Tsaimath

WO, Ch 144, Jumbled thoughts and garbled answers

Soft noises pulled me back into the dim, gloomy light that filtered through the mist. Blinking my eyes, I noticed some crud crusting them together and tried to move only for my arms to feel so incredibly heavy, far too heavy to move. Warm, familiar fingers started to caress me, gently wiping my eyes, ever so careful to make me comfortable. A feather’s touch ghosted over my face until finally, I could fully open my eyes and see the world clearly once more.

Now, there was an additional ...

WO, Chapter 143 - Memories, revised

• AN: Some parts in the second half of the chapter have changed, to accommodate the new reality I have imposed. Enjoy, there's going to be an actually new chapter today, too. 

With each step I took, the mist became denser. At first, I was able to vaguely see the outlines of trees but after a few steps, those outlines faded and even the ground beneath my feet seemed to blur, vanishing in the mist. It was as if I was walking within a thick cloud, even th...

Chapter 707

The evening’s gloom couldn’t have come soon enough for my tastes. After my short speech, overall interest in magic had been intense, it felt like everyone who had an affinity had approached me and even those without were showing interest. It hadn’t been limited to me, Mrs Wu had received just as much attention, maybe because she was the de-facto leader, and even Kevin had turned into a center of attention. The poor boy looked as if he was looking for a crack in one of the walls to hide ...

Chapter 706

AN: Public Speaking... Yuck

A part of me wanted to continue straight away, to try pushing Sandy into Rune Magic, simply to see if it would work. If it did, and I managed to get another EXP infusion similar to the one I had received when Kevin learned the skill, I might make level eighteen, though I doubted it. Teaching was profitable in terms of EXP but not to that extent. Or maybe it was teaching magic that was profitable, possibly as a result o...

Chapter 705

Soon after Kevin dropped into his meditative trance, Sandy returned, looking a little disgruntled.

“No idea what you thought would happen,” she grumbled, sitting down across the table from me, “So, any better ideas than to think really hard and try making something happen?”

“A few ideas, yes,” I nodded, looking at the young woman, “As you can see, your companion has taken the first step on his path. We shall try to facilitate your own path, just the same,” I told h...

Chapter 704

The emotions I could feel over the mental link I had established were almost amusing. Fear, amazement, disbelief and an overall sensation that I could only verbalise as a loud scream of ‘what the f…’ flooded over loud and clear, to which I tried to send back a sensation of collected calm. Given that both of us were disembodied balls of mind and soul, floating just above the Astral River in its resplendent glory didn’t really help. The human mind wasn’t made for this, at least until ...

Chapter 703

“So, affinities,” I began, once I had my two prospective students seated across the table from me, “Affinities are the easiest place to begin learning magic. Having the trait means you have enough innate talent that the system deems it worthy of recognition, or something along those lines, I actually don’t know the mechanism behind it. Either way, while it is possible to learn magic without having an affinity for it, it’s a lot harder and less efficient. So, why don’t we start wit...

Chapter 702

Mrs Wu’s story took far longer than it took me to finish my food. Thanks to Parallel Processing, I was able to eavesdrop on the people around us, even as I focused on her words and participated in the conversation. That way, I not only had her perspective but was able to glean some more information and largely corroborate her story. Sure, it was only corroboration from the others living here but it felt better than nothing.

Her story was both surprising and roughly what I had expected...

Interlude: Wu'ts going on?

The Change came silently, and yet, somehow, a sleeping figure managed to wake just moments before it hit. Maybe it was instinct, honed by years of intruding into places she wasn’t welcome in and doing things nobody was allowed to know, maybe it was simple coincidence, a result of having a little too much tea after dinner.

Either way, when blue flames started to flare up on the curtains, those instincts honed by years of active duty to a country she eventually betrayed took over, pushi...

Chapter 701

At some point, I decided that I should speak to the locals and Mrs Wu some more. I didn’t want to permanently stay here, hell, with the effect the proximity of this many humans had on my sleep I didn’t even want to briefly stay here. If not for the persistent feeling of obligation towards Mrs Wu, I would leave as soon as the sun set. There was no ledger to tally what her training had given me, but I wanted to give her and her people a leg up. And I had three ideas that would likely work.<...

Chapter 700

The talk with Mrs Wu was interesting. On one hand, I initially wasn’t sure how much of the backstory I should give her, as the things that I had done as Morgana weren’t things normal people would consider ‘good’. Hell, if I merely looked at my actions on Mundus through an outsider’s lens, I would have to consider myself evil and yet, when looking at the things I had done and my motivations, I didn’t feel evil. It was something that made me a little introspective and had me questio...

Chapter 699

Amusingly, the last bit of the way was the hardest for me. Not because of enemies but because of ever-increasing tension and worry. Even before the change, I hadn’t been good when it came to handling other people and now, with the change hanging over us all, I doubted that my clumsy and often awkward manners would help ease tensions. No, if anything, I felt it was more likely that I’d insult someone, making them snap and forcing me to defend myself. It was so easy to imagine such a scenar...

Chapter 698

Even with the number of bruises and scrapes Silva had suffered, she didn’t look like she was in too much trouble and I still had over half my Astral Power and Stamina. With that in mind, I decided that we would try to fish for more. I had no idea if there would be Shattered of similar power to the one I had just knocked off the building in the area or if the Shattered were somewhat territorial but given that we needed EXP, it seemed prudent to use the set-up we had to its greatest effect. 2023-01-09 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Interlude: Survivor's 101

Under a dreary, grey winter sky, a trio of dishevelled figures is fighting to contain another figure, this one barely looking human. The three are bruised and dirty, their clothes sporting numerous stains and a few rips, but compared to their foe, they appear to be in pristine condition. That foe, though humanoid, looks far from human. Its clothes are nothing more than rags, barely hanging onto the gaunt frame, its hands have twisted into claws, fingernails elongated and thickened, and its sk...

Chapter 697

• AN: There's a poll in the next post, I'd be grateful if people could give me their opinion. 

There was something weirdly satisfying about throwing a Shattered off a roof. I wasn’t sure why it felt so damn good, if there was some strange, primal sense of dominance that I got from taking the high ground and, quite literally, standing tall as king of the hill or if it was something else. Maybe it was the satisfaction that, for once, I could lo...

Future Interludes

I've been thinking about the future of Interludes.

During the Beta, they have served to add outside perspective by using scenes Samantha/Morgana wasn't necessarily part of but could witness, due to them being on the Forum or in videos or something similar.

That, obviously, won't work any longer so I've been considering whether I should write future interludes from an outsider's perspective, possible third-person focused on other characters, with information that Samantha would nev...

Chapter 696

As Silva and I walked away from the foursome, I could hear them for a little while. For a few seconds, they were completely flabbergasted, stunned to the point that they were completely silent. If not for the voices that I could hear after those first dozen or so seconds, I would have thought they might have simply gone into the building, exploring what we had just vacated. But no, as soon as they managed to collect their jaws from the ground, they started speaking in hushed voices, trying to...

Chapter 695

It took quite a bit of time for Silva to calm down after the earth stopped shaking. Using that time, I finished off the rest of my laundry, getting dressed in gloriously clean clothes. Getting the moisture from the fabric was a bit challenging, requiring me to use a combination of Rune- and normal magic, carefully cooling the moisture down to the point that I could use the cold-aspect of it to gain minute influence. It was incredibly finicky, largely useless for anything but training my contr...

Chapter 694

No powerful Shattered, angry felines or swarms of rats attacked Silva and me on our way back to our shelter. If anything, the amount of Shattered we came across was incredibly low, as if the Shattered were purposely avoiding the area around my shelter, but somehow, I didn’t truly believe that. Sure, we had been killing them but nothing I had seen indicated actual intelligence or the ability to communicate.

Nothing had changed in the shelter and after a quick meal, I began to experimen...

Chapter 693

• AN: Happy New Year, everyone. 

Looking for trouble was an interesting activity. Given how sensitive Shattered seemed to be to Blood Magic, or rather to miasma, I had decided to try and use that to my advantage. Simply looking for Shattered on the road was well and good, but it wasn’t enough, I wanted more, wanted to find the higher-levelled Shattered, like those level six and seven Shattered that had attacked us two nights before. To contin...

Chapter 692

The list of blue boxes that greeted me was… exhaustive. I didn’t even try to read through all the different kill notifications, there were hundreds of them, a long list that I simply let scroll by, barely reading it. It looked like the vast majority were mentioning rats, spiders or various bugs, though I wasn’t certain I wanted to know just how big a spider or bug had to become to actually be considered something the system assigned a level to. It was a rather disturbing idea, a bug wit...

Chapter 691

My new cape was a wonderful creation. While it was hard to judge just how well I was hidden, I felt a lot more comfortable with it wrapped around me, the magical formation I had embroidered into it taking just a bit of Astral Power to maintain. It felt a lot more efficient and easier compared to repeated castings of my Cloak of Shadows and took a lot less Astral Power or concentration. Silva was a little suspicious of my new gear, often moving next to me and occasionally sniffing my body, as ...

Chapter 690

• AN: I decided to change how Lone Traveller works, simply to make the mechanic more understandable, it won't change anything plot-wise. Other than a bit of musing on Samantha's part, questioning what makes a person in chapter 678. 
• Instead of discerning between natives and Travellers in this new world of Purgatory, it's going to use a "marking" system, where Morgana can "mark" one "Person" per 20 levels (Number of marks = Level/20, using normal rounding rules, ...
  2022-12-28 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post