akasoindustries

237 - Return to Sender

It seemed that she was, if the Fog that shrouded her fist was anything to go by. Even the Mantis didn’t seem like she wanted to risk trying to take that opportunity, perhaps waiting to see if the beast-slayer would just get made into paste.

The Fog-drunk slayer met the colossus’ punch with her own. Bright light flashed from the point of contact to the sound of a thunderous crack, and then… Nothing. She stood unmoved, and the black bug’s fist had been stopped.

But then, The...

New Emperor WIP

The illustrator didn't like how the first iteration was turning out in the painting stage so he decided to start over.

236 - Organized Chaos

Boom. The barrier’s interior was filled with colossal pressure and fire, the majority of its rune-stones exploding into shards and dust in rapid sequence. A considerable splash of CP-T was forced out through the gap in the moments before the barrier failed and flickered out. Right into the hole in that large hive’s ceiling, prompting the ground to tremble and a foreboding tremor to originate from the mega-hive.

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235 - Dispelling With Explosives

While the Mantis went off on her rant, Zelsys would occasionally cut in with a brief, snide remark or snap back at her to keep her going. The red one held the barest minimum of her focus, while she plotted a path around the barrier to its weak point. It was around this point that the others caught up, and Zelsys had a realization. It was a farce. A play to buy time. She felt vitriol from the Mantis, sure, but there was also fear, fear and tension that alleviated each time she took another bre...

234 - Triumvirate

The moment Zelsys stepped out into the chamber proper, the feelers that parted the Mantis’s hair whipped about and she reached up to her face, removing something before she turned around on a heel. It turned out to be some disgusting biomechanical inhaler mask, the mouthpiece a shaped sucker with mucosa visible on the inside. Its fleshy interior undulated alongside the tube as iridescent, Fog-like gas seeped out of the device. The Red One’s mouth contorted into a grin, and her eyes grabbe...

233 - Breach and Clear

A/N: The next scene has been taking much longer to work out than I expected. As such, there won't be a chapter tomorrow.

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“You’re not throwin’ all of ‘em through the gate,” Strol answered, but he still pulled a grenade and a phial from his backpack. “One, maybe two, but any more’ll be too much. That, plus the fact that even twelve of ‘em wouldn’t be enough to blow up the queen for s...

232 - The Gate, The Key, The Path

While she waited for the Fog vortex to form, she followed the others to the to-be location of the new Fog Gate. It was funny how quickly the dungeon desensitized one to displays like the one she had just participated in, even if the actual verbal exchange had very real meaning. Most of this didn’t even feel real, as if…

“Say, does it feel to anyone else like everything down here is only mostly real?” she asked out loud, just as she caught up and dropped the knife into the vortex...

231 - Proxy

At the mention of a Fog Gate, there sounded a not-so-distant scream, a single word in Pateirian that sounded rather much like “No!”

The chamber’s lightgems quickly began turning red, the doors’ glyphs lighting up in that very same sanguine colour before they slammed open to the chittering of uncountable feet from behind them. The chamber nearly instantly swarmed with every type of locust they had encountered up until this point, from lowly Drones through Warriors, Spitters, Beet...

230 - Curses

Unsure how to dispose of the potentially hazardous charge, Zel decided to simply shunt all of it into the Butcher and let it do what it would. She expected it to just fire up particularly intensely, perhaps spit uncontrolled arcs of lightning, but no such thing occurred. There was a sudden flowing sensation through her sword-arm as the pressure behind her eye vanished, the blade shuddered in her grip, and then fell silent. When she looked upon it in confusion, she found that a small portion o...

229 - Tidebreaker

In perfect alignment, the two-row firing line barked a wordless response and all hell broke loose; hundreds of quills flew down the corridor, loosed in such a tightly timed sequence as to create a continuous flow.

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By the time the robed locust barked his command, Zelsys had already begun engine breathing.

“Style: Beast!” she invoked when the locusts shouted their response, holding up the Bu...

Divine Emperor Sketch

I would've held off on posting any version of this artwork until one of the cast got a look at some portrayal of the Emperor, but I figure a description from someone who has seen him was be enough to justify showing it.

228 - Killzone

He proceeded to tip the bottle over while pressing it to his mouth and used the vortex to down the whole thing in one go. It slipped from his grip and shattered on the stone beneath, yet the noise was drowned by the cogworks.

It only took until the inevitable burp for his facial hair to begin smoldering and his Brass Eye to take on the infernal glow of hot metal, at which point he regarded everyone present before settling on the Spearman and barking, “The fuck’re you standin’ arou...

227 - Cogworks

The group found themselves treading a precarious staircase that spiraled down, each of them occasionally gazing out into the nothingness that surrounded them. There was no light down here, everything was consumed by an ever-present grey Fog that made it feel as though this place truly was an emptiness outside normal existence. And yet, every once in a while they could catch brief glimpses of distant structures so magnitudinous and empyrean that the mind struggled to comprehend.

Down and...

226 - Gestalt Kaleid

That self-same thrumming buzz washed over her once more, this time utterly consuming all other sensation within and without, and Zelsys found herself motionless. She sat stone-still, her mind filled by the sight of words in an ancient script and the sound of an equally ancient voice reading them out loud. A deep, wizened voice, so natural it felt like it was this place’s builder personally speaking to her. Even still she could not understand the words, and even still she instinctively knew ...

225 -Dead King's Oracle

A/N: If things go to plan I'll put up the second advance chapter later today.

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The outermost ring contained myriad flickering points, each of which branched off into a dazzling blur of glowing pathways that shifted about and changed in number the longer one looked at them. It felt like the more one tried to untangle the webway, the more complex and tangled it became. However, one pattern could be dis...

224 - Septagon

A/N: Spent most of today sneezing uncontrollably and blowing my nose, likely an allergic reaction to a speck of dust or a hair or someshit. Whenever this gets me it's at least a full day down the toilet where it's a struggle to do anything at all, let alone write. This means high likelihood of no chapter tomorrow, unless it magically subsides real soon.

Also apologies for the lack of a second advance chapter, I wrote a pretty big chunk and then realized I had to move stuff around and fi...

223 - Black Missive

Before she could even think of an answer, a familiar sensation twanged through her gut. A moment later, she noticed the subtle sound of a Fog Gate coming awake and of people passing through. By the time she turned her head to look, she saw the Inquisitor and Strolvath striding into the chamber, the gate already fading behind them.

Her mind raced with thoughts of quickly, concisely, and clearly bringing across that the two Locust Nobles were allies, but… There was no hostility to be se...

222 - Cultural Differences

“For your second question, think of it this way: The world is an island, the dungeon is a boat, and the Core is both the captain as well as the tarred rope keeping water from flooding in. Without the Core, the whole thing floods and sinks. Your third question connects to this; when something sinks, it makes waves. The Emperor thinks the waves of a Dungeon sinking will be tall enough to breach the blackwall and let him in.”

Zel found it genuinely surprising that she got a concise and...

221 - Just Communication

A/N: It's pretty plausible that there won't be a chapter tomorrow. I'm good  and nothing is going on, I just feel the need to give the upcoming  chapters some extra time to cook if they need it, since we're  approaching the end of this arc.

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In the center of the black orb, a bead of shimmering white light formed. It darted to the surface, moving about in place of a pupil as Zefaris loo...

220 - Philosopher's Eye

A more than cursory look showed that the Caster and Spearman were present, they kept to themselves to the furthest degree possible. They’d already raised a number of floor pillars into an impromptu mini-chamber off in the corner, with only a single-pillar gap for a doorway.

Zel immediately walked over to the projection glyph altar, grasping its control handle and willing a few pillars to rise next to it so they’d have a measure of privacy, though near enough to the two bugmen to see...

219 - Speedloader

The golem seemed to take the hint, adding one last comment, “Put it in once you’ve got some down time, good idea. It usually takes a while to get used to one of these, so just don’t use it too much early on and you’ll be good. Now…”

Delta looked over to Zelsys, raising his left hand in a prompt to make her choice. She genuinely couldn’t think of anything in particular she wanted for herself at that very moment, but she did have an idea. Before she would put her idea into w...