the biome’s border.
“There!” Kenva yelled, her voice carrying across the yawning chasm between their chosen trees.
Switching the hand that held onto the jagged bark, he turned — seei...
2025-07-03 21:42:39 +0000 UTC View Post“How the fuck did this happen?! Not only did you utterly fail in your duty to protect my compound against a pack of simple beasts, but you let a group of fucking children abscond with the contents of my vault?!”
Torin watched the vein on Old Yon’s forehead throb in time with his tirade, on the verge of bursting. Shadowed by the low wardlights of the boss’s bunker of ancient stone, it seemed to almost leap out of the man’s head. 2025-07-02 21:23:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Suspended on his throne in an endless field of black void and dancing white lights, Ekum watched.
He was curious. His gamble had been performing well — the pair of them had managed to secure two competent teammates who had a similar enough mentality to excel. They’d even managed to put themselves on a path to walk face-first into two challenges that could prove wonderful for their collective growth — if they could prove their mettle, of course.
Amongst h...
2025-07-01 21:30:51 +0000 UTC View PostLooking at his system guide’s guilty and sad smile twisted Kaius’s stomach in knots. It made the familiar office fade away, shelves of leatherbound volumes falling into the background as he gave his guide his full focus.
Having the knowledge of his previous glyphs shoved into his head hadn’t exactly been pleasant, but the guide had never once made a note of it, and definitely had never apologised. Could it really be so bad?
He knew little, far too little. ...
2025-06-30 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostSitting on a plush bear hide, Kaius readied himself to dive into his final skill. This was it — his last major milestone before he evolved his class for the first time.
He quelled his nerves. Whatever happened, happened — no matter what he was offered, it would be good enough. Everything else had been.
Still, he had some questions. While his education had been comprehensive in many aspects, there were some aspects that were lacking. With a full legacy and a mountain o...
2025-06-29 21:30:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe felled trunk cut through the jungle like a city wall, a pillar of dead wood that had shattered the canopies of its neighbours. Lying on the ground, it was still almost as tall as the young growth that surrounded it. the grasping roots that sprung from its base climbed even higher, shading the surroundings enough that no new growth had sprouted in proximity.
It was almost ominous — like it commanded a respect in death that not even its desperate competitors violated....
2025-06-28 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostOld Thousand Eyes lay butchered and broken. Its wings had been severed, leaving only blackened and cracked stumps that still slowly wept clear fluid. Its entire flank was missing too, burned and excised by the spell that had nearly cost Ianmus his life.
It had been a broken thing when they’d first made it to the site of its crash landing. The beast had been snarling, writhing in pain as broken bones and missing limbs destroyed all semblance of threat it had once posed. It had almost b...
2025-06-27 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostA sigilistic ring of tessellated and layered geometry hovered around the tip of Ianmus’s staff, rock solid and glowing softly to his mundane sight. Just over a longstride in diameter, it almost looked like the simplistic octograms that he had seen beginner students of runecraft make use of at Sunspire.
Only many times more complex, woven and layered across three dimensions.
He could feel the effect it had on his spell. His mana seemed to leap to his very ...
2025-06-26 22:23:42 +0000 UTC View PostThey tore across the ground, racing through a jungle painted in miniature. Each tree still towered up a hundred-fifty longstrides or more, but they were clustered tightly — only a bare hundred strides between each trunk.
The undergrowth was similarly stunted. Closely clustered and battling for dominance, the young trees drowned the jungle floor in gloom — only the hardy grasses and knee-high wide leafed brush that grew near the trunks of the trees' fully grown parents thrived....
2025-06-25 21:23:21 +0000 UTC View PostKaius tore through vines and brush alike as he raced through the jungle. His team was ahead of him, Porkchop acting like a plow as he used his strength and bolstered momentum to tear unheeded through the undergrowth.
A high pitched scream echoed through the canopy above. Looking up through clustered ferns, Kaius saw the faint glow of mana concentrating around a maw of needle teeth.
“Another beam coming, be ready!”
His team tensed at his words.
The gathe...
2025-06-24 21:29:32 +0000 UTC View PostKaius could feel Old Thousand Eyes dropping from the cavern ceiling at a steep dive, drawing closer by the moment. It would only take seconds for it to arrive, but with his mental stats raising his perception so high the time stretched.
It was agonising, like watching a headsman's axe head straight for his neck.
Running as fast as he dared, Kaius sailed a half dozen strides with every step. It was nowhere near enough. Even at a dead run, it would still take ten minutes...
2025-06-23 21:21:04 +0000 UTC View PostOn their approach to the waterway that cut its way through the jungle, Kaius and his team hiked up one of the areas rare hills. It was barren, a singular tree dominating its peak and choking out the undergrowth too close to its trunk. Covered only by a light dusting of wildflower and brush, it was an island rising above the sea of green.
They loitered among chest high roots as they surveyed their approach. Water roared a short distance ahead, drowning out the living ambience of th...
2025-06-22 21:36:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe depthsborn snake-centipede lazed in a patching of sunlight, coiled around itself.
It made it hard to judge its true size, but Kaius thought it had to be an easy thirty or fourty strides long. Thankfully, its wide and flat body segments looked to be two strides wide, so even with its size, it wouldn’t have an overwhelming mass advantage on them.
Still, it was armoured in heavy scaled plates. It would be a hardy beast, that was for sure.
A good thing in Kaius...
2025-06-21 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostFerns the size of oaks shaded them with fronds as large as boat sails. With every rustle of the ever-present humid jungle wind, spores drifted free, filling the air with an ochre haze that smelt of must and life.
For most, the constant obstruction would have been a constant hazard — obscuring any number of threats behind billowing clouds. Not for Kaius — Truesight cut right through it, leaving his vision crystal clear. It was odd, in a way — he could still see th...
2025-06-20 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostCinching his quilted robe tighter, Hanrick took a long sip of brandy and savoured the smooth burn that coated the back of his throat.
He stared mindlessly into the distance, sinking further into his favourite fireside chair as he gazed past his four-poster bed — losing himself in the star-speckled night sky visible through one of his many windows.
Beneath the twinkling lights, a pale imitation of the heavens beauty spilled out across the ground in the form of thousands of ...
2025-06-19 21:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius leaned back against the wall of the safe room, his arms folded in his lap as he took slow breaths.
His spar with Porkchop had worked out a lot of the tense energy that had lingered after his fight with the rootborers. It had been helpful too — he’d gotten a much better handle on his new Mercurial Reversal, and had gained a couple of levels for it on top of that.
As he’d grown used to the sudden surge of speed it presented, his parries had grown less and ...
2025-06-18 21:29:34 +0000 UTC View PostIanmus watched his closest two friends roughhouse in the middle of the safe room. Nominally, they were practicing their new skills — taking their time not to burn through too much of their already-drained resources.
In reality, he knew both of them well enough to be certain they were blowing off steam.
Porkchop’s poisoning had worn on them both. They were staunch warriors. Both of them could and had smiled as they were disembowelled, using one hand to s...
2025-06-17 21:32:54 +0000 UTC View PostKaius stood in the centre of the safe room, his sheathed sword planted point first in the ground. Leaning forwards, he rested his weight on his cross guard, drenched in the soft glow of the grubs that lived off the roots in the ceiling above. A little bit of practice with their new skills sounded like a fine idea in his opinion.
While all skills came with the knowledge of how they worked, and most non-spell abilities were somewhat automatic, you still had to get a feel for the ...
2025-06-16 21:33:01 +0000 UTC View PostKaius tuned out the world around him and slid into his soul space a moment before he accepted his new skills. Even if he’d seen the System weave a new class skill seven times before, it was no less of a fascinating sight.
His metaphysical centre was largely similar to the last time he had checked on it, but there were changes. The burning conflagration that was his soul burned just that much brighter, and the woven net of sigils and power conduits of his class surrounding it was just ...
2025-06-15 21:38:53 +0000 UTC View Post“If you want to prove yourself worthy of VOS…”
An enigma, another tantalising hint at the truth behind the Vesryn order. Clearly, whatever it was, it was important to the order — some sort of supreme skill, perhaps? Or could it be some sort of ceremony or ritual. Vesryn, wherever it was from, seemed like it was well founded and had a deep foundation.
Any group that could have devised such a potent art had to be, especially one where their bloody in...
2025-06-14 21:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius lounged against the safe room wall, sipping from a mug of the thin sap that pooled in the natural basin in the room’s corner.
It was thin and watery, but had a faint sweetness and tasted subtly floral — the perfect refreshment as the remnants of his wounds closed.
Porkchop had recovered well — once Kaius’s Vesryn Pact had grown strong enough to stave off the venom, his prodigious regeneration had quickly healed his wounds. Still, they would be here for some ...
2025-06-13 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post*Ding! level 244 Pale Rootborer - Envenomed Parasite slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!*
…
*Ding! Runeblade Initiate has reached level 146 > 170!*
*+3 Con, Str, & Int, +2 Dex, Wil, +1 Vit, Free - from Class & Racial Traits!*
Kaius stood in a field of slain worms, half dazed.
Pain oozed from a dozen r...
2025-06-12 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostRo stomped her way across the office, resisting the urge to shatter a chair against the wall and scream. Pacing didn’t help, but shattered axles, what else could she do?
“Whisper was right, the bastard’s a fucking moron — he knew nothing! Nothing!”
Everything out of that backstabbing rat's mouth had been useless. He hadn’t even been able to coherently explain why a minor noble from Greenseed was playing criminal in Deadacre ...
2025-06-11 21:33:27 +0000 UTC View PostKaius stared at the field of pallid tendrils waving through the air, standing at the threshold to the cavern. They looked disgusting. It was perhaps a little ridiculous that he was more unsettled by their demeanour and form than the deadly danger of their venom. In his defence, they looked like someone had wacked an insectile beak at the end of a shrivelled tube of skin.
Taking a critical eye, he planned his approach. They were spread evenly through the cavern, but he knew from the last...
2025-06-10 21:32:37 +0000 UTC View PostThe pale worm swayed like a thread caught in a gentle breeze, sweeping around as it blindly searched for prey. Kaius could feel the feverish heat that flooded through Porkchop’s body, a crawling miasma that spread from the bite on his leg.
His brother’s words hung heavy in his mind. Venom.
Kaius stood his ground, trusting in his brother’s fortitude as he slowly raised his sword. The worm seemed content to writhe aimlessly. He doubted it would last — somethin...
2025-06-09 21:27:19 +0000 UTC View PostThey needed to move.
The other Kolnirs would catch up soon. Even if they were moderately separated by a barred wall of supernaturally tough roots, he didn’t want to test the beasts — they’d proven their persistence enough.
Kaius nodded to his team.
“Porkchop — you’re first. I’ll take the rear.”
In a tunnel like this, the safest place for Ianmus and Kenva to be was between them, and Porkchop couldn’t defend their backs....
2025-06-08 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWading through the mire of grasses and fronds that surrounded him, Kaius felt like his nerves had been stretched to the point of breaking.
Every few minutes he would hear the distinctive cry of a Kolnir, their basey shrieks slicing through the jungle for leagues. He couldn’t just tune them out — not when the next one might be the only warning they got before they were attacked.
It hadn’t been long since they had fled the site of their last battle — they were be...
2025-06-07 21:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostA/n: accidentally had this scheduled for tomorrow, since I queued it right around midnight and Patreon auto selects tomorrow as the queue date. Woopsy!
Kaius heard the bellowing hoots of far off kolnirs once again. Four in quick succession, closer than they’d been only seconds before.
At best, they only had a handful of minutes.
He wanted to tear at his hair and scream. They had a kolnir pinned beneath Porkchop’s claws, immobile and on t...
2025-06-06 23:47:37 +0000 UTC View Post