“This is different,” Gerling said. “I can feel it.”
Gerling and his team were in a city of graceful, narrow spires and islands floating in the air on beds of cloud. Bridges connected the floating islands to each other, while columns of light connected them to the ground, with elevating platforms that rose up and disappeared into the clouds.
The streets where bright and clean, with white marble buildings and roads of dark crystal flagstones. Trees lined the streets, their b...
2021-04-22 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason was painted red, both from his own blood and that of his enemies. He ignored it for the moment as he pulled a clear crystal orb from his inventory.
-------
Item: [Genesis Reclamation Core] (transcendent rank, legendary)
A magical vessel capable of reclaiming the energy of unseated reality cores (consumable, magic core).
- Effect: Can drain the energy from unseated reality cor...
2021-04-21 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
The lone female vampire was seemingly the one most feared by the other vampires. After she agreed to join Jason in his conquest of the transformation zone, the four males looked at her and went off by themselves to discuss. From their expressions, the discussion was forceful and unfriendly. In the end, two chose to throw in with Jason while the last two refused. One of the refusers was Wassily.
“What is it you think you can accomplish?” Jason asked them. “You have no power, here. ...
2021-04-20 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
“The necromancer was surprisingly easy to get on board,” Jason said. “It’s likely that the powers we’ve seen are the extent of his unlocked abilities.”
“Perhaps,” Mr North said. “Or perhaps he wasn't so much eager to join our side as to leave the one he was on. It takes an unusual gold-rank vampire to put aside their instinct to dominate and get along with each other, which is not a good environment for a disempowered silver-rank essence user. You sensed his aura; the ...
2021-04-19 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason and Mr North were in an air-conditioned building at the edge of Jason’s territory, watching the border where it met the claimed territory of persons yet unknown. It was one of the surface buildings of Jason’s city, chosen for the second-storey viewpoint through a large window. They were relaxing in comfortable chairs.
The boundary was represented by a dark blue curtain of energy until, after several hours, it started to retract. The space in between the territories started onc...
2021-04-16 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason’s latest territory finished transmuting.
-------
- Your spirit domain has claimed a territory.
- Territory has been renamed [Geo-Thermal Metropolis].
- Anomalies attacking as a result of further spirit domain expansion will have increased power.
- You have claimed sufficient territory to stabilise the transformation zone and separate it from the convergent astral space.
2021-04-15 23:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
“This is the part where we go out and save the world,” Mr North said.
He and Jason were still in the mezzanine lounge.
“No,” Jason said. “This is the part where you stay here until I come back and get you.”
“You have something better to do?”
“Mr North, one of us saved the world from the convergence of an astral space and transformation zone threatening to open a wound in the side of the universe. The other one is responsible for the deaths of hundreds...
2021-04-14 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Mr North stepped from unclaimed territory into Jason’s spirit domain. He was in the bottom of a rocky canyon, with sulphurous vents letting out steam from the volcanic activity below. He scaled the canyon wall with the same adroitness his true spider form would have had and then walked to the top of a nearby ridge. He looked out over the domain, spotting the pagoda at the centre of the palace complex.
“Oh, Mr Asano,” he muttered as the aura of Jason’s domain washed over him. “...
2021-04-13 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason ducked into one of Shade’s bodies and vanished, right before a huge gobbet of webbing splashing into the shadowy familiar. Despite Shade’s incorporeal form, the potent magic on the webbing sent him flying backwards and pinned his body to the wall of the vast cavern. The energy in the web rapidly burned away Shade’s body, destroying it.
Jason appeared from another of Shade bodies, right underneath the huge creature. He reached overhead to carve his knife through its hair to c...
2021-04-12 23:00:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
G'day all. Shirt here with the long-awaited volume 2 PDF bundles. My assistant and I have been working on these for some time, because these are the error-corrected versions based on all the comments left in the typos channel on discord. I wanted to get these out earlier but with the Amazon launch and other things piling up, it took longer than I would have liked.
My assistant specifically asked me to thank everyone who has posted into the discord typos channel for their amazingly usefu...
2021-04-12 07:09:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
By the time Jason expanded his spirit domain into a fourth territory, the enemies were growing truly dangerous. Although extremely weak for their rank, they were still gold-rank entities and with each territory Jason claimed, the attacking anomalies grew stronger. In the previous transformation zone, Jason had sent off the gold-rankers before the transformation zone reacted by making the anomalies that rank as well. Jason assumed that since the anomalies here were gold rank, the transformatio...
2021-04-09 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
The astral space was a fog-filled realm of dilapidated manors and ruined castles, rising from a sea of mist. They were connected by crumbling stone bridges that spanned between them and Jason’s instincts told him that descending into the mist would be a Very Bad Idea. With poor visibility and murky light, it looked like a place that should have had vampires all along.
Jason’s previous visit was one of his most violent episodes, slaughtering Network personnel and EOA superhumans alik...
2021-04-08 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
After arriving in France, Jason created a modest boat from his cloud flask on an isolated stretch of the river Furan. The plan was to get some proper rest and make plans before heading downriver to Saint-Étienne. It also gave Travis time to modify the nuke, as well as instruct Jason and Farrah on its use.
The three were out on a covered deck. It was a cold winter day but that didn’t worry the essence users. Jason and Farrah were in chairs while Travis sat on the floor in front of the...
2021-04-07 23:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Travis skittered around to Farrah’s side of the table.
“Ohmygodthatwasterrifying.”
He warily glanced over at Ingrid.
“And weirdly kind of hot.”
Ingrid and Farrah both turned flat looks on him.
“What?” he asked them.
“I get it,” Jason said, appearing from the shadows and patting him on the back. “Not super appropriate, but I won’t go throwing stones in that regard.”
Jason turned his gaze on Ingrid. All she could see under his ho...
2021-04-06 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
“There are offices in the back of the warehouse,” Ingrid said. “We can sit down and talk there.”
As acting head of security for the weapon stockpile facility, Ingrid directed her team to secure the warehouse now that Jason and Farrah were no longer the chief concern. Ingrid knew that there was nothing she could do to stop them, so trying was pointless. Negotiation was her only recourse.
“You don’t need to worry about the door we left open,” Farrah said. “My magma e...
2021-04-05 23:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
The two ancient vampires watched their small army of ghouls burning and rotting at the same time. The ghouls were eerily quiet as they burned and died without making noise beyond the crackle and pop of flames burning their flesh. It was the screams of the lesser and lower-ranked vampires caught amongst the ghouls that punctuated the distant gunfire of soldiers and more ghouls fighting elsewhere on the massive base.
Vampires did not have the power to sense magic, but their sensitivity to...
2021-04-02 22:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason had been through months of unrelenting pressure, fighting and walking the knife-edge between life and death. He'd even slipped off it, although at least he had come back, unlike Kaito, Greg and Asya.
Taking a day to spend time with friends and family was like opening a release valve. Although the setting was anything but, there was a blessed normalcy to sitting around talking, preparing a big meal together with his sister and niece. It wasn’t anything elaborate, since all they h...
2021-04-01 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason didn’t ask any more about Mr North’s cryptic clues. Unless he was willing to try and torture the information out of him he wouldn’t be forthcoming and Jason wasn’t ready to take that step. In any case, Mr North seemed to know more about spirit domains than Jason himself and had entered Jason’s anyway. To assume the North had not taken precautions would be foolish.
“Will you act on our behalf?” Anna asked.
“No,” Jason said. “I’ll act on my own.”
...
2021-03-31 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
The ute pulled up a little way from the pagoda, due to the level of destruction around it. The gold-rankers trying to dig up any treasures had focused on the pagoda itself, the area around it looking less like an urban street than a motocross arena.
Vermillion continued his discontented mumbling as he hopped out of the tray, while Anna got out of the cab, looking around. She was concerned that Vermillion may well be right about Jason’s general receptiveness. She led the group in picki...
2021-03-30 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
2021-03-30 04:52:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
The transport Helicopter carried eight passengers, descending into what had once been a grassy paddock, close to the Global Defence Network camp.
The helicopter landed and the passengers disembarked. Akari Asano was the first to step out, her eyes panning the landscape. She took in the pastoral surrounds and the city of Nitra in the distance. The research camps set up by the magical factions gave each other a comfortable distance, arrayed around the strange, colourful town she had obser...
2021-03-29 22:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason’s spirit domain was a small city in western Slovakia. In the month since the dome around it came down, several gold-rankers had been exploring it, going in and searching, only to leave when the hostile effects applied to intruders grew dangerous. They would break into houses, smash their way into the pagoda and even dig up the ground in search of buried secrets.
The buildings, being made of mutable cloud-stuff, would restore themselves promptly, but the streets and parks were le...
2021-03-26 22:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason emerged from a node space portal, satisfied with the results. He opened a regular portal and returned to the cloud palace, still masquerading as desert ruins.
“How was it?” Farrah asked as they sat down, looking out over the desert.
“I’m pretty sure it’s going to work,” Jason said. “Rather than unreliably triangulating locations in node space through proto-spaces, doing it directly through node space is going to work much better. We could have saved ourselves m...
2021-03-25 22:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason and Farrah were sitting in a cabin on the cloud boat, going over the gains from Jason’s adventures in the transformation zone. The biggest were two items he had looted from the vampirically-transformed gold-ranker, Tran. The first was a bracelet; a simple loop of marbled red and black stone.
-------
Item: [Blade of the Blood Queen] (iron rank [growth], legendary)
A bracelet bestowing a fragment of the power belonging to t...
2021-03-24 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Gold-rankers, silver-rankers and even a few bold bronze-rankers went storming into the dome as it broke down. Once it was entirely gone and the transformed area revealed for all to see, even more followed.
Gerling still stood patiently, observing. Usually, a transformation zone turned an area into a supernatural reflection of its original state, but the Slovakian farmland had turned into a town from an animated movie, with colourful cloud houses, flowers and trees everywhere. It wasn’...
2021-03-23 22:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason looked out at the swirling rainbow energy beyond the pagoda. A moment of desperation had led him to dive into it while in the star phoenix form following his latest resurrection. The energy that had passed through him in that unusual state had once more heightened his understanding of the astral energies at play.
The gains were not worth the trade-off. Jason no longer had the safety net of his resurrection power, at least not until he ranked up in a decade or more. There was nothi...
2021-03-22 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason’s star phoenix form was impervious to almost any form of attack, with transcendent damage being a critical exception. His aura could downgrade transcendent damage, but with a diamond-ranker suppressing his aura that would not come into effect. He chose, then, to risk diving into the storm of energy reforging his spirit domain as Shako gathered transcendent energy for an attack. As he disappeared into the rainbow chaos outside of the pagoda, Dawn’s true form emerged from a shimmering...
2021-03-19 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Standing on the balcony on the pagoda’s top floor, Jason surveyed his spirit domain, stretching off into the distance. He felt his connection to the vast territory, as if it were part of him.
“Stabilise the transformation zone.”
A tremor immediately rocked the pagoda and did not pass, instead, continuing as a constant rumble. The entire pagoda felt like it was being hauled on a truck with mediocre suspension.
-------
- You are using y...
2021-03-18 22:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason continued to extend his spirit domain over the industrial wasteland city, seeking to master the battle trance as he fought hordes of anomalies. Although he had touched upon the trance once, it was not a state that he easily found his way into. In some fights, he managed it and others not.
“My understanding of the state is limited, having never experienced it for myself,” Shade said. “From what I do understand, forcibly trying to push your way into it will have little to no s...
2021-03-17 22:01:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jason kicked the zombie cyborg in the chest and it stumbled back off the edge of the roof, falling to the concrete below.
-------
- You have defeated [Unliving Anomaly].
-------
“I don’t like this place,” Jason said. “It’s too bloody grimdark.”
Somehow, having the gloom retract from the industrial ruins left it bleaker than when it was shrouded in darkness. Jason could now see across a citys...
2021-03-16 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
