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376 - 3 Days [Sturmblitz]

Three days and two nights passed.

Despite his entranced state, to the outside world, Victor never went fully catatonic. Between bouts of screaming and being consumed by inner dragonfire, in the short windows when the throes abated, he made it abundantly clear what he wanted — food. Always food. He devoured a third of his body weight over the course of three days, and consumed about as much Witch’s Brew — she didn’t even bother accounting for the quantity of Viriditas he took in,...

Krahe - Femme Fatale

artist is pappaserho

variant with and without detailed chest

228 - Afterburner [Cherno]

“Can you show me the blueprints of your arm?” she asked, expecting a simple no. To her surprise, Sauer reached up and detached the limb. He tossed it over to Krahe and sat down, leaning on his remaining arm.

One of its external access panels mercifully contained a miniature toolset for servicing and small repairs — something she had made use of many times in her early years. She began dismantling the prosthetic, and found something that at once did and did not make sense. It was c...

227 - Sauer Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Sauer looked around.

“Interesting construct. Remarkably stable. From the looks of this mental space… Yes, this will give us a bit more time.”

“A low-footprint engram should not be this responsive. Not without supporting hardware.”

“And you should not be able to sustain such a high-resolution mental construct without supporting hardware. Perhaps whatever machinery you are connected to also enables me to function in this manner, hm? Ah, but… Who knows. I...

226 - Sauer [Cherno]

The vessel resembled a tanker in general shape alone. Unlike those vessels, it was constructed in a borderline baroque style, and the iconography of the Twin Churches abounded wherever it could fit. Countless guns, harpoons, and armaments of other sorts that Krahe didn’t quite recognize bristled from its hull. A huge wheel revolved in the middle, its diameter amounting to one-third of the vessel’s length. With seven spokes, it clearly imitated the world-wheel in design. Like the world-whe...

225 - Neo Babylonia Pt. 2 [Cherno]

Krahe walked through the door, finding the “restaurant” to be just as she remembered it. Of course, in reality, it had not been here, but visiting that place was her only reason to take a break at this rest stop in particular, and so her mind placed it in the first empty space it would fit. She held a great deal of nostalgia for this place in particular, despite only eating there twice before it was wrecked. Never once had she been able to find a doner kebab quite like this one.

She...

224 - Neo Babylonia [Cherno]

A/N: If you got the amazon release of Cherno Caster Vol. 1, please don't forget to leave a rating or a review. Amazon doesn't have any minimum word count requirements for reviews, and ratings and reviews are even more important there than on RR. That's enough of me, here's the chapter.

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It took Krahe a short while to work out the hovercar’s manual controls, but before long, she had the machine whirring a ...

223 - Memoria [Cherno]

A/N: I deleted the first sentence of this chapter from the end of the previous chapter for better flow

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It was at this point that a door in an alcove swung open, and Casus stepped out. Only, the moment he fell into Krahe’s line of sight, his clothes flickered and changed, adapting to her mental image of how he would look in the fashion of Sector 9 — more specifically, a stereotypical Sector 9 street-samurai. A...

375 - The Guardian Pt. Final

With a furious roar, the great beast bears down upon the Guardian with the full might of its aura as it gapes open its mouths, unhinging their jaws. An emerald blaze wholly envelops the Guardian’s comparatively tiny silhouette, then implodes upon him, running through a spectrum of unearthly colours in the same manner that mundane fire would grow brighter and paler with greater heat. In a flash, the Guardian’s form vanishes, leaving only a darkly iridescent ember. Light rises in the back o...

222 - Twin Return [Cherno]

A/N: Been far too long. Got completely tangled in choice paralysis as to how I wanted to start Vol. 3, plus the final steps leading up to Vol. 1's amzn release.

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Deep underground, a chitinous pod cracked open, segments of its shell rising in a motion akin to the opening of a spider’s fangs. From its fleshy interior, a flood of oily fluid spewed forth, draining away through the grated floor. A gangly f...

374 - The Guardian Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

But… At this point, all the pain doesn’t matter. If anything, the pain combined with the awareness that he should be dead clears his thoughts. The lightning-wrought giant of light glances down at him, and he meets its — meets her — gaze. The Guardian realizes that this is Old Itria, and these are the wretched beasts of the Divine Emperor, but also not. This is a mere memory, passed down from his predecessor. He grips empty air, and a cold octahedron comes into his grasp. Ther...

373 - The Guardian [Sturmblitz]

The Guardian resolutely strikes hammer against anvil, perfectly in rhythm with the sutra he is chanting. His strikes are perfectly paced, perfectly placed, but the metal refuses to bend. His expression is feverish — veins bulge across his forehead and sweat drips from his brow. He brings forth black flame with all his strength, but the steel refuses to even turn the darkest of reds under its heat. Nonetheless he struggles on.

Before him, countless such metal segments lay in disarray. ...

372 - Tribulation Begins [Sturmblitz]

A chamber deep within the Guardian Spire.

Twenty minutes ago, Victor was slowly working his way through an ancient, yet remarkably well-preserves book. Beyond merely centuries-old, it was a historical treatise from the height of the Ankhezian Imperium, mostly pertaining to conflicts in far-off colonies — written in the self-translating Ankhezian trade script, of course. Despite the dry writing style, the subject matter easily matched and even surpassed the most fantastical things Vict...

371 - Dangerous Methods Pt. 3 [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich laughed.

“Please, take mercy on my old bones. That trick I pulled back there was exhausting enough, you want me to take you back and then here again? Then carry out the rite and bring the both of you back again?” he complained, almost visibly withering right before Zel’s eyes.

The old monster dropped the act before Zel could voice her doubt, adding: “Just give me a moment. I do need to rest.”

He brought a bottle of Tengri’s Tears, a smaller sea...

370 - Dangerous Methods Pt. 2 [Sturmblitz]

“You, I, Toza, old Sanger, the mightiest warriors of Borea, the war-orphans forced to scavenge the battlefields, even that Kargarian noblewoman, Arnys Krishorn — we were born as beasts, or else made into beasts in the earliest moments of our lives. Such is our lot,” Kanberich expounded. “Where the likes of Victor possess surpassing talent in certain matters, the only supreme talent afforded to us is our ability to live in violence. Where others must learn it, grip the razor-ember to t...

369 - Dangerous Methods [Sturmblitz]

“What is the risk?” Victor asked, determination audible in his voice, echoing inside Daywolf’s mask.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Kanberich grinned. The madness in his gaze flared, then abated. “I am not a madman, of course there are precautions. But they only go so far. Be not mistaken, your life will be at risk.”

“When is it not?” Zelsys questioned. “He goes back in seclusion, it’s right back into the downward spiral. We can look fo...

368 - The Dragonslayer Flame Method [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich held out his left hand, and within it ignited a flame. From this flame, he sculpted a scene, flicking embers onto the table, illustrating his words as he went. He even went so far as to alter the shade and texture of his flame to give visuals to the idea of someone becoming altered by mere proximity to a dragon descendant.

“This fundamental pillar of my cultivation — this process of “becoming more like a dragon” in the metaphysical sense — is a side effect of the dra...

367 - Exorcism Liquor and Dragonslaying [Sturmblitz]

Kanberich nodded: “You could leave this stuff in a mundane bottle and it would still be good in five hundred years. It’s like a glass droplet — the components balance each-other with enormous force, such that it goes around and becomes completely stable again.”

Thus, Zel brought out her bottle with the Sap of Grinning Death. She put a single drop of the substance into her own cup. The dragonslayer’s eyebrows went up in surprise and recognition.

“...Where did you get th...

366 - Old Dragonslayer's Manse [Sturmblitz]

At a simple gesture of the old dragonslayer’s hand, a smaller spire rose up in the middle, about as tall as a two-story house and no wider than ten meters across. It was nothing more or less than an elevator, and with a few more subtle gestures, they rode down into the spire, perhaps even into the mountain at its base. Zel couldn’t tell — she experienced no sense of velocity during the journey. Inside was not an indoor complex of cramped hallways, but a singular sprawling chamber, set u...

365 - SIEGFRIED [Sturmblitz]

Kanbu led them to a courtyard behind the building. A shaded walkway ran around its perimeter, supported by pillars, with an island of grass in the middle. A statue stood in the middle, bearing in hand a spear. It was nearly identical to the many guardian statues which had played so vital a role during the Blue Moon War. The pedestal was bedecked by a bronze plaque, polished and ageless:

Slayer of dragons near and far

Bearer of a thousand scars...