Normally, Velik chafed at moving so slowly. What took most people a week to travel, he could do in an hour or two, and he had no doubt he could reach the boundary in a few days. For the time being, it suited his purposes to move slowly, and he found that he appreciated the luxury of being able to just sit there and let the horse pull the wagon while he force-fed his battered system more upgrades.
What he didn’t enjoy was the chatter of other people, but even that didn’t turn ...
2025-07-01 11:58:48 +0000 UTC
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Hello!
So, today is launch day for the series. Subscribing patrons should already have the epub (it's been posted a few times), but I wanted to let you know the official, live versions are available. If you're an audiobook listener, that's finally an option. If you just like collecting epubs directly from Amazon so your kindle doesn't discriminate against them, that's also a possibility.
Additionally, if you'd like to help the launch in a way that doesn't involve a debit card, ple...
2025-06-30 13:33:53 +0000 UTC
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Over the last three days, Velik had managed to eat five stat boosters. He quickly discovered why the general recommendation was to wait a day between each one, though. It turned out that piling on too much too quickly hurt quite a lot. It wasn’t physical pain, either, or at least it wasn’t the kind his regeneration could fix.
It reminded him of being sick as a child. His limbs felt weak and heavy. Everything was difficult, even breathing. There wasn’t a single part of him t...
2025-06-30 12:30:51 +0000 UTC
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Velik wasn’t really sure what he was expecting. The crate was about ten feet long and a foot wide, resembling an over-long casket more than anything else. There was a stable mana matrix in it, indicating it was enchanted somehow. The configuration reminded him of the one on his cloak that enabled [Air Walk], but the similarities were superficial.
His best guess was that it was some sort of weight-alleviating enchantment, which meant that three laborers all arou...
2025-06-27 11:32:48 +0000 UTC
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As far as I can tell, this skill is functionally the same as [Mana Sense],” Aria said. “There are no blind spots that are commonly associated with what we consider to be failed merges. Other than the strange way you’re experiencing the world, the skill is identical.”
“And… any thoughts on what it is exactly that I’m seeing?” Velik asked.
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
They’d relocated to a sitting room on the opposite side of the...
2025-06-26 12:28:24 +0000 UTC
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The two liches returned with new bodies eight hours later, only to find the cathedral empty. There were no signs that the intruder had breached the inner sanctum, but he was so powerful that neither of them were willing to take anything for granted. Accordingly, they both set their minions to searching for the breather, but after a day and a half without discovering them, they were forced to give up.
“Nothing’s been taken,” one lich said to the other.
“The vault seals are ...
2025-06-25 10:51:56 +0000 UTC
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This would be so much easier if there wasn’t all this other mana around, Velik thought to himself as he triggered the trap for the fiftieth time. Mana flashed out of nowhere, crawling out of whatever hiding place it had, and formed the platform to throw him into the air again. Dutifully, Velik dodged out of the way.
He’d accepted that he couldn’t see the trap. He just didn’t understand why. There was nothing there, and then, impossibly, there was. That didn’t make sen...
2025-06-24 12:47:49 +0000 UTC
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Everyone had their thoughts on how best to accomplish the creation of [Mana Sense], and thus far, Velik had been dutifully taking their advice. He’d done his best to try it every which way, but nothing had really resonated with him. That simple, ten-minute conversation with Jensen had been by far the most useful, more so than days of theory and visualization exercises.
But in the end, he decided the best way to do something wasn’t to sit safely in a city. It was to ...
2025-06-23 12:01:37 +0000 UTC
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As much as Jensen wanted to enjoy spending some time with Sildra, it was difficult to do. She’d been in the city for the week, and most of her time was spent either trying to help Velik, or complaining about his abrasive personality. It took him a few days to realize what the problem was, since Velik certainly hadn’t changed a single bit in all the time Jensen had known him.
He did eventually figure it out, though. Sildra had become someone important, and she’d grown accustomed to...
2025-06-20 12:26:47 +0000 UTC
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Sildra took a moment to collect her thoughts. Morgus had appeared to her in her sleep, something he rarely ever did. Usually, she heard his words as a sort of whisper in the wind on nights when the moon was full. She wouldn’t exactly say she was jealous that Velik had experienced a full-on dream communion with her god—that would be ridiculous—but she was… surprised.
Of course, the fact that he was basically sending Velik to his death did put a damper on things. Sildra had spent ...
2025-06-19 13:01:05 +0000 UTC
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It wasn’t enough to see the mana. Velik needed to be able to differentiate it. In some cases, that was very easy to do. A divine beast’s mana was so utterly different from anything else’s that he could easily pick out its trail. Velik had even gone back south and confirmed that, over a week later, he could still detect Tesir’s passing. It had barely faded at all, which was kind of suspicious. All things considered, he suspected Tesir had left a trail on purpose to entice Velik to chas...
2025-06-18 13:48:11 +0000 UTC
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With a little help from Jensen, Velik found Aria in a coffeehouse on the south end of the city. She was reclining in a chair big enough to hold two of her, a steaming mug on an end table next to her and a book held in her hands. Other patrons were scattered around the room, either solitary or in small groups making quiet chatter.
A hostess tried to intercept Velik when he stepped through the door, no doubt to steer him back out into the street. He was wearing the same clothes he always ...
2025-06-17 12:42:32 +0000 UTC
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Velik sat in the woods under a night sky full of stars and fed sticks into a crackling campfire ringed by stones. It was… strangely relaxing. He scowled down at the flames, annoyed for some reason he couldn’t quite understand.
It came to him eventually that he’d never done anything like this in his life. The night was his time, when he was out, stalking through the dark while others huddled by their fires and worked to push back the darkness. So why am I… ah.
A wo...
2025-06-16 11:55:36 +0000 UTC
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Velik didn’t know what lies the guild leadership spun about Torwin’s death. They had a service for the old hunter at the guild hall in Cravel, which he didn’t attend. Not being a member of the guild, he wasn’t welcome anyway. Two days later, there was a small memorial in Ashala. Velik briefly considered making an appearance, but as soon as he found out hunters from the guild would also be in attendance there, he changed his mind.
Instead, he spent his time working on [Ma...
2025-06-13 13:04:22 +0000 UTC
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Jensen’s thoughts chased each other round in circles. Torwin couldn’t be dead. It had to be a joke, but he was pretty sure Velik had never deliberately told a joke in his life. He certainly never caught when someone else was joking with him. The man had the social skills of a sack of potatoes. But if it wasn’t a joke, then Torwin really was dead, and that was impossible.
He took a few breaths to try to rein in his emotions. Getting worked up at Velik wasn’t going to accomplish a...
2025-06-12 12:52:40 +0000 UTC
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Torwin was not hard to find. At least, most of him was not hard to find. Velik recovered three main pieces: his upper torso, head, and arms in one, a leg in a second, and another leg and pelvis in the third. About eight inches of spin and its attendant organs were simply gone, obliterated when he’d been struck by Tesir.
Velik stood over the body, quietly simmering as he looked at it without really seeing it. The thing in front of him was a pile of meat, not really Torwin. It didn’t ...
2025-06-11 13:36:20 +0000 UTC
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Velik’s nose was filled with the stink of burnt hair and meat, and every single joint in his body ached. He’d been ten feet away from whatever it was Torwin had used at the end there—One of those specialty arrows he took from that bounty hunter?—but it still felt like he’d been stomped on by a whole herd of horses.
The one consolation was that if he hurt this bad from being caught in the outer edge of that attack, Tesir had to be feeling it a lot worse. Velik’s visi...
2025-06-10 13:20:24 +0000 UTC
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Somehow, despite half his rib cage being blown out and an entire arm missing, Tesir was still on his feet. Mana raged through him, clearly visible to Velik’s [Mana Sight], flooding into the missing flesh and rebuilding it. No, not rebuilding it, Velik realized.
He was seeing his own transformation, but from the outside and a hundred times faster. In the blink of an eye, Tesir the man with thick, muscled limbs and shaggy white hair was gone. The only evidence ...
2025-06-09 13:08:05 +0000 UTC
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Velik knew plenty about divine beasts, though he’d had most of the research done on his behalf so that nobody would link his interest back to him. Most of what was out there was speculation, with a lot of claims that they didn’t and couldn’t exist. No one in living memory had ever seen one, as they were barred from existence by the gods themselves.
Obviously, those people were wrong. Velik had known that even before this one had appeared in front of him. He himself had the golden ...
2025-06-06 12:42:57 +0000 UTC
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The fact that [Apex Hunter] was completely silent for no apparent reason scared Velik more than he wanted to admit. The stranger was dangerous; that much was obvious just from watching him move. Ways to block [Identify] and other assessment skills weren’t common, and Velik had never met anyone who could defeat his. A high enough mental was sometimes enough, depending on the skill, but he would have felt some sort of feedback in place of the threat assessmen...
2025-06-05 12:51:02 +0000 UTC
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Every time Velik went out on an expedition with Jensen, he inevitably spent the majority of his time walking in circles around the slow-moving caravan. Even with the storage box reducing their needs down to a few wagons—mostly for those who demanded something to sleep inside of—and horses for those who didn’t have classes that put points in physical, they just didn’t move that fast. Thirty miles a day on open roads was a decent run.
When it was just Velik and Torwin, they easily...
2025-06-04 12:38:49 +0000 UTC
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“Level 50 is a huge milestone, one that almost nobody reaches,” Torwin said. “And to do it at your age… Frankly, it’s insane the number of times you’ve risked your life and are still breathing. Were you always this reckless or have you gotten worse since I met you?”
They were sitting in a camp about a hundred miles northwest of the Verdant Belt, hopefully far enough away to avoid any trouble with the local soldiers who might come looking for the three missing bounty hunter...
2025-06-03 12:09:27 +0000 UTC
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There was no time to think. The agent was already past the tip of his spear, its body swooping around the wood even as Velik tried to bat it away. In less time than it took to blink, it was at face level. Velik’s hand snapped into place to block, even as he realized the agent would simply flow around it.
Mana arced through his body, gathered in his palm, and erupted into a [Dread Lance] the width of his shoulders. The agent was too close to dodge out of the way of the...
2025-06-02 11:55:57 +0000 UTC
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It took Torwin roughly two minutes from when he heard the first explosion to when he got a visual on Velik and the three Slokarans he was fighting. It only took a moment to assess the problem: the archer. The man was picking his shots carefully, each one infused with magic that made them too deadly to ignore. The swordsman and spearman were trading off, keeping Velik busy while leaving a clear avenue for the archer to harass him.
It was obvious that the three men were experienced even w...
2025-05-30 12:51:06 +0000 UTC
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Arrows ripped through the space Velik’s head had been occupying an instant before. Each one had waves of heat rolling off them and, despite missing their target, exploded into small balls of fire right next to Velik’s face. The flames were almost blinding, but he knew better than to close his eyes against the flames. Heat could be withstood. Blinding himself in the opening moments of a three-against-one fight was a sure way to get himself killed.
Velik leaped forward, chasing after ...
2025-05-29 11:50:04 +0000 UTC
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The mysterious hunter stood over a perfectly stamped boot print in a patch of mud and frowned down at it, showing that he wasn’t stupid. Velik had left it there as bait not two minutes earlier, reasoning that it was easier to provide the man with a reason to stop than to try to catch up to him without being noticed.
The hunter had immediately recognized the trap for what it was, but it was too late already. The night was Velik’s time. He activated the [Shadow Step] ...
2025-05-28 11:27:11 +0000 UTC
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Hello!
Duskbound is migrating to Amazon on June 30th and book 1 will be stubbing on the 25th. Here's a free copy of the epub you can download early. This is 99.9% what the final live version will look like, but feel free to reach out to me if you find any typos in it.
As always, thank you for your support. I wouldn't be here if not for you all.
-EC
2025-05-27 12:41:19 +0000 UTC
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Velik found Torwin about eight miles away from the cellar he’d been shoved into. The old man was climbing out of a ravine, a deep scowl and some dried blood on his face. “Snakes,” he said shortly when he spotted Velik.
The ravine had hundreds of dead snakes scattered across it, some normal, albeit large, bodies, but most monsterized to gigantic proportions with armor plates and, in a few cases, wings. Every single body had at least one hole in it, though rarely was there an arrow ...
2025-05-27 12:37:51 +0000 UTC
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“The whole dungeon is falling apart,” Torwin growled.
“We need to get the seed now, before it’s too late.”
“No.” Torwin grabbed Velik’s arm. “It’s too dangerous. This was risky enough when things were stable. What are you going to do with no lifeline to save you when the piece of core you’re clinging to falls off?”
“You said the dungeon will just spit us out when the core dies, right? Will the seed come out next to us?”
“Probably not. We p...
2025-05-26 11:56:55 +0000 UTC
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Human fingers clung to the core through some sort of magic that Velik didn’t understand, but he could see the mana coursing through the monster’s body and out to the stone. Whatever skill it was using, it was secure in its perch, unlike Velik.
It was definitely a flesh beast, the first unambiguous one he’d seen since they’d entered the dungeon. The champion elite he’d killed had some similarities, mostly in its malleable body structure in incredible regeneration, but it had la...
2025-05-23 12:58:43 +0000 UTC
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