Tsaimath

Chapter 965

Wandering into the primal forest that had taken over what should have been fields was a fascinating experience. Some of the plants were reasonably similar to those we had encountered in the forest near our home while others were, well, they were neither reasonable nor similar to anything I had ever seen.

The strangling vines that acted far too much like snakes for my comfort were one thing, the noxious grass that constantly emitted some sort of haemorrhaging poison, trying to get people...

Chapter 964

The Charland should have ended my ability to be surprised by the changes brought about by the coming of the Astral River. And yet, despite knowing that the system had somehow brought an entire industrial area into existence before spatially compressing it so it fit in an area far smaller externally than internally, I had expected that the landscape would remain roughly the way it had been before the change.

Last year, this area had been filled with endless fields of grain, corn and othe...

Chapter 963

With the Shrine done, there wasn’t all that much we could do in this area. Sure, the Charland hadn’t given up all its mysteries but I doubted we’d be able to probe them, simply because of their complexity. It was a piece of bloody complicated magic, far beyond my current level, and what little I could understand from the readings Luna had put into the library, that wasn’t about to change. The Charland and its genesis felt as if it was just below the Astral River and the way it had bur...

Interlude: Divine Insight

In a seemingly endless, silvery-grey expanse, three figures sat and stared into the void, their eyes easily piercing through layers of reality and allowing them to observe. Far away, their power was channelled by one of their mortal servants, a young child slowly growing into her power and still relying on strength granted to them by others, but for once, the power wasn’t used for the child or for their caretaker. No, the power was purely used for the purpose of the three figures, for they ...

Chapter 962

Amusingly, there were no dreams that night. I had expected a visitation from Hecate but unless I had managed to forget my experiences in Her strange dreamscape, there hadn’t been one. Instead, I was greeted with a notification that I had completed the quest to build Her shrine, with an added modification that the Goddess was highly pleased with my efforts and thus increased my rewards.

Those rewards were given to me in the next few notifications and they were a doozy. The first reward...

Chapter 961

Even for a relative novice, the design imparted to me by Lady Hecate had obvious Greek influence. A geometric arrangement of narrow columns to carry the roof, the walls more to protect from the wind and weather than to bear loads, the design was both graceful and somewhat mysterious, greatly arousing my desire to see it complete. That was beyond the challenge it posed to arrange, especially as I was working alone, with only my magic to assist me in this endeavour. Sure, the magic I wielded wa...

Chapter 960

Luna and I had taken a bit of time to find a good place for the shrine we had been asked to build. The biggest problem was that the area was fairly flat, with rather sandy and unstable soil, meaning we could hardly dig down, as we had done before. There was no useful tree I could use to fortify the construction, nor did we come across a suitable large pre-change construction I could use as a base. The best place we could find was yet another crossroad, fairly close to a river, where the Astra...

Chapter 959

Studying the scattered dust didn’t get me very far. There wasn’t anything special about it, at least as far as I could tell, other than its exposure to a lot of Ice Astral Power, something fairly obvious. However, what I considered interesting, was that I couldn’t detect any Life or Death Magic in the residue, making me wonder if the powers Luna and I had both invoked had somehow disappeared without a trace. Maybe because we both had focused our efforts on the essence, the soul, of the ...

Chapter 958

It took almost an hour of snuggling for Luna to have her fill of physical affection. During that time, she told me in fairly general terms how her time in Lady Hecate’s realm had been, making me realise just how long that had been for her. It sounded like she had experienced at least a year, maybe even two, in the span of a night, an idea that felt incredibly strange. Doubly so when considering that Luna was just a little over six years old and had already experienced multiple sessions in L...

Chapter 957

Outside, I could finally focus on actively testing my new ability. While it was fascinating to study my companions with it and draw conclusions from the way the animating power of their bodies moved through them, I wasn’t about to try doing anything with those powers. That sounded like an incredibly reckless and fairly stupid thing to do, something that could easily end up changing them on a fundamental level I couldn’t even begin to understand at the moment.

Instead, I decided to s...

Chapter 956

Walking around our shelter, I realised that only Silva was currently awake, keeping guard. A quick, somewhat onesided conversation between us told me that she had received her rewards but when I tried to find out, she only gave me a wide, canine grin and refused to even hint at them. It was just a little annoying but then, I was fairly used to Silva having fun at my expense, especially when it came to my unbridled curiosity.

Shaking my head, I decided to test my new sense in the real wo...

Chapter 955

Projecting my soul outwards was only the first step when it came to perceiving souls. Once I managed that first step, the next was to change the path I naturally channelled it through to the one desired, in my case that meant I had to channel it through my eyes instead of my throat, so I would be able to see souls instead of being able to smell and taste them. It was a little amusing to me that apparently my natural inclination when it came to perception was olfactory and gustatory, making me...

Chapter 954

The way out of the Charland was comparatively simple, compared to the way in. We didn’t run into any additional large monsters and even the number of smaller critters we had to face seemed to be a little diminished. I wasn’t sure what that might mean. Had we managed to cut down their numbers by an appreciable amount or had something else happened for them to wizen up? Either option was possible, as were numerous otters, and without further information, there was little we could actually f...

Chapter 953

“So, what did you find?” I asked Luna, once she was done with her meditation, or maybe calling it a prayer would be more fitting, given that I was fairly certain she had communed with her Goddess while meditating. Now that she was done with it and we were moving out of the area sound the inner crater, I wanted to know what she had divined and what Hecate had made of the investigation.

“It’s hard to say,” she admitted and I realised that she was struggling to find the right wor...

Interlude: Survivors 602

If one could say one thing about the group of five that had taken over the cave near the lake, it was that they all were incredibly stubborn. Finding out that some strange creature made up of tentacle-like vines was living in the lake had only been the first step. The next was, obviously, to deal with the massive monster, regardless of the excellent protection it enjoyed thanks to many, many cubic metres of water to hide beneath and its innate power and vitality. They didn’t care that they ...

Chapter 952

The death of the Serpentia Triad coincided with the completion of Luna’s ritual, possibly adding some EXP to the total I gained, and propelling me to reach level eighty. Nearby, I could see Silva relax and dissipate the powers she had called upon to utterly devastate the Triad, shrinking back to her normal size and settling on four paws, looking quite exhausted. After shaking herself for a moment, she padded back into the slowly dissipating shield they had conjured up earlier, using the rem...

Chapter 951

It did not take long for the source of the roaring to become visible as it was moving out into the open around the crater. That first glance made me blink in confusion for a moment, uncertain of what I should call the roaring creature. It had three heads, all somewhat different in colour, making me think of a hydra, but its lower body was that of a serpent, not the more reptilian, or draconic, body I remembered the famed monsters of Greek myth having. Not that the name really mattered, its ab...

Chapter 950

If there was one thing that was absolute proof of the importance Lady Hecate attached to the analysis of the central crater, it was the zone of protection Luna and Silva laid down before Luna started to try to understand the crystal growth in the crater. And the crater itself, the strange Astral Power in the air and everything else that made this region so peculiar. The power the two of them invoked was strong enough to be palpable without concentrating on them, which was quite impressive for...

Chapter 949

Dealing with the poisoned ground was a chore and a half but it was also fairly interesting. It gave me some fairly interesting insights into the behaviour of mixed Astral Power, something I hadn’t really dealt with in the physical plane, only within the Astral River where I wasn’t bound by my physical body and senses. In addition, spending multiple hours during the day, trying to deal with the power seeping out of the earth and through the benediction Luna and Silva had set up let me obse...

Chapter 948

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on your priorities, the two Scorchipedes turned out to be sources of remarkably good resources, meaning we had to take the time to harvest them. Not doing so would have been a complete and utter waste, tough, on the bright side, it also meant I had more than enough time to do some digging nearby. Not directly in the area, just in case the scent of the Scorchipedes’ various bodily fluids attracted scavengers or something like that, but close eno...

Chapter 947

As Silva bounded to the side, avoiding the skittering legs of the Scorchipede, its companion wasn’t idle and was already moving to engage. In an attempt to box us in between them and thus limit our mobility, it was moving towards Luna and me, lunging forward with a wide-open maw. For a brief moment, my mind flashed back to the Querder beneath the glacier on Mundus and the rings of countless sharp teeth that ringed their maws, ready to draw in prey and shred it apart. The Scorchipede looked ...

Chapter 946

The initial parts of our incursion into the central area went remarkably similar to previous trips into the Charland. Sure, we tried to speed things up but ultimately, there was only so much we could do to hurry without taking undue risks. Alone, I had been able to ignore most enemies, simply because I didn’t have to worry about leaving anyone behind. I only had to worry about keeping myself safe, something a lot easier when you could become nearly untraceable, thanks to my cloak rendering ...

Chapter 945

There was a certain irony in the fact that I had taken the longest to prepare for our group excursion into the depths of the Charland, even compared to Alex. Granted, most of that came from the fact that I didn’t habitually prepare large amounts of supplies that I might need, instead relying almost entirely on my directly usable magic and physical abilities but still. They were supposedly the specialist when it came to preparing and using disposable equipment but they managed to finish thei...

Chapter 944

“Mom, come on, wake up!” normally, I would have been quietly amused at Luna’s childish exuberance. Far too often, she tried to project a mature facade, far beyond anything a child of her age should have. The facade had its uses, especially when it came to dealing with the realities of our changed, new world but at the same time, I always felt guilty knowing that I had taken Luna’s childhood from her. No matter that, realistically, it hadn’t been me that took her childhood but the ch...

Chapter 943

Two tasks, so simple and harmless when described. Well, one of them actually was fairly simple and harmless, it was just a repeat of previous actions, namely to establish yet another shrine with an attached library. Nothing we hadn’t done yet, just this time, I’d also get a direct reward for it. Somehow, I had a feeling that the reward was primarily to get me into a good mood, to entice me for the other task the Goddess asked of my group. That the shrine was supposed to be done after the ...

Chapter 942

“Greetings, Jade,” the familiar, tritonal voice of Hecate addressed me before I had that important moment to gather my bearings. Before, the Goddess had always given me that moment but now, I felt like there was something different in Her voice. An impatience, or maybe eagerness, I wasn’t quite sure, but it certainly spurred me to pull myself together in the endless expanse of Her realm.

“Greetings, Lady Hecate,” I returned the salutation, turning around to see Her three aspec...

Chapter 941

By the time I got back to the others, the Sun was already high in the sky. Without my conjured parasol, I’d be in for a bad time, though my various traits were helping with that particular vulnerability. Direct Sunlight would still make me suffer, especially as the clouds I had used the previous day had vanished, leaving what others would call a beautiful day. To me, it was plain annoying, but there was nothing I could do about it, at least for now.

Sure, I could gather enough power t...

Interlude: Survivors 407

• AN: Something went wrong with scheduling the post, my bad. Enjoy an interlude of people covering their backsides. 

To some, the gathering might have looked strange. There was no board room, no grand and elaborate table, no pomp or circumstances. It was just a simple, yet sturdy, wooden table, that had served as the dining table for a simple farming family. Now, it was the seat of the Six, the recently elected leader of their community. Despite the si...

Chapter 940

After stepping back from the crater, I explored the area a little further but not for too long. Not only did I need to watch the time I spent before heading back, I also needed to conserve my Astral Power, a difficult task with the strange Astral Power in the air constantly damaging me if I stopped protecting myself. Not that there was a lot to explore, it seemed that even the malformed monstrosities I had seen a little further away didn’t dare to get too close to the crater, so the only li...

Chapter 939

The rest of my marathon through the night was fairly uneventful. A few more monsters tried to get their pound of flesh from me but I managed to evade them all with a combination of speed, stealth and superior mobility. Occasionally, I had to block the odd attack with a bit of conjured Ice but I had prepared a few shards of Ice I could use to anchor conjurations at a distance, letting me create shields with ease.

But while the monsters weren’t a problem, one arose on the last stretch. ...