“Have you actually taken the time to examine the ship in your possession?” Veskari asked as Maya, Tender, and Bell entered the bridge of Shen’s ship.
Maya paused. “I know that tone. Mother used to use it a lot. I did something wrong.”
“I’m asking this as nicely as I can, but did you even try to figure out how to use this ship?” Veskari asked again.
Maya cast a glance at Bell who shrugged and Tender was silent.
“Uh…...
2020-08-19 13:50:44 +0000 UTC View Post“You appear to be injured,” Bell said.
“Eh, what’s a little dislocated knee, fractured ribs, and probably a concussion these days?” Maya grimaced as Bell’s larger upper arm grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up. There was a lot of pain burning through her leg and she looked down to see the black armor had taken more damage.
“One of these days, I’m going to come out of a fight without any injuries. All of this for a measly two thousand exp...
2020-08-18 13:48:23 +0000 UTC View PostIn the greater scheme of things, Maya wondered how her fight compared to what was happening on Earth. She knew all across the globe, people were fighting for their lives. It wasn’t too much different from what she was doing, just… for them it was only five or so days after everything had changed.
Maya should have been used to this. She had been stuck in the rainbow sky hellscape for nearly two months. That was, subjectively, a literal lifetime. Time enough for her t...
2020-08-17 17:38:07 +0000 UTC View PostMaya hit the activation button on the tablet. Green lights blossomed to life and the truck lurched forward. There was no rumbling of the diesel engine she had been used to. In actuality, the truck hadn’t even been turned on, it was just the mana motor that was activated.
Magi-tronics and electronics did not mix, due to the big guy called the System’s decree. The internal lights, radio, and AC didn’t work, mostly because those components had been ripped out and th...
2020-08-15 02:27:02 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you mean Nan’s not picking up? Did we break the communications array already?” Maya asked.
“I don’t believe so. We are well within the range that Shen’s ship would be able to pick up our signal, but I’m receiving nothing from Nan.”
“Trouble?” Maya wondered.
-Oh, no-
“Hey, Vesky, you need to calm down some. You’re in my head, and all that swooning and gasping at danger is really irritating.” <...
2020-08-13 00:11:22 +0000 UTC View Post“Oh, you’re still alive,” Maya said as she looked into a secured room. It had occurred to her that she hadn’t checked up on the roach rogue AI that she had captured when battling the Roach King all those weeks ag.
Rogue AI NN4582A was a dog sized roach that she had defeated but not killed. She could technically still kill it and that would give her some experience points, but the reason she had saved it had been to study the rogue AI core and see what made them ...
2020-08-10 17:19:20 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you think, Tender?” Maya asked.
“You do seem to have an affinity towards the color purple, boss,” Tender replied.
“Yeah, I know. I was the one who got Pops to paint his fleet of food trucks purple. Mother was against it, but when Pops found out it was the color of royalty; he got behind it.” Maya looked at herself in the full length mirror. Even with advanced technology that outstripped everything ever made by Humanity, mirrors were stil...
2020-08-10 17:17:46 +0000 UTC View Post“Say the words, Tender.”
“Shit. There goes our salvage.”
Maya chuckled and looked at the large tank that had been behind a false bulkhead. “Well, it’s not Ellen Ripley, more a… I don’t know what it is”
Tender ambled up to the tank and hooked up the diagnostic scanner to the tank. The module was a hand held device they had taken from Shen’s ship. The Necro wasn’t an [Engineer] so a lot of the devices on his s...
2020-08-10 17:16:12 +0000 UTC View PostIntegrated Economics Knowledge Cube - high grade, Tier 1
Download complete
“Whoa, Betty!” Maya cried out, grabbing onto Tender as the world swayed and knowledge blossomed in her brain. Her head felt as if it were on fire and she gasped, not in pain, but at the intensity of the feeling. “I’m never gonna get used to that.”
“Download complete, boss?” Tender asked.
“I have knowledge, my boy. The wo...
2020-08-10 17:14:51 +0000 UTC View Post“I had thought you were going to rest?” Tender asked as he entered the mess hall.
Maya looked up from where she sat at a table with the tablet opened before her. “No rest for the wicked, Tender. Where have you been?”
“I was installing the communications array,” Tender replied, walking up to her. “Now we can communicate with Nanaseto if the need arises.”
“Oh, yeah. Totally forgot about that,” Maya yawned. “Keep up the initiative an...
2020-08-10 17:13:15 +0000 UTC View PostTier 2 Achieved
Your body, mind, and soul have fully adapted to Tier 2.
-Note: This is a POC Tier 2 upgrade. You’ll still have to fully level to 100+ to use the full benefits of being Tier 2.
“What a crock of shit!” Maya yelled. “System! Where the fuck are you, you bastard!”
“Boss?” Tender asked.
Maya fumed. “That memory invading dickwad has added stipulations to my Tier c...
2020-08-07 17:38:26 +0000 UTC View PostI've been contemplating the direction of book 2 for a few days and although Veskari and the new tube critter are going to be a part of the story, I think i've introduced them wrong. Veskari was supposed to be different, but I've just written him as another generic asshole. So from chapter three I've been tweaking the story again, so that unfortunately is causing a delay for the new chapter.
I'm an exploratory writer, I have a plan and a direction, but most of the ...
2020-08-07 16:38:34 +0000 UTC View PostHey, guys. It's been a month and I'm glad you've all been on this journey with me. It means a lot that you're here giving your patronage to me and enjoying the story I've been writing. I hope to keep you all entertained and coming back for more.
I'd like to hear more from y'all. What else would you like to see? I want to do more sketches and quick drawings of characters and maybe some additional exploratory information on the System and the like. I'm thinking mayb...
2020-08-03 22:34:10 +0000 UTC View PostDay 5
Plano, Texas
Raymond “Pops” Sullivan opened his eyes and let out a gasp. He heard a voice, but it faded away with his dreams. He shuddered for a moment, trying to chase the voice, but it was gone now. A memory.
A concerned face appeared above him. Meredith, his wife. She looked both relieved and exhausted, an emotional combination that were at odds with one another. No one had been relieved about anything in the last… ...
2020-07-24 14:14:22 +0000 UTC View PostDay 5
Ko Samui Island, Thailand
Sword Rat Level 2 - Defeated
35 EXP
10 Credits
“Behind you!” a voice cried out.
Maria Valdez, turned to face another mutated creature tearing through the jungle ferns. It was dog sized and hairy, with a long serrated horn on its head. The sword of the sword rat.
She slashed down with the metal pole she carried; it cracked hard against th...
2020-07-23 15:47:37 +0000 UTC View Post“Ow.”
“It seems you have seared yourself,” the man who called himself the System said.
Maya grunted in response. They were back in her old home.
“So what now?” Maya asked.
“Well, you die.”
“Will Bell be okay?”
“You’ve informed the AIs of what he endured. The mana cores will run out of mana soon and shut down, which will force the cage to return to the dimensional scar. It will return the AIs along w...
2020-07-22 13:49:16 +0000 UTC View PostNow…
Anisa rushed toward the door, but it vanished. A moment later another door began forming on the opposite end of the cage.
“Shit,” Maya muttered. She rushed toward Anisa and put herself between the woman and the forming door. “You stay behind me. You do what I say.”
The woman looked frightened, but nodded.
“What’s happening?” Anisa asked.
“A giant turd is being dropped. I just need him to fully enter the cage...
2020-07-21 17:33:38 +0000 UTC View PostOne moment Maya was in her memory and the next she was within the confines of the dimensional cage. She gasped as the overwhelming feeling of the Void Space around her crashed against her Dimensional Awareness. It was like being tossed in freezing water, invigorating, but also so shocking it blasted all her thoughts from her head.
Why did everything feel cold? She briefly wondered.
The cage was solid now, not the mass of warping components that it had been when sh...
2020-07-20 19:38:42 +0000 UTC View PostNineteen hours before…
It wasn’t pain that burned through Maya, it was as if existence was churning through her veins. It was beyond Maya’s ability to describe, a sense of ‘everything’ surging and burning and consuming.
She saw a vast darkness, absolute and complete, but in a flash that changed. She stared into a gulf of swirling madness, of light, of power, and of destructive creation. Then she saw a fine golden web stretched across ex...
2020-07-17 14:17:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Apparently all the SIL i've described in the novel are blue skinned. Nan, Bell, and Tommoth, they're all blue. although Nan was supposed to be more darker, blue to black scales. Also, yellow eyes...
I think purple is the main color of this whole series. or various shades of blue. blue world. blue life. blue.... (damn)
2020-07-16 16:10:52 +0000 UTC View Post“Hello?” a voice called to her. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Pops?”
***
Maya gasped. “Hello?”
“Are you okay?” a voice asked.
“Hello?”
“Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Maya shook her head and felt a migraine beginning; not only did she have a migraine, but her entire body seemed to have been wrung out, dipped and battered, and then left for a toothless rat to chew on for a week. I...
2020-07-15 15:44:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Babylegs Bell, with his bright golden colored hair and grumpy temperament.
2020-07-13 22:27:17 +0000 UTC View PostMaya imagined that Shen’s face was contorted in rage, but the mask saved her from seeing any of it. That made it slightly better, slightly. The towering figure stretched out his metallic hands and growled, hovering inches from her throat.
For all her gains in Physical traits, Maya knew that he could crush her easily. The same way she had been overpowered by his goons. Shen was too strong, yet he didn’t stab her mind with agony again nor did he lay his han...
2020-07-13 16:13:28 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been doodling for decades and although I tried dabbling in it professionally, I never was able to fully commit to it. But I do enjoy some good ole drawing... Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame was the biggest influence on my art style, but over the last few years I've been drawing slight different. I still love Mignola's blocky hands and dark shadows.
Maya's features and character design are constantly fluid because I don't really know how she looks. Besides ...
2020-07-11 22:21:29 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I revised Chapter 33, added more to the end of it because it didn't feel right the way it ended. so I guess go re-read chapter 33 again. Thx!
***
Maya wondered what the state of her brain was these days. Suddenly going unconscious in a normal world meant a lot of bad things. She could only recall once when she had fainted as a kid from heat. Then, she had been rushed to the hospital and given an IV drip. That had been a bi...
2020-07-10 18:44:07 +0000 UTC View PostHere's an rtf of the first 30 chapters, unedited. If you're new here, best to read it and catch up.
I'm in the process of editing the entire series, in hopes of one day publishing it. so, for now the editing is being done on the main draft and the already published stuff is not going to be changed for a while.
2020-07-08 23:47:37 +0000 UTC View PostDynamic Quest: Defend the Hanganathorie! - FAILED
Enemy units are attacking. Defend what is yours and repel the invaders.
NO REWARDS
- 2000 EXP
Try harder, next time.
Maya didn’t wake in pain, but she still screamed when she opened her eyes. She stared up at a startling white ceiling, with bright lig...
2020-07-08 15:59:57 +0000 UTC View Post“There are others here!” Bell cried out excitedly.
Maya shared his joy and excitement, but a part of her shuddered in fear. The sight of the ship filled her with a dread. It was like looking into a pit of doom, her stomach dropped and her knees got weak.
Was it Intention? The Skill she barely ever used? Or was it paranoia? The world was simple, everything was out to kill her. That had been the case with Bell and most of the AIs she had come across. Nothing in this ...
2020-07-08 02:41:02 +0000 UTC View Post“You should be resting,” Tender said.
“Eh, it’s just second degree burns,” Maya scoffed as she limped out of the Hangy. She used her crowbar as a cane. “I’ve had worse falling out of a sex swing.”
Two days had passed since the battle in the corridor. Maya had spent those two days laid up in the medical room. She wasn’t entirely displeased by that; it gave her some good VR time, but now the side effects were noticeable. She had more headaches ...
2020-07-08 02:38:58 +0000 UTC View PostDynamic Quest: Defend the Hanganathorie
Enemies approach with nefarious goals. Defend what is yours and stand victorious over their charred corpses.
Rewards: EXP and loot.
Maya woke up on a bed in the medical room. A large multi-jointed arm sat above her and as she blinked away the sudden change in reality; she watched as the arm folded itself back into the ceiling.
“Hurts...
2020-07-08 02:34:01 +0000 UTC View Post