DefianceNovels

Chapter 427.

Zac immediately noticed something odd with the help of [Cosmic Gaze], but he initially wasn’t sure whether he was just imagining things. Thin tendrils of energy seemed to be passing between the three siblings unbeknownst to him or the other spectators, making Zac believe that they were somehow sharing their spiritual power.

The tendrils were extremely minute though, looking like glistening fishing lines in the air. It made Zac doubt his eyes for a second, especially s...

Chapter 426.

Branches and trees entwined to form expansive bleachers that were partitioned into mid-sized platforms that would be able to house between five and twenty people each. Even seats and tables sprouted up from the ground on the platforms.

Finally an inscribed disk was lifted out of the ground with the help of six gargantuan roots. The platform looked like an enormous coin, with a diameter of thirty meters or so. It would be impossible to have a proper battle on such a small surface, so it ...

Author Ramblings, The road not taken PT.2: Crafting a System

---> THIS IS NOT A CHAPTER  <--- 

Back in January I wrote an Author Commentary about the molemen, and a story plot I eventually discarded due to time constraints. Today I thought I would talk about the very first iteration of DotF, and the System I had planned. 

One of the biggest challenges of writing a litrpg is creating a working 'system', and I don't mean the ac...

Chapter 425.

The splinter was once again active, but it thankfully hadn't shown any change in its behavior. It just extended its tendrils to touch the miasmic fractals for a bit before it calmed down and started to emit that mysterious energy into his mind just like before.

The fact that the Splinter was once again active meant that he might boil over again, and Zac didn’t want another mess like the Zethaya situation on his hands. That time only his enemies got killed, but what if he turned berser...

Chapter 424.

Zac found himself standing on a gravel road in the middle of a tranquil forest the moment he appeared at the final level of the 6th floor, and the quest to defeat the Enlightened Three in a Dao Discourse had appeared immediately upon arrival.

If Zac had been tasked with something like this a few weeks ago he would have thought the quest meant he was supposed to expound on the Dao, proving his deeper understanding compared to these three enlightened cultivators. It would be like a theolo...

Chapter 423.

The next level placed him in an odd world where it felt like the colors were inverted, and he walked in a forest with white trunks and black leaves under a purple sky. The System wasn’t as generous on the second world, and it took him over a day to figure out who the guardian was and to trap the wily beast.

Things were pretty much the same from there on out as Zac bashed his way from one level to another. His resolve to finish the quests fell apart after just three days when he found ...

Chapter 422.

From one of the cracks in the ground Zac could see a flickering light, but when he peered into it he couldn’t see what the source was. It did however reignite Zac’s hope, and he started to cut his way into the mountain with the help of his axe.

The light steadily grew brighter as he made his way down, and he suddenly found himself in a passageway that was clearly not naturally formed. There was a tunnel hiding 50 meters down from the summit, and as Zac followed it even further down ...

Chapter 421.

Zac was about to make up some story about why he was here, but he stopped himself as he realized the old demon was asking a rhetorical question.

“Your heart and mind are in conflict, and you do not trust one over the other,” the demon said. “This is something a seasoned warrior can exploit.”

Zac understood all too well what the demon was talking about, and it felt a bit embarrassing as this was exactly what he had chided Emily for doing back during their sparring sessions....

Chapter 420.

It was both liberating and jarring to start a trial alone. It wasn’t that Zac was worried he’d fail, but he realized how much he had relied on Galau’s and Ogras’ experience and expertise as they ascended one level after another. It was mostly them who figured out a plan, while he had eventually been reduced to a simple enforcer.

While it was nothing wrong with that, he still felt he was missing the point of the Tower, and he vowed to do his best in completing the quests rather t...

Chapter 419.

A shell that could withstand an offensive Dao Fragment, along with Zac’s terrifying force, was definitely a material that could be refined into some very sturdy armor. Hell, he could cover a whole ship in shells judging by how big the centipede was. 

The problem was how to kill it without completely crushing the animal with something like [Nature’s Punishment] and ruining the materials. Zac activated [Inquisitive Eye] in hopes it would provide ...

Chapter 418.

Zac kept experimenting with [Undying Legion] and he found that he could infuse the Fragment of the Axe into skeletons as well, but only into the few who were wielding an axe. It appeared they couldn’t use weapons that he provided either, which made it impossible to hand out a bunch of disposable axes to improve their power.

But the Dao of the Coffin was a more fitting infusion anyway, so Zac felt it was fine. It didn’t only improve their offensive power by a huge de...

Chapter 417.

Zac's eyes were trained on the sea of parasites that came pouring out of their burrows and he calmly stepped forward as he activated his set of passive skills. A billowing cloud of miasma spread across the area and covered the ground, which elicited an annoyed grunt from Ogras who started to move away in disgust. 

Zac could only shrug apologetically, knowing that the skill in his current form affected his allies as well, or at least his living allies. He would have to experiment so...

Chapter 416.

Zac’s eyes lit up as he accepted the token. He knew that he would have to leave Earth sooner or later if he wanted to keep improving, and the Allbright Empire was his first choice. First of all, he had multiple connections there, and there seemed to be all kinds of places where he could grind monsters to his heart’s content.

He could even join the same army as Average since it sounded like it was an army that was constantly in battle with the various threats at the border of the Red...

Chapter 415

Things were pretty hectic in the next world as well, where they were thrown into a canyon full of rabid beasts. But one piece of good news was that the [Voidfire Array] wasn't actually gone or replaced with underwear. The System had been kind enough to place the core and array flags into Zac's Spatial Ring during the transfer. 

The mission of the 30th level was to find and save a young master who was being pursued by some rival faction. The targe...

Chapter 414.

A brief bout of darkness shrouded Zac’s vision until he was thrown into the next world. However, the System seemed intent of making the entrances rough ones going forward, and he barely had time to see a moonlit sky and a couple of candles before he fell into a pool of steaming water with his head first.

Zac sputtered as he tried to orient himself in the water, and he soon realized that he had luckily only fallen into a heated pool or hot spring that was a meter or so deep. He had fir...

Chapter 413.

Cosmic Energy streamed through MacKenzie’s body at unprecedented speeds, and Mental Energy was rapidly getting drained as her mind formed thin strands of her Daos and ingeniously wove them into her Cosmic Energy to create a facsimile of true skill.

Jeeves used roughly 30% fire, 10% wind, and 60% water to cause a reflective mist that formed an amazingly real illusion of herself and Ilvere falling while covering their real bodies in a thick mist. Her arm reached out to grab Ilvere’s s...

Chapter 412.

The gargantuan devil from earlier hadn’t seriously tried to kill Zac judging by the massive attacks they unleashed in their battle against the peak warrior from the allied army. It had only swung its weapon down without imbuing it with the Dao or any skill. Perhaps it had only considered him a bug to be squashed, and if it failed it didn’t really matter. 

It was pretty disconcerting to get thrown into a mess like this, but he had a mission to fulfill. His eyes turned back and f...

Chapter 411.

Zac witnessed the battle with a small frown, and the screams and cries of the villagers in the distance felt extremely discordant in his ears. His eyes followed Ogras as he looted the fallen Warrior and even put the mangled remains of his mount in his Cosmos Sack before he returned.

“Why did you have to do it like that?” Zac asked as the demon walked up to them. “You could have won in a head-on fight as well.”

“But the risk to my wellbeing would increase,” Ogras answer...

Chapter 410.

“Looking down on me, will you?” Ogras muttered to himself while cracking his neck as he moved toward the village. “I still remember you running around in a bloody dress like a lunatic.”

Ogras had seen the look in his eyes, and the words of caution had sounded like some elder cautioning children to not run too close to the Barghest pit. 

Of course, Ogras knew that Zac’s remarks came from a place of concern, but it was a stark reminder that the gap between the two kep...

Chapter 409.

Zac quickly discarded the thought of letting his anger take the wheel. That felt like a great way to become a raving lunatic, especially with the splinter still in his head. He would gladly take the upgrades it provided him, but he didn't want to rely on it any more than that. 

The splinter only helped with a scant few of his skills though, and a few other skills showed disappointing progress. Inquisitive Eye was still stuck on early proficiency, which didn’t really surprise Zac....

Chapter 408.

A warrior drenched in blood swung his intimidating two-handed axe, causing a wave of destruction to ripple outward. The attack created cascading explosions that cleared out a large swathe of rabid rats that tried to drown a town. There were millions and millions of them, but the axe warrior stoically took down one swarm after another.

The vision changed to a wiry warrior with two jagged hatchets who created blur with his frenzied swings in the arena. The swordsman desperately blocked on...

Chapter 407.

Sweat ran down Zac’s back as he weaved back and forth among the pack of plagued Apes. Their quest was to cleanse the area of corruption, but Zac had found the insane beasts living in the area excellent sparring partners.

The progression through the third floor had gone quite smoothly, but the quests started to become harder. Twice they decided to simply find and kill the guardian rather than completing the quest as it was simply more convenient that waste multiple days on a single lev...

Chapter 406.

The trio soon joined the monkeys in scouring the island, and with the help of Galau’s superior investigative skill they found an odd fluctuation beneath a lake. They could have explored it themselves and risked falling out with the simian sailors, but they instead called for the captain who awarded them each with a small sack of E-Grade Nexus Crystals as thanks.

Most of the crystals would most likely turn to dust the moment they exited the Tower, but they would work just fine while th...

Chapter 405.

The bandits quickly understood that the trees sprouting up everywhere were bad news, and various attacks soared out to destroy them. But the projectiles harmlessly shot straight through, hitting the mountain or sailing far out into the air.

It had taken Zac a while to understand the skill as well, but he eventually figured it out. The trees were mostly projections, a way for his spirit to change the surroundings to suit him better. It created an effect similar to a Dao Field, where he w...

Chapter 404.

Zac understood what the demon was inferring. Was his uncommonly high Luck Attribute finally starting to bring him some fortuitous encounters? So far his Luck had mainly been helping him stay alive from ambushes, but he had long known that the attribute could also increase the chance of lucky encounters.

His Luck had increased from 149 to 182 after gaining his two Fragments, which wasn’t a small boost. It meant that he also had passed the old attribute limit of the F-Grade, 175 points....

Chapter 403.

Zac slowly nodded. It was messing with his head a bit not knowing whether neither the people nor items around him were real or not. From what he had heard so far it was both and neither. He also briefly wondered if his high Luck stat would skew the ratio of real to fake items in his favor. Perhaps he would walk out of here an extremely rich man.

Or perhaps the System would decide Zac hadn’t suffered enough turned all his items illusory.

“Things here also have their own pricing...

Chapter 402.

The trio soon enough reached the main gate of the ramshackle wall surrounding the village. It looked like the fortifications were erected hundreds of years ago, but the townspeople had let it deteriorate. The only sign of recent maintenance was a hole in the wall that had been filled with rocks and logs in a clumsy effort to close the gap.

The gate was open, but an old guard gave them a glare as he blocked the path into the town. Zac didn’t sense any threat from him, and he could tell...

Chapter 401.

Kenzie exhaled with a tired sigh as she waited for the drones to return to her side. Jeeves was doing all of the calculations when she commanded the flying machines to strike her targets, but the AI ran on her spirit energy to function. Destroying one infusion pillar felt even more draining than using all her Daos to battle for half an hour, even though she didn’t even leave the flying treasure.

Ilvere silently gazed upon the destruction, not even bothering to comment as he directed t...

Chapter 400.

The problem was that his connection to the Peak Family wasn’t all that deep. It was simply a chance encounter between himself and Greatest. Perhaps they would have lent a helping hand if it was before, but now he had a bulls-eye on his back due to the quest. 

It was one thing for them to stand up against a solitary D-Grade warrior, but another thing entirely to create enmity with all the forces in the Base Town in order to protect him.

“We’ll just have to play it by the...

Chapter 399.

Who would have thought that it was actually Rasuliel Tsarun who coughed up a shocking 78 billion nexus coins to buy this thing? Zac had already learned that while the Eye was a precious item, it wasn’t worth nowhere such an obscene amount. Galau had explained that it would go for at most 20 billion Nexus coins in the outside world.

There were many ways to upgrade one's specialty core, such as the pills Zethaya Pill House provided. Those pills cost less than a billion nexus coins, a fa...