“Actually, could you just hang on to that for me for a few minutes?” asked Terry.
He’d gotten so caught up in the idea of making Captain Crossbow pay for the hat that he’d neglected to deal with the rest of ambushers. He thought most of them had run away, but there was always that one guy in the books. The last thing he wanted was to get another hat just to have some idiot destroy it, and they would. It was practically inevitable. Hell, one of them might even do it...
2024-07-26 06:59:27 +0000 UTC
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Terry couldn’t believe it. He just could. Not. Believe. It. He’d finally, finally, gotten another rice hat, and some walking dead man had put a hole in it. For that brief moment, he felt like this new world of his was truly conspiring against him. He hadn’t had grand ambitions. He hadn’t gone looking for acclaim, dominion, or any of that other power fantasy bullshit. He’d had two modest goals. Escape the war, and get another hat. Those had felt like achievable goals. Replac...
2024-07-25 06:58:14 +0000 UTC
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One rank two identification and a meaningful pile of money later, Terry was stomping his way out of the Adventurer’s Guild. He wasn’t mad at anyone in particular. He was just mad. He’d tromped over the rules of the Adventurer’s Guild like a drunk elephant and expected to get away with it forever. As a programmer, he knew better. There were workarounds in any system, but you couldn’t brute force every problem and expect great results. You also needed to know the rules before you go b...
2024-07-24 07:00:26 +0000 UTC
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The Adventurer’s Guild Hall turned out to be a modest affair. There were just a few scattered tables with a bare smattering of people sitting around them. Terry was surprised to discover that while they all tried to look tough, none of them gave him that sense of danger he’d come to expect from anything that posed a real threat to his life. They reminded him a bit of a guy he’d worked with for a while that he’d dubbed Señor Edgelord. They guy had been one of those programmers who spe...
2024-07-23 02:42:09 +0000 UTC
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Terry found himself almost glaring at the gates of the town they were approaching. He didn’t mean to do it. He’d just had such crappy experiences in cities and towns so far that he was not excited about spending more time than absolutely necessary in another one. He definitely wanted to get farther south before he even considered stopping anywhere for any length of time. Plus, getting farther south came with the delightful benefit of putting a lot of miles between him and his assorted ene...
2024-07-21 04:57:06 +0000 UTC
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Over the next week, Terry noticed that the group started to find a rhythm with each other. It started with the monster attacks. Those happened with a frequency that he found both annoying and suspicious. He usually hung back with Haresh and let Jaban and Ekori handle them. He didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. Plus, the younger adventurers seemed to need the practice more than he did. They didn’t get any value from watching him punch something to death since it was a feat they could...
2024-07-20 05:22:09 +0000 UTC
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Carrying Ekori wasn’t difficult, so much as it was tedious. Terry was used to having his arms free, and she was light enough that he kept forgetting about her. Then, he’d go to point at something or grab something that looked interesting and find his arm encumbered by the unconscious person he was carrying. Eventually, he started to zone out. It was only when Haresh called out to him that he snapped out of the daze.
“What?” asked Terry with a little shake of his head.
“W...
2024-07-19 02:26:51 +0000 UTC
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Okay, well, the results are in.
43% of responses favored pausing billing.
57% of responses favored leaving billing on.
There were 382 votes, which is approximately a 1/3 of all paying subscribers. I don't know if that's what pollsters would call a representative sample, but I suspect it's pretty close.
Per the results of the poll, I will be leaving billing on. For those of you who are only subscribed for Unintended Cultivator chapters, you have the option to cancel you...
2024-07-17 21:03:23 +0000 UTC
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Seeing as how he hadn’t really done anything in the fight except provide a brief if important distraction, Terry let the other adventurers handle the boar corpse. Of course, that came after what passed for field medicine. Jaban was banged up, but Ekori was still bleeding a lot. It was enough that Terry worried that she wouldn’t live long enough to get real help from a doctor or healer. That concern was almost immediately proven meaningless when Haresh gave the young woman a stern look.
2024-07-17 20:31:37 +0000 UTC
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Okay. So, I'm in a bit of a conundrum. There are people here subscribed to tiers that only get Unintended Cultivator chapters, which I'm not writing right now. But there are also people subscribed here who seemingly want chapters of anything I care to write, and I am still writing. Part of me feels like, with everything going on, I should turn off billing for the next month. The problem is that it's all or nothing. If I turn off billing, I have to turn it off for EVERYONE. I can't pick and ch...
2024-07-16 20:09:00 +0000 UTC
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Okay, I'm not sure how much I've complained about this to you guys, but I've been been in the same tiny apartment for four or five years. And when I say tiny, I mean TINY. It's less than 300 square feet. Wait, you say. Aren't your books selling well on Amazon? Surely you can afford something roomier than a micro apartment? You would think so. Except, the town where I'm living is in some kind of weird place in terms of real est...
2024-07-16 15:10:09 +0000 UTC
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“Should we intervene?” asked Terry.
“Not yet,” said Haresh.
“You sure? It doesn’t seem like they’re doing well.”
Haresh nodded in a sagely, teacherly way, even as a muted cry of pain wafted their way.
“This is how adventures—” Haresh paused to give Terry a sidelong glance. “It’s how most adventurers learn.”
Terry shrugged and turned his attention back to the fight that was happening just down the road. It’s n...
2024-07-15 03:41:05 +0000 UTC
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Terry discovered that taking a road trip on foot with other people was irritating in different ways than doing one in a car. There were no radios, streaming music services, or even MP3 devices, so no one was arguing about music. However, Terry might have welcomed that argument if it meant he could hear music again. He really missed music. It hadn’t crossed his mind a lot since he first arrived. There had been all that fear of death, fighting monsters, and trying to navigate a society he did...
2024-07-14 18:43:55 +0000 UTC
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“How can you only be rank three?” Ekori almost, but not quite, demanded.
Terry looked across the campfire at her. While Jaban and Haresh didn’t chime in, he could see them both looking at him intently and clearly interested in hearing the answer. Terry did a mental facepalm. I should have let them fight the man-goat thing. He’d had a bit of time to think about what he’d done earlier that day during the many hours of silent walking before he’d declared ...
2024-07-13 21:57:05 +0000 UTC
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Terry tried to decide on a strategy as he closed the distance with the man-goat thing. He didn’t have a good sense of how intelligent it was, but it hadn’t immediately charged at them. That didn’t necessarily make it smart. There were four of them. Five of them if you counted Drumstick, which Terry didn’t. The man-goat thing might have just been following a basic instinct not to attack multiple opponents. On the other hand, it might have decided to wait and see what they all did. That...
2024-07-12 21:50:02 +0000 UTC
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Terry was happy to discover that once the talking had started, it generally flowed pretty naturally without a lot of input from him. Not that the other three talked that much about things he specifically cared about, but he picked up little tidbits like what inns were generally safe, and which places were hostile to adventurers. He hadn’t considered the possibility before so he took a chance and asked a question.
“What do you mean they hate adventurers in Timran? I’ve never been t...
2024-07-11 14:37:54 +0000 UTC
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Terry had never been much for group road trips in the halcyon days before Chinese Period Drama Hell. He didn’t hate traveling. He actually liked seeing new things. Well, he liked seeing new things when there wasn’t a constant implicit threat of being attacked and eaten by something dredged from the darkest corners of some nightmare. No, it was the trip itself that he couldn’t really stand. He never saw the appeal of being trapped in a car with other people. The arguments about music, wh...
2024-07-11 02:46:27 +0000 UTC
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Dusk, Terry soon learned, was an attention whore. Not only did the kitten let the woman pet her but almost immediately abandoned his shoulder to crawl into the woman’s hands. Terry shot the kitten a look.
“Traitor,” he muttered.
“Oh, she’s not a traitor,” cooed the woman while stroking between the kitten’s twin sets of ears. “She’s just a sweet kitten.”
“She?” asked Terry. “I wasn’t sure about that.”
The woman frowned down at the kitten wh...
2024-07-09 22:45:32 +0000 UTC
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Since I know I am an endless fount of mystery to you guys, I figured I'd let you in on what kinds of things I've been up to recently. Today, at the grocery store, I bought sweet potatoes so I can try oven roasting them. Why? Well, apparently roasted sweet potatoes are a thing in Korea, and I saw it on Korean TV show I was watching...well, I say watching. It was more like reading but whatever. Anyways, I saw it and decided to try it for myself. This is an experiment that I attempted to make ha...
2024-07-08 20:14:03 +0000 UTC
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Okay, one more. Enjoy because it'll probably be a little bit before i write any more with these characters.. ~Eric
***
There was a blurry moment when Andric was suspended between unconsciousness and wakefulness, then the moment snapped and all that fear rushed back into him. He shot up into a sitting position and then reflexively covered his head with his arms. He braced himself for the rain of blows he knew was coming, but a gentle voice spoke i...
2024-07-07 22:00:53 +0000 UTC
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Since a lot more people than I expected were interested in this, here's another chapter. ~Eric
***
Varant eyed the woman suspiciously. Her being here, now, when all of this happened, was a little… No, it was far too convenient to be mere coincidence. Had she somehow instigated that attack an Andric? It wasn’t really her style, but he was basing that assessment on the woman he’d known eight years ago. She might have grown subtl...
2024-07-07 16:49:37 +0000 UTC
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The trio of people chasing Drumstick slowed to a walk as they approached Terry. The lead was someone Terry would have pegged as middle-aged based on the gray streaking his hair, but he didn’t trust that assessment. People in cultivation and LitRPG stories always seemed to age slower or have ways of extending their lives. He also hadn’t dared ask anyone about it because he was certain that piece of information would be something everyone here already knew. Even the baronet an...
2024-07-07 11:52:59 +0000 UTC
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Terry had honestly expected to find himself being chased and confronted by Church crazies, the annoying rich girl, or even the stupidly pretty people. However, he could admit that last one seemed progressively less likely the longer he went without seeing them. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t see them at some point, though. It felt almost inevitable that they would show up at some hugely inconvenient time and make some fraught situation a million times worse. That was how things usually worked...
2024-07-07 06:21:28 +0000 UTC
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It turned out that they did have cats in that world or something pretty close. At least a dozen of them came racing out of the alley like a silent feline tide before dispersing into the night like shadows. They weren’t exactly like the cats that he remembered from home, what with having four ears. However, seeing them made him feel oddly better. He hadn’t had a cat back on his old world. That had more to do with draconian lease policies than his personal feelings, though. He...
2024-07-06 08:18:39 +0000 UTC
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Terry turned to glare daggers at Kelima. She visibly wilted beneath the look for a few seconds before she drew herself up.
“What?” she demanded.
“You know what,” growled Terry.
“Enough, children,” said Heletina. “There’s no time for this. You two need to get moving.”
“What?” said Terry and Kelima in unison.
Terry did notice that while they said the same word, their reactions weren’t identical. He was mildly baffled and a little alarmed at ...
2024-07-06 04:09:33 +0000 UTC
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After everyone had sat down and some food was brought out, Terry finally had a chance to get his bearings. That process took a while during which he pretended to eat, but mostly just shuffled food around his plate. He didn’t get evil poisoner vibes from the baronet and his wife, but wasn’t that how it always was with creepy serial killers? They looked normal right up until the moment you were knocked unconscious and woke up strapped to a table. Then, they whipped out a meat tenderizer and...
2024-07-05 05:46:02 +0000 UTC
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Sen sat with his legs crossed and eyes closed. The sun would rise soon, but it wasn’t up yet. It was a quiet time, when the night creatures had retreated to their lairs and nests, yet before the day creatures had roused themselves to go about their sunlit activities. He let that gentle hush wash over him and through him. It was an indulgence in serenity that he rarely allowed himself, but given what was about to come, he felt he’d earned this indulgence. He was aware of the pill in his ha...
2024-07-04 21:13:16 +0000 UTC
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Terry had stormed halfway across the room before some things registered. Almost everyone in the room was staring at him with looks that ranged from horrified shock to disapproval and even one look of absolute glee. Being stared at by any group of people for any length of time was high on Terry’s lifelong list of Things to Avoid. He hated it, but he supposed that ship and any semblance of his dignity had already, much like Elvis, left the building. In addition to all of the very unc...
2024-07-04 03:16:38 +0000 UTC
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Terry wanted to stab himself in the eye. That would at least give him an excuse to leave. He hadn’t recognized the fancy dinner trope until he was escorted into the room for the schmoozing before the eating. He’d seen variations on it enough times to understand that he was out of his depth. Some people could navigate these situations. People other than him. He could barely navigate a date where the only things he had to do were try not to embarrass himself too much and avoid talking too m...
2024-07-03 07:10:33 +0000 UTC
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There were some hiccups getting the audiobook live. There's always a margin for error when you have to rely on other people's people to do things. The Volume Three audiobook fell into that margin this morning. However, it is live now!
You can grab it here!
2024-07-03 00:36:46 +0000 UTC
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