Author Frank Morin

Ch 112 - Higher Wisdom Pays Off For Once

Question for the hive mind.

I've been getting some pretty consistent feedback that Lucas's attraction to Ruby is not working for folks, especially since he had a serious girlfriend back on Earth.

So I am considering changing his relationship with Isabella to where he had actually proposed to her, but she said no. In that way, he is actually free to move on, but his hesitance is more out of fear of being rejected again.

What are your thoughts? Please participate in the po...

Ch 111 - Somber Celebration

That shook the team out of our dark moods for a moment as everyone checked their statuses and achievements. Everyone else got six more levels too, and even I had an achievement waiting.

“Congratulations, Lucas! You have reached level 16. Stat points allocated, plus one free point.”

I closed my eyes to savor the influx of power as my Intelligence and Wisdom ticked up a point each. I allocated my free point to Constitution, raising the base value to 40.8 points. With the extra 1...

Ch 110 - Bittersweet Rewards

A few minutes later, Lana’s voice shook me from the dazed healing stupor I’d fallen into.

“You have to heal him!”

“I’ve tried everything.” Tomas sounded tired, his voice gentle, caring, but firm. That was his doctor voice, the one he used when sharing bad news to patients or grieving loved ons.

Damn.

I shifted to one side to look past Ruby and only then realized my legs had finished regrowing. And my lower half was totally naked. Flushing, I willed my Sil...

Ch 109 - Off With His Head

I blinked open my eyes a second later under the onslaught of a river of healing power thundering into me from my Tesla Coil bracelet. It snapped me back to reality, but I wished it hadn’t. Dying would be so much easier. With consciousness, my mind shook off the berserker rage that had swept aside my rational thoughts.

Even once more rational, one thought still drowned out all others. The Overlord had hurt Ruby. Maybe killed her.

The thought speared through the pain like a sliver...

Ch 108 - We Push Our Luck to the Limits

I tore down the stairs, pushing the limits of my Agility as I moved in a blur. I had to get there faster. Tomas needed my help. Ruby was in danger.

I burst out of the exit at the bottom and skidded to a stop in another enormous, crystal-sheathed cavern. The entire closest third of the pristine walls were splashed with scorch marks and blood. The air hung heavy with the scent of charred flesh and gore.

I took in the battle in a single glance. Ruby stood against the right wall of th...

Ch 107 - Traps & Trouble

I am very sorry this chapter is half a week late! I had thought everything was scheduled through the week, but then remembered I had held off posting this week's chapters when i was scheduling this month because I was in the middle of making edits.

So today I'll be posting 3 chapters back to back to catch up and to give you a bonus chapter as an apology. Enjoy!

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The rocky hill rising out of the mud at the end of t...

Ch 106 - Stats & Dungeon Diving

Since we're only posting 3 times per week, I'm going to include the Stats update chapters in with another chapter. Like today.

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Stats check chapter. As usual, enjoy the growth, or skip this chapter without missing anything.

Name: Lucas Altan

Race: Tier-1 Human

Class: Backdoor Synergy Wizard

 Level: 15    Efficiency

 Life Points: 913 100%

 Mana: 152 100%...

Ch 105 - I Meet an Old Friend

Moments later, we broke out of the forested canyon and stepped onto the wide expanse of the higher plateau. Again, I had to pause to take in the awe-inspiring view of the impossibly huge mountains rising into the distance and scraping the sky to the west. Miles of smaller mountains in between beckoned me to explore. What kind of monsters and loot would I find up there?

That made me chuckle to myself. Here I was, standing on an alien planet, enjoying a view that would have been impossibl...

Ch 104 - I Get a Pep Talk From a Donut Consultant

“What class choices did you get?” Jane asked. She was still bloody, the back of her armor wrecked, but Ruby had healed her up good. While Tomas and Scott both checked their class choices, I deactivated the spells on Switchblade and banished the bike to finish repairing.

All of Steve’s 6 remaining clones said in unison, “I’ll scout the area.”

I hadn’t even noticed the other 4 get killed.

“Only 6?” Ruby asked.

“The fewer I summon, the more tangible th...

Ch 103 - Tomas Tries to Outrun a Jackrabbit

I headed back toward my castle house, deep in thought, planning the upcoming dungeon dive when my thoughts were abruptly interrupted.

As I passed an alley between a couple of the Base Camp tents, light flashed and the air around me suddenly hardened like it turned to concrete, freezing me in place. I also received a notification.

“Congratulations, Lucas! Mimic has captured Freeze Frame. Area of effect trap. Time remaining to re-cast the spell: 15 seconds.”

Who would trap...

Ch 102 - Council Blues

OK, so it's official. Yesterday I posted updates to all of the chapters from "Rewards" to here. These updates include all the edits I've made to those earlier chapters.

Nothing absolutely fundamental has changed, but lots of little things. Some of the more notable changes included:

• Changing the fight with Alpha somewhat, making it more challenging.

• Changing some of the tone with Noctarus to increase the tension

• Changing a bit of the fight with...

  2024-12-11 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post

Ch 101 - I No Longer Have to Look Like a Murder Hobo

NOTE - Hey guys, FYI - I've finished the first draft of Nexus Runner 2! You're a few chapters in already. I'll be posting some edits in the coming days. I don't expect things to change fundamentally, but will fine-tune and tweak some scenes.

For example - the scene where Lucas fights Alpha for the first time I'm tweaking to make the fight a lot harder for Lucas. Alpha is a lot stronger, and as cool as the fight was, it made Lucas seem too close to Alpha's power. Also, his conversations ...

Ch 100!!! - Shopaholic

Yay! Made it to 100 chapters of Nexus Runner!

Please take a moment to celebrate reading this far, and share a comment with your favorite character, scene, loot box, or anything that you've loved so far about Nexus Runner.

THANK YOU for your enthusiasm!

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Ruby looked surprised. “You didn’t get the announcement?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. Maybe it was limited to people in town. Makes sense, I guess.”

“Not yet. What are you talking ...

Ch 99 - Ruby Nearly Becomes a Ninja Wetnurse

The mazelike cavern on the far side of the Gloom Spider cave opened into a final wide antechamber of smooth stone. It held only an arched doorway with stairs leading down and a small sign.

“Stairs to Plateau Dungeon level 2.”

Nice. My first dungeon had been short and brutal, and had always felt a bit incomplete. Dungeons were supposed to have levels. I didn’t descend, though. I’d already gotten so much out of this dungeon. More than I’d hoped for. Why not share the lower...

Ch 98 - Painful Progression

Consciousness slapped me awake some time later, and with it came bone-deep pain that made me want to punch myself out cold again.

“Ow,” I mumbled, the sound garbled by my aching jaw. Even my lips hurt.

I blinked open my eyes and winced. How could eyelids be sore? Every particle of me felt like Fulvia had beaten me with a sledgehammer for weeks.

The soft, golden light of the same junction room with the 3 silver doors made my eyeballs hurt. Worried I might be bleeding out,...

Ch 97 - I Walk Into an Unsanctioned Fight

Fulvia drained of all color, from her rainbow wings, to her golden hair, to her silver suit. All color drained away, leaving her literally as white as a ghost. Her entire little body stiffened, and she looked so scared her heart might burst.

“Hey, don’t go scaring her. She was going to tell me some stuff.”

“Indeed, she was,” Cyrus said, his voice low and more threatening than I’d ever heard. “Weren’t you, Fulvia?”

“I . . . He . . . I mean . . .,” she st...

Ch 96 - Creeping Gloom

The passageway widened, but not into a cavern. Instead, it became a twisting maze of open spaces that wove through a jumble of meandering walls, huge piles of stone, and a ceiling that dripped with a constant pattering of water.

I checked the water first, but it wasn’t acid. Just plain water. Faint clicking sounds, like clawed feet scuttling over stone, confirmed something was in there with me. Carefully, I explored deeper, following the meandering path that wound around, over, and th...

Ch 95 - Acid and Cookies

The canyon emptied onto a high plateau, ringed with mountains on 3 sides and views back down toward the central forest of stage 2. It was a beautiful spot, covered in low grasses and scrub brush, interspersed with copses of smaller trees and a few solitary giants with crowns that each covered nearly an acre.

The plateau stretched for over a mile and looked empty, but folds in the land could hide hundreds of monsters. Hours of night remained, and most of the clouds had drifted off, leavi...

Ch 94 - Stats Check

Stats check chapter. As usual, enjoy the growth, or skip this chapter without missing anything.

Name: Lucas Altan

Race: Tier-one Human

Class: Backdoor Synergy Wizard

Level: 13

Life Points: 851

     (78,357 tier-zero baby human equivalent)

Mana: 145 (1450 tier-0 points.)

(Note - all other stats convert to tier-0 stats at a 10-to-1 ratio)

BASE STATS:

Constitution: 43.8

Inte...

Some Fun Art

I've been generating a bunch of concept art for Nexus Runner. Here are a couple recent ones. What do you think? Favorites?

2024-11-21 19:33:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Ch 93 - Puppet Master

As I trotted into the grasslands, I kept my senses on high alert. When I’d raced through the area as a werewolf, I’d definitely picked up scents of other monsters. My Perception was an insane 110, so when I focused on my nose, scents sharpened until I probably rivaled a weak-nosed breed of dog. It was a huge advantage, but nothing like a werewolf.

Back in the forest near the lake, a cacophony of wolf howls rose into a crescendo. Either they’d given up waiting for me, or had risked...

Ch 92 - I Drop an Imaginary Rock Into a Lake

It turned out that Noctarus’s study was located on the first floor of the castle. The halls and most of the other rooms were bare stone, undecorated and obviously unlived in.

Not really surprising. Zombies were dead. Or undead, as it were. They seemed way more sentient than zombies in most Earth movies, but did they care about things like decorating? Or maybe they lived on those ships Noctarus was so motivated to repair.

Either way, the castle was mostly deserted. I filed that f...

Ch 91 - Flexing New Muscles

“Have other humans advanced so far in their mana integration?” Noctarus asked, studying me again with that intense, nearly hungry look after seating himself again.

Could he be hungry? Was the feel of a fresh new soul like the smell of grilled hamburgers to a necromancer? Nasty. I sincerely hoped not. The constant stress of sitting in the presence of such a powerful boss while pretending to chat calmly was starting to weigh on me.

But I kept it up and shrugged. “I have no ide...

Ch 90 - I Glimpse a New World

Note - you've probably noticed, but now that the first month is over, the posting schedule is slowing down a bit. Not even I can keep up the crazy pace I've been doing forever.

for the next few months, I plan to post 3 chapters per week - M/W/F to keep 40 chapters ahead of Royal Road.

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Noctarus straightened in his seat, shifting to a more formal position. His expression turned serious, his tone scholarly. “We start with the basics,...

Ch 89 - I Make a Deal With a Dead Guy

A quick note.

We're pushing into chapters of book 2 already. Loving how this book is turning out, and I'm still making edits and fine-tuning the plan. I have begun posting updates to these early chapters.

So if you have any feedback, thoughts, suggestions, comments - please share.

And . . . . on with the show!

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“Five hundred people?”

“Indeed.” Noctarus nodded eagerly, black eyes intense.

Well, i...

Ch 88 - An Unexpected Tea Party

It took a second for my mind to catch up with my body. “What was that?”

The old man rose from his chair, his smile widening, but his face looked odd. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were black and lifeless, his skin sallow and pale as death. He looked as wasted as my grandfather had when I’d last seen him lying in the ICU just before dying of cancer.

He extended his arms in a welcoming gesture and said, “I apologize for the suddenness of my invitation. I sensed that Al...

Ch 87 - Desperate Times Call For Stupid Plans

“Fire!” Tony and Burns bellowed in unison and nearly 200 humans unleashed every ranged attack in our arsenal.

Arrows, spears, spells, and more blasted across the space. The barrier kept monsters out, but did not prevent anyone or anything from exiting the town, so it did not protect the werewolves from our barrage. All down the line, werewolves yipped and howled as the wave of death swept over them.

Few of them fell, though. Most ignored the wounds we inflicted, even the ones ...

Ch 86 - Alpha Talks

It really was my old friend Edmund. He was not only alive, but thriving. He’d bulked up with a ton of muscle and there was a confidence in his stride I’d never seen before. His pasty white lab-rat look was gone, replaced by bulging muscles and tanned skin. His blond hair and blue eyes, that had always made him look kind of washed out now gave him the look of a Viking.

“Ed?” I exclaimed.

“Lucas! Where did you come from?”

Laughing, he hauled me off the ground in a ...

Ch 85 - Goowee Doodle

Just as the second werewolf deflected past me, I changed directions, shooting sideways through a couple of the other werewolves who were struggling under the barrage of spells.

A couple errant spells and arrows nearly clipped me, but Energy Ward managed to deflect them. Arrows burst into fire or sizzled with lightning while some of the spells exploded with fantastic bursts of light. The concussive blasts shook me violently, but also pushed me on faster.

As I shot past the other we...

Ch 84 - I Enjoy A Bit of Elemental Harmony

Werewolves attacking on our first night shouldn’t have surprised any of us. I’d faced the deadly monsters and knew better than anyone how difficult they were to put down. I doubted whoever was on watch was truly prepared to handle a pack of werewolves. They needed help, and they needed it now.

“We have to get out there,” Ruby cried, leaping to her feet beside me. Her beautiful face was slightly flushed from drinking so much of Sam’s weak ale, but her natural regeneration would...