As time passed and the sun set, moon rising through the sky, I approached the guard outpost that housed my last use of the Arcane Spell Crystal. Last up was Gravity Well, something with a unique enough effect that I was pretty interested in seeing the different directions the Upgrade options took it.
By the time I saw the outpost appear through the trees, it was around ten at night. From what I knew of these guys, that meant they’d still probably be up for another half hour, maybe ano...
2023-07-19 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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After I made my choice for the Ethereal Armor Upgrade, Erani and I went out in the early morning to kill some Gloomspurs. Once again, we were pretty much just waiting for a party to accept our request. The receptionist said that we’d probably get a taker in a day or two, given the sum of money listed as a reward, but that we’d most likely not get to be very picky. We weren’t really telling what we wanted this party to do, after all, so it was more than likely that we wouldn’t have a w...
2023-07-17 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra long chapter!
After a long day’s walk, I arrived at the guard outpost that held the Arcane Spell Crystal. I’d arrived slightly ahead of schedule due to my own underestimating of how fast Expedite could work on me when I didn’t have to worry about using it on anyone else, so it was around nine thirty right now.
As I approached, I heard the faint sounds of conversation between the three people.
“Raise you three,” Bon said, and I could hear the sound of a ch...
2023-07-15 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Once we finished sorting out the paperwork, we headed back out into the main guild lobby. In order to receive the first half of our payment, we’d need to find the other party we’d be working with so we could officially sign up for the job, so that was goal number one.
We’d come up with the idea to kill the Young Dragon ourselves on the way to town, and, while it was certainly dangerous, the reasoning went like this: regardless of whether or not we took on the Young Dragon, we want...
2023-07-14 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
Erani and I walked into the city and straight to the guild lobby. It may have felt like a full day’s worth of time had passed to me, but because of Time Loop, we’d in reality pretty much just taken the job, walked out of the city, went to the forest, and then instantly come back.
It was around noon now, and I had one last use of Time Loop remaining. I planned on saving it until the end of the day, that way I could go to ...
2023-07-12 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Asmo sat at a table in a quiet, simple room. She was waiting in the war room for Winic to come meet with her and discuss the topic of Enchanted items once again.
The ones she already had made—the earpieces for the VIPs—functioned well, and were proof enough that Winic knew what he was doing. And she already had him working on his first ‘real’ project because of that. What he was currently creating would be one of the main keys to her entire plan, so it was important they got don...
2023-07-10 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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The Dragon atop its hoard took a step forward, growling at us. In the massive room, it almost looked small—or, smaller than a typical Dragon was—but that did nothing to take away from the primal fear the sight struck into me.
I held out a hand and bowed my head. “M-my apologies, uh…”
“Wealthhoarder, Slavedriver Neenix,” Index reminded me of its name.
I repeated the words back at it. In my panic when we first saw it, I hadn’t quite been processing what it’d ...
2023-07-08 12:00:14 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
We took some time to look around the area of the Goblin base, ensuring we knew everything about the location. We’d technically gotten a description by our two prisoners, but with the language barrier and the possibility that they’d lied to us about something, I wasn’t going to take any chances.
One thing that I noticed was that there weren’t any guard patrols. Nobody walking around the surrounding wilderness, nobody ...
2023-07-07 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: I've been writing a good bit extra as of late, so I decided to go ahead and post an extra chapter today, free of charge! Hope you all enjoy :)
(Also, it's an extra long one)
We all bent down to examine the Goblins, who we just realized could apparently speak Human.
“Ainash,” I messaged, “what’s it thinking right now? Is it really saying all of this with the intent to communicate?”
“Think so,”...
2023-07-06 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra long chapter!
I arrived back in the previous timeline around an hour before we’d gotten the Bond Rank and decided to split up. Though, of course, the Bond Rank still stuck around, and as such, so did Ainash’s memories.
She fell to the ground the moment I arrived back in time, which surprised me. I hurriedly bent down to help her back up. “Hey, you alright? What happened?”
Erani gasped, too, except she started glanci...
2023-07-05 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Erani and I crept through the overgrown forest in search of the Goblins that seemingly controlled the area. So far, we hadn’t seen any sign of them, but they were apparently pretty nonconfrontational—at least, they were until they saw a moment of vulnerability in you. But ideally, one of us would find their main home before that happened.
Ainash wasn’t with us right now. Instead, once the Bond had Ranked up, we realized it would be much more efficient for her to split off and go l...
2023-07-03 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Erani and I walked down a road after exiting the city of Salvation. We were currently on our way to meet up with Ainash and head off to do the Goblin extermination job. So, with the sun moving to soon crest in the morning sky, we traveled. We were planning to meet Ainash in the middle, so it wouldn’t take more than an hour, maybe half to get to her. In the meantime, we simply watched the sights on the sides of the road neighboring the quaint town.
Farmland and peaceful hills passed us...
2023-07-01 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra long chapter!
The gold-degree adventurer stared at me, dead serious. “Goblins are as dangerous as they come.”
“So what do they do?” I asked, getting honestly quite irritated at this point at his refusal to elaborate.
He sighed. “I’m not some sort of expert. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find one, since most people who scuffle with ‘em end up in a state unable to tell tales, if you catch my meaning.”
“Can yo...
2023-06-30 15:05:51 +0000 UTC
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“What if I could do the Mana charging for our teleportation on my own?” I asked the old mage in charge of the teleportation circle.
“Oh, that would be a great help. Do you have a team that could work on charging, or something?”
“Uh…” Technically, Erani and I consisted of the entire “team” I’d be using, but with Exponential Reclamation plus all of the extra Stats I’d been getting from Recursive Growth, I was pretty much a one-man army of Mana generation, anywa...
2023-06-28 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
A shout jolted me awake. I instantly sat up, throwing the covers from myself and looking around. Was it a monster attack? Demon invasion? There was nothing in the dark room, but the shout had come from downstairs, in the lobby. Hurriedly, as another thud echoed from the room below, I cast Ethereal Armor to summon Dark Plate, which had dissolved off of me in the night. Erani got up next to me, apparently having been awok...
2023-06-26 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
The man, after some prodding, handed over his valuables. It felt nice, turning a mugging around on the robbers, even though he didn’t actually have much coin on him. Well, not much objectively. But to us, the five one-hundred-eyt coins he put in my hand almost doubled our haul from tonight. Plus, the satisfaction Ainash had when she stared down at the coins gave me the impression she saw them as not only a resource to use, but a...
2023-06-24 12:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“This is a mugging?” I stared at the group of people. A few stood up front—a woman and two men—while another dozen stood behind them, doing their best to look menacing.
One of the men shrugged. “Call it what you want.”
“We just need compensation. Compensation for your brutal attack on our companion.”
I frowned, staring at them. Why had they chosen us? What was going on? Did they seriously just pick up their companion from a rampage and then decide now was a p...
2023-06-23 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
We checked out of the town relatively easily. The guards even gave us a little ticket for adventurers on jobs saying that, if we came back within a week, we wouldn’t have to check in the normal way—we could use a smaller side-entrance instead to skip any lines that happened to form. Not that I was worried we’d get stuck in line; it was around eight at night by now, so I highly doubted there’d be some boom in tourism sudden...
2023-06-21 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra-long chapter!
Erani and I walked through the gates and entered the town of Salvation. It was evening, probably around seven in the afternoon, so we needed to get our living accommodations sorted out. We’d need someplace to sleep, after all, and for that, we’d need money. Lyr, or eyt, or whatever the people here called the currency—Bon and the others had made it sound so confusing.
So I walked into the town and looked around.
“Y’know, compared to the kingd...
2023-06-19 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: This chapter is extra-extra-long! It's technically long enough to be two entire chapters, but I decided to keep it bundled together into just the one anyway. Hope you enjoy!
Carison stood on the sidewalk of a crowded, dirty street. He was right next to the crime scene he’d created, beating that drug dealer to near-death, and at this point, that man had woken up and run off, while Carison stood right where he was, waiting.
It only t...
2023-06-17 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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AN: This chapter's extra-long! Hope you enjoy :)
Keiki stood at a door in a dank, cold sewer. After tailing several suspicious individuals in the city of Fronttown, this was the only place of interest she’d found. Everyone else retired to their homes for the night, or something similar. But one of them came here. Down into the sewer, walked for probably a few hundred paces, and then went through this wooden door.
But when she tried it…
...
2023-06-16 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Asmo sat at a desk in a damp, dark room. She sat at this desk alongside Winic, the table sprawling with magical implements and ingredients that she didn’t understand. This place was his study, where he not only created magical items himself, but also had his students work for him on things he wasn’t Classed to create on his own. Currently, they were there alone, with Asmo giving Winic instructions on what items they’d need to create for this first mission. She was planning on sending ou...
2023-06-14 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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AN: Extra long chapter today! You’ll actually be seeing a lot of extra length chapters in the near future :P
Hope you enjoy!
(Also, I am currently uploading this from my phone in a candle-lit room because of a power outage. So please let me know if there are any formatting errors and I’ll fix them as soon as I can. Thanks!)
Asmo walked down a hallway in a large, ornate palace. She was currently on her way to her first meeting with the VIP...
2023-06-12 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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The three of us walked down the path, approaching the town we’d just arrived in. It was well into evening by now, with the sun setting behind us, so I was more than ready to just get in and retire—though we’d probably have to find some way to make at least enough money to get a room for the night, first. We could probably just find a quick and easy job to complete; with our mid-Level Statuses, I had no doubt there’d be some decent-paying job out there for us.
The town itself loo...
2023-06-10 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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While we waited for Ainash to wake up, we decided to see how Distortion Strike worked when it came to altering Erani’s appearance. So, she toggled it on, and…
“Woah.”
Index had been right, it certainly changed her appearance to a point where she was unrecognizable. But it wasn’t anything like a simple makeover. The moment she toggled the Spell on, it felt like a cloud of darkness overtook her, turning her skin an ashen shade of gray and replacing her eyes with hollow pit...
2023-06-09 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Erani sat with her eyes closed, having been keeping in her meditative state for what felt like forever, as she heard Arlan take a seat next to her.
“So, you mind telling me what your options are?” he asked.
“Oh, right, I forgot you didn’t know yet. I guess your Index thing already knows everything about the Sorcerer Class?”
“Supposedly. Knows everything about everything when it comes to the System.”
“Okay,” Erani said, pulling up the choices, “so he...
2023-06-07 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Erani sat, meditating and trying to figure out which Talent to choose. Between Elemental Embrace and Expanded Capacity II…ugh, she didn’t know. But she was leaning toward Embrace. She just needed to give it some time and come back to the problem with a fresh set of eyes.
For now, she still needed to also look at her Spell Choice, anyway. Maybe that would give her some additional perspective when deciding.
Choose one Spell to learn:
For...
2023-06-05 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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AN: just fyi, formatting in this chapter might be weird. I’m staying the night at someone else’s house, so I had to do all the formatting on my phone. It should be readable just fine, but if there’s anything wrong I’ll fix it when I get back to my computer. Hope you enjoy!
Erani closed her eyes as we both sat next to each other, leaning against the same wide trunk. “Okay, I’m gonna try to meditate and make my choice.”
“Cool, let me ...
2023-06-03 12:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Arlan’s fully-expanded character sheet as of now:
Minute Mage Basic Progression Path
-Every 1 Level: +1 Endurance, +2 Conjuration, +3 Stat Points, Time Loop Rank Up
-Every 3 Levels: Spell Choice
-Every 5 Levels: Talent Choice
-Every 10 Levels: Time Loop Usage Increase, Time Loop Upgrade
2023-06-03 11:55:01 +0000 UTC
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As I sat and meditated in the early morning twilight, I considered what might be waiting for me in these Spell Upgrades. Sanguine Bond was the first, but it wouldn’t be the last. And neither would the rest of the three Arcane Spells that I could use this Crystal on. Over the next few days, I’d of course work to Rank them up, but then after that, I still had Crippling Chill, Ray of Frost, and Expedite waiting on me. Those would have to come next, and hopefully it wouldn’t take long to fi...
2023-06-02 12:01:00 +0000 UTC
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