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Chapter 144: Fighting the Ground

Arthur’s next morning started with a pounding on his door that was slightly too earth-shattering to have come from a hand, or to even have come from his door. Jerked from a deep sleep into complete alertness in a blink of an eye, he jumped out of bed, ran to the front of his house, and threw the door fully open.

Outside, Milo was standing five or six feet away, at the end of the biggest, stupidest weapon Arthur had ever seen in his life.

“Don’t be too mad at me. I didn’t e...

Audiobook Sneak Peek

Hey guys, one last announcement today.

Here's a sneak peek of the DWBS audiobook. We found an awesome narrator in Marlon Dance-Hooi and a kickass audio producer in Noah James. We're really happy with how everything turned out and can't wait for it to be live.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek of what we have in store.

We still need to read Audible's rules around audiobook distribution - I'm fairly sure that if we go exclusive with Audible (which we probably will), we a...

Snowing Pine

Recently, we’ve been getting a lot of comments around the Patreon reading experience, which unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired, especially on the mobile front.

So we dusted off our programming gloves and Tyr built a website designed for reading DWBS, https://snowingpine.com/ . We implemented Patreon OAUTH, which effectively lets you use your Patreon account to log in. You’ll have access to the same content a...

Chapter 143: Ready

Rhodia’s parents were refreshingly normal. Ella was like ten moms compressed into one, and Maar was a whole different kind of intimidating. Rhodia’s parents, in contrast, were a lot like what Arthur expected from nice and normal Earth parents. They were proud of their daughter, pleasant to her friends, and happy to be there.

For the most part, they were happy watching everyone talk, eat, and have a good time. And a good time it was, too. The sheer volume of moms had given the town a...

Chapter 142: The Vole and the Giant

Arthur, being Arthur, immediately had second thoughts about his plan.

Yes, it would be awesome. Yes, it would be the absolute best he could do to create the greatest environment possible for Milo and Rhodia’s wedding. But would it be a good use of community resources and time? Probably not. With the same amount of effort, they could grow a bunch of food, build that many more roads, or check any number of things off the eternal things-to-do list for the town.

It took musing about...

Chapter 141: Wedding Planning

“Arthur!” Spiky stood up from behind the counter, almost knocking over a stack of books he had perched near the edge. “Imagine walking into this humble place of learning on a sunny day like today. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Ah, yeah.” Arthur scratched the back of his head, apologetically. “I don’t get as much time to read as I’d like to, lately.”

“Honestly, if I hadn’t seen you do it before, I’d wonder if you even could. But I get it,” Spiky said. “I...

Chapter 140: I Belong

Note: A nice chapter to round out the weekend. And huge thank you to everyone who showed up to support our Amazon launch. We're climbing the rankings really fast but we're not out of the woods just yet. Every bit helps!

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Arthur suddenly found himself in charge of an event that was only possible because he opened his big mouth and sprouted ramblings about Earth customs. That meant planning. And conversations. And meetings.

Food, at least, was easy. The town had multiple coo...

Chapter 139: Deejay

The party went on for a few more hours until people either started getting pulled away by work or went to rest for the day. Karra, Kout, and Lith were the first to peel themselves off, followed by Skal, who never stuck around in big social situations all that long and went back to the beach to check on his fishing lines. Work never really stopped for that long in Coldbrook, and the visitors were still coming in over the next few days.

Any chance that this return-to-labor would be viewed...

DWBS Book 1 on Amazon

Hi guys,

We try to make as few announcements on Patreon as possible, mostly because you guys are a large part of how we make our living and the last thing we want is to annoy you with non-book stuff.

Today is a small exception. DWBS Book 1 is currently live for purchase for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited readers on Amazon. In some ways, Amazon is a fickle beast. They take the first few days of traffic and use that as the benchmark for determining whether they show a book to organic ...

Chapter 138: Named Drink

Ella had originally made an amount of food that had seemed ridiculous to everyone when she brought it to the table. Now it was barely enough. Eito had to fight for his share while Karbo carved off huge hunks of meat, took giant scoops of salad, and sent Arthur to make him a drink.

“Make it make me stronger,” Karbo said. “Stronger and faster and meaner.”

“Why? You aren’t going to fight today, right?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah?” Karbo half-asked, half-confirmed. �...

Chapter 137: Festival of Moms

Note: Second chapter of the day!

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Arthur would always remember the next day as the festival of moms.

When the first wagon pulled up to the gates, it had a woman he hadn’t seen before. But, judging by hugs alone, she had to be Kout’s mother. Throughout the day, more and more mothers began to filter in, until there was a crowd of them and Arthur was forced to pull all his stampers, laborers, and general workforce together to make temporary housing.

Right when Arthu...

Chapter 136: Pinches and Curses

Note: Two chapters today!

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“Arthur! Come look.” Milo shouted out from the back of the shop. “I’ve made a little model of the train. It should help you visualize what I’ve been talking about.”

With Slapstone, iron, and entirely too much free time, Milo had put together a roughly to-scale model of the valley they all lived in, complete with cliffs, raised areas indicating roads, and even a little simulated ocean carved out of the rock and filled with normal water...

Chapter 135: Betrothal

Arthur read over the description for Overcharged Psychic twice. Luckily, the achievement didn’t seem to come with any downsides, or to be the kind of thing he could actively control. The next weird system thing was a bit more complex, considering that it involved opening an entirely new window he was wholly sure he hadn’t seen before.

The window wasn’t related to his class at all, despite being related to his current status as a person. Labeled Mayoral Interface, it ...

Chapter 134: Overcharged Psychic

“How’d she get here?” Arthur asked. “I thought Itela was days away.”

“She was. But that’s not important,” Mizu said.

“And I’m sorry I scared you,” Arthur said. “I didn’t mean to get sick.”

“You should have told me if you weren’t feeling well, and I’m mad about that,” Mizu said as she began to pull back from Arthur. “But that’s also not the important thing here.”

“Huh? What is?”

Mizu sighed. “Arthur, did you really g...

Chapter 133: Young Earthling

“Oh, Hi…” Arthur realized he had never learned the woman’s name. She had always been Mizu’s mother to him. “I don’t think I know how to address you.”

“Maar,” the woman said. “Stay here.”

With that, she stood up and walked into the house, returning a moment later with another chair.

“Here. Sit,” Maar said.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Arthur said. If anything, he would have rather run and jumped into the cold ocean than talk with this...

Chapter 132: Pressures

The only exceptions to the rule were Karra and Lily, both of whom could benefit from having an almost unlimited amount of majicka. Karra refused, flat out, to take any of the town’s resources.

“I could use it, but I don’t need to,” she said. “Working is fun for me. It’s a way of life, not a thing to get over with.”

And for Lily, her explanation was, “I could flare a bigger aura, but then I’d get tired. If I do extra today, I pay for it tomorrow. Unless it’s an ...

Chapter 131: Milo’s New Project

And just like that, Empathetic Host leveled again. Arthur shuddered as the wave of information he could read from everyone in the direct vicinity got that much stronger. He sat down, ignored it as best he could, and got down to business.

“Lily, I need you to get some food for Mizu,” Arthur said. “Stuff you think might be comfort food for her.”

“She likes cheese,” Lily said.

“She really does. Lots of meat, bread, and cheese seems like a good bet. A...

Chapter 130: Industry

Arthur didn’t realize he was walking face-first into a very long afternoon until it was too late.

Most of Arthur’s days since coming to the demon world were characterized by little moments, at least in terms of how he remembered them. There would be a few tiny stories, pinpoints on his personal timeline that made those days worth experiencing. The rest of his moments tended to blend together into big lumps of time spent working, practicing his craft, or not doing much of anything at...

Chapter 129: Arthur’s Best

“I haven’t…” Mizu looked at Arthur, who nodded encouragingly. “I wasn’t using many runes for pressurization and travel. I’ve worked something different out. The explosion was about something else.”

Mizu’s mother’s face assumed an odd look that nobody there could read, and she focused entirely on her daughter for the moment before taking another small drink of her tea.

“Explain,” Mizu’s mother said.

Mizu took a deep breath, looked in the direction of...

Chapter 128: Mizu’s Mother

“You’re telling me she made the entire trip with you without mentioning she was visiting her daughter?” Milo gawked. “How long was she with you?”

“Two, three days?” Talca said. “Odd ride. She brought all her own food, wouldn’t eat anything from any of the stands. Doesn’t talk unless she has to, and I mean that. I almost forgot she was there by the end.”

“Gods. Gods.” Mizu was standing with a clenched jaw and a ramrod-straight posture, trying her best to n...

Chapter 127: Talca and Littal

Some things took a lot of getting used to, and some took almost none.

For Arthur, “the town in inaccessible to wagons” was an idea that he took it as an undisputed, unspoken given. It was a fact of nature and a law of the universe, something that had carved itself into granite-like certainty in him over the last several months. They were alone, save for Karbo style rescues, forging their own path in the wilderness.

And yet, unless close to a dozen very excited people were lyin...

Chapter 126: Majicka Boost

It was a full two minutes before Lily came out of it, glancing at Arthur’s face to Mizu’s and back before breaking out in a huge grin.

“Oh, gods yes. I thought I was close. It’s about time, system.” Lily tore out of Arthur’s arms and jumped up, ignoring his protests that she should take it slow and immediately opening up her system screen.

“Lily, could you please sit down?” Arthur asked as he watched. “You were out for way too long for a skill gain.”

“N...

Chapter 125: Water is Important

Arthur and Mizu spent as much time together as they reasonably could, but it had to end at some point. Fun was fun, but in the Demon World, it always came with an expectation of eventually getting back to work. The fact that the work itself was fun made this much better than it sounded most of the time. The next day was a possible exception, though, and one that they both wanted to face rested.

Mizu explained her plans to Arthur a bit as they sat there. The easy part of the work was lay...

Chapter 124: The Best Things

Some berries, it seemed, were not meant to be baked, unless you wanted a cookie that tasted distinctly of fried pork. Thankfully, the cookies were weird but not inedible, so everyone more or less enjoyed the weird mystery cookies that Arthur made.

As discretely as he could, Arthur found a helpful-looking Coldbrook resident and got the word out about what had happened to the water, how sore Mizu felt over it, and how anyone who actually needed water before Mizu could get some basic repai...

Chapter 123: Weird Cookies

“See,” Milo said. “I told you she’d know without you telling you. Pay up.”

Arthur flipped Milo a coin. From the fact that Mizu was beaming ear to ear and making a beeline towards them, it was pretty clear that he had lost the wager.

“It’s working.” Mizu grabbed Arthur’s collar and more or less dragged him out of his chair. “It’s working. The water is… well, it’s going around in circles. Good circles, Arthur. Beautiful circles.”

“That’...

Chapter 122: Craft

Although Mizu seemed more cheered up when Arthur left, he still believed that he had a boyfriend-duty to help her in whatever way he could. The actual options for doing that felt pretty limited, but that didn’t mean there weren’t good choices to make at all, and they all pointed in the same direction. If Arthur wanted to help, his best shot was getting as much of Mizu’s waterway project done as quickly as possible, so there was more to show her mom when she made it to Coldbrook.

A...

Chapter 121: Water Pumps

Arthur decided he wasn’t going to cry. He was going to sob. There was no resisting this. Ella had dropped a mom-nuke on him. He was now what emotional scientists referred to as feelings-rubble.

The only defense against the onslaught of tears that was contributing its tiny shield was a primitive instinct somewhere deep in his programming about crying too much in front of his girlfriend. He knew Mizu wouldn’t care. Hell, she might even like that he was capable of it. But the instinct ...

Chapter 120: The Letter

Mizu decided, right then and there, that she would take the rest of the day off too. Not only was she so far ahead of her own work that nobody could really take exception to it, her break would actually allow her to dodge the twin work-management menaces that were Spiky and Leena who had been asking her to rest.

This was, for Arthur, as much like old times as anything could have been. There was Mizu, just sitting around the shop and watching him work while she read and drank tea. Big re...

Chapter 119: Arthur the Mayor

Note: Hope you guys love this chapter.

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The Coldbrook morning rush was a little more impersonal than the one Arthur used to handle in his old shop. That felt necessary, even if it was a little disappointing. The current necessities of the town demanded that people rush to their jobs, work as hard as they could, and then get back to the safety of the town before dark. Without a good way to get a town wide network of streetlights up and running, daylight was an expensive resource...

Chapter 118: Months

With the danger of the dungeon gone, months began to fly by. The town’s population grew. Dairy-producing Hings were captured and partially domesticated.

Milo’s iron vein proved to be more than sufficient for his needs into the near future, and between his and Rhodia’s output the town was soon furnished, paved, and awash in all the tools they needed to do their work.

Mizu’s tireless work pace was harder to see than Milo or Rhodia’s, but in hardly any time at all, she had ...