I still wasn’t sure why Pryte had been so upset by the roof collapse in the pavilion. They had been bound to make a few mistakes yesterday. Most of them had no idea about construction work, and Alex wasn’t in any shape for heavy labor. The important thing was we had managed to get it fixed up, and now, only a day and a half after the ninth floor, we had a new building that could double as a r...
2025-03-23 21:43:05 +0000 UTC View Post
That fact that Pryte was even doing this was kind of insane, sure, he had been bored with his job, but he was also comfortable. Just because the restless nagging of adventure had started to poke at him the last few hundred years or so didn’t mean he was likely to give in anytime soon. And then Dave with that damned insignia just had to show up.
Someday, he would need to ma...
2025-03-22 07:14:55 +0000 UTC View Post“John how are you feeling,” I asked the moment I was back into the waiting room. The smile on his face was nearly reaching his ears, which was more than I had seen on him since he was a baby. Was it just pleasant to form a core when you didn’t have a bunch of experimental situations happening because of it?
“I didn’t realize the feeling of being able to do anythin...
2025-03-21 03:40:23 +0000 UTC View Post“Monster up ahead, get ready!” Rabyn yelled after several minutes of running, causing everyone to skid to a stop. I spotted what he had already seen: there was a giant blue blob-like creature sitting at the bottom of the path.
“Maud, hit it with lightning, I’m going to do the same,” Elicec said before they both unleashed arcs of electricity into the creature, causi...
2025-03-19 03:59:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I woke up the next morning to find Rabyn, Maud, and John in the kitchen waiting for me. “Morning,” John said as I walked in.
“What’s up?” I asked, yawning and wiping some sleep from my eyes, covering which likely hid the surprise on my face at their gathering. We only had a couple of hours before we were planning to leave for the Arena. So this seemed a bit od...
2025-03-18 04:32:00 +0000 UTC View Post
“So, anyone wanna tell me what went wrong?” Mel said once all of us were collected, healed, and mostly conscious, sitting at a series of newly constructed tables. Only Trolke had not stayed for this conversation. Immediately after his healing, he wanted to get started on a building. Apparently Pryte had given him orders for a meeting area. Personally, I wanted to know how...
“Alright, the idea here is I want ya all to capture every one of these balls, intact,” Mel yelled before he tossed thirty green balls that looked better suited for a tennis match than whatever we were doing into the air. “Oh, also, they change shape and fly pretty fast!” I watched as they all started shifting and vanishing into the trees. How the hell were we going to ...
“As long as it gets us free from the prison you keep us in. We wish to experience the world again!” one of the two orbs said.
“I will even offer you my knowledge of channeling. Just let us be free!” the second said. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Neither of them sounded hostile exactly, but dungeon core voices were notably lacking in inflection when outside bo...
2025-03-15 05:35:55 +0000 UTC View Post
I was able to push myself to level three thirty-nine, not far enough for another fortification yet, but further than I had been before, with both a more powerful primary core, and a fancy secondary core in the form of Corey. Compared to how I had felt on the previous Arena floor, it was like night and day. I was confident I could hold my own again on the next Arena level, but ...
Mana flooded through my system, far more controlled than before. It wasn’t even Corey’s doing yet, the fortification itself had completely repaired my channels, no, it had done better than that. They were stronger than before. My core rank was unchanged, as expected, but my entire channeling system felt far stronger than before. I forced my eyes open, letting the light stream back in, spottin...
2025-03-12 02:25:12 +0000 UTC View Post
“Go, I’ll catch up!” Pryte yelled before I even had a chance to question the scream. I took off at a run, pushing my body as fast as I could. I figured we had walked maybe two miles into the woods, and it took me less than five minutes to get myself back to my house. I was pretty sure that meant I was pushing past the world record level there. At least that part of my body s...
After spotting Elody, I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to interrupt her. Both she and Mel were in front of the cloudwood, eyes closed, and surprisingly for Elody, floating. Mel’s colors were slowly shifting, in sync with different color clouds, that a gentle breeze was moving around the tree. He looked more and more at peace the longer the tree was here. I was glad to see something had finall...
2025-03-08 10:24:34 +0000 UTC View Post
“Hey, Mom, yeah, Dad’s here… Yeah, we can do a speaker call one second,” Alex said. If the cell networks were back up that likely meant some things were starting to get straightened out again. Was that just in the immediate of the United States, or did it spread worldwide? And just how much had I managed to piss off the acting president? Maybe I’d get lucky, and they found someone s...
“Gathering?” I asked, not entirely sure what he was talking about again. The idea of having some sort of get-together for people like us seemed like an incredibly idiotic idea, considering the warning both of them had made sure to give me. The longer I was here, the less comfortable I was with any of this. Just because we had a relationship with dungeon cores in common di...
I woke up the next day without my usual sense of dread permeating my brain. It was a welcome change. From the lack of smells, it was possible I was even the first person awake. That meant it was a good time to go track down wherever Chip had slept last night and get an early start on my simulator plans. While I had no regrets at how we spent the day before I needed to get these runs done qui...
Below is a short story with an open ending I wrote for a Shadow Light competition. This will likely be slowly expanded on in the future.
Chapter 1: There Would Have Been a Fight
“Can someone please turn that light off? James, please, where are you?” The man said loudly as the blinding light shone down on him. Wait, where was he? The man, with eyes now opened, looked around at the small glade he was lying in, clad only in the pajamas he had worn ...
2025-03-01 08:43:14 +0000 UTC View Post
All thoughts of having a quick conversation on my discovery became lost the moment the tree settled into its new spot. Its bark and leaves briefly shimmered before small clouds appeared around its upper branches. This was followed by a gentle breeze seeming to rise up from those clouds as the air itself changed. It was a subtle shift, and if I hadn’t been running on high an...
After that conversation, Pryte and Elody left me alone to do my own planning. Pryte wanted to check on the new equipment and make sure Mel was doing okay. Elody had promised Maud she would give her some advice on her leveling up situation. This meant I was able to consider a few things that I hadn’t tried yet. For one thing, could I bring Corey into the simulations with me? They...
“So what is being delivered from those prizes anyway?” I asked. I had no real idea what they could contain, considering apparently the orcs had won Earth in level one prize. So it seemed likely they could be just about anything.
“Hard to say, but if we get lucky, we might get some special equipment,” Rabyn answered as he walked to a picnic table that wasn’t the...
2025-02-26 23:25:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Not that I had ever really doubted our decision to save Glorp, but if I had the moment he showed up and returned us the favor with a save from the monster that had gotten the drop on me and disabled Corey, I would have doubted no more. Thanks to his help getting to the end our path was no longer in doubt. Sure, it was slow going, at least by what I assume had become his view ...
Maud
Maud wasn’t sure what to make her new life. It was somehow both her favorite dream and worst nightmare. She was glad her parents hadn’t been alive to see it. Sure, she had gotten some of her wildest wishes fulfilled, she could do magic. She was off in another world, competing in something she didn’t entirely understand. She was surrounded by all k...
Cecile
When Cecile had first spotted Dave, looking barely alive and out of his mind in the Spire his initial thought had been to help him. While most of the species he had seen over the last week had been brand new to him, humans weren’t. A couple had passed through his village just last year, working on mapping the planet, or so they said. He wasn’t...
In my standard reread of the day's chapter before posting, I decided I didn't like how it sounded, so I'm reworking a bunch of it. It may be as late as early tomorrow (but still probably tonight).
We've cleared the first Royal Road metric for a bonus chapter as well, so I will be posting that tomorrow.
Connie was proud of herself, extraordinarily proud of herself. Gramps was going to be over the moon when she got word to him that the plan had worked. They had made contact and none of them were the wiser for it. They all thought it was just a combination of luck and a Spiral judge that had pushed them together, and that was for the best. It was important they were in the dark unt...
Rabyn looked around the room the moment the door had closed. The item he had to bring to the finish had already appeared in the next room, but he wanted to be sure there was nothing worthwhile hiding in here first. It was always possible, and this would likely be one of the few places no one thought to search. A gleam of something metallic caught his eye, peaking from between two of t...
2025-02-20 00:24:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Truth be told, Elody wasn’t entirely sure why she had decided to join Dave. Sure, she had given him some reasons that were entirely true now, but they weren’t from the start. There had been something different about that strange man the moment she had met him that had caught her insight eyes’ attention. Reality rippled around him in a way she had only seen a few times before. Her mentor...
By the end of the second day of training, Maud and Glorp had both gotten a pretty good handle on using their new abilities, especially in regards to fighting each other with them. I, on the other hand, had managed nothing. Despite Elody’s thoughts on the matter, I was nowhere near being able to control the new soul mana flows, and any attempt to use my mana orbs quickly turned into a disa...
“Alright so we skip the class for now then. Maud any idea on a mana orb?” I asked, focusing the conversation back onto the here and now. I decided I’d worry about faction wars later when Pryte explained to me more about them.
“Oh, that’s easy, give me one of those elemental ones. I have plans!” she said with a devious smile crossing her lips.
“What exac...
2025-02-15 01:38:26 +0000 UTC View Post“The choice may be harder for Maud, but I think I’m already sold on this Combat Rogue. I’ve been eying it since the moment Mel identified it anyway. Mixing that with my courier class is going to do wonders for my battlefield mobility,” Glorp said as he looked at the list of class orbs we had available. The final count was a little over six hundred identified and a few strange ...
2025-02-13 23:02:08 +0000 UTC View Post“Before you start, Glorp already told me. Luckily since the squad still isn’t full, adding Maud to it is simple enough. What I am worried about, though, is you. We’re nearing two weeks of time used up, and you’ve regressed in terms of what you can do. I was kind of counting on you to pull off something amazing on that tenth floor,” Pryte said as we walked toward the ba...
2025-02-13 00:09:34 +0000 UTC View Post