Nihilea

Chapter 36: Space Invaders

Chapter 36: Space Invaders

“Commerce directed northward is heavily regulated: everything is meant to facilitate the war effort in some way, shape or form. Even goods that, on the face of it, have nothing to do with the front line have to be justified in that context, or else the purveyors in question will be denied a trading permit. As you can imagine, this is clearly much easier for some categories than others. Packs of cards and dice so soldiers can pass the time ar...

Chapter 35: Gladhanding

Chapter 35: Gladhanding

I may have mentioned before, but my inventory was very useful for mundane purposes too. Removing the blood on my clothes, from a short-lived scuffle, and even the residue of the splattered plum beneath Damien’s boot. Neither of these acts generated a usable item, so presumably they merely vanished, forever lost in whatever void the System used as a garbage disposal, but more importantly, it kept me clean, and obscured the cause of death to a de...

Chapter 34: Beat It

Chapter 34: Beat It

“It’s a good deal!” Damien protested, his face puckered up in offence. “A single round trip of the caravan can earn a profit of thousands of gilt. I’m not sure how you were able to hide that water of yours, but if you use that on the shipment, then that cuts the risk of discovery to almost zero. No need to look over your shoulder, worried that the outriders are going to round you up at any minute. Just a leisurely trip to the surrounding to...

Chapter 33: Prepare for Trouble, and Make it Double

Chapter 33: Prepare for Trouble, and Make it Double

“That’s because we told him to keep us on the down-low,” Little Boy declared, pointing a boney finger at Damien. “In our line of work, too much attention is a bad thing! This ain’t like a legitimate business, we don’t do advertisements here.”

“We’re the Allen Keys, the best smugglers in the region, and we move cargo from place to place: no questions, no failure,” Fat Man continued, picking up ...

Chapter 32: Mind the Gap

Chapter 32: Mind the Gap

Briefly, I considered taking Damien’s report from bed, before dismissing the idea. It would be a touch too disrespectful, enough to breed the embers of resentment, even after how easily I put him in his place last time. Also, I’d yet to obtain a way to open doors from a distance. Climbing out of bed begrudgingly, I made use of my inventory’s mundane utility, and summoned my ill-gotten gambeson on top of my regular clothes, figuring that a ...

Chapter 31: The Cat in the Hat

Chapter 31: The Cat in the Hat

Our conversation petered out after that, as Spike had a job to do, allowing me to get back to town, Pumpkin riding on my back the whole way through. 

[Knife stored.]

I’d stowed my knife and swapped back to a Level 1 Merchant as soon as I was out of the guardsman’s sight, returning to the inn much as I’d left it. The innkeeper was already up, despite it being barely sunrise, humming a jaunty tune as h...

Chapter 30: Say Cheese

Chapter 30: Say Cheese

Typically, I’d barely spent ten seconds in the smithy, when what looked like a disco ball lit up on the ceiling, bathing the room in red. I'd seen it in passing, when I'd bought my knife, but had thought it a mere decoration, like the streamers they often went up in shops around Christmas time, not some kind of targeted burglar alarm, one that didn't react to Pumpkin but caught me immediately. 

Still, it wasn't doing anything to keep ...

Chapter 29: Taste the Rainbow

Chapter 29: Taste the Rainbow

Unfortunately, bringing the fruit closer to my eyes didn't magically reveal any additional information. Maybe if I had the Farmer Class, it would have helped, but neither of the components of my Class specialised in fruit, and that left me with a problem. On the one hand, it was stored in a warehouse filled with food, lending a strong expectation that it was fit for human consumption. On the other hand, it was a strange looking fruit, one t...

Chapter 28: A Little Bit of Everything

Chapter 28: A Little Bit of Everything

[Furthermore, you may select one of the two options below.

1) Wrath and Ruin: As a Soldier, once per day, break the limits of your body to deliver a devastating blow. As a Merchant, you will know when someone is trying to cheat you.

2) Death and Taxes: As a Soldier, wounds you inflict cause rapid decay. As a Merchant, curses you inflict last twice as long.]

The ch...

Chapter 27: Murder, She Wrote

Chapter 27: Murder, She Wrote

[50 EXP gained for your first premeditated kill!

Level up!

Title gained - Murderer: Death comes easy, murder is hard. It requires a certain resolve, to take up a weapon and kill in cold blood, far from the battlefield where emotions run high. You are recognised by certain dark powers. It would be unwise to wear this Title in public.]

 “Thanks for the w...

Chapter 26: Dead Money

Chapter 26: Dead Money

My first reaction was annoyance, to have come so far only to face a hurdle in the final hour. I smothered that quick, with experience borne from far too many business deals gone south, to consider what to do. I could run. That was the simplest, expected course of action: I already had what I needed, so why not vanish into the night, and leave the homeowner scratching his head? The problem was, if the homeowner was the tailor, and it probably was, ...

Chapter 25: Thief in the Night

Chapter 25: Thief in the Night

It was strange to be able to go outside at night, and have it be genuinely dark. It could never have happened in London, where fluorescent lights were never more than a few feet away, and even the suburbs had street lights that never went, courtesy of the cheap and plentiful electricity that the modern grid supported. It was different, in Frontier, where such lighting had to be sourced from either flammable fuels, which were expensive and ...

Chapter 24: Threading the Needle

Chapter 24: Threading the Needle

I was taking a bit of risk, letting Damien go after our rather heated exchange of views, but that was somewhat inevitable. Like in business negotiations, I had to show some promise in order to interest the other party, in this case whoever was looking to hire me, but not so much that they saw all of my cards. This way, I’d hopefully get a decent role right off the bat, while holding my trump cards in reserve for when they...

Chapter 23: The Water of Life

Chapter 23: The Water of Life

I had to admit, I hadn’t seen that coming. Damien had always come across as fairly strait-laced, focused on physical training and with a love of old heroic ballads, a bit of a himbo, even. To have him blatantly admit to involvement in some kind of organised crime? That was a surprise, especially because historically, smugglers of legal substances almost inevitably began to dabble in the illegal, too. The temptation was always too much, be...

Chapter 22: Goldfinger

Chapter 22: Goldfinger

Far from the most flowery apology I’d ever heard, admittedly, but it was in keeping with what I recalled of his character. Indeed, if he’d gone too much further I’d have suspected someone of putting him up to it, but as it stood, the apology felt genuine, driven by embarrassment and guilt rather than anything more problematic. I still let him sweat for a little bit, because I’m petty like that, but only for half a minute.

“Raise yo...

Chapter 21: Knock Knock

Chapter 21: Knock Knock

True to my word, I spent the next day taking it easy, catching up on some much needed sleep after a week of anxiety and more reading than I’ve done since my final week of university exams. I lounged in my room at the inn, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of sustained peace and quiet, something that was rare back at the orphanage, and utterly non-existent as a CEO in the internet age, who was only ever one phone call away from a crisis. I ate a...

Chapter 198: Black Sabbath

Chapter 198: Black Sabbath

Internal Affairs, as a general rule, did not get too much publicity from the media arm of the Empire. This was sensible, because as a department that worked in the shadows, investigating misconduct and crime committed by other members of the Empire, they preferred to keep a low profile, typically only commenting on their work on a particular case, long after it was finished, if ever. The personnel, too, were kept out of the limelight, their ca...

Sworded Affair: Short break until 4th November.

So, apparently I'm due to travel to a family gathering for Halloween. This is news to me, given I only found out today, and between that, the editing going on in the background to tidy up some of the earlier chapters in terms of grammar and sentence structure, and generally recovering from a cold, well. Suffice to say, I'm quite behind where I'm supposed to be, both for my second book launching on the 1st and in real-life, at a very delicate time of writing (as I prepare to finish the final c...

Chapter 197: The Beginning of the End

Chapter 197: The Beginning of the End

To Emma’s chagrin, making a wax sculpture turned out to be significantly harder than she had expected. Whilst she had no issue heating and moulding the wax itself, nor with using the sculpting tool, thanks to her passive traits from the Chandler class, that was as far as the benefits went. For the most difficult aspects, namely, shaping the surface of the sculpture to make it aesthetically pleasing, she was very much on her own. 2024-10-28 23:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 196: Egeria

Chapter 196: Egeria

Astrid had answered the call, partly to come to Emma’s assistance, but also as an escape from her pursuers, who had proven both numerous and persistent. Accordingly, she returned in anticipation of a fight, should any of them still linger at the spot where she vanished: though she also hoped that the main force had dispersed to go looking elsewhere. As it turned out, Astrid was half right. If anything, there were more people than before, and there ...

Chapter 195: There and Back Again

Chapter 195: There and Back Again

The trip back home was thankfully back to business as usual: a smooth, seamless and instantaneous transition from being buried underground to the front steps of the family home. More than anything else, Emma was happy to see the real sky again, after how long she’d spent in one artificial environment after another. 

[Ephemera (Toggle: OFF)]

She spent a good, long while just standing there, her armoure...

Chapter 194: Minutemen

Chapter 194: Minutemen

Disabling a digital bomb was nothing like how it looked on TV, Emma quickly learned. That was a good thing, because there wasn't nearly enough time for the Monitor Lizard to write an entire new page of incredibly verbose code all on the spot. Instead, he booted up what looked like a control panel of some sort, and entered his username and password. That brought up a nested window, where he did the same thing again, though hopefully using some diff...

Chapter 193: I Tell You This Story To Save Your Life

Chapter 193: I Tell You This Story To Save Your Life

“You understand,” the Monitor Lizard exhaled, following Emma’s gaze, his hands overlaid atop the device at his heart. 

“At last, you understand. There was never any hope of survival, for anyone who stepped into Blenheim Palace. Why would there be? My masters had weeks of undisturbed access while the portal network was down, in the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse. Why would the gateway have sur...