Tsaimath

DLM - Bk 5, Ch 10

Sometimes, I wondered if living with other humans was worth the hassle they brought. Would it not be much easier to settle in some secret facility, something similar to Technica’s lair, only somewhere without humans other than Sophia around? Maybe at the bottom of some ocean-trench, dug deep into the earth beneath some mountain-range or even on the moon, somewhere I could just focus on my research and not have to bother with others? Especially not with trying to help them, if they did not w...

Chapter 475

“Are you ready?” I asked Ylva, making sure that she was on the same page as me. What I had in mind wasn’t that much different from the experiment on Sigmir and myself, only that I was now working with the one I ultimately wanted to change. If I managed to gather Divine Power, this would be the application of it. Not that I had any Divine Power yet, nor did I think getting it would be easy. Thus far, I didn’t even understand the interaction between the Astral Power and the Soul, which ...

Chapter 474

Returning to wakefulness was a slow process, my mind not willing to let go of the wonderful dream I had been having. I wanted to close my eyes again, to fly some more, on my own wings, not merely on borrowed wings. But once I was aware enough of my surroundings, the urge to sleep faded from my mind.

Still, I didn’t instantly try to get up, instead trying to put the things I had seen in order, to make sense and form conclusions from the experience. What had actually happened when I tri...

Chapter 473

“You think this will work?” I asked Lenore, looking at the circle we had prepared on the floor. Since fighting the first Manticore, we had encountered two more, both young and about as powerful as the first one, but things had gone a little awry during the second fight. While the fight itself had been under control, none of us had been able to do anything about the Manticore that had been flying above us, quite some distance away. There was no doubt in any of our minds that the Manticore ...

DLM, Bk5 Ch 9

If there was a deeper level of hell, I did not want to visit. Just getting copied on the various reports sent to Technica, with the obligation to read them, made me consider weapons of mass destruction, simply to get rid of the paperwork. With the added responsibilities regarding the convention, and the paperwork that went along with it, there was a part of me that simply wanted to dump the whole thing into a virtual shredder and get rid of it that way, right before building an underwater lai...

Chapter 472

An angry growl escaped me, as I smashed the vial of Manticore-Blood I had been working with on the floor,  the destructive act helping me vent my feelings. Working with the blood had been a bit of a headache, the connection between the blood I had and what I thought were the others of the same bloodline tenuous, difficult to follow and zero in on. If not for my recent exploration of Blood Magic in regards to ancient Bloodlines, I would likely have failed, which somehow made my annoyance ...

Chapter 471

With the beast lying dead, we first made sure that nothing else was nearby, about to attack. Olivia and Lenore had been tasked with keeping an eye out for danger during the fight, but it was better to ascertain something as important as that. When none of us called a warning, I began checking my companions and noticed Olivia doing the same. Not that I thought that the Manticore had managed to inflict any serious wounds in the short battle, but it was good to know that Sigmir was only lightly ...

Chapter 470

The process of isolating the divine portion that might be within my Avatar, a remnant of the creation of its race, proved as difficult as one should expect. I had spent a couple of days trying to isolate it within myself, had tried to delve into the bodies of Sigmir and Ylva, trying to get an idea what I was looking for and there was very little progress. I had gained a point each in Blood Magic and, curiously, Astral Meditation but had achieved nothing that would constitute a breakthrough. 2021-08-30 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 469

“And, did anything happen while I was gone?” I asked Lenore, once Maggie had left my capsule-space and I had returned to Mundus. My Avatar had been stashed in her Hallow while I had been gone and she was currently flying over the grassy mountainside of the White Mountains, some distance above the ancient Road.

“The road passed the treeline, so there’ll be very little in the way of cover for quite a while. Other than that, another type of mountain-goat that might just be able to ...

Chapter 468

It took me a second to shift myself to the emergence-point I had set for the Door, the timing just coming out right, with me regaining my awareness a few moments before Maggie appeared in my space.

“I bid you welcome on the Frozen Spire. Act without malice, leave without hindrance.” I formally intoned an utterly pointless greeting. She couldn’t really act in overt malice, not within my capsule-space and I lacked any ability to hinder her leaving but I thought the formality was app...

Chapter 467

Watching Maggie rapid-fire questions at Raia was quite amusing, but asking questions without giving the other time to respond seemed to be in poor taste. Instead of watching, I wondered how I would react within Mundus, if I was truly embodying Morgana, not just wearing the body, so to speak.

“Let her reply.” I ordered, speaking softly into a momentary pause as Maggie demonstrated that she needed to breathe on occasion. Maggie’s expression flickered for a moment, before settling in...

Chapter 466

It had been a while, since a message sent over the Pantheon-Entertainment Forum managed to catch my eye. Mostly, I received a mixed bag of hate, mindless adulation and people feeling entitled to the information I had gathered in Road to Purgatory, which I routinely ignored, slowly configuring the spam-filters to work to my satisfaction.

But a message from Tobiuno, a former rival from my Craft of War-Days, was a bit of a surprise, I had read some of his posts before, and had rec...

Interlude: Highlight Reel V

A group of well-armed soldiers is slowly advancing, each of them clad in uniform chain-armour, carrying a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. They move in a well-practised formation, their shields overlapping with spears thrust through the gaps.

Ahead of their formation, throwing rocks and timber at them in an attempt to stop them, a few massive, humanoid beings are waiting, each taller than the advancing soldiers by half their height and twice their girth, their bodies thick w...

Chapter 465

“Didn’t we plan to rest up in Carinthia for another day or three?” I asked, right after emerging from my Hallow, taking in the camp-site on the upper slopes of the Carin-valley. Much further down-hill, I was able to make out the town, and obviously the massive Thia-Lake. Judging from the distance and elevation involved, the others had to have left shortly after breakfast the day prior, even before I had started sweating with Mrs. Wu, contrary to our original plans.

“Well, with y...

Chapter 464

Who would have thought that the Outsider-Trait would have a positive effect. One useful enough that it had moved from my discard-list to my keep-list, when looking at optimising my character in the live-version of the game. Sure, it was annoying to get treated like dirt in most societies, but that treatment extended to acting like a social bug-repellant during periods of exuberance.

After we had made our way back to Carinthia, we had realised that yes, the gates of the town were closed ...

Chapter 463

Despite my best efforts to push those thoughts aside, the Curse that had surrounded the Lycantroll kept lingering in my mind. It was a gorgeous piece of magic, mind-bogglingly complex, yet I suspected that at its core, barely any power was required. The crux of the matter was quite simple, to the point that it had taken me longer than it should to realise it, but I shouldn’t have been able to parse the different elements within the Curse, even with my affinities to Blood and Darkness, divin...

Chapter 462

“You won’t be able to help him.” Olivia spoke up, as she slowly moved around the downed, still squirming, form of the Lycantroll. I had been staring at my Athame, still bloody, with Lenore’s sight, trying to understand the devilishly complex magic. It was only thanks to my growing expertise with the curses of Darkness-Magic and the intricacies of Blood Magic that allowed me to get the vaguest idea what it was. The Curse afflicting the Lycantroll was almost a living being, a magical pa...

Chapter 461

If it were only the beast’s eyes, deep-set but looking greedily at my Sigmir in a way that made me want to take a shower, despite it not being directed at me, it would have been one thing. I would still have plucked the thing's eyes out for it, and killed it soon after, but I wouldn’t have anticipated nearly the same amount of pleasure in doing it. What really made me want to come up with creative solutions to prolong the thing’s pain as long as possible, to rend its body, flay its mind...

Chapter 460

“By the gods.” Olivia muttered, before her voice took on the slow, deliberate cadence of spell-chanting. She wasn’t alone with the sentiment, even if none of us expressed it the same way. Adra readied her spear with a look of grim determination, aware that engaging the monster with multiple people was our best bet, preventing it from focusing on any one combatant. Similarly, Rai pulled the shadows tightly around him, turning him into another shadow in a dark night. I could still perceiv...

Chapter 459

Eating in a filled common-room was rarely pleasant, with countless people milling around, too much noise and, far too often, drunk people being drunk. But when we came down, to eat before hunting during the night, the locals quickly recognised that we were travelling Adventurers, planning to rid them of the monster stalking their valley. That caused an annoyance of a different kind, instead of noise and hostility, people came to our table, some thanking us even if we hadn’t actually done an...

Capter 458

Walking the short way from the gate of Carinthia to the Adventurer’s Guild, essentially across an open square, felt incredibly weird. Even at the Brighthollow Clan, the orcs had looked at us with a mixture of interest and dislike, but here, they received us with an almost giddy excitement. It made me want to look over my shoulder, to see if there was either a hidden camera or someone else, walking behind me, who warranted such a reception. There was no scorn, no distrust, nothing of the sor...

Chapter 457

Walking up the Carin-Valley, I let out a content sigh. While I wasn’t yet close enough to the snow-capped mountain-tops to magically reach them, just seeing the white glaciers up there, blending in with the clouds in the blue skies above, made me happy. Just knowing there was a large body of Ice nearby gave me a peace of mind I hadn’t quite expected. The knowledge that I had a nearby location where my powers were amplified by orders of magnitude, where I would be able to face armies if ne...

Chapter 456

As we made our ways down the highway, my mind was still on the events of the night before. After I had returned to my body, and been violently sick, Sigmir had helped me to get myself back together, carefully feeding me some water, while Lenore remained within her Hallow, trying to help my mind process what had happened. With some care from the two of them, I was able to crawl into my bed-roll and get some sleep.

Come morning, my head was still aching, a deep-seated, pounding headache t...

Chapter 455

My discussion with Sigmir and Ylva went roughly as I had expected it to go. Sigmir was quite happy to help her companion become stronger, easily agreeing to suffer what I could only describe as horrifying pain on her behalf, though, also as expected, she was quite wary of putting me through the same torment. Given that we, Lenore and I, had only the slightest idea where to start that project, namely by trying to detect the Divine Bloodline present in all three of us, it was purely theoretical...

Chapter 454

It was a little disappointing, but ultimately I decided that heading back to the arachnids was something I wouldn’t be able to do during the beta. As annoying as it was, I simply didn’t have the time to ingratiate and integrate into an entirely different form of society, not if I wanted to be able to complete the quest around the Soul Prison. And the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the quest around it was special, maybe even something unique to the beta itself. A un...

Chapter 453

By the time I closed my Capsule, ready to delve back into Road to Purgatory, I was feeling bone-deep exhaustion. There was something about the presence of other humans that just took a lot out of me. That was especially true when they were like Jenn and looking at me as if they were trying to set me on fire with their mind. She had been perfectly polite, at least as long as Chris had been next to her, but when he had excused himself to use the facilities, the fake smile on her face had faded ...

Chapter 452

With my own video posted and a comment made under the thread from Kerrin, one of the Crusaders of Light, I was reasonably certain that nobody would think to connect me with the troubles the Crusaders had run into. It was unlikely to happen in the first place, with nothing but general vicinity, with me being confirmed within a few hundred kilometers of their location, and somewhat similar traits, as in, female, associated with birds, darkness and mind-magic, pointing at me, but there could alw...

Interlude: Raiding

Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

• Kerrin, confirmed Beta-Account-

Raiding - Or how not to do it.

A word of advice, for all those who want to challenge the open-world dungeons and raids in Mundus: Don’t.

Well, maybe that’s too harsh, but if you do, be careful, those things are deadly. Part of the problem is limited information, which is why we, internally, decided to share our experience here, so that others can lea...

Chapter 451

The separation from Morgana when our Avatar-state ended was working more and more smoothly. One moment, We, together as one, had been flying above the trees, propelled by wind-magic and wings, before dropping through the foliage and splitting, slightly disoriented but far from the utterly incapacitated mess we had been when we first used the ability.

“That went well.” Morgana said, using an imitation of my voice to speak out loud. It took me a moment to focus on the slightly foggy m...

Chapter 450

Come morning, Lenore and I were ready and waiting. We had overheard enough from the Travellers to have a reasonably good idea of their plan, namely to launch a direct magical attack on the small valley, hoping that their apparently powerful area-of-effect magic would allow them to carry the day against the spiders. Overall, it wasn’t a terrible plan, at least the part of using area-of-effect magic to diminish the number of spiders they’d face, before charging in and finishing off what the...