Shirtaloon

Chapter 176: Relief

On his return to the cloud palace, EmirÂ’s first action was securing the scythe. His second was seeking out Jason and his team on the balcony terrace and enjoying a light lunch.

“Join us,” Jason said as Emir arrived.

“I’m a little busy right now,” Emir said.

“Are you sure?” Jason asked. “We’ve got gold plum soufflé.”

“Well,” Emir said. “I suppose we can talk over lunch.”

“So, have you come to give us some top-end awakening stones?”

Â...

Chapter 175: Shallow Earth

The team had been eager to test out their new abilities as soon as they reached shore, but things were a little busy. While the iron-rankers were in the astral space, even more people had been awaiting their return. Many of the foreign adventurers had brought family, let alone the locals. The cloud palace had been placed offshore from a small town that had been going through what was essentially a festival for the better part of three weeks. The townsfolk were exhausted but increasingl...

Chapter 174: Making an Exit

The shadow gate took Jason from the tower at the heart of the city to one of those at the cityÂ’s edge. He emerged at the base of one of the archway towers, not far from where ruins gave way to sea. He was surrounded by other adventurers, milling about, regrouping or making their way up the stairs that wound their way around the tower.

He was immediately bombarded with messages as contacts and party members came into range. His team quickly contacted him through voice chat, relie...

Chapter 173: Take the Loot and Go

The last set of stairs led Jason into a hallway that looped around in a ring, a huge circuit he estimated to be almost as wide as the full tower. The outer wall of the hallway was the familiar stone, while the inner wall was solid glass; a single, curved pane that looped in a giant circle. Through the glass was a library, softly lit by magical chandeliers, hanging from the ceiling. The circular space was haphazard in design, with shelves set out at strange, seemingly random angles inst...

Chapter 172: Meanwhile, Two Weeks Ago in Greenstone...

Thalia Mercer was ill at ease. Most of the cityÂ’s iron-rankers had left a few days earlier and would be gone for weeks. She had hoped, in the quiet that settled over Greenstone in their absence, to start getting through to her son. She and her husband both had made so many mistakes with him, which had almost cost them their son. The mysterious cultists and the horrific thing they implanted into Thadwick had brought home just how disastrous things had gotten and they resolved to put Th...

Chapter 171: Irreconcilable Ideals

Shade led Jason upstairs into a square room. The stairs emerged from an alcove in the middle of one wall, with a sealed door on the opposite wall. The walls to either side were covered in square panels marked with what looked like scrambled segments of constellations. On the walls and floor were images of constellations that were whole and in order. Jason was about to enter the room when Shade stopped him.

“Once you enter this room,” Shade warned, “the next trial shall begin.<...

Chapter 170: He Who Fights With Monsters

In the heart of the city, a crowd of adventurers were gathered in the tower square as the sun dipped below the horizon. Clumped into teams, they formed a ring around the grand tower in the centre of the square. While the plain brickwork of the tower was uninspiring, its sheer height and width left it looming over everything else in the central city.

JasonÂ’s party was now reformed, with the addition of Jory, whose own group had already escaped the trials. The teams of Keane, Vald...

Chapter 169: Company Worth Keeping

Since they were the impetus for the rooftop party, Jason and Valdis provided the supplies. Jason set up a buffet, putting out a couple of tables, an array of large bowls full of food, tongs and a stack of plates. He also laid out a good supply of drinks, tapping casks of wine, beer and mead.

“I’ve only got a dozen mugs,” he announced, “so I hope you all have something to drink out of.”

Valdis raided the dimensional space of his offsider, Sigrid, from which he retrieved...

Chapter 168: Team Change

Only seven groups had managed to breach the centremost region of the city before the blood root vine had been killed. One was made up of people with flight powers. Such abilities were mana intensive at iron-rank, requiring them to chug mana potions as quickly as they could without poisoning themselves and stopping to rest atop every building not reduced to rubble by the plants.

Another was made up of adventurers from a jungle kingdom who had managed to find their entire original ...

Chapter 167: Making a Spectacle of Himself

“We’re getting closer to the centre,” Jason said, looking at his map. “We could get there today if we went straight for it.”

“That explains why we ran into so many groups, yesterday,” Neil said. “Everyone is converging.”

“Do we go straight for the middle?” Jory asked. His abilities had been growing as fast as anyone else’s, but that had never been his goal. He had gotten more than he could ask for with the alchemy recipe his previous group had come to blows over...

Chapter 166: Part of Being a Team

After defeating the flesh abomination, JasonÂ’s temporary team had grown to five. With two defenders in Keane and Sophie, two healers in Neil and Jory, Jason was their only dedicated damage source. They were heavy on sustain but light on immediate damage, with JasonÂ’s powers bringing certain, but eventual death to the monsters they encountered.

This setup made for slower going than they might have with someone like Humphrey on hand but it wasnÂ’t without benefits. With the overs...

Chapter 165: No One Has That Coming

In the aftermath of the fight with the vorger, Jason and Sophie had no time to catch up with Neil and Jory. The flesh abomination lumbering in their direction posed a new, albeit very slowly approaching, problem. They stood together, watching as it didnÂ’t so much walk in their direction as vaguely amble. It was basically a huge, vaguely spherical mound of muscle, skin and fat on four short, blobby legs. Scraps of clothing and pieces of armour could be seen wedged into fatty crevices w...

Chapter 164: A Worse Plan

CliveÂ’s team were making their way up through a building that became more precarious as they went. It was the tallest building they had encountered in the city, almost as tall as the archway towers on which they had arrived. This section of the city was more akin to forest than jungle, with the remnant buildings in the shadow of towering trees.

The building they were climbing up through stood higher than the trees around it. It held its structural integrity despite one especiall...

Chapter 163: Surplus to Requirements

Jason and Sophie continued their way through the city. More cautious than ever, they exposed themselves to long sightlines as little as possible. Sometimes they used narrow streets to hide themselves from above, at other times, rooftops, to hide themselves from below.

Helping them remain unobtrusive was the quiet nature of their essence abilities. Only the sound burst accompanying SophieÂ’s wind blade made any real noise and, compared to the cries of the monsters they fought, it ...

Chapter 162: The Danger is Us

In the time they had spent allowing Sophie to recover, some other groups had moved deeper into the city. They started seeing traces of that as they went, the plants and building showings traces of essence abilities having been used on them. They knew they werenÂ’t far behind another group when they found monsters that had yet to dissolve into smoke.

“Can you loot them?” Sophie asked.

“Probably not,” Jason said, touching a finger to the dead monster.

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