Shirtaloon

Thank you for the well wishes.

I know getting the return date delayed sucks, but the outpouring of positivity coming in my direction is enough that it feels like I've moved to Tuscany, leaving my life as a harried businesswoman behind, and met a nice man.

I haven't responded to every message as there have been so many of them and that would defeat the purpose of having time off, but I read them all and the support you've all shown me is humbling.

Thank you all so much.

I did not want to post this (extended break)

TL;DR:

• I got sick right after getting home from my holiday.
• It's not covid. I've had multiple tests to make sure.
• I'm taking extra time off to recover.
• There will not be charges for August for existing patrons.
• Return date is tentatively set for September 1st/2nd (depending on time zone).

That's the quick and crappy version above. I know you were all looking forward...

Book 9 (incomplete) PDF

Book 9 PDF bundle. Book 9 is currently incomplete, and will end up being a whopper. Probably the second-largest, after book 1.

Chapter 673: A Man That Will Inspire Courage

The crash of wood smashing apart and stone being pulverised filled the air with noise, dust and splinters as Jason dashed through it. He dodged falling sections of ceiling and leapt through holes in once-intact walls, his cloak deflecting much of the debris filling the air.

“You’ll try to avoid damaging the city my arse,” he grumbled, his voice lost in the noise.

Outside of the central city area, most of the architecture in Yaresh was built with living trees as a core, mould...

Chapter 672: Brave Because It Can Win

As the night moved closer to dawn, the most likely time for a messenger attack grew imminent. Jason floated, cross-legged and eyes closed, over the roof of the cloud hospital as he projected his senses through the Shade bodies scattered around the city. His eyes shot open when he noticed something approaching the cloud house. He was alarmed because all he sensed was a small dead spot within his perception, subtle enough that he'd almost missed it entirely.

Jason unfolded his legs, dropp...

Discord Q&A reminder with the correct link

Don't make rushed Patreon posts at 7am when you've been up all night, kids; test your links.

Q&A starts in a bit under 2 hours, and this might might well get you there:
https://discord.com/events/614969767937441805/988980050860855347 

July Story Hiatus

TL;DR:

• The story will be going on hiatus throughout July.
• Existing Patrons will not be charged for July. New patrons after July 1st will be.
• Chapters will be halted across all platforms and tiers.
• Last chapter before hiatus will be 673 for silver+, 663 for bronze, 658 for iron.
• Resumption date will 4th or 5th of August, depending on time zone, on all platforms.

Those of you who have been around for ...

Chapter 671: The Better Adventurer

One building on the Adventure Society campus of Yaresh was older than all of the others. It had been the entire headquarters for the Adventure Society in the early days of the city, and the defensive measures built into it were formidable. As Yaresh grew, and its branch expanded from a building to a full campus, the building and its defences had been repurposed. It now served as a set of secure residences, for those who needed to be kept safe, along with those who needed to be kept secure, bu...

Chapter 670: Sadness porridge

Hana Shavar let out a happy moan as she stirred in half-slumber before her head cleared as she came fully awake. Despite herself, she couldn't help but stretch out, luxuriating in the cloud bed that felt far too light to support her weight, while doing so perfectly, moulding to her body.

Propping herself up on her elbows, she looked around. The room was small, one of several on the hospital’s top floor set aside for the people running the camp to get some rest. Arabelle Remore had sen...

Chapter 669: Hot Chocolate

Jes Fin Kaal was not prone to nervousness. As a messenger, confidence was ingrained. More than that, she was a Voice of the Will; a representative of her people’s most powerful beings. But as much as she might have tried to bury the memory, she remembered the sense of inferiority that had defined the final moments of Pei Vas Kartha as she died at Jason Asano’s hands.

While being a Voice of the Will was an unquestionably powerful position, there was no escaping the fact that it was a...

Live Discord Q&A

To celebrate the launch of book 6, Heath Miller, our fine audiobook narrator, and myself, our adequate author, will be doing a live Q&A on discord.

Working under the not-entirely-reliable assumption that I set it up correctly, it will take place on launch day, June 28th, at 4pm Pacific and 7pm Eastern in the USA. That's 9am my local time (which my assistant should wake me up for), and will vary by individual time zone.

This is my first time using a discord event, so i...

Chapter 668: Mr Asano Will See You Now

Jason looked at the orb in his hand, given to him by the Healer. He wasn't certain exactly what it would do, but with the power of his soul space, he was certain he could figure it out. He was tempted to do so immediately, but instead, put it into his inventory. There would be time later, and he couldn’t help but feel there was another shoe left to drop with the messengers.

Rufus had posited that the messengers might strike the teams investigating the worm-infested towns. Jason wanted...

Missing 667 PDF

The PDF for 667 was accidentally not attached it is now, as well as here for those who missed it.

Chapter 667: A Mortal Perspective

From his room overlooking the camp, Jason watched a combination of Adventure Society enforcers and Magic Society functionaries take away five cylinders on a floating platform. Each cylinder was a stasis pod, containing a worm host that could be vaguely made out through the blue liquid in the pod.

Someone appeared in the room and joined Jason in staring out the window. It wore brown robes and sported a neat grey beard, appearing as a handsomely middle-aged man. Jason knew that it was nei...

Chapter 666: What the Swarm Came to Cure

Jason stood in an empty room, looking through a window wall down at the evacuee camp. It was far more than just the few dozen people from the town Jason and his team had gone to, as towns across the southern region likewise had adventurers investigating. It had started with seven teams and expanded once the truth was discovered.

Through Shade’s eavesdropping, Jason was keeping an ear out for how things were going. Jason and his team had encountered one of the worst-gone towns, almost ...

Chapter 665: An Egg Starting to Hatch

Standing in the town filled with fallen elves and annihilated parasite worms, Jason looked off to the distance. Something had pinged his aura senses, somewhere out in the rainforest, and he withdrew his magical perception. It was a gold rank adventurer, leaving Jason unsure if he had been noticed in turn, but the person was making a beeline for the town.

“Time to make myself scarce,” he said.

Downstairs, meanwhile, Jason’s team were having a discussion.

“Is he even g...

Chapter 664: He Himself Does Not Become a Monster

Jason didn’t linger downstairs with the others for long. He had no interest in facing the town filled with dead, but didn’t want his aura restricted by the underground facility. His aura could somewhat escape the workshop’s inhibition magic with the doors open, but it still greatly impeded his senses. He went up the stairs, through the tunnel into the dirt basement, and then up the ladder to the trapdoor.

This returned him to the building that served as the secret entrance to the ...

Chapter 663: Voice of the Will

Sophie was taking a firm stance against studying the worms rather than eradicating them on site.

“Do you want some lunatic researcher trying to do what the messengers did and use them as a weapon?”

“It’s a good point,” Belinda agreed. “Imagine what Evil Clive could do if he got his hands on these things.”

“Evil Clive?” Clive asked.

“Lindy, I thought you were Evil Clive,” Jason said.

“Oh, that’s sweet of you,” Belinda happily r...

Chapter 662: Unquestionably Authoritarian

Neil was checking the low-priority patients at his triage station. The more critical cases were already stashed on bunked recovery beds, with the remainder those who were comfortably self-mobile. These were the people that had endured the best and gotten the most from what Sophie and Humphrey's aura powers offered. In most cases, this was the handful of iron-rankers who had lived in the town. Not adventurers, but agriculture specialists with essences like earth and plant.

Sophie continu...

Book 6 chapters are down.

G'day all. Firstly, book 6 comes out on the 28th, ebook, audiobook and paperback.

Sorry about the lack of notice (I've been an unpleasant combination of sick and busy) but the free-release and Patreon chapters for book 6 have come down from all official sources.

Chapter 661: Triage

In the worm-breeding facility hidden under the town, Jason and his team gathered around as Belinda prepared to open the hidden door. Inside could be anything from an empty room to a wildly dangerous entity, so they were prepared to spring into action. When she finally triggered the door, a whole section of the slate brick wall shifted backwards and to the side, revealing a large opening.

The room inside was dark, with only the floating lights from the main chamber outside the door provi...

Chapter 660: Imperfect Responses

The messenger Jes Fin Kaal was hovering just over the flat roof of a circular tower in a messenger stronghold. She was looking out over the rainforest contemplatively when another messenger floated up through the round hole in the middle of the roof. It was the dark-skinned and silver-haired Hess Jor Nasala, who was subordinate to Kaal. Not only was Kaal gold-rank to his silver, but she was also a Voice of the Will.

“Our agents in the city have reached out,” he reported. “The inve...

Chapter 659: Evil Lair

Jason emerged from his soul space, cloak and hood back in place. In the tunnel beneath the town, Clive was looking at the empty space where the messenger had died. There was no visible trace after Jason’s execute spell left not so much as a single drop of blood. Instead, there was a pile of dirty clothes and the orb she had used to avoid the worms. Clive was searching her clothes for anything else left behind, but stood up on Jason’s return.

“You handled that with unexpected ease,...

Chapter 658: Significantly More Powerful

Clive winced at the grisly sound of chewing that filled the tunnel. The worms were being merrily devoured by toothy leeches that grew in number as they ate. The sound of fleshy consumption was accompanied by a muffled screaming that came from the largest pile of leeches, under which the messenger was buried. The pile undulated with the messenger's helpless thrashing.

The auras mixed up in the tunnel were unsettling. The strongest was Jason’s, which loomed like a prison tower. Although...

Chapter 657: Superior

As she pelted his familiar with metal feathers, Pei Ves Kartha watched as the unnerving man opened his eyes. He rose to his feet, not by pushing himself up but tilted on an invisible slab. She could sense the way he moved with his aura, and it was not the crude inefficiency of an essence user. He used it in the clean, smooth manner of a messenger. His gaze moved up and down her body, his eyes like nebulas in a void. It did not escape her attention that they were a mirror of the nebula eye flo...

Chapter 656: Apocalypse

Buried beneath a town where the populace had been body-snatched by parasitic worms was a hidden chamber. The messenger, Pei Vas Kartha, had been operating there for months, luring the town elders into what they had believed to be lucrative-but-ordinary treason. They had helped her to magically excavate under a building, in the dead of night, installing the facility.

The hidden chambers were topped by an ordinary building, with the unordinary doors set into the brick wall of a basement o...

Chapter 655: Inferior

Nervousness was not a normal sensation for a messenger. When the adventurers arrived, Pei Vas Kartha had been in her hidden underground lair, as usual, managing the worm implantations. She was confident that they would not sense her presence, as any non-messenger perception would be firmly but subtly blocked. The sophisticated aura magic rituals had been inscribed into the facility by someone far stronger than Pei herself.

It was not the first group of adventurers to arrive. Pei remaine...

Chapter 654: Grisly Chore

While Humphrey was only adequate as a personal participant in the battle against the parasitised elves, his contribution was still large. This came through the other assets he brought to the combat, starting with his cohort of summons.

Humphrey’s dragon-bone soldiers, the spartoi, had been modified by his powerful, if unpredictable, summoner’s dice. In this case, the soldiers had been called up in the form of spiders with fire powers. It wasn’t ideal for fighting their current ene...

Chapter 653: The Old Groove

The team only had a brief respite from the worm-host elves that were inundating them, rushing from every street and building in the town to hunt them down. While Humphrey and Jason quickly discussed Jason’s departure, Clive drew out a ritual circle. Golden lines were left behind by the edge of his staff as he used it to draw, like scratching in the sand with a driftwood stick. The ritual, like the golden light itself, was an aspect of Clive’s most fundamental ability.

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