Nihilea

Chapter 191: Tank Swap

AN: Patreon looks like it's working again. Enjoy the chapter! Next one Monday night.

Chapter 191: Tank Swap

[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 22 minutes.]

Emma frowned at the popup, now finally visible in a moment of calm. That was objectively a good thing, as the last thing she needed in the heat of combat was to have her field of view filled with status updates. Nonetheless, she wasn’t sure what ...

Chapter 190: The Gravity of the Situation

Chapter 190: The Gravity of the Situation

Now in possession of a viable plan, the party was quick to spring into action. The Leech King started off with a beam of pressurised air, forcing the Time Eater to focus on absorption, bringing its healing to a halt. Saint took advantage of the window this granted, vanishing with a pop to reappear behind the boss. Crevices opened up in the ground around her, unleashing blasts of high-pressure water that cut deep grooves into the...

Chapter 189: A Timely Discovery

Chapter 189: A Timely Discovery

“Alright then.” 

Emma cleared her throat, stepping out of the stairwell in her armour, with one eye on the clock.

[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 50 minutes.]

“There’s not really time to explain how we ended up in this situation, so I’ll keep it short. We’re at the end of a long Dungeon, and that big portal on legs is the final boss. Anything that goe...

Chapter 188: Gather Your Party

Chapter 188: Gather Your Party

[The Eternal Wind blows!

Emma calls for aid.

Do you answer?]

The sudden notification came at an unfortunate time, the momentary distraction nearly costing Astrid an injury. She recovered, just barely, throwing herself to the side to avoid the incoming prongs of a taser. Ramming the butt of her staff into the man’s knee, followed by a mean left hook to lay the man out fl...

Chapter 187: The Aristocat

Chapter 187: The Aristocat

Night combat, traditionally, was regarded as among the hardest forms of combat to master. Of the five senses, humans relied upon sight most of all, and in the absence of light, all aspects of soldiery were seriously hampered. This was true both at the individual level, in the form of significantly degraded accuracy of fire, and at the tactical level, where permanent fog of war became the norm, and maintaining unit cohesion and communication be...

Chapter 186: Eternal Wind

Chapter 186: Eternal Wind

Emma doesn’t like it, the idea of exposing her fragile homunculus body to such power. It would take little more than an errant breath to knock her over, and that would be the end, not of herself, but a considerable investment in time and effort all the same. She still does it, in the end, because against all odds, the Time Eater has yet to turn hostile, or even notice her, really. Emma wasn’t sure what was going through what passed for its ...

Chapter 185: Locus

AN: Sorry for the late chapter today. Was planning out how to approach this, the big final boss fight of book 1, starting now. Enjoy! 

Chapter 185: Locus

Descending a staircase backwards proved a unique exercise in frustration, particularly given the constraints involved. Each step required Emma to adjust for curvature, in a way that brought her precisely the optimal distance down a step. Even the slightest deviation, and she’d fail to advance, broug...

Chapter 184: She Was Only Seventeen

Chapter 184: She Was Only Seventeen

[42 EXP added.

Level up!

Level 17 Damned Apostle.]

Emma barely noticed the level up, in her sudden disorientation. She managed to stay on her feet after a bit of backpedalling, just a bit, to find herself in a corridor that was both familiar and not. Familiar in style and decoration, but most certainly nowhere she’d been before. The path behind her ended in a solid...

Chapter 183: The Last Question

Chapter 183: The Last Question

“Thank you.”

The space station began to fade from sight, signalling the end of the memories of Liberation, the end of another simulation. Emma emerged with her guard up, expecting a hostile reception upon her return to the robot-filled city that served as the main hub between individual stages. Belying her expectations, however, she didn’t emerge back into a hail of fire, but instead to utter silence. The city was gone...

Chapter 182: Red Sun in the Sky

Chapter 182: Red Sun in the Sky

To Emma’s vague surprise, the other side of the door to Ideological Training was much like what came before it. Wider, perhaps, now easily able to accommodate her flying sword, whereas before she’d had to take care, exactly where she flew, so as to avoid bumping into obstacles. More long corridors, continuing in zero gravity, with the only difference being the sudden availability of windows, alongside a layer of background static, gri...

Chapter 181: To Infinity and Beyond

Chapter 181: To Infinity and Beyond

Soon after Astrid noticed her would-be kidnappers, they too detected her presence. Under her watchful eye, each member of the party palmed a straw effigy, wrought in a crude facsimile of each man’s likeness. A grid of black and white squares appeared, like a chessboard’s flying cousin, with an image of herself in the centre square. Each man placed their effigy upon the grid, forming a loose cordon, and as they did so, their bodies...

Chapter 180: House, M.D.

Chapter 180: House, M.D.

To Emma’s annoyance, she immediately hit a hurdle the moment she opened Internet Explorer: the computer wasn’t connected to the internet, nor were there any networks available to join.

[The planet blew up, I’d be more surprised if there was a connection.]

Emma didn’t disagree, but it certainly put a damper on things. Without access to that limitless font of information, she was forced to start d...

Chapter 179: One Small Step For Man

Chapter 179: One Small Step For Man

Emma began a methodical search of Magus Austere’s dwelling, one that looked much more like the inside of a student residence, rather than part of a hidden space station. The main room pulled double duty as kitchen and living space, the cupboards and drawers boasting a varied collection of cutlery, tableware and non-perishable goods. The kitchen itself was small but fully functional, with a dishwasher included beneath the electric ho...

Chapter 178: Voyager

Chapter 178: Voyager

Emma was on guard as she drifted toward the open airlock, wary of it being yet another trap, the latest of many. She’d switched back to her armour as soon as the space station appeared, and true to her expectations, it remained visible even with Magus Austere’s mask shoved back into Eden’s Echo. Emma couldn’t claim to know what the various filters being applied to her did, but whatever they were, they persisted between her different forms. T...

Chapter 177: Starliner

Chapter 177: Starliner

Drifting alone on her flying sword, several hundred miles above the vaguely planet shaped cloud of cosmic dust that was, until recently, a vast ecumenopolis, Emma felt incredibly alone in the world. The System was silent, providing no guidance whatsoever except to remind her that yes, the clock was still ticking down until the Dungeon’s untimely collapse. For a long while, she floated in place, waiting for any guidance that might come, but event...