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2025-09-24 02:02:05 +0000 UTC View Post
RinoZ posts
Chapter 1682 - Awakening
Coming out of an evolution is always a bit of a weird feeling. I mean, if a human went to sleep and woke up in an entirely new body, they’d feel pretty weird.
For me, it’s even stranger than that. Not only do I change size and shape, but my insides get reorganised as well! New things get stuffed in there, existing things get moved. I would’ve thought I couldn’t tell what was going on in there, but when it’s changed, I notice!
Sheesh. My legs feel like they’ve been weld...
2025-09-24 02:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1681 - Slowly Waking
I don’t really dream while in torpor. Technically, torpor and sleep are different states, I get that, but still, not-dreaming is one of the few things that I haven’t really gotten used to in my new life.
This, though? This… listless… bodiless experience I’m having right now… it’s as close to dreaming as I’ve come since I was reborn on Pangera. If anything, it reminds me of how I felt just before I hatched.
The major difference between now and then is that I have th...
2025-09-23 02:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1680 - Border Escalation
Merchant built many financial institutions, but perhaps the most enduring is the Colony Bank. Despite the obvious drawback of being run by monsters, the bank thrived in unexpected ways.
In an odd way, people were more willing to entrust their savings to ants, rather than less. They knew the ants had no real interest in money, and they also knew that anything stored deep within the heart of a nest was about as safe as anything could possibly be.
With low fees,...
2025-09-22 02:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 63 - Ascension
When the Unseen smiled a final time and flicked a finger towards him, Tyron felt knowledge slam into his mind as it never had before. In an instant, his head felt like it would burst out of his skull. Runes and sigils engraved themselves into his brain, as if seared there with a branding iron. Through the blinding pain, he parsed what he could, even as he felt his teeth would crack from the force he had clenched them.
As it turned out, he had known a little of how magick...
2025-09-20 09:20:00 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1679 - Monetisation
The Colony didn’t, and in many ways still doesn’t, understand money. There is no trade within the family, no exchange of any kind, for most ants. Almost none of them will ever have any sort of interaction with currency. Their needs are provided for, and they labour for the Colony gladly, without any expectation or need for remuneration.
Although there is an enormous amount of commerce that occurs between the Colony and others, these transactions are handled by exc...
2025-09-19 02:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1678 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 8
“Enid Ruther, as I live and breathe! I’m surprised to see you out and about.”
With a golden monocle, broad moustache, and heavy paunch, Riggurt looked every inch the wealthy merchant baron that he was. Leaning heavily on her walking stick, Enid smiled and leaned in for a soft hug, patting her old friend on the back. She looked around his opulent office within Rylleh, much the same as she remembered it. Plush, purple carpets, expensive ornaments and artwork on the walls, the firepl...
2025-09-18 02:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1677 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 7
[Persuasion, Negotiation and Empathy. These Skills will fuse at rank four and become the foundation on which all of your success will be built. We should also investigate ways you can become a better trader through evolution. There must be organs and mutations that will help. Keep in mind, we can’t cross the line. Skills and such are accepted as part of business, but mind-controlling pheromones are not.]
The little ant nodded seriously.
[The Brood Tenders have already been inves...
2025-09-17 03:59:39 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 62- Unseen but not Unheard
For a time, Tyron drifted in a field of white. He expected visions to assail him, strange truths and esoteric knowledge, as they did when the Unseen granted him a mystery, yet there was nothing.
What was happening to him? He’d reached level eighty, but the status ritual still wasn’t complete. After making his choices, he’d expected to select a new Class, to step into the unknown realm that lay beyond, and yet here he was… in a void of… nothing.
Clearly the Unseen had som...
2025-09-16 03:20:55 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 61 - Beyond Golden
So far, Tyron had selected six of the ten abilities he would be able to take as an Imperator of the Endless Horde, which meant there were six options he’d seen but passed over still on the list. In addition, there would be eight more for him to choose from that he’d never seen before, a veritable smorgasbord of choices, including the level eighty selections, which should be potent, considering most that came at the Class threshold were.
He was glad to reach this point with a ...
2025-09-15 07:50:39 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1675 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 5
Note: Misnumbered the chapters. My bad. You get two to cover the mistake.
The first loss-making venture was a lemonade stand. Although the hatchling was indeed very diligent with what she dubbed ‘market research’, interviewing humans, observing the most walked paths in the city and in developing her product, there were several key failures.
Primarily amongst them was that she had tested the drink, made with fresh lemons sourced from within the first stratum of...
2025-09-15 02:36:29 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1676 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 6
The hatchling stared at the empty, wooden bottom of her money chest. How was it empty? This shouldn’t be possible… it wasn’t possible. She had predicted the market perfectly!
There was a huge gap for artisanal ant carvings, there was literally nobody in Renewal making them! Those people loved ants, so naturally, wouldn’t they buy a lot of carvings of ants?
No, her plan had been flawless, but she hadn’t accounted for the change in costs!
T...
2025-09-15 02:30:18 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 60 - Ascension
Author note: Going to be some retcon and rewrites which isn’t something I like to do, but I feel is correct in this instance.
I was pushing for a few scenes I thought would be cool and believed I needed Tyron to stay Gold for that, but I actually don’t, and I agree that the whole adventure to the Realm of the Dead, and this whole book as an extension, feels like a waste if he doesn’t get level 80 here and now.
So that’...
2025-09-12 07:46:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1674 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 4
Of all the champions born to the Colony, it would be difficult to say which was the most disruptive. Solant is obviously a strong contender, reshaping the way the family approached war and instilling a… particular focus and drive towards victory that hadn’t existed before.
In her own way, Merchant was exceptionally influential to the fate of the family. For good or for ill, she forever changed the relationship between the Colony and wealth, and how we interacted with th...
2025-09-12 02:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1673 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 3
When Jasper awoke, he didn’t imagine there would be anything particularly special about this day. He lived alone in a small house on the outskirts of the city, cheap enough that he’d been able to buy it when land prices were still low. As a fully functioning town, Renewal hadn’t been around that long, but the speed of its development had been utterly staggering. Some buildings in the city centre were already being torn down as they were too small to accommodate the booming population. 2025-09-11 02:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Chapter 1672 - Shake Your Money Maker pt 2
Jasper was used to seeing ants about the place; they were in Renewal every day, after all. On a few occasions, he’d even been asked questions by them, quite the remarkable occasion. They had an insatiable curiosity about tea and sweet things like cakes and biscuits, and he’d answered as best he could. He wasn’t a baker, after all, but the owner and operator of a small cafe in which he sold various beverages, hot and cold, along with snacks and sandwiches.
It was a simple bus...
2025-09-10 02:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1671 - Shake Your Money Maker
Hatchlings worked their way through the Antcademies believing that the Eldest had a plan in mind for all of the castes. The soldiers were intended to fight on the frontlines, with the thickest carapaces and the strongest mandibles, serving as the swords and shields of the Colony. Generals were intended to be fighting support, the second line of defence, providing auras, tactical know-how and their own formidable fighting prowess. Scouts, naturally, had been designed to move quickly, see every...
2025-09-09 02:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1670 - Politicking
“We are worried about your future.”
It was an odd day. Alice Erry had not expected to be seated across from a monster when she had woken up that morning, yet indeed, here she was. The room itself was opulent, which shouldn’t be too surprising, considering whose ship it was.
Neutral ground, they’d said, since they were unwilling to meet within the Green Mountain itself. A smart decision. Within the confines of the city, they would be treated like the Dungeon spawn that they...
2025-09-08 04:58:47 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 59 - Near Death Experience
Drifting in the black was something Tyron had gotten used to, over the years. He preferred the darkness to the other possibility, the darkness was constant, steady, predictable and cold. While he slept, he came here sometimes, his consciousness simply existing in an endless void.
To some, it may have been a dreadful, even terrifying place. Such a blank and empty existence wasn’t something a person could conceptualise under normal circumstances. People needed things, they needed...
2025-09-05 08:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 58 - The Three Way Battle
Note: Let me know how you feel about this one. I'm not especially satisfied with it.
When the magick descended, the sphere dissipated to reveal a more sizable undead horde within. Rather than stitched abominations, these were horrific, bat-like ghouls of varying sizes. With distended, fanged maws, smoking black claws and red eyes, Tyron almost felt they were some form of inferior vampire, flesh shaped creatures with a whiff of blood magick about them.
<... 2025-09-05 04:42:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1669 - Security
Odren the Father of Monsters is both well known, as far as Ancients go, yet also shrouded in mystery. The Origin Cult who worship him aren’t particularly helpful in this regard. Ask two of them the same question and you are liable to get five different answers.
As far as we can discern, it is not believed that Odren was the very first monster spawned in the Dungeon, but he is believed to be extremely old, perhaps the oldest of all the Ancients.
Referred to ...
2025-09-05 02:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1668 - Serve the Path
It has long been assumed amongst the cults that Braxxin is a type of monster known as a titan, though we have no idea where in the Dungeon they may originate. More accurately, if they are known to any amongst the cults, they have chosen not to share it with this author.
Due to his tremendous height, there were many who saw the Ancient and survived to record it. Humanoid, with pale blue skin and a beard of frost, Braxxin’s height has been variously recorded as between one ...
2025-09-04 02:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1667 - Border Tensions
Ruminominex is a creature of change and flux. The Shaper of Earth creates and destroys in a constant cycle, guided only by her own inexplicable design.
There are some who suspect the Ancient is an elemental of stone or earth, but the cultists who worship her do not believe so. In their dreams, they have caught glimpses of Ruminominex through the ever-shifting mountains in which she makes her home and describe her as a sturdy, dense, animal-like creature, with skin that shif...
2025-09-03 02:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1666 - Shifts in the Sanctum Part 3
Alongside Carriflare, Kygar the Storm Bringer is agreed to most likely be an elemental that has reached the pinnacle of evolution. A creature of storm, lightning and wind, Kygar is a destructive entity by its nature, yet those who dream of the Ancient amongst the Cloud cult speak of the wisdom and temperament possessed by him.
Kygar is patient at times, boiling with fury at others. Like the skies he personifies, the Ancient is both friend and foe, clear and nourishing one d...
2025-09-02 02:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1665 - Shifts in the Sanctum Part 2
Many assume that Perrianon of Blood and Horgran the Butcher are more similar than they are. Horgran is, from what we know, a beast of unfathomable strength and appetite for death, a creature of endless violence. Perrianon is not obsessed with blood, or the spilling of it. Perrianon IS blood.
By the very nature of their existence, all things bleed in the presence of the Ancient, running like a river, filling depressions in the earth, forming lakes, even oceans. There i...
2025-09-01 03:44:16 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 57 - Deep Waters
The moment the battle started, Tyron knew he was out of his depth. While he might be considered powerful in his home realm, with an army of undead at his command and a great talent for magick, in this place, he was nothing.
He raised his hands and began to cast, words of power thundering out of his mouth as he began to shape reality to his will. His ghostly opponent did the same.
Although the spirit wasn’t able to match his own fluency, or the force with which his words e...
2025-08-31 00:06:07 +0000 UTC View PostB5 Chapter 56 - Awaiting the Lords
A swift march across the dunes proved too difficult for Tyron to maintain, so he eventually relented and allowed his minions to carry him. Magick, he could easily supply, balance, not so much.
Dove shouted and harangued him the whole way, though Tyron largely tuned him out. Instead, he let his mind drift, trying to soak in whatever he could of his new spellmagick. The hints and images he was able to tease out were so tantalising that they captured his imagination instantly, sucking in h...
2025-08-29 06:19:54 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1664 - Shifts in the Sanctum Part 1
Far to the west of the lands claimed by the golgari, over the sunken ocean and beyond the Burning Islands, the vast area known as the Somnos
Legends say that Horgran the Butcher is sustained by slaughter, that the fields of death left in his wake are all that he needs to survive. The Hatchet Cult are… difficult to work with, even for a group accustomed to affiliating with the deranged and demented. Glorifying acts of butchery, they certainly know how to serve a good steak, obsessi...
2025-08-29 02:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostPAX AUS PANEL AND SUCH
Hey there folks!
It's that time of year again, PAX AUS is kicking off the 10th and 12th of October and I will be making an appearance on the litrpg panel on the sunday!
They haven't finalised times yet, so that could change, and I'll post again when it does.
So if you want to come along, say hi, ask some questions, get some books signed, feel free to come on down!
The panel also features: Shirtaloon, Haylock, Thinktwice, Tevagah, AndyK and HannibalForge. All Aussie aut...
2025-08-28 05:08:41 +0000 UTC View Post