Chapter 53
Spending decarmas on gear was one thing. Even the compass was justifiable, and that was before considering that it had proved useful enough that Jensen’s master had borrowed it. Wasting it on disposables because he’d gotten himself backed into a corner was a different story. His father wasn’t going to be happy.
But that would only be a problem if Jensen was alive to hear the old man complain about it, so he didn’t hesitate. Internally wincing, he bought three al...
2024-12-14 04:24:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Returning from the Astral Realm was an ordeal in and of itself. Pulling myself through my own mana core was rather like turning myself inside out, and reversing that was far from easy. In some ways, succeeding in advancing to stage nine actually made it more difficult, since my new body was so unfamiliar to me, but the massive increase in my capabilities more than made up for the extra handicap.
Querit had been true to his word, though, which already made this life’s advancement a mar...
2024-12-13 14:28:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
Being attacked while working was an expected event and we’d figured out what to do thousands of years ago. It was well known that things lived in the Astral Realm even before the first archmage reached stage nine, and had in fact been one of the driving forces behind developing a mage’s shadow in the first place. Nobody else could go in with us, not when the gateway to the Astral Realm was our own mana cores.
So when the baby serpents, each one at least a hundred feet long and with ...
2024-12-12 14:28:43 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 49
“What the hell is a corrupted seed bearer?” Velik asked.
Torwin frowned, but didn’t answer. They stood over the corpses of three strange monsters, all of which Velik would have said he recognized. One was an enormous mist toad, probably the biggest Velik had ever seen at close to eight feet tall. The other two were a hookpaw bear and a burrow skinder. At least, that’s what they should have been, but the system had other ideas.
“They didn’...
2024-12-12 02:37:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
I used every bit of mysteel I had left to make the cage surrounding this room. There wasn’t enough to make solid walls of it, nor did we have that kind of time, but the cage was possible. I wrapped divination and teleportation wards around it, sealing Querit and myself inside, then I systematically rooted through his golem core for days.
In the end, as he knew I would be, I was convinced of his sincerity. This was going to happen, and if I didn’t survive it, Querit would be trapped ...
2024-12-11 15:37:59 +0000 UTC
View Post
Five weeks remained. Ammun’s army was broken and the civilians had been stashed away. My allies were as kitted out as I could make them. The Order hadn’t dared to show its face anywhere on Olpahun, at least not that the gestalt had seen. If they were back over here, they’d come some other way than their chain of island teleports.
And I’d wasted more time than I was comfortable with setting up my little honeypot to draw all these golems in. It had taken me a few days to work out ...
2024-12-10 13:53:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 46
Fetching the remains of his spear out of the monster’s ruined eye was Velik’s first task. Unfortunately, the phantasmal shaft he’d constructed out of [Phalanx] had shattered into motes of light, leaving the tangible, physical portion buried out of sight. That was why, after drinking another healing potion, he was standing on the dead wolf’s face with one arm buried up to the shoulder in gore while he blindly groped for the weapon.
Thank...
2024-12-10 03:38:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
I spent the first week systematically tearing apart the remnants of Ammun’s army. It turned out I’d been a bit too pessimistic in my estimates on how the evacuation would go. By the gestalt’s count and my own estimations, something like seven in ten people had escaped the collapse of the tower, split heavily in the favor of the noncombatants.
The units that attached themselves to civilians were left alone. Usually, they were no more than ten or fifteen mages and casual spying tend...
2024-12-09 12:30:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
Grandfather stared doubtfully at the chain. It was six feet long, each link an inch thick and covered in runes. Thirty more exactly like it hung from a rack standing nearby. “Why would we need such a thing?”
“Because you have an entire wall of portals connecting Eyrie Peak to the rest of the continent,” I said. “You may need to defend it.”
“I’m not arguing that point. I simply fail to see why any threat should be so powerful that we could not destroy it with our ow...
2024-12-06 13:56:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 43
Velik froze in place and peered around, half-expecting his doppelganger to jump out from behind a tree and run him through. When that didn’t immediately happen, he took a cautious step into the champion’s domain. Usually, the monster announced its presence right away, with the only exception he knew of being that spider that had been a speedy ambush specialist.
What if this thing mirrors my own abilities? [Apex Hunter] fol...
2024-12-06 01:12:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
My already overburdened schedule was suddenly stuffed to the brim. There’d be no sleeping in my future, nor was there time to oversee any non-essential experiments. The only thing I’d be doing that wasn’t furthering my goal of meeting Ammun in open battle and prevailing was helping Senica.
“But why did I spend days working on this if you were just going to do it yourself?” Senica asked, her voice waspish when I showed up to treat her.
“We just got confirmation. Ten wee...
2024-12-05 14:09:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
Reaching stage seven involved a mage anchoring themselves in the Astral Realm, with future stages building on that connection. It was a difficult milestone to achieve, but well within my capabilities. The hardest part had been finding—or building, in my case—a mana resonance point that would hold the mana flows in the physical realm in sync with those of the Astral Realm while I worked.
Anchoring a spell partially in the Astral Realm was another matter entirely. It actually had the ...
2024-12-04 13:58:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
This was the riskiest part of my plan. If I called it good here, chances were I’d be dealing with the Order again very soon. They’d probably try to be a lot sneakier the next time, and given that I was going to be entirely focused on a skeleton-shaped problem in the near future, there was every chance that they could take revenge at an opportune moment.
The only way to guarantee my safety was to wipe out the entire Global Order of the Arcane, which was possible, but not really pract...
2024-12-03 13:20:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 40
The giant lizard’s body slammed into the ground with a hard, meaty thump. Black blood trickled out of its mouth and stained its teeth. Velik stood ten feet away, staring at it impassively as four spears made of magical energy kept the monster pinned through its death throes.
[You have slain an elite ironjaw croc (level 34).]
[You have been awarded 3 decarma.]
[You have advanced to level 32. +2 Physical, +1 Mental, ...
2024-12-03 03:37:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Elder Council sat on their chairs, more thrones, really, and glared at me with various levels of mixed animosity and fear. Rounding them all up had been a chore, especially once I had to start dragging them around while keeping them subdued. While I was grabbing the fourth one, the first three had tried to pull off some sort of ritualized spell that probably wouldn’t have done much to me anyway, but which I didn’t need to deal with at that exact moment. Number four was an expert trans...
2024-12-02 14:10:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
Author's Note: Sorry, I didn't do any writing over the Thanksgiving holiday and am just now getting some work done. I should have another four or five chapters by Tuesday or Wednesday.
* * *
Chapter 38
The parlor looked a lot like the common room, with an old, scuffed table in the center flanked by six chairs. A fieldstone fireplace dominated the back wall, and there was a faded painting of a young farming couple in front of a log house on the left wall. Who...
2024-12-02 00:47:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Global Order of the Arcane was, if nothing else, thorough. I’d already broken down the exterior wards of Tredor’s research lab and destroyed the ward stone. I’d been expecting the remaining wards to collapse at that point, but instead, the interior defenses were holding strong. For such a comparatively small building, having multiple ward stones was a ridiculous amount of over-engineering.
A roar shook a nearby door so hard it nearly rattled off its hinges. Sparks of mana flas...
2024-11-29 12:10:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Bakir dragged me through two more teleportation jumps over the next few hours before he finally left the safety of the Order’s warded fortresses. I’d used the time to explore the new cities he’d been taken to, mostly in an attempt to establish some baseline of the continent’s geography. If all I could figure out was where I was, I’d still count it as a win.
Once Bakir left the city itself, it was time to move on. Sadly, it was an obvious trap. Whoever was in charge stuck him i...
2024-11-28 15:32:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Bakir and his friend retreated from the surface to the back wall of the cave, then proceeded to transmute the stone until they’d burrowed through five feet of it to reach a second chamber. That was a mildly clever bit of protection, enough to turn away a casual attempt at scrying by virtue of nothing but a decently thick layer of solid rock. It wouldn’t stop a divination from piercing through it, but it would hide the fact that there was anything there to scry for in the first place. It w...
2024-11-27 14:37:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 35
Velik was three hours out from town and well away from the deep wood when he finally got that level up he’d been waiting for. It came from killing a group of worgs that he’d specifically targeted as practice for [Phalanx].
[You have slain a bristle fur worg (level 12).]
[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]
[You have advanced to level 31. +2 Physical, +1 Mental, +2 free points.]
For t...
2024-11-27 04:10:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
Despite Bakir’s repeated proclamations that Adilar was who I needed to talk to—that the whole reason the senior archmage had come to my home was specifically to negotiate with me—he still guided me along the teleportation chains across the ocean.
The Order had spent a considerable amount of time and effort surveying that route. They’d settled on six islands anywhere from three to five hundred miles apart, determined mostly by mana density. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was an ab...
2024-11-26 14:39:53 +0000 UTC
View Post
Surrendering his mana crystal voluntarily actually made me even more suspicious of Bakir, so I took the time to make sure I had him properly secured. There was no real way to keep him long-term, not without a massive expenditure of my own mana to maintain a draining field on him at all times. Even if I were willing to invest that much into Bakir’s capture, I’d still need to keep an eye on him. Draining fields could be resisted, and it wouldn’t take much mana for someone at Bakir’s lev...
2024-11-25 13:52:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 31
What had been vague intuition moments ago crystallized into sharp focus. Velik was no longer blindly guessing where his prey was and how it would approach him based on incomplete information. Now, he could clearly see the whole game laid out in front of him – move and countermove, feints and strikes.
[Apex Hunter] was the merger of his extraordinary senses, his ability to position himself in such a way as to take his victim by surprise, and most ...
2024-11-22 14:01:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
It required some patience to get the opening I was searching for. The Order’s new base of operations on the island was too well warded for me to casually enact my plan at my leisure, but I knew they weren’t going to sit in there forever. Sooner or later, they’d have to leave the safety of their underground nest, and then we’d see how good their portable defenses were.
My bet was on ‘not very.’
In the meantime, I got everything set up and turned to testing Senica’s pr...
2024-11-22 13:56:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Surprisingly, the ointment of aging was properly made. I hadn’t given Senica enough credit for her work, but she’d done it all perfectly. Even substituting a few reagents for things she could actually get her hands on had been done flawlessly.
“The good news is that your only mistake was using it now,” I said. “You’ve thrown your body’s chemistry out of order, but that’s easy enough to fix if you know how. Though, it’ll be a bit harder since I’ll have to do it for yo...
2024-11-21 14:16:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
“That’s totally awesome,” Senica said.
“No, it’s not.”
We were sitting around the table while I updated my family on what I’d learned about this potential threat and what they should keep a look out for. I no longer had any doubt in my mind that the location they’d chosen for their hidden base was a coincidence, not after learning exactly how deeply into my life Bakir had probed. The fact that he hadn’t spoken to my family yet just meant he was smart enough not t...
2024-11-20 14:40:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
Grandfather returned to Eyrie Peak that evening. It was no surprise, really. Querit was still off wherever he’d gone to sulk. A cabal of mages many times stronger than the Wolf Pack had turned up on the island and had an unhealthy amount of interest in me and my allies. I still hadn’t figured out how to make bio-mysteel, nor did I have any ideas on how to complete my advancement back to stage nine without outside assistance that lacked the skills to do what was needed even if I got over m...
2024-11-19 14:33:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
Chapter 26
10 years ago…
“My feet hurt. Can we take a break?”
“We’re almost there! Come on, another five minutes.”
Velik scowled at Chalin. “You’ve said that four times now.”
They’d been exploring the forest regularly all summer, oftentimes going on overnight camping trips so they could push deeper. At first, it had just been to see what was out there and because they didn’t have a lot of responsibilit...
2024-11-19 02:38:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
I’d been putting off a particular task for a few weeks now, one that I could justify delaying because I had other things to do that were arguably more important. However, now that three new archmages were here, I couldn’t delay it any longer.
It was time to go talk to Keeper again.
I teleported directly into her warehouse library in open defiance of her wards, something that I knew bothered her to no end. Every time I arrived, I noticed that the warding schema was more robust,...
2024-11-18 14:04:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Perhaps we’ve started on the wrong foot,” Adilar said. “Our intentions were not to spy on you. If we’d wanted to do that, we’d hardly have sent Archmage Bakir to knock on your front door and announce our presence.”
There was some logic to that. While there was every chance I’d have found them anyway, and I’d probably have come at them with a lot more open hostility if they hadn’t taken the time to meet with me first, it was still a much smarter move to not alert me ...
2024-11-15 12:09:19 +0000 UTC
View Post
