Sean didn’t exactly wake up. Waking up was something you could feel happen, something that was at least gradual-enough that there were in between zones, timings where you weren’t-quite-conscious yet. This was something different. He had blacked out and then seamlessly found himself fully conscious and looking at an old friend behind a metal table. It wasn’t even disorienting.
“So, I’m guessing you aren’t actually Jeff.”
“Nope, afraid not. I’m pretty close, though...
2023-12-12 05:52:16 +0000 UTC
View Post
In these trying times, everyone has to look out for themselves. That’s the rule. If you can save someone, you do. But if shit hits the fan and a wave of monsters is about to sweep over everyone, you need to take care of yourself. It’s not just me that’s telling you this. It’s an accepted, society-wide norm.
The rule exists for a reason, Sean. I know it’s harsh, but too many people have died waiting for tank players to catch up, and too many tanks have died trying ...
2023-12-12 05:51:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Shit. Shit.” Sean tried desperately to slow his descent down the sides of the canyon and failed miserably. It would have been one thing if he had just slipped and fallen. Instead, he had tried to jump away from the attack coming from below, one that had been lifting up the ground itself as he jumped. It wasn’t entirely unlike getting double bounced off a trampoline. The only difference was that instead of landing a few feet away in his yard and fracturing a wrist, all that force was ma...
2023-12-11 17:40:49 +0000 UTC
View Post
2023-12-11 17:34:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
2023-12-11 13:52:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
Leaving the woods at a different angle, Sean expected that he might end up pretty far from home. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Instead of disgorging him at an unknown location, the woods appeared to have accounted for the weird different-dimension feel of the space inside the woods by keeping track of where he had entered. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Sean found himself exiting the woods at roughly the same spot, to the point where he saw his own trailing footprints an...
2023-12-10 17:02:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Apocalypse System will kill you dead and not bat an eye. It isn’t your friend, it won’t feel your loss, and to the extent it writes anyone obituaries, they come in the form of wry little anecdotes attached to an equipment’s flavor text. For all the jokes it tells, the system created a cold, cruel world that will shred you to pieces if you take your eyes off the ball for even a second.
At the same time, you can’t ignore the fun of it all. I don’t just mean that...
2023-12-10 10:32:49 +0000 UTC
View Post
A long time ago, literally and figuratively, before his string of jobs, Sean had been a student studying to be a teacher, in Physics.
There were a lot of arguments about why it was necessary for teachers to pay some school a bunch of money, then intern at an entirely different school for free, and then eventually find a remarkably mediocre-paying job at yet another school. Some of the explanations almost made sense if you squinted enough.
The whole arrangement had always made Sean...
2023-12-09 05:29:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Achievement Unlocked: The Three Spectral Bears
Once, in the woods, there were three bears. The first bear was a killer. He loved to stalk through the forest and take down unsuspecting prey. The second one, that bear loved killing too. The third one was, in fact, really very enthusiastic about murder. The three were not, you might say, exactly porridge enthusiasts.
Most hunters don’t screw with the bears. Fighting ni...
2023-12-08 01:32:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
Overestimating your own strengths can be dangerous, and can get you into messes you can’t get out of. I know, I know. You are tired of me telling you to be careful. I get it. I grind that particular point a lot. That’s because it’s important. I’ve watched over-eagerness kill more people than any other single force, and I’m not going to be there to hold you back. I want you to be careful.
But, at the same time, I don’t want you to be too...
2023-12-06 21:55:51 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Well, you look much better than this morning, at least.” Cedarhelm creaked as he shook back and forth a little, entering what Sean was starting to think of as his active mode, where he went from looking like a big lump of dirt to an alive-looking big lump of dirt. “Happier. And you’ve gained some levels, unless I miss my mark.”
“Something like that.” Sean really wanted to like Cedarhelm. He really did. But it was fundamentally hard to have an even-footing relationship wit...
2023-12-06 20:12:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sean couldn’t change any of his tactics. He simply flared Hard Time as much as possible and hoped that it would be enough to buy enough time that his strike would land first. In that moment, the skill seemed to be working better than it had before. It wasn’t a massive difference, and he didn’t break the sound barrier. But his knife simply moved faster than it had in the past. With impending death hovering over him, he didn’t have time to understand why yet. But he was thankfu...
2023-12-06 20:10:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Not every single Apocalypse Beast is outright evil. It would almost be better if they were, because the mere fact that you might someday have to murder a T-Rex who would have been pretty good lunch company is the kind of thing that encourages hesitation. Unfortunately, waiting to act is often fatal in a world that rewards killing first and asking questions later.
The main thing to keep in mind is this: Whatever the rules of society were in your time, they don’t apply anym...
2023-12-05 17:19:26 +0000 UTC
View Post
By the time Sean woke up, it was already well into the morning. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. He had been fully planning on recovering his wind and doing something, anything to make himself more secure. Apparently, he had been a bit more nappish than he thought. But the fact that he was still alive was a great sign.
Best laid plans, I guess. What is this place? Sean thought, rising to his feet. The area he found himself in was what he thought of as a grove, in that ...
2023-12-05 17:17:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
Eating Capon was entirely out of the question. There was something uniquely off-putting about a truly jacked rabbit that Sean just wasn’t about to get around. But he still had to eat, and lentils weren’t going to cut it after the day he had. Keeping the fact that apocalypse beasts were never truly harmless in mind, he tried to make the end of the glutton rabbit as painless as possible.
There was plenty of wood to be had, and even kindling by virtue of the chewed-and-exploded log. Se...
2023-12-03 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
The trees showed no signs of thinning. Sean should have arrived at the edge of the forest after an hour of running, but nothing changed. Something system-ish was happening, for sure, but he had no way of knowing exactly what.
Do I just… keep walking? It doesn’t seem like the trash goliath followed me in, and I should be able to lose it again if it finds me. Eventually, there has to be an end, right?
But after a few hours, Sean still hadn’t found anything resembling ...
2023-12-02 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Thump!” Sean vocalized, just before the Trash Compactor made the same sort of noise on the chest of a garbage man. He frankly loved the thing. It did damage. Sometimes that damage came in the form of its spikes digging into a target. Sometimes, the sheer weight and momentum of the weapon dragged those spikes into their victim’s body. And sometimes, it just meant a solid, devastating hit with the flat parts of the compactor’s business end.
Sean could hardly aim the thing. It bar...
2023-12-01 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Tyr: This be a new series, as stated in the previous announcement. Don't confuse it with Deadworld!
Chapters 1-25 are available on RoyalRoad.
---
Some enemies can be cheesed. That Wicked Witch the system generated might very well not like you dousing it with a pail of water. And, yes, it might melt. But as much as it might make sense to hunt those weak spot...
2023-11-30 21:17:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey guys,
As your favorite announcer, I, Tyr, am here to present you with advance chapters from the new series R.C. has been working on~
You may have seen recently a certain story called “How to Survive at the End of the World” on the front page of RoyalRoad, written by someone called RC Joshua! Coincidence? You think not! And you are right, for there is no way t...
2023-11-30 21:10:49 +0000 UTC
View Post
One of my favorite things about writing is trying to anticipate how various people will react to what I’m writing. In part, this is just part of the job description; if I don’t think a sad part is going to make you feel a little sad, I need to rewrite it. If someone is supposed to be a jerk and you don’t hate him, I need to go back to the drawing board. When every single part of the book is aimed at making you feel something (and it is, even for “filler” chapters), that means I end ...
2023-11-28 06:51:32 +0000 UTC
View Post
The system instance was efficient. It was persuasive. It had a fundamental understanding of every intricacy in the planet that it ran. And it had the means and brainpower to accomplish its goals. But, due to circumstances outside its control, its fate was unfortunately sealed. The main system would never, ever forgive what had happened here. It would destroy it. The certainties it had on this horrifying fact was what finally reminded the system instance of a pair of its own traits so old it s...
2023-11-28 04:28:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
If you could call being in a coma “sleep”, Matt had slept for quite a while after Derek had caught him. Now, he felt sure he didn’t need any more rest. Without talking much, he and Lucy watched the sun rise over the scorched, leveled remains of the demon city. From what Lucy told Matt, after he collapsed, the entire set of hearts in the basement had gone up, triggered by that first big single-point blast. There was nothing left where the city used to be.
After the fight, Artemis a...
2023-11-26 20:46:38 +0000 UTC
View Post
The trickiest part about figuring out what to do with the demon hearts was realizing that, whatever might happen, they were no more dangerous in the basement than they’d be if Matt kept them close. If the demon lord set off one, they’d all go off. Matt would have to somehow get to ground level and run before they demolished the town, but in the meantime there was virtually no way the tower itself would survive crumbling from the stress. The chances of him escaping were paper-thin if they ...
2023-11-26 01:07:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
The demon lord turned and walked to one of the walls, one made almost entirely of what appeared to be glass. “I want to put your mind at ease if I can. I know it’s you who’s been wasting my hearts and just demolishing my troops lately. Don’t worry about that at all. I can always make more, and I can assure you that after making the first million or so, I lost most of any personal connection I might feel for them. I’m honestly just glad you’ve made it here. Really.”
Matt fe...
2023-11-25 00:41:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
When Matt had been falling into the hole he created, it looked like he was descending into pitch-black darkness. Now that he was at the bottom of the hole, it was a different story. It was still dark, despite the best efforts of the light streaming in from above. But it was dark in the way you’d expect the demon lord’s basement to be in a video game, a sort of candle-holders-lining-the-walls dimness as opposed to anything that actually kept him from seeing.
As he displaced the...
2023-11-23 00:41:53 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Your mole digging skill is really overpowered, Matt. That was close,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, no kidding. I’m going to go deeper.” Matt had not taken terrain into account when he had begun this particular tunnel, and the ground had apparently been at a slight downward slope towards the town. Matt had been tunneling fast enough through the ground that after a specific shovel stroke, his nearly level tunnel breached into open air, exposing his head only a few hundred meters from the ...
2023-11-20 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Before Matt said anything, he made everyone move a good distance away. Then, he activated his digging skill and bore a tunnel into an entire hill. As an added precaution, he asked Brennan to also set up the tent. And finally, he felt safe enough. One by one, each member of the team entered the tent and heard everything. Really, honestly everything.
They all knew a little about Gaia because Derek had told them. But none of them were ready to hear that a people group had managed to drive ...
2023-11-19 23:42:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
The main system sat on top of the laws of the universe like a tattoo sat on top of skin. It colored every aspect of it, manipulated how people saw and thought of it, and was very, very hard to remove. But as much as it could manipulate those laws, its abilities were still limited. It could make someone jump higher, or even give them the ability to fly. But it couldn’t nullify gravity. And even when it gave people skills, they came with costs, usually of mana, and were without exception acco...
2023-11-18 15:02:20 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone!
I know that since a lot of you guys read ahead on Patreon, some of the RoyalRoad announcements might not really come through. So, if you haven't seen it already, we recently launched a new novel titled How to Survive at the End of the World. And we think you'll really enjoy it.
I'll start with the FAQ and then drop the RR announcement below.&nb...
2023-11-17 22:07:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
Cobblestones, Matt decided, were one of the best things about being strong in a society that ran on medieval aesthetics. Or at least they were for someone who was a super-strong mole-enhanced digging specialist trying to make his way quietly under a heavily guarded military weapons storage facility. If the building had been built over concrete, he would have had to bash through it, making enough noise to let every single guard know exactly where and when he was coming up.
As it stood, t...
2023-11-17 21:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
