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12 - A Beast on Two Legs

A door creaked as it opened, but it wasn’t the one she’d expected - it was a door behind her, from which emerged… A boy. Couldn’t have been older than fourteen, done up in downright whorish makeup and clad in glorified harem silks, some sort of metal chastity device gleaming beneath the sheer fabric. Zelsys couldn’t help noticing the makeup caked on his skin in places other than his face, or the bruises it was obviously covering. She willed her Tablet to begin a full mnemonic record...

11 - Toss Out a Brick to Lure a Jade Gem

After the end of the penultimate bout, she took a few minutes to rest and speak with the bookie, learning that Von Wickten fought in full plate using a sword and shield, and allowed challengers to use their own equipment as well, justifying this obvious unfair advantage as “Special Rules”. In these few minutes, she went through her Fog Storage inventory and picked out one of the garish jade ornaments she’d retrieved from the Locust Queen’s hoard, stowing it for later....

10 - One Who Imposes Herself Upon the World

The bearded, tan-skinned man who had let them in walked over to a table covered in documents, a bright red lump pulsing on the back of his neck. Both women felt shivers run up their backs, their killing instincts demanding that this poor wretch be put out of his misery, but they both held back.

“De-po-sit?” the man asked again.

Zel wordlessly pulled out two sacks of money, tossing them onto the table, to which the parasitized flesh-puppet of a man opened them with inhuman dext...

9 - Von Wickten

Zelsys drew in a deep breath and kicked up some sand, burning the better part of her lung capacity to generate Fulgur that she immediately dumped into her outstretched right arm, causing the minor muscles to twitch uncontrollably under her skin as snaking, blue-white arcs branched off of the limb to strike at airborne sand particles. Each grain became the core of a miniscule lightning-sphere, none powerful enough to cause serious damage, yet together counting over a hundred.

She whipped...

8 - Sanger Family Rules

Reiner went quiet, staring off vaguely in the direction of the fighting pits. He didn’t seem particularly torn up or upset about the rather grave accusations Jorfr had just leveled at the knight-captain - Zelsys was willing to wager that Reiner had heard such things said about not just Von Wickten, but all of the town’s nobility. It wasn’t prevalent in public, but even Old Man Duma had derided the Dragon Knights for being “parade-obsessed asshats” during their conversation with him....

7 - To Draw a Narcissist's Envy

A/N: I renumbered the chapters to fit the 2k/ch release scheme.

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“Ah… Feels like head’s splitting open…” he grumbled, rubbing his temple before turning to Zel again. “Seems I conveyed my message, then. Whatever those creepy fuckers want from you, I’m uninvolved, y’understand? My debt’s paid.”

“Got it,” she said as she prepared to leave, only to spin back around and draw ...

6 - Fighting Pits

“Right. Of course they don’t need to see you to tell that you’re looking at them, dumbfuck. Keep calm, just play the subservient peddler and you’ll be fine…” the griller told himself as he tried as hard as he could to stay small and not look at them.

His own eyes betrayed him, and he gave up in trying to avoid getting a good look at them, knowing that he wouldn’t have a choice either way.

The smiling, two-meter-tall barbarian stomped about in metal,...

Conqueror's Mantle Zelsys Finished Art + Cover Art Drafts

5 - Crimson and Scarlet

In the upper floors of the Von Hoedorff family manor, the young duke sat behind his desk, his back turned to the door as he looked out through one of the windows built into the titan’s eye sockets, thinking on the state of his domain. He was overjoyed over the great prosperity brought in by opening his domain to the World of Martial Arts, effectively subsuming the stable grey markets of neighboring, now occupied states.

However, something gnawed at him, a burning question demanding an...

4 - Gunshot to the Head of Apathy

Meanwhile, during this uncharacteristically short sparring bout while all of the students were occupied, the Instructor had quietly made his way inside the main building. He returned with something tucked behind the sash around his waist just in time to see Victor take Reiner’s hand to get back up, insisting that he was alright and that he had just tripped. The young man dusted himself off, and obviously putting on a brave face as he saw the Instructor return, he looked to Reiner and asked:...

Conqueror's Mantle Zelsys First Render Pass

3 - Reality Check Through the Skull

Three knocks on the door: Two, then a short pause, and the third. The code for an injury that needed treatment, but wasn’t an emergency.

A deceptively clear voice rang out from behind the door: “Come in, come in!”

Inside, there was a room with two sections split off by partitions, and another, much bulkier door across from the entryway. Resved’s wrinkled hand stuck out from behind the left-hand partition, waving Victor over.

“Come, come,” came Resved’s voice ag...

Release Schedule Update

I've taken into account the results of polls from here, RR, and the Discord, and decided to shift to a roughly 2k~ bi-daily chapter release schedule. Patreon rewards will be adjusted both to give higher-tier Patrons their money's worth, and to make said rewards work with this new release schedule.

EDIT: After some consideration, I've decided to set the cap at $5 and then expand towards $10 by gradually building up my backlog, as I've done before.

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2 - Habitual Escapism

On his way to the training grounds, Victor stopped by an apothecary to replenish one of the several creams he used for his face. He found himself delayed further by a Kargarian peddler’s stand - one of many traveling merchants who had broken off from the Great Caravan to independently travel Ikesia. Victor had learned to ignore these peddlers, but this one, he just couldn’t ignore, because he sold something the young man hadn’t been able to get his hands on since he’d arrived to this ...

1.5 - Straight From a Pulp

Mid-flight she somehow dug her fingers into the creature’s flesh, flipping it over and slamming it back-first onto the ground, wrestling with it and seemingly trying to stab it using what at a glance looked like a tonfa with a two-pronged, jagged blade on the front, terrible snapping noise and flashes of light issuing from the gap between the prongs.

The way she moved was almost unnatural, flashes of light under her skin not unlike the flashes of lightning within a storm cloud precedi...

Release Scheduling Poll

With the beginning of a third major arc, I'll be able to alter my release pattern without significant issues, so I figured I should ask you all what you would prefer.

In case you haven't noticed the change, Patreon rewards are currently planned to be 5k~ words advance for 1USD Patrons, 7k~ words advance for 3USD, 10k~ for 5USD, 15k~ for 10USD, and 20k~ for 15USD. As already said, they'd be slightly adjusted if the poll turns out in favor of B or C.

1 - Hunt Reminiscence

His weapon was terribly front-heavy to the point of awkwardness, for just below its spearhead it had a blunderbuss, the trigger placed halfway down the haft - it was this was what lent it the name Boarkiller. As he readied his spear and fought through his fear to look for an opening, he took note of the deformed manacles on the beast’s legs, errant chainlinks still hanging from them. It had a brass ring embedded in its flank, a trail of dried blue blood running down from it. Victor recalled...

Conqueror's Mantle Zelsys First Sketch

0.5 - Town Inside a Titan's Ribcage

The sun dawned upon the Town of Arches, its rays filtering down through the eponymous cage of ancient, supermassive ribs that it had been built within, its walls little more than plugs in the gaps between each rib.

A young man dragged himself into the world of the waking, groggily sitting up in his bed as the pains of the previous day’s hunt shot through him, the gash across his back having crusted his bandages to his body like some vile turtle-shell. His eyes drifted towards one of t...

ARC 2 FINAL - Breath of Change

A/N: There it is, final chapter of ARC 2. 326544 words. Man.

I'm taking a month off starting today - 8th April - with the caveat that this isn't a hard break. I intend to begin publishing ARC 3 within this "break period" in order to build up a large advance chapter backlog before public publishing resumes, I just won't be on a hard daily schedule.

Speaking of advance chapters, I will also restructure my Patreon in order to give higher-tier Patrons what they paid for in the form of...

312 - Storm Reactor

A/N: We're pretty much in the final stretch here, I just need a bit more to set up the events of the next book. Sorry for the extra extra delay on this one, this is around the time I normally get done writing on any given day, you guys just normally don't see it due to backlog.

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The Woodsman held the Broken Butcher gingerly in his hands, as if it could shatter at any moment like so much glass. He put...

311 - Swift Recovery

“Well that was fa-” she began, trying to sit up, only for the numerous battle-mended breaks in her ribcage to remind her of their presence; that was not to mention the still-healing wounds of being dismembered and having her heart cut open. Despite that, she still sat up just fine, remarking, “Oh, yep, sure feels like it was too fast a recovery to be true.”

Though her exhaustion quickly faded, wrenching hunger was left behind, a tacit demand for more concrete nutrition to repair...

310 - The Black Judge Has a Sense of Humor

Even now, bloodied and propped up by another, she grinned, by some impossibility exuding the appearance of an untouched, truly victorious warrior. It reminded Ubul of the Emperor, of Xiān Dì, in his younger days- nay, it reminded him of Young Master Tian Feng. That young man from all those centuries ago was an altogether different person to whom he became, a distinction even the Emperor himself had acknowledged in changing his name.

“Every last word,” she said. “A soldier who ha...

309 - How the Mighty Have Fallen

A/N: Patreon chapter early today, no particular reason.

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“ARE YOU SO FOOLISH TO THINK YOUR OWN HAND WILL DO ANY BETTER THAN THE BARBARIC THING YOU CALL A WEAPON?” he questioned, but his words were betrayed by the way he said them. There was no malice there - only a mixture of curiosity and respect, eagerness, even.

“Something tells me you’ll appreciate this,” she grinned...

308 - Dharma

Ubul lunged forward, even now generating force enough to pulverize the ground behind him and anything that stood against him, pulsing with preternatural earthen magicks.

Makhus allowed his instincts to guide him, trusting his armor and his blade, feeling the surging flow of arcane power flood in from the belt, rendering out a series of blinding-white glyphs across his sword’s flat, recursively repeating until his sword was entirely enshrouded in this five-symbol phrase whose meaning M...

307 - Atavism

Two figures stood atop flying swords high in the air, kilometers in the distance, one in white, the other in black.

“How?! Her soul should’ve burst at the seams, burned up to cinders! She should be a fulgurite statue! There’s no conceivable way her foundation…” the Black-robed Brother exclaimed in disbelief as he glared down at the battlefield through his magnifying seal, then turned a narrow, angered gaze upon his sibling. “You. What have you done?�...