James looked at the spot where a second ago stood a group of knights and grumbled as he retracted all the shadows he had spread. He could feel the only people left were those that had been surveying him for days and his workers, and although he was ready to fight off any opportunist that might try their hand now it seemed highly unlikely for anyone to try anything now that he was here.
James began to return to the warehouse, but on the way, he stopped by the unmoving black body lying on...
2023-01-15 23:09:41 +0000 UTC
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Narrated by Thomas Miller.
2023-01-10 15:54:41 +0000 UTC
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The warehouse shook as the explosion washed over its entrance, and the workers inside had to cover their ears and close their eyes to spare their poor senses from the effects of the detonation, all lying on the ground after they had been pushed further away from the detonation point by their bosses. At least, the mundane workers.
Four humanoids, with clothes and skins on the border between black and dark grey, emerged from the central room of the warehouse, just as the explosion ended t...
2023-01-09 15:31:34 +0000 UTC
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Narrated by Thomas Miller.
2023-01-05 18:19:38 +0000 UTC
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Narrated by Thomas Miller.
2023-01-05 18:18:52 +0000 UTC
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It had been a week now since they had all been recruited by the newest face on the Black Block - not that he actually had a face, so far as they knew. They had all been looking for work, most of them had dropped by his shop at least once to see if they weren't hiring, and after the little gathering they were invited to and their respective interviews, they were the lucky few who made the cut. And, truth be told, they were a weird bunch.
Bob, the stupidly tall frogman with muscles that w...
2023-01-01 22:24:00 +0000 UTC
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Atop a relatively impressive building in the slums, in a much better state than its neighbors, was the office of the man who'd call himself the number one expert in runes this side of the country. Whether that title was true was questionable, but what was certain was that no one in Zalcien could ever hope to rival Runar in that field.
For once the man of elven descent wasn't drinking tea or handling the mountain of paperwork on his desk. No, under the sunny sky of this beautiful day the...
2022-12-24 16:34:42 +0000 UTC
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Here's the new cover! Made by gravemud on Tumblr. https://gravemud.tumblr.com/
It'll officially replace the old one next week.
2022-12-19 18:00:06 +0000 UTC
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James took in a deep breath and readied himself in a fencer's pose, his extended right arm holding a dark blade, his left at his back, and his legs spread in such a way his feet formed an angle, and suddenly thrust forward to pierce his opponent's heart, only for a familiar black humanoid to step back before swatting away at his blade with its own black sword. James stepped back and turned to the side before slashing at his opponent's arm, the faceless dark thing lifting back its weapon at an...
2022-12-18 17:03:36 +0000 UTC
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Dane shivered in their hospital bed.
They couldn't remember how long it had been since they first woke up in these very sheets with a cast over their right leg, but they were sure it was too long.
For a child who loved to run and jump around in the slums, being stuck like this was one of the most harrowing experiences possible, and as a homeless orphan living in the slums, they had pretty high standards! Really, in recent memory, the only things worse than that had been Igne putti...
2022-12-11 18:17:05 +0000 UTC
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Greetings! If you kept an eye on the info I release, you might recall there was a project to make an audiobook of Silhouette.
Goods news and bad news.
The bad news is, we won't be able to release a full audiobook on Audible anytime soon. Voice acting is work, and the voice actor willing to work with me is already doing me a big favor by offering rates much lower than the standard in the profession, but the simple reality is that it's still a lot of money.
The good news...
2022-12-11 14:15:43 +0000 UTC
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Greetings! If you've kept checking the Royal Road releases you should know that I have been looking for an artist for a while now, and I'm very happy to say I finally found one who took the job to make a new cover!
The artist in question is Gravemud! Check out their gallery to see how the final piece might look like.
This here is a first sketch, made by modifying my original one and adding in new elements, namely...
2022-12-09 15:05:21 +0000 UTC
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Although James had been very tempted to stick around for his new employees' first day of work, he reasoned it would be more detrimental than beneficial. The whole point of the operation was for potential enemies to see the warehouse as the easier target, and for potential spies to feel confident observing and maybe sabotaging it. His new workers might feel weird and uncomfortable if he hung around, even hidden. Besides, his infused could handle the situation. The goblin shaman and the werewol...
2022-12-04 20:54:06 +0000 UTC
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After a very long and very draining day spent interviewing more and more eccentric and or desperate slum dwellers looking for work in his newly acquired and modified warehouse, James barely held himself back from slamming his head onto the desk he had been using. The notes he had taken did help filter away the profiles he wanted absolutely nothing to do with, but he still had more prospective recruits than he could afford to hire.
Let's just try to think about the ones I liked the b...
2022-11-27 17:17:16 +0000 UTC
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Through one of the many black one-way windows, James, glued to the ceiling, looked at the people gathered before the warehouse and readied himself. His infused had quickly finished installing the new wooden panels to form new walls, and as far as he was concerned the infused planks and nails they had used were as solid as the rest of the warehouse after its little makeover. However, having a building and furnishing and trapping it were three very different things. It had taken a couple of day...
2022-11-18 18:32:06 +0000 UTC
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James dug into the earth, once more excavating an underground passage between the sewers and one of his bases. Tentacles as hard as steel pierced the solid material before him before elongating and throwing it back, a task made easier by the fact he was currently only a bunch of wriggling tentacles with no body, each limb uniquely doing its part, with the middle ones not only passing the debris to those after them but also infusing the rubble and condensing and fusing it, reducing the size of...
2022-11-08 18:44:05 +0000 UTC
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James was very tempted to rub his chin with a tentacle, but staying stoic was probably better for his reputation.
"And you say this warehouse has only recently come into your possession?"
The sleazy salesman who had brought them here made one of the fakest smiles James had ever seen.
"Why yes! Why, my poor uncle died of a tragic Sickler attack, and I wound up inheriting this magnificent building. Does it not fit each of your wishes?"
James hummed as he...
2022-11-02 17:43:23 +0000 UTC
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James took a deep breath - or rather, mimicked the action since he had no lung or respiratory tract - and focused on the target in front of him.
He was back in the sewers lair, three days after Pierce Evil's attack. After that Blake Black had left members of Mischief finally arrived, James had them discreetly guard the shop while Larry, Barry, Jeffrey, and Mark got to enjoy a nice day off. Although Soluble's former goons were initially supposed to act as the brothers' bodyguards, recent...
2022-10-29 17:05:34 +0000 UTC
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Zalcien was, in the grand scope of things, a forgettable place. A city large enough to be considered one of the core members of the Alliance of City-States, but far too small to be of any importance. It had its vote when it came to the presidency, but some of the otherwise smaller cities and villages that did not were more famous and richer, to the point that in past few years many would have debated over Zalcien's right to keep its position as one of the fifty city-states had it not been for...
2022-10-21 17:11:38 +0000 UTC
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Up on top of a building in the slums of Zalcien stood an open office, home to one of the many members of the cabal of criminal mages known as Wicked Witchcraft, though who distinguished himself from the rest via a great knowledge of runes and a close relationship with the strongest and most well-known member of the group, for this was Runar Arthen's office.
The elvish man was sitting at his desk, enjoying the comfort of a leather seat as he reviewed the progress of his rune business and...
2022-10-14 19:33:15 +0000 UTC
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Sarah and the others were sitting on white couches - Elaimant had their own due to their size, Kopper and Glicer shared, and Sarah and Scareowl had agreed they were more comfortable with each having their own rather than sharing - set up in one of the many communal areas made available to the Hero trainees by the Union. The room had a really nice and cozy atmosphere, with dark red wallpaper with thin grey stripes and small black lily patterns, with really nice wooden flooring. A large crystal...
2022-10-09 16:21:30 +0000 UTC
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Sarah was on the verge of banging her head on her desk.
In the official Hero Union trainee white full-body suit, the short, lithe ginger girl watched in despair as the Legion teaching them got ready to press the remote it used to control its presentation and present another slide. Judging from the groans around her, she wasn't the only one. She spared a look at her fellow trainees and took in the sight of the even smaller redhead Glicer Glitter looking in horror at their mechanical inst...
2022-10-02 19:28:48 +0000 UTC
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Today was a weird day for the people of the slums of Zalcien living near the Black Block. A troop of thugs and a few mages led by a trio of knights, chief of which was Pierce Evil, one of the most important subordinates of Runar, the enchantment specialist of Wicked Witchcraft and notable crime lord, had arrived on the block and attacked one the latest shops around, a place owned by a newcomer named Silhouette, and the battle had been quite eye-catching. Bolts of black electricity, explosions...
2022-09-24 19:12:24 +0000 UTC
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As thirty men and women charged toward his shop, led by a pair of helmetless knights in iron armor and a very eye-catching one wearing golden jousting equipment while a couple of mages stood in the back ready to fire spells to help the horde, a single thought went James' head.
I can't believe I think we can win.
Who would have known that after being killed by a single assailant with a simple knife, James would find himself looking upon a charging horde of people wielding ...
2022-09-19 21:26:34 +0000 UTC
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The slums of Zalcien had always been tumultuous, from their dark origins at the tentacles of an aberrant monstrosity that forever doomed its inhabitants and their descendants to a life of pariahs to the daily struggles of the people dealing with gangs and monsters. Still, there were a few places where one could say they felt relatively safe, the greatest of which was the Black Bank, a remarkable building in this ocean of poverty that represented the indifferent acceptance and protection of a ...
2022-09-13 19:32:25 +0000 UTC
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As soon as he had stepped into the Black Bloc, James had been fully aware someone was following him. That was the plan, after all, and why he appeared as Silhouette in the first place rather than his more discrete self, doubly so since he had completed the underground tunnel connecting the shop to the sewer lair. With his enhanced senses he quickly noticed the small kid that had begun to shadow him, and it didn't take a genius to realize that it was probably one of Guy's protégés. They were...
2022-09-07 21:16:38 +0000 UTC
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On the second floor of a decrepit abandoned building on Zalcien's Black Block, Carn the thug opened the door to the room he and his friend Gaston were in, torturing Dane, a child that served as one of many of Guy's informants. Instead of his friends and fellow goons working for Runar as he had expected, what stood in front of Carn was a shadow. A tall and thin humanoid black mass that darkened the world around it by simply existing, void of any feature on its ebony surface. Though he wasn't t...
2022-08-31 19:37:06 +0000 UTC
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Gaston was a simple man. He liked breaking stuff, especially bones, and he was more than fine following orders. It was why he was happy as could be in the life of the simple goon. People gave him money for him to buy some fun stuff, and he had even more fun breaking what they told him to. He already lived in Nirvana, really. He didn't even mind living in the slums, things were just easier to break here after all. Occasionally he had to change employers after they upset the wrong people and we...
2022-08-24 19:27:06 +0000 UTC
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After some time to rest and a few episodes of Captain Cyan to cool down, the whole family was back to the training room, this time to try and get the most out of the ratlings' new tricks.
For the occasion, James had created a living parkour course with a field of tentacles that the children were currently running through under the curious gaze of Trixie the ghost girl.
"David, you're a feral beast with air powers, take advantage of it. Just going fast at things isn't enough, you n...
2022-08-17 17:14:44 +0000 UTC
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Somewhere in the slums of Zalcien, somewhere between the infamous center where the Horror lied and the border with the rest of the city proper, was a five-story tall building in relatively good condition, on the roof of which one would find an unusual office. Sat in a red leather chair, a tall old elf with long grey hair and a medium trimmed grey beard read some papers covered in strange symbols, and even to those who could them their placing made no chance. Which was the exact reason why it ...
2022-08-09 16:27:16 +0000 UTC
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