Tsaimath

Chapter 1261

We continued to talk about the local religious fanatics for a little longer, with me describing in more detail what I had observed. Eventually, that part of the conversation wound down, and I remembered that I hadn’t been the only one who had gone out to explore. 

“Now, Lia, would you tell me what you found when scouting?” I asked, bringing up this new topic. “I’ve mostly used my wings and stepped through the shadows to save time, but I believe you went around on foot, so...

Chapter 1260

When I returned to Jademoon Tower early in the afternoon, Lia was looking incredibly out of sorts. According to Luna, Lia had been out the entire night, only returning in the morning and had gone straight to bed, only getting up now, as I was returning. 

“How was your night, Mom?” Luna asked, her voice casual, almost bored. 

“The night was interesting, the morning even more so,” I replied, my voice just as casual, “I’ve been looking into the new neighbours, a...

Chapter 1259

When looking at the compound of Lorgar’s merry band of sun-worshipping lunatics at a relatively short distance, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Sure, I thought these people were completely and utterly insane, but that didn’t change the fact that they had built something huge. Not tall or monumental, like my towers were, but a wide, sprawling complex, with numerous cleared fields. To make matters even more impressive, they were somehow able to control the environment to the point that ...

Chapter 1258

“Good evening, Maggie,” I spoke quietly, right after I stepped out of the shadows directly behind Maggie, who was sitting at her desk. A part of me was deeply amused that humanity hadn’t managed to get rid of paperwork, even after civilisation had literally ended. However, these people were trying to reclaim the lost civilisation, and paperwork, or rather records, were necessary to organise a large group of people. You needed to know what you had in order to plan for the future, and tha...

Interlude: Reunion?

Looking out, in the dim light of the setting sun, Carnelia couldn’t help her pensive mood. Returning to Jademoon Tower, the tower where she had spent weeks in a fugue, hadn’t been easy. Some memories were worse than others, and it had taken her a few minutes after their arrival, simply standing there, trying to centre herself. Luckily, her little sister had been with her, providing an anchor and a patient ear to listen to her doubts, fears and worries. 

Hindsight and distance w...

Chapter 1257

By the time I was done inspecting the surrounding area with the Oculus, night had fallen. It was fascinating how much the environment around here had changed, not just with the season, but in some parts more than I would have deemed possible. It was expected that trees would grow a bit and that a few would get knocked over by the wind. Things like that happened every day. Just as changes wrought by sapient, mostly human, hands were expected. Some additional fields had been cleared and planted...

Chapter 1256

Once we stepped out of the shadows at Jademoon Tower, Luna let out a relieved gasp, stumbling a little as she pulled out of the grip Lia and I had on her arms. 

“We need to come up with a better way to travel,” she asserted, looking at me with expectation in her eyes. Sadly, I had to disappoint her in this case. I wasn’t able to simply pull out a better way to teleport people across continental distances, or any distances for that matter. But if Luna, who should have relative...

Chapter 1255

It was pretty amusing to watch my daughters go wide-eyed at the description of the various dragons now living in the Temple of the First Dragon. Living and breeding, peacefully and in harmony, something neither Luna nor I could honestly believe. Sure, with the divine power I had noticed in the temple, it was plausible, but for these circumstances to occur naturally? 

The more I thought about it, the less I believed that this had truly all happened by mere chance. Sure, I had set up...

Chapter 1254

Finding Luna wasn’t difficult. She was sitting in one of our common areas, a notepad sitting on the desk before her and a pencil in her hand. The expression of annoyance and the empty page of paper before her spoke of indecision and boredom, so it wasn’t a surprise when she instantly agreed to do something. Anything.

This might be the biggest disadvantage of the new tower, its remote and isolated location. We had to build here due to the Nexus, but nothing was interesting in the are...

Chapter 1253

It was with a soft sigh that I stepped out of the shadows and back into my tower. The last few days had been seriously unproductive. Sure, I had managed to capture that Qalupalik and secured it so I could test a few things, but the creature might just be the least mentally sound being I ever had the misfortune of encountering. If it had just tried to harm itself while trying to break out of the cell I put it in, it would be one thing. Annoying, sure, but not the end of the world. But it was f...

Chapter 1252

Watching yet another small critter make its way towards the shoreline, I couldn’t help but grumble quietly under my breath. The strange, sound-based magic soon started to batter the magical shields I was using to keep myself safe, trying to find cracks to start pulling on my mind. The shields were a work in progress, a lot more complicated than the original one, where I had simply blocked all sound from entering. By now, I was starting to lessen the silencing effect more and more, adjusting...

Chapter 1251

From my perch on the biggest tree I could find in the area, I was looking down on the ocean. Some ice was floating on the water, though not enough to completely cover the surface, let alone seal it shut. I could see some dark shapes moving in the water, though I had no idea whether those were fish or something else. These shapes could be anything, from something normal, like fish, seal or other marine animals, to the unusual, like Rumcol or Naga. I just didn’t know. But I wanted to find out...

Chapter 1250

There was something inherently liberating about feeling the wind beneath my wings. A giddy, enthusiastic sensation I just couldn’t shake, making me want to whoop in joy, to dive and swerve as I rode the air currents. It was almost intoxicating, reminding me just how wonderful magic could be. Levitating with my cloak was fun, but compared to the free flight my wings offered, it was pedestrian.

And that didn’t go into the advantages my wings brought with them when it came to mobility....

Chapter 1249

Lia and I had stepped through the shadows to return to my tower, only for Lia to freeze and warn me that she could smell the scent of blood in the air. Somewhat alarmed by that revelation, we had immediately started to check the tower, my mind conjuring images of strange monsters breaking into the tower and attacking Luna. I had been certain that the remote location and the protections I had put in place would be enough to keep my daughter safe, which is why I hadn’t done more. Had my compl...

Interlude: When the Mother is away, the Maiden gets to play

Quietly whistling to herself, Luna made her way through the tower, this massive edifice of her Mother’s ambition. In different circumstances, one might have called the thing a phallic representation of her own, masculine insecurities, but, as things were, that just didn’t apply. Instead, calling it a raised middle finger towards the sky might be more appropriate, even if Jade had taken care to obscure the tower’s sight from the Sun. Or rather, it was the other way around. She didn’t w...

Chapter 1248

It took me a few more days to observe the giants to my personal satisfaction. Their social dynamics were quite interesting, especially as each of the three different groups seemed to develop in entirely different directions. The group around Naya, the giant I had observed first, was firmly in her matriarchal control. She was their undisputed leader, with the other giants following her lead without question. Trying to figure out why was a little challenging, but I ultimately put it down to pur...

Chapter 1247

Somehow, through some strange, obscure phenomenon, my internal monologue sounded like David Attenborough while I was watching the Giants through my scrying constructs. Or maybe I was simply imagining things, because the voice fit the images so incredibly well. The three different groups of giants all showed some distinctly different behaviour. 

The easiest group to figure out was the pair. The female looked to be gravid and focused on working within and close to the confines of the...

Chapter 1246

“That was awesome,” Lia enthused, once we entered the small cave we had used months before, right after we arrived in this area. The cave wasn’t some glorious domicile, but it was good enough to spend a few days in, giving me time to either set up something better or quickly finish my business here and return to the tower. 

“True, this was something else,” I admitted. Just watching my daughter had been fascinating, the way she had demonstrated new tricks, using her body a...

Chapter 1245

• AN: I accidentally scheduled the chapter for tomorrow, instead of today. Thanks to the subscriber who messaged me the reminder. My Bad.

Now that it was only Lia and me, we decided to see just how far we could push ourselves. We both wanted to know how well we could traverse the mountain if we pushed our bodies to their full attribute-enhanced limits. Thanks to our concealment magic, we didn’t have to worry about enemies ambushing us. If I only had to worry ...

Chapter 1244

It had taken almost two months of work, but it was done. My tower, all hundred and twenty metres of frozen glory, was completed. Each wall was glowing with the ethereal light of runic formations, every pillar was reinforced with webs of crystal and each door was magically protected. The shrine at the base of my tower had been sanctified by Luna, drawing upon Lady Hecate’s power, though the layout wasn’t quite what I had expected. 

Instead of the shrine being wholly devoted to L...

Chapter 1243

Despite my initial, somewhat hubristic, ambition, building a tower higher than the local mountains just wasn’t in the cards. The crevice containing the Nexus was in a saddle between two peaks, both easily visible on either side, but the sense of scale threw me far off. My towers had all been quite large, sure, reaching some fifty to eighty metres into the sky but compared to the mountains reaching a few hundred metres from my position, that wasn’t all that much. Additionally, if I genuine...

Chapter 1242

Thanks to our continued travels, the concept of waking up in an unfamiliar place didn’t really apply to me any longer. Two years, four if one counted the time I had spent on Mundus, of rarely waking up in the same place twice had conditioned me to simply accept my surroundings upon waking, while making sure that I wasn’t under threat. Today, however, that didn’t quite apply. 

Mainly because, when I woke up, my mind was completely relaxed and in a state close to the one I had ...

Chapter 1241

Filling the crevice was an utterly exhausting task. The walls around me were made of a thick layer of Ice coating the mountain’s rocks. If I wanted the foundation for my tower to be as stable as possible, I needed to tie the Ice I was conjuring into that already existing coating. Then I needed to anchor the coating to the deeper rocks. Amusingly, both of those tasks had roughly the same difficulty, just with slightly different connotations.

Manipulating the coating of Ice was difficul...

Chapter 1240

Finally, after an indeterminable amount of time, my feet set down on a perfectly smooth and impossibly cold surface. Even with my affinity to Ice, I was feeling cold here, and the moisture on my breath immediately froze, forming thick, white clouds. In a moment of whimsy, I spat on the ground and had to force down the giggles when the spit didn’t land as a liquid but instead made a soft, clinking sound. Down here, it was literally cold enough for spit to freeze before landing. I hadn’t ex...

Chapter 1239

Moving around the mountain’s summit wasn’t all that much easier compared to moving across it. Sure, we didn’t have to climb up all the way, but that mostly meant we were moving up and down the slope, picking our way depending on the local circumstances. To make matters worse, some fresh snow had fallen in the last few days, making it entirely possible that a wrong step would set off an avalanche, potentially pulling the one setting it off down the slope with it. While our bodies were su...

Chapter 1238

Getting the chunk of Eternal Ice and Eternal Earth into a portable form was more complicated than I would have thought. The biggest problem was its sheer weight; the thing was stupidly heavy, while its tendency to absorb Astral Power working in its vicinity was a close second. Even with the different traits I had to enforce my Astral Power and my ability to control it, I had some difficulties, making me wonder if a lesser spellcaster would have been able to work near it at all. 

Sa...

Interlude: A Pale Shadow

On some days, Doris wasn’t sure getting out of bed was worth it. Those days had been far too frequent for comfort in the last three years, though one could argue that even in the two years before that, such days had been a common occurrence. While in bed, cocooned in a comfortable wrapper of bedding and fur, she quietly wondered just what the Gods had been thinking of when they brought the Travellers into their world. Fighting against the Empire had been one thing, even leading the r...

Chapter 1237

After setting up a small stone for Sasha, despite knowing that Luna’s efforts with the coffin would see the stone buried in greenery before long, I finally let my mind wander and look at the various notifications I had received after the battle. They had been near the edge of my mind, but caring about my family and burying Sasha had taken priority.

To my surprise, there was no special message regarding the guardian’s demise. Nothing beyond the fact that it had died and we gained EXP...

Chapter 1236

The realisation that Sasha was dead hit me like a punch to the gut. We had dragged her along, taken her far beyond her natural range because I was curious about her physical, mental and spiritual make-up, and now, she was dead. Because we had taken her into danger beyond her capabilities. 

Closing my eyes for a few moments, I forced my mind away from the recriminations and grief that tried to well up from within me. There would be plenty of time to think about this later, to consid...

Chapter 1235

When I came back to myself, I was partially buried in a mound of sand, my head pounding and my ears still ringing. For a few moments, I was just lying there, my head twisted to the side so I could breathe without getting my mouth full of gritty sand, trying to ascertain I still had all my limbs and my mind remained mostly intact. Then, once I was confident my body wasn’t about to shut down on me, I started to stretch my senses outwards, to check if the rest of the world was still there, aft...