Jason looked at the rabbit standing nervously in the hall. His brow furrowed in thought as his mind started putting pieces together. The transformation zone, Healer’s missing gift, the rabbit construct he created in his soul space. Now, this rabbit. It was no construct; there was a soul in there.
It was only normal-rank. It must have been terrifying, crossing all those territories when everyone else was so much more powerful than it. It had been looking for him, whether it understood ...
2023-08-07 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
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G'day all. The chapters will resume tomorrow, but I wanted to make a post about some issues with billing some of you have had. Patreon has reached out to me about this issue and here is what they said:
An issue with a payment partner is causing a slightly higher-than-normal number of your patron payments to be declined by their banks. We've traced the increased declines back to payments system upgrades required by one of our processing partners. Patrons might see some payments ...
2023-08-07 00:21:06 +0000 UTC
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Barely seconds passed between the aura appearing at the edge of the territory and reaching the group. Only the gold-rankers had a chance to intercept it, but it avoided them with blink teleports to slam into Humphrey, bowling him over in the long savannah grass. Gold-rankers swarmed them, only for Humphrey to hold out a forestalling hand from where he lay under Sophie.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Not a mphflm… ”
His words were muffled by pressing her lips onto his.
...
2023-07-28 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Just a reminder that there won't be any chapters next week. I'll be on the other side of the country visiting my mum, along with catching up on the sleep I missed editing book 10. And probably doing my taxes. Yay...
2023-07-28 22:00:41 +0000 UTC
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Undeath’s avatar moved through the lightning field in massive strides. As tall as the iron towers dotting the landscape, lightning peppered it to no effect. The magical electricity was more attracted to the avatar than the lightning rods. The undead behemoth reached the mesa in which the controls for the lightning were hidden. It was abandoned now, but electricity arced around the ring of towers on the top.
The giant undead avatar let out a roar that was not angry or pained but a mind...
2023-07-26 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Mahk Den Kahla found the messenger in front of him a worrying oddity. His mannerisms were bizarre, with none of the dignity he would expect of a messenger, especially a gold-rank one. Even his clothes were strange. Mahk had woken up in clothes not his own, but very much in the typical messenger style. This Boris Ket Lundi, as he introduced himself, wore clothes reminiscent of the servant races.
"I think it is clear which of us is the superior messenger," Mahk said. "Surrender your terri...
2023-07-24 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Here is book ten in full for all Patrons in both light and dark backgrounds.
2023-07-24 20:03:36 +0000 UTC
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The air was hot and heavy, despite the deluge of rain. A gold-rank messenger, Mahk Den Kahla, floated in the air, his aura pushing aside the downpour. That didn’t help visibility, the sky filled with a grey haze. He could only make out a handful of the countless massive stone spires that rose from the rainforest below like arms grasping at the sky. At the top of each spire was an ancient ruin; castles, temples and palaces brought low by the weather seemingly long ago.
Mahk knew that w...
2023-07-21 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Rick gestured to the illusionary map floating over the table like a hologram. It showed the bottom fragment of a circle, divided into territories.
“This is everything we know about the layout of the transformation zone,” he said. “We can make some guesses based on this, but what you’re seeing here is what we’ve confirmed.”
He gestured again and five territories the bottom edge lit up green and joined together.
“This is Jason’s unified territory,” he continu...
2023-07-19 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“I don’t like leaving it here,” Taika said.
“We can’t use it and we can’t take it with us,” Humphrey told him. “Our best move is to leave before it brings trouble down on us.”
Belinda and the two men were standing over a shimmering orb that had refused to enter either Humphrey or Belinda’s storage spaces.
-------
Item: [Stable Genesis Core Amalgam] (unranked, legendary)
An amalgamation of refined v...
2023-07-17 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cas Vin Baral signalled that he’d found them by firing a magical projectile in the air. When Kol Kelis Vel arrived, however, he was in a far from triumphant position. He was in an area with powerful ice energy, leading to trees white with snow and a large frozen pond. On that pond were two Cas Vin Baral’s, both of whom immediately started explaining that they’d been captured and they were the real one. One of them was shrouded in an air node illusion.
Kol wasn’t even floating li...
2023-07-14 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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TL;DR: The story schedule will be paused for the first week of August and all of September. Patreon payments will also be paused for September and you will not be charged for that period.
Also, I'll be at Dragon Con this year.
I've mentioned this in various places, but this is the official announcement that I will be in the United States for the entirety of September. I'll be popping up at Dragon Con, but mostly it's a vacation with my friends...
2023-07-12 23:10:01 +0000 UTC
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Belinda was huddled inside a hollow log as it floated downriver, banging off rocks. She'd conjured a plug at the open end to keep out the water and was back in her human form. Messengers were just too big. Her arms were curled around puppy Stash. Light came from the now-active ritual circle carved into the inside.
There was little chance of the gold-ranker sensing them through the interference of the elemental forest, but Belinda’s ritual meant that he would need to be both extremely ...
2023-07-12 23:00:05 +0000 UTC
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With each territory Belinda's group claimed, the number of messengers in their group expanded. The messengers brought from stasis weren't abnormal like the elemental messengers of the soul forge tree, instead being ordinary, if rather confused. The gold-ranker, Kol Kelis Vel, no longer had a peer to discuss it with and had taken to using a silver-ranker instead.
Of the silver-rankers, Relia Vin Vala had proven the pick of the bunch. Most of them knew when to keep their mouths shut, but ...
2023-07-10 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Neil looked up at the sky as Dustin, Durrum and himself rode through the mud on a flat stone, courtesy of Durrum’s earth powers. He thought it might be sundown, but it was hard to tell when the blanket of black clouds made for a perpetual night. At least the lightning bolts were avoiding them, courtesy of the rabbit controlling them from the mesa.
“It was weird seeing a bunch of messengers eating root vegetables, right?” Dustin asked.
“Definitely,” Neil agreed. The area ...
2023-07-07 23:00:08 +0000 UTC
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The brighthearts and the cultists had gathered under a humungous stone arch not far from the battlefield. It was the best shelter they had found while roaming the territory before the battle. There wasn’t enough room for all the messengers who had been left scattered around various lightning rod poles.
The space was large enough to fit all of the cultists and brighthearts comfortably. Comfortable was relative in the lightning fields, but hard earth instead of knee-deep mud was a welco...
2023-07-05 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Rain hammered from a dark sky, the light choked off by black clouds that turned day into night. The erratic flashes of illumination were unwelcome, coming as they did from the deadly strikes of lightning. Each stroke of lightning passed, leaving fresh victims and thunder rumbling in the dark. The flashes meant that no one adapted to the lighting conditions.
In this battle, the powers possessed by the combatants were not those usually valued. In a pitched battle, the power to soar over t...
2023-07-03 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Neil and Dustin shared a look as the anthropomorphised rabbit paced back and forth over the elevating platform, its low muttering punctuated by regular bleeping sounds.
“This is strange, right?” Dustin asked. “I know that we’re adventurers roaming through a strange unreality after battling an undead army deep underground to win a tree by breaking the universe, but…”
Dustin trailed off and Neil gave him a curious look.
“But what?” Neil asked
“It’s fi...
2023-06-30 23:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Farrah glowered as she reached for another handhold on the icy cliff face. The steam produced by the ice carried on the powerful winds blasting her was immediately carried off by those same winds.
“Oh yeah, let’s all just jump off this cliff,” she said bitterly in voice chat. “We can all fly.”
“How was I meant to know?” Sophie asked from the top of the cliff. Her flight power involved wind manipulation, and while not working as normal, had at least allowed her to ret...
2023-06-28 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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I've been slack about being available for the weekly Q&A since I got into the back end of book 10. I'm getting back into a more relaxed routine now, so I'm going to be kicking it off again this week. I will be available to answer questions on discord in the weekly questions channel following the release of the mid-week chapter, starting tomorrow. That's 9am for me, but I don't know if I'll have just gotten up or if I'm about to go to bed. Even though it's tomorrow. My sleep schedule is a ...
2023-06-27 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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The three-headed dog hadn’t been hard to take down with the gold-rankers Clive’s group had on hand. The creature dissolved into rainbow smoke almost immediately, leaving behind a basketball-sized crystal orb. Inside, motes of blue and orange light swirled through inky darkness. Clive was the one who examined it.
-------
Item: [Stable Genesis Core] (unranked, common)
A refined vessel of transformative potential energy
2023-06-26 23:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Farrah wore obsidian armour, covering everything but her head. She flew down to join Jason and Sophie just over the bush canopy, rubbing her temples. All around them, the bush was aflame.
“There’s still plenty of them left,” Farrah said. “I’ll go again once I get some mana back. The lava cannon is fun, but not especially precise, and these monsters seem quite springy. I don’t remember bone feasters being this quick on their feet while armoured up.”
“They're not rea...
2023-06-23 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Jason slowly meandered along an empty street with shops to his left and the beach to his right. The ghost town wasn’t a true replica of his hometown but a nostalgic version of it from his youth. There was an Aussie rules football memorabilia store, several of which had cropped up, failed and closed as he grew up. He stopped in front of Mrs Kim’s Takeaway, a favourite before she sold up and moved to Coffs Harbour.
He stared at the glass storefront, plastered in the usual stickers adv...
2023-06-21 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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The main entrance to Jason’s mountain fortress was the mouth of Jason’s giant stone head. Inside was the central transport hub where three elevating platform shafts were set out in a triangle, giving access to the upper and lower reaches of the complex. Archways were set into the walls all around, one of which held an active portal. Filled with blue, silver and gold light, it led to Jason’s soul realm and had been left open continuously.
Jason emerged from the portal with a sandwi...
2023-06-19 23:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Rick Geller was not happy. He had no compunction about putting his life on the line to protect people; he was an adventurer and that was the job. He’d known that when he signed up and he’d lived that life ever since. But every time he was in the same city as Jason Asano, that job got extravagantly out of hand.
He knew Jason wasn’t causing these things, or even involved all of the time. Jason hadn’t participated in the disastrous expedition out of Greenstone or the fortress city ...
2023-06-16 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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As a quick reminder, the livestream event will begin in half an hour, as of this post going live.
https://www.facebook.com/podiumaudio/events
2023-06-15 00:30:12 +0000 UTC
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Both in the underground realm of the brighthearts and previous transformation zones, dimensional powers had been tricky. Still floating in the air with his familiars, Jason tried opening a gate to his soul realm and was pleasantly surprised to find that it worked. A circle of milky white stone appeared in the air and was filled with rainbow light as the portal opened.
At least in the territory he had claimed, Jason had access to his soul realm and the resources within. What he needed ri...
2023-06-14 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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TL;DR: Livestream event this week. June 14th, 6pm (US Pacific), 9pm (US Eastern). 11am for me, which is nice.
https://www.facebook.com/podiumaudio/
My audio publisher is holding a livestream event this week. It's on Facebook, apparently, which probably means I'll have to log into it again. Anyway, it's got some great authors and voice actors appearing and the schedule means I won't need to...
2023-06-13 14:20:04 +0000 UTC
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He was standing next to Gary, chatting in an oddly calm fashion given their presence in an underground necropolis. They both felt the surging disruption in the fabric of reality and Jason gave him a smile.
“See you on the other side, brother,” Jason said.
“Is this going to hurt?” Gary asked.
“I don’t know,” Jason told him. “You’re the first person I know to pick up a temp job as a god. Are you prone to exploding under dimensional duress?”
“I’m n...
2023-06-12 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Here is an early look at the cover art for book ten, coming late November.
Chapters will resume on the normal schedule next week.
2023-06-08 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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