RCJoshua

A Quick Favor

Hi guys!

I'd like to ask a special favor. Over the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to write a lot. Like, a whole lot. Things were flowing, I liked where things were going, my hands felt good, and my mood was good. I cleared some serious, serious words.

I think that really helped overall quality, but one thing that sometimes comes into play when I write fast is little continuity things. We are now approaching the end of an entire trilogy, and we are taking the next little ...

Chapter 143: Mole Mining

“Seriously. That’s three battles won by heart, out of three battles total. It’s like that’s your only move,” Derek said as the group sat around, resting from the battle and their rapid withdrawal from the battleground afterward. “You need to diversify your moves a little bit, man. I’m starting to get bored with it.”

“Thanks for your feedback,” Matt said, deadpan. “We’d like to assure you we take every comment seriously. But… yeah, I’m guessing that will be th...

Chapter 142: Really a Gollum

“Hey. Hey. You. I’m not going to hurt you. I never do, right?”

The bear regarded Matt with a wild, suspicious eye. It was true that Matt had never hurt him, but from the bear’s perspective, he was probably like a psychotic dirt ninja. To be fair, Matt had let him go so far mostly because it was funny. He imagined the bear didn’t have much confidence in the human’s overall stability.

“But I have a reason for that,” He lied. “I need information. And If I don’t ge...

Chapter 141: Fighting an Army

“It’s still unbelievable. They all kept this quiet? The entire Church? Somebody would have told us. Even just if they got drunk and let it slip,” Artemis said as they started making their way to the edge of town.

“I don’t think so.” Derek was huffing keeping up with the other two, but his recent stat gains meant it was much easier than before. He could even talk while doing running. “When we were at the Church, the lady said Alder sets each one of those plinths up himself....

Chapter 140: Truth-teller Stone

Near the border, repairs were well underway on the demolished lookout tower. As much as demons were individualistic, their self-centered instincts all evaporated away when participating in an activity related to war. The lighter-weight demons were hard at work erecting scaffolding, carrying lighter materials, setting more delicate parts, and doing more exacting carpentry tasks. A contingent of heavy-duty, large-animal demons had also shown up, complete with demon-variant beasts of burden. Tho...

Chapter 139: Important Stuff

Matt jumped to his feet just in time to hear the sounds of a few dozen crossbows slap against a few dozen shoulders, and didn’t have to look to know what they were aimed at. By the time the strings started twanging, he was already in motion. The first salvo missed him entirely, but provided no relief from his dodging. They were too well-trained to fire all their shots at once with a weapon that took a few moments to reload, instead sending salvos at him in groups.

After a few moments,...

Chapter 138: Holder of the Shield

Meanwhile, where the plinth originally stood was now replaced by a ten-foot crater in the ground. The church-lady was a good deal more injured, but appeared to have survived thanks to a magic shield she had put up. It had cut the damage enough to let her live, if not without scratches and bumps.

“What was that? Why would you do that?” She screamed, standing up from the grass and brushing herself off. “Are you insane?”

Matt had zero time for her. He looked around franticall...

Chapter 137: Church Plinths

“One last thing for ya two, before ya go.” The old man had finished whaling on Matt for a while, having thoroughly proved how good the armor was by subjecting Matt to dozens of attacks that probably would have otherwise killed him without protection. By the end of the fight, he had gotten used to the old man’s speed again and got in a few hits of his own, but nothing like what he had taken. He wasn’t really injured, but he had been rattled around so much his bones now felt loose.

Chapter 136: Phoning for Help

“I see what you mean about the descriptions. Very minimal,” Matt said. “We’re still under the communication block?”

“We are. Thought ya might have something to say.”

Matt pulled a stool away from the wall and sat down. “Without going into details, more than a few of these armor pieces have names and functions that indicate they know about my past. I don’t even think I have to distrust you, since I don’t have any idea how you’d even know. But how does the armo...

Chapter 135: Dust Mask of the Barren Lands

The old man’s house smelled like fire and sounded like mayhem, even from the outside. The hammer blows they had heard yesterday had been loud, but they had also been at a sedate, controlled rhythm. Things had changed. The hammer blows came harder, louder, more frequently, and at a pace so disordered it sounded almost random. The chimney, which had been gently smoking yesterday, was now pouring smoke out at a pace that would have made Matt think the house was on fire if the black clouds were...

Chapter 134: Coffee and Workouts

Matt knew that first impressions mattered. When he first met Lucy, she had told him that he should just slink off into the shadows and die. Thankfully, he had been old enough and maybe even wise enough to know she was a hurt kid, and that hurt kids don’t always think things through. It wasn’t a great first memory, but he had a lot of tools for minimizing the hurt and pain from her actions.

Her story was different. Her first memory of him was a guy showing up five years too late to p...

Chapter 133: Demonic Platinum

“Oh, and this. Absolutely this. Do you know what this is? It’s a whole lizard made of stone.”

“Why not just use an actual stone, then?” Matt asked, completely lost for the fifth time in the last ten minutes.

“Because stones can’t walk, you idiot. This could.”

The old man was going crazy, jumping from piles of hide to piles of bone, stacks of metal to stacks of wood, and bolts of cloth to bolts of demon-tendon string like a kid on a timed shopping spree in a t...

Chapter 132: Titan of Strength

“Ya did well, but ya still shouldn’t have been able to knock me out, ya know.” The old man had now calmed down, and after reviewing the actual chain of events with Matt, he was both appropriately impressed and, it seemed, not accepting of the defeat at all. “Ya couldn’t of hit me hard enough.”

“I mean, I must have. You were pretty out.” Matt was taking it all in stride. After all, he was pretty sure the old man wouldn’t have actually killed him. He had no problem with ...

Chapter 131: Batters Up

The old man considered this for a moment before turning to Matt again. As he approached, he cleared his throat a bit bashfully.

“So, there, Matt, was it? I’d be pleased to take the commission, if ya is interested. I’ll make something real nice, I think.”

“Thanks, old man. I’d like that.”

“I’ll even throw in a weapon, free of charge. Just provide the materials and I’ll make ya something good. Better’n what you got, anyway.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine ...

Chapter 130: Dropped a Mountain on Them

“So the trick to the old man is, he’s going to hit you with a pipe. That’s just going to happen. You might think he’s not going to do it, or that you can block it, or… I dunno, anything, really. But he’s probably going to hit you with a pipe at some point. But besides that, he’s a really nice guy.”

Matt, who just wanted armor, didn’t exactly expect to hear a one-sided monologue about a blacksmith from Derek. It went on for a surprisingly long time. Derek first talked a...

Chapter 129: A Line of Credit

Inside the building, everything was marble. Not in the Earth way where the building had marble flooring and just a lot of marble inlaid with other materials. As far as Matt could see, every single surface in the place was really, truly, and actually made of the stone. The only reason he felt confident walking around the room without banging his shin on something was with his PER score and the fact that, at some point, some architect had tempered the calcium carbonate madness by differentiatin...

Chapter 128: Riches in Friendship

Matt and Derek picked up an enormous amount of food from various street carts as they walked toward the bathhouse. Eventually, it was enough that they had to make a pit stop and spread their loot on a cloth on a bench between them. Then, they absolutely destroyed thousands of calories worth of fried meats, breaded meats, and various foods Matt couldn’t recognize but that Derek assured him were good. Now, thoroughly bloated, they were letting it cool off in a natural hot spring-warmed pool o...

Chapter 127: Buy Utah

“Good. Next, that tattoo. The others might not have noticed it, but don’t think that I didn’t see you apply it. Where’d you get it? And why didn’t you tell me about it? From what I saw on the mountain, it looks like it helps you move stupid amounts of rock?”

“Not exactly.” This was something the system already knew about, so Matt felt like he could talk about it without giving much up it didn’t already know. “It’s more like an enhancement for Survivor’s Refle...