ericdontigney

Rinn's Run: Chapter 23 - Revelations

Banjin Colle clicked open his pocket watch and looked down at it. He was appalled to realize that even this wasn’t enough to lighten his mood. He clicked it closed and shoved the watch back into his pocket. He cursed his handler for at least the fiftieth time since this all began. The task set him by that damnable man had seemed straightforward enough. Some fool had allowed files related to Project Penumbra to escape the loving embrace of a hyper-secure facility that appeared on ex...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 22 - Delivery

As Kalan walked away from the embassy, a deep sense of relief washed over him. While he liked the duke, he also felt wary about the man. The nobleman was too mercurial. He’d manipulated nearly everyone he’d encountered and, by all appearances, planned on manipulating his own government. At the same time, he’d let Kalan see him manipulate the embassy staff and that fool of an ambassador. He’d also aimed to manipulate his government into sending help to Ariadne base. That could mean tha...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 23 – Soaring Skies

“Wait! Where are you going?” the woman from the sect shouted as she ran down the road after Sen.

Sen kept walking as he pointed down the road and said, “That direction.”

The stunned silence that had followed Sen’s revelation that he was just a foundation formation stage cultivator was followed by a more awkward silence as the seven surviving cultivators studied him. The men who had been with the hatchet-faced cultivator seemed absolutely baffled by Sen. They couldn’t s...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 22 - "Elder" Sen

Sen made only two brief stops on his way out of the village. The first stop was at the small market to stock up on some extra food. Sen had acquired a bit of a taste for the local fish and suspected they might be hard to come by once he left. He’d also concluded that it was largely impossible to have too much fresh produce available while traveling. While it was still too early in the season for many of the locally grown crops, Sen purchased liberally from what was available. Not for the fi...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 21 – Restoring Balance

Sen procrastinated for almost two weeks. He didn’t call it procrastination, of course, and he made good use of the time. He helped Luo Min and Luo Ping in their fields, doing more heavy labor in a few days than any normal paid labor could have done in a month. He cleared land, taking a bit of satisfaction in using the axe he hadn’t bothered to return yet. Then he used the drying technique that he’d mastered on the road to season the wood. Some of it he simply split into firewood for use...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 20 – Settling Accounts, Part 2

Luo Ping was frowning down the road. “There’s a big part of me that wishes you had killed him.”

Sen gave her a sympathetic look. “I would have. Hells, I probably should have. At the end of the day, though, you and Min have to live here. I’m leaving.”

“Soon?”

Sen nodded. “Yes. It’s not time, yet, but soon. I’m still supposed to do something or learn something here. I’m just not quite sure what. Are you worried about him?”

“He’s the...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 19 – Settling Accounts, Part 1

Sen breathed in and out, his mind guiding the ever-more precise execution of his cultivation pattern. Yet, for all that he had improved on using it, and all the flaws he could sense but not yet identify, Sen understood that this pattern could only serve him for so long. It might, might last him until core formation, but it couldn’t last beyond that. It was only barely able to keep pace with the demands Sen put on his qi now. If he could continue making small improvements, it might ...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 18 - Sect Business

As he lifted the cup of Dragon Well tea to his lips, Elder He Mingze took a moment to enjoy the warmth of the cup and the smell of the tea. It was calming in its familiarity. He knew that the next report he heard would prove troublesome, and so he allowed himself this moment of relative peace first. Two months ago, he enjoyed this state of relative calm all of the time. That was before the incident or incidents, depending on how one chose to observe things. He was of the opinion that it was a...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 17 – The Healer, Part 4

Sen made a point to put on a show of cooking for a few days. Somehow, he always managed to cook at least three times as much as he needed. Although, for Sen, it was only mostly a show. He did have a vested interest in making sure that Luo Ping got the things that her body needed to heal. Of course, the greater part of it was simply so everyone could pretend that he hadn’t bought them a truly absurd amount of food. He did make a point to store the meat in his storage ring, though. A...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 16 - The Healer, Part 3

Sen did know the next day. While Luo Ping’s leg hadn’t healed completely, nor had Sen expected it to, it was substantially better. Most of the inflammation was gone and Luo Ping herself reported that it felt markedly better. Whatever hesitation the woman had felt about him had also disappeared. Now, he caught her staring at him with an expression that he found uncomfortably close to reverence. So, rather than deal with that discomfort, he excused himself and went outside. There was anothe...

This Morning’s Chapter

Hey everyone. I'm dealing with an internet outage in my area this morning. I’m posting this from my phone. With any luck, they’ll get it resolved quickly, but it could be a few hours. Just know that the chapter is coming. 

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 15 – The Healer, Part 2

From nearly the moment Sen applied the poultice to the older woman’s leg, he was in crisis mode. It was a constant race between him and doom. He raced to make elixirs that would shore up the woman’s energy. He hurriedly threw together mixtures to combat her sudden fever. Then, he had to make what amounted to low-powered versions of cleansing pills in liquid form to help wash away the flood of impurities that suddenly crashed into her blood. By the time he managed that, he discovered that ...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 14 – The Healer, Part 1

Luo Min made a few, very halfhearted attempts to refuse the money before she plucked the coins from Sen’s hand. Sen pretended he didn’t notice the way that a veritable mountain of stress seemed to evaporate from the young woman’s body. Sen expected that she was so busy being relieved by the money in her hand that she didn’t notice something unclenching inside Sen’s spirit. He hadn’t even noticed how much it was bothering him that he hadn’t made good on that offer to pay...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 13 - The Luo Farm, Part 3

The inside of the hut was little more than one big open space. Some attempts had been made to establish areas of privacy with old, tattered clothes hanging from the ceiling. It appeared that the sleeping area was off to the right, while the kitchen and literally all of the home’s storage were off to the left. The moment they walked in, Sen could smell the sickness in the place. Yet, he sensed nothing of it on Luo Min. Odd, he thought. She was young and, sometimes, that let people a...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 21 - Stories

When Kalan stepped back into the hall, it wasn’t quite utter chaos. It was the next best thing to it. There had to be nearly two dozen people milling around Edmus. To the man’s credit, he was chatting, shaking hands, and being supremely gracious. Kalan gave serious consideration to simply slipping away along the edge of the crowd. He didn’t like crowds at the best of times, and he didn’t know Kessellian customs or law. That was dangerous ground when you were standing inside an embassy...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 12 - The Luo Farm, Part 2

It was Sen’s turn to cock his head to one side. The question struck him as absurd, given that he’d said he would pay and there was silver in his hand at that very moment. He decided to start over again. He’d just explain from the beginning and, maybe, after he did that, they’d finally be reading from the same scroll.

“I was just exploring the area. These fields seemed abandoned, so I didn’t think there would be any harm in gathering some medicinal plants. If this is...

Unintended Artwork: Master Feng

Okay, so I got a little distracted this morning by the arrival of new artwork. The next chapter will arrive shortly. In the meantime, meet Master Feng. I feel pretty good about this image, but what do you guys think? Should I commission more art from this artist? Sound off in the comments. 

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 11 - The Luo Farm, Part 1

Sen passed a few hours at the small inn that seemed to pull triple duty as an inn, restaurant, and tavern for the locals. He finally managed to order and eat a hot meal that consisted of dumplings, fried rice, and some form of steamed fish he didn’t recognize. The fish seemed particularly fresh, so Sen concluded that there must be a river or possibly a lake nearby. The villagers and farmers who were in town were particularly cautious of him, possibly because word had spread that he was a cu...

Food Porn: Behold the Taco Salad

It's a bit late and the lighting wasn't ideal, but this was yesterday's dinner. A chicken taco salad with homemade pico de gallo! 

Yes, it was awesome and delicious enough that I went back for seconds. 

Quick Unintended Update

For those of you who have access, I've uploaded revised versions of the Epilogue for Volume 1 and Chapter 1 of Volume 2. If you're interested, check out the new versions and let me know what you think in the comments. 

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 10 - The Road South, Part 5

Sen and Bigan spent one final night camping. Yet, the young man had become all but mute in the wake of the confrontation with the bandits. Sen supposed that the facts of the situation had shattered some fond illusions. Bigan clearly believed that being a cultivator was some grand adventure like something from a story. Sen supposed that the young man had even had some fanciful notion of what it would be like to heroically drive off some bandits. The reality, unless Sen missed his guess, was bo...

Unintended Cultivator V2: Chapter 9 - The Road South, Part 4

Sen was pleasantly surprised to discover that Bigan was far less chatty the next day. It seemed that the young man was struck by an unusual case of reflectiveness. It didn’t have the same kind of lost-to-the-world quality that his former daydreaming had, which gave Sen some tiny shred of hope that Bigan might make a breakthrough of his own. It wouldn’t be a cultivation breakthrough, for the young man truly was beyond any real hope of that. A small touch of enlightenment, though, that<...