noct

143. Creative Application of Force

Rhys blinked awake, then sat up. He laid on the floor of the second story of the tavern, in someone’s bedroll. As mages, they didn’t really need to sleep, and as a result, they didn’t have beds; it was an expense they could afford to skip. The bedroll he laid in smelled strongly of must and mildew, as if it hadn’t seen the sun in a long time, and instead spent a long time in the bottom of someone’s storage ring, or maybe in a garbage pit. Rhys idly sucked in all the impurities on th...

142. Going on the Offensive

The more he watched, the more he understood. Less is More could reach outside of his body, but not far; only a five-foot radius or so, at best. He couldn’t target its abilities; in other words, he couldn’t make the impurities worse without making the potion better an equal amount. On the other hand, he could push more mana into the skill to make it activate more strongly, though Less is More was always kind of funky with receiving more of anything, and at the end of the day, he w...

141. Less is More

A/N: Thanks for all the support, guys! I'm getting my feet back under me. Back on the writing train!

Time passed. Their profits grew, and Rhys purchased the building outright, then started shopping for their next location. In the meantime, he had a few of his underlings build a second cart, then walk the streets with it and record their sales at each location they stopped at. The more they wandered the city, the more they learned about the best places for sales. As exp...

140. Unexpected Visit

A/N: Sorry, guys! Didn't mean to skip yesterday. Spent the whole weekend at a wedding and I was exhausted. I usually spend the weekends pre-writing the week's chapters, so this is a setback for me. I'll try to make it up at some point, but right now, I'm struggling just to keep the daily posts going. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow! Thanks for reading, as always!

Rhys stared into the vat, thinking. The sun was finally setting after a long day of chips and fries, and he...

139. Water Syndicate vs. Snack Shack

Business continued to flow freely. Potatoes flowed out, fried into delicious golden chips and fries, and gold flowed in. A few days passed. Rhys checked on the raccoon’s farm and watched as the raccoon grew the next generation of farmers, and swung out a few times to make sure the ex-criminals got to work putting their powers to good use, producing potatoes, tomatoes, and continuing to set up Rhys’s second farm. Rhys poked around in town, looking for someone selling sugar beets or sugar b...

138. Calamity

Just as Logan leaned forward to spit fire, the earth erupted behind him. A flash of bony white shot out of the soil and pierced through the back of his head, bursting out his eye socket. He pitched where he stood and bucked back, his mouthful of flame shooting harmlessly into the sky as Sable manipulated her tail to point his head upward. She hadn’t anchored herself by sending her tail into the earth; she’d used it to sneak around behind Logan and attack him from behind. Rhys nodded, fina...

137. Boss Fight

As promised, the man led them straight through the woods. They didn’t even grow close enough for Rhys to sense any other booby traps, which was unfortunate; they’d been an empowering experience. The badger walked along at his heel, his earlier hesitation forgotten. Now that they were travelling together, it seemed that he had accepted his fate. Was travelling together his holdup? Rhys laughed quietly, but he got it. Social engagements were hard work. Back in his homeworld, he much preferr...

136. No Curses, Only Dealers

Jay blinked awake, lost. He looked around him, dazed. He’d been in the safehouse, so why was he back in the tunnels? Had he blacked out again? Another digging accident, maybe? He started to stand up. “That fuckin’ overgrown rat—”

A gentle but firm hand pressed him back to the ground. Jay fought against it, but he might as well have fought a steel beam. He jerked back, suddenly far more awake. His vision cleared, revealing that it wasn’t Nant before him, but some kid he’d n...

135. A Curse? Oh Goody!

Rhys held his breath and pulled his aura in. Stepping quietly over the floor, with the help of some decrepit floorboards he’d insisted Orlen not fix and Trash Step, he approached the other room. The shriek was quiet, only loud enough that his enhanced ears heard it, and muffled, as though it came from beneath the building… though, to his knowledge, the building had no basement. His heart beat faster in excitement. Was it a ghost? Ghosts were pests, weren’t they? And besides, they came o...

134. Grand Opening

They opened the next morning, spreading a Grand Opening banner made of scrap fabric, which one of the mages good with a brush and with decent handwriting had fixed up nicely. SNACK SHOP was blazoned on their shop’s signboard, under an image of delicious fries in an iconic red holder that Rhys definitely hadn’t stolen from a certain clown back home. He’d wanted to make it fully iconic, with a moist soft drink cup sitting behind the fries, but his artist had gotten lost when he’d tried ...

133. Open Shop

The mages were efficient. By the time he brewed up another vat of soda, the chips and fries were already stored away in storage rings and ready to be transported. Rhys put the soda in his ring, and he and a few of the less-recognizable mages set out for the city… but not before Rhys made everyone a fresh pair of robes from the cloth in the garbage. He went for shades of red and yellow, since they were colors meant to incite hunger, and bright and bold enough to form the foundation of their ...

132. Byproducts

Rhys lifted his hands over the water and activated Trash Manipulation. He didn’t immediately latch onto any object or pull anything toward him, but simply stretched out Trash Manipulation, searching for everything he could sense around him.

Instantly, his senses lit up. The entire kitchen, the trash still stuck in the earth below, the hood hiding their operation from prying eyes from above—all were trash. Rhys took a deep breath and let it out, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at...

131. Disregard Women, Acquire Soda

Korii came out to meet them, intercepting Rhys with a hand on her sword and a wary expression on her face. She looked Sable and the skeleton up and down, then, in a forcedly neutral tone, asked, “Who is this?”

Sable hopped free. She stood at a distance, the skeletal limbs on her back shifting subtly to prepare if Korii lunged. Korii noticed, and adjusted her stance, readying an attack. The tension between the two was palpable, both of them on edge, waiting for the other to make the ...

130. Homeward Bound

Once more, Rhys mounted his skeleton warrior. The skeleton was a little larger now, and faster, what with the extra bone he could use to make a more complete projection. Sable perched on its shoulder, while he lounged in its arms. It was just too comfortable down there. Plus, it was his skeleton! Of course he got the best seat. It’d be crazy to hand it over to a random person.

Internally, Rhys considered ways to make his travel even more comfortable. He could string a hammock between ...

129. Is This a Remnant Weapon?

The hand clawed at the earth, fingers curling up on the surface of the earth, and a figure emerged from the filth. Rhys stared for a second, struggling to compute what he was seeing. He’d expected a giant skeleton to climb out of the well, but instead, there were three long bone fingers connected to a small figure’s back, then three on the other side…

Rhys blinked. He rubbed his eyes, then stared. “Sable?”

Ernesto’s ex-champion clambered out of the Impure Well. She gaz...

407. The System

The blue light faded. Ike blinked, looking around. He stood in a strange space. The entire room was made up of blue energy, low, glimmering light shooting through the dimmer energy in veins. A big window gazed down on the world from on high, and a big panel full of mysterious symbols, buttons, and squares sat before it. It was a small room, just big enough to hold all the controls and the big window, with maybe the room of a small house within it.

Wisp immediately ran to the window and ...

406. One Last Task

Everything went quiet. For a long moment, it was just the three of them, standing on the roof, looking down at the rubble of Brightbriar’s tower and all his puppets.

“Should we go?”

“Why?”

“Someone might blame this on us. Demand money.”

Wisp looked at him, then away, at the wreckage before them. She spread her arms, taking in the magnitude of the damage they’d done. “Who? Who has a death wish?”

Ike snorted. “Fair enough.”

Thump 2025-05-28 15:58:43 +0000 UTC View Post