A haunted expression plastered across his face, Tyron stumbled from the small stone building. Dove tried to read the look in his eye, but the young mage was already collecting himself as he handed out silent orders to the gathered skeleton army.
In neat ranks, they gathered their weapons and gear that remained in the camp and began to file into the building, disappearing into the darkness within.
“So you succeeded then?” he asked. “You’ve secured passage through...
2023-09-25 09:27:40 +0000 UTC
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[Mother is beginning to recover the energy she spent in our defence,] the keeper noted happily, running his long, root-like fingers across the nearby flowers. [Biomass is accumulating steadily, but more importantly, her root network is bringing in vastly more mana now.]
[That’s great news. I suppose.]
Technically, the Mother Tree is an ally of ours, so if she’s doing well, then that’s great. If only she wasn’t so petty, I wouldn’t worry about her regaining her...
2023-09-24 00:07:47 +0000 UTC
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Soooooo this description is a thing.
[Occultus Toxicus Limax: Hidden Toxic Slug. A hardy, defensive monster used as a forward scout by the Krath tribes. With its dense coating of ascended slime flesh, the Hidden Toxic Slug is difficult to kill, and is capable of changing the environment to better suit itself, and its masters.]
Actual useful information in the basic profile? Gandalf, you feeling alright? This is most unheard of!
Of course, information only leads to...
2023-09-23 06:25:53 +0000 UTC
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Despite my protestations, the slug is surprisingly manoeuvrable, slithering towards me with those burning orbs fixated on my position. Judging by the mana sense I’m getting, this isn’t some freshly spawned creature, but an actual monster from below who’s climbed up for some easy pickings.
Unfortunately, you aren’t going to find any here! Only death! Your death, specifically!
Yes, this creature absolutely has a core thrumming away within that slimy body, and I’...
2023-09-22 05:23:03 +0000 UTC
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Ok, I've returned from travelling. My brother-in-law got married, lovely ceremony and all that, then the family and I did the tourist thing for a few days. Lots of work to catch you guys up on what you missed! Enjoy!
Two weeks into the wave and all I’ve been doing is grinding. Now, I’m as big a fan of grinding Skills as the next person. In fact, my dedication to mindless repetitive tasks has become legendary all throughout the lands! Anthony the dedicated, they call...
2023-09-22 04:44:34 +0000 UTC
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The interior of the temple was as austere and lavish as one would expect from the Colony. My dearest reader, the ants have made an artform out of taking the simple and the elaborate and mashing them together.
Inside the temple, the columns were enormous and perfectly round, the ceiling was calamitously high with interlocking arches holding up the vaulted roof. The scale was breathtaking, the engineering was magical, the simple elegance was moving. Yet, as was the...
2023-09-12 05:39:06 +0000 UTC
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Hello dear readers! It’s been some time, but it is I, Travelling Tolly, at your service to bring you my tumultuous tales from the lands of the Colony!
As we all know, the third stratum isn’t the most welcoming to tourists. The weather is simply dreadful, the air filled with choking ash and the heat is positively suffocating. Naturally, being the incredibly accommodating hosts that I have learned they are, the ants of the Colony have gone to great lengths to m...
2023-09-12 04:01:13 +0000 UTC
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Last time I'll be annoying about this!
Book of the Dead volume 1 is out now on Amazon and Audible!
Amazon.com: Book of the Dead: Awakening: A LitRPG Adventure eBook : RinoZ: Kindle Store
Obviously you incredible people already support the novel, or you wouldn't be reading th...
2023-09-11 11:11:56 +0000 UTC
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“It took longer than expected to collect these. I hope you weren’t too inconvenienced?” Yor asked with an arched smile.
Tyron sat grimly in his workshop, the darkness only kept at bay by the small globe of light he had conjured.
“As grateful as I am for the service you’ve done for me, don’t you think it would be more appropriate to send word of your arrival? Rather than wake me in the middle of the night?”
Yor pouted and the Necromancer averted his eyes. Evil t...
2023-09-11 06:30:06 +0000 UTC
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Morrelia blinked the sweat and blood from her eyes as she bared her teeth in a snarl of rage. Berserk fury pounded in her veins, empowering every movement, every strike, but also narrowing her vision. Every fibre of muscle yearned to be unleashed, to slash and cut and stab until the fighting was done, however she couldn’t lose herself to the rage like she used to, not anymore. With a monumental effort of will, she restrained herself, took hold of her own mind and forced it to hee...
2023-09-09 09:25:55 +0000 UTC
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The waves in the Dungeon are terrifying occurrences, really. I mean, monsters start leaping out the walls, the floors and it can be very difficult to determine when and where that’s going to happen. Not to mention the strata become absolute flooded with ravenous, crazed beasts, driven into a frenzy by the close proximity of other monsters and the never ending violence.
I can only imagine what it’s like elsewhere in the Dungeon, the various kingdoms of humans, ka...
2023-09-09 00:57:15 +0000 UTC
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All right! I’m juiced! I’m jacked! I’m fully powered up and ready to go! New Skills to grind, new fusions to chase down and new mutations to get the hang off. By the time the itching finishes running its course and I can get up onto my legs again, the Gravity Mana Gland is already kicking into gear, filling up its vast new reservoirs. Feels good!
Even more impressive are my dangerous and snappy looking mandibles! They didn’t extend as far as I expected, but they certa...
2023-09-08 13:38:30 +0000 UTC
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A status page? Do we even have those anymore?!?!?!
After a lengthy discussion with Granin, Corun and Torrina, the three golgari excuse themselves and head back to the third, but not before promising to continue their painful adaptation process.
Apparently, there’s a ton of people who are trying to make their way down to the fourth, only the intense levels of mana standing in their way. I have to say, if we had the priests and human soldiers fighting alongside th...
2023-09-08 07:59:19 +0000 UTC
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Do you think I deserve this?
Laurel’s voice echoed from the spectre that hovered in the centre of the obscuring cloud of mist created by the Speak With Dead spell. Ghostly eyes filled with rage glared at him, baleful and red. Tyron folded his arms across his chest.
“You went after a Necromancer in the hopes of getting some coin, Laurel. You knew what might happen.”
You have no reason to keep me. Set me free.
Freedom had always been th...
2023-09-07 09:21:08 +0000 UTC
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Tyron looked down and let the emotions run through him. Rage, pain, grief, shame. It was difficult to be here, hard to endure the internal tumult he felt every time he stood in this place, but still he forced himself to. It was here that he renewed his purpose.
Magnin and Beory looked the same as they had in life. They were laid next to each other, arms touching, facing the sky above through a gap in the trees. This place was on the edge of the Ordan estate, but he wasn’t w...
2023-09-06 09:20:32 +0000 UTC
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IS OUT NOW!
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
You can grab this tender slice of prime storytelling at Amazon and Audible, right at this moment. All the annoying errors have been cleaned up and the story is sparkling clean. Enjoy!
Amazon.com: Book of the Dead: Awakening: A LitRPG Adventure eBook : RinoZ: Kindle S...
2023-09-05 01:16:40 +0000 UTC
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[Before you get too carried away,] Granin chips in, [remember that manipulating mana outside of your body is much harder than the mana inside it. Manipulating energy within someone else's body is another level of difficulty above that. You’ll need to train hard before you can even dream of setting of those insane bombs you can make.]
That makes sense. If it was easy to manipulate energy inside an opponent then almost any other method of fighting would be completely redundan...
2023-09-04 09:30:35 +0000 UTC
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Pleased by the positive reaction to their first suggestion, the three golgari shapers launch into their next suggestions with gusto.
[Well, I had Corun work on a suggestion for your mandibles, since you haven’t mutated them after the reset. We know that in the past you had a few different mutations, but you made a fair bit of use of the infusion mutation, right?]
It was true, infusing mana into my mandibles had been one of my earliest offensive mutations after the aci...
2023-09-04 06:16:22 +0000 UTC
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[Anthony,] Granin greets me shortly with a perfunctory nod.
Corrun and Torrina are a little more excited, the former giving me a broad smile and the latter a more reserved wave.
[Well if it isn’t the rock trio. What’s been happening in your lives?]
[Trying to avoid mana sickness,] Granin says, [and this isn’t helping much.]
The big golgari is a big unit, almost tall enough to look me in the eye, even now, his granite coating shifting and folding as if ...
2023-09-02 06:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Time to get back to business. The wave is ongoing, the fortress needs defending and all of a sudden, the Colony is more interconnected than ever before.
The gates are working! I can take a few steps and be in the second stratum! Or the third! I mean, going to the second would be deeply unpleasant, but the third might not be so bad. I could say high to Al, and all the other demons who ended up feeding me energy through the Vestibule.
A number which has been ...
2023-09-01 10:36:24 +0000 UTC
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As a reader of One Piece for over fifteen years, I can't believe the live action is actually good.
I'm so shocked I had to post about it.
The end.
2023-09-01 01:13:46 +0000 UTC
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Special thanks to Poncemaster for his Class name suggestion: Lord of the Ossuary. It's about bones, it's about large quantities of bones, and has that touch of class. SUBLIME!
The carriage rattled across the worn cobblestone road, with four wagons in train behind it. Tyron looked back over his shoulder to make sure they were keeping pace as he’d instructed and was pleased to note that they were.
“Our stop is coming up,” he told the driv...
2023-08-31 05:25:19 +0000 UTC
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“You have to hone your concentration further.”
“I’m sorry, I struggle to maintain my focus for long periods of time.”
Tyron compared the scripting he’d had his apprentice, Flynn, complete over the past five hours. As time stretched on, they grew progressively worse, small errors creeping in by the three hour mark.
“It’s something you must improve at if you want to be able to work in this field as a Master of the craft,” he told him. “Being able...
2023-08-30 04:48:31 +0000 UTC
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“Do not discuss what we have seen or heard until we return home,] the Eran warned her people as they made their way out of the grand ant fortress.
Here on an expedition, her word was law and even her daughter knew better than to cause trouble for her mother at this moment in particular. The brathian were silent for the remainder of the journey. They marched in silence through the enormous tunnels of the fortress, didn’t breathe a word as they exited the vast gates and continued to k...
2023-08-29 07:45:43 +0000 UTC
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As nice as it is to sit down, eat tea and cake with our neighbours while discussing the inherent superiority of ant-made goods, there is still a wave going on. It’s not like it's a big deal, there's just this globe-spanning disaster in the form of endlessly spawning monsters, savage and berserk, desperate for Biomass and experience.
So, with the ink barely dry on our trade deal, the brathians returned to the waters of the lake, vaguely promising that less monsters would ass...
2023-08-29 05:47:39 +0000 UTC
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As it turned out, it did not ‘sound good’, to the brathians.
[Twenty percent! That’s usury,] she declared flatly.
[Isn’t that the percentage you were offering us?] Anthony pointed out.
[This was a number we arrived at after a lengthy discussion of the costs and risks of conducting business. I would be happy to go over them with you….]
Anthony scratched at his head as Enid did all she could to contain her smile, regardless of how hard it threatened ...
2023-08-26 05:07:20 +0000 UTC
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Already, Enid could detect the faint signs of tightness around Eran Thouris’ eyes. She controlled her face. She didn’t want to appear smug during the negotiations.
[I am simply communicating the many difficulties that we will incur in order to facilitate this transaction,] Eran patiently explained.
[Hey, if it’s too hard for you, we can just call the whole thing off,] Anthony replied cheerfully. [We don’t want to impose. No need to endure any hardship on our acc...
2023-08-26 00:41:03 +0000 UTC
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Truly there is nothing so terrifying as being put in a social situation with someone who has mastered the Skills that impact those interactions. Masters of Speech, Negotiation, Persuasion, Haggling, Diplomacy, Intimidation, the other related Skills, the many, many fusions, and those who have levelled the various Classes which give bonuses to one’s words.
To the unprepared or undefended, these people can talk them into, or out of, almost anything. Naturally this...
2023-08-25 10:54:40 +0000 UTC
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“I can’t believe you’ve already reached your second Advancement,” Elsbeth pouted. “Just how much have you been grinding?”
Tyron raised a brow and took a sip from his cup, a wry smile twisting his lips.
“Can you blame me for being driven? All things considered?”
His old friend sighed and shook her head, looking sad.
“No. No, I suppose not.”
She looked as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately restrained herself with a shake o...
2023-08-25 02:10:45 +0000 UTC
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Still thinking of a change to the name of the Class. Skeleton Lord sucks.
The Awakening.
Tyron Steelarm. Your mastery of your craft has advanced by leaps and bounds, proving your choice of Ascension was a wise one. Your soul burns with hunger, now you shall fashion an army to feed it.
You are Ascending.
+20 to all stats.
You are able to advance Mysteries to the next stage.
You have...
2023-08-24 07:25:48 +0000 UTC
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