ericdontigney

Rinn's Run: Chapter 33 - The Prisoner

“Kala, unseal the hatch please,” Kalan requested of the AI.

The hatch unlocked and swung open. Kalan exhaled a breath that he told himself wasn’t a sigh and stepped into the room. He swung the hatch shut behind him and the ship automatically locked it. The woman perched on the bed directed a bitter look at him. He gave her a bland look in return, which just seemed to annoy her more. He walked over and set the tray on the bed next to her, all but daring the woman to attack him. She...

Stormbreak: Chapter 1 – Favors

As promised, here's a first look at one of the other novels that I've been chipping away at a little bit at a time. ~Eric

***

A light rain splattered me as I walked. The dark clouds overhead gave the streets a feeling of premature dusk and threatened something more serious than light rain. Of course, that was nothing new in Stormbreak. There was always heavy cloud cover and the sense of an impending electrical storm that never arrived. A young woman sulke...

Unintended Cultivator-Only Tiers

A number of people have made it known to me that they don't ever want to see updates about non-Unintended Cultivator projects or content. So, I've created alternative versions of most of the tiers. If all you want is Unintended Cultivator, look for the tiers starting with "Cultivator Only" and pick the equivalent tier to what you have now. 

The new tiers look like this:

Cultivator Only Good Karma Corner

Cultivator Only Storytime Corner

Cultivator Only My Hero Corn...

Unintended Cultivator, Vol 2, Bloopers

Zhu Fen had been on the receiving end of killing intent before. At least, she thought she had. The sect had all their disciples train against it with those of a higher cultivation stage, just to prepare them for the possibility. The sheer weight of the killing intent that landed on her in that moment wasn’t simply vast, it was beyond overwhelming. By itself, that would have been enough. Of course, that wasn’t how it worked. The dread was already coursing through her when the sense of his ...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 32 - Inflection Point

Banjin Colle wasn’t certain how long after Temera he arrived on Cobalt 7, but it was sufficient time for her to vanish into the station’s shadows. He was confident that she was going to try to kill Rinn. Part of him thought he should let her, while another part of him thought he should stop it before it started. Reasoning that he must arm himself with information, he made inroads with the criminal class on the station. He casually dropped Rinn’s name a few times. It was always followed ...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 31 - Hunting

Temera Amaluy had a lot of time to think back on that odd, unexpected conversation with Banjin Colle. He wasn’t what she’d expected. He was less implacable than she imagined him to be. When he’d broached the subject of what to do about Kalan Rinn, she thought that they’d be on the same page. It was obvious they needed to kill him. Nothing short of death was going to allow either of them to get what they wanted from that man. When she’d said as much to Colle, though, he had seemed de...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 30 - Bargaining

“That’s not how it was!” Tessan screamed, throwing his hands out in an unconscious defensive gesture.

“No,” shouted Estra at the same moment as she rushed toward Kalan’s back.

Estra came to a stop with Kalan’s blaster pointed straight at her forehead. Tessan was pressed hard against the door in a vain attempt to put a little more room between himself and Kalan’s sword. It had taken all of Kalan’s restraint not to kill them both. Those old reflexes that the fight ...

Unintended Update

Okay, so, people naturally want to know what's happening next with Unintended Cultivator. Mostly, when will the next chapter drop. I went back and forth on this with myself. On the one hand, I literally haven't had a day off since sometime in late April. On the other hand, superstitious writer Eric was like, "Don't. Screw. With. The. Magic." 

In the end, I decided I'm going to take a couple days off. So, a new UC chapter will probably drop sometime late on the 4th or early on the 5...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 61 – Change

Falling Leaf was bored. She’d gone through her usual morning. She caught a rabbit to eat. Then, she’d gone and let the Kho give her treats. Sometimes the Caihong would join him, but she hadn’t that morning. Then, Falling Leaf had snuck into the house and stolen one of the Kho’s snacks from his plate. She always found the look on his face when he saw the empty plate funny. Then, she’d gone and watched the Caihong work her strange alchemy. It was equal parts fascinating and disturbing...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 60 – Passage

Sen was pleased to discover that being on a ship didn’t bother him particularly. It took him a few hours to get used to the motion of the ship. After that, though, he was fine. He chalked it up to his body cultivation. Lifen, on the other hand, wasn’t that lucky. She was ill for days. So, Sen divided his time between cultivating and making sure the poor girl drank some water or ate some weak broth. Cultivating at sea was a wholly different experience from cultivating on land. On land, the...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 59 - Getting Out, While the Getting’s Good

Lo Meifeng had explained her plan to get out of the city to Sen several times, and he finally decided that he just needed to know what his part in things were. He was happy to discover that, aside from putting up a little bit of the gold he’d acquired from the demonic cultivator, his part was mostly to do nothing special. Instead, he was to spend his day visiting places he’d been before, get seen by people, and then very publicly arrive back at the Silver Crane. That worked out for Sen, s...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 58 – The Question

There had been no real hiding it once Sen started preparing to leave. If it had just been him, and he’d been planning to vanish into the night, that would have been one thing. When he gave it some thought, he even gave himself even odds of getting away if he went alone. He could hide and set up effective obscuring formations. Of course, if he was wrong about how effective either the technique or the formations were, he’d face his enemies alone. If he was willing to leverage every...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 57 – Alliances of Necessity

Sen waited patiently while Lo Meifeng examined the contents of the demonic cultivator’s storage ring. He was pleased to note that she looked as disturbed by the pills as he had been. When she got to the small notebook, though, she looked downright alarmed. By the time she finished skimming through it, she looked both outraged and more than a little afraid. When she turned her gaze on him, he could see a host of unasked questions in her eyes. Yet, to her credit, she focused on the most impor...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 29 - Tessan’s Folly

“Traffic around the station is a little heavier than usual, Captain,” said Em after talking with station control. “Arrival time is estimated at three hours.”

“Thank you, Em. Please contact the client and let them know we’re inbound along with our ETA.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Kalan settled back into the captain’s chair and watched as Cobalt 7 slowly grew larger on the screen. He’d expected to feel tense when they arrived. Kala had informed him several days prio...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 28 - The Legend of Ankala

The next morning, Kalan had gone to check on Petronan only to find the man’s cabin empty. He checked the galley and medsuite. No Petronan. He finally made his way down to Engineering and found the man sitting at one of the workstations. Kalan cleared his throat. The engineer glanced over and shot to his feet. That was followed by a wince and the engineer pressing his hand against obviously tender ribs. He gave Kalan a rueful look.

“Guess I’m not quite healed up, yet,” said Petro...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 26 - What to Do About Captain Rinn

Banjin Colle had shadowed the fake captain at a very healthy distance. He was certain that, if he followed that young man for long enough, he’d discover who sent him. Instead, he found out that the fake captain was the real captain of an actual freighter ship. Banjin was simply flummoxed when the man had gone into the port and approached a ship, only for some woman to approach him. She’d addressed him as Captain Rinn. Of course, then he’d pulled that blaster so damned fast that...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 27 - The Market

Once Fresia started talking, the whole story had simply poured out of her in a rush. Petronan had gone with her and directed them to a little open-air market he knew about. Kalan was confident he knew what kind of market she meant. They were common enough in port cities. They were less of a formal structure and more an ever-changing assortment of little stalls that sold food, useful tools, and the inexpensive trinkets that people liked to buy as proof they’d been somewhere. It was the kind ...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 56 – The Danger Is What You Don’t Know

It took another week to fulfill the last of his invitation obligations. Fortunately, no one else tried some stupid power play like Chen Aiguo had. Instead, most of those meals and events were simply boring. Yet, the dinner with the Celestial Arch sect was by far the oddest of the lot. While Sen had expected something like the Wandering Winds sect, what he got struck him as more of a religious order. The lack of ego on display was so profound that it made Sen feel almost self-conscious, like s...

Unintended Cultivators V2: Chapter 55 – Dancing Monkey

Sen flopped back on the bed and let out a relieved sigh. He’d spent the last week attending one lunch, dinner, or function after another. He’d met so many people that their names and faces had all blurred together into an undifferentiated mass that he just labeled vaguely important people. If not for his body cultivation, he would have been drunk almost non-stop for that entire week. The fact that he simply shrugged off the many cups of wine that had been pressed on him seemed to...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 26 - What To Do About Captain Rinn

Banjin Colle had shadowed the fake captain at a very healthy distance. He was certain that, if he followed that young man for long enough, he’d discover who sent him. Instead, he found out that the fake captain was the real captain of an actual freighter ship. Banjin was simply flummoxed when the man had gone into the port and approached a ship, only for some woman to approach him. She’d addressed him as Captain Rinn. Of course, then he’d pulled that blaster so damned fast that...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 54 – New Business, Part 2

Sen wasn’t particularly looking forward to meeting with the elder, at least in part because he’d meant to take a closer look at the sect treasures. If nothing else, he would have liked to discover what they did. He’d meant to spend some time studying the treasures, but there had constantly been something else more pressing. Now, he was out of time. Then again, knowing what they did might have made him less inclined to give them up, which could create problems later. While the sect might...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 53 – New Business, Part 1

In the end, Sen took Lifen’s advice and brought in Lo Meifeng to help him sort through the various invitations he’d received. Together with Lifen’s practical insights into the local state of affairs, Sen wound up declining about half of the invitations. He was surprised when Lo Meifeng suggested he accept the invitations from the other sects.

“Why? How are those not traps?” Sen asked.

“I suppose it’s possible that they might be, but it’s far more likely that it’s...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 52 – Old Business

“So, just like that, you own half of this place?” Lifen asked.

She gave the run-down alchemist’s shop they had just exited a sidelong glance. Sen followed her eyes and gave her a half smile.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Lifen sighed. “The other two places were better.”

“No,” disagreed Sen, “they were nicer, which is another way of saying that they didn’t need the resources quite as badly as this place. Plus, the couple who runs this place are the ...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 51 – Prism

Elder Deng’s fist slammed into the wall. If he’d been in any other room, anywhere else in the sect, that stone would have shattered and likely sent a cloud of deadly shrapnel into some unsuspecting junior sect members. That was why the room existed. It had been reinforced with countless formations to withstand the fury of even peak core cultivators. And Elder Deng was furious about so many things. He was furious that a demonic cultivator had been in their ranks, had even been a r...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 50 – Recovery

While Sen had thought he was exaggerating about how long he would sleep, he did spend nearly a full day doing nothing but sleeping. He only came around a few times. He found food and drink waiting for him, fell onto it like a ravenous beast, and dropped almost immediately back into deep unconsciousness. He didn’t really wake up like a human being until the next evening. Even then, he barely spoke with anyone for more than a moment or two. Instead, he found his way into their kitchen, comman...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 49 – The Threat of Irresistible Force

One of the things that Sen hated about coming out the other side of a fight was that, when it was over, it wasn’t actually over. There were always a hundred little details to take care of before you could finally collapse somewhere and rest. As much as he just wanted to shoo Shen Mingxia back to her sect with instructions to come see him the next day, that wasn’t going to suffice. She wanted to talk and ask about how to get in touch with him if there was some dire emergency. He answered h...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 48 – By Right of Combat

Sen was a little surprised to hear the woman identify him as Feng Ming’s student, but that was nothing compared to Elder Deng’s reaction. Sen could almost hear the Elder’s heartrate triple, and he saw the sweat beading on the man’s forehead. The elder looked at Sen.

“Is that true?”

“It is. Since we’re sharing secrets, apparently,” said Sen, shooting the new woman a look, “you should probably know that Master Feng owns the Silver Crane.”

“What...

Chapters Are Coming

So, like most people, I need to visit the grocery store occasionally. That happened this morning, and it took a lot longer than I planned for. I forgot it was Sunday, so there were a lot of people there. But, I'm dutifully working on the next chapter,   which should drop in the next couple of hours. 

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 47 – Peace Talks

As much as Sen wanted to sleep, wanted to rest, he didn’t dare, because as much as he wanted to believe the danger had finally passed, he knew it hadn’t. If anything, the danger was even greater now, just not necessarily as immediate. So, he went inside long enough to dress his wounds, and see if he could reinforce the formation protecting the Silver Crane. The people inside the brothel were very, very quiet around him. Even Lifen didn’t seem to know exactly what to say to him. Then aga...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 46 – The Siege of the Silver Crane, Part 3

As the night slowly slipped away toward morning, Sen sat on the steps and cultivated. He couldn’t know for sure, but he had an intuition that the next fight, if it came, would not be so easy. It may even well be one he couldn’t win. Shen Mingxia knelt to one side, always in the periphery of his Sen’s senses. Unwilling to forsake her vow to the sect, and unable to confront him directly, she hovered there in a kind of moral limbo. He supposed that the night’s events would ultimately fre...