noct

41. Time to Die

“Jared! Watch out!”

The skeleton clumsily lurched at the cultist. Jared stepped backward, only to collide with Anne. She fell forward with a shout. “What are you—”

There was no time to reply. Jared slashed at the skeleton. His blow sheared through bone, but the skeleton didn’t react. A few ribs lighter, it continued to lunge his way.

Anne fell against him again.  He pushed her away. “Get out of my way!”

“How rude. Isn’t she your beloved comrade...

195. After the Battle

Birds sang. Sunlight drifted down from the window, illuminating tiny motes of dust. Ike laid in his bed and dozed, enjoying the warmth. Soon, his uncle would barge in and demand he return to the plant, admonish him for sleeping in and drag him out of bed by his ankle, but for now, for just a few seconds more, he had peace.

A dark-haired girl peered in the top of his window, then scurried over the ceiling. “Hey, Ike. You awake?”

Ike stared. What the fuck—

And t...

40. Wiping Out the Cultists

Levi stood, then almost fell onto his ass as the bones shifted under him. He threw out his arms and barely caught himself. Slipping and sliding, he made it to the bottom of the bone mound with a proud “aha!”

“Man. That looked cool, but tactically speaking, it was a real throw. Thank you, skeletons, for doing your job! If they’d got past you, I would’ve been fucked for real.” Levi tossed a salute toward the battling skeletons, then threw the skull at a stray cultist. The cult...

194. I Knew Them

Ike reappeared in front of Llewyn. His whole body trembled in rage, but he held it back. Suppressing it forcefully. Holding back his wrath. He pointed at Llewyn.

“You die here. Today. Right now.”

Llewyn laughed. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Ike narrowed his eyes. “Then, if you won’t die, I’ll kill your ambitions, instead.”

White light flashed. Ozone sizzled on the air. Once more, Ike vanished.

Llewyn looked around, glancing left and right. He frown...

39. Beseiged

“Hey, Isa. Do you think your village still needs those two zombies?”

“Hmm? What, those? They were still animated?” she asked, startled.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Levi replied.

He looked at his status menu again, considering his options.

Levi | 18 | Lv 30

Class: Necromancer [SPECIAL]

Str: 37

Mag: 66

Dex: 34

Spd: 36

2024-10-14 16:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

193. Brute Force

Ike charged in, fist held high. He punched toward Clarissa, currently the weakest of the trio. Her eyes lit up, and the mana flowed into her body. She charged to meet him, raising a fist to meet his.

He slammed his toe down and pivoted, whirling toward the current weakest puppet instead: the father. His punch flashed out. The light left Clarissa and entered the thread, travelling toward her father, but too slow. Ike’s punch landed first, shattering a huge crack in the puppet’s carap...

38. Welcoming Death

The three—no, four of them, counting the slombie, made bed in the ruined cultist camp that night. Levi snoozed in one of the nicer tents, while Isa dozed and kept an eye on the slombie. Some time around midnight, the sound of crunching and tearing flesh came from Colin’s corner. She didn’t look over, respecting her promise, but her lips tugged upward a hair.

Some eight hours later, Levi stumbled out of the tent, scratching his stomach. He looked around, taking in the remnants of t...

192. Not Getting Away

Purple lightning flashed. Ike vanished.

Llewyn jumped back. He looked around, searching for Ike.

A hand gripped the back of Llewyn’s collar and threw him to the ground. All around Llewyn, puppets flew into the air from the force of him impacting the ground. Clarissa staggered to the side and dropped to her knee.

Ike pinned Llewyn to the ground with his knee and hammered Llewyn’s face. Llewyn grappled at him, pushing Ike away. Ike ignored his blows. Llewyn scratched and b...

37. Aftermath

At last, the last cultist fell. Levi crouched, checking their face to be sure, then stood. “Yep, that’s the last of them. Isa, you full?”

Isa gulped noisily. A petrified cultist stood bolt upright in her grasp, stiff as a board and pale as the moon. She discarded the woman, and the cultist collapsed to the floor, dead. “They made a fine snack.”

Across the room, the slombie got down on its hands and knees. It crawled from one body to another, hungrily absorbing their fles...

191. Rank 3, Rank 4

Llewyn charged toward Ike. Ike raised his sword and met the man’s clawed hand head-on. In that first strike, his sword shattered. It blew to pieces, the mantis’ claw burst apart.

Farewell. The sword had done him well. Since Silver had forged it, it had been his constant companion. It was incredible that it had held up to Rank 3 battles, when a Rank 2 mage had forged it from a Rank 1 monster. But Rank 4 was too much. The blade finally gave up the ghost and shattered.

L...

36. Midnight Massacre

The cavern was broad and tall, tall enough Jon didn’t feel strange pitching a tent in it. Around him, other devotees of the Death Cult erected their tents. Someone cooked dinner over a smokeless magical fire, turning the soup with a big ladle. The room filled with the scent of simmering potatoes and aromatic tomato.

A shadow fell over him. He looked up. Arun smiled down at him, fixing her ponytail. Her cat ears twitched, a remnant of her mother’s ancestry. “Did you finish securing...

190. STORM CLAD

A cloud pierced down from the clear sky. All at once, with a sudden vengeance, the storm reformed. It swirled and churned. White clouds darkened, to gray, then black, then purple. They surged together, forcing a horrible form in the sky, piled up high, high, high into the heaven. Lightning flashed. Rain rushed. The winds howled.

In the center of the funnel cloud, a shadowy form appeared. One bit at a time, it twisted together. Feet. Legs. Hips. A torso, arms, head. Ike reformed. From th...

35. Top of the List

The doors clanged open again. A rope unspooled into the darkness. “Wait long?” Isa asked.

“Just long enough.”

The rope went taut. Isa tightened her grip on it, leaning her weight against the rope to make the job easier. A pale hand gripped the edge of the pit. She reached down, offering a hand up. “Come along, my sweet.”

A bloodied, slippery hand gripped hers. A very dead Mae, cataracts forming in her eyes, met Isa’s gaze. Isa jolted, surprised. Her grip slippe...

189. To Wear a Storm

Immense power rushed into him. Before, at lower Ranks, he’d been completely overwhelmed and totally unable to handle it. Now, it felt… not controllable, but handleable. Something he could manipulate. Instinctively, he called out to it, and it answered, moving with his urges. A massive surge of energy, smashing into him all at once. Pain, heat, and a jolting discomfort bit into him, all while his core ran faster. His aether called out to the rush of energy as he did consciously, wanting it...

34. Corroding Beam

“Go!” Levi threw his hand out.

The green-and-black energy in his palm had grown to a fever pitch. It bubbled and boiled on his palm, barely contained. When he finally gave it permission to escape, it blasted off toward the slime at speed, in one thick bolt of green-black energy. The bolt slammed into the slime and sunk into it. It dissipated. Black and green threads bit into the slime, spreading throughout its entire body.

The slime lunged at Levi, slamming itself down. Levi t...

188. Petals Fall

The man thrust his hand at Ike. Light blazed out. A brilliant swirl of purple flower petals flew at Ike. Each petal was about the size of a palm, and razor-sharp. It sliced directly through Ike’s armor as if it wasn’t there. Blood flowed, staining the ice pink. Ike healed quickly, but it was no use. The petals swirled around him, dancing and cutting. They never faded. They almost felt like birds, fluttering viciously around him.

Unhesitating, the man darted in. He slashed. Ike’s a...

33. Foul Feeder

The slime loomed over them, dark and dangerous. Big, fat drops of acid splashed down from above. The Armalgam stood beside Levi, and the Spinal Cord lifted from his hips, swaying like a cobra. Colin fell back. Isa stretched, eyeing the slime up. “I’ll help, this time. You’ll still get plenty of EXP even with me fighting.”

“I’ll take all the help I can get.”

The giant slime spread wide, pressing all the way to the wall on either side. It stretched up as well, reaching...

187. Turnabout is Fair Play

Ike and Wisp burst down from the wall. Before the mages’ failed strike, it would have been madness to leave the safety of the barrier to go on the offensive. There were far more Rank 3 mages than the two of them, and the Rank 2s still posed a threat, not to mention Llewyn of unknown Rank. But now, the mages were in chaos, reeling from the power of their own attack. Llewyn was nowhere to be seen. It was the perfect time to strike back.

Mana whirled off the field. Some mages laid dead o...

32. Bowels of the Earth

They continued down the path. More slimes leaped out at them. Some dropped from the ceiling or crawled out of tight crevasses, but Levi quickly smashed all of them. Once, they even faced a smaller foul feeder, but Levi handled it with his usual panache, and Colin healed his wounds afterward. Their first fight left the Spinal Cord badly damaged. After a few more encounters, it hung on by a thread. Levi put mana into it, forcibly regenerating the bone.

For all that, it wasn’t enough to ...

186. A Magic Circle

Mana whined, building to a fever pitch. The magic circle glowed ferociously, on the verge of erupting. Bright blue light seared out from the ground, eclipsing the black-robed mages in its brilliance.

“Is there nothing we can do?” Ike asked.

Shopkeep crossed his arms. He shook his head. “I lack the kind of weaponry that could disrupt such a spell. A truly well-developed city should have externally-pointed grand formations of the sort that can bombard attackers like this. Once...

31. Slimin' and Grimin'

Levi closed in on the slime, his sword held high. Some of the slimes alerted, turning toward him, but the closest one, a blue slime about mid-thigh-height, didn’t react at all. He slashed through the bulbous thing. It split in two, barely resisting his sword. Its upper half hit the ground and laid there for a second, then bobbled back up into a second smaller slime. Both halves of the slime turned toward him.

Isa watched from around the corner, her arms crossed. “I forgot. Don’t c...

185. A Shopkeep and a Salesman

“Hello! Good afternoon. How’s everyone doing, this fine day?” Llewyn flashed his salesman smile up at them.

Shopkeep, Wisp, and Ike stared down at him, silent.

“I’ll take that for a yes. I’m here to call on a debt you owe me, for several thousand puppets. I sold them to you and your villagers some decades ago. Due to extenuating circumstances, I was unable to collect the debt until now. A sum total of two million, seven hundred and fifty eight thousand, nine hundred an...

30. Cutesy Wootsey Slimey Wimey

Monsters charged them immediately inside the doors, horrid wormlike creatures with tubular mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. Levi rushed toward one and slit it open, then whirled.

Too late. Everyone else had already overwhelmed the worms. Dead worms laid on the floor, unable to withstand the tsunami of swords and attacks the dungeon enterers had leveled at them.

Levi glanced back. He gestured. “Come on. We have to go deeper!”

“Obviously,” Isa said. He rushed ahead. 2024-10-05 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

184. Not This Time

The voice sounded close, but it boomed from the edge of the town. Shopkeep’s head snapped up. Wisp and Ike looked up as well. From his place on the ground, Ike couldn’t see anything special. The voice sounded familiar, though. He jumped up onto the fence and peered a little further. “What is it? Who is it?”

Shopkeep snapped his fingers.

The town’s barrier shimmered inches from Ike’s nose. A vast cliff spread before him. Ike staggered and barely caught himself before he...

29. Enter the Dungeon

Knell and Shaheed turned away, leading them toward carriages that awaited them at the far side of the square. Levi and the others followed Mae and her party into the same carriage. The emo-looking adherents of the Death Cult filled another two or three. Kai slipped in with the remnants, some ragged-looking men and women that Levi didn’t like the looks of.

They bumped along. Levi watched the terrain pass by outside the carriage window. They wound into desolate lands. The forest thinned...

183. A House

Sitting on his doorstep, Ike checked all the skills he’d taken out of the treasury. Most of them were useless skills. Skills for counting, transferring money around, skills of that sort. The kind of skills a town full of traders would find incredibly useful, but which Ike found kind of worthless.

Well, not worthless. I’ll sell them for a profit.

The only two combat skills in Shopkeep’s treasury were a low-rank sword skill, inferior to River-Splitting Sword, and a sk...

28. I Said What

The old lady looked up. Levi spun around.

A hulking man even larger than Piri with blue-tinged skin stood over them. He had the same build as Piri, and a similar face. He crossed his arms. “I did recommend someone to the cult, but it wasn’t this pipsqueak.”

“Oh?” The old lady looked Levi up and down. She squinted. “Then what were you doing—”

Levi put his hands on his chin and gave her puppy dog eyes. “I was just so eager to join the cult that I couldn’t h...

182. Recovery Efforts

When Wisp and Ike emerged once more from the treasury, burdened with almost more loot than they could carry, they found themselves standing in an entirely different place.

A stone city stood around them. In its center stood a modest castle, but this castle had no walls. Instead, shops and homes clustered close. All stood empty. Not a single puppet nor person was anywhere in sight.

Ike and Wisp exchanged a glance. Ike shrugged first. “Let’s go find Shopkeep.”

It wasn’...

27. Infiltrating the Death Cult

A cold hand grabbed his shoulder. “Wake up.”

Levi startled awake. He drew his knife and lunged, stabbing center-of-mass.

Isa caught him by the wrist. In a flash, he extended his free hand to Levi’s shoulder and forced him back to the bed. The two of them stared at each other, Levi’s heart pounding, Isa stone cold.

Abruptly, Levi smiled. He patted Isa on the shoulder. “Just testing you! Haha.”

Isa released him and stepped back. “Sure you were.”

Lev...

181. Lightning, Called

White light. A wall of noise. For an infinite second, those were the entirety of Ike’s world.

He held his breath. His whole body screamed in pain. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, except in a dull throb of ache. His Body Reforging Art activated on its own. It drew at the last scraps of his aether, sucking at the scraps like a camel slurping up the last water at a dried-up oasis. Ike stared, waiting for his vision to clear.

A hollow head clattered to the floor. Blackened porcel...