jmclarke

Chapter 137: Cuts, Teeth and Mana

Grimloch and Theresa shot toward the xyrthak.

The huntress was the faster of the two; she hefted her spear and closed on the monster, and Grimloch followed close behind. He’d always been able to cover a lot of ground with his enormous strides, but Life Enforcement had begun to increase his speed.

Isolde, Khalik and Alex flew up and over the xyrthak, preparing their spells. Alex cast a forceball and Thundar cast a body enhancement spell on himself.

The minotaur got Grimloch...

Chapter 136: A Cold Delivery

The air rushed past Alex’s ears as he fired himself toward Malcolm’s fallen body. He kept the modified Potion of Flight in his Wizard’s Hand, which was poised to squeeze at his will.

Spells fired at the xyrthak from behind him, drawing its attention, but the creature now seemed intent on singling out targets that were alone.

And Alex had broken away from the group.

He stifled a scream as it shot toward him, and he activated The Mark, focusing it on the act of flight. I...

Chapter 135: The Xyrthak

“Shit,” Alex swore. “Do the others see it?”

He squinted, searching for the other group until he finally spotted them. He didn’t know if they’d seen the xyrthak and gone to ground, or if they'd already been lying flat, but they were pressed to the dusty earth, moving slowly.

Good.

They were looking up, but hadn’t-

No, now Rhea was pointing in the xyrthak’s direction and the others were no longer moving.

“Do you think it’ll see us?” Thundar gr...

Chapter 134: The Nest

“My, my, well aren’t you all prepared.” Baelin said admiringly.

And he was not exaggerating.

His class had come looking like they were ready to go to war.

The entourages of every student were bristling with weapons.

Hogarth, Svenia and Eyvinder all had longbows and javelins with heavy, barbed-tipped arrows. They gripped long spears and kept their usual side-armaments at the ready. They wore no armour: chainmail or other metal armour would have done littl...

Chapter 133: The Hunters (Interlude)

Theresa ducked, avoiding The Watcher’s strike as his sword passed finger-widths above her hair.

Her great-grandfather’s sword whipped up like a snake’s strike, and her opponent barely got his staff up in time to parry. He yelped in surprise when her hunting knife suddenly shot forward—driving him back—and she followed like a wolf pursuing a wounded buck.

All around the fighting pit, the other Watchers cheered and jeered, thumping their staffs against their seats in appro...

Chapter 132: The Forging

“Bring that over, Tertium,” Alex said to a construct holding the black dungeon core remains.

He heard the scrape of chair legs behind him followed by the click of Baelin’s cloven hooves moving across the tiles. “And so it has come to this point,” the chancellor leaned over. “Exciting moments to witness: both the learning of a young mind, and the first application of a potentially magnificent substance. Your golem will prove an excellent proof-of-concept.”

“Yeah,”...

Chapter 131: Stealing the Enemy's Weapon

“Ah, you are early,” Baelin’s voice said from behind him.

“Argh! Oh holy shi-” Alex startled and whirled around to see the towering chancellor in the hallway. Alex’s force disks—filled with papers, notebooks and more of the dungeon core’s sample—seemed to shudder with him. “Gods, I didn’t hear you behind me at all, Baelin.”

“Hm, a Proper Wizard should be prepared and aware of their surroundings,” the chancellor said, glancing at the window.

The tw...

Chapter 130: Forging a Body and Plan

“Ooooh, careful with that part," Alex said to Selina as they worked on sculpting the massive foot on the golem’s left leg. “If we sculpt too much filigree in this area, then the foot could get caught on stuff when it's walking.”

“Hm, that makes sense,” Selina said, reshaping some of what she’d shaped.

Alex smiled at the progress she’d made. With all the work he’d put in with The Mark, he’d become a talented sculptor in these past few months, and teaching Selina...

Chapter 129: Allies

“My learning?” Alex asked.

“To be blunt: I think if I were to help you power it now, then that would rob you of some very, very valuable learning.” Baelin flipped the pages of the golem-crafting notebook to Alex’s diagrams. “See this? This is advanced work. I am sure that this Mark helped guide you on the path to create this construction-plan—from how you described it—but there is some real creativity here. You made certain rather creative choices for the construction of...

Chapter 128: A Proposition

“Before I speak on that,” Baelin leaned forward in his chair, watching Alex closely. “Who else knows of this?”

“Um, just Khalik, Theresa—her parents—and my sister, Selina,” he said. “No one else has found out, and the only other person I’ve told is you."

“Good, very good,” the chancellor said. “Sharing secrets with those you know—and those that you have invested your trust in—is good, but each time you share a secret, you greatly increase the risk tha...

Chapter 127: The Chancellor's Reaction

Baelin was as still as a statue, seeming like a flesh-coloured gargoyle that someone had draped rich robes over. He wasn’t breathing and—in a moment of wild imagination—Alex thought he might have somehow died right before his confession.

Then he saw the chancellor’s eyes: they were moving, as though rapidly reading something in the air that Alex couldn’t see.

“…I see,” Baelin finally said, his tone unreadable. “I see. Perhaps you would like a seat.”

“Ye...

Chapter 126: Consultation and a Leap of Trust

Theresa’s jaw dropped. “Holy…Alex, this is big. This is a big, big, big decision you’re talking about here.”

“I know,” he said emphatically. “I know, I know, I know. But you know what keeps going through my head?”

“What?” she whispered.

“What happens if-”

“Wait, lower your voice,” she said quickly, glancing around.

He paused, realizing that his volume had risen and he hadn’t even noticed. “Thanks. This situation’s got ...

Chapter 125: The Impetus of Death

“Dead?” Alex blinked, his brain slowing down until it felt like he was trying to think through tar. “Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that,” Carmen said. “The investigators arrived about half an hour ago and have been asking all of us questions.”

“Did it have something to do with the sabotage?” He glanced around, wondering if would-be attackers would suddenly jump out of the shadows.

“No. It was the mana vampire.”

“ 2021-08-10 14:34:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 124: Lances, Cries and Shock

The entire class went quiet at the mention of the word xyrthak. Alex, Thundar, Khalik and Isolde glanced at each other from where they were sitting side by side.

Murmuring could be heard throughout the class.

Since this class rarely had a lot of applicants, the classroom Baelin used for the theory portion of Art of the Wizard in Combat II was definitely on the smaller side compared to Alex’s other classes.

The general look of the room was a cross between a hunting lodge, a...

Chapter 123: The Opportunist

In Alex’s experience, people tended to treat ‘opportunists' like lepers. And he couldn’t really disagree with that treatment most of the time.

An opportunist tended to be bad to be around: they’d wait for any chance to advance themselves—often at someone else's expense—while pretending to be a harmless colleague, friend or ally as they waited for their opportunity to strike.

Alex was something of an opportunist himself: he adapted to situations and strategized, looking...

Chapter 122: Rampage

“So, you’ll be following my lead,” Lagor said as he and his three assistants drew their mana conductors. “I’ll go in first and use my mana to jump start the mana process. Carmen, I want you to power up the section that controls its movements and Minervus, you’ll empower the section that’ll connect with its master to receive instructions. Alex, you’ll work on the section responsible for connecting to the embedded magic items, in this case, the lightning rods. O...

Chapter 121: Hunt-mania

One thousand and five hundred gold coins.

The number made Alex weak in the knees, and he stood in the street pondering it as Minervus made his way through the crowds to get to work, though there was still quite a bit of time before their shift started.

Alex watched the flesh golems push their way through the crowd. Some of the adventurers—a few with shining badges of the Delvers’ Guild on their chests—shot glares at the three constructs, but none moved to create a larger fus...

That Small Surprise: Discord Server!

Hello everyone! Here at last, Fool has a discord Server! I joined up with several other authors in order to have a server that was nice, full and where people could try multiple stories out.

In the Mark of the Fool channels, there's a general lounge and meme channel as well as a patron lounge (called the Fooluminati) and spoiler channels for each tier.

Make sure you read the rules and follow them (I'm sure you will, you're all great) and also make sure you go to the #get...