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92 - Liminal Coil Pt. 4 [Cherno]

A/N 11th July: Added more detail to Krahe's reminiscence of Oasis.

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“We will now begin with the extraction of your spine.”

Bit by bit, the two grafters did just that, starting with a single cut down the length of her back. The bones and discs went first, extracted with a combination of cutting and the bone-dissolving liquid from before, leaving only her wrecked spinal cord. Then, in stages...

259 - Amaryllis Belladonna [Sturmblitz]

Collier froze at the mention of Forgehand, furrowing her brow as she tried to remember, then finally looked back at Zefaris.

“...I don’t know who that is, but it’s no wonder he worked on That Monster if he can pull sorcery like this. Tell her to come around as soon as she can, aye? Field maintenance isn’t enough for what she does to that gun of hers. Now- You said you had a request for me, was that right?”

Zefaris nodded, handing over a small box.

“I need someone...

91 - Liminal Coil Pt. 3 [Cherno]

A/N: Mentions of Liminal Diving and Liminal Skimming in the previous chapter have been edited to just "Diving" and "Skimming" for lore consistency reasons.

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It took the High Grafter several minutes, but she could, indeed, make sense of Barzai’s scroll.

“You fall within the lower two-thirds of the Liminal Coil’s inbuilt adjustment range,” the High Grafter said. “Extra-fine adjustments wi...

90 - Liminal Coil Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe returned to the entrance, where the door had closed behind her. Willing a tendril to emerge from her back, Krahe smashed it at full force into the door, once, twice, thrice. It opened seconds later, Fidelia waiting on the other side.

“I have my choice, though there is the possibility that it may reveal itself to be corrupt or designed with some major fundamental flaw. It’s the Liminal Coil,” Krahe said.

“It cannot be corrupt, elsewise it would not have been permitted...

89 - Liminal Coil [Cherno]

Four scrolls in, she found what looked to be a document penned by someone after the fact specifically for the purpose of making Barzai’s tortured writing legible. Much of it described how he repeated himself and reiterated what Krahe had painstakingly extracted herself. That scroll also came with a second, smaller scroll, in a case locked by a five-digit combination lock. The Fourth Scroll contained it, right below a warning of the sigil that was supposedly a potent mental attack glyph, abl...

258 - A Warm Welcome Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

From where he stood, he felt her aura; they all did. It was a familiar sensation, as if being in the immediate presence of a predator about to lash out. The difference was that in the past, it only got this intense in her immediate vicinity and when she was fighting. Makhus stood a good thirty meters away and he felt it as if he was no further than five. The sensation, stoking his fight-or-flight instinct and raising the hairs on the back of his neck, grew no lesser when she raised her hand a...

257 - A Warm Welcome [Sturmblitz]

A welcome party awaited them in front of the gate, made up of members of the Newman Sect as well as the city’s tankmen, both in Third-model and Second-model suits. It wasn’t the whole sect, or even a substantial portion of it, just two handfuls of people, including Mata Gano, Vaceran, Joseph the Mercenary, Fendas Pohlem, Nesgon the Immortal Groundskeeper, even Halxian Estoras. The Estoras Heir had grown nearly ten centimeters and bulked up a fair bit since the Blue Moon War, gradually app...

88 - Reliquary Pt. 4 [Cherno]

Firminus paced as he spoke, eventually settling down on one of the benches.

“Collating this with other information that I rightly should not possess, I would wager that the Molted Vestige has extraordinary sensory filtering properties while likely also dampening cognitive strain and substantially enhancing the user’s ability to parse sensory information. If you see any nodules near where it would connect to the brainstem, they are more than likely auxiliary motoric brains, as Aspasi...

256 - To Familiar Shores [Sturmblitz]

Zefaris had no issues remaining awake for days on end, and she wasn’t physically exhausted, yet she wanted to do nothing more than to pass out. Only now, having ended her work, did she notice the persistent, strangely ephemeral headache, somehow perfectly spread out perfectly throughout the inside of her head. Slowly and deliberately, she gathered the badges of every fallen doppelsoldat she could find, moving their skeletal remains such that they all sat, at rest, leaning against the wall. ...

87 - Reliquary Pt. 3 [Cherno]

A few minutes passed while Krahe and Casus both quietly walked through the vault, reading about the various relics. Most of them were wholly organic body parts, both entire limbs or individual organs, or even just particular muscle groups. Some seemed rather minimal, such as an ultra-flexible, ultra-resilient stomach that could break down nearly anything, including solid iron and bone. In fact, the more she browsed, the more Krahe realized these were weird and interesting, but not all that ex...

255 - Death's Platoon [Sturmblitz]

The process of assimilating a Remnant was quite like grasping the Core itself: She felt out the location of the Remnant’s densest portion, then placed her hand at that location after having brought out the Phantom Core. From there, she had to unravel the Remnant and wind it around her core. It had been described as “convincing” the Remnant to join her, necessitating a fighting will stronger than that of the Remnant, thus making duels the easiest way to ensure one could actually subsume ...

86 - Reliquary Pt. 2 [Cherno]

The strange symbols immediately surrounding her lit up with a milky-white glow.

She couldn’t put together an oath on the spot, so she closed her eyes and focused on the convictions for which she had fought and died once already. To master both herself and every tool in her reach, to inure herself from attacks of the exact sort as the one which had killed her and the one which had forced her into this situation. To see the likes of Whitestone purged from the world, and to visit the sam...

85 - Reliquary [Cherno]

“Your Relic - hopefully Relics plural in the future - will be the sole proof of your apostlehood, should you need to prove it for access to church facilities. In such cases, your identity will not be recorded either, as I will embed a warning with my personal seal into the Relic. Only those willing to flagrantly betray the church and invoke my wrath would dare to go against it. It is not foolproof, but it is as close to anonymity as a graft-apostle can come. Before you ask, yes, I shall be ...

84 - High Grafter Fidelia [Cherno]

A/N: You're not having a stroke, I accidentally numbered this one 85 at first.
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Casus and Firminus soon returned with a woman in tow - at least Krahe wagered it was a woman by the voice and figure, considering the wholly obscuring hooded robes and mask. She was also fairly short. From her reading on the church, this had to be High Grafter Fidelia, one of the three religious authorities presiding over Audunp...

254 - Phantom Core Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

It was the moment when she witnessed Zelsys torn limb from limb. Back then, when she fell into that trance and carved the glyph of Eternal Snow upon the Living Storm.

That was where her Phantom Core waited, in the middle of her memory of Ubul’s Tomb. She found herself standing in that thoughtscape, striding through a frozen snapshot of it at the exact moment when Eternal Snow took effect. The Core wasn’t a physical object, of course, but in her mindscape, it took the form of a wispy...

253 - Phantom Core [Sturmblitz]

Incoherent, flickering, repeating phantoms, all across the battlefield, wrought of ghostly non-matter in hues of pale blues and cyans. Most of them were barely even recognizable as people beyond their shapes. Those who still held vaguely person-like forms repeated the same motions over and over again, or simply remained in one place, hiding behind cover that wasn’t there, guarding against an enemy that would never come. The least coherent among them were just vaguely humanoid clouds of ener...

"Tar" Artwork [Cherno]

252 - Remnants [Sturmblitz]

After a brief exchange with her opponent immediately preceding his death, Zefaris returned to them with a strange rolodex in hand.

“Let’s make camp. We’ll have to stay overnight,” she said.

Without a moment’s questioning, the four of them sprung into motion around Lydia and had a campsite ready within minutes. Jorfr sat by the fire, using a cast-iron pan to simmer cuts of pork from Arthal while Victor looked on, furrowing his brow as he struggled to remember a recipe fro...

83 - Spines [Cherno]

A/N: Paragraph fixed near the end.
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As Firminus spoke, it was him who grew increasingly more disquieted, rather than Krahe, due to her overall lack of reaction.

“That all makes perfect sense to me. I see no reason not to go ahead with the procedure, unless it has a sky-high failure rate or something of the sort.”

“The secondary concern is that a spine is one of the more complex grafts, lea...

251 - Burial Ground Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

Zef’s bullets tore straight through the ghosts which leapt into their trajectory, one prevented from striking true by a sudden block by Toza’s ghostly limbs and the other by a near-inhuman spot dodge. His blades were exquisite, exactly of the sort one would expect in an ancient cultivator’s arsenal, and yet, one of them simply snapped where Zef’s bullet struck it. The other bullet whistled by Toza’s head, its trajectory having changed by nearly fifteen degrees closer to its target. ...

82 - Blades in the Night Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Some distance away, on a rooftop, a lanky figure rose from a prone position. He unhooked the crescent-shaped head of a long staff-rifle from under his armpit, and pulled magnifying goggles up off of his eyes. He had felt the impact confirmation ping, affirming that his shot had connected with a living target.

“With that, my work is done…” he said to himself, carefree and unworried as he descended to ground level. One shot; that was how much he had been paid for, and a confirmed hi...

81 - Blades in the Night [Cherno]

Another day passed.

Upon his return from running errands in the morning of the first day, Casus visited upon Krahe good news. Slaughterhouse 9, the Old Street Butchershop, and two other Hashem Family locations had been cleared and secured by the church, and their bounty payout was still being calculated to adjust for any bounty increases from further crimes registered at the secured sites. The only other notable event in this timespan was the absence of Imraal’s food cart in its usual...

250 - Burial Ground Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

A grisly mirror of Ubul’s Tomb, this place was; the only thing that forestalled the perfect completion of that mirroring was the absence of any Pateirians. This battle had been between Ikesians and Grekurians alone. With her left eye, she could see the evidence of several dead inquisitors as well: Aquila Calibur swords stabbed into the earth, suits of inquisitorial full-plate still shining from amidst the white-purple flower carpet. One Inquisitor in particular caught her gaze, a doubled-ov...

249 - Unassuming Logging Hamlet Pt. FINAL/Burial Ground [Sturmblitz]

A pig was brought out to be butchered, and Zelsys was once more put to task as organic heavy machinery, this time in killing the creature. Remembering the captive-piston tool used by many modern butchers, she turned to the pig’s owner, who was holding the fat thing in place alongside several other men.

“You don’t need the skull intact, right?”

“Of course not.”

With that, she simply pressed her fist against the beast’s forehead, drew it back a few centimeters, a...

248 - Unassuming Logging Hamlet Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

Sophia. That was what her parents called her.

Zel was well aware that Zef’s original name was Sophia Gottfrid, but until now, it had been just a piece of information no more relevant than her hometown. It was something Zefaris had told her once, and neither of them had mentioned it since - when Zef had shared her old name, she said it as if she had merely wanted to rid herself of a weight. It felt quite strange hearing the name actually used, and considering Zef’s own reaction, she ...

80 - Six Trees Killer [Cherno]

When the dust cleared and the desolation revealed itself, a wide grin painted itself over her face. From where Casus sat, her glasses, turned white by reflection, obscured her eyes, and a strange inhumanity replaced her face. Her grin became almost nauseating to look at, like an open wound full of broken glass. It was just a moment, and the next, it was gone.

“Too slow. I’ll need hotter loads, but it’s a good start. I think I’ll call it… Hm…”

She rubbed her chin, squ...

79 - Sector 7 Style Sparring [Cherno]

The next day, they visited one of the smaller Zaveshian temples in the city. Besides the main one, there were five of these smaller, yet still sizable compounds, one for each district, with even smaller shrines to fill in the zone of influence.

“Razem’s seals. Green trousers. Amorphous body armor. That arm…” the receptionist listed off, looking Krahe up and down. He looked at Casus. “I take it this is Krahe? You requested urgent access to one of the training chambers with her ...

247 - Unassuming Logging Hamlet Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

“The statue. You kept looking at it. Does it have anything to do with this offer of yours?” Franz asked.

“There is power in the monument, yes; it attracts and houses minor spirits. Were it to be destroyed, the forest would not fall upon you - the forest needs not a monument as a reminder. However… I shall be able to harness the power of what your monument represents to fuel a protective array around your hamlet. I only need local materials to channel the power.”

A melanc...

78 - Thaumshot and Mamon Couplers [Cherno]

“Oh, right. I wanted to ask you to show me how that belt of yours works - unless it’s a church secret,” she asked after taking a sip of ekarone juice.

Casus was more than happy to do so, rising from his seat.

“Wait here.”

He brought back the Silberblut Coupler and two other belts - the Dregsteamer from the Old Street Butchershop, and a brass-plated, slightly ornate belt with a depression on the right-hand side and a grey, cracked crystal in the center. The brass be...

77 - Ekarone Days Pt. 4 [Cherno]

Rather than Jahangir, the treason which Damrus had been made aware of was related to a loss which he hadn’t mentioned. Silberblut himself. Damrus had meant to take his body as the next step in his own growth. The old Coupler meant nothing to him, the accursed thing ran on Thaumic Fusion and leaked anathemic remnants into the user’s system; even someone like Casus Aristedes, with his freakish resistance, couldn’t use it for long.

Indeed, the traitor was his own son, for his failed ...