Tsaimath

Chapter 779

Thinning out the ranks of the Undead was a massive undertaking. I hadn’t truly conceptualised their numbers, not actually pictured what it meant that there were only about four hundred people holed up at Apple Gate Farm. There had been around half a million people living within the city limits, with a similar number in the outlying communities, depending on what distance you included them, and I would be surprised if there were more than maybe two thousand people still alive of those. Mostl...

Chapter 778

Plans had been made in the morning, plans to destroy as many Undead as possible while leaving as many Shattered as possible behind. It wasn’t that we liked Shattered better but, as far as I had seen, there were two factions competing for control over the basic Undead. One faction was composed of Shattered the other was either composed of racoons or of the higher Undead I had seen, either way, it was quite likely that the second group was capable of procreation. Shattered, on the other hand,...

Chapter 777

• AN: I guess this is the Jackpot-Chapter? Sadly, I only realised that I should have made a joke of it upon posting this. So, sadly, no joke, no lie. Enjoy

“Are you being serious right now?” Cassie asked once I finished telling the leadership of Apple Gate Farm about the conditions in the city. I could understand her disbelief, if somebody had told me about racoons riding formerly domesticated hogs into battle against some dogs, I would have been sceptical myself....

Interlude: Don't turn around...

Just a little over a month ago, Jason would have been out partying on a Friday night. Drinking, dancing, having fun with his buddies, and doing his best to get lucky at night's end. Just one month ago.

But then, like they said in one of the old animes he’d watched as a kid, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. A wave of fire covered the horizon, sweeping away everything he had ever known. Including his family, most of his friends, the grades he had worked just hard enough...

Chapter 776

Given that we didn’t manage to get back to our lair, we were trapped near the edge of the city, hiding out in a basement to pass the day by. Without my notes on alchemy and general crafting, I couldn’t really work on those, so I decided to spend the day doing something almost as interesting. I, once again, began experimenting with my magic, focusing on the elements I wasn’t familiar with.

After a brief moment of consideration, I decided to begin working with Earth-Magic first, try...

Chapter 775

Ultimately, escaping the Undead’s encirclement wasn’t a significant problem. By noticing it early enough, we had managed to avoid the original encirclement and once we were on the move, the Undead simply couldn’t keep up.

That didn’t mean we had been able to simply traipse off into the night, whistling and skipping all the way, but it meant that we could slip away quietly, once we got enough distance. Though, the ‘enough’ was quite the stretch, one that was far longer than I...

Chapter 774

Back on the ground, we reunited with Silva and Alex, both of whom had opted to remain on the ground. Silva for purely practical reasons, a dog wasn’t that good at climbing ladders, especially not steep ones, while Alex had taken up an observing position, possibly to make sure no trouble found us. From what I could tell from the racoon’s behaviour, I was convinced that their primary skill was stealth, with very little offensive potential. It looked like they didn’t have access to the cor...

Chapter 773

Once again, I stood on my balcony. There was a part of me that felt amused at the familiarity of the location, the sense of belonging that welled up within me as I stepped onto it, looking into the night as I had done hundreds, maybe even a thousand times before. The odd thing was, everything had changed, the entire world was completely different from what it had been when I stood here the last time, I was fundamentally different, and yet, it felt oh-so-familiar.

Though, the biggest ups...

Chapter 772

Watching Lia work was quite fascinating. I could see how her magic was charging the circle she had drawn and watched as faint lines of it began to sink into the trapped racoon. Her attempt at turning it turned what was a battle between the strange influence of necrotic energy and the vital energies of the racoon into a three-way battle. Or maybe it would be better to describe it as a replacement, the necrotic energies were eroding the vitality of it, and Lia’s vampiric powers started to rep...

Chapter 771

It was amazing how easy it was to turn a room full of destroyed junk, with nothing functional beyond its physical shape, into a well-equipped campsite. The only thing previously present in the room we truly used was the grate in the floor, allowing water that spilt from the laundry machines to drain. With a bit of magic, mostly water though I added an application of Fire Magic into it to make things hot, I could easily create a shower and the same magics allowed me to prepare some simple, hot...

Chapter 770

For once, there was nothing I could really do but remain hidden, watching my companions fight. It was, strangely, quite interesting, not to fight alongside them allowed me to focus on observing them. I could see a rather impressive difference in Lia’s performance, compared to our usual training, a sharp, almost cruel, edge that seemed to propel her to rip into her foe. If I had to guess, it was because her foe was made of flesh, allowing her to spill the Scorched’s blood, letting it paint...

Chapter 769

Looking at the familiar neighbourhood, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. There were parts that hadn’t changed at all, they looked almost like they had before the change hit, with only minor damage from the past thirty-odd days. Other parts were simply gone, the houses nothing but blackened rubble, reminding me of images I had seen in history class, images of the World Wars and bombed-out cities. Not quite as black-and-white, but there was a bleak quality to the scenery that matched those...

Chapter 768

“So, what do you think those creatures you’ve seen yesterday might have been?” I asked Lia, as we took a break from training. She only shrugged in response, trying to control her breathing. After a little while, she managed to respond verbally.

“Whatever they were, there were four of them, at least four I could smell. Of those four, I could only see two, the other two remained out of my sight, no idea if it was due to stealth or cover. Either way, their scent was bestial, somewh...

Chapter 767

Looting the tea store was even more worthwhile than I had ever imagined.

As soon as we reached our lair after the successful looting, I decided to brew myself a cup of tea. I wanted to see just how good a tea needed to be to command such a, at least in my eyes, ridiculous price. Maybe it was one of those rich-people things, where they didn’t buy the tea for the taste but for the price-tag, to show their rich compatriots just how much money they could waste on expensive tea. Or maybe s...

Chapter 766

• AN: I might have made the mistake to google "most expensive tea" - This chapter is partially caused by the result. 

The night after talking with the leadership of the local survivors, Silva, Lia and I were once more heading into the city. Not to actually hunt more undead, but to see if we managed to find even more survivors. And to gather some more tea, I needed to make sure that my stock remained high. It would run out eventually, but I wanted to push that day...

Interlude: Revelations

“This was…” Arlan began, only that his sentence never finished. His voice simply trailed off, unable to find the right words to describe the emotions he felt.

“Scary? Awe-inspiring? Discombobulating? Intimidating? Incongruous? Unnerving? Take your pick, I think they all fit quite well,” Cassie suggested in response, sounding only partially kidding. There was an undercurrent of seriousness in her voice, one that made one wonder just how unnerved she truly was from the meeting t...

Chapter 765

Listening to them describe their retreat from the city was quite interesting. It certainly demonstrated just how carefully they had planned, for things to go off as smoothly as this, especially for a retreat in the middle of the night. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to coordinate a group of that size but then, my skills weren’t suited to that kind of stuff. Far too many people involved, even Silva would likely be better at that. Was better at that, as her army of dog showed, she had ...

Chapter 764

As usual, the first indication Lia and I got to alert us of our visitors was a series of loud, resounding barks. Silva had her pack well trained, making sure that nobody could sneak up on the brewery during the day-time and in return, I made sure to heal any injuries the dogs incurred and let them listen in to magic training, provide cold storage for any meat they didn’t immediately devour and even helped hunting. It was an excellent relationship with ample benefits on both sides, one that ...

Chapter 763

“So, want to head back to our place or to the Farm and give the people there an idea of what the city is like right now?” Lia asked as we made our way across the fields away from town.

“We probably should give them a warning, just to be on the safe side. We might have to spend the day there, would that be okay for you?” I grumbled, not completely liking the idea. Sure, there was no real problem with staying at the farm, the underground room in which I had created Lia was perfect...

Chapter 762

We might have underestimated just how many Undead would be drawn to our little battle. Instead of maybe a dozen or three enemies, as we would have drawn while Shattered roamed the streets, there were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand. After a little over an hour, no more enemies managed to reach the roof through the stairs, my magic formation continuously pouring freezingly cold mist down the stair while more and more enemies tried pushing into the house.

Lia, in a bout of curiosi...

WO, Ch 152 - The little Prince

• Character-List:
• Dani, Protagonist (duh) - mysteriously appeared on the slopes of Mount Coronet
• Charm - Charizard, her original partner who somehow appeared with her
• Vio - Shrinking Violet, shiny Gardevoir, joined Dani after she saved her from a Poochyena
• Su - Surly, Luxio with some obedience issues
• Aura - Shiny Riolu, hatched from an egg Dani was given by Cynthia

Remembering wh...

Chapter 761

Our battle on the rooftop had started in a rather anticlimactic way, after preparing our defences, I had stood at the edge of the roof and started launching hailstones at the undead shambling around down in the streets. I even managed to get one Shattered with a nicely placed Icicle, putting just a little extra oomph into a hailstone and sharpening it with Ice Magic, so that it had the strength to rip off the Shattered’s arm, leaving a gaping hole in its torso.

That opening salvo was ...

Chapter 760

Getting to the edge of town was trivial. The beasts that had roamed the fields during prior nights were gone, they likely fled during the night and when we reached the town, I realised I really couldn’t fault them for it. When we left the city, the smell had started to get truly bad. Not bad enough to cause physical pain but bad enough that staying was incredibly unpleasant. Thoughts of a sewage treatment plant in the heat of summer came to mind, or something equally disgusting, but compare...

Chapter 759

“You should have the other dogs start to accompany the people at Apple Gate Farm. Getting them used to humans is the smart thing. I’ve got little doubt that humans, or at least culture-making races, will regain their superiority in time. Hitching your fate to them from the start will likely benefit dogs as a whole,” I quietly advised Silva, as the three of us were setting out from our lair.

The sun had recently set and we had set out to check the undead in town, to see their level...

Chapter 758

After Lia and I theorised what might have happened with the wave, we did the only intelligent thing. First, I fed Lia, then we went to bed. The feeding was still a somewhat surreal experience, somewhere between what I imagined nursing a baby would feel like, feeding a pet and caring for a child, only that there were some rather disturbing sexual undertones as well. It was something I refused to think about, especially given that Lia still wanted to kneel before me when I fed her, something I ...

Chapter 757

• AN: Again, Patreon doesn't allow me to cross words out, so [italics] means the word should be crossed out, as is part of Morgana's subconscious processes. Or in other words, she is still uncertain how to relate to Lia.

When I returned to the brewery, things were weirdly quiet. Normally, some of the dogs under Silva’s leadership were in the area, making just enough noise to be audible to someone with my hearing. But now, there was nothing, just silence, eerie enoug...

WO, Ch 151 - Fairy Song

AN: I was tempted to name the chapter "Elfin Lied", to honour Guardevoir's elven appearance, but decided against it. Not my best title, but eh...

• Character-List:
• Dani, Protagonist (duh) - mysteriously appeared on the slopes of Mount Coronet
• Charm - Charizard, her original partner who somehow appeared with her
• Vio - Shrinking Violet, shiny Kirlia, joined Dani after she saved her from a Poochyena
• Su - Surly,...
  2023-04-13 08:32:56 +0000 UTC View Post