Metra’s leg was bouncing up and down, up and down. She was twitching left to right, left to right. She was fidgeting with a pen, round and round, round and round.
“Fuck!” The sudden exclamation spooked Lee, who had been watching with all of the fascination of a young deer. “Urgh,” the First of Wrath kept exclaiming her annoyance. “I’m a weapon, my king, not a slave girl to be displayed as a trophy piece.”
“I am pretty sure you’ll disagree wi...
2024-07-12 10:10:26 +0000 UTC
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“Are we planning another fight today?” Scarlett asked.
The question came over breakfast. No activation of the seal was getting between them and an expansive meal that morning. Hearty pancakes with bacon were the meal of choice.
John cut another slice off. “Maybe during the seal competition,” he answered. “We are on seal three of six, if I understand correctly?” He waited for the confirmation. “Nahua?”
“Mhm?” The axolotl woman looked up from her pla...
2024-07-11 18:04:29 +0000 UTC
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The Inevitable party stopped in front of the government building. Tall walls of orderly cut stone formed an out perimeter. The oaken double doors were currently open, but the two guards still stopped the quartet. “Your invitation?” one of the dark elf men asked, his hand demandingly extended.
Aclysia respectfully bowed her head, she delivered the parchment. An eyebrow rose, as the guard read through the Guild’s description of the party. “Unvetted in matters o...
2024-07-10 15:36:26 +0000 UTC
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They barely made it back into the bunker before Rave jumped John.
The feline Lightbearer pressed her nubile body against him. In her eyes, the pink lustre had taken the shape of two hearts. Her mouth was open, her tongue slightly extended. There was only heat on her face, a desire that ran as deep as her excitement from the last fight. Now that adrenaline and pain no longer kept her otherwise occupied, the Restorative Heat had kicked in fully.
John knew what to...
2024-07-09 12:37:16 +0000 UTC
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Among the many reasons why John liked being a generalist was the advantage of sensory overload. There were many fighters in the Abyss that John would have called his peers or even superiors. Liakan was certainly among them. The demigoddess would have easily squashed John on his own and probably defeated him even if he had all of his elementals around.
That was why he wouldn’t have fought her just with his elementals. What John did, what he almost always did in his fights, was t...
2024-07-08 12:00:56 +0000 UTC
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The plan was layered and yet straightforward.
Their goal was not the annihilation of the Azure Tribe or even the permanent harming of its present members. Neither of those outcomes were desired in the long run. That prison Hailey imagined was far from capable of being in practical use and John doubted anything short of killing Liakan would remove her from this competition.
Therefore, the only thing he wanted was to defeat her in a way that satisfied the Quest. ...
2024-07-06 09:43:58 +0000 UTC
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The situation was tense.
Battle had gradually relaxed as priorities shifted from getting first to a new position to holding that position. Since each side was doing so, the skirmishes reduced to potshots reduced to hostile glaring.
Both John’s forces and the Azure Tribe had decided to take up position in the northeastern quadrant of the new stretch of the Glory Road. If they had known about each other, they probably would have tried to be more aggressive in c...
2024-07-05 08:09:20 +0000 UTC
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The bad news was that John was beholding proof of the fact that Glory was doubtlessly the strongest person in the entire Illusion Barrier. The undecorated wraith knight walked and where he walked the stones were ground down by invisible forces. It was more than just accelerated time. Decay on its own did not turn inert stone into grains as fine as desert dunes. In life, Zelos must have been a Latebloomer from millennia back and he had all that time to hone his skills in every dim...
2024-07-04 17:56:05 +0000 UTC
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Several days later, the party sat back in the Adventurer’s Guild. Reysha tossed several herbs into the soup that she had just bought. The green particles swam on top of the broth, then on top of the spoonful she took of the meal.
When Reysha filled her mouth with the food, it tasted bland. Bland was a massive improvement over the wretched taste of botfly maggots and puss that she was used to. The herb was a medical agent typically used to make vile concoctions go d...
2024-07-03 12:40:22 +0000 UTC
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‘Not going to lie, I kind of love this.’ The thought occurred because the armour was, for all of its stupidity, pretty cool. John couldn’t help liking it. Even though he wasn’t a mecha fan, he could appreciate a giant death robot.
It helped that Xipe-Totec was sent flying by the two beams. The monstrous god-warrior was sent flying straight to the ground. At John’s side, Nahua began to hiss. Not with her mouth, she was too busy laughing, but with her skin. N...
2024-07-02 07:28:47 +0000 UTC
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“Wake up.”
John was not quite certain when he had last been rudely shaken out of his sleep. He was even less certain when he had last seen white hair first thing in the morning and had it not be accompanied by tight wetness around his manhood. That being said, he had to deal with one and was not blessed by the latter. Nahua stared at him expectantly.
“The trial is about to appear,” the axolotl woman spoke in a serious tone.
John immediately chased...
2024-07-01 09:52:56 +0000 UTC
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‘We have built the torment nexus from the famous book “do not build the torment nexus”!’
Whoever made that meme never had asked themselves just how useful a torment nexus could be with the right application.
‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.’
A beginner’s mistake, that she did not make. The question of purpose and justification for the product had been contemplated early...
2024-06-29 17:36:05 +0000 UTC
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“Do you want to go after her?” John asked, while the duellists separated.
Ehtra’s green eyes remained fixed on the retreating samurai. Between Rave’s questions, the power of light at her disposal, and her raw power, the theory was all but confirmed in its entirety. Kage and Hikari were the Twilight Twins reborn.
How exactly this had happened remained a question unanswered. Similarly, they did not know how much of the old powers had transferred to these ...
2024-06-28 17:51:00 +0000 UTC
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‘He didn’t stop me.’
That was the only thought that Rave had. No Sylph zapped into her path, no shout came after her, she was left to charge. If there was any endorsement she could have for her action, then this was it. Grinning ear to ear, she bridged the distance.
One Martial Art brought her right in front of the unknown combatant. The reinforced knuckles of her right fist were on a collision course with the black-haired woman’s face. Blue eyes stared...
2024-06-27 15:56:38 +0000 UTC
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Aclysia and Apexus made their way to the local church district.
The Church, as the institution, was present as a central building. It had little resemblance to a temple of any kind and it was not either. The block of grey stone had been hastily erected when the Leaf had earned initial prominence and had not been replaced in the 90 years since. It barely had any windows, nothing in terms of decorations, and existed solely for the purpose of administrative duties. In t...
2024-06-26 17:42:54 +0000 UTC
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Nahua smiled with sickly sweet innocence under the combined, deadpan stares of the gathering. “You can try to tickle it out of me all you want, but I am not telling what awaits.” Her sing-song tone only made it more aggravating. “The Glory Road is a sacred path through the first sky and into the temple where the first touched the second. I have told you all you deserve to know. From here, show me merit.”
Sighing, John sorted what he did know. It wasn’t a lo...
2024-06-25 17:03:47 +0000 UTC
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Three days of travel later, the party was well within the massive gash that Rex Magnar had cut into the original map. It would have been a massive area to scour through without guidance. Nahua cut right through that issue, guiding them to a much narrower area.
They still took two days combing through that area, though. The terrain was all flat jungle. Any manmade landmarks Nahua knew from 500 years ago had been swallowed up, either by vegetation or new towns. Courtesy of John’s...
2024-06-24 21:24:31 +0000 UTC
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“We should look into some mobile prison.” Scarlett looked over to Hailey. “Think we can construct something like that?”
The enigma engineer opened her mouth in what John assumed was going to be denial at first. A flash of inspiration made her fall silent. “Maybe with the Rose?” she mumbled to herself and grabbed a nearby piece of paper.
Momo squawked and tore it away from her before Hailey could start scribbling things down. “Get your own research...
2024-06-22 17:27:47 +0000 UTC
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Y'ello,
A quick newsflash to inform y'all about my vacation weeks this year.
As per usual, I'll be taking week of my birthday off. That would be 29th of July to the 4th of August.
In addition, this year, I'll be taking a prolonged vacation that flows into that. I won't be at home from evening of the 19th until the 8th of August. I'll be crossing the Alps on bicycle with my father and my nephew. I expect to have wifi for most of the trip, but I still won't be in a position t...
2024-06-22 01:27:10 +0000 UTC
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“Now we are in an interesting situation,” John mumbled.
Singed and Karia both had been fought to a standstill. Nia had agreed to not fight as long as Singed did not and Beatrice had managed to outmanoeuvre her opponent by playing her advantages to their maximum value. Under other circumstances, John might have decided that this was to his detriment, just as Gnome still being busy with the soldiers was, but if Liakan was true to her word, these enemy forces remain...
2024-06-21 13:48:51 +0000 UTC
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“Uhm, do you feel that?”
Beatrice considered responding with dry sarcasm, but the situation felt like it did not allow that. The weirdness was distant and familiar, unnerving in a way only a comfortable horror movie could be. “Affirmative. Nia is active here.”
“Should we… go to her?” Gnome asked.
Beatrice analysed their situation. Behind them was a long tunnel. They had spent the past several hours breaking through seal after seal. The ants ...
2024-06-20 15:48:43 +0000 UTC
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Korith looked at the 4 platin coins in her hand. It was the remainder of their platin, but with 66 more gold coins in their collective funds, Aclysia did not feel the need to be stingy.
The metal fairy had resolved to also spend on a proper two-handed warhammer later, so the kobold had her traditional main weapon in addition to the mace. Korith would just get it without being asked. That was the simplest way to get her to accept it.
40 gold was a lot and yet it...
2024-06-19 21:35:52 +0000 UTC
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Singed tried to resist the urge to inspect his arms.
Under the armoured exterior of this form were new bones. The plates of Mithril and Orkosite clattered softly while Singed turned his arm. New sand moved underneath them, the lifeblood of this new form. Singed barely even remembered flesh. There were the memories of his life, for certain, muddled with the faint influence of all those that had lived in the Azure Tribe whose souls had not survived to individuality unt...
2024-06-18 15:59:25 +0000 UTC
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John rubbed his temples, then sighed. This was an opportunity to gain additional information, if nothing else. ‘Could they have come in while we were still closer to the entrance?’ he complained to the whims of fate. Four hours were quite a lot and none of his parties had moved at a slow pace. By the time they were back in the entrance area, the Azure Tribe would have scattered out in their own right.
The Gamer contemplated his next move. Ultimately, the Azure Tr...
2024-06-17 12:39:12 +0000 UTC
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“The world is… what’s the word… Oh, I’m so stupid, I can’t remember it…” Nahua knocked the side of her head. “Ruled? Is that it? Ruled by the Divided Gates, right?”
“The Divided Gates are the foremost powers of the world; they… we do not rule it.” It had been over two months now since Fusion had joined their ranks, but John still wasn’t fully used to saying it. “I think the word you may have been looking for was ‘head’?”
“M...
2024-06-15 10:47:50 +0000 UTC
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“There it is!” Nahua exclaimed.
Even with his vision unbothered by the night, John found it a little difficult to make out what she was pointing at between all of the trees. It was a hole, barely wide enough for a person of John’s size to fit through. A rather large size, he had to remind himself. He was no longer as lanky as he used to be and even then, he had been much taller than the people who used to live in these parts.
One after another, they squee...
2024-06-14 16:01:27 +0000 UTC
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John had to hold back his laughter.
Momo stood in the doorway of the living room. Her gaze kept darting back and forth between Nahua and the Gamer. For once, this wasn’t because John was inappropriately close to a woman he had met very recently. In fact, he and Nahua sat quite far apart. The axolotl demigoddess even had clothes on. It had taken a moment to get something tailored that fulfilled her cultural desires.
No, Momo’s struggle was a different one. T...
2024-06-13 11:19:24 +0000 UTC
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They knocked on the door of the trader’s house. A young boy answered, staring up with the fascination that rambunctious children often had for the dangerous jobs. “We would like to speak to your father,” Apexus said, slightly lifting the chest he was carrying with Reysha.
“Alright!” the boy answered and hurried inside. There was excited shouting and the reprimanding answer of a stern mother. While she disciplined her overly energetic boy, the father moved t...
2024-06-12 10:47:13 +0000 UTC
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The sound of soft kisses were all that competed with the distant thumping of techno music in the large bedroom. A mattress worthy of thirty people was currently occupied by only three.
John’s tongue wrestled with that of Gnome. The shy brunette answered every advance with a little bit of playful resistance. A body made of stone, dirt, and magic felt different than genuine flesh in a few ways. Gnome was firmer, her surface a little smoother, and yet she was unmistak...
2024-06-11 09:39:32 +0000 UTC
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Lorelei’s stay in the Necropolis had been pleasant, all around.
She had been there for a week now. Her accommodations left nothing to be desired. The bed and other furniture were comfortable, clothes were provided when she asked for them, and she was free to move about as she chose. On more than one occasion, she ventured out of the castle she was staying in and into the city. The undead citizens of the Necropolis kept themselves busy via trade and craftsmanship. I...
2024-06-10 14:26:49 +0000 UTC
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