Mana Garden? There were mana plants?
His head nearly spun as he tried to wrap his mind about the revelation. Mana was one of the most severe limiters in the System. What kinds of plants could he grow that provided mana? Would they fuel runes? Store mana? Produce it?
The initial excitement—almost—pushed him to absorb the Trait of Nature. He only restrained himself when he sensed other contenders doing exactly that. It gave him pause, mostly out of curiosity as he wishe...
2023-09-29 19:29:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Many thoughts rolled through Keynes's head as he considered the offer. Each time he glanced at the guardian, he wanted to ask if this was an elaborate joke. However, given the revelation about the Children of the Forest, that seemed unlikely.
What made him uneasy about the offer was the implication that the Father was acting against the System. Could that even happen?
The System isn't actively micromanaging the whole universe, Alice informed him. It only 'acts' direct...
2023-09-22 16:39:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
“There is no need for hostility,” Kora stepped next to Keynes, her voice unyielding, nothing like what Keynes remembered.
The guardian seemed unperturbed by her, though. Given what the Grand Druid had said, it was no wonder. If Kora or Keynes were to try to assault him, they would be killed. It sounded a little far-fetched to him, but there was no point in risking their lives and rewards for the unknown.
“We mean the Children no harm,” Kora added. “We are only curious ab...
2023-09-15 19:05:43 +0000 UTC
View Post
My apologies for the delay but I had to rewrite the entire chapter as I really didn't like it. I am much more satisfied with this version
------
A stunned silence followed the Grand Druid’s presentations. The spiritual auras were less restrictive and revealed a maelstrom of emotions coming from the contenders.
While Keynes kept his aura almost tightly controlled, Kora wasn’t as good and her reaction to the rewards was leaking out.
Her and others’ react...
2023-09-11 20:56:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes and Kora had many questions on their minds but the guardian urged them to attend the meeting first. Apparently, there would be time for questions. He assured them they might even receive answers that would positively surprise them. Keynes wasn’t convinced but he understood that their timing wasn’t optimal and let the guardian lead them to the meeting.
Neither Keynes nor Kora expected to find a human village in the centre of the monster dominion.
Their surprise didn’t ...
2023-09-01 16:26:14 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone! The roof is done. It was several tough days for me as I spent entire days working and was so exausted my brain didn't function.
Here's the chapter for the last Friday.
-------------------
Locating people without the vision of the future was extremely difficult. Shaper had to rely on other, more mundane methods he had set up just in case.
He was glad that one of his alarms pinged Windsor Freeman. After learning through his spies that the ex-pres...
2023-08-28 21:07:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone, I hoped to post two chapter this week but there are several developments that keep me occupied.
1. I started editing the first book with a professional editor and it is time consuming. Optimistically speaking, I see the first book finished by the end of September. You will have a chance to read it first before the chapters are uploded to RR.
2. A few unwelcome personal matters.
I still plan to get another chapter as soon as possible as it will show two other pe...
2023-08-18 16:43:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes slammed the guardian with spiritual energy. The guardian vanished and for a second Keynes thought he won but pain in the right side disabused him of this notion.
Keynes turned the fall into a roll and reoriented his body to face the guardian. But the guardian wasn’t nowhere to be seen.
Watch my back, he said.
But master, I cannot sense its spiritual energy and I can only see through your eyes, she replied.
“So you like to hide,” Keynes sa...
2023-08-11 18:28:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone, I hope you're all well :)
---
Kora got to her feet without saying a word. As she looked around and took in the damage done to the area, she wondered how it was that they were still alive. She still could sense Lem Solaris’s indignation permeating the air.
Then she felt Keynes’s emotion bursting out of him like a tide wave. Kora didn’t remember the last time she had felt so much raw and unfiltered emotions coming from Keynes. He usually was very secretive ...
2023-08-04 16:56:14 +0000 UTC
View Post
The History of the Solar Empire is full of unsung heroes and their accomplishments that saved our civilization from collapse or pushed it forward. It is the battle prowess that often made figures like the Queen of Poisons, Sandman or Lord of Winters famous, while ignoring other important aspects of what can be considered power.
One of the best examples was Tay Tark. A young woman, who had her ceremony shortly after the first outbreak. Her Talent was deemed generic and ignor...
2023-07-28 18:48:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
Vivena woke up with a start and immediately knew everything was wrong. Her body didn’t feel right.
And she was handcuffed.
She looked around, slowly, as her vision swam any time she moved her head too quickly. She was lying in a hospital bed. Several thin cords connected her body to the medical equipment. Screens were turned away from her. A large mirror…a one-way window was on the rightmost wall, while a normal window was on the left. Aside from that there were two chairs and...
2023-07-21 19:25:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hi everyone, I wonder if you'll pick up on one important detail in this chapter :)
----------------
Keynes exhaled, then collapsed on his back. His health, stamina and mana were low but he didn’t care. He just killed twenty-third Heartwood but even that was second to his true goal. He was maxing his attributes again. Over the last three weeks he was combining snake trees with heartling plants, spawning the Heartwoods. It was a proof that these combinations weren’t r...
2023-07-14 16:28:41 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes’s connection with the Greater System closed. He was granted knowledge about attaining personalised quests and what they meant to him. He whistled as some outcomes were straight out insane and akin to rewards granted for levelling as a Perfect State ascender.
Obviously, nothing was for free. If he wished to gain access to personalised quests, he had to enter a greater rift and find a specific location outside of this Universe. The Greater System didn’t say it but it w...
2023-07-07 19:35:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
IMPORTANT:
I'm going to remove Human Essence Ascender (£1) as no one use it anyway.
I'm going to give Rift Essence Ascender (£2.50) access to all chapters.
I'm leaving Perfect State Ascender (£4.50) as it is but anyone who subscribe to it has my BIG thank you.
In the future I may do (£10) for those who don't mind supporting with extra disposable income but for now I will stick with these two above.
********
Keynes’s focus s...
2023-06-30 18:02:14 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes activated the Orb of Grand Insight and the Trait of Spirituality. As the time stretched, he checked on his spiritual core, hoping to get the insight about its structure.
He didn’t know what to expect from the trait but with his new technique and the Orb of the Grand Insight, he was surely going to learn much.
Then the world exploded.
Everything vanished, only darkness remained and then slowly faint pinpricks of light appeared. As they gained strength, even fainter t...
2023-06-23 19:38:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes had gone through at least a hundred different plants when he felt something unusual and novel; an instinct, which he followed as he inspected plants with his spiritual aura.
At first he only recognised a distinct spiritual signature of each rarity but he didn’t stop there and tried to peer deeper into the spiritual structure that made the plants. This constant pushing followed the new instinct and its feedback only reinforced Keynes’s focus.
And then it happened.
...
2023-06-16 19:07:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Solar Council’s conflict with Untainted Paradise was one of the strangest ones in the post-outbreak era. It has started with Untainted Paradise’s refusal to fulfil their end of bargain and open rifts for the members of the council.
Death of Syberius Sael and an argument over the first sub-boss dominion further deteriorated their relations but the true beginning of Untainted Paradise’s end was destruction of the council’s navy nearby Emerald City.
...
2023-06-09 19:14:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
“We should have already reached the centre,” Keynes said as he flew above the forest. After the incident with attackers, he decided to stay higher in the air to give himself more time to react.
I agree, Alice said. There is something happening on the dominion level but I am unable to say what.
“I’ll have to land and regenerate mana for a while. You’ll need to come down first and find a safe zone.
A few minutes later, Alice returned with...
2023-06-02 19:12:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes sat on a fallen log, listening to Wagner’s report. Keynes needed him to find Kora. He was torn by his loyalty and Lem Solaris’s stupid task.
“You have to find her.”
“We’ll,” Wagner assured him. “Once we finish cleaning up here.”
Keynes learned that the Solar Council had attacked their rift cluster and Emerald City following the destruction of their headquarters in Geneva. Tyr Truman and Andrew Gunnar were dead, which should have saddened Keynes more ...
2023-05-26 17:36:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
The kidnappers were only Level 4 and they stood no chance against Kora. She easily reached them but then her sense of danger fired up. Something was not right. The kidnappers came to halt, then dispersed in different directions, she followed the one with the Untainted Paradise executive on his shoulder. She briefly considered her next move but any weapon conjured by her might potentially harm Pucci—
She didn’t see what hit her but she stumbled. The kidnapper stopped and turned aroun...
2023-05-19 12:51:40 +0000 UTC
View Post
Now, that I decresed the frequency of posts to 1 per week, I am thinking about changing tiers to one tier offering all the chapter for £3 and one for anywho wish to support me extra, let's say £5-10. What do you think?
-----
The Level 4 ascender stopped shivering then his eye snapped open. Keynes kept his spiritual aura at ready in case the man tried something. Kora stood behind Keynes as prepared as him. But in the end, there was no need for drastic action. The man froze like a...
2023-05-12 15:08:34 +0000 UTC
View Post
Untainted Paradise’s space department’s first major breakthrough went unnoticed. Exactly the way they hoped for. They finally had unrestricted access to space without supervision of the Solar Council and the World Government. They understood that this wouldn’t last forever and eventually others would catch up and counter-measures would be developed. But Untainted Paradise didn’t become the largest non-government organisation by pure luck. Having poached key researchers from the Wo...
2023-05-07 01:14:58 +0000 UTC
View Post
Guys, today's chapter will be posted tomorrow. My wrists are in pain today. I will publish the chapter as soon as it is finished/edited, which should be around midday tomorrow.
Also, I am thinking about changing the schedule to 1 chapter per week because while you guys support me and I appreciate it a lot. This is not enough to support me and there are a lot of duties piling up. There are two things I am doing to fix it.
1. I continue editing the early chapters so they are better ...
2023-05-05 16:16:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes activated [Spiritual Wraith]. The monsters froze, disoriented. He didn’t bother with killing, instead, he used [Flight] and flew a few metres up above the ground. From there he watched Kora’s show. [Empower] was busted. End of story!
At full power, she could one-shot him. They judged that it scaled her strength to somewhere between Level 6 and 7. This also put into a perspective how strong a Level 8 like Hunter was.
Level 4 monsters she was ‘fighting’ now d...
2023-05-01 19:00:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
Keynes turned to Kora as she suddenly exhaled in elation. His alarms quickly faded away, seeing her grin as she relaxed her pose. She had been doing these strange katas for a while now.
“Don’t tell me…”
“I did it.”
After a second of deliberation, he asked for clarification, “a stage or a technique?”
“Technique, of course. I told you I’m out of essence for now.”
“Yes, you did. Congratulations,” Keynes said.
I cannot help but not...
2023-04-28 19:32:39 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Do you want to stop?” Kora inquired with a timid smile as she stared at Keynes from above. They were training hard the last couple of days as they ventured back into the forest but were stalled by growing unease and Alice’s warnings. Something was up with the dominion’s debuff, though they couldn’t pinpoint it yet.
“It’s unfair,” Keynes replied, getting back to his feet, while Kora returned to a fighting stance. “Your speed of improvement is faster than mine.”
2023-04-24 23:15:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sorry for the delay but I am still struggling with my health issues.
UPDATE:
I was so tired I wrote Lex Solaris instead of Lem Solaris. It's fixed.
-----
Many things happened simultaneously as Keynes reached the sealed rift with his Talent. A feeling of wrongness washed over Keynes. He remembered it…but then he didn’t. Suddenly his mind started falling. He heard Alice’s terrified voice and someone’s pained grunt. Then the forest vanished and a familiar vision appe...
2023-04-23 19:27:53 +0000 UTC
View Post
And so it begins.
----
Vivena breathed out in relief. The rift boss, huge deformed larvae, finally succumbed to her stack of poisons. Since she’d created her dominion, every rift inside it gained poison affinity. Most of the time, it benefited her as items, raw materials and skills often had poison affinity as well.
The issue was that as often the rift monsters had poison attacks or poison resistance. This made delving the rift tedious as she had to spend more time killing...
2023-04-18 23:07:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
Wagner and his top executives waited. After the encounter between Windsor Freeman, Keynes and Columbus, Wagner had called everyone into Emerald City for the meeting and confirmation of another outbreak.
Only several key people were missing like Andrew Gunnar who had become Untainted Paradise’s new CEO and moved to Geneva, a few heads who ran Wagner’s secret projects. He didn’t count the other three founders as their involvement in the company’s operations was marginal and their ...
2023-04-16 12:39:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone, still one chapter behind the schedule. With CH160 a new arc starts.
-----------------
Lem Solaris’s request caught Keynes off guard. He had expected to easily come up with a list of spells he would need as a stealth mage. But as he had delved into his memory, he discovered only the very obvious stuff like [Invisibility] or class spells. He was certain that this wasn't what Lem Solaris had had in mind. In fact, the longer he thought about her the more he grew ...
2023-04-11 15:16:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
