Hey guys! Once again, it has been way too fucking long. However, I am now finally moved into my new apartment, the wifi is set up as of about ten minutes ago, and I should actually have time to write consistently for at least the next month and a half or so.
Thank you to everyone who's stuck around, its been like... almost a month since I last posted and I feel absolutely terrible about it, but hopefully June will be a ...
2023-06-05 23:59:00 +0000 UTC View PostIts been quite a week (and a bit. Sorry about that). I'm no longer working where I used to work, which is both a good and a bad thing I think. An old friend from highschool I haven't spoken with for the better part of a decade passed away, which was very strange to find out about. It also looks like I'm going to be moving soon, so expect some possible disruptions because of that.
Anyway, sorry for the long delay! I really appreciate all of you and your engagem...
Hey guys, sorry about the long wait. It's been a very hectic few weeks and then some fun added complications arose that delayed things further. I was planning to post this chapter on Monday afternoon, but then I lost power and it only came back on a few hours ago. In other news, I no longer work where I used to work, so that is another fun(?) change.
Thank you to everyone who has stuck around despite the rather lo...
2023-05-03 17:03:24 +0000 UTC View PostClass on Monday sucked even more than it usually did. I was in no way, shape, or form recovered enough to make attending a good choice, but unfortunately skipping was an even worse option. Not only was this our last class before the final, but missing it would also be an obvious sign of weakness to all of my watching classmates.
Disappearing for a weekend was one thing, everyone knew that consolidating gains took time, but I could count the number of classes I’d missed in the past two...
2023-04-20 19:13:51 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I finally made it back to my room several hours later, I barely managed to step inside and shut the door behind me before my legs simply gave out. Only Miranda’s quick reflexes saved me from face planting into the ground and instead I slumped onto my side, head lolling to rest against her bare thigh.
My bones were like lead weights and my muscles had the structural stability of overcooked noodles. The moment my control finally lapsed, my circulations collapsed into a tangled mess...
2023-04-10 16:39:14 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys! Its a new month and I wanted to thank everyone that has stuck with me despite my somewhat... sporadic update schedule. To all of you, new and existing Patrons, I really appreciate you guys and your support. It keeps me going to know that you care about and enjoy my work. Anyway, on to the chapter!
I stepped out of the classroom to find Camille waiting for me, arms folded under her chest and an unreadable expression on her face. She was standing in a...
2023-04-02 21:30:11 +0000 UTC View PostI slumped forward and my arms buckled under my weight, only a sudden firm grip on my shoulder stopping me from face planting into the unforgiving stone floor. My body felt like an overfilled waterskin, my insides bloated and gurgling with every tiny movement. Thick, ropy tendrils of half-assimilated mana writhed like a nest of snakes under my skin, probing and pulsing and shoving their way deeper and deeper into my being.
I felt like I was going to be sick. Waves of unsettling pressure ...
2023-03-23 22:52:21 +0000 UTC View Post“You can begin once you’re ready,” Professor Williams’s voice whispered in my ear.
I nodded, glancing up towards where I knew the viewing area was hidden in the room’s domed ceiling. Though I couldn’t see them behind the opaque stone between us, I knew the rest of the class was watching me on specialized illusionary screens designed to transmit mana flows as well as images. I could just barely sense them, a dense cluster of mana signatures dampened by the mana-reflecting pro...
2023-03-19 02:33:22 +0000 UTC View PostI met Professor Williams at her office nearly eight hours before class. She’d arranged things with Professor Shrike such that I would not be penalized for missing one of his lectures and it wasn’t like we were going to be covering any new material anyway. It was our last real class since next week was going to be two days of exams and he’d told us weeks ago that we were just going to be reviewing some of the key concepts covered throughout the course.
On Miranda’s suggestion I...
2023-03-10 06:57:13 +0000 UTC View PostA few minutes later, a beat-red Lea disappeared into the bathroom and Miranda hurriedly shifted from where she was still lounging across the stone floor into a kneeling bow. She opened her mouth to say something, but I raised a hand to stop her.
“One moment,” I mouthed silently and Miranda obediently bowed her head. After a few seconds, I heard the sound of pouring water start up as Lea turned on the shower. Focusing, I summoned a thin wall of force between us and the bathroom. The ...
2023-03-01 06:36:19 +0000 UTC View PostWhy do I even bother trying to say when the next chapter will be finished :( I have no idea how other authors manage to keep to a well regulated and even release schedule.
As we moved into the final weeks of the semester, I was glad I no longer had as much of a reason to go out into the city because there was no way I could have devoted an entire evening to visiting Lea. Even with her staying just a few minutes walk away from my dormitory I was finding ...
2023-02-18 02:57:32 +0000 UTC View PostAnd here's the next one as promised! I'm trying to get a third chapter out this week as well, but that mostly depends on how fast the writing goes. Enjoy!
Daphne was nearly skipping as she left her last class of the day. Not even the heavy folder of makeup work tucked away in her bag could sour her mood. She would simply do it all on the boat, at this time of year it would be a two-day trip, and not have to worry about it at all once they reached the mainland...
2023-02-07 01:31:08 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys, sorry (again) about the long wait. Its only January but somehow my schedule is already packed with too many things to do and it didn't help that this chapter just didn't want to be written. The next chapter should be up sometime tomorrow afternoon, hopefully that at least slightly makes up for it. For now, enjoy!
The door opened just as my fist was about to impact against the well polished wood. “Orion! Just the man I was hoping to see,” Profess...
2023-02-06 05:02:57 +0000 UTC View PostA blazing pillar of fire bore down on me like a tidal wave, tongues of white-hot flames dancing within the conflagration. The heat radiating off of it filled the room in an instant and I watched out of the corner of my eye as Cayla scrambled back away from her joyously laughing friend, arm raised to shield her face.
It was an impressive bit of magic, a peak fourth-circle fire spell Briella had found in one of the grimoires her great-grandmother had provided to her along with the potion ...
2023-01-29 00:49:21 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys, it's been like a week I think? Sorry about the long wait. If you're in the discord you'd know my computer broke in the middle of last week and I only just got it back earlier today. This chapter has been languishing on my backup disk since Wednesday which feels really bad. I'll do my best to make sure such long breaks between chapters are few and far between but sometimes things outside of my control get in the way. 2023-01-24 06:04:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Damn, chapter 100!? That's... a lot of chapters. Didn't really think I was going to get this far when I first started writing this story a little over a year ago. I had hoped for something a little bit more exciting for such a big benchmark (triple digits, feels weird), but this is the chapter that it fell on so that's what its going to be.
Thank you guys for supporting me on this journey. It means so much that you enjoy my work and want to contribute to m...
2023-01-14 07:39:32 +0000 UTC View PostEmotions and people talking to each other are both hard and complicated, but I did my best.
I waited patiently with my back turned as Lea changed out of her rumpled night clothes. Once I’d promised that I wasn’t going to leave without her, her previous reluctance vanished and she shyly warned me not to peek before hurrying away.
That had been almost twenty-five minutes ago and she was still holed up in the small bathroom attached to her room. ...
2023-01-12 03:12:18 +0000 UTC View PostWriting people talking to each other is hard. Writing heavily traumatized people trying to talk to each other is even harder. I hope I properly captured the emotions I was going for here, let me know what you guys think!
I woke three hours later than I had planned feeling physically refreshed yet mentally exhausted. Despite feeling rather hazy about it in the moment, I could suddenly remember the entire session I’d had with Professor Williams in razor-sharp...
2023-01-07 23:27:09 +0000 UTC View PostThe books that Professor Williams pointed me towards proved to be technically helpful. Unfortunately, the ‘technically’ was a key modifier in this case. The books were about rituals using outsiders as components, but they were all deeply technical and arcane to the point that I struggled to follow what the authors were saying.
One of them, a journal detailing a long-dead mage’s attempts to learn about other worlds by translating a monstrous outsider’s memories into a form interp...
2023-01-01 19:41:14 +0000 UTC View PostI got to the classroom about twenty minutes before class was scheduled to start and was very glad to see that Professor Williams was just as early as usual. I would have liked to come even earlier than that, but unfortunately I was unwilling to miss class and I could only make it down from Professor Shrike’s classroom so quickly.
“Good afternoon professor,” I called out as I set my things down in my usual seat in the front row.
The professor turned away from the diagram she ...
2022-12-31 04:22:55 +0000 UTC View PostNot quite Monday, but less late than things have been recently? Next chapter is mostly done, should be up soon. Enjoy!
Analyzing outsiders may as well have been a field of study all its own. Avalon’s library contained records of nearly ten-thousand unique specimens, not to mention their various offspring and hybrids built from their corpses, stretching back to the founding of the Academy. Some had been summoned on site for research purposes, others hunted d...
2022-12-28 03:23:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe current goal is another chapter on Monday and hopefully at least two more during that week. I don't think I'll hit 100 by the end of the year like I wanted to, but I'm gonna do my best! Enjoy!
I wanted to move immediately onto the next part of our training, but apparently I had overestimated the girls’ mana reserves. Briella was mostly fine, her family’s bloodline spirit made fire-related magic cheaper to cast as well as easier. It was why she could c...
2022-12-24 21:08:13 +0000 UTC View PostDespite being what some might describe as a lawless hellhole full of murderous sociopaths, Avalon did have a number of very strictly enforced rules. The student handbook they gave out at the start of every year was nearly four-hundred pages long and reading all of it was not so much required as it was just common sense.
Every year a few particularly stupid first-years would disregard the strongly worded encouragement to read and memorize the entire thing before they did anything else, a...
2022-12-21 22:16:28 +0000 UTC View PostI've been fighting with this scene (and the next like... 5 chapters tbh) for way too long. You guys deserve at least a vaguely reasonable schedule. At some point, I just need to be happy enough with it I think.
Sorry about the long absence, I will try to make sure that isn't a common occurrence. I have a lot of planned time off during the coming holidays, so hopefully lots of writing time finally! For now, enjoy!
The moment I fina...
2022-12-09 06:29:45 +0000 UTC View PostNext one should be up either tomorrow evening or sometime on Thursday. For now, enjoy!
EDIT: I've made some changes to the chapter to better describe what Orion thinks he is seeing.
As you can probably tell, I did not post another chapter last week unfortunately. Doing things with my family proved to me more time consuming than I expected, along with some other less fun issues. The next 2 chapters are basically written and just...
2022-11-23 02:42:40 +0000 UTC View PostSorry about the delay, I wanted to have this chapter out on Monday but time has not been accommodating. I'm not working most of next week thankfully so I hope to hammer out 3-4 chapters. For now, enjoy! If anyone has forgotten the first part of what is going on here, I believe it began in chapter 75?
I was finally starting to see how Miranda had managed to be as successful in feeding on our classmates as she had been, even in a place as cutthroat as Avalon. S...
2022-11-17 20:11:02 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys, one of you recently brought to my attention that the button to connect to discord is there, but doesn't actually seem to be working. If you are in the discord and are interested in other people being able to see that you are a patron, please reach out to me and I will give you the role you should have. I'll have to see if I can figure out what is going wrong here :(
Anyway, enjoy the chapter! I really appreciate all of your ongoing support, particularl...
2022-11-11 02:02:02 +0000 UTC View PostHey, I just wanted to ask everyone if you guys can see the option to connect to discord through the patreon. I set that up a while back but as far as I can tell, no one has tried it yet. I don't know if thats because I did something wrong or if just no one is interested in doing so. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed today's chapter and thank you for all the support! I really appreciate all of you.
2022-11-08 03:09:08 +0000 UTC View PostFour, technically Four-Three based on the naming convention the Earthshadow’s private enforcers used but I’d never interacted with any of the other Fours, met me at one of the side gates in the wall around the Earthshadow mansion. Four was a tall, slender man with a long streak of red running through his messy dark-brown hair. With his hood down and the identity-concealing spells woven into the hoods deactivated, he looked rather awkward in his matt black robe.
Though I reflexively ...
2022-11-07 19:07:39 +0000 UTC View PostHere's one, hopefully I'll have another chapter out on Thursday. Enjoy!
As I had decided the night before, it was time to start cleaning up loose ends. Thus, after a productive morning grinding through a small pile of assignments and some combat magic practice, I left Avalon and headed towards the edge of town where many noble families had mansions built for their children attending Lightcastle.
I had already done some initial investigation into the six...
2022-11-01 04:50:21 +0000 UTC View Post