Tsaimath

WO, Ch. 137 - New Companions

When the next day dawned, I woke with sore muscles but otherwise, I felt good. Immediately after waking up, I went into the bathroom, to take the third shower during the brief stay at the Mountain Lodge, this time I even invited little Vio to share with me, before heading out to talk a little more with Lisa.

She had given me some more ideas while we had been working in the afternoon and maybe, there was more where it came from.

We met in the kitchen, where Greta was happily prepar...

Chapter 639

• AN: I'll try to post a chapter a day until the next major turning-point, around chapter 666 as there will be a lot of Cliffhangers around here. The other tiers will get those chapters at the same pace, once they reach this point. 

Tears were still streaming down my face, as I was shunted into my capsule space, my mind whirling from what had just happened. How could Sigmir be dead?!

Unwilling to believe what I had seen, I quickly pulled up...

Chapter 638

With the cry of a raven and the howl of a wolf, the next phase of our battle was started. Now, there were no longer four individuals fighting, it was only us, united in common purpose as a pack, willing to do whatever was necessary to break through the elvish encirclement.

The Protector, now no longer split in two but united in body and mind, pounced forward, the speed enough to take the elves by surprise and suddenly, it was no longer they who pressured us, it was us, who forced them t...

Chapter 637

The cats we had appropriated from the elves were quite impressive sprinters. Sadly, their ability to cross long distances at that pace was less sufficient, after only ten minutes of dashing at their fastest pace, their speed started to flag rapidly and no matter what Sigmir and Ria did, they just couldn’t pick back up. But their somewhat unwilling efforts had bought us just that little bit of extra time.

“Dismount,” I called out to the others, gesturing for Rai to close the distan...

Chapter 636

Focus, as so often, was the bane of concealment. It was relatively simple to remain undetected if your opponent wasn’t actually looking for you. You just had to trick their eyes and blend into the environment and they might never know that there was something to look at. But the moment that arrow shot into our concealment, subtly disrupting the spells before getting swallowed by the shadows and disappearing from their view, the elven Scout, and the elven teenagers who had shot the arrow in ...

WO, Ch. 136 - CharCoal

Dinner was an interesting affair. The food was simple but incredibly good, the bread fresh from the oven, a hearty stew and salad fresh from their vegetable patch all came together for a great taste. In addition, the conversation was quite entertaining, especially after Lisa’s brothers realised that I was interested in ways to employ Pokémon for manual labour, a topic the others were eager to hear more about, too.

That led to an almost chaotic environment, where each of the Mountainb...

Chapter 635

“I’m getting worried,” Sigmir quietly admitted, whispering into my ear as I was held in her arms. Normally, these moments were reserved for those delicious, sweet nothings that made my heart beat faster and still managed to bring a blush to my cheeks, so her confession of worry was not something I liked to hear.

“What worries you, love?” I asked, speaking just as quietly as I pulled her a little closer, removing that tiny bit of space between us and pressing against her, tryin...

WO, Ch. 135 - Meet the Mountainbacks

After a brief shower, a mere twenty minutes of gloriously hot water pouring down on my body, I dried off and left the bathroom for Claire. After a quick look around the room, I decided to get to know our hosts, at least one of them. Walking across the hallway, I knocked on the door Lisa had indicated earlier and moments later, the teenager called for me to enter.

Opening the door, I poked my head in and realised that her room was quite similar to the one we had been given, the furniture...

Chapter 634

Once again, a bunch of trees were consumed by the black flames of Nidhogg and power was being siphoned off by the soul prison. Lenore and I kept incredibly close watch, making sure that no portals were opening nearby and the moment the drain from the Soul Prison faded, I pulled the remaining Astral Power to me, using it to step into the shadows, dispersing it into the strange realm that connected all the Shadows. There, it became nothing more than background-static and quickly faded away.

WO, Ch. 134 - Mountain Lodge

Somehow, travelling down the mountains was just as exhausting as hiking up the mountains. Or maybe a different kind of exhaustion, instead of having burning thighs from constantly pushing yourself uphill against gravity, our knees and calves hurt from the strain of having to permanently cushion our steps while walking downhill. Either way, after a day of hiking down a steep hill, my legs were in pure, infernal agony.

Over the course of the last few hours, the mostly barren rock, with so...

Chapter 633

“Well, damn,” I muttered, looking out of the forest, the wet boundary before us stopping our progress.

“Yes, a dam would help here,” Adra snickered in reply, making me let out a soft growl of annoyance at her joke.

“Harharhar,” I grumbled, shaking my head at the idea of damming up a river of that size, wide enough to make the forest on the other side hazy in the distance.

“So, where do we go from here? We’ve been heading straight southwest for the last two we...

Chapter 632

Why couldn’t the elves be less competent?

That question flashed through my mind, just as yet another wave of magic washed around us, kept at bay by the combination of wards cast by Adra and myself. By now, we were reasonably confident that the elves wouldn’t be able to detect us with their sweeping, wide-area scans, otherwise they would have done so a while ago. But it didn't mean we had no problems just because we could keep those at bay.

Such as yet another group of elven sc...

Interlude: The Hunt is on!

Sometimes, you don’t just walk along your Road to Purgatory.

Sometimes, you are the hunter on the road, sometimes you are the prey.

Bare, grey rocks reach into the clear, blue sky, some of them capped with snow, others completely bare. There are a few clouds of ash, hovering in the distance, speaking of the tremendous magic inherent to these mountains and yet, despite the danger, there are large avians slowly gliding th...

Chapter 631

It was early morning when Lenore and I managed to get back to the others, the first rays of the sun just hitting the canopy high above. It would easily take an hour, maybe two, for those rays to filter down to the gloomy shrubs near the ground and that twilight was something we had to use.

A quick tug on our connection called Sigmir and the others from their underground shelter, all of them looking somewhat rough and tired, the night not terribly restful due to the constant pressure gen...

WO, Ch 133 - I dub thee, Rogue

I was mostly rested when Cliff woke me up for the last watch of the night. Vio was still snuggled against my chest, making a few discontent noises when I started to move, at least until she fully woke up.

Outside, I looked around, noticing a dim glow in the sky, indicating that somewhere behind the mountains, near the horizon, the sun was starting its way across the sky.

“Do you know any details about the ruckus earlier?” I asked, speaking quietly so Claire wouldn’t be distu...

Chapter 630

Once again, I felt a pulse of magic in the distance, the elves communicating amongst them in their hunt for us. They hadn’t been able to find our tracks, the combination of Adra and my magic enough to ward them off so far, but they were trying to create a net to trap us. The magic they used to communicate was relatively crude, more akin to shouting than a magical mobile phone, but it got the job done. They were hours behind us, and yet, I could feel their efforts, making it obvious just how...

WO, Ch. 132 - Chance for rain and nightly pranks

Maybe there was some sort of male survival instinct that made Cliff and Lucas aware that Claire and I were in a cold, slightly murderous rage. When we walked up, I noticed that a few beads of sweat were forming on Cliff’s forehead, while Lucas was affecting a look of innocent confusion.

“We’ve had it, Lucas,” Claire fumed, giving him a glare that could have substituted for Champ’s efforts in heating up the kettle they had, likely to prepare tea.

“Your pranks, the disre...

Chapter 629

After the Avatar state ended, I staggered for a moment, my mind needing those few seconds to catch up with my body. Around us, the smell of blood was thick in the air, the elves all lay dead while their mounts were either dead or dying, none of them had managed to escape.

“Adra, renew the protections to conceal us, I’m certain somebody is going to take an interest in dead elves,” I ordered, before closing my eyes, drawing out the rest of my magic, amazed at the sheer amount of pow...

WO, Ch. 131 - After the storm is before the storm

Luckily, the sudden storm passed as quickly as it appeared. We didn’t have to stay in the small cave Myna had found for more than an hour, just enough time to sit down, make some tea and relax, watching the pouring rain outside. With Charm’s tail-flame giving off light and warmth, things were surprisingly cosy, but we all were quite happy when the weather cleared back up, the dark clouds being replaced with clear skies, bright sun and a rainbow in the distance.

Sadly, the rain had d...

Chapter 628

We closed our eyes, for a brief moment of stillness, to bring our concentration to the maximum. The positions and expected actions of the elves below filled our mind and our plans to deal with their conditioned reflexes were checked once again before the moment to strike had come.

Silently, we stepped off the high branch we had prepared on, a mere silent shadow in the night, our wings catching just the smallest bit of air, to keep our descent controlled. A second passed then two, as the...

WO, CH. 130 - Mountain Travel

“Okay, Yo, that’s enough,” Claire called, ending the sparring match between Aura, my Riolu, and Yo, her Meditite. Since leaving Celestic Town three days ago, we had let the two of them train with each other every chance we got. Their training was very limited, with no actual moves being used to train, but that only meant that they were working on their basic skills and movements, without the added hassle of bringing their attacks into it.

The effects of that training had caused bo...

Chapter 627

If nothing else, the third feeding of the Soul Prison managed to stoke a fire in the elven realm. While we, in the field, didn’t notice all of it, mostly increased patrols and magical activity sweeping through the forest, the forum gave me additional insights that I wouldn’t normally have. From what I could see there, and in a few of the elven Travellers who streamed their gameplay openly, it was bedlam.

The elves didn’t know who it was they hated but hating they did with a burnin...

Chapter 626

To keep things unpredictable, I had waited for one night, before Lenore and I headed back out, this time travelling multiple hours to the northeast, essentially travelling back in the direction we had come from. That way, it hopefully would obfuscate our speed and give a false impression of our destination. I was aware that such tricks would only work for a few more days, or rather a few more feedings, but for now, my tricks would lead them to false conclusions.

Finding a suitable locat...

WO, Ch. 129 - Northward Ho!

Dinner at Professor Carolina’s place had been a wonderful affair. Amusingly, the addition of four younger people made it a little less lifely, with Cynthia and Joyce acting as responsible elders, not their usual, playful selves, while Claire, Lucas, Cliff and Wera were utterly cowed by Cynthia’s presence, barely daring to speak and most certainly not willing or able to make jokes.

Regardless of the sombre atmosphere, or maybe because of it, the dinner was more akin to a lesson where...

Chapter 625

Armed with a few keywords and ideas, I did the obvious thing. The writers at Pantheon Entertainment had obviously taken a lot of inspiration from various Greek and Norse Myths, so looking at those to gain a few ideas in regards to the inmate of the Soul Prison was an obvious idea.

If my memory served me right, the Grandmother had told me that ‘Sunna’ had created the Soul Prison to hold ‘one of the Great Beasts’. A quick check on ‘Sunna’ told me that it was either a founding ...

WO, Ch. 128 - Dinner Invitation

“So, where have you taken shelter these days? The attendants at the hostel let slip that you haven’t been staying there since you left over a week ago,” Claire asked, looking at me with that half-teasing, half-curious expression as if she expected that I would tell her some salacious story. Feeling a little mean, I tried to give her a conspiratorial grin and spoke in a quiet whisper.

“Well, I’ve been injured during my task,” I softly admitted, gesturing to the few, faint mar...

Chapter 624

Lenore and I continued to move around the forest randomly, trying to create multiple false trails, if the elves could even find those. To disrupt things further, we kept switching in and out of each other's Hallow, at times I stepped through the shadows to interrupt the trail I had been on and even logged out, just in case there was some sort of magic that followed my essence. In addition, I thoroughly inundated both of us with Dark Magic, trying to cleanse and burn away anything that might b...

WO, Ch. 127 - Oracle Badge II

Addi and I took up position behind Kodra, while Claire and her opponent went at it for another round. This time, it was a battle between Twiggy, her Grotle, a Haunter, the evolution of Ghastly, the Pokémon that had given us such trouble in Eterna Forest. Luckily, there was no gloom around, nor tricky terrain that allowed it to hide its primary body and harass us with endless streams of poisoned mist, as the Ghastly had back them. No, it was a pretty straight-up fight, if a battle with an opp...

WO, Ch. 126 Oracle Badge I

“Today, we have four challengers seeking to earn the Oracle Badge. Two are currently in possession of three badges and the other two are in possession of four badges. Are there any trainers at the appropriate level willing to help me test their mettle?” Kodra’s loud voice echoed across the training field, overpowering the dim noise made by some fifteen trainers working with their Pokémon.

At his call, seven people moved out of the crowd, signalling their willingness and indicatin...

Chapter 623

Just as expected, Sigmir’s enthusiasm for the idea that I would head off in the middle of the night for some magical experimentation with the ability that had brought our current troubles was… impactful. She didn’t even try to talk or let me explain, instead she simply said no, before grabbing me, carrying me off and doing her very best that the only sounds coming from my body were moans, some panting and screams of pleasure.

Sadly, as great as both of our stamina was, at some poi...