“Sisters! We arrive now at the final battle!” Leeroy called, her voice ringing out even within the darkness. Her precious siblings were around her, even if she couldn’t see them. They were a presence that she could never deny, a wordless embrace she would never refuse. “The enemy has taunted us for so long, thinking themselves outside the reach of our mandibles. They were fools, the Immortals can charge anywhere!”
“WE SEEK!”
“Deep in the heart of th...
2025-06-24 10:50:53 +0000 UTC
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The healers were around me before I even knew that they were coming. After my twenty defenders were dragged into the tree root and, I presume, shuffled back to the fortress, they caome back for me, grumbling all the while.
“Having a nice nap, Eldest?”
“You know this is a war zone, right?”
“Serves you right for jumping off the platform.”
Look, I’ll tolerate a lot from the healers, I know how badly they get overworked, and the futility of trying to k...
2025-06-24 06:49:25 +0000 UTC
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By the time Zluth reached the settlement of the Zissth along the roof of the heart it was already a storm. The slugs could feel the storm of mana at war in the chamber below and were already up in arms. Zluth found Zaluss, the scout and pet master who’d captured him on his first visit to the Zissth.
“What’s going on down there?” he hissed from atop his hulking pet spider.
All of the Krath were assembling, gathering their war-beasts and pets as well. They’d n...
2025-06-23 07:30:38 +0000 UTC
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It’s hard to get a sense of exactly what’s going on, so much of my energy is focused inwards. Pretty much all of it, in fact. The incredibly dense liquid mana is attacking any remaining doom-goo on my carapace, but it can’t do anything to help the toxin that’s already gotten in.
Every ounce of my strength is diverted to containing the rampant spread of the infection. The stuff is like normal fifth stratum mana on fast-forward. Everything it touches is instantly devoured a...
2025-06-23 05:21:11 +0000 UTC
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Bit of a longer one. Sorry for the delay!
Talking to The Three wasn’t something Tyron needed help to do. He had a ritual he could use to contact them whenever he wanted, and he was fairly confident they would answer him. However, having a rising star amongst their Priesthood by his side certainly didn’t hurt his case when negotiating.
Even if he didn’t pay attention to everything taking place in the city, Tyron knew Elsbeth was considered to have the favour ...
2025-06-22 08:36:32 +0000 UTC
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Off to see Tyron. Elsbeth might have thought of it as a good thing, once. Despite everything that had happened, she still liked Tyron, and they had a lot of history together. She’d known him almost as long as she could remember.
However, being around him now was… challenging. At least it was more pleasant than being near Rolan. Tyron may have harboured romantic feelings for her once upon a time, but they were dead and buried at this point. Ironically, one of the few things he...
2025-06-19 12:01:31 +0000 UTC
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Something doesn’t feel right. Like, there’s layers to not feeling right. You put your foot into a wet sock, it doesn’t feel right, it’s icky and unpleasant. Coming home to a suspiciously quiet house and the door handle is broken? Feel really off. I now know that it’s likely to be debt-collectors, and they’re just doing their job, but the first time it happened… I got the heebie-jeebies.
This experience I’m having right now? Blows those out of the water. W...
2025-06-18 23:16:37 +0000 UTC
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The moment it began, Zluth was on alert. His first suspicion was that Soluzz had set a trap, but when he turned his stalks towards the Krath’lath, he looked as mystified as the rest of them.
If anything, that was worse. Zluth was prepared for betrayal, as any sensible Krath would be, this was something else.
“Are we under attack?” he demanded.
“Impossible,” Soluzz spat. “Here in the heart? Who would have the guts? Who could?”
“It's...
2025-06-18 05:01:07 +0000 UTC
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The descent into the lower chamber of the heart was a difficult one. The flesh of the chamber walls was sagging and leaking mucus, yet even so the way was narrow and dangerous. The Zissth had created a path, but dragging such a large and heavy monster through wasn’t easy. Once they were through, Zluth could feel the change in the air instantly.
Rising from below were such potent and toxic fumes his skin began to bubble and burn when they brushed against him.
Down there, t...
2025-06-17 07:45:55 +0000 UTC
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Finally noticed I’ve been using the wrong names and tribe names for several of the Krath from the deeper locations. Shoutouts to big G for persistently letting me know.
I’ve been saying Gluzzgith for the tribe who live in the heart, but its meant to be the Zissth, and their Krath’lath is Soluzz, who’ve I’ve been calling Thulziss.
I’ll make the changes in past chapters, but going forward.
Gluzzgith ...
2025-06-17 02:13:28 +0000 UTC
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Have I corrected the numbering or am I still off?
It was galling to Zluth to find just how extensive the hidden path network of the Gluzzgith tribe proved to be. All these hidden tunnels and connections which drove straight through the heart of the Dungeon!
Revealing its existence to them was a great show of faith on behalf of the Krath’lath, Thulziss, but also a demonstration of power. He was letting them know that his mighty tribe had access to their territory...
2025-06-15 11:12:35 +0000 UTC
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The pressure was crushing. All over the fortress, the systems that Solant had so thoroughly built, so painstakingly tested and reinforced, were reaching breaking point.
The internal cleansing system, with its interweaved network of channels, had endured enormous strain ever since the vents had started dumping incredibly concentrated toxic mana inside the fortress. The work of the construction teams had been nothing short of heroic, braving extremely dangerous conditions to conduc...
2025-06-14 12:39:20 +0000 UTC
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“Have you managed to get some rest?” Elsbeth asked.
Munhilde grimaced. Despite her agelessness, a gift from the Three, even the old Priestess was looking fatigued. Sometimes Elsbeth wondered just what the price her teacher had paid for her long life. She had no idea how old the woman, who she now counted as a friend, really was, seemingly perpetually locked in middle age, and she knew better than to ask.
Through her own work as a Priestess and her growing familiar...
2025-06-13 09:03:46 +0000 UTC
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Tyron had noticed, on those occasions when he had worked with others, that they seemed to think that since he was, in their words, a ‘genius’, that he would be more stubbornly attached to his own ideas. This came up often when he was studying under Master Willhem. There were more senior apprentices than him, and Tyron had been only too happy to take their advice and suggestions on board. Why wouldn’t he? It seemed foolish to be overly attached to an idea just because it came from...
2025-06-12 10:41:04 +0000 UTC
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Jern and Alis were side by side, cleaning their weapons and armour and talking. Alis had been unusually reserved since Anthony had been taken, and Jern knew she felt somewhat responsible. Which was silly. She’d been on the platform at the time, but the attack on the Nave had knocked her just the same as it had the rest of them. She had nothing to feel bad about, but she seemed to insist on it anyway.
“Jern? Jern! Are you alright?” she asked, looking concerned.
T...
2025-06-10 07:23:16 +0000 UTC
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Hmmmmm.
Thanks to the most broken of all Skills: Tunnel Map, which somehow works even though I can’t see a thing, I can tell that the Krath have managed to drag me to a shortcut. The speed they're taking me away from the fortress is really accelerating right now.
I’m not happy about it.
[Hey, is there any sign of the wave finishing yet?] I ask Solant, interrupting her thoughts.
[A moment… Not yet.]
Dangit! I was sure it was going to be dropping...
2025-06-09 06:53:21 +0000 UTC
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As it turned out, Annita Halfshard had agreed to help Master Willhem work on the dimensional gateway, much to Tyron’s delight. Of all the Arcanists he’d ever seen, she was the only one he could say was close to matching the skill of their Master. While Tyron was an expert in the narrow fields he had chosen to focus on, she was a true expert, with an incredible sense and gift for the art of enchanting. He didn’t doubt she had a Mystery related to the artform, per...
2025-06-08 11:31:50 +0000 UTC
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“This is… quite the piece of work.”
The spectre of what had once been Master Willhem, the greatest Arcanist of the Western Province ran his bony hands along the sketches Tyron had created. Covered in dense layers of sigils bound tightly in interlocking arrays, it was the most complicated bit of sigil work the Necromancer had ever created.
He wasn’t even sure if it would work.
“The numbers I was dealing with were… challenging,” Tyron was forced to admit. ...
2025-06-05 11:17:57 +0000 UTC
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“We need to move faster,” Chozth demanded. “At this rate it will take a week to reach the heart and give this invader what it deserves.”
She followed her statement with a powerful strike to the side of the ooze cocoon that contained the giant ant. However, power was relative and no Krath had ever considered their arms strong, sticklike as they were. Zluth doubted the monster within felt a thing.
“We are in the peak of a wave,” Zluth hissed at her, “moving thro...
2025-06-04 09:14:06 +0000 UTC
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It wasn’t always easy being the smartest person in the room. Yet, Brilliant wasn’t just the smartest person in the room, she was the smartest person anywhere.
What a burden she bore upon her carapace.
Surely there were people, or monsters, out there with higher Cunning than she had, of course there were. In fact, one could be found not far away, her Seniors brainy pet demon had more mind-matter than she possessed by a large margin.
An...
2025-06-03 10:36:52 +0000 UTC
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Pets can be exceptionally powerful assets in the Dungeon, and much has been written about them, but I find a great deal of the discourse settles on the expense of raising them.
Some argue that pouring valuable cores into a pet is a wise investment, since delving the Dungeon with a capable monster by your side makes the endeavour much, much safer. Others dismiss this attitude, saying that by the time the pet has become strong enough to assist on deep delves, the perso...
2025-06-03 06:39:46 +0000 UTC
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You might think there’s nothing to do when you’re wrapped up in a cocoon of slime and being rolled around the Dungeon, heading toward a slime-pool of doom created by a god-monster several thousand years old, and you’d be right!
At least I had people to talk to.
[Crinis, for the last time, I am not letting you live inside me. Stop asking, it’s never going to happen.]
[I wouldn’t ask if you stopped getting in trouble like this,] she told me primly. [Y...
2025-06-02 11:50:58 +0000 UTC
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Mozant was unspeakably nervous. She had been designated as the Tender with the most musical mind, her work on the curriculum for the hatchlings being the best of any of the ants. As such, she had been chosen to evolve and expand her musical capacity, to take mutations and Skills that would expand her mastery of sound, something the Colony knew and cared little about.
It had been… a liberating experience. Free to pursue this one subject to its limits, she had been able to unleas...
2025-06-02 03:55:32 +0000 UTC
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Sorry again that this is all so late. I've been hopeless at keeping my schedule this year, been a big struggle. Enjoy!
Worthy Steelarm was in something of an awkward position. People kept coming up to him as if he were in charge, no matter how many times he politely, firmly, emphatically assured them that he was not. Slayers didn’t have someone in charge, that wasn’t how they operated. They got together, thought about what needed to be done, then t...
2025-05-31 05:33:21 +0000 UTC
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Really liked this so I thought I'd share it! The book will be called: Fated Antagonist
2025-05-31 01:45:05 +0000 UTC
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“You fucking moron! You actually broke a rift for nothing!”
Dove rolled around on the ground, cackling out loud as he held his ribs and kicked his feet. Tyron scowled at him.
“How was I supposed to know they would move at the last second?”
Scouting the Golden Army wasn’t exactly easy. Their members were all level 79 veterans with inhuman abilities. Sentries that could see a fish swimming in water from hundreds of metres away weren’t easy to ...
2025-05-30 05:08:52 +0000 UTC
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There was a rising sense of urgency amongst the Brood Tenders. They worked as they always did, with a sense of calm and control. They were the most critical workers in the entire Colony, tasked with the greatest responsibility, to care for and raise the future generations. They were an unshakeable force whose cool and calm was impossible to rattle.
Yet this situation was unlike anything Theresant had seen before.
The young Chal would simply not stop singing.
The...
2025-05-29 12:16:22 +0000 UTC
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The Krath were in a frenzy.
“Move back!” Thulziss bellowed, phlegm and mucus flying from his lips as he glared down at the others. He loomed large over them, radiating power and authority, yet he did not get the reaction he expected.
Some were cowed, especially those from his own tribe, the Gluzzgith, who had travelled from the heart to come to this blighted place, but others still roared back at him, foaming at the mouth.
“Can’t you hear it?”
“It’...
2025-05-28 12:21:30 +0000 UTC
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It wasn’t as difficult to engineer a break as one might have thought. With the knowledge he had learned from the Three regarding the nature of magick, along with what he had figured out himself along the way, Tyron was beginning to accrue quite a number of insights regarding the rifts.
How they interacted with magick being perhaps the most important field within his burgeoning expertise.
After all, if he could use magick to shrink a rift, surely he could use magick ...
2025-05-23 11:55:31 +0000 UTC
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Merigold of House Herimar had long heard of the fierce battles fought in the court of the Emperor. Nobles had killed for the chance to speak a single sentence in the ear of someone close to the Emperor, while entire Houses had been toppled for the slightest advantage in the enormous bureaucracy of the capital.
As a minor administration official from an unimportant house, she had never imagined that such a thing would ever concern her. Buried in papers, totting up the numbers, tha...
2025-05-23 07:12:34 +0000 UTC
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