QuietValerie

Lieforged Gale Chapter 71

I woke up in my room in Exodus City the next morning, reeling from a new nightmare. The dream I had was twisted, dark, and had me desperately trying to prove that I was a girl to everyone around me. The body I had for the dream was my normal one—my Keiko body—but nobody seemed to understand. They would point to my tiny, feminine form and label me ‘boy’. It seemed that the barbed words of my former friends hadn't entirely rolled off my back.

The nightmare lodged itself in the bac...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 70

Unlike Ghoul’s End, Grand Celestial Temple was absolutely teeming with people. The temple had three distinct wings that radiated out from a large circular area in the middle. Up and down those wings were various amenities, including cafes and bars, while the central region contained the massive cash shop for Rellithesh. It was more like a titanic circular department store than any normal ‘shop’.

You could buy anything from armour cosmetics, to infinite soap, to the crafting satche...

Coven's Rebellion Chapter 15

Surprise! Coven Chapter! Idk why or where this came from. Actually, nah, the blame is squarely placed at the feet of my adhd. Anyway, hope you enjoy! A second chapter is already in the works, too!

May

Watching the operation from the sidelines in VR was agonising. My heart was constantly in my throat as these incredible people did their best in situations where at any moment, a mistake would mean the end. The team was...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 69

I logged back into my Lightstalker character with extreme levels of trepidation. Sirona had gotten a message saying my character had changed, and when I checked, I saw that the name was now Rescera Vega. Sirona's friend had changed the vowels in the first name, making it sound very different. It wasn't my favourite name ever, but it did the trick.

The first thing I noticed was that the body was still a bit larger than my Keiko one. However, the proportions had drastically changed.

Iron Drumbeat Chapter 12

Holy hell, just when you couldn't hate landlords more. Our rent is paid fortnightly, but I am paid monthly. So now we're required to pay three rent payments this month. Almost certain this is on purpose, to squeeze more money out of us. Looks like it's ramen time and extra work for ashlyn. Late stage capitalism is hell. Please enjoy this chapter.

“Ready?” Tink signed, giving me a long, determined look.

“Yeah,” I nodded, mentally reh...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 68

I found the copper node two hours of walking later. My thighs hurt from the exertion of climbing the ridgeline, so I was forced to stop and rest before actually grabbing some of the ore.

The ravine that housed the ore vein was pretty large. You could've driven two cars down the whole thing side by side if it weren't for a few big boulders. The ore vein itself was also easy to find—several diagonal slashes in the wall were weeping green oxides.

Pulling out my trusty Spectreheart ...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 67

“Can I trade you in for a trainer that’s less of an asshole?” I asked, after I’d processed Mheitai’s statement.

Her answering chuckle was not a kind one. “You can no more be rid of me than I can of you. We are, very unfortunately, stuck with one another.”

Gritting my teeth, I bonked my head lightly against the ground. “Fine. Let me up—I won't try to kill you.”

“Excellent,” she said, stepping back. A flick of her fingers erased the bindings, and I w...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 66

I was only able to follow the road a couple more kilometres before I was forced to leave it behind. While it turned to connect a few outlying farmsteads to the hamlet, I forged a path around the brambles and through the intermittent copses of trees.

For a short time, I saw evidence of the villagers everywhere. Grass had been trimmed back by their herds, markers for trails had been tied to trees, while other trees had been felled for firewood. Then, those markers grew sparser until all t...

Digital Exodus Chapter 35.5

Spicy chapter for those who want it :)

“Ugh, I want to stop thinking about all the depressing stuff,” I complained weakly, my voice muffled by the side of Cerri’s boob.

My girlfriend snorted softly and, with a sudden flurry of movement, I was in her lap. “Well, how about we think about our future? The people of Earth know how to join us if they want. There’s a lifeline. I know we've got servers, RUCU, and random computers stu...

Digital Exodus Chapter 35

The Cherish came roaring in like the finale of a violent apocalypse, and to some, it may as well have been. The superheated charged particles of her exhaust as she arrived lit the sky of Central America with daytime auroras. Then, as she shifted into a close, stable orbit and the nozzles in her shield closed back into the web of armour, a very small pseudo moon hung there above the Earth.

All over the globe, people began to panic. Images came in from major cities around the world—Some...

Digital Exodus Chapter 34

Silence descended the moment the Winslows were back in the docking tube. I seated my butt back on the sofa again with a sigh, and promptly froze when there was a low whirring sound that rumbled through the hull of the craft. My hackles instantly rose again, but before I could act, the sound of heavy calibre automatic gunfire shredded the silence in the cabin.

Eyes darting, I tried to find the damage to our ship— Only, there was none. Outside the small porthole beside me, though, was a...

Digital Exodus Chapter 33

Bang!

The sharp cracking sound startled me and the rest of my comrades in the plane, and for a split second I began to look for gunshot wounds. Then, I realised that it hadn’t been a gunshot at all, but the sound of a door hitting a wall.

At the rear of the spacecraft, near the door I'd just come through, were two people—A salt-and-pepper haired man and a woman who could've been either twenty or eighty. Judging by the floating travel bags following behind them and the...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 65

The settlement of Geilig's Hook was a quaint run-down hamlet where all the houses were cobbled stone and clay. The most impressive thing about the place was actually its size. It probably would've been considered a village if it had an inn and a temple, but neither were present. They did have a small tavern, although that was just a large and roughly constructed room attached to a house by a covered path. There was also a small store, although it appeared to be rather understock...

Giving love to those who had to drop patronage.

So, every now and then I check the exit polls for those who dropped patronage. It's mostly a morbid curiosity a lot of the time, but nowadays I don't feel so personally shit for not keeping up a good release rate. Now, I feel a much more encompassing existential dread.

Currently, 90% of exit polls are "My financial situation has changed." That's fucking terrifying. Even 2 years ago or 1 year ago during covid it wasn't this bad, but now... the cost of living and the state of politics in ...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 64

The next day, I set out on a mission to find some copper. Guides from other Rellithesh players said that if you wanted piped water in a custom made structure, copper was the best and easiest to acquire material. The region we were in might have a few nodes that spawned—It was a relatively low tier metal so it could be found in most places.

I considered trying to fly everywhere in small mode, but unfortunately my wings were actually still just Juvenile Wings, and therefore there was a...

Digital Exodus Chapter 32

We piled through the door on the other side of the concourse like a pack of riotous foxes, and as we did so, I turned and closed it, then pulled one of my tools from the cargo shorts I was wearing. It was a small hand-held plasma torch. The kind that, in Digital Galaxies, had a functionally infinite battery life, but that in reality could hold the heat for maybe a minute before it ran out of juice. Nobody used them over the more mundane alternatives, because quite frankly, they ...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 63

Mum and I spent three days in our new house, decorating the interior to match the vaguely cottagecore parts of the exterior. We also saw that we had a small amount of miscellaneous processing tokens called Processing Time Tokens. A quick search told me that they were tokens you could get through various means that when turned in to the government, allowed you to acquire something that took significant ongoing computing time to simulate. The colloquial term for them was ‘pats’ because most...

Digital Exodus Chapter 31

The lift came to a halt with a soft sigh and a dull thump. Already, we had our guns trained on the door, while the humans were safely hidden behind a box. Actually, we were all taking cover, but they were especially taking cover.

A chime sounded out in the hallway and the huge doors began to slide open. As soon as there was a foot of space, bullets began to pour into the lift from outside. Whoever had laid in wait for us was unloading their ammunition with extreme prejudice. Conventiona...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 62

The ‘pick-and-mix’ operating system had, indeed, been a ton of fun. We got to test and acquire a whole plethora of interesting little apps, along with the standard things like the web browser and communications app that they gave everyone.

Some of the more niche and interesting programs I picked up were one for practising kata and other martial arts techniques, and an app that allowed me to simulate the effects of a few different medications—that one was limited by the research t...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 61

“If you're going to call your son, I must advise you that while he may know about the existence of the Exodus Union as a political entity, he is not allowed to know anything I have told you about our Callisto facility, or Exodus City, is that clear?” The doctor told us with a kind smile. When we both nodded, she left mum and me to our own devices.

We returned to our seats, while the dark haired doctor wandered over to a hot drinks bar. Mum watched her go with a blank expression, the...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 60

At a much more sedate pace than the name of the inn would suggest, we began our journey up towards the expansion zone. With us, we had mum's friends—The guild ‘Carnival Historica’—and a whole host of random players who were paying for a chill, leisurely ride up to the new zone.

Built onto Willow, we had three private towers for our guild and the Carnival to stay in, then a crafting building, and the main inn building. That building was still just three storeys tall, as it'd been...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 59

We all agreed—Including Vesuvia’s gladiators—to take three days to build out the towers that Willow had started. They needed everything other than the walls, window holes, and doorways. Thankfully, two of mum's friends were woodworkers so they were able to help us make the most of Willow’s wonky towers and wonkier support beams.

Stairs also went up, connecting one floor to the next, of which there were three for the crafting hall, and five for the three extra towers. It amused m...

Digital Exodus Chapter 30

I sat down heavily on a random crate and allowed my mind to just… take stock. We’d been going non-stop since we began the stake-out to find Jason’s folks. Now we were riding a cargo lift up a four, maybe five kilometre high spire.

In that time, I’d taken my first life… or ten, I’d used an actual, real light machine gun in combat, I’d seen multiple people casually killed by my friends— Oh, and I used nothing but my digitally simulated mind to manifest a sort of stasis fi...

Kaia the Argent Wing Chapter 86

A third of the main school building was a write-off. The flaming core was too powerful and imbued with too much Storm energy for the weak Pre-Storm construction to survive, and so the fire had claimed a large swath of it before we got it under control.

The deaths were a far greater loss than the building, though. With the other dead we lost that day, the number was up over one hundred Edgewood souls gone. Added to that, we lost two hundred when Pastor Thomas and his ‘faithful’ trai...

Kaia the Argent Wing Chapter 85

I kicked one of the Pastor’s people in the knee, shattering the joint and sending him to the ground, then I followed up by ramming the butt of my axe into his face. Blood and teeth flew into the air, but I didn’t stop to finish him. I kept moving—I needed to find Chloe.

Out past the edge of the parking lot, another group was arriving—the Bandoner party. They came to a halt when they saw the carnage, except for the few in the group who were from Edgewood. They took one look at th...

Kaia the Argent Wing Chapter 84

[CW: Gore.]

The fire spread for all of thirty seconds under Chloe’s renewed winds, until the storm bird finally rose to meet the challenge. Its scream cracked like thunder, and a new wind bore down on us from its direction. With two opposing streams of air colliding, the gusts became erratic—swirling in from all directions. Snow, fire, and random detritus began to batter our party, while the noise became an all-encompassing cacophony.

All around us, houses were goin...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 58

I slept up in Willow’s branches that night—Hiding from everyone and everything—and she was kind enough to weave a little basket for me to do so. Then, early the next morning before everyone awoke, I got to work on the crafter's hall. I wanted it finished before we moved out, and… I wanted to distract myself from what’d happened with Paisley.

Could I have perhaps been a little more assertive about what I was wanting and feeling in the moment? Yeah, definitely, but that would’...

Digital Exodus Chapter 29

Gloria, Jason, and Roger all suffered superficial cosmetic plate damage when we took out the remaining four turrets. We had to wait half a minute after they were done before attempting to leave our cover, and I was a little nervous that there might be other cameras in the turret network, but when David bit the bullet and stepped out, he remained perforation-free.

As soon as it was clear we could move freely in the loading area, I hurried over to David and Ed. “Show me your arms.” 2024-07-05 01:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Kaia the Argent Wing Chapter 83

I leapt forward, wings straining to bring the point of my axe down through the thorax of another scorpion.

“Burn the houses!” I shouted back to my comrades. “Let us lay waste to this nest of evil!”

Yet again, I spoke like some old timey warrior in a movie. It was weird as hell, but that was just how I started thinking when I was getting really crazy in combat as Silver. Like, somehow my own personality and intentions were put through an angelic filter that strictly adhered...

Lieforged Gale Chapter 57

Hello! I've done a big editing pass of this story. Some things have changed, a few things have been added. My goal was making things like the game systems more consistent, and smoothing out rough spots and stuff. Anyway hope you all enjoy. Have fun!

“You and your shitty friends can have fun with your tree,” Marlon said after a couple of moments of silence. “Me and my guild got places to be. Got a queen to meet, after all.”

With the duel bein...