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Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 63 – Yeah, That’s Not Ominous

Terry and Kelima were nearing the top of the mountain when Dusk finally came bounding out of the growing evening darkness. She came over, rubbed against Terry’s leg for a few moments, then looked up at him expectantly. Snorting to himself, he picked up the cat. He stroked her fur and scratched her ears.

“Did you kill all the bad death weasels?” he asked.

The kitten ignored him completely, which Terry decided to take as an affirmation.

“Of course, you killed all the b...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 62 – Death Weasels!

Kelima looked from the death weasels to Terry, then from Terry back to the death weasels. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Then, she looked at the monsters again.

“You know,” she said, “I think I get now why you always got so mad at me for this.”

“Thank you,” said Terry, feeling vindicated.

“But I’m still hitting you with a big stick if we get out of this alive.”

“Less thank you,” answered Terry.

“Are we going to get out of this? Do...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 61 – Death Flag?

After catching a very long nap, Terry dragged his sorry ass out of the tent. He took a few minutes to eat some leftover murder-bird and splash some water on his face. Then, mostly because it was the path of least resistance, he took them onto the actual path up the mountain. It was wide enough that it actually functioned more like a road. That meant that it had probably been made for wagons. Given how rare storage items were, and how heavy a big load of rocks usually was, that made sense to h...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 35 – And What If The Gods Descend

Leaving a conquered capital was always a logistical challenge for Sen and his people. They needed to leave enough soldiers and cultivators to realistically defend not only the city, but the nation at large. He couldn’t count on the nobility to do it, since many of them were dead or their houses disbanded. The same held for the local sects. Trained house guards, who’s loyalty would always remain questionable, were usually absorbed into the army. That meant that the people he left behind ne...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 34 – Teapot

Once word spread that he’d ordered the army to prepare to march, it was like everyone lost their minds. The lines of people that thought they needed to speak with Lord Lu had stretched out into the hallways and out of sight. The strangest part for Sen was that many of those people would have been overjoyed to see him dead mere weeks earlier. Now, though, his control over the city and nation had been firmly established. He owed the soldiers of the army something for that. It had been their r...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 60 – Unsettled Thoughts

It wasn’t until Terry found himself standing in a sunny little clearing with nothing attacking that he realized he’d been bracing for an attack. Oh, right, he thought. Getting attacked when coming out of a dungeon doesn’t really happen unless there’s some kind of narrative setup for it. Like, there was a hostile adventurer’s party, or the dungeon was located right outside of a city. He vaguely remembered a few other examples, but the predominant trope was ...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 59 – Prizes

Poke. Poke. Poke. Terry was vaguely aware that someone was nudging his shoulder. No, he thought. Still tired. Go away. Poke. Poke. Poke. That dragged him a little closer to being awake. Dammit, he growled mentally. I don’t want to get up! Poke. Poke.

“Poke me one more time, and I’m gonna break off that finger,” said Terry without opening his eyes.

“Oh, good,” said Kelima. “Not dead.”

Terry finally opened his eyes ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 33 – I’ve Learned Better

Sorry this is arriving late. My weird sleep schedule and expanded daily writing duties caught up with me. Wound up sleeping through some of my normal writing hours. But, here's yesterday's chapter. Enjoy! ~Eric

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Sen landed outside the palace. He was sure there were a great many things he needed to do since he was about to order generals to prepare for a new march. Unfortunately, there was at least one more headache to deal with before that. O...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 58 – Boss Fight

“What could you possibly be so happy about?” demanded Kelima. “Look at that thing!”

It was only then that Terry realized that Kelima had seized his arm in a death grip with one hand and was pointing at what had to be the floor boss with the other. Wait, thought Terry. Is that the floor boss or the dungeon boss? Both, maybe? He wasn’t sure how that worked and supposed it didn’t make much difference for his immediate future. What ma...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 57 – The Important Things

As they made their way through the dungeon floor, Terry made what was, in retrospect, a very obvious discovery. The minotaurs were warm-blooded creatures, so blasting them with ice was a great way to slow them down. What was a more interesting realization was that the frozen soil beneath him made for a half-decent stand-in for rocks. After a couple more encounters, Terry had adopted a new normal strategy. Rather than engaging the things up close and personal, he did his best to freeze them at...

Holiday Season Randomness/Challenge?

Okay, so we're into November now, which is pretty much the beginning of the holiday season here in the US. Last year's holiday season was mostly a wash for me because A) I'm an adult and therefore have very few needs or wants (or can get those things for myself), which means the orgy of greed at Christmas is largely lost on me. And B) all food was a source of misery and sadness because most of it tasted terrible. Now, in answer to the inevitable question, that food thing has gotten better-ish...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 32 – How Bold. How Brave

Sen and Master Feng walked out of the compound gates to find what looked to be a tense standoff. Guarding the gates were numerous mortal soldiers and what looked to be Sen’s entire cultivator honor guard. Even Song Lan and Xu Xiao Dan were there, facing out toward what appeared to be a significant portion of the cultivators that either come with Sen’s army, either willingly or unwillingly. As soon as Sen appeared, he felt their spiritual senses focusing in on him, as well as their qi tryi...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 31 – Complicated Question

After giving the matter some very deep and extensive consideration for approximately nine seconds, Sen came a conclusion.

“You know,” he mused aloud, “I don’t have to answer anyone’s questions. For that matter, neither do you. It’s not like anyone can really make us talk.”

“I wondered if you’d realize that or not,” said Master Feng with an amused smile. “Be aware that, if we don’t give them a story, they’ll make one up.”

“That won’t b...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 30 – You’d Think So

It turned out that Master Feng didn’t know what had happened. He had heard stories about weapons that endured tribulations, but had never actually seen. He hadn’t even met anyone who had seen it.

“I’ll admit,” said the elder cultivator, “I thought that it was a myth right up until I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

They were standing inside the forge, staring down at the swords which had been placed on bench. Sitting there, they looked innocuous enough, save for that...

Publication Day! Volume 7 is live!

Man, it seems like just four months ago, Volume 6 was coming out. Now, it's time for Unintended Cultivator Volume 7 to makes its official debut in the world!

It's available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook form over on Amazon. It's on Kindle Unlimited too!

You can grab those here.

The audiobook is also live over Audible. The grea...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 56 – Fifty Percent of the Hassle

For Terry, the dungeon had been a mental grind more than a physical one. It had felt like crunch time back at one of his old programming jobs. Not a good crunch time when things had gone well. No, the dungeon had been like one of the bad crunch times when a project had been completely fucked but still needed to be finished. One of those delightful times when people abruptly started working twelve hours a day for no extra pay. After a week of that bullshit, everyone would shamble out of the of...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 29 – I Wish I Knew

Nodding his agreement, Sen left the forge and went outside into the courtyard. He cleared his mind as well as he could, assumed a stance, and began working through the sword forms he knew. There was something reassuring about going through those familiar motions and routines. Knowing them so well made it easier for Sen to adjust to the new swords. He wasn’t sure how Master Feng had done it, but the length of the swords was virtually identical to the last pair. That also made it easier to ad...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 55 – No Minotaur Steaks!

“This doesn’t look like a spa,” said Kelima.

“No shit,” said Terry. “Wait. How do you even know what a spa is?”

“Who doesn’t know what a spa is?”

“Sure, that might be true back where I come from, but here?”

You know, interrupted other-Terry, they had spas, or something very similar, as far back as ancient Greece.

Seriously? Terry asked mentally.

Why would I lie about that?

...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 54 – Frilly Party Dress

Terry stood there and tilted his head back. That let the drizzle that had been falling since nearly the moment they entered this godforsaken floor wash some of the blood off his face. The mud goblins, as it turned out, weren’t really that much harder to kill than their non-mud cousins. The spider-goats, on the other hand, were just something straight out of a nightmare. Those evil bastards came racing at him on their eight legs, bleeting to wake the damned, all while drooling some kind of a...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 53 – Elder Thing?

After doling out a bit of their food and water to Kelima and Dusk, Terry refused to let himself be sidetracked. He spread out his blankets, ignored the hard stone beneath them, and went to sleep. After all, Kelima had gone wandering around and not been attacked. That seemed like sufficient evidence that they were safe. Well, they were probably safe-ish. Safe enough that sleeping wasn’t likely to get either of them killed. When he woke up several hours later with his metabolic funct...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 52 – Here Comes The Boom

Now that he’d found Kelima, Terry’s first instinct was to get moving again. However, the idea of fighting again after all that pain actually made something inside of him cringe. There was also the problem of being tired. It wasn’t physical tiredness. His body actually felt better than ever. It was that creeping exhaustion that pain always brings on. While he was worried about them running out of food and water, Terry decided that getting a few hours of actual rest would probably be more...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 51 – Thanks For That Insight

Terry lost complete track of the world as pain wracked his body. It was like that agony closed around him, and he was just a tidy speck of sanity adrift on an endless, stormy sea of suffering. There wasn’t anything like time on that sea. It might have been minutes. It might have been years. Terry also discovered that he was in no way cut out to be a guru or sage. He didn’t survive it by finding inner peace or harmonizing with galactic consciousness. There was none of that transcending the...

Unintended Cultivator Vol. 13: Chapter 28 – It's A Chore

While the first few days in the forge had been marked by lengthy periods where Sen did nothing, the final day was much busier. He spent much of the day standing near the anvil, pressing his qi and killing intent into the forming blades. While he didn’t know what was happening inside the metal, he did sense that the resistance in the metal ebbed each time he did it. His qi flowed into the blades faster and smoother. It was a kind of proof that his old swords had been impeding his techniques....

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 27 – By The Heavens, No

By the time the third day of forging the swords had arrived, Sen had started to understand why Master Feng had said it would take so much experience to master smithing. The elder cultivator hadn’t slept or even taken a meaningful break the entire time. In addition, he’d been subtly using his qi to do…Sen wasn’t entirely sure what his teacher was doing with that qi. All he knew was that it had been a very nearly continuous process. Possessing some experience with using qi for extended ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 26 – About Assassinations

As Master Feng went back to work at the anvil, Sen tried to focus on the manual again without much luck. Instead, he found himself turning over what his teacher had said about the last person he’d seen use that technique. It doesn’t matter. You’re not like her. He didn’t need to think for very long about what that had meant. Sen’s first thought about the technique had been about how useful it would be on the battlefield. He understood that he’d seen that applicat...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 25 - Early Blooper

I meant to post this yesterday with the chapter and just forgot. I don't normally figure out bloopers as I'm writing the chapters, but this one came to me. So, I figured I'd post it as a fun little thing for you. This may or may not make the final cut. Enjoy! ~Eric

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If he did it properly, he should be able to step directly into one shadow and out of another with no time spent in that in-between place. Or, he thought, maybe you only spend a fra...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 50 – Kind of a Kill-Joy

“How many times are you going to do that?” asked Kelima.

Terry shot her an unamused look and said, “At least a thousand times more.”

With that, he summoned the queen’s source stone from his storage ring. Then, he put it back.

“How can that still be entertaining?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

“One, we didn’t have anything like this where I come from. This is never going to stop being amazing to me. Two, I’ve been stuck in this isekai nightmare for m...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 25 – People Are the Problem

At first, the sounds of Master Feng working in the forge distracted Sen. The heat would have been distraction, as well, if he’d been trying to study the Shadow Gate manual years earlier. Yet, the periodic, rhythmic sounds of a hammer on metal soon faded from Sen’s awareness as he was finally able to give the manual his undivided attention. It had been years since he was able to give his complete focus to a single task, and it felt luxurious. Even in battle, he was never focused solely on ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 24 – Diligence

Locking Master Feng and himself away from outside disruptions proved a little more challenging than Sen initially anticipated. While his honor guard and the soldiers he’d grabbed were willing enough, the word had spread with seemingly impossible speed. Before he knew it, cultivators, mortal generals, and even the matronly noble woman had all arrived outside the now abandoned sect compound. All of them were demanding one thing or another. The generals were shouting about how they needed Sen ...

Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 49 – Other Queen

Kelima eventually got tired of throwing rocks at him. Quite literally. She kept throwing until it looked like she didn’t have the energy for it anymore. Somewhere in the middle, Terry had just gone back to punching the wall. The rocks hitting him were aggravating, but it was like being pestered by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes from his original world, not whatever obscenity passed as mosquitoes in Chinese Period Drama Hell. If the absurdity held true, those things would be the size of vultures...