Zea entered the Harbor and scanned the place. Aldrick was nowhere in sight, of course, because that would have been too easy. She still couldn’t believe he’d just casually suggested moving in together like that, as if they hadn’t just met a few days ago and knew practically nothing about each other.
Though, she supposed from his perspective, that wasn’t true. She knew his biggest secret, something that would get him killed if the wrong people found out. It wasn’t like there wa...
2023-02-22 15:33:08 +0000 UTC
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“So you know how you always wanted to take a vacation?” Nym asked.
“No?”
“Well, you did. I definitely heard you say it.”
“I don’t think I did,” Ciana said. “Is this about that guy who showed up, the rude one?”
“Yeah, kind of. Listen, you should… not say anything until we leave. Apparently, they can hear everything you say and do, all the time.”
“What? That’s… Why would they even-”
“It’s my fault,” Nym interrupted he...
2023-02-22 15:18:33 +0000 UTC
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After his first go with Black Burrow Stout the other night, Luke had declined to participate in the end-of-the-night celebration. He’d scarfed down half his winnings in food, much to the amusement of the other fighters, and then left to find a place to sleep. The last thing he wanted was to spend another night in a dwifkin-sized hotel.
At Zea’s recommendation, he headed for the north side of the docks. The places there were rough and ugly, both the buildings and the people. It was m...
2023-02-21 15:17:29 +0000 UTC
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In a way, Nym almost felt cheated. He’d been working on this for months now, getting lessons from an archmage no less. He’d been so sure he was close, that he had nearly accomplished his goal. And then Ferro had shown up, turned all his progress on its head, and shown him how wrong he’d been about his most basic assumptions.
It had been so easy to do, once he’d been shown the right way to do it. The correct path across the third layer moved with the Astral Sea and crossed less t...
2023-02-21 15:01:29 +0000 UTC
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Luke walked behind Tantoro as they followed Fatty out of the back room. The previous fight had gone on even longer than anticipated, which didn’t seem to surprise any of the other fighters, but now it was finally his turn. He was about to step foot into the ring with a seven-foot tall naked, hairless, green man.
They passed through a gap in the bleachers and hopped down into the pit. Tantoro walked over to the halfway point and stood there, hands crossed over his chest while the crowd...
2023-02-20 15:36:10 +0000 UTC
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Nym knew he needed to check back in with Analia and Cern. If nothing else, Cern should have an assortment of potions, elixirs, tinctures, tonics, salves, and God only knew what else ready, which meant he needed Nym’s help transporting it and preparing it to be sold. Analia… might not want to talk to him. They hadn’t exactly been fighting, but they also hadn’t parted ways on friendly terms. If she was still mad, he’d take it as a win. It would mean she wasn’t dead.
He busied ...
2023-02-20 15:24:28 +0000 UTC
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Luke followed Zea into the fight club, which he’d learned was named the Bloody Harbor on account of how close it was to the docks and how often it was frequented by sailors. It was practically empty early in the day, but he’d been told it would be filled to the rafters in the evening. That was apparently a good thing, since larger crowds meant more money in bets. That wouldn’t matter to Zea yet, since they needed to get paid a few times before she had the cash to bet with.
Gamblin...
2023-02-19 13:04:36 +0000 UTC
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Luke scrubbed at his beard with his hands and tried to hold onto his temper. Fucking System had to know this, but had never bothered to mention it to him. It wasn’t like Luke had been shy about his leveling plans, but not once had that rat bastard ever so much as hinted that too many levels could have negative consequences.
And it wasn’t just because Luke didn’t ask the right questions either. He knew that Curt had asked System a million questions when he was figuring out builds a...
2023-02-18 14:07:36 +0000 UTC
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Luke groaned and rolled over in bed. His head wasn’t exactly pounding, but the sunlight stabbing at his eyelids was not welcome. He pulled the blanket over his head and tried to go back to sleep, but now that he was awake, his bladder was demanding attention. “God damn it,” Luke muttered, kicking the blanket off and sitting up.
He stopped and looked around blearily. Wherever he was, he didn’t recognize it and also had no idea how he’d gotten there. It was a small room, barely ...
2023-02-17 15:41:56 +0000 UTC
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It took Nym two hours of searching after he teleported to Karu before he finally found the Earth Shapers. They were almost a hundred miles away, literally out in the middle of nowhere, excavating a chunk of forest around a base camp made of familiar looking buildings. He’d seen the like many times in the military camps and outposts, the quick and dirty shelters earth mages put up. They were easy to make and easy to abandon.
He spotted Bildar first, the bearded mage working some sort o...
2023-02-17 15:30:40 +0000 UTC
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[Twitch Reflexes] was Luke’s new best friend. One moment, Zammin was standing in front of him, maybe five feet away, the next, the diminutive fighter was a foot in front of him with his fist driving into Luke’s outer thigh. And the only reason it was just his thigh taking the blow instead of Zammin’s intended target was that beautiful, beautiful skill: [Twitch Reflexes].
Luke resolved right then and there that his next level’s AP was going to be...
2023-02-16 16:39:59 +0000 UTC
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“Fox, do you have a minute?” Nym said to the ring on his finger.
[What now? Don’t tell me you’re giving up already? I’m not going to help you clean this up. It’s your job.]
“No. I found the source and took care of it. The scarabs should die off on their own now even if I don’t do a thing to hurry it up.”
[Congratulations. I would prefer if you cleaned up the Garden at least to preserve it, but I suppose that technically meets the letter of our ...
2023-02-16 16:30:27 +0000 UTC
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Zea handled the bargaining. Luke, on her orders, just stayed back and kept his mouth shut. The pawnbroker squinted at him a few times, but didn’t say anything about it. When it was all said and done, he stashed the bundle away and dropped nine silver coins into Zea’s hand. She handed over three to Luke and stuck the rest in a little pouch she wore around her neck on a string.
“That doesn’t look like half,” he said.
“It’s half minus the cost of your new boots,” she ...
2023-02-15 16:42:08 +0000 UTC
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Nym stared at Naera silently while he waited for her to put together her answer. It took her a while before she finally started speaking. “I can only present a theory based on reverse engineering the techniques and principles used here.”
“That’s fine,” he told her. “I’d like to hear it.”
“Like many of the creatures created by Research Lab Six, an ascendant is, at its core, a human being that has been permanently altered by magic. One could make an argument that i...
2023-02-15 16:17:51 +0000 UTC
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With his weapons issue sorted, kind of, Luke started working on securing passage on a ship. That turned out to be decidedly more difficult. He made his way through the city until he reached the docks, then started asking around for ships willing to take on passengers. Most of the dockhands and sailors didn’t know, didn’t care, and weren’t impressed with the amount of XP they could feel coming off him.
More than once he was threatened with violence, and on two different occasions s...
2023-02-14 16:24:58 +0000 UTC
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That was too much of a coincidence for it to actually be one, but Nym had a good idea who might be behind it. That fox had to have known about this lab, and probably known that only an ascendant could get in. The infestation wasn’t a new one; he could have done something about it years ago if he’d wanted to. Nym wondered if he’d find the talisman that had kicked it all off in the fox’s den, assuming that it even existed at all.
He scanned through the notes about the experiment a...
2023-02-14 16:14:18 +0000 UTC
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Pips bounced off the far wall, all the while cackling madly. Donaley barely spared them a glance before shaking his head. “Pips, don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Nope,” Pips said, popping back up to its feet and buzzing through the air again.
Luke resolved to ignore the tiny thing, though he was curious about what they were. It felt like it’d be rude to ask, and also something he probably should already know if he wasn’t an off-worlder. The best thing to do wa...
2023-02-13 18:26:30 +0000 UTC
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Nym’s brain stopped working for a second, then started working far too fast. The statue knew who he was, which meant his cover was blown, that he had exactly however many seconds before it reported back to whoever owned the place he was standing in before some ascendant found him. His options were to fight or run. Given everything else he’d found and the absurd levels of magical power on display, he doubted he could so much as scratch the statue.
At the same time, he already knew th...
2023-02-13 16:38:10 +0000 UTC
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As much as it pained him to spend the AP on it, Luke couldn’t help but feel that utility skills would serve him better in a human city than combat skills would. He wanted to upgrade [Mace Mastery], but seeing as he no longer had a mace, that was probably not the best route to take. The loss of his weapon was enough to convince him not to even try going after the other two ogres. Or giants. Whatever.
With 30 AP to spend, upgrading [Thalian] to rank 2 s...
2023-02-12 16:52:50 +0000 UTC
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It was a good thing he didn’t need eight hours of sleep anymore. When he finally got back to sleep, he only had about two hours until sunrise. Minou and his family were all early risers, even with the night’s excitement. Not for the first time early in the morning, Luke cursed his perception stat.
He got himself dressed and stuffed the rags that had been his old clothes into the leather backpack he’d made. His new pants and shirt weren’t nearly as comfortable, but they were cons...
2023-02-12 16:52:40 +0000 UTC
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The chimera was fast and smart. It knew better than to just lock itself into a grapple with Luke. Maybe it would win that, but maybe not. Size didn’t mean shit in this world. It had gotten a decent measure of his speed when he’d run at it, and probably overestimated his strength based on the attack he’d biffed it on.
The fight ranged across the yard, with the far more mobile chimera taking the lead in keeping at the edge of Luke’s range. He chased after it, and it baited him awa...
2023-02-12 16:52:29 +0000 UTC
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Luke took another sip of his drink and looked Minou over. The man was probably around level 10, which surprised Luke because he looked like he was in his forties. He was dressed in rough home-spun, like something the actors in old-timey movies set three hundred years ago might wear.
He was in good shape, but it just looked like the physique of a man who did hard labor for a living, not a man whose body had been fortified with AP invested heavily into stats. Even at level 10, Luke had be...
2023-02-12 16:52:19 +0000 UTC
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Luke appreciated Curt’s build notes so much more by the time that conversation was done. System only advised on a skill to accomplish a particular task once Luke brought it up, and never recommended anything on its own. They wasted close to an hour before Luke decided to walk while he talked.
Some skills were so situational that he couldn’t foresee a realistic need to ever take them, but most were general enough that Luke considered spending the AP. [Deception] made...
2023-02-12 16:52:10 +0000 UTC
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System appeared out of nowhere, as always. “I am not able to speculate on the motivations of the gods or any vendettas they might have against you.”
“Don’t you give me that bullshit. This has something to do with my being an off-worlder. Tell me what you know.”
“What would you like to know about, specifically?” System asked, ignoring the heat in Luke’s voice.
“Well, let’s start with the gods. Who are they? What do they do? What do they have to do with the...
2023-02-12 16:49:59 +0000 UTC
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“Oh, okay. Nope. Don’t like that,” Luke said. “Can you speak out loud instead of directly into my head?”
The bird-man let out a warbling screech, followed by another telepathic message. ‘I do not think you could understand my language. And I certainly do not understand yours.’
“But you’re responding to it right now.”
‘I am not. I am responding to your thoughts. It is… imperfect, but far more meaningful a conversation than we could otherwi...
2023-02-12 16:49:23 +0000 UTC
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Luke sat on the ground next to the shallow grave he’d dug for his brother’s remains. “I think this might really be goodbye this time,” he said. “I guess we’ll see. I might get a mile up the pass and end up turning back when I run into another one of those goliath elementals. I got to say, I’m a bit nervous about making the attempt. Still got 20 AP, though. Maybe I should dump it into agility and stamina so I can run away better?”
If he followed Curt’s build notes, he r...
2023-02-12 16:48:56 +0000 UTC
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“Holy shit!” Luke yelped. He threw himself backwards and to the left, but the stranger just extended the lunge with another step and turned it into a sideways swing. Luke got the handle of his mace up just in time to block the attack, but it hit hard enough to push him back a step. He shoved back and broke the clash.
“What the hell is wrong with you!” Luke shouted. He’d just risked his life to save this guy, somehow miraculously winning a fight they had no business even surviv...
2023-02-12 16:48:26 +0000 UTC
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Luke hit the trail at full speed and sprinted towards the battle. Some smaller elementals had already formed, but he didn’t have time to take care of them. Instead, he wove a path through and rushed headlong towards the giant elemental up the pass.
The ground shook beneath him, and he felt a growing knot of dread in his stomach as he closed the distance. There was the normal feeling of encountering something with significantly higher XP than him, but there was another facet to it this...
2023-02-12 16:47:38 +0000 UTC
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It was all Bulgrit could do not to cackle when he’d watched his boss get his face demolished by the Day Hunter. For six years he’d been serving that braggart, six years of running errands and performing chores far beneath the dignity of the Boss’s Right Hand. For six years, he’d felt Gulgok’s eyes on his back, sizing him up like a snack, and wondered if today would finally be the day his boss reaped his XP.
And now, suddenly, unbelievably, he was dead. The Day Hunter had freed...
2023-02-10 17:37:09 +0000 UTC
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Luke hadn’t forgotten his first few fights, when everything was a higher level than him. He remembered how scared he was, but that memory was dull and faded. He’d killed a thousand monsters in the last few weeks. This was just one more fight.
At least, that’s what he thought right up until the goblin brought the sword down on him. Luke swung his mace up to parry the blade and force it aside with plans to follow up by heel-kicking the goblin’s knee while it was off-balance. Then ...
2023-02-10 17:36:43 +0000 UTC
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