Shirtaloon

Chapter 617: Put the Extraordinary Aside

A large flying carriage landed on the lawn in front of Jason’s pagoda. Jason and his companions emerged, along with Liara, and Jason immediately walked up to the pagoda doors, which opened at his approach. As soon as they did, water came spilling out onto the grass. It was far from a flood, but enough to demonstrate that the massive atrium floor had been flooded to at least a couple of centimetres deep.

Like the night outside, the interior was dark. That did not obscure Jason’s visi...

Book 5 release

Book 5 is being published in ebook and audiobook on April 5th.

Chapters from book 5 will be taken down in two weeks from all (legal) online sources.

I'm not wildly comfortable with this just being a charmless informational post, but I'm kind of drowsy and tapped out on witticisms. Also, I'm pretty hungry. I'm going to go have a sandwich.

Chapter 616: A Good Friend to Have

Estella Warnock still thought of it as her grandfather’s house, even though he was now gone. After the death of her parents, Warwick Warnock had retired from adventuring to raise Estella, never pushing her to adventure the way he had her father. Warwick had learned that lesson at the price of his son’s life, and had been determined to avoid the same mistake with his granddaughter.

Warwick had only ever pushed Estella to find her passion, whatever that might be. If it turned out to b...

Chapter 615: Mother's Favourite

“Humphrey is the least-suited to duelling out of you four,” Neil assessed as they watched Humphrey enter the arena.

Jason had a lot of training and experience in the five years since his first arrival on Pallimustus, allowing him to master his own power set. But when it came to group tactics, Jason could not match the lifelong education people like Neil, Humphrey and Rufus had gone through. That big-picture understanding required exhaustive instruction on essence abilities, roles, t...

Bad news, good news.

TL;DR: I'm taking next week off for mental health (and to get ready to move); big chapter to round out this week.

Writing this story is what I do. It occupies the vast majority of my time and I'm usually revising and editing late into the evening or even early into the morning. Some days are easy, some are hard, and when the whole week is hard, I end up with a constant headache and my body forgetting how to sleep properly. Which means it's self-care time. Not a euphemism.

Chapter 614: The Only Wound You Can Truly Suffer

Jason’s commandeering of the arena’s public address system had broken the tension between Rufus and his opponent, Glenn Twenhey. After they saw Jason escorted off, however, they went right back to staring at one another. It was more than just assessing the other by physique, clothing and body language. Their auras were clashing like fencers, each seeking an opening that would make for an advantage as the fight began, or even uncovered a little extra information that could be the differenc...

Chapter 613: Uncharacteristic Sincerity

Melody woke up in a small pond, her head pounding. She opened her eyes and saw massive amounts of destruction above her, something having ravaged the inside of Asano’s cloud building. It had destroyed the room she was in and dumped her all the way down into the mostly intact atrium.

She was in the waterfall pond that was the atrium’s centrepiece, but the damage meant the waterfall no longer fell into it. As she got to her feet, dripping wet, she saw the water was currently spilling ...

HWFWM Trailer

My audio publisher has produced an animated trailer with bit of a PS2 game feel to it. They'll be using it in marketing materials, but if anyone is interested, you can get an early look here before it gets listed and becomes searchable.

https://youtu.be/WIhPVGgPDgU 

Chapter 612: The Only Person Who Thinks It's Obvious

On one side of the duelling area, the entire wall was made up of reinforced glass, behind which was the lake at the heart of the sky island. Specially reared aquatic creatures, unfazed by the regular water traffic, swam around in the water. It was an impressive backdrop for anyone viewing from the seats that made up the other side of the area, also behind reinforced glass.

There were VIP viewing booths into which the palace stewards were expertly guiding the more prestigious attendees, ...

Chapter 611: The God in This Scenario

“I can’t believe his majesty went along with this,” Liara muttered as she rode an elevating platform into the bowels of the sky island.

“Dinner and a show,” Jason said. “What’s not to like?”

A vast amount of infrastructure was in the underground portions of the flying island on which the royal palace and residential sectors for royalty and foreign diplomats were located. A large part of that was underwater docking stations where vehicles could arrive in an airlock ...

Chapter 610: Follow Your Convictions to Your Death

Jason, Liara and Zareen were sitting at a table, with Hector de Varco standing in front of them. It was already drawing attention, even if people couldn’t hear through the invisible privacy screen. Hector was a larger man than his relative, Lancet, and less polished. His hair was trimmed short instead of a sculpted coiffure, with broad shoulders and an outfit that, while tailored, lacked the same flatteringly painstaking fit. Hector also lacked the gold hair of Lancet, instead sporting a de...

Chapter 609: Hefty Nuggets

Unsurprisingly, the commotion in the middle of the palace ballroom drew attention from across the room. After glancing at Gary standing over some nobleman he had dropped with a serving platter, Jason’s attention moved to everyone else. He watched body language and looked for aura spikes, as much as he could without pushing out his senses more forcefully. Most of the obvious reads came from younger members of the nobility, as the more experienced and high-ranking ball attendees had well-trai...

Chapter 608: All Singer and No Song

The arena-like ballroom was set up in various zones, often repeated in different places around the room. Along with long buffet tables, stewards roamed with trays of food and drink. There were tables and small lounging areas, each with its own very high-end privacy screen. The privacy screens kept any sound from getting out, but did not prevent it from getting in, and there was no shortage of people using them to politic. Aura etiquette was very strict, with auras tamped down.

The Storm...

Chapter 607: A Difficult Child

The tailor, Alejandro Albericci, had come to the pagoda to make final adjustments on the formalwear of Jason’s companions. He was also a fully capable dressmaker and had arranged the gowns for the female members of the group - some of whom were more open to the experience than others. Sophie glowered as Alejandro checked over Belinda’s gown.

“Why would anyone wear this?” Sophie asked.

“Because maybe I’d just like to enjoy myself and feel pretty every once and a while?�...

Chapter 606: That Boy In the Tent

Jason walked across the atrium of the pagoda and looked at the doors leading outside with a frown.

“Why do these swing open?” he mused out loud. The doors and the section of wall around them dissolved into cloud-stuff, revealing Zara Rimaros standing outside them.

“I’ll be with you in a sec,” Jason said. “I’m just doing some home renovation.”

The cloud-stuff re-solidified into sliding doors made of dark crystal, containing swirling blue and orange light. They...

Chapter 605: One More Loyalty to Balance

Jason and Liara were in the pagoda, taking tea in a parlour as they discussed the Adventure Society liaison to his team.

“Vidal Ladiv,” Jason said. “It’s kind of an inspired choice. Someone I like and respect – when I don’t, that becomes clear very quickly. But he’s not someone I’m close to, who will be biased in my direction. It’s a smart choice.”

Vidal Ladiv was an Adventure Society official who had done very well out of the monster surge, reaching silver ran...

Chapter 604: If You're Going to Punish Someone

Maldonado's team whirled at the unexpected voice. A man was walking out of the jungle and over the ritual line at the edge of the base camp. He was wearing dark red combat robes, not voluminous like a scholar's robe, but still draping loosely. He was not tall, but he had the lean athleticism of an adventurer. His features were sharp, with a pointed chin under a neatly trimmed beard. His dark hair was glossy, shining in the sunlight.

His presence was unsettling for two reasons. One was h...

Chapter 603: Occasionally Carniverous

A suppression-collared adventurer was trudging through the jungle, but paused in a clearing. He looked around, warily, seeing nothing but lush jungle and dark shadows. His expression was conflicted for a moment, then he turned to walk in a different direction.

“That’s not the way,” a cold voice said, sending a chill down his spine, despite the sweltering jungle. He looked around again, still seeing no one but himself. He turned again, resuming his original direction.

***

Chapter 602: El Demonio Que Hace Trofeos de los Hombres

The adventuring teams led by Rangel and Tellez were in dense jungle. With eleven members in the combined group, it was necessary to cut a path, but magic was more than up to the task. One of Rangel’s team members, Barrera, had been doing so with a conjured blade-whip that made short work of anything from thick scrub to entire trees.

Sunlight speckled in through the canopy above, vesting the two teams in false twilight as they stopped to argue over their current endeavour. Both teams h...

Chapter 601: This Doesn't Feel Glorious

There was a rocky outcropping on the southern mainland, well beyond the border of Storm Kingdom territory. Towering over the jungle, it overlooked a sweeping river and was an excellent landmark to portal to. A portal opened as someone did just that, and adventurers started emerging. Emerging first were silver rank guild adventurers, followed by Princess Liara and, finally, a visibly nervous Autumn Leal.

Autumn looked around at the guild team assigned to watch over her familiar ritual. T...

Chapter 600: Dear John

Jason tossed the list of names onto the table in front of him.

“This is what Dawn was up to,” he said as he rubbed his temples. “She could have told me. It’s not like I was doing much more than lounging about recovering.”

He got up and moved out onto the pagoda balcony, leaning on the rail and looking out to sea. In the distance, light was flaring as a magical storm was absorbed by a windmill-like mana accumulator.

Farrah moved to stand next to him.

“She kn...