Shirtaloon

Chapter 526: The End of the World

Some of the neighbourhood kids watched from across the river as Rufus and Jason sparred. Stripped down to plain pants, they matched their swordsmanship furiously until even their silver-rank endurance was spent. The children observed with fascination, some trying to imitate them, others engaging in their own spars using sticks.

Jason lost repeatedly, despite all his advancements. Rufus had trained under what many considered to be the greatest swordsman in the world since he was a boy. F...

A bunch of announcements

I have a few announcements here, so like trying to explain litRPG to my Aunt Helen, I'm going to start with the specific and grow increasingly vague:

• I was going to have a couple of chapters to round out book 7 this week. Instead, after doing some heavy final revision on the chapter coming out in about 10 minutes, I really liked it as a point to leave book at. I ended up making it another very long chapter - not quite as long as the last one, but definitely hefty, and I'm really h...
  2021-08-30 22:50:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 525: Stand at the Front

The royal family of the Storm Kingdom was very large. Every combat-trained member of silver-rank or above was gathered in a ballroom in the royal palace; one of the few rooms large enough to hold them all. From Zara and Vesper to Soramir and the Storm King, the only absent member of that group was Zila, who had gone northwest to fight in the battle there. Only untrained core users like Pelli were exempted from the family call to arms.

With them was the royal guard, all members of the Sa...

Chapter 524: Between Mortal and Something Else

Battle raged over the waters of the Storm Kingdom's northwestern reaches. The Builder’s underwater city had surfaced for battle, disgorging airships to meet those from Rimaros in the skies above. Many adventurers were not even in airships, free-floating in the air or even approaching through the water. The Builder's force had many constructs designed to operate in the water, along with abominations modified not from intelligent races but sharks and other deadly denizens of the deep. Fightin...

Chapter 523: This One Time

The lumbering figure was only passingly humanoid, its massive body embedded with coral that jutted from its flesh like spiked armour. It was still some way offshore, yet the sea only reached up to the giant's thighs. What was above the surface was already a match in height for a five-storey building.

“Asano,” Pelli said through voice chat. “I’m sensing a gold-rank monster near your location.”

“Yep,” Jason said. “I’m just looking it up.”

He was already pai...

Chapter 522: A Normal Man

The office door of Havi Estos burst open to admit Havi’s stumbling, flustered great-nephew. Havi looked up unhappily from the accounting papers he had been concentrating on.

“Jono, what have we said about knocking?”

“Sorry, boss, but–”

He was cut off as a strong arm grabbed him by the back of the shirt and yanked him back out of the office door to clear the way. A woman with bright pink hair stormed in and planted herself in front of Havi’s desk.

“Estel...

Chapter 521: A Lot More Steps

“Travis is supervising the construction now,” Clive said, shortly after arriving at the cloud house with Gary. They joined the rest of their teams, minus Jason, in getting ready to head for the Adventure Society. Farrah, Gary and Rufus would be joining with Jason’s team for the operation, with only Jason sitting out at Dawn’s insistence. Jason had modified the cloud house to have a locker room with separation screens, allowing the men and women to change privately while still talking....

Chapter 520: No One Telling Me I Can't

Jason and Dawn walked towards each other until they were face to face.

“No,” she repeated.

“Dawn.”

“I said no.”

“Yeah,” Jason said softly. “You did.”

She wheeled around, turning her back on him as she ran a frustrated hand over her face. The rest of the room’s occupants looked on in confused silence, aside from Soramir. He was looking at them with narrowed eyes.

“Why do you have to be like this?” Dawn asked, her back still to Jason...

Chapter 519: One Battle at a Time

Jason took the sound recording crystal out of the projector, stopping the music. He then returned the projector to his inventory. Vesper stood on the other side of the large, wooden-floored room, looking slightly flushed. She stood with her back to him, looking out the window. They were in the lower-security area of the royal palace, close to the arrival lake, where minor affairs and less prominent guests were hosted.

“You can dance, I’ll give you that,” she said.

“I did t...

Chapter 518: That Powerful and That Old

Liara, Vesper and the thus-far silent Trenchant Moore were sitting across from Jason and his team in an Adventure Society conference room. Liara tapped a folder on the table in front of her.

“The reason the society gave me so much leeway with the contract you all just completed was that it was part of a wider test program. This monster surge is unlike anything that has come before. You're all aware of the specifics, so I won't waste time repeating what you already know. The Adventure ...

Poster giveaway

My audiobook publisher is holding a contest in conjunction with the book three launch to give away some posters featuring Farrah. This is through Podium Audio and not patron exclusive, and there is no cost to entry. Anyone interested can jump in here: https://bit.ly/hwfwm3-giveaway 

Chapter 517: I Am Not Jason Asano

Jason and his team arrived back at the cloud house, exhausted in ways no stamina potion could fix after two weeks on the road. There were some kinds of tired only rest could fix, however potent your potion supply was. The monster surge was now in full swing, with monsters spawning faster than even the most pessimistic predictions had anticipated.

The abnormal rate of magical manifestations was not restricted to monsters, with a commensurate increase in the appearance of essences and awa...

Chapter 516: What It Sent Us

Happy with his service to date, Soramir had Trenchant Moore assigned full-time to assist Liara and himself. While Trench could and would also assist Vesper, she remained a silver ranker and could not be given authority over a gold, even if she was a princess and he a royal guard. It was part of the complex hierarchical interplay between the royal family and their guard force of elite adventurers.

In the office he had been assigned, Moore was going over the reports of Asano’s expeditio...

Chapter 515: A Story About a Magic Trowel

Jason and Farrah sat on the balcony of his cloud house in the morning sun. As Taika and Travis came from inside, chairs made of cloud stuff rose from the floor.

“It’s time for the long version of how you two arrived here,” Jason told them as they sat.

“No worries, bro. It started with that big standing-stone thing you two made on the footy field in that abandoned town. No one was stupid enough to go near it while you were still around, although I’m pretty sure every coun...

Chapter 514: Hegemon's Will

As Belinda left Jason on the balcony of the cloud house, Humphrey came out to take her place, leaning against the railing next to Jason. Jason flashed him a smile before turning his gaze back out over the lagoon, shimmering with the light of twin moons.

“We’ve come a long way from that waiting room in Greenstone where we met,” Humphrey said. “But I suppose you’d already been further to get that far.”

“That was quite a week for me. I didn’t even give notice at work....

Chapter 513: Meanwhile, Two Weeks Ago in Vitesse

Jason was disembarking from the airship that had just returned his expedition to Rimaros. He was moving with the group across the open-sided walkway stretching from the docking cradle to the port tower when he froze on the spot.

“Mr Asano?” asked the expedition leader, Jeni Kavaloa.

“We’re done, right?” Jason asked. “Expedition over?”

“The contract is complete, Mr Asano. I’ll be handing in the report but you can get a copy of…”

She stopped botheri...

Chapter 512: Staying with Friends

Autumn Leal was tired. In the course of what she had thought was an ordinary delivery run, she was ambushed by a team of Purity loyalists. Outnumbered and outmatched, she had thought she was done for until the guild team she hadn’t known were trailing her in stealth appeared. They captured and took away the loyalists that survived the resulting ambush, leaving Autumn to complete her supply contract.

She didn’t like being bait, but she did like coming home alive, so she called the wh...

Chapter 511: I Don't Think You're Angry

“I still say we should have fished whatever that thing was out of that fire lake,” one of the guild team members said.

“We weren’t there to kill monsters,” said Korinne, the team leader. “We were there to stop the Builder cult from prying the astral space off the side of our world and blasting this whole region apart in the process.”

The expedition had just emerged from the astral space and the expedition leader, Jeni, was setting up a device that would seal the astr...

Book 3 is coming (yay). Book 3 chapters are coming down (boo)

Book three is coming to Kindle and Audible. And paperback, if you want a copy you can still read after the high-protein yoghurt apocalypse has taken out the electrical grid. Just keep it somewhere dry.

Unfortunately, this means that the chapters from that book will be coming down from  online serialisation platforms. That's Royal Road, Scribblehub and here. This will be taking place at some point on Monday the 23rd of August, Australian time. I'm not sure of the ex...

Chapter 510: Put the Mask Back On

The collared cultists were effectively non-threats without powers, but Jason wasn’t taking chances. Holding a hand out to the side, blood spilled out to take the form of Colin in his blood clone form.

“Watch the packaged meat,” Jason instructed. “If it starts going bad, eat it fast.”

The cultist still free didn’t try to look out for his fellows. He did just the opposite moving out of the way as the familiar approached them with slow, methodical steps. The cultist never...

Chapter 509: A Fair Fight

Jason looked at the vessels of the Builder arrayed in front of him. Yet again, the Builder was pushing the boundaries of its agreement with the other great astral beings, reinforcing their unreliability. It reminded him all over again that none of them cared about the welfare of one mortal. Their only concern was how he could impact their agenda or, perhaps, their pride as higher beings as they looked down on mortals.

Once again, Jason found himself in front of some vastly more powerful...

Chapter 508: The Source of the Madness

Jason knew from his map that the expedition had been portalled to somewhere in the north of Colombia, which in this world was in the southwest of the Storm Kingdom. They headed south, on the same wide, well-maintained roads Jason had travelled on during his delivery contract.

The group experimented with the chat features of Jason's party interface, the guild team clearly having used similar abilities before. They explained them to the unaffiliated after some basic functionality tests, s...

Chapter 507: The Days They Sing Songs About

Trenchant returned to Soramir’s balcony lounge after escorting Farrah away, finding the diamond-ranker mid-conversation with Princess Liara. He stood at attention, remaining quiet.

“I would have like to ask more on what she said about starting the monster surge,” Liara asked. “I didn't sense any lie from her, but is that even possible?”

“I had already suspected something along those lines,” Soramir told her. “There has been speculation of interference in the natura...

Chapter 506: Idiot Plan

Farrah and Rufus watched Jason slump into the cloud house like a beaten dog. He didn't even use the doors, the walls opening in front of him and closing behind as he trudged in a straight line. They shared a look and got up, using the actual doorways to get to his room where they stood outside, knowing he would be aware of their presence. They waited, but there was no reaction. Rufus was about to call out to him but Farrah shook her head.

“Shade,” she said quietly. “What happened?...

Chapter 505: Bad Apples

Jason made his way through the basement levels of the Adventure Society complex until he reached the restricted areas. From there he was escorted to the Builder response unit’s area; a series of securely sealed rooms surrounded by powerful aura containment. His escorts led him to Liara’s office, where she was sitting behind her desk. She looked up from the report she was reading.

“You can leave him, thank you.”

The escorts left them alone, closing the door behind them. She...

Chapter 504: The Part That Knows How to Quit

Princesses Vesper and Liara were in a room with Trenchant Moore and Liara’s teammates, Jana and Ledev.

“Let’s start with you, Ledev,” Liara said. “What is your assessment of Asano?”

“He’s capable enough. Guild-level, and strong alone. His aura is… formidable. He excels in solitary action but would be harder to incorporate into a team. His methods are unconventional, for an affliction user.”

Trenchant Moore tossed the folder containing Jason’s file onto ...

Chapter 503: How Deep a Hole

Jason went down into the waterfall cave beneath his cloud house. The natural stone was hidden behind walls, floor and ceiling made from cloud stuff, leaving only the cave mouth with the water rushing past. Sunshine sparkled through it like a spray of diamonds, dancing into the room. The space was otherwise lit by soft, ambient light coming from the cloud-stuff.

The room was mostly empty, aside from boards formed out of cloud-stuff on the walls. Jason could write or draw on them with onl...

Chapter 502: Integrity is Forever

Gil picked up his fruit from the floor, lamenting that he'd been too startled to catch it when, normally, his gold-rank reflexes would have no trouble doing so. Then he realised that Soramir could also have caught them even more easily but quickly quashed his annoyance at that. He looked up sheepishly, knowing that the diamond-ranker would have certainly sensed the emotion and where it was directed.

“Don’t concern yourself, Mr Vinaros. I’m not here to make things harder for you.�...

Chapter 501: Murky Waters

Jason felt the emotions play out in the auras around him. At the centre was the man on the other side of the tailor shop’s glass, Kasper Irios. A peak-level bronze-ranker, he was standing frozen, gripping the handle of the almost-closed door. His shock was as plainly written on his face as his aura after hearing Jason's name.

The man who had spoken his name, Alejandro Albericci, was also a silver-ranker. The moment he sensed the reaction of Kasper, his welcoming aura filled with surpr...

Chapter 500: An Object Lesson in Foolish Risks

While Rimaros was considered a single city, the islands that comprised it were spread over hundreds of kilometres. With three main islands and many sky islands that were themselves often sizeable, it was a city of many flavours, with each island having its own feel.

The most populous island was the easternmost of the three main islands, Provo. As well as being the general trade hub of the city, it was home to the majority of the non-magical citizenry. Its infrastructure was all designed...