Elijah didn’t hesitate.
He used Flicker Step.
Flicker Step
Slip into the shadows, emerging behind your opponent. Only usable while under the influence of Shape of Venom. Cooldown based on Dexterity. Current: 54.1 Seconds.
In only an instant, he was behind the skeleton, though he didn’t attack it. As a Blight Dragon, he...
2024-09-05 15:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostElijah lowered his staff and cast Nature’s Rebuke. It had been incredibly effective against the zombies, so he expected it to do just as much damage against the tidal wave of rotting flesh coming his way. The spell hit the mass, and for a moment, he thought it was going to work. Layers of flesh disintegrated beneath the power of the spell, prompting a wave of hope. Then, rolls of rotting meat surged, closing in around the gaping wounds until, only a moment later, no ...
2024-09-05 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostZeke shoved his hand through the monster’s chest. Its scales were durable, but a simple punch from Zeke could shatter boulders with ease. As a result, he felt almost no resistance until he latched onto the creature’s spine. Then, he reared back and kicked the monster in the stomach while yanking back. The opposing forces countered one another for only a second before the thing’s spine ripped free of its body – along with its serpentine head – showering Zeke...
2024-09-05 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostElijah barreled through a pair of zombies, throwing them aside with so much momentum that when they hit the wall, they splattered like bugs. Still, he knew they weren’t truly dead because their brains remained undestroyed. He didn’t take the time to finish them off, though. Instead, under the influence of Shape of the Guardian, he threw himself toward the giant skeleton on the other side of the chamber. He had one task, and he couldn’t stop for anything.
He...
2024-09-04 15:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe pyramid hovered in the air, suspended by nothing Elijah could sense, and glowing with aquamarine energy. Even though the clouds had parted, the sun was nowhere to be seen, and the world seemed permanently cast in shades of grey. Elijah couldn’t explain it, but then again, he didn’t need to. His innate curiosity had given way to more practical concerns – like the flock of winged monsters circling the enormous floating structure.
Thankfully, the creatures...
2024-09-04 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostElijah leaped free of the falling skeleton, flipping through the air until he landed on his feet a few yards away. Black bones clattered to the ground, collecting into a large pile as he clutched the faintly glowing white crystal that had been around its neck. After he skidded to a stop, he let out a deep breath and let his shoulders sag in relief.
“How many is that?” Sadie asked from the other side of the bone pile.
“Fifty,” Elijah answered. ...
2024-09-03 15:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostCarmen pressed her foot against the pedal, sending a surge of ethera through the machine and activating the grinder. The attached belt had been made from leather covered by ground dragonstone, creating a fine grit that could grind down the most stubborn of metals.
Not that such a belt was necessary for her current material. It was called True Steel, which was just a fancy name for a high-carbon steel that had been through so many rounds of Refine Material and Ethereal ...
2024-09-03 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostFlames danced across Zeke’s metallic forearm, casting it in an orange glow. It tingled a bit, but due to his nearly perfect resistance to fire, it was incapable of harming him. Beside him, Adara took a sip from a metal flask, saying, “I don’t have an infinite supply of this fire resistance potion, so we probably need to get through this dungeon as quickly as possible.”
“One second,” Zeke said, concentrating on the mana woven through the flame. It didn’t j...
2024-09-03 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe giant skeletal warrior’s steps thundered with incalculable weight that shook the ground beneath Elijah’s feet. It was more than twenty feet tall, and the bones that composed its body were far thicker than they should have been. They were also pitch black, as if they’d been charred, and the joints glowed the same aquamarine as the lightning dancing between the towers aboveground. That same light burned in its eye sockets, somehow conveying extreme hate in those flic...
2024-09-02 15:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostA paradoxically cold wind drifted through the tunnel, cutting through Elijah’s Cloak of the Iron Bear and seeping into his spirit. He shivered, but after many hours spent fighting through the labyrinth of a crypt, he’d grown accustomed to the discomfort. And crypt it was, as evidenced by the burial chambers dotting the network of underground corridors. Some were elaborate, displaying golden sarcophagi surrounded by lesser coffins. Others were more like mass graves....
2024-09-02 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostZeke watched the dragon flee into the skies, its wings, huge as they were, seemingly incapable of holding it aloft. Not helping that perception was the fact that its flight path was erratic, its flapping wings stuttering every so often. Clearly, it would take quite some time for it to heal after being so thoroughly injured. After the encounter with its mother, the thing had climbed free of the mountainous landslide, eager to get away as quickly as possible.
For h...
2024-09-02 13:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostSeptember is here!
That means we're starting another accelerated release month. My goal is to keep it going all month, and I think I have enough backlog to do that. However, as always, if I can't manage it, I'll cut it short. That said, expect the extra chapters on Wednesdays to be suspended for the next couple of weeks. I'll pick that back up at the end of the month. Either way, we'll be doing 14 chapters a week for this whole month, which is a huge amount of content.
in o...
2024-09-01 19:16:06 +0000 UTC View Post“You can handle it, right?” asked Elijah, glancing back at Ron. “I can’t understate how damaging it can be.”
“I’m fine,” Ron said.
“I ain’t,” Kurik muttered. “How ‘bout I just sit this one out? I can –”
“Don’t be scared, bro. It’s just a little death and decay. We’ll protect you.”
“I ain’t scared. I just don’t like it. That’s a valid feeling, by the way. Most people av...
2024-09-01 15:10:00 +0000 UTC View PostAs Elijah circled the tallest tower in the region, he felt a combination of electricity, ethera, and death dancing across his wings. He banked, avoiding a bolt of teal lightning, then latched onto the spire at the top of the tower. Like that, he remained stationary for a few seconds, just surveying the scene below him.
From the ground, the forest of towers seemed random, but with the advantage afforded by his current vantage point, Elijah could see a pattern laid out b...
2024-09-01 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post“It ain’t proper.”
“You were welcome not to use the cultivation cave, you know. Complaining about it now isn’t going to change anything,” Elijah said, striding alongside Kurik. Before, the dwarf would have struggled to keep up – on account of his much shorter legs – but after his bout in the cultivation cave where he’d advanced to Body of Stone, he had no issues maintaining Elijah’s pace.
“If my parents could see me now…they’d disown me,” Ku...
2024-08-31 15:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post“You already understand it,” said Sadie, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face. “I don’t think there are any other layers to it.”
Elijah shook his head, then jabbed the fire with a stick. Sadie was not the person he would have normally chosen for esoteric discussions on the relationship between life and death, but she’d been the first to complete her cultivation, progressing to the Stone Body stage. As the others were still otherwise engaged, she was the ...
2024-08-30 15:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostZeke took an inadvertent step backwards as a wave of primal fear swept through his mind. It only lasted a moment, but in the brief instant, he knew what others might feel when they looked at him. Violently, he shoved that away and studied the creature looming over him.
It was enormous.
Zeke had seen many huge monsters since being reborn in the troll caves. From the cyclops to the enormous tortoise to his recent encounter with the necromantic vessel, he’d ...
2024-08-30 13:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostIt was almost certainly a bad idea.
Elijah was well aware that he should have at least gone back to the cultivation cave to let everyone know what he was going to do. Yet, as he stepped past the threshold, he pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the excitement building in his chest.
The door itself had been a pain to bypass, and Elijah had been forced to brute force it in his guardian form. Now it lay in pieces. Probably not very scientific of h...
2024-08-29 15:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“That was weird,” Zeke said as he leaped over a fallen tree. The forest all around him looked as if it had just been hit by a hurricane of epic proportions, but he knew that wasn’t the case. For one, they were too far from the ocean for that, and for another, he’d been assured by some of the natives that there had been no storms. However, they had informed him that there were powerful monsters in the forest, which prevented them from going too far from their villages...
2024-08-29 13:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostFor what Elijah had planned, he needed as much ethera density as he could find. To that end, he returned to his corner of the cultivation cave, where he settled down to inspect the branch he’d stolen. At first, he felt a little bad about breaking off a piece of the tree and taking it for his own uses. But for some reason, that didn’t bother him as much as he might have expected it to. Would he have felt the same way if he’d torn the leg from a beast?
...
2024-08-28 15:10:00 +0000 UTC View PostElijah opened his eyes, frowning as he looked around his section of the cultivation cave. To say he was disappointed would have been a vast understatement. He’d spent the past three days trying to advance his Body cultivation, but he’d made absolutely no progress. It wasn’t because he didn’t know what he was doing, either. He was well-versed in the methods, which weren’t terribly complex at his current stage. He knew he was doing it correctly. Ins...
2024-08-28 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostMiguel sat in the center of the grove, his eyes closed as he basked in the dense ethera surrounding the ancestral tree. Now that he’d used Pledge of the Green Warden, everything felt so different. It was like comparing a two-dimensional drawing of a forest to walking among the trees, and for the first few hours, it had been overwhelming. That was why he’d sunk into meditation, cycling through the mental exercises Nerthus had given him what felt like a lifetime ago.
Zeke shook his head as he looked at the long lines of shackled prisoners. There were thousands of people there, and plenty more remained within the city, where a few pockets of resistance had sprung up to defend the civilians. The scouts had found more than one mass grave containing hundreds of beastkin, elven, or even dwarven bodies, and by all indications, they would continue to find the results of the Imperium’s barbaric practices.
If Zeke had felt guilty about th...
2024-08-27 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post“Remove those things from my sight, or they will be removed,” Sadie intoned, her voice low but firm as she leveled her sword in Benedict’s direction.
For his part, the Warlock seemed surprised by the altercation, and for good reason. He’d clearly taken great pains to avoid Sadie, so being cornered in the middle of the square had taken him aback. However, he quickly recovered his composure and said, “I don’t remember anyone putting you in charge. This ...
2024-08-26 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe spear, glowing with radiant power, skittered off Zeke’s ribs, and he returned the failed attack with a backhanded blow from his hammer. The Knight took it on her shield, activating some sort of skill, and for a brief second, she resisted the momentum of the strike. Then, an explosion of sound, the skill broke, and Voromir sent the woman flying backward into her subordinates.
A hail of arrows fell upon Zeke. Some hit with enough force to stagger him, but mos...
2024-08-26 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostAlright, so this week has been pretty awesome. I've been writing up a storm, and I'm super excited about my progress. You'll all see the results of this whirlwind of writing progress in a week or two. Anyway, let's get right into the update.
First of all, Mistrunner 3 is releasing Tuesday on both Kindle and Audible. Find it HERE. It's the penultimate volume in that series (with the fourth and fin...
2024-08-25 21:50:50 +0000 UTC View PostElijah heaved a body onto the pile, then took a deep breath that he immediately regretted. His sense of smell had recently taken a step forward – or perhaps his Mind was now capable of parsing the sensory information more completely now that it had progressed to the Jade stage – so getting a nose full of decay was especially disgusting. He turned away and saw that the procession of corpses was still ongoing.
“How many, do you think?” asked Ron, who’d discarded his ...
2024-08-25 15:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostMiguel let out a...
2024-08-24 15:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post“They’re comin’, hoss. Ain’t nothin’ we can do about that. All we can do is get ready.”
Ramik gripped the arm of his chair, his knuckles paling as he stared at the map on his desk. The man standing before him looked like he’d been through a war. His clothes were torn and bloodstained. He looked uninjured, though the same couldn’t be said for the pale, red-haired woman beside him. She had a bandage encircling her forehead, and another w...
2024-08-23 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostTucker staggered down the street, lifting a jug of rum to his lips and taking a long swig. The taste wasn’t anything spectacular, though it wasn’t terrible, either. Still, it did the job, which was all he could ask for. As he lowered the jug to his side, it slipped from his fingers, shattering against the flagstones.
“Damn,” he muttered, kicking the shards of glass with his boot. Then, he looked back the way he’d come. Mariskal wasn’t near...
2024-08-23 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post