CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Penelope observed the others’ reactions with rapt attention.
Interesting.
It was immediately clear to her that nothing was clear. Put simply, she didn’t know what was going on. Though that was nothing new. She rarely did. What she did know, however, was that, moments before, two of the mommies felt way more interesting than usual. They blazed with unseen colors she could sense s...
2025-01-06 18:21:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
“Huh?!”
The collective exclamation shocked Richard from his state of numb acceptance.
Huddled around the campfire, practically smothered by the combined attention of the tiny tireless terrors, naturally, all he’d wanted to do was get some cultivation in. Only, come to find out, in quite possibly the least convenient way imaginable, that his body wasn’t nearly so recovered as he’d thought it was. Apparently,...
2025-01-06 18:20:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Robin did her best to console the visibly distraught children, trying not to let her own anxiety show through as she did so.
Kneeling on the fresh turf—it having regrown rapidly after the boss fight, almost like magic, as if a timelapse in real time—she held Alice and Chance in what she hoped was a comforting embrace. Rocking gently as they wiped tears and streaks of snot on her lapel. Spotting movement out of the...
2025-01-06 18:19:02 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Piled high before him, stacked atop one another or standing in neat rows, sat a varied assortment of priceless treasures—consumables, each and every one of them.
From the items he was more familiar with—stacks of intricate golden talismans, shimmering scrolls of various make, and even a few iridescent tickets reminiscent of what he’d expect to see at Devil’s Arcadia, if clearly from a far earlier iteration—to items he ha...
2025-01-06 18:18:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY TWO
An overcast sky reflects the orange light of a burning city.
The walls had long since fallen. The horde of monsters to descend in droves. It’s people lying dead in the streets by the thousands. Strewn about haphazardly like dismembered dolls, or else buried beneath the collapsed rubble of their homes and storefronts. Monsters raced down ruined boulevards and narrow alleys with impunity. Resembling demonic spirits in the flickering...
2025-01-06 18:17:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Uuugh…” Richard groaned.
Flopping over onto his back—a uniquely uncomfortable position inside the sloped bottom of the sphere—he took some time to simply sit with all his myriad aches and pains. Really let them soak in, you know?
Well.
Mistakes had definitely been made. Although, on the other hand, lessons had most certainly been learned. Didn’t that effectively mean he’d broken even? Wel...
2025-01-06 18:16:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY
Richard held on for dear life.
Skipping across the sky with reckless abandon. Moving at suicidally high speeds without a care for his own hide. The earth-heaving tremors pounding away just behind, and rapidly gaining on him besides, the perfect incentive for a man to rethink his priorities—a choice few of his ingrained policies. Too fast? Hah! There was no such thing! When you were being chased by a mountain of gray flesh, dead set on...
2025-01-06 18:15:02 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER NINETEEN
Richard allowed himself ten seconds to come up with a suitably non-suicidal plan. Considering his opponent was a monster sat squarely in the middle of E grade, he likely could’ve done with a little more time in which to decide his course of action. It was just that he knew that he had no such time.
Already he was on the clock, and every second counted.
Lvl 100 and an Elite to boot? For ...
2025-01-06 18:14:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER EIGHTEEN
•-|—WAVE SEVENTY-SEVEN—|-•
•[Enemies Slain: 9450/11,200]•
Richard could only watch with growing outrage as the twice cursed Abominaball slunk its way off the battlefield like a guilty teen—arms overflowing with midnight snacks.
That cretin. The fiend! And here he’d thought it’d simply given up the ghost! Come to realize, it had been&nbs...
2025-01-06 18:13:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER SEVENTEEN
•-|—WAVE SEVENTY-TWO—|-•
•[Enemies Slain: 0/9,600]•
Richard made it to the ramparts just as the countdown for the seventy second wave reached zero. Taking his customary place behind the central cannon, he wasn’t immediately bombarded with all manner of questions and congratulatory backslapping, for which he was eternally grateful. Grateful, though unsurprised. Apart from general c...
2025-01-06 18:12:30 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER SIXTEEN
Richard was halfway to the city ramparts when he realized something was up. Glancing back from where he’d come, he immediately recognized the seeming tranquility for what it was. He checked the wave countdown just to be sure.
Fiftieth Wave Will Begin In: 4… 3… 2…
Two seconds left until the beginning of the fiftieth wave, and no horde of thousands had deigned to grace him with their presence. It didn’t <...
2025-01-06 18:11:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a sad fact that, in his previous timeline, a great number of the major discoveries made on the system and how it operated, were only ever strung together in hindsight—long after the information would’ve been of use to anyone still living. By running surveys, testing small sample sizes, and compiling mountains worth of data, a choice few of the more research oriented profession classes out there were able to make fairly accurate as...
2025-01-06 18:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER FOURTEEN
•-|—(You have slain an enemy: Plague-Touched Skirmisher [Lvl 3])—|-•
Experience Gained.
•-|—(You have slain an enemy: Plague-Touched Skirmisher [Lvl 2])—|-•
Experience Gained.
•-|—(You have slain an enemy: Plague-Touched Skirmisher [Lvl 2])—|-•
Experience Gained.
(…) 2025-01-06 18:09:00 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’m telling you there has to have been some sort of mistake!” exclaimed princess Caerinth.
“Uh… begging your pardon, your majesty?” Casandra Knightly tried.
“And I’m telling you that no such error could possibly have occurred!” the arch magister shot back. “My rune-work is impeccable. In fact the only reasonable explanation that readily co...
2025-01-06 18:08:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWELVE
Of course the first thing he tried was to use this infinite font of mana to fix his abysmal talent.
It didn’t work.
Whether this was because the creator of this workshop had anticipated someone would try this, or the mana in this temporal bubble was merely incompatible, he didn’t know. A shame, though he hadn’t honestly expected it to work. It was just too tantalizing of an opportunity not to at least attem...
2025-01-06 18:07:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER ELEVEN
Septimus Preach missed his master terribly. This was not a particularly uncommon state of affairs. Ever since his master set off to explore the greater cosmos with that devious, conniving, master stealing harlot, he’d been left, all alone, to oversee his master’s path trials. A rather mind numbing post, considering no one had actually seen fit to take the shaper’s path—despite it clearlybeing superior—in, oh...
2025-01-06 18:06:01 +0000 UTC View PostINTERLUDE (III)
No Matter What The Future May Bring
So it was decided then. There was no more use in denying it. She was a junior talent scout—at least in name, if not in function—it was about time she acted like one. And who better than this miraculous child to start off her career? Of course there were bound to be complications. Because why ever would there not be…?
How was she supposed to know the...
2025-01-06 18:05:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TEN
**BE WARNED**
Any Path You Take Will Be Permanent. You Cannot Take It Back.
Now, Choose the Path You Seek to Walk & Remember to Choose Wisely.
A screen appeared before Richards eyes, upon which scrolled a list of path options. Skimming through the options, he was immediately taken aback by just how many there were.
The true nature ...
2025-01-06 18:04:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER NINE
I would much rather they refrained from waking me up in this manner. For one thing, it really is rather jarring. And for another, who knows, I might just get used to it.
For the second time that day, Richard was dragged from his cultivation trance by the terrified shrieks of small children. Opening his eyes with a sigh, he expected to be greeted by some form of harmless novelty, or else something equally mundane.
Perhap...
2025-01-06 18:03:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER EIGHT
They heard its approach well before they saw it.
THUMP. SCRAAAPE! THUMP. SCRAAAPE!
And they’d felt it’s heavy footfalls long before then.
THUMP. SCRAAAPE! THUMP. SCRAAAPE!
The very ground quaked under them. Every shifting vibration setting off the butterflies in Robin’s stomach for another round of fluttering.
“If anyone happen...
2025-01-06 18:02:01 +0000 UTC View PostINTERLUDE (II)
A Change in Your Scheduled Program
Asha Na’Keer looked on, a pensive frown crinkling her snout.
Reflected in her eyes was an unremarkable scene. One mirrored, to one degree or another, in the hundred odd screens she’d accumulated over the last half hour. An imposing wall of holo-monitors, each depicting a different clearing from a different angle. Live feeds from ongoing tutorials, not all of them acquired leg...
2025-01-06 18:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER SEVEN
A bead of sweat trickled down Richard’s brow. It took every ounce of self control he possessed not to shift his gaze towards the looming purple creature. The very same that always seemed to hover just outside of his periphery. So close, its long whiskers tickled the skin of his ear. Its golden eyes like full moons, trained specifically on him. Gleaming, unwavering, and feverishly intense.
Seriously, what was this girls problem?! ...
2025-01-06 18:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostINTERLUDE (I)
A Maid Under Certain Circumstances
Asha Na’Keer remembered a time, not so long ago, when she’d thought her career was really headed somewhere. Of course, that’d been just before cold hard reality came a’knocking. Proceeded to pancake her budding optimism flat with all the tonnage of an industrial deep space cargo hauler. But then, isn’t that just the way it goes? Big dreams were for the young and driven. And in...
2025-01-06 17:06:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER SIX
What eventually shook him from his cultivation-trance turned out to be something not even a jaded veteran like himself could easily ignore.
The terrified screams of children.
Snapping his eyes wide, he was immediately greeted by a scene of imminent carnage.
Stuffed animal constructs converged on the shivering huddle of kids with an almost agonizing slowness. Their hitching gate, dead button eyes, and comparatively oversized rus...
2025-01-06 17:05:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER FIVE
Denise was the first one to break the silence.
“Hahaha! You- you’ve gotta be florking kidding me! That’s what you’ve had us all practically shirting bricks over this whole time? Are you serious? What next? Is the big purple dinosaur himself going to make a celebrity guest appearance?”
Robin hated to admit it, but Denise actually had a point.
Argh! Knew I shouldn’t have bought the stupid stick. 2025-01-06 17:04:09 +0000 UTC View Post
CHAPTER FOUR
All it took for him to exit his soul palace was the general wish to be elsewhere. A twist of vertigo later and he was once more trapped within the body of a bald infant, exactly as he’d left it.
Said body currently in the process of being cradled by a rather distracted young woman he still did not know nearly enough about. He studied her for a moment, brown eyes reflecting the educational video she was watching. Brows pinched t...
2025-01-06 17:03:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER THREE
As it so happens, the resources freely given to Super Easy Mode participants are surprisingly, almost infuriatingly, informative.
All it took was a mental request for “help,” and all manner of questions could be answered in a flash. An intuitive interface with a clearcut layout, a plethora of convenient drop down menus, and interactive search functionality appearing right before one’s eyes. An ease of access to once coveted i...
2025-01-06 17:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWO
+—|-CONGRATULATIONS-|—+
People of [Planetary Designation: PL-0017-D38]! Rejoice! For it is your turn to be assimilated into the multiversal fold!
Now, we, the friendly folks over at Ra’ak Neer consortium, understand that this can be a very delicate and tumultuous time for you lesser race- ahem! That is to say, for un-initiated species such as yourselve...
2025-01-06 17:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER ONE
Tower of Champions – Twenty Seventh Floor
Richard Penn watched as, one after another, the best humanity had to offer were disciplined like disobedient dogs. Noses gleefully rubbed into the steaming piles of their misplaced arrogance.
It’d been fifteen minutes since they first entered the twenty seventh floor, and already three quarters of the global top one hundred were dead.
Golden l...
2025-01-06 17:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostTaking in the bowing figure before her, Lanyue’s perfect eyebrow quirked.
“A protector, you say?”
Rising from the deep curtsy to her full height—some six foot six, give or take a few inches, and most of it muscle—the imposing looking woman, with her hard eyes and chiseled jawline, replied.
“Yes. This one believes it would be in both our best interests to adopt this working arrangement, at least in a temporary capacity. To be revisited at a later date, upon furthe...
2024-11-13 19:23:15 +0000 UTC View Post