akasoindustries

218 - To Split a Boulder With a Dagger

Zelsys took up a wide grappler’s stance with her arms held out, the bayonet nestled in the pit of her thumb as it hung onto the pinky by its finger-ring.

The cleaver-arm came crashing down with all the expected speed and force of an immortal machine, almost too fast for even her Homunculus Eye to see.

In a split-second snakes of Fog coiled out of and around Zel’s arms, and she grabbed the cleaver as one would a falling log. One moment Delta’s entire mass had...

217 - Expeditious Trial

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Heavy as its footfalls were, the top-heavy idol that was Delta’s body moved with unnatural grace, only a subtle grinding audible whenever it took a step. Following it up close from behind, Zefaris made out certain details that were inconsistent with its general image of a headless, angularly simplified human male figure. Most notable were the backs of its forearms: each had a groove down the middle that unnervingly reminded Zefaris of the rails that bayonets were ...

216 - Delta

A/N: Apparently it took me a little longer to recover than I expected,  'cause yesterday I got so caught up in getting the writing done that I  forgot to actually post a chapter until it was too late.

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It ticked Zefaris off immediately, and she questioned the subcore as she hesitantly holstered Pentacle, “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you speak as you do, when Sigma spoke in a man...

215 - True Allegiance

To Zel’s surprise she found her blade stopped dead by the crossguard of a strange sword-spear hybrid hewn from blackstone. It wasn’t its wielder's strength that stopped her, but the simple fact the weapon was standing on the ground. She could’ve killed him right then and there, but there was sapience in his body language. He was covered in chitin head to toe, his eyes were covered by characteristic bug domes, but this up close, she could see the completely normal human eyes behind the t...

213/214 - Retribution Equally Unto All/Cavalry

A/N: Missed out yesterday, doubling down today. Might need to take a day or two off soon to deal with some health stuff, but it's a 50/50 right now.

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“Bring retribution equally unto all before me!” the beast-slayer screamed a spontaneous battle cry as she dug her heels in and grabbed her cleaver’s handle, bracing for recoil. Thundercannon!”

Click. Click.

Lightning surging, muscles...

212 - 40:1

They harmlessly brushed across her skin. It was like wearing the maneater’s skin, sewed into a skin-tight coat by the dungeon’s black thread. A moment later, she smashed its head with her gun’s barrel.

In that moment, she felt what she knew to be the Retributive Battery charging. It was a tenuous pressure building behind her right eye, the same one she had felt for a split-second when the statue’s talons pierced her skin. Her vision remained unclouded, yet Zelsy...

211 - Style: Beast

The cyclops elaborated further, “There are so many contradictory fables about Orchid Mantis mutants that one can never know what is true. I’m a little hesitant to believe he was the real thing, even with what he did. What he said.”

“That ridiculous, huh?” Zel chuckled.

Zef nodded, “Yeah. Unassisted flight, immortality, completely nulling the abilities of other Fog-breathers, destructive power ten times what Ubul could bring to bear. Most likely a mix of official propag...

210 - Death-rattle Prophecy

Cleaver in hand, she walked right up and squatted down in front of him, looking into his motionless face. She was ready to cut him in half the moment he moved, but she was also curious. This one didn’t quite give off the same crusty feeling as the other bugs. Even the Red Mantis had a faint trace of it, but this one didn’t exude venom, only tranquility.

His eyes shuddered open. Pure white, with a single dot each for a pupil. Smiling, he looked up at her.

“They weren’t lyin...

209 - Orchid Mantis

“I’ll have to figure out a use for that Fulgur when I’m not close enough to use the saw, but I’ve got some ideas,” Zel said as she rose to her feet, pulling Zef with her.

Zef chuckled, half-jokingly questioning, “What, Thundercannon not enough for you?”

“You never know,” Zel responded as they passed into the intermediary chamber. “It might run out of ammo, or get jammed, or I might do something stupid and fuck up my arm too bad to work the lever.”

The c...

208 - Engine of Retribution

Flashing a smile so sweet it was unpleasant, the man backed up towards the door, Hands still held up, “I’ll tell them you’re shellshock-ridden conscripts.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t bother calling a guardsman, too much attention,” the alchemist said, to which the sleazy one just quietly opened the door and slipped out.

“A-are you going to...?” the smaller one asked with the voice of a young girl, clearly fearing for her life.

“Kick you lot out of my fuckin’ store,...

207 - Sleazebag's Gambit

The bottle slipped from his grip and came spinning through the air, to which Makhus caught it with his free hand. He pulled the cork with his teeth and took a swig, maintaining eye contact with the intruders’ sleazy leader all along.

The mass of muscle thrashed and struggled, even as Sig grabbed his arms and pulled them back so forcefully one could see the shoulder joints stretching, threatening to dislocate. Sigmund even kicked the knife away, well out of reach. Makhus recognized tha...

206 - Home Invasion

Putting it away securely in a cabinet he let out a sigh of relief, yet calm didn’t come. His containment glyph tattoo was still red, ever so slightly.

“No choice but to ride it out, I guess,” he sighed inwardly, internal tension building in the absence of something to focus it towards. For a while he did his best to calm down, even considered going through the extra hassle of doing Rubedo Purgation on himself, but… He couldn’t stop himself wanting to ...

205 - Opus

Then, the worst of it passed whilst his tattoos turned blood-red a third of the way from his wrists to his elbows. He was still far, far more heated than he would’ve liked to be, but there was no turning back now. In his current headspace, Makhus was absolutely certain it would be better to just use Sensory Enhancement at its full potency to burn the excess Rubedo rather than try to perform Rubedo Purgation on himself.

“S.S.S.S. Arts: Sensory Enhanc...

204 - Anemic Samples

It was named “Daytime Dust” for the sunstreaks that its pure form left on damn-near anything it touched. The other name - “Yellow Snow” - was a low-brow term insinuating the Citrinitas used in its production was extracted from urine, even though urine contained only trace amounts of the aforementioned essentia.

It was popular with scholars and alchemists in the North, but rarely issued to soldiers due to the fact doses beyond the functional minimum caused semi-euphoric effects t...

203 - Need-to-Know Basis

It was a relatively small hive, just a glorified blockade really, but the extermination was still a mess. Focusing mostly on covering the Inquisitor’s advance, he had to keep an eye on her and make sure nothing got into her blind spots. The wordless exclamations of his song quickly became the ever-familiar word that accompanied his right-legged kicks: “BUNKER!”

He could see the stake momentarily heating to molten-orange whenever it came out, feeling its heat spreading out through ...

New Discord Link

I realized I had unintentionally made the previous link temporary. This one won't expire.

https://discord.gg/TX5F7x8hUw

202 - Iconoclasm

The artist just got back to me out of the blue with the completed illustration, so posting resumes as normal. 

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Zefaris couldn’t help feeling concerned when she saw Zel so nonchalantly step into that macabre contraption, even if nothing seemed amiss for the first twenty or so seconds. The needles were huge, sure, but she didn’t seem unwell, until her eyes suddenly went blank moments before t...

201 - Idol of Retribution

It faded, then a new wisp came forth.

Azothic Trait Purged:

Cannibalism

Then, another, this time faster.

Azothic Trait Purged:

Hyper-Accelerated Metabolism

And another.

And another.

It sped up so abruptly and so significantly, that it flickered by faster than either of them could reasonably read. Zelsys managed to make out the general gist of it, the message being clear: The dungeon had excised the vast majori...

200 - To Die For Tarnished Steel

“How convenient that we’ve met like this!” he sleazed, barely able to suppress the singsong western accent, “The uh… The city quarter’s militia master has given the order to confiscate any military surplus weapons, and we’ve gotten a tip that you might be storing some war-knives and sparklocks.”

Makhus had to hold back a chuckle, as he knew that Willowdale’s militia was only divided by city quarters for the purposes of defending the town from outside threats, and that ...

199 - The Alchemist's Heart

When he stepped in to take a look at its contents, Makhus knew the governor hadn’t exaggerated a single word of his claims, and he felt like a child in a candy store.

Within the box, there were recesses padded with pure white Fog-infused silk which gleamed iridescently in the light. In the largest recess, taking up some half of the box’s total volume, there was a flask of four necks and shaped like a human heart, densely etched with very particular, smooth-flowing glyphs both within...

198 - Hidden Vault

Makhus furrowed his brow and nodded. Slowly, exaggeratedly.

“I get it,” he said. “However, are you aware of the fact that I do not have the supplies to produce more complex restoratives and performance enhancers? We’ve scarcely even re-opened the store.”

The governor grinned, “I have already sourced everything necessary to produce ten times as much as I need. Deliver at all, your payment will be three-hundred and twenty gelt per dose. Keep delivering, and I will arrang...

197 - The Alchemist Meets the Governor

The heavy doors opened with nary a sound as one of the guards opened it and the visitors entered. Crovacus felt conflicting emotions flooding through his exhaustion-numbed mind, first joy at the sight of the very investigator he’d assigned to find him a competent alchemist, second a resigned sense of apprehension when the second man entered and he realized it was the alchemist.

“This guy, of course…” he sighed inwardly, that stubbly face and that razor-sharp, unflinchin...

196 - Perpetual Overwork

He’d nervously chewed his cigar for so long it had gone out, so he just tossed it aside and pulled open one of his desk drawers, retrieving from within it a cigar wrapped in an additional outer layer of blood-red seals. Biting off the end and spitting it into the trash, the tip of it glimmered with emerald-green droplets. In a bid to perhaps reinforce his own ego or maintain appearances to the lavish empty office that spread out all around him, the governor used his abilities in Aethermancy...

195 - Ongoing Tribulations

A/N: I'll be taking a couple days off during which there will be no  chapters. I'd say two, at most three. I'm not sick or burnt out or  anything of the sort, I just want to take a little time to de-stress and  think about the macro of the plot going forward. I also want to give my  illustrator some time to finish a piece that I absolutely insist on  posting alongside a certain scene, and I think this is better than  stalling with filler.

I'll see you again...

194 - Vulgar Display of Power

Alcerys purged the thoughts of lashing out from her mind, as she had done before more times than she cared to count. Instead, she started signing out questions.

“Injuries?”

“Uh…” the homunculus drawled, even raising an arm and stretching. She suddenly gritted her teeth and stopped, putting her arm down as she remarked, “Oh yeah, a couple broken ribs, got tossed around. The gate fixed ‘em up so I should be fine in a bit. Seems like the gate just makes smaller injuries...

Discord Server

Long overdue, since I figured it just wouldn't ever get any use, but I might as well make one.

Patrons get a special role and a private channel, that's about it for now. I'll be adding the invite to the RoyalRoad A/N.

https://discord.gg/2T5katFW

193 - Disturbing Implications

Chop by chop, slash by slash, limb by limb, she dismembered the corpse, and came to a realization, one that explained the gigantism and reduced mental state. This wasn’t a Locust Noble, at least not the normal kind. For one, his insides were relatively normal, it wasn’t just his blood that looked normal. The insides of his limbs were relatively normal, save for the utter absence of even the smallest deformities, beyond those caused after the fact. That wouldn’t have been telling on its ...

192 - Tower of Meat

It was exceedingly bulky and long, easily large enough to at the very least smash her organs to pulp on impact, were she so lucky as to take a hit without it cleaving through her armor. But to him, it was as proportional as her own sword was to her. So it was that the Inquisitor pulled her own blade free in turn, acting as if she were going to duel the giant bugman honorably. She wasn’t that stupid or arrogant, but he didn’t know that.

The Black Swordsman slammed his shield on the g...

191 - Re:Swordsman

After she killed a few locusts, she decidedly knew it would take her longer than twenty seconds to deal with the remaining locusts, so she just made her way to the hive and leapt atop it with a lungful of Fog so she could dismiss her Fog tendrils one by one, catching each gun in turn and stowing it into her armored coat. Then, it was back to the extermination.

Warrior after warrior, drone after drone, the Inquisitor wiped out the rest of this rabble. The greatest discomfort she felt all...

190 - Incantation

Into the next chamber. A long corridor, blocked off by a single hive, from whose doors already poured a crowd of drones and warriors. Too many to safely dispose of just using the flaming sword, even with its greatly extended burn time. Instead of even considering direct combat, she opened up her coat and pulled out all of her sparklocks pair by pair - eight in total, each richly engraved. Two in her hands, two under her arms, four under her elbows.

It was situations like this that gave ...