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Serenity hated doubting the people around him, but there was that moment when he wondered if he ought to accept what Senkovar said. He clearly had some interest in Berinath that he hadn’t told Serenity about. At the same time, at least so far, he’d never lied to Serenity. He’d been wrong and he’d left things out, but he never lied.
Which meant he was probably not lying now, even though he’d definitely left things out. Well, what was the worst...
2023-11-29 09:01:01 +0000 UTC
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“Does that mean we’re almost done?” Serenity was more than ready to be done with this. It hadn’t been hard, but it was definitely annoying. The scraping of the mana-draining rune on the shield he’d established to block it didn’t help; while he could tune it out if he was paying attention to something else, the rest of the time it was a constant annoyance.
“One way or the other, yes,” Elder Ibken grumbled. “You’ve passed the tests of c...
2023-11-28 09:30:57 +0000 UTC
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Serenity leaned down and rolled the expanded ball to Elder Lizven. That seemed to snap her out of her shock and she leaned over and carefully picked up the ball without letting her fingers dip into the openings. Serenity had the feeling that she’d had experience with people who’d worked the puzzle but not locked it into place; it looked like the sort of carefulness that happened after you’d made a painful mistake a few times.
It took Elder Lizven ...
2023-11-27 08:16:18 +0000 UTC
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Serenity couldn’t hear what the short dryad whispered to the guards’ leader, but he could see that the dryad allowed her past him. She scurried into the room, then hurried towards the four dryad elders. Serenity noticed that she carefully avoided the tiled area, but that only made sense; whether or not it was in use, crossing a rune or ritual circle was to be avoided when possible. Even if it was safe, stepping on it could damage the setup.
The d...
2023-11-26 05:27:25 +0000 UTC
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Serenity couldn’t tell how well his answer went over with the four dryads, but if he had to guess, it wasn’t very well. It didn’t line up with their worldview, after all, and people never liked having their worldviews questioned.
Serenity knew he didn’t like it either. He tried to listen, but he knew he didn’t always succeed. He probably didn’t even recognize it when people failed, after all; he simply thought they were wrong.
“World Sha...
2023-11-25 10:34:50 +0000 UTC
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The doorway led into a short tunnel that opened into a large room after a few steps. It clearly took up much of the interior of the giant tree, at least on this level; Serenity was fairly confident that it was fifty feet wide in its smallest dimension. Even for a giant tree, that was a lot of space to have open.
A spiral staircase led up to something above them, but Serenity was instead led to a tunnel. It started off with a few steps down, then turned in...
2023-11-24 10:12:26 +0000 UTC
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Serenity wondered exactly how he was talked into this. He was there for all of it and could even review the video if he wanted to, but that didn’t really explain it. He wasn’t actually all that interested in training as a World Shaman; yes, he’d happily take the training and adapt it to fit himself, but it wasn’t a driving need.
Right now he’d rather study enchanting. It would be less embarrassing, and that was saying something. He’d always be...
2023-11-23 09:30:52 +0000 UTC
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Baron Restali,
The full report on Earth is on its way using the Messengers’ Guild. It was very expensive because I kept finding things to add and they were so cheap that there was no excuse to not include them.
Earth is a contradiction. After as long as I spent on the planet, all I can safely say is that I do not understand it. It is not like the other worlds I have spent much time on. In many ways, it’s the closest to th...
2023-11-22 08:43:54 +0000 UTC
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“Whatever it is, you’ll need to train before you have any hope of making it by delving.” Kaasi glared at the three people she and Death had escorted to Serenity. “Amaia and I carried you through that dungeon, and it wasn’t even hard for a Tier One. You know that, don’t you?”
It surprised Serenity when Death stretched out a hand and set it on Kaasi’s shoulder. “I’m sure they do. They were simply trying to get our attention and find a ...
2023-11-21 08:34:21 +0000 UTC
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“Why are you on Earth? It can’t be to kill Rissa, not when the first attempt was only a couple weeks ago.” None of the other attacks were on Earth, after all; they were years earlier in the Timestream. Yes, it was a threat now, but it couldn’t be why they were here. They’d have tried earlier; if nothing else, it sounded like it took Morgan a while to come to her new opinion that Rissa needed to live.
Morgan looked down and muttered something t...
2023-11-20 06:48:31 +0000 UTC
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Serenity was out at the waterfall trying to clear his head when he was swarmed by a group of people. Serenity wasn’t really prepared for company yet after the annoyance of trying to do something that didn’t make sense; how did emptying your mind help you talk to someone?
Not that he’d even figured out how to do it in the first place. It just didn’t seem to work for him. He could temporarily still his mind by focusing on something, but that was ...
2023-11-18 22:37:31 +0000 UTC
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Aki screamed.
The scream was wordless but it filled Serenity’s mind with a sense of urgency.
Serenity immediately forgot about the show he was watching while he waited for Rissa and ran outside. He couldn’t tell whether Aki had screamed in pain or in anger, but either way, it gave him a direction. He ran from his home set in the side of a hill to the new building near the Adventurers’ Guild, the building Aki had created for the Imperial guests...
2023-11-18 10:31:35 +0000 UTC
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Kaasi stared at the box that appeared in the place of the serpent. She couldn’t even call it a chest; it wasn’t. It was a cardboard box with a lid, like the ones she’d seen reams of paper come in. She supposed that meant it was probably something they could take with them, but it was essentially valueless except to get the reward out of the dungeon. What could the dungeon possibly have given them that needed a box to carry it out?
The answer, appa...
2023-11-17 08:09:12 +0000 UTC
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Kaasi was confused by Miss Black. She was oddly endearing in her continual childlike wonder at the world. She also seemed incredibly desperate for a friend, which made Kaasi question the assumption that she was close friends with the deadly anomaly, Colorful. In some ways, that was too bad; Kaasi really did need to know about the woman and if Miss Black, Amaia, couldn’t lead her to Colorful, there was no real reason for her to spend time with Amaia.
T...
2023-11-16 07:47:13 +0000 UTC
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“Are you Rolan of Eternus?” Death thought the name was pretentious, but it wasn’t as bad as Becca said it was. It was aspirational, or something like that.
Or maybe Death was missing something again. That was normal. She still wasn’t certain why everyone had accepted her so easily; the other new people didn’t seem to be accepted easily, even when they came in with a group, but she’d had more than one person tell someone else to listen to her or...
2023-11-15 08:54:15 +0000 UTC
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Baron Restali,
While I have only been on Earth for a few days, I can already say that the information about both Serenity and Earth seems to be accurate yet incomplete. The Tutorial took seven months, far longer than any world I’ve heard of; part of this length seems to be that the invasions did not cause the usual level of significant death; there seem to have been a higher than normal amount of odd invasions; while some of these were e...
2023-11-14 06:46:26 +0000 UTC
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Two more fire blasts impacted on Serenity’s shield before he was certain another lightning bolt wasn’t headed his way, at least not from the lightning mage’s wand. The lightning mage seemed to come to the conclusion a moment after Serenity did, because he dropped the wand and threw lightning at Serenity using his hand instead of the wand.
It wasn’t a simple bolt this time. Instead, the lightning formed a curtain that went all directions, includi...
2023-11-13 00:30:21 +0000 UTC
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:We should draw them out: Rissa sent silently to Serenity. :I don’t know what they want, but I think we need to find out. I think they might be why I had that vague bad feeling earlier.:
Serenity nodded. He’d noticed the timing as well. He wished Rissa had a shield; while he’d recover from damage to his head, she wouldn’t, and anyone who was going after her first … well, the only good thing was that people were taught to aim for center mass....
2023-11-12 06:09:33 +0000 UTC
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“Serenity?” Rissa walked up to her husband and set a hand on his shoulder. “Care to go out and walk in the park for a bit? Jenna’s settled down for her nap and I’m free for a couple hours.”
Serenity nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.”
He needed the time to clear his head after talking to the World Shaman that was probably a distant relative. Rissa probably also needed a break; there was little point in her doing the normal evaluat...
2023-11-11 09:41:59 +0000 UTC
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“Are you sure that’s her?” A whisper drew Death’s attention to the corner of the room where a group of three sat. They’d been there since before she arrived and had been quiet, watching the room the same way Death was. “She’s not black.”
The speaker was odd; Death wasn’t certain what he was the most likely to die of because it seemed to change from moment to moment. A closer look told Death that this wasn’t a natural feature of his; in...
2023-11-10 07:46:30 +0000 UTC
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There were many places to learn about a society. Cymryn didn’t have time to learn anything but the highest level, which meant his information would only be of use as context for whatever the people planted on the planet found out over the next five or six years.
One thing was clear: there were massive fault lines between different factions. Whatever plan Serenity and the empire he worked for had, it clearly hadn’t come to fruition; there was no Wor...
2023-11-09 04:32:01 +0000 UTC
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“I hope he was Dalmoti,” Senkovar admitted. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if to suppress his emotions. “I thought he was killed. Did he say why he left and came here?”
Serenity wished he could read emotions better than he could. He knew Senkovar felt something but he had no idea what. Was he one of the people who wanted Serenity’s line dead or was he unhappy about it?
Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out. He’d already...
2023-11-08 05:09:25 +0000 UTC
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Past the obvious sense of time, there was an assurance to the World Shaman’s aura, a level of confidence that Serenity had felt only in the young and overconfident and those who knew themselves and their place in the universe. Serenity was willing to bet he knew which one Senkovar was.
There was a subtle difference between that and the feeling and the way the aura of someone who would never move up a Tier felt. Serenity had felt that far more often th...
2023-11-07 06:43:56 +0000 UTC
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“Long enough for a world that is awake and inhabited,” the World Shaman agreed. “So. You are, by the Empire’s standards at least, an unusual Emperor. By my standards, you are an untrained World Speaker but an oddly successful one; at least, I assume that you were awarded your other worlds for helping their World Spirits rather than conquering them?”
“Uh,” Serenity stalled on that question for a moment. Tzintkra and Lyka/Aeon were different fro...
2023-11-06 04:39:09 +0000 UTC
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World Shaman Senkovar Et’Tart waited for the other Imperials to leave before he settled into one of the overstuffed chairs in the suite’s common room. “You are Earth’s Planetary Sovereign, are you not?”
Serenity wasn’t sure why the World Shaman felt the need to wait to ask that. It wasn’t known on Earth, yet, but it would be eventually. It was, however, at least somewhat known offworld and that mattered a lot; Serenity’s reputation would...
2023-11-05 07:07:56 +0000 UTC
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Serenity held the fist-sized chunk of crystal out on his open palm so that everyone could see it. It was one of the smaller chunks he’d picked up, but he could still feel a resonance from it. If anything, it seemed stronger than before, but for once Serenity did not feel the strong pull to eat it. He knew he could, but it was more like seeing candy or smelling delicious food when he wasn’t particularly hungry; he’d enjoy it, but it wasn’t necessary.
2023-11-04 08:23:42 +0000 UTC
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Trying to explain “how Earth worked” quickly turned into “watching a documentary about recent human history.” It was surprisingly difficult to find anything that wasn’t either about old history, whether that was Rome or World War Two, or hyper-focused on a short time period, a location, or a person. Fortunately, this was something Aide could easily handle after Serenity had trouble finding what he was looking for: a relatively short overview fro...
2023-11-03 08:01:33 +0000 UTC
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Showing the Imperials around Earth was easier said than done. Serenity wasn’t sure how to show them what he needed to in order to get them to abandon their likely conquest plans, and Blaze didn’t seem to be certain either. Serenity needed to somehow balance showing them the value of the planet while also showing them its teeth. Earth would not just roll over and play nice like a tame dog if someone tried to conquer the planet.
The first stop was th...
2023-11-02 08:37:49 +0000 UTC
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Kaasi-of-Haunted-Glen watched the video recording of the two anomalies who destroyed the Human Defence Force research facility in New York City. The local who identified them was definitely correct to call them anomalies. It was too bad he was dead; someone who could find people like that with no more instruction than “locate anomalies using this poorly understood thing called a MANIC” would be useful. Even if it was simply luck, luck could be very importa...
2023-11-01 07:44:22 +0000 UTC
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Showing the Imperials to their rooms seemed easy enough. It was a large suite setup; actually, there were several different suite areas. The one Serenity started with was the largest, with a TV area with a couch just past the entryway, followed by a more open room with a bunch of couches. Off to one side, there was a dining area and just beyond that was the kitchen. In the other directions, there was a bathroom, two bedrooms, and a hallway that led to the ot...
2023-10-31 08:43:38 +0000 UTC
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