Shirtaloon

Chapter 651: Mockery

The stasis cabin of the Carlos Crime Wagon was an adapted bunk room filled with stasis pods. Each pod contained an Order of Redeeming Light member, and Carlos regularly serviced the pods to make sure they were operating properly. Space being at a premium, it was a narrow cabin, making the maintenance work rather awkward.

Carlos grumbled under his breath as he worked. He’d been preparing for the next major step in his research, to which Jason was critical. That was the exact moment tha...

Chapter 650: Even Though You Fear

The round building was like a silo; wide, high and round, without any internal structures. Standing in the middle of it, next to a small crystal recording projector, Benella felt tiny. The three powerful beings looming over her, floating in the air on thrones did not help.

Benella had one chance to prove herself still valuable to the messengers. What she had gone with was presenting Jason Asano as a potential threat to the agenda of the messengers, which was a risky play. Her initial in...

Chapter 649: The Face of Insurmountable Power

Messenger architecture was obsessed with circles. Their buildings were circular, as was the pattern in which they were laid out. The wall around each of their strongholds was also a circle. The wall was only ten feet tall, which would hardly even slow down a silver-rank adventurer, but the wall itself was not the obstacle. It was a platform for the powerful defensive screen that tapped into the combination of aura projection and ritual magic used by the messengers.

Benella was unnerved ...

Chapter 648: Vampire Monster Slaves

Korinne’s team paused their progress over the rainforest to fend off a large group of spider monkeys. These were not the spider monkeys of Earth, as they had four extra arms, shot webbing from their hands and poison barbs from the tips of their tails. They also were more aggressively omnivorous, still enthusiastic about fruit while also mixing anyone they could catch into their diet.

The rainforest canopy was an environment that was a mixed bag for the team. They could all get by on s...

Chapter 647: Stories About Fungus

Urman Vohl had pulled back to throw the folder full of papers across the room when he stopped himself, closed his eyes and put the folder back down on his desk. His sons, Valk and Emresh, stood anxiously in the middle of the office.

“Another one,” Urman snarled. “That’s two in the time it’s taking the broker to get here. You are certain he’s coming, aren’t you, Valk?”

“Yes father,” the older brother said.

Urman’s office was midway up one of the inner ci...

Chapter 646: The Genuine Article

Benella was anxious as she rode a skimmer bike carefully through the rainforest. There were no roads to her destination and she wouldn’t risk being observed flying out over the canopy, so she took a small bike and made her cautious way along the animal trails. Fortunately, there were enough large magical beasts amongst the local fauna that the trails were generously wide, if quite meandering. Early morning light only partially broke through the canopy, drenching everything in a beautiful tw...

Chapter 645: Who You Truely Are

Emir had known Jason before many of the tribulations that reshaped him from the soul out. Gods marking his soul, in the way overbearing deities would see as a reward. The Builder, using a star seed to try and force Jason into accepting slavery. The long, slow recovery from that, and his struggles against powerful political forces.

Emir himself was responsible for placing Jason into situations he should not have been. It was Emir’s search for the Order of the Reaper that ultimately sen...

Chapter 644: Distant Power

Within the relatively confined area of a city, swift travel was a simple matter for Jason. Being able to shadow jump respectable distances through Shade’s bodies meant that Jason could deploy his familiar around the city and jump to those locations, sight unseen. Because of this ability, Jason had never gone the long way to the camping grounds just inside the city wall where merchants, adventuring teams and other travellers left their sizeable vehicles. In his brief visits to his team, he w...

Chapter 643: The Power and the Control

Jason had yet to enter any of the towering glass and metal structures he had seen from a distance while approaching the city. This would soon change as the clientele of the underground arena departed, Jason amongst them. As he had speculated on finding the VIP area, there was a private entrance aside from the tunnels he had shuffled in through himself, shoulder to shoulder with the crowd. Rather than just a less crowded set of stairs, the private exit was an underground tram station.

Tw...

Chapter 642: The Sex Magic Thing

Jason’s second opponent in the underground cage fights had been capable enough, but suffered from a critical flaw in his fighting techniques. This was due to an absence of the essence abilities he normally had access to, and Jason completely sympathised. Combat styles interacted with essence powers on a spectrum, with one end having the fighting style as the skeleton, with the essence powers building off of it. This was Sophie’s end of the scale, and such adventurers fared the best when d...

Chapter 641: Settling Differences With a Nice Chat

The brick locker room under the fighting cages was small, which made sense as there were two for each of the four cages. They weren’t much different from domestic bathrooms in size and layout. Jason emerged from the shower having washed off the blood, of both himself and his opponent. His regenerative abilities had already healed his injuries, the biggest factor being Colin.

Jason's clingy cyclist-style outfit was surprisingly resilient and hadn't ripped, so after washing it off in th...

Chapter 640: What You Want Instead of Want You Need

Jason had accessed the restricted section of the fighting dens with a payment that was outlandish to the rebellious youths packed shoulder to shoulder in the main area, but negligible to any mildly successful adventurer. The restricted area was the largest of the subterranean chambers, with four cages surrounded by chairs. It was less crowded than the open areas, due to the exclusivity, while still being relatively packed.

The clientele weren’t any kind of city elite, based on what Ja...

Chapter 639: The Point of Sacrifice

On Earth, the Asano Clan had a deficit of silver rankers. Taiko had been amongst the first trained in Farrah's training methods that did not use monster cores, placing him in the first wave of non-core essence users. The monster waves and proto-spaces were both outstanding places to grind out experience, working alongside the network, before the factions started fragmenting and his association with Jason became a problem.

Once magic came out into the open, Taika had moved his family; fi...

Chapter 638: The Same Thing as Telling the Truth

Jason was cooking breakfast in the pub’s kitchen when the chef, Kellance, arrived through the door leading directly into the kitchen from the alley. In Yaresh, alleys were much nicer than the norm, usually having more in common with a garden. In this case, a gravel path meandered through long grass and around a couple of trees with long leaves of lush green.

Jason had learned the day before that the elven chef was the cousin of Bellory, the pub’s owner.

“Morning, bloke,” J...

Chapter 637: A Man of Many Talents

After increasing delays, the convoy was finally preparing to head down the last stretch of road leading into the city of Yaresh. Part of the delay was making sure they had a place waiting to stow their large vehicles for the duration of their visit. They had settled on a fairly low-end camping ground as space was currently at a premium. Many travelling adventurers had already arrived in Yaresh, looking to join the conflict with the messengers. Humphrey and Korinne’s teams were far from the ...

Chapter 636: Quiet Professionalism

The original design of Jason’s cloud constructs allowed two modes. One was overtly made of cloud substance, while the other looked traditionally constructed by the vessel replicating ordinary materials. This could be a false façade or truly mimic the properties, so long as the materials had been fed into the flask.

Over time, the binary nature of the constructs had become more fluid as Jason made many alterations to the cloud flask that produced them. Between deepening his bond to it...

Chapter 635: Doing Things That You Shouldn't

The astral realm that Jason’s soul space had become was an estate of cloud buildings that sprawled through strange and varied gardens. It all centred on a dark crystal tower in a pagoda style that loomed over everything. Completing the dark lord motif was the giant blue and orange eye floating over the tower that regularly prompted unwelcome Sauron comparisons.

In a garden that looked something like an English country pond, Jason had created an avatar of himself. The avatar was floati...

Chapter 634: Inventing a Man in Your Head

Rainforest encroached on both sides of the wide road leading off towards the elf city in the distance. Glass ziggurats and polished towers of dark metal poked up over the canopy, the elves having built their metropolis within the forest instead of clearing it to make room. Jason had been looking forward to exploring such a large city built into, rather than over the environment.

He had stopped outside the city first, having found a rare clearing by the side of the road. While other memb...

Return date delayed three days

TL;DR: The story will return from break 3 days later than previously announced.

The new return date is the 5th or 6th of May, depending on local timezone.

I have finally moved into my new house, although I'm still waiting on all my new furniture. Currently, most of the rooms are either empty or with makeshift furniture, such as the folding picnic table with my computer on it. That being said, I'm very happy to be in the new space, but there's a lot to d...

Chapter 633: Not You

“That’s the first thing you ask about?” Jason said. “My cloud flask? After I go off into your astral space and die?”

“You’re going to talk to me about causing trouble?” Emir asked. “There are about a hundred outworlders who arrived in the wake of you coming back, and you've just left them on the other side of the world while you're playing with your great astral being friends. Since you keep not showing up, who do you think people bother about it? Anyone in the area wh...

Chapter 632: People That You Didn't Aggravate

A sprawling, multi-level, subterranean complex extended beneath the entirety of the Adventure Society campus. Large portions of which were restricted, with potent protections, including the ones through which Liara led Jason, Farrah and Travis.

“There are two things on your agenda before you go,” Liara told Jason. “One is collecting your winnings from the duels, along with the additional materials from Mr Noble’s list.”

Liara continued to keep one of Shade's bodies hidde...

Break reminder

There will only be three chapters this week before I go on break, and none next month. This will give a chance to move, do an edit pass of book seven and - please let this be true - get some real sleep.

As reminder, Patreon will NOT charge patrons that join before the April booking cycle at the start of the month, but they will charge new patrons that join after.

It's an odd aspect of the author/reader relationship that the times I look forward to the beginning of are the...

Chapter 631: Where We End

Farrah and Jason emerged from his soul space, through the archway located on the bridge.

“I can kind of feel the bond, if I go looking for it,” Farrah said. “It’s way more subtle than my power bond ability, though. To be honest, I was expecting more.”

“I know that story,” Travis said from the doorway to the bridge. “Women tell me that all the time.”

“Oh, bloke…” Jason commiserated. “You need to work on that self-confidence.”

“That’s neve...

Chapter 630: A Matter of What You Want

The convoy left the river, passing by several towns on their way to the coast. From there they followed the coast roads for the most part, but they increasingly needed to find alternatives. Compared to the excellent road network maintained by the storm kingdom, these were not as wide or well-maintained as those to the north. Sometimes the hefty hover yacht needed to float over the rainforest canopy. Others they would ride along the beach, skim over a bay or take to the water, running under a ...

Chapter 629: Just to Prove You Could

“Nope,” Gary said as Belinda approached him in the yacht's dining and barge lounge. He was sprawled back in a chair reading a book with a mug on the table beside him, steam rising from the piping hot contents. His vantage allowed him to look out as the hover yacht proceeded down the river toward its next destination.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask,” Belinda complained.

“I’m not making you another set of lock picks.”

“Alright,” she conceded, ...

Shirt's discount shirts (and pants)

TL;DR: New merchandise, short-term discount, GIVEAWAY. Details below.

IMPORTANT: Giveaway runs until 31st of March, 11:59pm PST, Unites States times. Discount runs until 26th of March, 11:59pm PST, so don't waffle about.

My audio publisher has decided to do a short-term discount of, I believe 15% on the HWFWM merchandise, including the new stuff, including a hoodie, an art print of the book 5 cover, and pants.

This link should get you straight there with the discount auto-...

Chapter 628: The Thing You Practice With The Most

It was raining again as a land skimmer moved over the rubble that was once a city. It hovered only a metre over the ground, but that was enough to float over almost every part of the city’s inland reaches. A few buildings, once magically reinforced strongholds, had left remnants in the form of a partial wall or two.

“This side of the city was where the shockwave from the astral space being taken hit,” Vestine said. She was driving the skimmer but had been quiet for most of the tri...

Chapter 627: Asset

Having returned in the pre-dawn, Jason emerged from his cabin when it was almost time for lunch.

“Oh, thank the gods you’ve come out,” Neil said, rushing up to him. Jason narrowed his eyes, about to probe his aura to confirm his identity as Neil continued.

“Clive made… I suppose we have to call it breakfast,” Neil lamented. “Taika threw him into the river.”

“Taika’s only bronze rank,” Jason said with a laugh.

“He’s strong,” Neil said. “The...

Break Dates

The last chapter before going on break will be March 31st in Australia, which is Wednesday the 30th in the US. That means two chapters that week. First day back will be May 3rd Australia, May 2nd USA.

I'd love to put something insightful and funny here to take the sting out of going on break, but bt5rgvf4eeedchy6n89ju55555555555gv bnjimkoul.

I fell asleep on my keyboard, and not for the first time. Thank you all for being understanding.

Oh, and more stuff will appear in the...

Chapter 626: Rage, Authority and Otherworldly Power

Jason moved through the night-covered city, flickering unseen from shadow to shadow. There was no shortage of them under the light of the twin moons, allowing him to make a blistering pace. With the blanket of stars, the city was relatively bright, given the early hours, making it a shadowy realm that was perfect for Jason.

He didn’t expand his senses too far as his magical senses were an expression of his aura. Pushing them too far would broadcast his location to any aura-sensitive b...