emergencycomplaints

Chapter 125

Luke did not consider himself to be a particularly observant person. Even here on Aros, after all the fighting for his life and the system giving him the ability to literally count the ants on a tree a thousand feet away, he’d only recently started trying to sort through what his senses were telling him. Even then, that had only been an active effort to make up for losing the ability to feel the amount of XP other people or monsters had.

However unobservant he might have been, he stil...

Story Sample: Risen

This is a completed novel available exclusively to library tier patrons that was originally written as the first book in a trilogy. Those other two books... are not written yet.

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Charlotte has wielded the power of necromancy to destroy countless zombies and ghouls, send raging spirits to their final rests, and put her fellow necromancers to the knife when they’ve fallen to the madness that comes with their power, all while walking that fine line herself.

When she stum...

Chapter 124

“Back on Earth, we had this thing called a telescope that let us see stuff from far away. They came up with all sorts of stuff from it, microscopes used for medicine and science, binoculars used for hunting and by the military, even big-ass telescopes that took up whole rooms and were pointed at the sky so they could look at the stars,” Luke said.

“Sounds useful,” Zea said dryly. “Probably why we have them too. People with low perception sometimes use them.”

“Yeah? G...

Chapter 123

It took Zea two days to admit that she just couldn’t do the enchantments that blocked scent with her current level of skills. “Maybe we should call off the whole thing,” she told Luke.

Considering that she hadn’t been all that keen on Project: Ant Smiter to begin with, Luke wasn’t terribly surprised that she was ready to give up on it. “We still have the bombs,” he said. “Can’t hurt to chuck them from a ways away and see what happens.”

“It very much could hur...

Chapter 122

Luke prodded the dead boar… thing… with his foot. It had a lot of bone spurs across its skull and shoulders, and instead of hooves on its front two legs, it had appendages that looked an awful lot like monkey feet. It was also a lot bigger than a regular wild pig, at least any of the ones he’d seen. It was easily taller than he was, and if it weighed less than three tons, he’d be surprised.

It had taken a single attack infused with [Power Strike]to the side of i...

Chapter 121

The ship was called Averast, which maybe meant something, but neither of Luke’s language skills translated it for him. It was one of the big ones he’d spotted earlier, which was somewhat comforting. He wasn’t sure exactly why he wanted the ship to be bigger, other than that bigger meant sturdier, probably, less likely to sink while he was on it. Maybe it also meant less likely to be attacked by sea monsters, which he assumed existed because why wouldn’t they?

Luke made ...

Chapter 120

Luke was just settling his packs back into place with their new additions when he heard Zea moving toward the tailor’s shop. Specifically, he heard the clinking sound of coins smacking together with every step she took. It certainly sounded like there were a lot of them, and he almost thought he could hear her humming under her breath. That poor shopkeeper.

A few seconds later, Zea appeared in the shop window. Well, the top half of her head did anyway. Luke raised a hand to wave, then...

Chapter 119

Sicanti was smaller than Luke expected it to be. He supposed it counted as a city by Aros standards, but it didn’t seem like it could hold that many people to him. Then again, they were approaching it from downhill and couldn’t even see the harbor, or any of the ocean itself for that matter. Maybe it would look bigger once he got a better view.

They’d used the roads pretty much the whole way, but Luke thought they’d done a fine job of remaining inconspicuous. At the speed they�...

Chapter 118

Zea’s eyes went wide. “No. Noooooo. Bad idea. No!”

“What? Why? What’s the big deal with ants?”

“You have to have a special build to be an ant hunter,” Zea told him. “Because of the pheromones. They’re not the only bug monster that has them, but they’re the worst by far. If you fuck with an anthill, you’re going to have thousands of them pouring out and no way to stop them from swarming you.”

Luke frowned and considered that for a moment. “Uh, what...

Chapter 117

Luke experienced a moment of sheer, visceral panic when he read that notification and realized that his lungs wouldn’t open up to pull in air. He could try to take a breath, but there was nowhere for it to go. Then he remembered that he could hold his breath for an hour if he needed to, probably more.

He’d be fine. Or at least, he wouldn’t die from just the poison. The merc who’d attacked him knew it too, or at least was smart enough to realize that he’d be able to fight back....

Chapter 116

“This is bullshit,” Zea muttered under her breath. Even from across the room, Luke could clearly hear her, and he wasn’t sure how far away he’d have to be before he couldn’t. She wasn’t trying to be noisy, but his hearing was so sensitive now, and without his ability to sense XP active, he was really paying attention to what it told him. He was tracking people just by listening to them breathe, and he was reasonably sure if he sunk any more points into perception, he’d start hea...

Chapter 115

Luke stared down at the headless corpse in shock. “What even the fuck?”

A moment later, he got the ding of the kill notification, which was a whole new level of fucked-up. Had that merc been alive for a few seconds after his explosive decapitation? Just fucking how?

[You have assisted in slaying Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 35). 670 XP awarded.]

Luke turned his stare from the corpse up to Zea. “Learn a new party trick?”

“Something like th...

Deleting Tiers

Hello,

I still have 14 people on tiers that are no longer updating. Please, please, please, please, please, please go cancel your subscriptions (or change to GM only updates if you're on a library tier right now and would like to continue reading ahead on that story) . I cannot stress enough that Patreon does not allow me to halt payments on a single tier of content and I do not want to bill you if I'm not providing you with anything new to read.

...

Chapter 114

Bertram Singer had joined the Blacktongue Mercenary Company when he was sixteen. He had spent the better part of his life fighting men and monsters, sacrificed his future for the privilege, and grown to the point where it was rare for him to meet anything or anyone who could challenge him. This boy, barely grown to a man and already wanted by a church inquisitor, had presented him with a rare opportunity.

That’s what he’d thought ten minutes ago, at least. Now he was getting just a ...

Chapter 113

It wasn’t that Luke expected to get away, though that would have been the best possible outcome. Enough of the Blacktongue mercenaries had run off that he’d accepted he wasn’t going to kill all of them, and that it was a distinct possibility that they’d continue to be a problem in the near future. Killing one more right here and now wasn’t going to change that.

But no, he didn’t think he was going to get away without another fight. His goal was to catch up to the one who was...

Chapter 112

“Gods above, what are those idiots doing up there?” the boss muttered to himself as he glanced up at the ceiling.

Zea would have laughed if she hadn’t still been gagged. Luke was generally pretty easy going, but she’d seen him when he got riled up about something. From the sounds of it, he wasn’t happy and was taking it out on the mercenary group that had attacked them. It sounded like a demolition crew was tearing apart the building over their heads, and Zea had some vague wo...

Chapter 111

Luke was planning on killing a lot of people in the next few minutes. He wasn’t sure what the exact number would be, and he supposed that really depended more on them than it did on him. But he was sick to death of people in this world fucking with him, and abducting Zea crossed the line. She’d been dragged into his problems enough, and he’d failed at keeping her safe.

That was his fault. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He’d thought she’d find a place to hide, but then the...

Chapter 110

Luke had forgotten how uncomfortable a rank 1 language skill was. The way it twisted his lips and tongue around to form sounds he was pretty sure he’d never made in his entire life was downright creepy, like feeling someone else’s fingers in his mouth forcing it into the shapes needed to say the words.

It put him in a bad mood, and he didn’t need help with that. The merc he’d captured was woozy enough already that, now that Luke understood what he was trying to say, everything c...

Chapter 109

While Luke wove through the trees to reach the next archer, a woman at level 24 with high agility and perception, but not much else going for her as far as [Analyze] was concerned, he tried to remember what it was that System had said the highest level mercenary was. He wanted to say the answer was 35, but he hoped he was misremembering.

At least nobody nearby was that strong. As far as he could tell, he was the highest level combatant in this particular fight, though h...

Chapter 108

They were both up early the next morning, having only gotten a few hours of sleep. Even that was more than Luke needed, but Zea continued to insist that she was going to sleep every night, regardless of how much stamina she’d gained. He didn’t much see a reason for it, but since they’d paid good money for a room, he guessed it was fine.

The project wasn’t finished, not even close. She’d gotten all the carving done though, which she considered to be the important part. Everythi...

Chapter 107

Luke supposed it wasn’t unusual for a hotel to have a bar somewhere in the building. People liked to drink, hotels liked making money, so it made sense to him that they’d try to tap their current customers for some extra income. It hadn’t really been all that relevant to him, what with the whole being underage and not going on too many family vacations. The bars he’d visited with his older siblings had been more ‘trashy locals and cheap liquor’ than they had been ‘sophisticated ...

Chapter 106

They left a lot of miles of dirt road behind them that afternoon. It wasn’t that it was hard to keep a conversation going while they ran, but it was easy to just fall into the rhythm of the movement and not think too hard on anything. At least it was for Luke. He wasn’t sure that Zea’s brain was as susceptible to just living in the moment as his was. Either way, hours passed in relative silence until Luke spotted a town up ahead. He slowed to a stop and said, “Incoming civilization.�...

Chapter 105

The road ran north and south, and the farther north they followed it, the more the trees thinned out. Within an hour, the landscape had given way to wide, flat plains dotted with occasional farmhouses. Luke and Zea approached the first one they found, a sprawling, multi-family building sat right in the middle of a ring of sheds, barns, coops, and pastures.

“I wonder how many people it takes to take care of this much land,” Luke said. The farmhouse was big, big enough for twenty peop...

Chapter 104

The breeze didn’t bother Luke so much because it was cold; it was just that he was aware of the breeze in the first place. Despite his best efforts to turn the leftover scraps of his clothing into some sort of loincloth, the bulk of his repair work went to the harness for his mace and what was left just didn’t cut it. It was… airy down there.

Zea thought it was hilarious.

They moved at a steady pace, nothing too onerous for their superhuman bodies, but still easily fifty mil...

Chapter 103

Now that the fight was over and the adrenaline was wearing off, Luke started to feel all his injuries. He’d had a few dozen holes of various sizes poked, ripped, or torn in his body over the course of the fight, and what wasn’t actively dripping blood was swollen, inflamed, or bruised.

Probably the worst of it was the gut wound from a squirrel folk spear. It wasn’t immediately fatal or anything, but now that the fight was done, it hurt like hell. If he hadn’t had access to 2023-05-25 13:55:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 102

The lesser guardian’s snapped off arm regrew before Luke’s eyes, a process that took a second at most. High stamina wouldn’t account for that, so he was guessing it was some weird skill the monster had. He just hadn’t seen it before because the squirrel folk were shielding it from harm.

Luke was confident he could overcome that regeneration, either through a thorough and extended beatdown or by finding just the right spot to pummel. Before that could happen, he needed to get rid...

Chapter 101

The lesser guardian of nature crashed through the squirrels, unheeding of the damage it did to them in its rush to reach Luke. The squirrels themselves dodged out of its way, an action which reduced the death toll from dozens to a mere four or five in the second it took for the two to collide.

Luke parried its initial punch with a [Power Strike], which did nothing more than throw the stick monster’s arm out wide and cause another cracking explosion of woods in the tre...

Chapter 100

At first, he had a hard time picking the thing out of the background, but eventually it stepped away from the trees. It was shaped like a man, but eight feet tall. Long, spindly arms made great, ponderous swings with each step it took. If Luke had to describe it, he would have said it was a skeleton made of sticks, packed with dirt to give it mass and bound together in a layer of vines.

He would put it at level 26 at best, based on the XP he could feel from it. Assuming it didn’t have...

Chapter 99

The tree wasn’t moving very fast, perhaps only a foot or two every second. Occasionally, a huge root would break itself free, slam down into the earth, and drag the whole thing forward in a ten-foot jump. The whole process was so ludicrously slow that there was no way it could ever catch up to them.

Luke figured that was why they were waking a whole bunch up at once. The trees wouldn’t even be able to move through the forest without being blocked by other trees, but if the squirrels...

Chapter 98

In hindsight, altering their direction to run closer to the mountains probably wouldn’t have actually helped that much. The squirrel folk seemed to keep an absolutely enormous amount of territory and almost certainly would have found them anyway. They would have delayed the initial contact, but been that much farther from getting out the other end when the sun came up.

Luke might still have said it was worth it, except for one thing. The squirrel folk had no problem whatsoever followi...