probablyaturnip

Side Story: Killi's Day

The math doesn’t work in our favour. Killi thought with a sigh as she leaned back in her chair, two hands trying to rub away her growing headache while the other two kept flipping through papers.

To say the reports she’d received from the watching grey were bad would be an understatement. They painted a picture of a galaxy that had already been conquered, leaving the entirety of the war effort feeling pointless.

Based on the history of hundreds of worlds, it seemed li...

CH501 Gods and Mortals

In their realm, the gods gathered for a meeting. It was the sort of thing that had been happening frequently since the invasion points had been marked, an unavoidable consequence of their increased workload when they were all doing their best to keep the world and the lives of their mortals from ending, but more and more often they found the topic coming back to one particular mortal who’d been leaving his mark.

“I trust no one else here has anyone in their faith aiming to end the l...

CH500

The streets of the warrior’s tower were usually a little chaotic. There was no helping that fact. It was a place specifically made for people to come and train in combat skills, it was bound to draw a bit of an unruly element among the more respectable people simply trying to improve themselves, but even those who would consider themselves hardened veterans of the city's sometimes rougher atmosphere couldn’t help but be suprised by what they were seeing as a crowd marched forward, one par...

CH499

"God damn Greed, I wasn't expecting to see you here," Ben laughed, thrilled to see his friend again despite the situation he was in. "No nation has you tied down?"

"You kidding? Sticking to one place is a good way for some bastard or ex-fling to find me. Just having my shows on is giving me enough headaches with people showing up uninvited, if you know what I mean."

"Ha, I can guess. Glad to see nobody's eaten you without me around to save the day."

"Well, there's been a cou...

CH498

"Uh, so what the hell was that?" Skoe was the first to ask, giving voice to what the rest of them wanted to know with Thera also casting her eyes to Ben, more than willing to trust him at the time but wanting an explanation now given that she'd just very publicly committed a crime.

"Nobody worry, Myriad's aware of what happened but long story short that guy has someone chained up in his basement to turn into potions. Given that that's, you know, bad, I just stepped in to stop it."

CH497

The next couple hours of flying were relatively peaceful, at least for himself. He tweaked and modified the enchantments as he went, getting them to the perfect balance of both comfortable for the user while still accomplishing their designed task, ending up with a final product just a little better than it started, with the main change being the mind split it caused became a bit more bearable for those feeling its effects, even if he couldn't keep himself from thinking that two of his test s...

CH496

Attempt five… failed. Dang, let’s crack it open I guess and see if it’s at least obvious.

Sitting at a table in the shop, Ben was examining a side project of his. Nothing significant, just something to try and help him with some mechanical aspects of his designs for Inux. He was attempting to make a watch.

It wasn’t an easy task by any stretch, not least because he didn’t even really know how they were supposed to be put together. Thanks to his knowledge skill a...

CH495 Nati's Perspective

“Grandfather,” Nati greeted lightly with a bow, showing the one before her that due respect after being pulled to his realm, getting a much warmer response in return.

“My dear, have you been well?” Nare asked, his lava-like features taking on a smile at seeing her.

“Of course, I’ve been making as many amulets as I can and they’re shipping regularly, you have nothing to worry about.”

“Hmm, and as nice as that is, that wasn’t exactly what I was asking, you ...

CH494

The day that followed ended up straying from his new norm just a little. Instead of spending so much of his time pumping out weapons to do his part for the world, he first went to visit Killi at the magic towers, submitting reports of his discoveries to get her help with handling before taking advantage of the fact he was there by reading even more, finally finishing the second floor.

That of course left him with the largest to go, the first which was made up of not only what could be f...

CH493

He wasn’t feeling a touch of exhaustion when morning came, his practice and study had captured his imagination enough that the night had basically passed in the blink of an eye, but with the rising sun came his regular tasks as he put his work down and moved on to preparing breakfast before heading out for the day, off to fill his quotas for the war effort.

He got to the shop as usual and freed the homunculi from their cases, reaching out with deep connection to fill them with his sou...

CH492

It was still dark when he left the archive but he didn’t care. He let himself take a minute to watch Thera sleep after the perceived weeks he’d been away before rushing to the living room where he wouldn’t disturb her. A small part of him wanted to wake her up and drag her to join him but he crushed that selfish impulse. He was the one who decided to spend so much time in the archive like that, there was no reason to make her suffer for it. Especially when he knew how much she enjoyed h...

CH491

Huh, combining scrying with space magic is pretty obvious so I’m not sure if that really belongs in here, but I can’t deny that the level of skill it was done with was masterful. I don’t really see any way I could apply it to my enchanting, but I’ll at least keep it in mind.

With that book done, the cover turned red to mark his comprehension of the memories it contained, Ben put it back and looked at the progress he’d made.

With fifteen red covers now, he was ne...

CH490

“Oh, son of a bitch!”

He’d spent what felt like two entire weeks within the archive that might have only been a few minutes in the real world, going over everything he’d seen in his first dozen volumes again and again, trying to deconstruct the dead languages based on the context clues he had and even felt like he had gotten pretty far with the project, or at least as far as he could considering what he had.

Given that, he’d decided it was time to see if any of the other...

CH489

<ACQUIRED TITLE- BRUTAL BLACKSMITH>

“Hey, what the actual hell?” Ben muttered to himself as he prepared to lay down for the night.

“What happened?”

“A new title. Why the hell did I get a new title?”

He didn’t really need to ask, it was obviously because word had spread around about his fight that day, but that just left him with more questions. He wasn’t going to out and say it, but Thera had been dealing with a poor reputation in town for years a...

CH488

When a few of his minds returned to normal speed, the area was silent. With the exception of both Thera and Sonya, no one had been expecting things to end quite so quickly, especially not when a not insignificant number had bet against him. He was pretty sure there was the sound of money changing hands but that was it until he spoke up.

“Ahem, look, I tried to not kill him but that’s going to change if nobody starts treating the guy.”

“Ah, right, it looks like it’s Ben�...

CH487

It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes after he’d gotten back to work that he’d heard a knock on the door and went to check it out, finding Thera behind it looking far more exhausted than she had been when they’d parted, while Aso seemed a strong mix of curious and excited.

“Miss me already?”

“I need you to beat someone up for me,” She sighed, looking mentally drained as she asked.

“Uh, I think you’re probably better equipped for that than I am.�...

CH486

In the month after finishing the dark tower, the day-to-day lives of both Thera and Ben had returned to their more normal state; at least for the most part.

While Thera was still being treated differently because of the reveals of both her connections and title, it had become so much easier for her to just not care about it. Her charm was gone, and with it a weight she’d been carrying her whole life. Whatever anyone had to say about her was nothing in comparison to the comfort she was...

CH485

“Ben, help me out,” Pelenia asked with a pout. “Use that clever brain of yours to figure out how to help me awaken a skill too.”

Luck hadn’t been on the queen’s side when she got her blessing, it hadn’t given her the one level she needed to her charm to be able to awaken it and the moment they all stopped focusing on Thera she turned to him as they made their way back.

“Mom, you can’t just expect him to be able to come up with some crazy way to strengthen yoursel...

CH484 Thera's Perspective

None of them were willing to let things go that easily so she pulled the information from him before any of them would set foot on the next floor, just to get the barest amount of context on what had happened to him. When she’d woken up from her nightmare, it was just the four of them, no Ben in sight and from what her aunt had to say he hadn’t been there the entire time, like he’d never arrived on the floor.

She knew that was ridiculous, he’d been the first in with the rest of ...

CH483

With the fourth floor in front of them, Ben couldn’t help but feel great. He felt like he was winning, finally pulling one over on the gods after how the last tower had gone for them. He’d been able to see everything that was going to happen on the first three floors ahead of time, making them easy to deal with thanks to Funa’s strength on their side.

Now just to see if the luck holds up.

Given that he’d only been able to witness three options for the fourth and f...

CH482 Thera's Perspective

Slowly, Thera felt herself coming back to consciousness, even if she had to fight past the groggy feeling picking at her every step of the way.

Ugh, feel like I shouldn’t be asleep right now. What am I supposed to be doing? It’s probably not important, I can rest a little longer, right?

…

The trial!

All at once she shot up, as awake as she could be to find herself back in the tower's rest space, her mother still asleep beside her while ...

CH481 Thera's Perspective

Having her vision returned to her as they got out of that floor, Thera was greeted with the sight of her aunt carrying both Karly and her mother in one comically large arm while the other held onto Ben’s hand, leading everyone out before letting them down.

“This reminds me, I really hate mind effects,” Karly sighed, remembering her own disastrous attempt at the trial of Anailia. “Maybe I should have considered that before tagging along.”

“It will be worth it when we’...

CH480 Thera's Perspective

Her mother Pelenia, the current queen of Anailia happily waved at them as they drew closer, managing to look both excited and oh-so-smug.

“Mother, if you were going to come then why didn’t you just meet us at home?”

“Because then you might have tried to stop me,” She laughed. “Don’t think I don’t know how you’d react.”

“Okay, but this might end up taking a couple days. Don’t you have an entire nation to run? A nation that should be preparing for the n...

CH479 Thera's Perspective

“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Thera muttered as they got to the shop, having just finished eating and saying goodbye to her aunt. “Literally every time we finish one of these we say we’re never doing it again.”

“We can mean it for realsies after this one,” He said innocently while she shook her head.

“No, I’m done believing that. I’m putting money on the next wave being bad enough that we do the non-affinitied tower or something.”

“Huh, that w...

CH478 Thera's Pespective

Thera hated the feeling of eyes on her. It was a feeling she would get in full force every time she was out in town ever since her titles and family connections had been outed that she couldn’t escape and it was just so exhausting. Knowing people were afraid of her when she hadn’t even done anything.

In the past, it had been easier. She’d just pushed everyone away and been happy with it.

…Well, not happy, but at peace. She’d come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t ...

CH477

He was taken to the back where he’d been expecting to find maybe ten or twenty people, just a few parties who’d challenged the tower and lived to tell the tale, but he’d been too pessimistic in his estimate, instead finding over fifty in the back room where he’d been lead, all of them waiting thanks to the reward he’d been willing to put up to draw them in.

His request had been simple, offering a small fortune just to talk with anyone who’d gotten to at least the second floo...

Another Poll!!!! Plus Update

Here we are, my family is gone after their very very long visit and I once again know peace, at least for the most part as I put out these daily chapters that I hope you're all enjoying! I said before I'd figure out when it is I get to go back to my regular schedule later and now it's later so you can expect me to return back to four days a week after november third.

Speaking of rewards though, since patreon recently made some changes to how it displays things I'm going to post this her...

CH476

Time had flown since the visit to his research institute, with all of his work transitioning from his crafting to studying all of the known modifiers, testing them against multiple spells of each affinity as he tried to brute-force their finer rules, feeling the problem budge under his efforts.

Each modifier would interact with a given mana in its own way, leading to different, yet predictable, results the moment it was understood, leaving Ben to fill dozens of notebooks that ended with...

Side Story: A spirit's study

Author's note

You can consider this side story to take place between the end of the 12th arc (with the first wave of the invasion) and the beginning of the thirteenth. Hope you all enjoy!

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Seven great spirits were silent as they stood around the crowd of nearly a hundred, not responding to any cries or screams that came from them, either from their broken bones or as they tried to save their lives, begging for mercy or making threats of revenge in the cases of the few who...

CH475

With his bookmaking done, Ben went out to start the day, putting his main destination on hold since it was still early, to instead visit the church he had set up, wanting to give it a look.

There was not much need for cleaning. Given the evaluation of gods in that world, anyone who went in, even those who didn’t necessarily give his god any faith, made sure to show a certain level of respect and kept the place in top shape, and he was fairly sure that Sachel would occasionally visit t...