Shirtaloon

Chapter 255: Here We Go

“This a bad plan,” Sophie yelled at Jason as they ran side by side. He was pouring on every bit of speed he could muster, while she was running backwards and still had to ameliorate her speed to match his.

“This is a fantastic plan,” he yelled back.

The were moving down a wide boulevard, chosen for being one of the more open and least overgrown. It was still more jungle floor than flagstone road, but they had become expert at navigating the terrain of the astral space a...

Chapter 254: Good News, Bad News

“This whole system originally belonged to the Builder,” Clive said. “There’s a good chance he has at least some sense of what is happening with it. Probably only to a limited degree, though. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to send out teams to activate these towers.”

“Meaning we should set off the phoney sabotage,” Jason said.

“Exactly meaning that,” Clive said. “If the Builder thinks we're going for it, he’ll concentrate his forces everywhere except here because he ...

Chapter 253: The Hero of This Story

“Should we be getting out?” Sophie asked as the cloud house continued to shake. “What if the church collapses on top of the cloud house?”

The cloud house was still hidden in the huge internal space of a cathedral.

“At most, it would be the roof falling on us,” Clive said. “That’s not enough to breach the cloud house, especially now it’s been upgraded to bronze-rank.”

“Yep,” Jason said. “We go out there and the first thing that happens is we fall on the gr...

Chapter 252: War of Adaptation

The enemy force only had a few cultists, being mostly made up of constructs and the converted. The hadn’t even engaged Jason’s team before being thrown into confusion as Belinda used her Unexpected Allies spell. The team were masked in illusions that made them appear as members of the enemy force. Illusionary doubles of their true form appeared as allies and enemies alike were switch-teleported around the area by Belinda’s spell.

The enemy constructs were unthinking automatons...

Chapter 251: Losing the Battle to Win the War

Jason dashed forward, his sword flicking out.

“Faster,” Sophie said, catching every strike with her hand as she moved backwards, easily matching the pace of Jason’s advance.

“You don’t need to hit hard,” she said. “If you’re going to fight the constructs effectively, it’s about building up the power on your sword as quickly as possible.”

Fending off Jason’s attacks while moving backwards at speed was apparently not strenuous enough to make her incapable of ...

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I'm trying to be more on the ball with these. I make no promises; I'm very flaky. Not literally, though. I don't have a skin condition or something. Why am I gibbering? You know what a metaphor is.

Chapter 250 - A Significantly More Dangerous Entity

The Builder was now wearing Thadwick’s face, but those that knew him would spot the difference immediately. There was a very different beast inside Thadwick’s body and the change was startling. It began from the eyes, hard and unyielding. This was a gaze that knew its domain was everything it landed upon. Person, place, or object, all that it saw, it owned.

It was a far cry from the insecure haughtiness of the body’s former owner and his constant need for validation. Uncertain...

Chapter 249: Being What He Needs to Be

Jason could barely stand in the wake of Neil’s spell wearing off, but he determinedly pushed himself to his feet.

“We need to move with alacrity,” Shade said. “The cult’s forces approach.”

Jason nodded, pausing only to spare what was left of Anisa a brief glance. He was again reminded that most of the people he had first met on arriving in this world were dead. Most of the Vane family, their servants, Farrah and now Anisa. For all the wonders his new home offered, it ...

Chapter 248: Forsaken Place

Humphrey lay on the ground, barely conscious, his life spilling from the savage wound in his chest. The rest of the team’s circumstances were not much more promising, with the summons destroyed and the seemingly indestructible enemy too dangerous to even approach. Jason’s afflictions, the means by which they had overcome so many strong enemies, were falling off as fast as he could put them on, even the ones being applied retributively by Jason’s aura. The team’s most powerful magic...

Chapter 247: The True Danger

Archbishop Hendren had apparently put his barrier up in time to completely shield the three, who were barely even dirty after having had a building dropped on them. The dome flickered out of existence; anyone with magic senses could detect that huge amounts of mana had been poured into it. This was of limited help to the team, as one of the many problems in facing a silver-ranker was that they had no shortage of mana to spend.

Anisa’s aura, like Sophie’s, cleared the air around...

Chapter 246: Thadwick

Shade’s passage through the cultist camp had been easier than anticipated. The camp was divided into three sections; the tents, which was his access point, was the largest section. It was where the bulk of both the iron-rankers were gathered. The crude buildings made with a stone-shaping power were areas he tried to avoid, as one of the bronze-rankers there might have been sharp enough to spot Shade. The very few buildings that looked like they were put together by a skilled craftsper...

Chapter 245: Faith and Glory

The power of the ring gate let the cultists drift down from the sky in safety, but they descended into trouble. The cultists drew more than a little attention on their way down, the blue light slowing their fall making them stand out both visibly and magically. The result was a slavering pack of monsters awaiting them on the ground.

The centre of the city had not been monster free for some time. The blood weaver was long gone and even if it hadn’t been, the increasing magical de...

Chapter 244: Ambitions

Over the last week, the ambient magic in the astral had taken on a strange cadence. Like ripples on still water at the footfalls of a great beast, the very space around them was agitated. It grew stronger day by day, until even Sophie could sense it, and she had no magical senses at all.

The monsters were apparently affected, being driven to unusual behaviour. Some hunkered down in the deepest holes they could find. Others gathered into large packs of disparate creatures that wou...

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Chapter 243: A Valiant Death

“I could feel the power he was throwing off like heat,” Thadwick said, full of enthusiasm. “I want that power.”

“And you will have it,” Zato said. “Dougall began the treatments earlier than you, so his power came into its fullness earlier.”

Dougall’s new presence within the cultist enclave had not gone unnoticed. Although he remained in reclusion, all had felt the power radiating off him. They felt the instinctive drive for veneration coming from the star seeds wit...

Chapter 242: Strong Foundations

By the time the team had spent almost a week in the camp of the former cultists, Belinda and Jason were assisting Clive almost full time in the basement, in the room with the large magical plate set into the floor. They were digging through the texts that Knowledge had given to Jason, finding anything that might be of value to Clive. They slowly gained a better idea of what it was they were looking at and how it might be useful.

“It’s clear that the goddess foresaw what we woul...

Chapter 241: It’s Very Complicated and You All Need to Go Away

The five storey mass of webbing was stretched between two buildings, completely blocking the street.

“I think I’ve spotted the blood weaver’s nest,” Neil said.

“Good eyes,” Sophie said. “Maybe you should be the one scouting.”

“It’s a gift,” Neil said.

“Has anyone else noticed Neil starting to take on some of Jason’s more immodest traits?” Humphrey asked, leaving everyone laughing but for an affronted Jason and an aghast Neil.

“You really thi...

Chapter 240: The Boss Comes to Town

Humphrey swung his arms inward, brutally clapping his hands into either side of the cultist vampire’s head. It relinquished its bite on Neil’s neck, rearing back to let out an alien screech from its inhuman mouth. His jaw unhinged in macabre mockery of the formerly human anatomy. The mouth no longer had teeth, just bare gums and a pair of hairy barbs, growing awkwardly out from the roof of the mouth. They bristled, wet with saliva and Neil’s blood.

Humphrey, gripped the vampir...

Chapter 239: The Most Dangerous Thing in the Dark

Behind his front-line team members, Jason injuries swiftly started healing over. The recovery power he gained from devouring vampiric curses combined with the healing Colin provided to close his wounds without requiring intervention from Neil. In most cases, his armour had mitigated the bulk of the damage, so here were no individual injuries that were egregious.

Jason did not immediately turn his attention to the team. First, he looked out at the amassing monsters, picking out th...

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Chapter 238: Sin Eater

Behind his front-line team members, Jason injuries swiftly started healing over. The recovery power he gained from devouring vampiric curses combined with the healing Colin provided to close his wounds without requiring intervention from Neil. In most cases, his armour had mitigated the bulk of the damage, so here were no individual injuries that were egregious.

Sophie and Humphrey were waiting for the monsters to get closer, while Neil cast a spell, conjuring two sets of three s...

Chapter 237: It's Not About Killing Monsters

They heard the monsters before they saw them. It began with the sound of something moving loudly through the thick jungle, pushing its way roughly through the undergrowth. Humphrey had them turn around and go back the way they came, making for one of the defensible points he had been looking out for as they travelled.

He had picked out a construction that had held up better than most, due to being a solid, flat, stone platform. It was only around chest high, far from enough to st...

Chapter 236: A Series of Familiar Powers

Shade was not visibly changed in his new, bronze rank vessel; he remained a shadowy figure in a cloak of darkness. The only visible difference was an increase in his number of bodies, from three to seven. He had also gained the ability to exert a small amount of physical force, while remaining an incorporeal entity. It wasn’t enough to inflict damage but it would allow him to perform tasks in places too dangerous for people who weren’t intangible and didn’t have six extra bodies. 2020-04-27 23:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 235: Anyone Can Be Useful

“I actually got the materials pretty cheap,” Jason said. “Gary made it from local materials in the first place, so I just needed higher-grade versions of the same stuff.”

Jason had drawn out the diagram for the ritual of ascension that would have his sword, like he had himself, advance from iron-rank to bronze. He was now laying out ingots of blood gold and star-fall silver, piles of quintessence gems and neat stacks of bronze-rank spirit coins.

The rest of the team wer...

Chapter 234: Crossing the Threshold

The team waited for the sound of grinding stone that would signal another wave of combat, but the room was as silent as Neil, under Jason’s baleful glare.

“I think we’re clear,” Humphrey said, finally.

The team stopped to rest in the zone of clean air Sophie’s power had finishing clearing out, while the poison mist in the rest of the room slowly dispersed. As the haze disappeared, it revealed a horror show of dead creatures piled around the broken remains of the constr...

Chapter 233: I'm Sick of Fighting Magic Rocks

The now-familiar sound of grinding stone echoed through the cell block. The first time, it had been small holes in the walls and ceiling. The second, large holes in the floor. The group looked around for the new source of the grating noise.

“It’s coming from the cells,” Humphrey said. “All the cells.”

The team looked through the rusty bars and spotted apertures that had appeared in the floor behind them.

“How many cells are there?” Sophie asked.

“Twelve ...

Chapter 232: Stalwart

The spider constructs had appeared from holes that had opened in the walls and ceiling. This time, it was the floor that opened up, six large, evenly-spaced but much larger holes, appearing in a straight line down the length of the cell block. The team didn’t wait for whatever was within to emerge, springing straight into action.

“I’ll take the first, you the second,” Clive said to Belinda and they both quickly chanted out their rune trap spell.

“Emplace the mark o...