I don't think I can really count this as early ... but it is indeed on time!
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“Serenity?” Aide’s voice rang in Serenity's mind before he was even really awake. Adrenaline - or whatever his body now used that served the same purpose - shot through Serenity. This had to be both important and urgent; Aide wouldn’t wake him otherwise.
“Yes, Aide?” Serenity scooted carefully away from Rissa. She was still asleep; he didn’t want to disturb he...
2023-09-30 22:54:50 +0000 UTC
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I am currently expecting the next chapter to be on time. Early would be nice but I can't promise it.
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“Red agrees with you.” Russ frowned and shook his head slightly at the deconstructed trap. “What about the wood thing with a monster core?”
Serenity shrugged. “A complex combination of a trigger and a mana source. The way it’s put together is the reason that tiny Wrath Demon is so small; the man who opened it broke the connection before ...
2023-09-30 06:57:39 +0000 UTC
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A neon pink thorn brought back memories. They weren’t good ones, but at least they made it fairly easy to figure out what the monster had to be. It had to be a Demon of Pain, a Thorn Demon.
It was a hard decision, but Serenity had to trust that Earth’s defenders could handle a Demon of Pain. Given that all of the others he’d seen were Lesser Demons, his guess was that this one was, too. Its size also seemed to indicate that it was probably Lesser....
2023-09-29 06:57:42 +0000 UTC
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The Lesser Demon of Wrath was incredibly cute, far cuter than the Lesser Demon of Sorrow. Serenity was pretty confident that other people wouldn’t think so, but there was something about how tiny and aggressive it was that made it positively endearing.
As he watched, it tried to headbutt its way through the bars of its cage. It wasn’t making any progress, but it kept trying. Serenity tried to suppress his grin, but it kept returning whenever the ado...
2023-09-28 05:30:12 +0000 UTC
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Where did the Lesser Sorrow Demon come from?
The question bothered Serenity. It wasn’t the only question that bothered him, but it was the one he couldn’t resolve just by asking Aki. She didn’t know where it came from; Russ didn’t have any idea either. Serenity could tell that it wasn’t a dungeon monster from another dungeon. That seriously limited its possible origin, but he wasn’t certain where to start, other than getting it out of the way fo...
2023-09-27 04:12:33 +0000 UTC
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Legion told Serenity about the trapped package a few hours after it happened.
Russ waited until Serenity was back on Earth to fill in the details. All of the details. “...six trapped packages that day. We’re lucky that only two of them were opened by their apparently intended recipients, so we only had one death. It could have been a lot worse.”
“You’re sure they’re all people who were on Mr. Michaelson’s list?” Serenity couldn’t...
2023-09-26 03:36:04 +0000 UTC
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This time, Serenity saw Elder Lizven’s eyes follow his to the planet above them. After a moment, she lowered her gaze to meet his, wrinkled her brow, and asked “Just who were you?”
Somehow, even though she directed the question at him, Serenity didn’t think she actually expected him to answer. It was worth a try, even so; she had asked and it might get her to actually listen if he was lucky. There was certainly no point in cooperating father if t...
2023-09-24 23:25:42 +0000 UTC
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As far as Serenity could tell, the enchantment on the rope binding his hands was simply to make it sturdier. He’d checked and that was all he could see. :I seem to be fine. I can get out of this whenever I want to; it’s strong, but that’s all. Nothing to stop shapeshifting.:
:Good.: Rissa sounded worried. :I hate that you have to do this. Surely there’s another way out of this situation?:
:Not without fighting,: Serenity disagreed. :I’d ...
2023-09-23 21:32:25 +0000 UTC
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The portal guard led the group to a building that was clearly grown in the side of the large tree that was closest to the portal. Even so, it wasn’t all that close. If this was where the guards’ station for the portal was, it was surprisingly inconveniently located. Even in a place without significant weather, there had to be a reason to put the rest area a long way from a work area. Since it seemed unlikely that they couldn’t grow anything closer, Serenity wa...
2023-09-22 21:44:25 +0000 UTC
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Currently coping with covid. Chapters may be late. Sorry. This should have been out hours ago.
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Becca left work at the Adventurer’s Guild at three that afternoon. She was happy to be working the early shift; the evening shift was usually when the entitled delvers came out, the ones who thought the rules should be bent because they had money. They didn’t understand that the regular delvers often had more money than they did and were happy to spend it at the...
2023-09-21 23:02:18 +0000 UTC
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There were no hellhounds on the way to the first reported incident. Russ was grateful for it; he’d stiffened up in the time he spent watching the video of the hellhound summoning, and while he made certain to stretch before he got into the car, he just knew he’d pick up worse injuries if he had to fight again. He might be “healed” but he wasn’t fully recovered.
Also, he was just plain too old for this. He wasn’t ready to completely hand over ...
2023-09-20 22:54:51 +0000 UTC
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Quincy stayed with Russ through his entire round of medical treatment. Between the deep puncture wounds and burns, Russ decided to pay for magical healing; without it, he would probably have had to stay at least overnight but magical healing had been around for long enough that they let him go home with strict instructions to come back to the hospital if any of a long list of things happened.
It still took hours. Magical healing didn’t automatically clea...
2023-09-19 22:30:14 +0000 UTC
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“It’s not a bomb,” Brown told Russ. “There are no signs of any explosives at all. Here, let me show you the X-Ray.”
Russ was lucky Brown got along so well with the local police; if he didn’t, this entire exercise would have been far more difficult. Ever since they were moved to New York City from Boston, Russ spent more time with Quincy while Brown dealt with the police, other than UERT. Brown seemed to have an issue with Lancaster, so Quincy de...
2023-09-18 23:59:49 +0000 UTC
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Rube nodded at the security guard, Jim, as he headed into the elevator to the underground area. It still surprised him that something as simple as finding a discarded but colorful box led him to work at a museum, much less the Metropolitan. Not only did he not have a doctorate, he hadn’t even finished his Bachelor’s; worse, his degree plan wasn’t art or archaeology or anything like that. He’d moved over to a business degree; nothing else seemed to fit...
2023-09-18 00:04:40 +0000 UTC
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Shopping meant that Serenity didn’t manage to make it to the Guild hall until the next morning and then it was afternoon before he, along with Raz, Blaze, and Ita, entered the nearby dungeon. Riss, Legion, and the rest of the entourage were back at the market; Serenity was glad to be done. He could always visit in the future; the portal location meant it was certainly close enough to Earth for a day trip.
As it turned out, there were actually three dungeo...
2023-09-17 04:03:11 +0000 UTC
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Tsallin was a city built at the mouth of a river. At Tsallin, it was called the Tsa; Serenity knew the river had other names as you traveled upstream. They wouldn’t matter, because the trip from Tsallin was a sea voyage from Tsallin to Kvellin. In Kvellin, they’d be able to find a portal to the next city along their route. If Serenity was lucky, they wouldn’t spend too much time in either port city’s market.
He didn’t expect to be lucky.
For...
2023-09-16 05:11:45 +0000 UTC
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Russ needed a vacation. Most years, that wasn’t an issue; he worked when he was needed and was on call the rest of the time. Where possible, the other Guardians took his cases; he was mostly retired, after all. Despite the sheer size of the territory he covered, that usually meant he only had two or three big cases a year; everything else was petty stuff that just took a day or two.
Admittedly, he handled a lot of other peoples’ petty stuff too. It was...
2023-09-15 01:22:42 +0000 UTC
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Edit: Managed to get Patreon to display the image instead of the page it's from.
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He was halfway done with the mapping project when something about the small shattered ley line areas attracted his notice: they all emanated from the points where the lines crossed. That didn’t mean anything until he started to notice that none of them crossed anywhere else; they might run parallel to the main lines, but they wouldn’t cross them. That meant they were exactl...
2023-09-13 23:37:31 +0000 UTC
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The MANIC device didn’t make any sense.
Human tilted it at someone else in the crowded area and got yet another nonsensical result. This time, it said Tier Three but she could immediately tell that the woman was only Tier One and definitely wasn’t masking her aura.
She wasn’t at all certain that it did what she thought it did. She’d assumed it detected a person’s aura, since that was by far the easiest way to detect their Tier, but that o...
2023-09-12 23:19:11 +0000 UTC
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Serenity and Russ were eating breakfast when the world shook. Serenity could hear Gaia’s jubilation, so he immediately knew what had happened: Earth had advanced to Tier Four. That was insanely fast; worlds were supposed to be slower than people, not faster!
Russ seemed confused, so Serenity told him what he’d sensed. Russ’s reaction was far more muted than Serenity’s. “It seems gentler than last time. I hope I’m right about that.”
“G...
2023-09-11 23:02:24 +0000 UTC
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Human was not in the van.
Once again, Death debated abandoning her humanlike form to find the Beast-God and once again, she rejected the idea. Not only was it not necessary, this was interesting in a way she hadn’t seen in a long time. Probably ever.
Death wasn’t certain she’d had the capability to be interested in things before she took an Incarnate. At least, not things that weren’t directly connected to her portfolio. She certainly ha...
2023-09-10 22:23:19 +0000 UTC
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Serenity felt a lot more relaxed as he climbed back up the stairs at the dungeon’s exit. He might not have gotten the workout he wanted, but he had gotten some food and time with good company instead. It helped.
The good feelings were a little hurt when he headed out of the Guild building, only to receive a scolding from the receptionist for not checking in with her before heading down. The problem wasn’t whether or not he could handle himself, or even...
2023-09-09 23:12:53 +0000 UTC
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When Serenity returned to Aki’s dungeon, he found Raz in his draconic form teaching a young woman about dungeon management. That had to be Nadia Davis, the niece of the helicopter pilot who’d taken him to the island with the Well of Souls. She was so intent on Raz’s lesson, something about difficulty curve models, that she didn’t even notice Serenity approach.
Raz looked up, so Serenity waved before he quietly walked away. He could guess what they ...
2023-09-08 23:23:17 +0000 UTC
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Why was he here, watching while the enchanter was questioned?
Serenity really didn’t have anything to contribute. He could just as easily have watched this later or even heard the details from Russ, but Russ wanted him here. Serenity wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like they were talking about anything interesting; they were just trying to find out what he knew about the boxes from the museum. So far, that seemed to be nothing.
Serenity kept listeni...
2023-09-08 02:16:54 +0000 UTC
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“Not allowed?” Blaze frowned at Russ. “You can enforce that?”
“If we catch it,” Russ admitted. “We try, and I like to think that something this overt is always caught eventually, but sometimes they go for entirely too long. Once upon a time … it was only a few years ago when each of us had to cover multiple states. Now we’re training people who never had any idea magic existed. It’s not easy and it’s probably going to get worse before ...
2023-09-07 04:39:21 +0000 UTC
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Everything was more or less back under control when Russ finally called Serenity and asked him to head back to New York City. It wasn’t quite an afterthought when Russ asked Serenity to bring Blaze and Ita but leave Rissa behind.
They met at a strip mall, in the back room of a store that sold boxes and other packing materials nestled between a liquor store and UPS store. Serenity had never really thought about the economic model of a store that sold only...
2023-09-05 23:16:54 +0000 UTC
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During the weeks after the fight on A’Atla, Serenity kept busy putting things back together. He was busy enough inside the tunnels that he wasn’t with the first group that reached the dungeon. He heard about the encounters with the snakes; they ran from the Lamia without engaging her. Serenity knew that a group could handle her, especially since almost everyone was high Tier One or low Tier Two at this point.
The first attempt at the Lamia came only a few...
2023-09-04 21:58:49 +0000 UTC
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Becca looked up from her phone when the door chimed to let her know someone had arrived. She tucked the phone under the desk. Maybe she would take up Kerr’s offer of paying for training; it would give her something to do between customers other than scroll through Facebook.
She’d only turned it down in the first place because she didn’t want something else handed to her just because of who she was married to, like the job itself, but th...
2023-09-03 19:56:07 +0000 UTC
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Character List of Deep Blue Sea
This list includes people mentioned in all Arcs to date.
It does not include people with only a single mention or the “people” from the Story Dungeon; they are specifically for that Story. If I missed anyone more important than that (I often do), please let me know in the comments.
Aaron - Abducted from another world; not useful to Priestess Alanaeon. Ended up at Steadfast Sevente...
2023-09-02 21:44:15 +0000 UTC
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There's a section here that was requested yesterday ... it fits well so I put it in today's epilogue and moved the bit I had planned for that section to the prologue that will come in a couple days. It sets stuff up for the next book anyway.
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Letter from Honoria Clearsight, Head Librarian of the Great Library of Asihanya to Serenity, Sovereign of Earth
Transported by Legion using a personal-only small-scale long distance teleportation Sk...
2023-09-01 23:18:07 +0000 UTC
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