N. Francis

Chapter 98: Overachieving, Gone Accidental

As Rory inspected the crystal geodes, the former Scales of Earthen Tyrants, he couldn’t help but purse his lips.

Tyrannical Geode Scales

Quality: Rare

Formerly the scales of an earthen tyrant. Once the deep-earth elements were replaced by a lattice element, the scales underwent a transformation, with the residual echoes of earthen aspects morphing into genuine crystals.

His lattice affinity wasn’t crystal; i...

Chapter 97: Scales of Earth

“Well, isn’t that damn nice?” Rory whistled as he took in the reward for slaying the Tyrant of Earth and Scales. Having their region ‘contested’ by Ehkorrus and the Tyrant had rendered some of their ‘claims’ less effective, or something along those lines.

“I’m sure Irene and Apostolos will appreciate this,” Rory nodded to himself. He’d probably ask them for their input before making any choices for the awarded Perk and Decree. That aside, it was the less interestin...

Behind the Scenes Notes #3: Alchemy

And here we have the Alchemy notes! Again, light spoiler warning for currently untouched subjects but no actual story spoilers. That said, I'm just attaching the PDF of my notes so I don't have to format this twice.

Chapter 96: Down with a Tyrant

Rory was feeling good—outstanding, even. While losing his hand a few weeks back had been a nuisance, his new hand felt as good as gold—hell, he felt as if it were better than his old hand. He could more easily sense and manipulate pneuma with the new hand, provided he was directly touching whatever he wanted to manipulate through it. Then there was his latest creation, the ‘Vambrace of the Early Void,’ which protected him from spatial and void energies and came equipped with built-in ...

Chapter 95: Portage

“Oh, Founder Rory,” Gil stepped back, surprised to see Rory tinkering away in the workshop.

“Surprised to see me?” Rory raised an eyebrow at the young man.

“Here? No, you’re here plenty,” Gil shook his head as he began to shrink to his dwarf form. “I didn’t expect to see ‘ya here so soon. There was a lot of hullabaloo recently at the circle. Figured it was ‘ya, but you’re already onto a new project.”

“Sort of,” Rory raised his hand, hol...

Behind the Scenes Notes #2: Forging

Minor Spoiler warning for techniques that haven’t yet been introduced to the main series. There are no story or plot spoilers, only mechanics that haven’t been properly introduced yet. If you wish to keep them a surprise skip any sections with terms you’re unfamiliar with. Spoiler warning over.

Fundamentally, forging is the most “basic” of the crafting skills, alongside leatherworking, stitching, etc., as it covers all t...

Informal Sunday #7: Short and Sweet

Hey everyone, very brief Sunday update this time around. I know for some time now I've been saying I would do a note drop, and yet, no notes. Well, the background was basically all my notes were scattered between different notebook, word documents, etc. I had to spend a bit of time going through them and also unifying the language and contradictions. Well, with that said, I've pretty much handled a good chunk of some of those notes now!

For that reason, for the next 3...

Chapter 94: Inventory

Rory next awoke to the sound of someone pounding on his door. Dragging himself from his bed, which he had collapsed upon, Rory yanked the door open moments later.

“What?” Rory grunted, annoyed to have been woken up.

“Figured,” A rather disheveled-looking Apostolos sighed as he saw Rory.

“Figured what? And what’s with you? What dragged you through the mud?”

“Oh, you know, just the warning that space was collapsing by the bound circle. You can imagine tha...

Chapter 93: Indefinite Firmament

Where the hell to start? Now, that was the question.

Alright, maybe not. Rory knew there were only two areas to start with. The first was the most obvious: Start from the beginning. Isolate and fold space, yadah, yadah, and boom, inventory. The second area was a little less direct but potentially would save him a lot of time. Rather than start from the beginning, he would begin by establishing a null space. His reasoning was reasonably solid; at least, he thought so. E...

Informal Sunday Update #6 - Return of the Sunday release

So, what to announce or talk about? First, I think I'll address the first chapter of volume three now that it's out for the RR community as well. I've had some people in the past say they aren't certain about the fact that Universe's End is settled history, that you already know Rory will go the distance. With the first chapter of volume three I of course reminded the audience of that fact, but I think it's worth doing, given the entire premise of Universe's End is it's following the story of...

Chapter 92: Handcrafted

Much like when Rory had been modeling the Living Rune usage in their model of his new prosthetic hand, those nearby were forced to retreat a safe distance as he worked. While just seeing the Living Rune wouldn’t cause significant harm outside of a headache, trying to understand what you were seeing, especially while it was a component of a greater mechanism, could potentially cause severe damage.

Thus, Rory spent nearly two hours working on inscribing the single rune...

Chapter 91: Need a hand?

It turns out that losing a hand wasn’t exactly fun, at least Rory didn’t think so as he meandered back the remainder of the way through the forest. In his early days, losing a hand would have been a paralyzing injury, but Rory had suffered considerably worse since then.

The one caveat was that he’d also had the magic pill of an ascension right on the ready in times prior when he’d suffered grievous injuries.

Now? There wasn't much to do besides popping in an ossif...

Chapter 90: Not quite a pair of snakeskin boots

While Rory had implied uncertainty about the whereabouts of the Tyrant of Earth and Scales, that was hardly the truth. In fact, years back, they had discovered its whereabouts nearly fifteen miles out from Ehkorrus. It had been discovered by accident by none other than team MVM when they’d been on a hunting trip. Wandering far away, they’d uncovered what appeared like a mile-long gorge, the earth torn asunder and clawed apart as if a maddened god had brought vengeance to an arrogant earth...

89. Errands

“I can’t believe it.” Apostolos groaned, head in his hands as Rory did his best not to burst out laughing.

“Oh aren’t you glad?”

“I AM glad she is fine!” Apostolos mumbled, resting his head against the wall of Rory’s house. “But she’s tier six! I’m only half way through tier six! By the time I reach tier seven she will be hot on my heels!”

“and the problem is…. What, exactly?”

“It’s, just, just…” Apostolos fumbled for words befor...

88. The Difference of a tier

“A spar?” Apostolos questioned, staring at Rory with confusion. “Now of all times?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really like you to be the one to ask so out of the blue.”

“I know,” Rory said, rolling his shoulders. “But it’s been a long time since my last ascension. I’ve honestly started to forget what a fresh ascension feels like.”

“And so, you want to spar because…?”

“Fastest way to get a feel for the new capabilities,” Rory said ...

87. The Seventh Realm

So, I'm currently trying to figure out how to set chapters to release at certain dates for different tiers without manual input, so if it's a release date and you don't get notified that a chapter dropped it might not show if the chapters is already out and I'm just editing who can access it.

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Ascensions, oh sweet Ascensions.

It had been… oh so long since his last ascension, and Rory was glad to finally break through that wall again.

After recoveri...

86. Yet another epilogue masquerading as a prologue

The young immortal found himself struggling to process everything he’d heard, only able to stare in astonishment at the two True Immortals.

“Oh look, you broke his brain.” The Spear said with a sigh as she looked at her peer.

“He’s just taking a moment,” The Architect said with a shrug. “Right?”

The young immortal nodded frantically, trying to find his words.

“Speak already,” The Spear rolled her eyes as she snapped her fingers, the brain fog cloudi...

Informal Sunday #5: Friday Edition

Now, some of you may be wondering, "Hey, why is a Sunday update dropping on Friday?" which is a totally valid question.

To which I'd answer, because its my Patreon and I do as I please.

Humor aside, I actually just wanted to announce that the Totality tier is officially going live! For 6$ gain access to three weeks of chapters, plus another yet to be announced benefit. Because I'm on "break" the two early Totality-tier chapters are dropping today and Wednesday, the days where I'd ...

85. Conflict breeds Growth

Aelia was rather pleased, all things considered.

Nearly all her founders had reached their seventh ascension in the blink of an eye -at least relative to low-tier humans or monsters.

Well, almost all of them.

There had been one that had taken his sweet damn time.

But I can’t really get mad now, can I?

She was, of course, referring to the Architect. The others had gotten bored of playing the responsible adults early on, staying around ...

84. Uso

Author's note: We've got one chapter to go for the volume! After that, I'll be taking a one week 'break' as I release my third Patreon tier. I plan to do a note drop and potentially a side chapter in the week in between though!

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Perception was an odd thing. You could take two people and have them witness the same event; still, they might report two very different things that had occurred, memory conformity or eyewitness misidentification.

Rory...

83. Without Guidance

Author's Note: Due to some time constraints, at time of upload I haven't had a chance to give the chapter an editing once over. My plan is to handle that later in the day, so if you want to read it after its been edited, wait until you see this author note disappear.

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Violet was tired, annoyed, and truthfully feeling rather irritable, all things considered.

“Dawn’s Arrow.” Violet yelled, her hoarse voice making it sound more like a whi...

82. Viper

Kill.

Her instincts said to kill.

Not the human nor his not-quite-human companion.

Kill the opposers, the warped and twisted.

Scales turning harder than the toughest diamond, she dispelled her stealth scales.

“Do you think you can cause a stir?”

Her brood father had requested she cause a distraction, so she would, even if it meant using the goofy head covering he had made for her.

Releasing the stockpiled energy within the hat and pulsing...

81. The color of Violence is Violet

Author's Note: I for the life of me can't figure out how to format this so paragraph spacing appears correctly on mobile, so I apologize if things like interface pop-ups bleed into the rest of the writing as one endless block of text.

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“I still don’t see why you didn’t push harder. I’m sure they would have let us tag along if you really sold our case!” Marcie bemoaned, throwing several depressed jabs and uppercuts as she shadowbo...

Informal Sunday #4

Hey Y'all, hope you've had a good week!

Personally, I've been busy, track season has swung into the thick of things and as a coach, I've lost a good few hours per day even outside of work.

That aside, what do I have for this week's updates?

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-Well, we're approaching the end of Volume 2. If Volume 1 was all about those first few early years, then volume 2 was about establishing that first city. Volume three? Well, more founders, actua...

80. Shore of Oblivion

Author's Note: At minimum, four more chapters for the volume. Once again, I will be taking a one week 'break' from releasing chapters at the end of the volume, but there will still be two chapter uploads at that will also be when I introduce my third tier as mentioned in an earlier Sunday update. Also, during that same week I plan to do another note drop, might run a poll one what notes you all would want to see.

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Days passed, and thankfully for the b...

79. Into the Lion's Den

“So…. Violet?”

“Oh, E.O.N, please. Really? Now of all times?” Apostolos groaned, palming his forehead as the two walked down one of the pathways winding through Ehkorrus.

“Well, you know, just curious,” Rory said.

“You’re annoying is what you are.” Apostolos groaned, much like a teenager responding to their parent. “But to answer your question… No, it’s not what you think. It was just a dance.”

“A dance,” Rory responded, deadpan.

�...

78. On the Eve of Bad

Author's Note: So, the E key on my keyboard isn't working well, as well as my editing software acting funky, so if you see random misspellings missing an E, or just misspellings in general, that would be why (Assuming I missed them while editing)

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On the Eve of Bad

“This really isn’t necessary,” Rory grumbled from where he sat.

“Oh, what’s a bit of fun?” Apostolos elbowed him from his side, positioned to his right.

“It’s ...

77. Approaching the Seventh Summit

Slightly longer chapter. A few of the recent chapters were on the shorter side, so I'm going to try to balance that back out with longer-then-average chapters for the remaining few chapters of Volume 2

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5 years later

If there was one thing Rory had found particular over the years, it was the fact that years felt as fleeting as mere days or weeks, he’d slowly gained the ability to ‘let go’ of his perception of time. It reminded him...

Informal Sunday #3

Hey y'all, a short Sunday update this week as I only have a few things to update/reiterate.

1. I've slowly started to update the early parts of the story. Their shouldn't be any retcons, so no worries there. I do find it interesting how certain ways I explained things have changed or been streamlined since the early chapters, for example Significance. Within the story, Significance is perhaps the most important thing to Ascension, everything you do carries some degree of...

76. New Faces and New Years

Author Note: Only a few chapters (3-5ish) left of the volume. I've decided that once we finish Volume 2, I'm taking a one week break. Two chapters will be uploaded during that time, but that will be when I implement my third tier, the Totality tier, that I mentioned before that will be 3 weeks ahead.

That aside, I'm also starting the process of going back through Volume 1 and even some of Volume 2 and updating things to current standards. 2025-03-21 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post