Tsaimath

Chapter 1181

No matter how powerful I was as an individual, the raging storm outside reminded me that I was still an ant compared to the actual forces of nature. A glacier could exert magnitudes more force than I could, tides could erode any rock if given enough time, and the torrential storm was stronger than the burned land, at least on the surface.

Despite my scrying construct being only partially physical, without any actual biology or anything I would regard as critical to its function, the sto...

Chapter 1180

Sitting in my newly established underground lair, I could only laugh at myself and shake my head when considering just how easily I had let myself get distracted. The idea of the underground lair was a sound one, even the Burned Land with its Bitumen and artillery beasts would need some time to burn through some thirty metres of earth and rock, meaning I was in a secure place. From here, I could test and implement a few ideas that would allow me to project my attacks through the Astral River ...

Chapter 1179

Dreams could be decidedly weird; there was no question about that. Not only were there instances of Lady Hecate using dreams to communicate with me, pulling me into Her realm so we could have a conversation, but there were also recurring dreams about Neyto, or rather, about the Crystal Forest surrounding the small village and the Nexus at its centre. While it wasn’t a nightly occurrence, the dream about Neyto happened almost as often as the various dreams I enjoyed about Sigmir and what we ...

Chapter 1178

Talking with the Chief was incredibly interesting. When it came to his speciality, he was just as adept as Mrs Wu, and a part of me wanted to watch these two face off in some sort of sneakiness challenge or something like that. While the Chief never outright explained what he had been doing in the military, the way he readily spoke about covert tactics, night raids and strategies more suited for thieves, bandits or other sinister folk who went around doing mischief in the night, gave me a sne...

Chapter 1177

As it turned out, the “Chief” was present in the small town, though the expression of worried annoyance on his face made me think that he didn’t really want to be. When Catherine and I turned up, the man was quietly talking with a few other guys, and a woman or two, all of whom had the appearance I had come to associate with people adept at physical violence. While they didn’t have any overt weapons beyond a knife or two on their person, they all had that look of physical fitness, alo...

Chapter 1176

It was quite impressive how quickly the otherwise nearly mundane woman could move when thinking that her child might be threatened. While I didn’t use Observe to confirm her level, the rest of my senses could give me an estimation that she was below level twenty and a lot closer to ten than twenty, meaning she was just about as weak as she had been before the change. And yet, she managed to get to her child before I reached it, even though we had started a lot closer. Granted, neither Luna ...

Chapter 1175

The first realisation I had when looking at the people we were about to meet closely was that their skin and skin colour were quite interesting. Since the Change had introduced attributes to people, skin condition had improved to a certain extent, as a lot of environmental factors, things like harsh wind or sunlight, were apparently considered ‘attacks’ or harmful and thus subject to reduction due to the Endurance attribute, resulting in a few interesting effects. 

From what I ...

Chapter 1174

• AN: I'll be gone the coming week (17th to 25th) but unless something goes wrong, Dragon-Patreons should get the chapters as usual, while the Wolves will get four chapters on the 17th, to last them until I get back from vacation.

If there was one person who was truly ecstatic about the prospect of meeting new people who just happened to be in dire need of rescuing and some guidance to the proper divine path, it was Luna. While my dear daughter ...

Chapter 1173

With the information given to me by Lady Hecate, I started to look for the people apparently calling out for aid. Given that they were supposedly in fairly close proximity, I used some scrying constructs during the day, when we couldn’t hunt for Bitumen in the burned area, to scout things out from the air. If there was a decently large population of people somewhere nearby, they should be visible from the air, especially once my constructs were clear of the smoke and ash from the burned lan...

Interlude: Livin' on a prayer

Looking back, Jenn was, once again, wondering how she had managed to get from point A to point B. Just about two years ago, she had prepared to give birth to her first child, while her husband had celebrated a promotion at the bank he had been employed, making both of them deliriously happy. That is, as long as the pregnancy hadn’t been kicking her behind. Or worries about her husband’s fidelity, especially when he reconnected with a woman he had called a friend for years, that is, until ...

Chapter 1172

“Good evening, my dear.” There was only one entity I knew who spoke with three voices at once and, as it happened, that particular entity was also the one who had repeatedly pulled me from my dreams, inducing the fairly discombobulating sensation of being aware without being awoken, the human mind not quite equipped to handle going from sleep to the strange, liminal state required to commune with Her. Or maybe with all deities, I wasn’t quite sure, the only comparable experience I had w...

Chapter 1171

After the initial experiment to acquire a core from one of the Bitumen was an abject failure, I tried a few more things, but none of them worked as I wanted them to. Sure, I learned quite a few interesting, and some fairly disgusting, things in the process, but ultimately, I wasn’t able to confirm any of my suspicions.

What I was confident in was that the Bitumen weren’t individual life-forms; if they could be considered alive at all. They were outgrowths of another being, generate...

Chapter 1170

Sneaking into the territory of the goop men was somewhat nerve-wrecking, but at the same time, it was necessary. I needed to know what exactly the terrain these creatures spread did, whether there were any additional effects we would suffer under just from walking across it, if there were some sort of early-warning system included that may allow them to pierce my concealment and if it prevented me from slipping into the shadows to escape. Hel, it might even act autonomously and suddenly start...

Chapter 1169

Readying myself for the next experiment was just a little odd, as the situation was both similar and dissimilar to the one I had been in the night before. The biggest similarity was that I had positioned myself on a hillside and was planning to poke a fairly large bear. Granted, this particular bear had an affinity for waves of burning sludge fired as artillery barrages, meaning it might be a Soviet bear. Or maybe a German one, I could recall some stories about ludicrously sized artillery pie...

Chapter 1168

Even after we returned to our camp, it took me almost another hour to remove the various shards and splinters from my body, a process that ultimately left me exhausted and with a bit of lingering soreness, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t able to discuss the entire issue with my daughters. And there were a few things we needed to discuss, mainly what our next steps would be, if we wanted to linger and challenge this entire region, including whatever monster decided to try blowing up a hillsi...

Chapter 1167

My awareness returned slowly. At first, I was barely able to hear Lia and Luna’s voices, mainly Lia explaining what had happened while they likely made their escape from the fallback point, just in case more attacks were incoming. It was quite amusing to listen to them, despite the worry I could hear in their voices, I couldn’t help but relax a little. Sadly, while the ability to hear their voices was nice, the return of other senses was less pleasant, mainly because my body still felt as...

Chapter 1166

Channelling vast amounts of power was always an intense experience. A faint feeling of omnipotence, stray thoughts intruding on my mind, suggesting just what I might be able to accomplish with that much power, alongside an aching pain in my body and a buzzing in my mind, it was incredible. Yet, at the same time, there were small parts of my mind that reminded me that, despite all that power, I was still mortal. If I lost control, or continued channelling this much power for too long, one part...

Chapter 1165

After my constructs were dispersed, I realised just how interesting this area might be. Even from above, it had been difficult to determine how large it actually was. The smoke continued to obscure my constructs' vision until they got high enough to be above it, which was just about where the clouds sat, continuing to block said vision, so no luck there. However, even with the limited information I had managed to get, I was confident that this wasn’t just some small matter but something big...

Chapter 1164

When we saw the mess we were heading towards, the first thing we did was stop. Even from afar, we could see that there was a lot going on there, but without getting a lot closer, we couldn’t tell what that entailed. So, instead of running in like fools and finding out what dangers were there by using our bodies, we got comfortable, and I conjured my usual scrying constructs.

Curiously, conjuring the ravens was a little easier than it used to be. It only took me a moment to assume a co...

Chapter 1163

Seeing smoke on the horizon could either be a very good or a pretty bad thing; it completely depended on the amount of smoke one could see. If there was a little smoke, rising in a somewhat distinct column, it usually meant one was seeing a singular, likely controlled, fire, often lit by another sapient presence. That went doubly if the column wasn’t singular but if there were multiple columns rising in somewhat close proximity without intermingling into a cloud, as that meant multiple fire...

Interlude: A matter of perspective

As so often, while the spirit and even the flesh were willing and eager to accomplish their stated goal of tearing down the edifice of wicked darkness, reality was not so accommodating. In fact, the entire tower stood defiant against all their attempts, the doors of heavy stone not even budging, the walls not taking a single crack despite their best efforts. Trying to draw upon Lady Sunna’s power only gave Lorgar a headache, further cementing just how wicked this structure must be and what ...

Chapter 1162

Title gained

You gained the title: Spirit Binder

You bound a spirit of nature into a physical form, allowing you to harness its primal power for your needs. Those sensitive to these elements can recognise your deed, shaping their perception of you. 

While it only took me a moment to read the text, weighing the message conveyed to me by the system took a lot longer. Titles were rare, especially when compared to traits or...

Chapter 1161

For a minute or two, I simply observed the invisible entity with my Soul Sight. It wasn’t idle, thrashing around, causing gusts of air to blast against the walls and redistribute the air within the crystal cage I had created. The crystal-lined earth all around it was easily strong enough to withstand the blasts, though I could see that a bit of dirt was already falling, indicating that its thrashing around had some effects. Not a whole lot, and none on the salt-coated stone I had used to se...

Chapter 1160

While we hadn’t managed to figure out a whole lot about our current opponent, at least not in confirmed facts, we had enough pieces of the puzzle to make some fairly educated guesses about its nature. One, it was wind-aligned, and I was confident of that as I had seen its soul. Two, it was invisible and, likely, intangible, interacting with the world only if it wanted to, though we were less confident about that. Three, it had not yet tried to seriously kill us, either because it lacked the...

Chapter 1159

“Fascinating,” I heard Luna mutter behind me, as I was still trying to see what had spooked me to turn a stretch of forest into a mess of broken branches and uprooted shrubbery. “Something was there, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what that ‘something’ was. Just a presence, natural but not quite, magical but also not really, just, strange,” she continued to speak, her words only making limited sense as she was trying to understand a phenomenon we had minimal information on.

Chapter 1158

The first indication that something was wrong came to us in the form of a strange sound. It sounded almost like a moan and, if not for Sasha’s immediate and fairly strange reaction to it, we might have ignored it as simply a trick of the wind blowing through the trees. Nothing but a form of auditory pareidolia, the phenomenon making people see familiar shapes in unrelated objects, only applied to sound. However, given that Sasha immediately sought to hide behind me instead of continuing to ...

Chapter 1157

• AN: I finally got to use the snicker-inducing thought that spawned the entire Sasquatch-plotline: The Saskatchewan Sasquatch

Standing atop one of the local mountains, I had a realisation. While I wasn’t entirely certain where we were, thanks to the effects of the change partially randomising geography on an unknown scale, I was somewhat confident that we had passed what used to be the US-Canadian border a few weeks back. Not that there was much of a b...

Chapter 1156

It was with an angry snarl that I threw my latest project away from me, my patience and self-control finally overwritten by a long, continued string of failures. Trying to make a magical item that allowed its user to fly was complicated. Incredibly so, if one of the things said item needed to do was work regardless of elemental affinities. It was supposed to allow even a person whose Astral Power was completely biased towards Earth to soar, but no matter how hard I tried, I had yet to succeed...

Chapter 1155

Sasha was a study in contradictions, making observing her as we travelled a fascinating experience. On one hand, she was intensely curious, which manifested in her constant desire to explore the world around us, though only in a somewhat limited radius, using her own senses. In that, I could easily see myself in her actions, just that she was using her senses to explore the physical world, sniffing the flowers so to say, while I was much more interested in the non-physical world, the differen...

Interlude: Tower(ing) Offense

For the five bearers of Lady Sunna’s Word, the winter hadn’t been an overly pleasant experience. Sure, Lorgar was able to keep the worst of the weather away from them, the powers bestowed upon him by his Lady enough to accomplish that, but there was a vast difference between allowing them to endure the weather and preventing the weather from making them miserable.

His Lady had guided the fivesome down, out of the mountains, after encountering the strange valley filled with mist and ...