“How many today?” Toltho asked, trying to keep the weariness from his face as he asked his kin.
“Forty-five so far but there’s still hunters out.”
An answer he was expecting, even if it still left him with a headache. Forty-five today, thirty-two the one prior, a high of sixty-seven before that with sightings and attacks working out to within that range consistently since their god had told them that the second wave had started, with the demons they once raised and corra...
2025-02-25 19:59:38 +0000 UTC
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The muscles of every body he held were left sore after the long day so he stretched out at the end of it, trying to rub some life back into them while he cleaned up and began packing away his clones, his student following suit. Their talk still lingered in Delair’s thoughts in the days since, pushing her to work all the harder in her efforts to train and learn and with it, Ben himself was thinking about how best to help her grow.
His original goal had been to get her to the fourth lev...
2025-02-23 12:31:16 +0000 UTC
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Even if they took a bit longer to set up given they were all different from the enchantments he’d been making until that point, Ben still made quick work of them, finishing up after an hour while at the same time creating models and blueprints to show how shapes and sizes could be placed in the factory to be properly enchanted on for the people who would be creating them at first until thinking better of it. There was an easier and better option all around as he shaped some of the leftover ...
2025-02-21 10:21:41 +0000 UTC
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“Can we go up there?” Delair asked, pointing at the volcano in the heart of Nare’s lands with her eyes alight, completely oblivious to how Ben’s stomach sank with the question.
“Ahem, sorry kiddo but we’re here for work so not this time, maybe in the future,” He told her, praying that she’d forget if the opportunity ever came up. “For now just take in the sights, we should be there soon.”
Nare had given him directions already and they were easy to follow, with ...
2025-02-20 18:08:54 +0000 UTC
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It looked like the yeti was about to say more, only stopped as two more passed through the gate. Thera returned with Mora in tow, his teacher glancing their way before doing a double take at the young spirit, shaking his head in the end.
He could see exactly what the boy was but before he could comment, Thera cleared her throat, shooting her uncle a look that screamed her expectations from behind Mora’s back while she put on a far lighter voice for her explanation.
“Uncle Falk...
2025-02-18 18:45:52 +0000 UTC
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While his clones were hard at work, his real body was devoting its attention to his student as she trained, watching her technique and pointing out areas she could improve while at the same time giving her lessons in her head, helping her absorb more information on the subject of crafting and magic then anyone would expect of a child her age and feeling his chest tighten a bit as they did.
Knowledge was power and a healthy foundation would make for a far easier time when it came to her ...
2025-02-16 16:58:13 +0000 UTC
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He made a small detour when he got back, the day still earlier enough that he didn’t need to wait for Delair in the shop as he first ran to the church of Myriad, looking under the statue of his god and taking what had been slowly piling up there before going back to work, with all of the stopstone that had been materializing in hand.
Since he’d first turned his god’s church into a stopstone factory, slowly producing grains of the stuff while the days passed, half of a bucket had b...
2025-02-14 17:42:03 +0000 UTC
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The god’s talk had run long enough that he hadn’t been able to schedule his next job run until early in the morning, leaving Ben to walk through his gate soon after waking Thera up, with her insisting on getting up for Mora so he wouldn’t be left to himself in the early hours no matter how much the boy denied it.
He’d had the option of just coming along with him for it of course but they could both tell over dinner that the child hadn’t been interested, even less so than his u...
2025-02-13 15:17:24 +0000 UTC
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The realm went quiet as soon as she’d said it, all of them taking it in and working through the implications of just what that meant, with Ben being the one to break it.
“Woo!” He yelled out, shattering the atmosphere between the two gods. “Oh, hell yeah, look at me go!”
“Ben, please,” Myriad sighed, already imagining how the other gods of the world would react when the news spread. “When word gets out about this it’s going to be a brand new complicated thing to ...
2025-02-11 18:58:31 +0000 UTC
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When he got up in the morning he made a point to mention how much better he was feeling over breakfast, getting to see Mora perk up at it while Thera caught on to the deeper implication of it before they split up for all of the tasks they had, with her back to deal with hospital work while it was time for him to stop putting off a visit be needed to make, passing through the magic towers’ guild to do it.
With a side effect of his activities there not going unnoticed. People around rec...
2025-02-09 16:41:18 +0000 UTC
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The request instantly perked Nare up, pulling him away from thoughts of how some poor trial design had almost just killed Ben and bringing him to the forefront of the conversation, light coming back in his eyes.
“You’re finally going to take it on?”
“I don’t have much choice,” He shrugged. “I want the tower blessing and more importantly, completing it should let me become a contender for my deep connection too, right? Then I still just have the problem of actually aw...
2025-02-07 16:43:08 +0000 UTC
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“So?” Ben asked the god before him, tapping his foot and waiting for a response while they cleared their throat.
“Ahem, it’s good to see you doing well, Ben,” Nare told him, looking as uncomfortable as he felt. “Congratulations on clearing a new tower.”
“Yeah, no thanks to you, Mister challenge and crafting god. Just out of curiosity, how much of the design did you contribute to the first floor of that one?”
“Ah, we built it so many thousands of years ago...
2025-02-06 19:02:28 +0000 UTC
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<Alright, you’re done, tell me exactly what happened. This got a lot of eyes and some strong reactions up here.>
Why did so many gods tune in to watch a bit of surgery?
<Because my insane apostle rejecting having his heart repaired in the middle of a tower to instead experiment on himself is the sort of thing a lot of gods were always going to hear about, with just as many wanting to know what the ultimate plan was. So?>
…Okay, I guess I was neve...
2025-02-04 18:16:23 +0000 UTC
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Mora could tell that Thera was worried even as she dropped him off, she’d done a terrible job of hiding it but both she and Ben promised they’d be back as fast as they could once they’d finished up what they needed to do, leaving him alone with one person he knew and one he didn’t, with Delair’s mother trying to be friendly while Delair herself was trying and failing to grab his arm, the spirit keeping it intangible for the time being to spare himself whatever she was going to try a...
2025-02-02 12:10:15 +0000 UTC
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<I thought I was going to have a heart attack.>
I think that would have actually been the better option than what I went through.
<Quiet you. Can you imagine how I felt when you wouldn’t let Thera grow you a new one?>
Can you imagine how I felt when my heart was destroyed by some bullshit trial design? Speaking of, where’s Nare? I have complaints.
<Busy right now.>
How convenient for him. Ben thought dryly, as...
2025-01-31 19:10:16 +0000 UTC
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The other four didn’t understand what was going on throughout Ben’s battle. The real one had been on the defensive the entire time while the fake was repeatedly asking him to just kill it already but with Ben’s proposal, everything changed. Both attacks and defenses stopped, all acts of magic did as they looked to each other in silence, all communication by that point happening in their heads in order to properly transmit the flood of ideas needed to make the original’s goal possible ...
2025-01-30 18:30:52 +0000 UTC
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“Alright, guess it’s finally my turn,” Ben said as Jake was carried back to his cell. “Want me to bust you out first so Thera and Vasta can try to treat you?”
“Ugh, no, I want them to keep focusing on Amy,” Jake groaned as he laid on the ground, feeling every one of his injuries. “Good luck though, hope you have an easier time than us.”
“We’ll see.”
He’d already broken down the barrier containing him when he went to help Amy and it hadn’t reappear...
2025-01-28 15:23:12 +0000 UTC
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Oh god once more it's the end of the month and I'm once again forced to wonder where the time went. Entire weeks vanished in the blink of an eye but here I am, with another poll for all of your voting pleasure, with a few characters that haven't been seen in a while but the good news is that all of the except for Abel should appear in my beautiful and not at all poorly made chapter 290 full of character summaries which can be a bit of a refresher if need be.
Not much to say otherwise fo...
2025-01-26 21:57:15 +0000 UTC
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“Stay close, little ones. Don’t drift too far,” The great earth spirit said as it and the surviving spirits went, the only one with the will to try and manage the rest as they travelled through the void, the weight of what they’d lost heavy on all of them in the face of their first true disaster.
Their home was gone and their people dead, the invaders who’d come to claim it having made sure enough of that that by the time the third swarm had arrived they’d had no ch...
2025-01-26 17:53:48 +0000 UTC
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“If this is all you amount to, it’s no wonder you’re a side character in your own love life. First choice of neither and who could blame them?”
Jake felt his stomach drop the second he heard Amy’s duplicate say that, the feeling changing into horror when it proved enough of an emotional blow that left an opening to get her stabbed.
Amy was the strong one among them, the responsible, dependable one and it was so easy to think she didn’t have any insecurities to her. She...
2025-01-26 16:56:27 +0000 UTC
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“If this is all you’re good for it looks like you’ll lose another student.”
Did Vasta have a student before Jake?
Based on the way she reacted during her fight, it was clear the answer was yes and that whatever happened, it hadn’t ended well, something the woman she’d known since arriving on that world had never touched on in their time together but apparently still cut deep enough to leave a psychological blow when it was brought up during her fight, nearly b...
2025-01-24 11:18:32 +0000 UTC
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“Alright, we can’t put this off any longer,” Vasta told them. “Let’s finish this.”
They had a single floor left, one final challenge to face until they were done and free to leave, all that was left was to overcome whatever it might be and with time in the fourth floor ticking down, Thera picked them all up and carried them between the platforms down below, passing through one of the doorways to find out what remained.
With the setup feeling familiar. All of them were ...
2025-01-23 08:44:18 +0000 UTC
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“Mmh, this is beginning to look a bit troubling,” Vasta muttered as the clock continued ticking down.
It was a sentiment all of them could share. With half of their time used up in their search as they flew across the endless plain of platforms, they hadn’t found so much as a glimpse of an exit despite the fact that they were covering distances that regular parties taking on the challenge couldn’t imagine. A distance that would have taken anyone else days to traverse had been ex...
2025-01-21 12:55:56 +0000 UTC
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With the third floor finished they stopped to rest before going to the next. There’d be no break between the fourth and fifth ones, same as any of the affinitied towers, and just as importantly, that was the stage that affinitied magics would be blocked as well. While they hadn’t come into play too much in the first floors, it was still a loss that would up the coming challenge and with no way to know what was still left to face, they needed a chance to recuperate.
Ben cooked food f...
2025-01-19 14:02:19 +0000 UTC
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An attack that came from under them, designed to throw them in the air was thwarted by Thera placing a well-timed barrier beneath their feet, using her magic to keep them firmly on the ground while Ben continued to count and observe before yelling out to the rest.
“After the next one, we’ll have passed the one-hour mark!”
With the increase in attack variance keeping up with his predictions to that point, the rest of them could feel the pace had increased as well, with attack...
2025-01-17 08:14:00 +0000 UTC
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With how fast the second floor had been to finish, there was no need to delay. As soon as they left it they opened the door to the next, ready for whatever new trial that one was going to hold and found a completely empty area that time, with the only thing to indicate it wasn’t endless being the four towering walls around them.
So that looks like what? Two hundred meters across both ways? Plenty of room to move if it comes down to it then. No ceiling though, and as for ground…<...
2025-01-16 19:08:31 +0000 UTC
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“Alright, let’s stop focusing on how many organs I may or may not currently have and get this over with,” Ben told them as he pushed open the door, letting them into the second floor of the tower waiting just beyond and finding a far simpler space than the last one.
While the area itself was broad, there really wasn’t much to it. The first thing they saw going in was a new door in front of them, closed and locked with the way out being both obvious and far grander than that firs...
2025-01-12 12:34:03 +0000 UTC
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“No.”
“Um, no?”
“That’s right,” Thera told him. “No matter what notification went off in your head to make your eyes light up like that, you’re not allowed to look so happy when you currently don’t have a heart.”
“...Okay, but in my defense they were really good.”
“I’m sure,” She said dryly. “You can tell me all about them after you have something proper beating in your chest but for now teach Jake all of the healing spells you can in ...
2025-01-10 15:48:03 +0000 UTC
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“Ben, as your primary healer, tell me how you're hurt already unless you want to become even more so.”
“Is it appropriate for healers to threaten their patients?”
“I have terrible bedside manners. Now out with it already unless you’re going to make me prove I mean it.”
“Okay, fine, fine, just… Nobody panic.”
Two words that were certain to cause their fair share of stress as the other four watched Ben carefully slip off his jacket, with Thera getting...
2025-01-09 12:16:39 +0000 UTC
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Hey all, looking at where I'm currently at in the story and with a new year here, I've decided to take next tuesday off from posting so that I can focus on plotting and adjusting some of my plans and ideas for future events and story beats to make sure I've got everything where I need it as we slowly draw closer and closer to the end. Sorry for the sudden notice on this, having a few days where I can just focus purely on planning instead of writing and posting is pretty helpful to the whole ...
2025-01-07 19:13:43 +0000 UTC
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