Shirtaloon

Chapter 977: Getting Complicated Fast

Bussinger looked down at the gold-rank essence users. Not long ago, she would have said that group, acting together, could have accomplished anything. Killed anyone, no matter how protected. Taken down the civic infrastructure of a nation. That many people, with that much power, was an invincible, unstoppable force.

One man had taken them apart like stripping a gun down for cleaning. She suspected he hadn’t even tried that hard. It was well known that Jason Asano used stealth and skir...

Break plans over the next six months.

G'day all.

I wanted to give everyone a heads up on breaks in the release schedule over the next six months. The short version is that there will be a few breaks, but they will generally be shorter. No full months off, and no paused billing. I have well and truly learned my lesson there.

Mum (unconfirmed): Date unconfirmed, 1 week off
As many of you know, my mum hasn't been in the best of health. She has an auto-immune disease, spent a lot of last year in a...

Chapter 976: How Much Punishment They Could Live Through

Jason rested his hand on the grip of his sword, but didn’t draw it.

“Before we start—”

Amstutz launched at Jason, the air around his fist shimmering with power. Jason casually tapped the man’s forearm, deflecting it to the side. A surge of force fired like a cannon beside Jason’s head, shooting off behind him. At the same time, a kick to the chest sent Amstutz sprawling back onto the roof of the bus.

At gold-rank speed, the exchange had lasted less than a second....

Chapter 975: Your Terms Are Acceptable

In the heart of the mountain was the recently looted reality core depository. The individual containment vessels were themselves miniature vaults, and some the most sophisticated magitech ever produced on Earth. As the farming program had been embarked upon cautiously, only seven cores had thus far been acquired. This corresponded to the seven containers left open and empty.

Three people were in the vault, surveying their loss. One was Geneva Network branch director, Geneva Andros. With...

Chapter 974: Most Practical Purposes

Tera Jun Casta looked through the transparent floor of the dirigible as it drifted across the sky. Over the course of the day, they had floated over canyons deeper than most mountains, forests painted white with snow, and deserts filled with rolling dunes and shimmering oases. The more exotic locations included a chain of islands floating in the sky over five waterfalls spilling over one long cliff face, into a tropical lagoon. Upstream, a town built entirely out of ice floated in the middle ...

Chapter 973: A Cruelty or a Mercy

Jason stepped through the portal into the long savannah grass around Tera Jun Casta’s remote villa. Tera looked at him from the porch, taking him in as he did the same. The wings she had been so proud of as a messenger were nowhere to be seen. Her clothes were a simple blouse and pants in the human style, although fitted for a nine-foot-tall woman. She was standing on the wooden porch in bare feet, not floating over it. Her eyes looked at him with the same old hatred he remembered.

Th...

Chapter 972: Little Umbrellas

“Thank you,” Jason said as he shook Velius’ hand. “You helped my family at a dangerous time, when the clan was being established and I couldn’t be there. You have my gratitude.”

“You should direct your gratitude to the Reaper. I serve at its pleasure. Speaking of which, the clan is now stabilised, and you are here. It is time for me to attend to other duties.”

“You’ve been here a long time. Did it bother you, being stuck in this place?”

“I do as is re...

Chapter 971: All the Fuel It Needed

In Saint-Étienne, Vincent Baudrillard was pacing around a rooftop garden courtyard. There was a wrought iron outdoor table setting, at which Emi Asano sat. She was eating a large half sandwich while she watched his back-and-forth march. He ran a hand through his increasingly dishevelled hair yet again, which only further set off his rakish good looks. Instead of telling him that, she made a poor attempt at stifling a giggle.

“Stop laughing!” he half begged, but his beleaguered voic...

Chapter 970: The Wisdom These Situations Demand

“Magic was revealed on Earth,” Farrah began, “when the Engineers of Ascension sabotaged the grid in what was ultimately the action that spelled the end of their organisation. Without the ability to detect and resolve proto-astral spaces across the globe, those spaces broke down and ejected monsters into the world, causing the monster wave crisis.”

She tapped the clicker in her hand and the briefing room’s projector screen lit up with rows of ID photos and names. Farrah’s was...

Chapter 969: Good Lord

Moisture from the nearby waterfall took the edge off the bright sunlight, beaming into the gorge from high overhead. Trees and wildflowers grew around the houses carved out of the rocky walls, wooden decks jutting into the gorge. Clean, natural aromas drifted on the gentle breeze. Jason sat in a porch swing, on the deck of the house closest to the waterfall, an arm draped over Zara’s shoulders as she leaned into his body.

“You made this place to be relaxing,” she said. “Given th...

Merry Whatever You Celebrate

For me, it's all about family - for good and for ill. I wish you all the best, whatever your observances, or lack thereof.

I've been having a nice relax during my break, recharging the batteries and not paying too much attention to work. I'm going to try and catch up on messages and discord Q&A questions after Christmas, once I've gotten some sleep in the wake of the family's departure.

In the meantime, here is a book 12 preview, in the form of the appendices tha...

Hopefully the last technical issues post.

Everything should be back on an even keel right now. The last step was resetting the Patreon discord bot which automatically assigns discord roles. If you are still having trouble accessing your discord role, try resetting the Patreon-discord connection, following the steps here: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115002341603-I-don-t-have-my-Discord-role<...

Technical disaster wrap-up

TL;DR: Anyone still experiencing technical issues, please message me directly.

G'day all,

I am currently in holiday mode - I am currently somewhere extremely warm and may or may not be dressed like Jason. This means that, aside from going over the editor's work on book 12, I've been stepping away from everything, including the Patreon. I'm hoping that the end of the billing pause has resolved any of the issues, but I am aware that there may be lingering problems.

I have fin...

Chapter 968: A Brief but Firm Reminder

“Are there any kind of warning signs I should be aware of?” Anna asked. “Some kind of indication that you or your familiars are about to go off like a powder keg?”

“Yes,” Jason said calmly, then sipped at his fruit juice blend. “Some humans, in a display of idiocy so grand I have no metaphor to compare it, are trying to DESTROY THE PLANET THAT THEY ARE STANDING ON!”

His outburst was mirrored by the land around them as the gorge was rocked by a tremor that shook lea...

Year end and a bonus from Heath

TL;DR:

• Tomorrow's chapter is the last for the year.

• Heath has recorded book 12, chapter zero.

• It is available to his $1 patrons.

Links:

• Heath's discord: https://discord.com/invite/aThxvk47Xc

• Book 12, ch. 0 audio: 2024-11-29 00:34:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 967: What I Present to The World

Spiritual damage lingered, beyond the capacity of healing magic to repair. This was something Jason was intimately familiar with, but his latest spiritual injury was mild. Holding shut the rip in the universe had strained his prime avatar, but within a couple of days it had largely recovered. He spent that time in his astral kingdom, in his house by the waterfall.

Far from crippled, just not up to another fight, he spent most of the time cooking. He set up an outdoor kitchen on the spra...

Status update on this definitely not bugged to hell website

TL;DR:

• New discord channels for chapter releases.

• Billing will not be repaused for December, to try and avoid further problems.

Discord PDF chapter links:

• Silver and above: https://discord.com/channels/614969767937441805/1310725802999943178

• Bronze...

  2024-11-27 14:05:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 966: A Cultural Experience

Onslow’s shell had expanded to the size of a house. It was serving as combination command centre, rest area and triage tent, always hosting one or two healers. As powerful as the adventurers were, no gold-rank monster was to be dismissed, and even silvers were a threat with numbers so high.

Jason landed inside Onslow’s shell in a half crash, tumbling on the floor. Arabelle was kneeling next to him a moment later as he rolled onto his back and pushed himself into a sitting position. ...

Chapter 965: This Is Kind of How Team Biscuit Operates

The massive torrent of transcendent light continued to gush from the giant portal, inundating the rainbow glow of the manifestation. The adventurers surrounding the phenomenon looked on as monsters swarmed out, thick as insects, despite the smallest being the size of a bread van. Most were silver rank, with one in a hundred being gold.

Even the smaller, silver-rank monsters were hulking things. Each had a body shaped like a spider but the hairy, muscled flesh of a gorilla. Massive insec...

PDF chapters temporarily being posted to discord.

Entirely anticipated technical issues have been preventing some patrons from getting access to the latest chapters. For this reason, I have started posting the chapters to pinned comments in the iron, bronze and silver channels in the discord. This will continue for the remainder of the month.

Chapter 964: Expanding His Influence

In Zermatt, Switzerland, it was the early hours of the morning. In a chalet of largely glass walls, Marie Finnegan sipped at a mug of hot chocolate. On the coffee table, her phone beeped a notification. She picked it up and saw a text message consisting of only the letter C. She sat down her phone and her drink, then pulled out a second phone and dialled a number not saved in the contacts. Her call was answered, but the person on the other hand said nothing.

“Confirmation,” Marie sa...

The inevitable technical issues.

I am aware that people are suffering technical issues with the Patreon, as predicted when I paused billing. I'm considering potential solutions, although my options are limited. They include undoing the pause, which I have not yet done but may end up doing, just to prevent even more problems. What I have done in the immediacy is send an email to Patreon that has half a chapter's worth of word count about this issue and, to be honest, most of my other grievances with the platform. I will see h...

Chapter 963: Minimum Collateral Damage

Jason and Gary sat, side by side, on a porch swing. Mist wetted the trees growing from the sides of the gorge, filling the air with the scent of the leaves. Jason was still, gathering his thoughts, while Gary shifted in anticipation of long-awaited answers. The leonid was not tall for his kind, yet he loomed over Jason. Even so, it was the smaller man’s presence that seemed overwhelming. This was Jason’s world, and on an instinctive level, Gary could feel it.

“I must be a strange ...

Status Update

Just a quick check-in. I won't be releasing chapters this week, but I'm currently looking at returning for the last two weeks of November.

Thank you for all the well-wishes for my mother, they are very welcome and I am extremely grateful. She had a very rough week, but she is now home from the hospital. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I can provide help for her, and the support of my readers is what has made that possible. You have given me the opportunity to get my mothe...

Book 12, Chapter 0

I forgot to change the file to a PDF when I made my last post, and released it as a Word document. Here is the PDF version. Sorry about that.

A little bonus

G'day all.

I'll be on a plane in a couple of hours, but before I go, I wanted to thank everyone for the outpouring of support, positivity and well-wishes for my mother.

There is something I wasn't going to release until December, which a very chapter zero I wrote for book 12, as a summary of book eleven. Unfortunately, as Stash is the point of view character, it doesn't work very well for that purpose. I decided to include it here, as an apology for the hiatus and a thank y...

Unfortunate news

TL;DR:

• My mum's health has sharply declined and she's in hospital again.

• I'll be taking at least a week off to go see her and arrange a higher level of care for when she gets out.

• I will be pausing billing due to the uncertainty of content in November and the complete absence of it in December.

The summary above mostly covers it. My mum has been in and out of ...

Chapter 962: I Know What You Are

The first people from Earth to visit Jason’s astral kingdom had been a trio of government officials and the security team that came looking for them. After their experiences, they had been subject to every test that could be devised, be it magical, technological or both. There were no signs to be found of mental manipulation, pod people, shape-shifted replacements or any other scenarios that could be tested for or imagined. For many, wary of Jason’s magic, this was not enough to confirm h...

Chapter 961: The Scary Demigod Side

Asano Village had an auditorium for large meetings. Jason sat quietly at the back, watching a presentation by Clive, Audrey and a pair of biologists from the Cabal and the Network. With them were officers from the CIA and their Australian counterpart, ASIS. They were outlining everything that had been discovered about the blood oaks, from the name to confirmation that there were more of them. The results were a combination of experimental records, recovered communications and working with sam...

Chapter correction and book 12 release date

G'day all,

We now have a release date for book 12, and it will be May 20th of next year.

It has been correctly pointed out that I got my characters mixed up chapter 960. I put Li Li Mei's father in place of her uncle, which I have subsequently fixed. The corrected PDF is attached to this post.

I can only say that ti was an issue stemming from my increasing tiredness as I increasingly look forward to my December break. It's pleasantly novel to just be tired and not burned out...