C_Mantis

Chapter 455

Patrons please note: On the 26th and the 29th of September, I will be taking my usual two chapter break for the end of the book.

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Chapter 455

Instead of teleporting directly to the breachpoint, they stopped at the very first planet they had reached in the breach, and they were gratified to see no one permanently residing there, making it a safe haven. 

Allie compressed decades of travel into mere seconds, but the process wiped her out for a few days.

Chapter 454

Patrons please note: On the 26th and the 29th of September, I will be taking my usual two chapter break for the end of the book.

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Also minor editing thing. I’m making it more clear from the provided information last chapter that they aren’t in their own bodies for this strange realm. It's more like specifically built clones but there was some confusion and I’m trying to clarify that. Minor edits only, no real reason to need to go back and reread the last chapter but FYI.<...

Chapter 453

Chapter 453

Matt was buoyed along by the exuberance of the rest of the crew and couldn’t help but be excited for them.

Strange realms were said to be able to replicate Minkalla effects, but being lucky enough to find one at the right Tier before it was used was the stuff of legends on most expeditions. One that affected the lowest Tiers of one's cultivation base were rarer still.

Matt fully understood how incredibly lucky his cycle of Minkalla had been. Moving all of his G...

Chapter 452

Chapter 452

Matt found he quite enjoyed strange realms.

Having visited several, he could confidently say that.

He would even go as far as saying he recommended people visit true cooperative ones.

They were little more than fun games with a twist that ended with a near-unique reward.

The Unsparing had visited three pure cooperative strange realms over the last nine years and Matt had enjoyed each and every single one.

Their current one might be his fa...

Chapter 451

Chapter 451

Captain Stenson had been around Ascenders before. He was one of Lila’s trusted captains, having been with her since her third expedition well before she had founded the guild. He had, with her help, risen from a Talentless but dedicated member of the maintenance staff with grand ambition, to Captain of his own ship. 

Like most of the original crew, he had taken up various positions in the now larger guild. 

Having lasted with Lila on her ship u...

Cool stuff from dragon con.

One of the readers/pateron's Sciencetor2, rebound one of the hard cover book 1, and it looks stupid good.

So good in fact I want to commission at least 5 to give away to the paterons. No clue how I will do that but I think it could be fun to give away something this cool. I'm sure he's going to pep this post so show him some love please.

The fox on the table is my little Aster (generic white fox plushie) with a Aster named bracelet I got last year.

They will both join ...

Chapter 450

7.7k chapter.

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Chapter 450

Matt hardly looked up from the mana stones he was creating as he felt a Tier 32 team appear and vanish upon seeing them. What had started as him trying to understand the trick of the previous strange realm’s storage gems had also become a very good mana control exercise. 

Such probes had happened fairly often, with the teams willing to challenge them being surprisingly rare, despite the Tier 30 world below them still full of ...

Chapter 449

6.5k chapter. Enjoy.

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Chapter 449

A few additional planets worth of Natural Treasures added to their haul and people quickly approaching their rear, the Unsparing ran into the final obstacle for the breach: the bubble of third layer energies at the core of this scramble.

Despite their surroundings making it easy to forget, they were still well within the first layer of chaotic space.

The layer two energies, along with the higher than normal concentratio...

Chapter 448

Chapter 448

Matt finally let himself feel the elation and triumph as they safely escaped into chaotic space and he saw they weren’t being chased. They had feared they would be targeted, but the Corporations ship hadn’t sought a final vengeance and turned their blades to them. The other team wouldn’t have won, unless for some reason they hadn’t brought their best fighters into the strange realm, but it might have started a dog pile, everyone hoping to be the lucky l...

Chapter 447

Chapter 447

They arrived at their base a few short minutes later, where they checked in with Liz before picking up one of her clones. She would be tagging along as far as she could, but given the more limited spiritual ranges they had to deal with she might not be able to make it all the way.

Still, there was a possibility it might work.

Liz hadn’t been idling away her time while on semi-permanent guard duty, instead she had been testing the strange realm's s...

Chapter 446

Note on the 26th and the 29th of September, I will be taking my usual two chapter break for the end of the book.

No chapters on the 26th and the 29th.

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Chapter 446

Having discovered the strange realm’s true rewards, they didn’t linger once they were sure nothing else was happening, and instead rushed back to base at their best speeds.

The weird spatial expansion in the side area where they had found the pocket space still immediately pushed t...

Chapter 445

Paterons please note: Note on the 26th and the 28th of September, I will be taking my usual two chapter break for the end of the book.

Chapter 445

Emmanuel and the others arrived at the edge of the Tier 46 world as far as they could be from each other, even Tobias shrinking down to his humanoid form, his shield world vanishing into his very spirit.

The moment they entered the world’s real space, they all immediately probed it.

Emmanuel first checked in ...

Chapter 444

Paterons please note: Note on the 26th and the 28th of September, I will be taking my usual two chapter break for the end of the book.

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Chapter 444

Tim sat down with dozens of scientists just hours after he finally finished getting his ‘Beginner Concept Actualization’ entry to Novice. 

The method to gain proficiency wasn’t what he had expected at all when he unlocked the skill but a year of saving, on top of the loans he had taken out, had f...

Chapter 443

Chapter 443

Tim grunted as his hands landed on the wooden pole in a steady pattern.

Each strike was accompanied by pings of pain, but the increases from five years of grinding his ‘skin hardness’ entry as he tried to puzzle through his Concept had pushed the masochistic training all the way to apprentice.

He didn’t have much time alone, but grinding up one of his hardest entries was one of the excuses no one ever called him out on, and it gave him time to think....

Chapter 442

(You guys are getting this early so I don't have to fiddle with setting on my phone at dragon con any more than I have to lol)
See you after dragon con. No chapter on the 1st. Enjoy.

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Chapter 442

The seekers did another round of divinations after they repaired the Unsparing in the closest world. From there, they reoriented themselves before heading deeper into the stronger energy regions, trying to find the core of the Breach.

Both of their seekers...

Chapter 441

Chapter 441

With a grab, the skill orb appeared in Allie’s hand and they all couldn’t help but stare at it. Even as an Ascender, Matt had only seen the rare skill shard variants a few times. 

Sending a wave of spiritual perception into the orb, Matt felt at the skill and tried to identify what it was.

Skill orbs were rare versions of skills that could be used hundreds, thousands, theoretically millions of times. For a Tier 8 skill like [Fireball...

Chapter 440

(You guys are getting this early so I don't have to fiddle with setting on my phone at dragon con any more than I have to lol) See you after dragon con. No chapter on the 1st. Enjoy.

7k chapter, enjoy.

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Chapter 440

Having a seeker point out this world as being high value, Matt had been expecting… More.

He wasn’t sure how, but he felt thoroughly underwhelmed by the Tier 8 world. It wasn’t that Tier 8 worlds couldn’t have good things; even lower-T...

Chapter 439 

Also note this isn’t a ‘end of book Manny’ pov, this is simply alt pov in the book like any other.

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Note I will be taking one day off for Dragon Con, Monday September 1st. I think I mentioned it a while ago but I kinda forgot to re-mention it as much as I probably should have.

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Chapter 439 

Emmanuel flew through chaotic space for what felt like the thousandth year.

He had already done all of the work he could do while away from...

Chapter 438

Chapter 438

Exploring chaotic space was dangerous. Exploring chaotic space blindly was suicidal.

Which is why no one did it.

No one.

Seekers were both a finder of all things rare and shiny and a compass back home.

A seeker, more than any other role on a ship, was indispensable, which was why they were usually the only member of a team to get a personal share of the loot most of the time.

A large portion of that reason was the Seeker...

Chapter 437

Chapter 437

Emmanuel flew through chaotic space, letting the second layer energies batter his physical body directly, unbothered by the small pricks of pain.

Behind him, Alister pushed the two of them forward, using a portion of his stored momentum to give them a slight speed increase.

Neither of them were going all out but the combined efforts of the two of them made traveling through chaotic space easier.

Emmanuel could focus on traveling and calming the chaot...

Chapter 436

Chapter 436

Their pilot immediately pushed the Unsparing’s shields to their maximum the moment the enemy ship started charging its cannons, getting ready for a fight. Matt was also ready to cast his own shield in case their enemies were as clever as they thought they were.

The moment the ship revealed itself, it started giving off the signals of a Corporations vessel. Such codes were fairly easy to change and many teams would change not only their virtual identity’s Gre...

Chapter 435

6k chapter! Enjoy.

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Chapter 435

Emmanuel flew through chaotic space at his personal best speed, keeping in line with the other Tier 50s. He could have changed his Talents to any number of ones he had worked out for just such an occasion and sped past them, but he was, like the others, saving his strength for what came when they reached the small cluster that was around one of the five Tier 46 planets usually swirling around in the deepest parts of the fourth...

Chapter 434

Chapter 434

Matt was still on edge, and he could feel that the others were too, but the older Ascenders seemed entirely unbothered. Including Aiden and Lila, which Matt noted. Aiden even had the nerve to wink at him.

That actually helped Matt feel a bit more at ease. If neither of them were upset, it was either because they were informed in advance, or that, even surprised as he was by Eclavorn’s actions, he wouldn’t fail whatever test he was being put under.

Amus...

Chapter 433

Chapter 433

Matt opened his eyes as he stood up from where he was sitting, wishing he had another week or two before he needed to stop, but his [AI] had let him know it was time to get going.

He had been finishing up the last of the modifications to his [AI] in preparation for his upgrade. It had been close, but he got to where he wanted to be just in time for the end of war Minkalla meeting between the Federation and the Monster Collective. He had planned to be entirely do...

Chapter 432

Chapter 432

Tim grunted as he brought his blade down with all his might and the distorted goblin-like creature screamed in agony as it transformed into other shapes to stop the pain. The lightning arcing around his blade tried to prevent it, but the damn mini-boss was incredibly resilient to all forms of damage, and so it managed to escape the net of energy and dash into the underbrush and vanish.

Panting, Tim searched for movement with his eyes, ears, and spiritual percept...

Chapter 431

Chapter 431

Matt entered Kees’ open door just for it to close behind him with a soft thud.

“Kind of ominous there, Kees.”

His vice guild leader gave him a flat look that Matt figured he had earned with his dodging the man for the past few days.

Matt had already known what they were going to talk about, which was at least in part why he was willing to avoid this conversation.

Pushing the chair out, Matt flopped into it.

“Hit me with it. How ma...

Chapter 430

Chapter 430

Matt looked at the readout and smiled.

His expression wasn’t exactly unique, with nearly all of the scientists he had allowed into the testing room having some variation of the same excited expression.

Tim’s Talent was weird.

Or at least, it wasn’t what they had expected. Which they probably should have expected.

As Tim moved through the small kata he had been doing for the last few minutes, they could all see as his Talent pulse...

Chapter 429

Chapter 429

Tim collapsed into his bed the moment Ascender Titan left, utterly drained.

The man had been far too enthusiastic about Tim’s Talent and had eagerly offered up interesting ideas to test things.

From alchemy to the physical entries he had acquired, all had been thoroughly investigated. Each entry brought a dozen questions along with requests for examples for his simplifications. After he finally managed to relax a bit it was actually kinda fun, as the Asc...

Chapter 428

Chapter 428

Tim looked at his familiar apartment door with shock as adrenaline flooded his body and made him shake as if he had just had a near death experience.

Which might be true.

Carefully reaching out to open the door to make sure he hadn’t been hallucinating, he paused as he stared at his hand shaking like a dog shitting razor blades.

Why a dog would eat razor blades, or how they could get all the way through a dog's digestive tract to be defecated, rema...

Chapter 427

PoA is getting added into a game! Or at least Matt is being added as his own unique playable character and it's been super cool helping design him with the creators. 

Check it out here or after the chapter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/critrpg/lit-rpg-a-progression-fantasy-action-roguelite

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Chapter 427

Matt sto...