M.J. Markgraf

Mana System Chapter 222: The Storm

After weeks of sitting around, the Retribution finally got to fly again.

Knowing we were leaving, the harbor was a beehive of activity. Cobbled together crews were drilling aboard the other captured pirate ships. The people knew it wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when another enemy would appear.

As soon as Khikall got us away from the docks and any possible collision, I engaged the cloak. It was far more effective now that I could enable and disable the automatic rechargi...

Mana System Chapter 221: Troubled water

Sorry about the late chapters, I have no excuse, I simply spaced on it.

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I watched as the workers placed the last armor panel in position and began to weld it into place. It had taken a few weeks to repair the damages from our fight but the Retribution was looking almost new.

The replaced sections were clearly visible by the heat transfer in the titanium. I could easily fix that when I turned the thermal defenses on. It sh...

Mana System Chapter 220: Turncoat

Captain Grulaine hissed in annoyance as his second in command handed him his “orders”. His second flinched back and hurried out of the room. If he hadn’t, Grulaine may have cut him down in a fit of pique. It galled Grulaine to be under the thumb of another. He had gotten rid of his father for that very same reason. And now thanks to a series of unfortunate events, he found himself beholden to the damn pirate king Black Gar’s lap dog.

How was he to know the repair yard where he w...

Mana System Chapter 219: Protectorate

Admiral Levins surveyed the destruction with disconnected apathy. When his fleet of five had arrived, they found the city under siege from slaves and commoners alike. He had immediately ordered all ships to fire upon the town, not sparing a single thought of innocent casualties.

He did have to court marshall one of his captains when they refused his order but the orders were eventually carried out. The once prosperous port city was a burned-out husk. And he held a scarf over his face so...

Mana System Chapter 218: Island retreat

Ship repairs were progressing adequately. I say that not to disparage the time and efforts the workers put in just that I had never accounted for proper major repairs when I built the Retribution in the first place.

It was a major mistake on my part and was making everything ten times harder to complete. Take replacing the power conduits. Entire sections of the wall had to be removed to get at the areas in question. It was a good thing spatial storage was a thing, otherwise, even that s...

Mana System Chapter 217: The Enforcer

Sarvis limped past a line of bloody and broken men as they kneeled on the deck. He didn’t follow the policy not to show weakness to subordinates. For him, it was more important to show that he would push through the pain.

He growled deeply as he walked, making those closest to him flinch, but otherwise remain kneeling.

Good, if they had moved he would have cut them down for he needed no cowards on his ships. This little display was as much a test as it was a recruitment. The peo...

Mana System Chapter 216: Overhaul

I had to remove my armor before I could shove myself into the tight crawl space behind the bulkhead and wall. Thankfully I fit. Otherwise, I would have to remove an entire wall section to get at the damaged areas. It wasn’t the worse outcome but it would take far longer to remove those than it would to simply slide behind it. I suppose if I was in dire straights, I could just rip the panel off with brute strength but purposefully damaging my ship felt wrong.

The power conduit wasn’t...

Mana System Chapter 215: Joining forces

I realized as I was about to rejoin the battle that something had changed. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. The pirates had stopped fighting amongst themselves and the survivors were all looking toward me and my crew.

Even Barcos and Sarvis had broken off their conflict, neither man looking tired at all from the prolonged fight. But they weren’t staring at us, they were staring past us. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw we were barreling toward Sarvis’s ship. 2022-02-12 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Mana System Chapter 214: Survival

Khikall grumbled as the captain left him to fly the ship and man the weapons. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it but he knew it wouldn’t be as effective. Especially with the captain telling him not to use the new weapon unless he absolutely had to. What good was having a weapon if you couldn’t use it?

To make matters worse, the ship trailing them was a warship from one of the pirate kings’, which ship specifically, he didn’t know. Khikall only knew the fleet belonged to the En...

Mana System Chapter 213: Pirate Tide

The first shots came from our pursuer, ranging shots to increase accuracy. It wouldn’t have been an issue except one of the shots managed to land, disrupting our cloak and ruining our approach. The damage was minimal since it was an inert round but still, the shield flickered to life shortly after, Khikall doing his best to run all of the systems at once.

It didn’t take long for our quarry to notice us after that and now we were stuck between two ships firing on us. Khikall did his ...

Mana System Chapter 212: Victory of ash

Turns out I probably didn’t need to make a statement by killing the guard. I forgot one thing. It was small but very important. A lot of slaves still had families.

The next morning the town literally exploded in violence as the surviving families of slaves dragged the government officials out and beat them into submission. Yeah, turns out offing simple debtors that were paying off their debt by working as a slave was not a smart thing to do. And after mourning their dead loved ones, t...

Mana System Chapter 211: Flames of Rebellion

Em’ah slipped through the grimy back alleys of the port town in the guise of a malnourished adolescent male. It was hard taking a form so small but she found over her years that slaves tended to only trust those worse off than them.

Her destination was a storage warehouse and sleeping quarters for dock slaves. She wasn’t going to bother with the ship slaves, since most of those were hardened criminals. She still couldn’t believe how idiotic those freed slaves on the island had bee...

Paul

This one I left a lot to artist interpretation, mostly because he is better at non-human characters. It still turned out pretty good though, so no complaints here.

Mana System Chapter 210: The Spark

After a week of following the faint trail of the ship that left the pirate haven, we finally caught up with it. Or at least where it stopped. It was another pirate city but it appeared a massive battle had taken place.

Buildings were nothing more than burned-out husks and bodies were strewn about everywhere. It was rather easy to tell what had happened as the remains of broken slave collars were lying about everywhere. The exception to this was the non-combatant slaves. It seems the for...

Mana System Chapter 209: Industrious

It was less than two weeks since we had left the island to its own devices. So I was a bit surprised to see two pirate ships docked at the port. Careful of a trap, I dropped Barcos and Em’ah off to scout things before we docked. Thankfully the merchant ship was a Guild ship and even if these were pirates, they weren’t dumb enough to attack a Guild vessel.

It didn’t take long for Barcos to send up an all-clear signal. With a weary shrug, I ordered Khikall to take us in.

It wa...

Khikall

Another piece of fantastic art from williamrliberto. I didn't expect to see this until sometime next week but he finished it much sooner so I figured why wait.

Mana System Chapter 208: Intentions

After fixing the Retribution and rounding up most of the hidden pirates, my small group set sail again. Everyone was in good spirits after our little battle, even Barcos. Mostly because there was enough booze on the island to make even him happy.

The first island we stopped at had no merchants willing to brave the trip, even with our insurance that we would be protecting them.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to me that they refused. I would have refused in their place as well. It w...

Mana System Chapter 207: Island Paradise

We circled the island as the defenders took potshots at the Retribution.

Few of them hit and the volume of fire wasn’t enough to worry the shields.

“Why do you want this island?” Em’ah asked for the second time.

“Because we need a place to stage our raids from. Preferably away from prying eyes,” I replied.

“I don’t see how you’re going to hold it with the four of us,” she mumbled in return.

True, holding it with only four people would be impos...

Commissioned Art

What do you guys and gals think of this commissioned art I got of Ska?

Mana System Chapter 206: Ambush

I anxiously sat in my chair in the command room. We had arrived at the location of our ambush a week ahead of schedule in order to allow any possible disturbed mana trail to dissipate and not give away our position.

The island in question was a small pirate trading port. It only remained in existence because it wasn’t worth the effort to take it out. The small island wasn’t self-sufficient, meaning nobody wanted to take it from the pirates that called it home. And there were enough ...

Mana System Chapter 205: Repairs

The next day was rather uneventful. Khikall showed me where to purchase the materials I needed to ‘repair’ the ship. Really it was more of an upgrade because I had plenty of spare mana lasers and cannons to replace the damaged ones on the ship, but I saw no point with continuing to use subpar material.

Since I couldn’t afford to make the weapons from pure mithril, I grabbed a few different types of magical metals to test with. They would all work fine but I wanted to find the best...

Mana System Chapter 204: Surprise party

I disconnected the three mana cannons from the front-mounted turret and inspected them. There were signs of damage from use. I frowned, pulling out a notebook and scribbling down my findings. I didn’t really need the notebook with my almost perfect memory but it was faster to look at a log than it was to dig through my random memories.

I would need to overhaul my mana cannon design if they were degrading this quickly. I had hoped that the titanium would have held up better but it was ...

Mana System Chapter 203: The hunters

Ulq and Xiph stepped out of the portal of the Bazaar. Xiph’s tentacles twitched in distaste at the thin environment before he reached out to his partner mentally. [Do you have a trail?]

This wasn’t the first time asking this question, nor the first Bazaar on this strange world they had exited from. But the priests had assured them this was the correct world and so they came. The cost to hop from Bazaar to Bazaar was expensive but there was no other way to start locating what they we...

Mana System Chapter 202: Cutthroat

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Enjoy this Extra chapter as my Christmas gift to you all.

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I exited the interior of the ship to see Barcos and Em’ah both waiting. Barcos with a bored expression but I saw a slight smirk on his face, he was enjoying this. Then there was Em’ah, she was pissed, probably because I forced her to fight right after joining the crew but I tended toward trials by fire and she survived. It also gave me a good idea of her...

Mana System Chapter 201: New prey

With Em’ah’s directions, Khikall was quickly able to get us to the location where the Courier was last spotted. It wasn’t where they were attacked but that was fine as we knew where they had been heading.

Khikall had been right though, my runes or the hull blocked Em’ah’s skill so she was forced to remain on the top deck as we searched for our target, using a radio to communicate. I wanted to just build the functionality into the viewer but I didn’t understand the skill well...

Mana System Chapter 200: Em’ah

We entered the first port town without anyone batting an eye. Apparently, it wasn’t all that strange to see two humans and a Jerboa walking about together.

At first glance I estimated the city to be about the size of Saint June. And while that held true for the size it wasn’t even comparable when it came to the sheer density of people.

The city was crowded making it difficult to even move through the streets with the press of bodies moving one way and the other. I mentally tha...

Mana System Chapter 199: Hot getaway

Khikall and I had spent the better part of an hour watching the soldiers try different attempts to get on board. Thankfully – for their sake – none of their attempts caused any damage. Although, they had worked out some strange rubberized suits and were starting to put them on to attempt boarding again.

By this time eight ships had entered the cove and were spaced evenly around to cut off any retreat. They even had a few blocking off our escape over the island and below it. Not that...

Mana System Chapter 198: Legion

I decided to release this weeks chapters along side the RR release schedule. This way you don't have to wait until Saturday to enjoy the chapters. On the 25th I will resume my normal Saturday release. So let that be my Christmas gift to you all and Happy Holidays.

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We docked at an open slip, not that we had much of a choice where we docked. The three ships that followed us in, shepherded us to...

Mana System Chapter 197: The wayward prince

“Dammit, Barcos, would it have killed you to tell me Khikall was a former pirate?” I complained as I sat down in the command room.

Khikall grunted but Barcos just shrugged. “Wasn’t my place to say, besides, I don’t see how it changes anything.”

I rubbed my temples, “of course it changes things. Maybe not with the crew, but it changes how I need to go about our efforts in this region. And what’s your story anyway? No, wait, let me guess. You’re some wayward lord, ...

Mana System Chapter 196: Chumming the water

“Director Tolish, here are the weekly reports,” his assistant said, handing him a stack of papers.

“Thank you, Vetor, anything of note I should look into first?”

“I have arranged them by significance, Director,” the man preened.

Tolish smiled, happy to have such a competent assistant as Vetor in this strange new world. He did frown slightly when he read the first page. It was a BOLO for a native enchanter. The request came from another Guild representative that T...