puddles4263

Chapter 730

After these three, gonna be back to Rand for a bit. But the next Naffur interlude will have some familiar faces in it...

Naffur stumbled to a stop. Very slowly, he blinked. His hands rose, almost unbidden, and felt at the wound in his shoulder. Blood poured out of it, staining his shirt. Or it would have, had the shirt not already been soaked in mud and blood.

Gasping, Naffur collapsed to the ground. His breathing was uneven and he found it difficu...

Status

Woo, Naffur has been giving me trouble. Aside from being amusing to write, he was brought in for a reason. These next 3-4 chapters will be setting the stage for that, so I really want to get it right. I'll release it as a big batch tomorrow.

Although I'm tired, this is the last week. The goal is to write 15 more chapters before December and end around 50 on the month.

Chapter 729

In the darkness of the room, Randidly slowly toiled.

After slowly gathering enough Stamina, Randidly’s hand flexed, crushing the pebble into powder. His expression remained neutral, even as his Stamina ran out before he could completely crush the stone. All he could do is try again. So he breathed in and then breathed out. Stamina slowly filtered back into his body.

After a few minutes, his hand flexed again. The stone was crushed to dust.

So it had continued ...

Chapter 728

Ophelia looked at Shal in shook. “You are not worried? You don’t wish to look? We currently have no pressing matters. There would be no harm in the diversion.”

Shal shrugged. “Even I know little of the specifics of my disciple’s life. He comes, he goes… I can sense he lives and is not in mortal danger. As such, it is fine to leave him to his own struggles.”

Ophelia considered Shal for several seconds. He kept his expression as blank as possible. It was a s...

Chapter 727

It's funny. A lot has changed since starting to write this story. Mostly I'm more deliberate about things. But also, I often force myself to write scenes that I don't think are as fun to write so that I can bury tidbits for plot reasons. Overall, it is my growth as a writer.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to be able to make even the scenes that feel like a chore fun... one step at a time.

Helen was in her element, swimming in the tides of...

Chapter 726

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Randidly found it academically interesting that the people in his Soulskill subsisted mostly on using secondhand images of his to fight, but it swiftly became clear that this Alta was not someone who could be a fair benchmark of Randidly’s mastery of images. Hell, if what Randidly believed was correct, no one could match him here.

Chapter 725

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Later in the day, Alta stood at one of the high windows of her dining room and looked down on Randidly. He seemed to be meditating on the green lawn in front of the manor, taking great care to breathe in and out.

Frowning, Alta leaned her head against the window pane. So, he was a close acquaintance of Creta’s from back in her a...

Status

My girlfriend will be gone over Thanksgiving, so she gets a date night tonight. I'll be back tomorrow~

Chapter 724

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“So we do nothing,” Alta said sourly.

Lucretia could only nod, although she knew how frustrated her mistress was. “What did you expect? We captured a very high-level operative of the Council of Fates and killed two of their powerful agents. Is it strange that they would turtle up? This might very well be the first setback th...

Chapter 723

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These two chapters were very fun to write.

In the darkness, Randidly saw fire.

It wasn’t dreaming but a sort of hyperfocus that Randidly had found himself falling into if he let his mind wander down the path of images. Although he didn’t know for sure, Randidly had a deep feeling that...

Chapter 722

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After taking a steadying breath, Helen knocked firmly on Randidly’s door. The echo of her knuckles on wood hadn’t even faded by the time Helen reached down and twisted the handle. Her lips were pursed as she opened the door. Her bond with Randidly allowed her to sense Randidly somewhat. Or at least it had previously. Although his cu...

Chapter 721

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The thought to remake his Class came almost unbidden to Randidly at the moment, but the more he considered it, the more he had liked it. Over the past month or so, there were a few warning signs related to his Class that he had noticed, but was unable to figure out what to do with the information.

For example, Randidly reached Lev...

Chapter 720

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Probably four hours later, Randidly had a pretty good idea about the location where he was stuck. The small central island was probably only 15 meters across and was surrounded by water. As of yet, Randidly had no way of testing out how deep the water was, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried.

Randidly had twelves seeds in the...

Chapter 719

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Just as Randidly was thinking about the Ashen Image, there was a deep searing pain in his chest. Pressed as he was against the ground, Randidly could basically only wince. But the seconds stretched and the pain only grew worse. At some point, Randidly began to tremble.

Hissing, Randidly did his best to suppress the trembling. Afte...

Chapter 718

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Delayed release because these scenes were harder than I thought they would be. I reworked them a few times to cover everything that should come up.

Randidly came awake slowly. But then a strange sensation pulled him increasingly quickly back toward his body. He was swinging slightly, suspended in wh...

Chapter 717

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Aiden Darke was filled with fear as Randidly moved with animal fluidity to strike at the body of his Propagator. Instantly, he dispensed with pleasantries and struck with his most accurate attack. The sky split and the image of overpowering force crashed downward against Randidly’s back.

The kid seemed to shiver, but he continue...

Chapter 716

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Randidly took a glance around at the surrounding street. It was truly abandoned. It appeared that Randidly had wandered into an older part of the city. The wooden buildings were dirty and the alleys were stacked high with trash. The upper story windows of the surrounding buildings were closed.

And that glance was all the preparati...

Chapter 715

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Randidly touched his heart lightly with a wince. That Chilli burger he had bought from a C Corporation pop up appeared to be giving him heartburn. Heedless, he meandered around the streets of Hastam. It had only been two hours or so since he had fought Helen, but he still felt that strange heaviness on his heart.

Part of it was th...

Chapter 714

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Sorry for missing a day. The dreaded flu >=| Doesn't it know its November?!?

For several long seconds, Alta just stared at how tiny Ryal’s body looked with the hand of the Earth Golem around his neck. Then her eyes traveled up to the terrorist himself. Like all Earth Golems, his face was define...

Chapter 713

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A few days later, while Ryal and Alta went pear picking to make centerpieces for their wedding, Lucretia sat in the workshop below the old Bounty Estate and considered the problem of the sap of the World Tree.

It was extremely alarming to Lucretia that the power in the tree sap suddenly had such duality, even if Alta took it in stride. The bur...

Chapter 712

Inner world interlude is by far the most fun to write. This will be three chapters. Conclusion of the little arc will be tomorrow. (Hopefully me saying this doesn't mess that timeline up)

“Cailm the Unbeaten, first of his name, Emperor of the Earth Golems, was broken on his very doorstep,” Lucretia reported calmly. “His armies were scattered, all five of his Hierarchs were captured and beheaded by the allied forces. Many claim that such a daring an...

Status

Finishing that fight was somewhat exhausting. Today was a break to recharge and outline a bit. 

Checked the word count, and I'm about 5 chapters back from the ideal November pace. Let's work on that this week.

Chapter 711

Randidly’s eyes snapped open as the Skill kicked in. Almost like a fresh flurry of snow, tiny motes of ash exploded outward from his body in a three-meter space around him. The thick currents of blood howled in and carried the ash some distance away, but very quickly the flows turned turbid. Those tiny motes of ash each carried with them an insatiable hunger and very quickly devoured the energy and substance of the currents of blood.

Helen’s eyes narrowed as she approac...

Chapter 710

Lol, so I'm not good at predicting length.

Pain. That was what Helen knew in that moment. Part of it was the burns on her legs and back from Randidly’s eruptions. Part of it was the feeling of her heart beating too hard for too long, exhausting her body. Part of it was the scalding image of blood that she felt completely submerged in. The heat was worse than Randidly’s Skills in a way.

But it was the way that her heart fell silently to pieces w...

Chapter 709

“Acri, no!”

Through the sea of vicious heat that numbed Helen to the state of her body, Randidly’s voice cut to her very core. It helped a lot that her danger sense started screaming at her in the same moment, and she stilled as a wave of wintery air hit her in the face.

With a forlorn hiss, something landed across her shoulders and spun around her neck. She felt the sharp edge of a blade.

Randidly’s spear… was soft…? And living…?

Randidly ha...

Chapter 708

Randidly saw the confusion in Helen’s face as she experienced the wave of crippling cold he had dealt with for the past day. Truly, it wasn’t something easy to handle, even though he could reproduce only a fraction. For all that it was simply an image, the feeling of it spreading across your body wasn’t comfortable at all. Even now, Randidly felt strangely stiff and out of himself.

But still, at the moment of attack, Randidly felt very clearly how he could use the col...

Chapter 707

Man, this fight got away from me. I have three chapters... and I think they are all kinda long...

One more chapter tomorrow to finish the fight...

The words of the elders introducing the under 25 tournament and explaining the various rules were just a dull ringing in Helen’s ears. The whole while, her eyes were locked onto Randidly who stood next to her at the front of the contestants. It seemed that it mattered little to the master of c...

Status

Had an idea for the Helen fight, so I want to take more time to measure it all out. Nothing today, but should finish it up in three chapters tomorrow.

Chapter 706

Azriel sniffed and frowned. Why did she smell smoke…?

After a bit of searching, she located a bonfire on a nearby roof, surrounded by several smaller fires. The fires were being controlled by two harried-looking acolytes, and in the middle of them…

Snorting, Azriel leapt over and landed on the roof. “Randidly? What are you doing?”

With a sniff, Randidly pulled the dripping mucus up into his nose and glowered at Azriel. Simultaneously, he seemed to be shi...

Chapter 705

“Hey! Hey, kid! Isn’t your fight today? Shit- Althor, get over me. This fool has been stuck in that ice image for god knows how long.”

The voices were extremely clear, even as Randidly felt like he was hidden in a deep well. Noise and sensation reached him slowly, only after reverberating against the walls of the prison that Randidly had constructed for himself.

Some distant part of Randidly’s mind was strangely pleased by the number thirty-four for some reaso...