“Hard Entropy? How is it different from normal Entropy?” she thought, but no answer came even when she queried [Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom]. Leaving the tent, she investigated the rest of the great chamber, and finding no entrances beyond the one which she’d barricaded, she decided she was unlikely to find a better place to sleep. She dreamt of nuclear fire and woke up in a cold sweat, stomach wrenched by hunger and tongue curled up like a dead snake in her mouth. Quenching he...
2023-01-28 05:14:12 +0000 UTC
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Zel gave a faux-pained grin back. The fact she’d fallen for Red’s deception back during the extermination mission could entirely be explained by the fact that Red wasn’t actually the one speaking, but Zefaris still wouldn’t let her live it down… Despite her, Strolvath, and Alcerys all having had the opportunity to stop her. Upon the group’s return to the arena, the roles were somewhat reversed. It was Jorfr who arrived to find his opponent already there, and it was Zelsys who rece...
2023-01-27 19:07:38 +0000 UTC
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Krahe found that her entropy dissipated normally, but there was still a tentative sense of something off. Her body felt weirdly achy… And it clicked. She queried [Chernobog’s Mystic Wisdom] about the feeling, and lo and behold, her theory was confirmed. It was the feeling of Anathema buildup.
A second and third gauges made themselves known, the second tinged yellow and separated into thirds by two notches, while the third one was tinged red and subtly styled to resemble her left arm...
2023-01-27 02:57:34 +0000 UTC
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The druids weren’t even people as far as he was concerned. Soon they would meet their reckoning, if even one-third of his and Kristina’s plans came to term. Neither the Ramdalls, the Buhaugs, nor the Eisens possessed the means to oppose the druids; at least not within the city, and not yet.
The ice-cold thrum of passing the barrier ripped him out of his own thoughts.
He was ordered to place his hand upon their bloodbound hands. The druids began reciting an incantation in their...
2023-01-26 20:26:55 +0000 UTC
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“Yes! She has expended all of her power, she must be barely able to move! Now, get back up and finish the job!” Asgeir cheered on inside his own head, deluding himself into the idea that victory was still within grasp. He was right that Rikke could get up, but that was where his rightness ended.
She had, after all, ritualistically consumed the flesh and Azoth Stones of both a cultivator-Razorflayer and a cultivator-Springspitter. Not only that, she had also hunted and done ...
2023-01-25 18:40:54 +0000 UTC
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[Deathsmoke Spray]
[Tags:]
First-order
Burst Beam
Cinder Element
Lacerative Damage
Energetic Damage
[Details:]
A short-lived, unfocused pyroclastic flow.
Burst duration scales linearly with energy input. Scales more efficiently if imbued with Anathema.
Approx. five-meter effective range, dissipates over approx. a mete...
2023-01-25 03:15:01 +0000 UTC
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The Thundergod skulls’ chrome-like gleam brought to mind a Knights of Rebellion song, and an untoward chuckle escaped her, and she reached up, taking the skull from between her antlers and seating it around her right hand, melding it onto her metallized skin and forming a handle for it as she did so. She regurgitated a compressed mass of Fulgur, a sudden flash of lightning striking from her tongue to the metal skull. The unmistakable form of her first-ever Thundergod took shape around it, i...
2023-01-24 19:13:41 +0000 UTC
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With open palms and her arms tilted either sideways or down, Zel met all three spikes from Rikke’s right arm, using Siphoning Pulse on her hands. Two, she stopped dead. One had been timed weirdly or perhaps had a lower velocity… And went right through her left hand, whizzing past into the ground.
“Overpenetration’s a bitch, isn’t it?!” she cackled as the gaping hole in her left hand pulled itself shut. Even the bones of her ring and middle finger had been unharmed, merely be...
2023-01-23 19:33:33 +0000 UTC
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I've had to disable to discord link I had included in the post-chapter plugs. I've put the new one in the fic synopsis on both RR and SH, but here is the link if you haven't noticed.
https://discord.gg/KPggKZzfx4
2023-01-22 17:22:31 +0000 UTC
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Yet again they met in the middle, but this time, Zelsys had prepared. She allowed Rikke to strike her with her left hand just to ensure this landed, grappling her serpent arm with her own left for the moment. Zelsys gave no clear indication. One moment she had her right arm up in a guard, and the next, she’d kicked Rikke away, the berserker’s razorflayer claws ripping four trails of skin and flesh out of Zel’s back immediately followed by six more whipped right out with the tendrils. Th...
2023-01-22 16:56:33 +0000 UTC
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“Probably further along in… Digestion?” she thought, hoping that they were indeed just digesting their prey.
Krahe took her gun and pressed it to a spot she thought to be the parasite’s head… Then reconsidered. Would a gunshot wake the other parasites? Would it even matter?
She walked past, hearing relief turn to terror once more.
Once she’d passed the precipice and was securely out in the open, she turned around. Her eyes met the molten man’s.
S...
2023-01-22 00:22:56 +0000 UTC
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Then, there was that White Snake. Zel saw it as a vastly more mobile and melee-capable Alkasnail, although one lacking that beast’s slime armor and sheer mass, instead possessing surface-level scale armor and regeneration only possible for a construct. It was nevertheless far more dangerous than the Alkasnail. Rikke’s situational awareness made her think that the berserker might also share her senses with the beast, or at least be able to see through its eyes.
It was abundantly clea...
2023-01-21 21:23:24 +0000 UTC
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Rikke’s right arm by this point had turned into a fully-fledged giant serpent which somehow split off from her and left behind a scale-covered arm with hollow fangs instead of the index and ring fingers’ nails. The left arm mercifully did not turn into a full sized razorflayer, merely gaining feline claws. Not yet finished, Rikke’s legs transformed in perhaps the most gruesome manner of her entire body, also taking the forms of a razorflayer’s mighty digitigrade limbs, but an order of...
2023-01-20 20:34:05 +0000 UTC
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Eventually, the time came for the final preparation. To comply with the agreement to do battle unarmed and unarmored, Zel took off her boots, the Impelling Arm, and even removed the blades from her braids, tying them instead with string. She shared a kiss with Zef before making her way to the central circle. The ground was made up from a coarse clay-rich dirt such that it was a good balance of soft and solid. It was around forty meters across.
“No easy dust, ground slams won’t b...
2023-01-19 18:30:50 +0000 UTC
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[LEFT ARM OF CHERNOBOG]
[Tags:]
Inseparable
Self-evolving Graft
Channeling Catalyst
Anathema Container
Outer God’s Touch
Living Item
[Details:]
This graft expresses amplified performance metrics based upon the holder’s attributes and archetype level.
This graft can contain an amount of Anathema based on the holder...
2023-01-17 21:07:13 +0000 UTC
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Hours passed.
Grandfather Runar shared with Jorfr many a tale, none of which were recorded in tomes or scrolls that he could conceivably get his hand on; some hidden away in Fryg’s private possession, others lost altogether to all besides the memory of the ice witch.
His voice and form had both nearly faded by the end.
“Ah… It seems that our time has passed. One last tale, then: In bitter spite at that which the Smoke Witch took from us, Fryg all but banned our...
2023-01-17 20:11:16 +0000 UTC
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There wasn’t just one internal monologue, but two. Not just one train of thought, or point of focus. It was as if he had the mental faculties of two people at once, as if… As if his mind’s metaphorical spindle could spin two threads at once. He could discern his two inner monologues easily; one was in his own voice, the other in Koschei’s, yet both were his own thoughts. A third, silent presence was also felt; his Primordial Self.
It was bizarre, yet exhilarating all the same.
2023-01-16 20:30:55 +0000 UTC
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Rather than merely becoming conjoined or one devouring the other, Victor’s and Koschei’s souls were forge-welded in the enantiomorph’s crucible, folded in on one another, reforged again and again, until a damascened, unified entity emerged. The Left Eye itself had acted as a buffer, the process harnessing gem’s latent antediluvian energies and eldritch forces of a prophecy being fulfilled to allow for the merging of both their existences to such a degree that even the world could no l...
2023-01-15 17:54:36 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Got an absolutely horrid hay fever flareup. Next chapter on Sunday, Jan. 15th.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
“That… Construct-armor, of ours. It will not work. Not yet. To pursue its current design to the final iteration will be a labor of years. Our body is too weak to withstand the stresses of such a construct unprotected. But… That crooked path is not one we need to walk.”
Koschei spread his arms, and in a...
2023-01-13 21:08:17 +0000 UTC
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“This place, this body is my demesne. There is nothing you can do to usurp me; my being is my empire, and not a single soldier goes unaccounted for,” Victor proclaimed.
A great tsunami of bone swelled up and crashed down behind him, forming into a boundless army of bone wrought knights and beasts that stretched out to the horizon, monochrome animating flame blazing within each of them.
“It makes little difference,” said the Second King, unbothered. “The Enantiomorph take...
2023-01-12 20:21:58 +0000 UTC
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Her first thought was light, and indeed, burning a smattering of Thauma and funneling it through her arm with the intent to produce light caused a reddish-orange glow to spill from its many crevices, illuminating the entire hallway with scattered rays. It staunchly refused to narrow into a usable beam, and feeding it more Thauma produced an unacceptably small light increase compared to how much heat and Entropy was produced, so she just let it go for now. At least, with some further experimen...
2023-01-12 20:20:32 +0000 UTC
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Vol. 2 of Retribution Engine is now available in Kindle and Paperback on Amazon. As before, this is mainly for those who want a paperback copy.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRZ7H5YJ
2023-01-11 22:17:33 +0000 UTC
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Zelsys proceeded to recount her mindscape conversation with the Second King as well as the fact Victor had passed the initial Despot of Self breakthrough… As well as the facts that the titan Teutobochus was guarding a Fallen Star and that it could be controlled by a living possessor of the Second King’s authority, meaning that Victor defeating his grandfather would be vastly beneficial not just by ensuring that the redhead wouldn’t get bodysnatched.
“...He already agreed to the ...
2023-01-11 20:09:37 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Sorry for the delay. I just outright forgot to click publish.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Ingvald looked at the cleaver in his hand as one might look at their own newborn child. Then, he raised it and threw it at her. Zel caught it and turned it over, giving it a closer look as she casually approached the smith.
She separated the frontmost segment, finding that they were joined by strong magnetism runes in the spot...
2023-01-10 16:52:00 +0000 UTC
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“When we were fleeing, a man leapt from the sled and confronted the dragon. His body is not here,” Gunnar stated grimly.
“Hm? Oh. That one. I saw him get swallowed whole, unfortunately. If it is any consolation, he fought well.”
A brief negotiation followed, pertaining to the specifics of what would be supplied to Red and how it would be dropped off. The matter of her lockout from the city came up as well, with Yvonne revealing that the stain should fade within a few weeks...
2023-01-08 21:04:01 +0000 UTC
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They followed her to a particular spot at the crater’s edge, where she snapped her fingers and caused an opening to form, a doorway to a spatially impossible place. Within the crater, which could be no more than fifty meters across, there was an entire pavilion paved with blackstone and filled with Pateirian architecture rendered in that same material; there was even an artificial river running through the place, the everpresent mist and the colour of the water making it clear that it was b...
2023-01-07 20:55:06 +0000 UTC
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By the time the rod was done, she struggled to stand and Red was clutching her head in pain as her horns resonated… But done, it was, the rod floating menacingly in the air as its eldritch glyphs pulsed with magenta light. Zefaris pulled Pentacle from its holster. Every chamber was loaded with Atrine-enriched powder with a lead ball; a configuration she didn’t use much anymore due to a lead ball’s inability to maintain its form under the forces Atrine powder subjected them to. But for t...
2023-01-06 19:04:44 +0000 UTC
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They approached within stone’s throw of the tree-wall, there being a small clearing with several distinct paths deeper into the jungle.
“Now, answer me - where is Zelsys?” Karmesin demanded.
“In the city.”
“Then tell her I am waiting.”
“Why not come to her yourself?”
“I cannot!” the red woman snapped. “The barriers which shield the city will not let me pass. I know not why.”
Yvonne cut in: “Have you visited any of the jungle sett...
2023-01-05 19:20:47 +0000 UTC
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The Crescent Jungle.
Vaster than Oasis City by an order of magnitude, a self-contained evolving ecosystem that also served as one half as the Boiling Lake’s regulatory mechanisms. Kilometer-tall trees reached into the sky, few in number and acting as landmarks amidst everything else, the jungle sectioned off by lines drawn between these Pillar Trees. It was a self-replenishing wellspring of high-value materials that served as the economic heart of Oasis City.
The Expeditionary F...
2023-01-04 16:44:25 +0000 UTC
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“So? How do you feel?” Zelsys asked.
“Like I should be overwhelmed,” he answered.
“It won’t hit all at once. The physical changes to your brain will take a little while. Try breathing with one lung at a time.”
Victor nearly asked if that wasn’t reliant on overriding nerve impulses with Fulgur, but then realized that it wouldn’t be necessary if he really had succeeded in the Despot of Self’s initial breakthrough. So he sat up, taking another drink and open...
2023-01-03 18:06:28 +0000 UTC
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