Tsaimath

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 16

I had worked with Galatea on plans to increase the amount of nanites we had available until around midnight and went home afterwards. On the way, Galatea showed me a newsclip of the local evening news, reporting on a press conference Battlemaster had given, announcing that he was moving up and assisting the new leader of the Heroes’ League, Krionyx. There was another press-release cited, making the announcement that Krionyx was taking over after Skylar had been sacked, but the ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 15

Monday morning, started quite early and as always, I went to the gym, first thing in the morning. On the way there, I was reading the facts Galatea had found for me, regarding the Wardlaw-family, one version only compiled from publicly available sources, the other more fleshed out, with less available sources, as she had flexed her digital muscles and acquired information normally not available, from their bank, Tanisha’s former school and even the IRS. The information on the W...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 14

The “talk” with Tanisha could not have been more anti-climactic. She got back to the room while I was doing homework, once again, and she treated me as if neither the night before nor Saturday morning had happened. She gave me a friendly greeting and started getting ready to go out again. It was just her standard-Friday-evening routine.

I almost asked what was going on, but stopped myself, remembering that I had told her she did not need to talk, something I was slightl...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 13

I left Tanisha to her own devices, following Nisha’s advice to give her space to approach me on her own time. The few times, I saw her, I simply ignored her, not engaging her at all, and went on with my day. It made for fun living, so I spent most of my time in my workshop, getting the shop ready and designing the tools I needed to build the microbots I had designed.

The first step to get the shop ready was to check for cameras, going over every centimeter and making sure...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 12

“I think we solved it.” I spoke out loud for the first time in thirty-odd hours, my voice raspy due to dehydration.

In front of me, a blueprint was displayed on the screen, or rather, I saw it as a blueprint. Most other people probably would not recognise it as one, it had none of the normal features one would expect, for one, it did not display anything ordinarily thought of as technology. On the screen was a complex crystal, made from the same substance that I grew my...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 11

The morning after rescuing Tanisha from the police station, I woke up later than usual, only getting up at about seven thirty and slightly grumpy. Tanisha was still snoring away in her bed, so I decided not to wake her, which would have been entertaining but I wanted her to be at least partially receptive of the message I planned to give her, mainly that I had no interest in picking her up at a police-station a second time. Somehow, I had a strong feeling that waking her up would...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 10

After the night out with Nisha and Mina, life went on without huge changes for me. I pushed the longing for Sophia back down, fearing rejection if I contacted her and continued with my work. The microprocessors worked quite well and the new computer allowed Galatea to intermittently work on optimising designs for the microbots I wanted to create. There were still quite a few blank spots on the design, functions I needed but could not fit into the space I had for them, but a few i...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 9

After a quite suggestive whistle from Tanisha and a few words with Karen and David who had been in our common-area, I made my way to the mall where I had promised to meet Nisha and Mina. It was a bit of a distance from my cluster, but it was roughly the same distance for all of us, as it was quite central. Not that moving around on the Island was tedious, the public transportation was well thought-out and organised.

Nisha was already waiting for me and, as so often, we got ...

Chapter 135

After we split with the three trappers, we continued further into the forest, with Adra leading the way together with Rai. Adra was better at looking for tracks and threats, so today she was teaching him how to get better at it. It had been one of our plans for the future, that those better at those general skills would teach them to the rest. So, I would teach them how to cook, Sigmir would teach us how to skin and process game, Rai would teach all of us how to sneak and Adra wo...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 8

I quickly got a reply from the Shadowbroker, but sadly, it was pretty much as I expected. He cautioned me of directly involving myself, saying that showing myself would only serve their narrative. He suggested gathering information and he would see them reach the right places, it was what he was doing but he doubted that it would have any effect. Skylar had been a target long before I ever arrived at the scene, as he stood in the way of their influence. Adding to that, was that, ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 7

After the enrollment-lull ended, I realised I might have taken on more than I could cope with. My day started at five a.m. with me getting out of bed, grabbing my bag and going to the gym, I needed the physical exercise or I would go crazy, it had become just as much part of my daily routine as my morning coffee at the Coffee Club. After a strenuous workout, I used the gym showers instead of going back to my dorm-room and got myself the first cup of coffee, sadly not at a club-ho...

Don't label me!

As someone has asked, I will start posting the Don't label me! chapters here as well as on RoyalRoad. There will be no extra chapters up here, it is purely for your convenience. The first chapter posted will be Book 3, Chapter 7, if you don't read the story already, you can find the other chapters here. 

Enjoy

Chapter 134

 There seemed to be nothing more to do in Yaksha, so, after replenishing some of our supplies, we headed back out into the wild, away from the bad smells and the bustle of the town. Not that Yaksha was an especially bustling town, but compared to the wilds we had been travelling in for the past months, it was teeming with people. We were not the only group heading out, over the cleared fields around the town, some other hunters were even close enough to talk.

It was a three man tea...

Chapter 133

When the next morning dawned, the three stooges, who had tried to attack us during the night, had demonstrated that they were travellers, by virtue of their bodies despawning at some point in the night. To us, it was an incredibly useful thing, or there would have been three dead bodies that raised questions and could cause trouble. Now, we just had to leave before the stooges respawned and the situation would have time to blow over. 

Lenore and I happily discussed wha...

Chapter 132

My mind was jolted awake during the middle of the night and for a second, I was unsure where I was, or even who I was. It took me a second to get my bearings and to realise that the jolt I had felt, had been caused by the ward I had placed around the four of us. Stretching my mind into the shadows around us, I felt three intruders sneaking towards us, the three stooges I had sent off earlier. Well, if they were sneaking up on us, in the middle of the night, I had no need to ascer...

Chapter 131

 AN: Small change, in the previous chapter, Rai hands over the money for registration, not Sigmir. 

Saya gave us the system-variation of the quests to hunt wolves, alpha-wolves and wind raptors in addition to the one that required us to bring in game-animals, mostly elk, deer or mountain goat, but it was quite wide-ranging, as it was given out to supply the town with meat. The quests for wolves and meat were marked as easy, the one for wind raptors as medium and the o...

Chapter 130

The guild-clerk’s gaze was intense, I felt like as if I was under a microscope, or maybe a butterfly ready to be pinned to a piece of cardboard, to be archived for later. It was not so much power that kept me pinned but intensity and experience, the woman I was facing had seen so much more than I. 

“Very well. What information do you need from me? And how much does the registration cost?” I asked, pulling a little on the crystal in my chest to streng...

Upsala

Due to a small scheduling mistake on my part, a chapter was released early, so you all get an extra chapter, to keep everything on schedule. Enjoy ;)

Chapter 129

After entering into Yaksha, we moved further into the town and I wondered if there was any sense or order to the layout. The buildings around us seemed to be warehouses and the buildings behind them might be residential houses, not that I could really tell. The buildings had solid wooden walls, with only a few, small windows and a single, large door each. The buildings on the outskirt had even larger doors, reminiscent of barn-doors, almost as if they were used to let wagons insi...

Chapter 128

We saw the first signs of Yaksha around noon, two days after I had performed the ritual and helped Ylva to cross the first divide. During those days, we had heard howling wolves but never clear enough for Ylva to make out the exact meaning, so we were uncertain if we were actively hunted. 

I also wondered about the exact mechanisms of crossing divides, Sigmir and I had crossed the first divide without outside resources, well, outside of the perception-potion I had used...

Chapter 127

We quickly left the ritual site, putting as much distance between it and us as possible. I had a feeling that the bigger black wolves would not be happy if they knew that someone had used one of theirs as a resource to strengthen themselves, once that happened, we would be hunted again. So, it was vital to create distance while keeping up Adra’s anti-tracking spell and my own concealment spells. Neither were not perfect, there were undoubtedly countless ways to beat either, jus...

Chapter 126

With the two bowls of blood in front of me, I focused on the one from the five smaller wolves, trying to concentrate the power in less volume, to make it similar to the blood of the big, black wolf. Feeling the blood was easy, but I wanted a fundamental transformation, a change of its base properties. I felt my own Astral Power flow out, and realised something, not only should I concentrate the blood to match the power in the big, black wolfs blood, I also should add the properti...

Chapter 125

Knowing what I wanted to achieve, I just had to create the ritual to do so. Creating a ritual from complete scratch was not something I had done before, but I had successfully changed a few, so I believed to have a chance. And if not, what was the worst that could happen? Other than apocalypse by giant tentacle-monster. 

Just looking at the requirements of the ritual, I had a feeling that the ice-shackles I had placed around the wolves would not last, not if the strugg...

Interlude Patch 1.4.

It was a strange place, a place that defied the mundane idea what could be real. It was the place, the laws of reality went, if they wanted to get falling down drunk. It was a place where the question of when was meaningless, where tomorrow’s future was yesterday’s past. It was a place outside of space and time, a place located in the fleeting moments between dreams and reality, it was a place where reality was as malleable as ideas and change as natural as shapes in the clou...

Chapter 124

After I had managed to convince the big, bad wolf to start moving up the valley, I focused on the incoming pack. Sadly, I was quite sure that I would need as much power as possible for my plan to work, so I was limited in my actions against them. But there were somethings I could do.

My runic magic easily worked with previously acquired resources, meaning I could easily use the viscous substance I got when using Blood Magic to fuel it. Looking at the attacking pack, that sn...

Chapter 123

The next day mostly passed uneventful, the wolves were looking around the area, searching for our hideout, but they failed to find it for most of the day. Inside our valley, we relaxed and trained our magic, as there was no way to spar. I had managed to create a spell-chant for my Shadowcloak and taught it to Rai, letting him practise some magic. He needed more Astral Power to cast, but it worked quite well, even without strong mental attributes. He would never be a powerful cast...

Chapter 122

I spent the rest of the evening working on defenses for the small valley we had chosen as our killing ground. The first defense that went up was a simple wall, about two and a half meters high, with a parapet slightly under two meters up. The wall had an unsecured opening in the middle, allowing for a single fighter to defend it with ease, hopefully it would be enough to draw the wolves in.

Further down the valley, I had used my Ice-runes to compress the loose snow, giving ...