Nar adjusted Jul’s weight on his back. He did it gently, but Jul still muttered something in his ear.
He tried to hide his grimace. His arms had been sore after the first day of carrying her, and by now, two more days later, they were permanently numb from the moment he picked her up in the morning, to the moment he lay her down at night, and woke her up for her long watch.
[Constitution] wasn’t doing anything for him. His HP stayed at full, obviously, he did not expect to inc...
2024-11-14 11:05:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Okay, that’s it! Viy, stab it!”
Viy shouted and pushed her spear into one of the soldier’s weak spots. It didn’t go in as easily or as deep as Wik’s attacks went, but it still had an effect.
The soldier roared in anger, but as it shook off Gad’s aggro, the tank hit him with the second charge of her skill. The guardian was forced to forget about Viy and her spear.
“That skill has a cooldown of 2 minutes, right?” Kur asked, talking about the guardian’s ant...
2024-11-14 11:00:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
“I realize we never introduced ourselves,” the red leader said.
It had been a quiet night. The other party had been exhausted after their ordeal, and Kur had ordered them to bed early, so that they wouldn’t disturb their sleep.
Nar had stayed up late, however, listening to Rel tossing and turning. She mumbled in her sleep, and he managed to catch a few words here and there. They were mostly begging and pleading, and they set his blood to boiling. It reminded him of how Jul u...
2024-11-13 10:03:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
Jul patted his arm and Nar halted next to her. He waited in silence, while she sensed whatever it was that had called out to her.
After a couple of minutes, she leaned towards his ear and he leaned down.
“I’m sure,” she said, whispering.
Nar held a gasp.
“Okay. Let’s go back and tell the others,” he whispered.
Slowly, and as silently as possible, they crept back through the darkness, towards the rest of the party.
Following his bridge crossing g...
2024-11-13 10:01:53 +0000 UTC
View Post
The caster sat back down, hard, and wiped her mouth, breathing hard. She looked around her, unsteadily, her eyes glazed over, looking without seeing.
Nar realized that the explosion must have momentarily blinded her.
“Mul? Mul!” she shouted.
In a panic, she patted the floor around her, until she found her brother. He was laying on at her side.
“Mul! Mul!” she cried, once she got hold of him.
“Yes! Yes! I’m fine! Stop shaking me!” the brawler grunted...
2024-11-13 01:19:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
“I’m sorry to see you guys go, but I understand.”
Kur and Row shook and held each other's hands for a moment, neither willing to end the goodbye.
“Us too,” Kur said. “I really hope we can meet again.”
“Outside, or at least, somewhere closer to that damned exit!” Row said.
Kur and Row laughed and nodded at each other.
It was early. The deadline was still a bit less than two hours away, and the vast majority of the Climbers were still asleep.
<...
2024-11-12 13:19:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hi everyone!
It's Launch Day!
Thank you for taking the time to check out my Patreon!
The Infinite Nexus and the Endless Labyrinth is a huge, huge world, full of adventure, danger, power, advanced aethertech, plots and mystery! I want to tell you so much, but I have to resist spoiling anything!
Our MC, Nar, starts out weak and in a bit of a bad spot. But I can guarantee you, he will eventually reach heights he could have never dreamt off! You are what you do
2024-11-11 14:29:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
“No Change. You are on the best path for you!” Tuk said, beaming. “You hear that? Ah! The recognition! The validation!”
“I got the same thing,” Cen said.
“To me, it said I was on the only path that was right for me,” Mul said, frowning, clearly unsure about what that meant.
“I picked no change too,” Nar said. He felt light. Like he had made the right decision.
“I got a new boon that is going to help us in every single fight,” Kur said.
“...
2024-11-11 14:26:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
“... and then, I thought, I have nine more, why not use just a second one?” Tuk said.
Gasps erupted around him.
“Fucking pile, man. You’re insane!” Jaz shouted.
“I thought you were just going really fast,” Nar said. “But now that I think about it, I could feel your blood on my face every time you tossed your rings!”
“Ew!” Lim said, tears streaming down his red cheeks.
“I never allowed this!” Cen said, enraged. “You could’ve lost your...
2024-11-11 14:26:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
-[ Quest, Cross the Chasm, completed!
Congratulations, you have made it to the Mid-Levels!
You are closer to atonement.
Other rewards:
1. You have been granted a 10-hour rest period within this safe space. There are no facilities or dispensers.
You may leave whenever you want.
Warning: This area is now a no-combat zone.
2. Experience and attributes gains are being calculated. They w...
2024-11-11 14:25:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
A tank stepped out from the gathering of Climbers and stood in their way as they walked down the stairs. He was an altei, and his back was so straight it almost bent backwards.
Nar disliked him on sight.
“Finally moving your ass?” he asked Row. “We’re getting shredded down here!”
Row shook her head. “I told you to stay put. We weren’t ready.”
“And now you are? What changed?” he asked, and glanced at Kur’s party. “Another caster? We have plenty o...
2024-11-11 14:25:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Row urged them to follow her to the line, before another wave of guardians descended from the tube.
“Boss!”
A quam called out to Row, waving at her with four short swords.
Crystal’s mercy! Four blades? How’s that fair? Nar thought, staring at the four bladed DPS.
Jul used no weapons, and for some reason, Nar had never considered what she might look like if she ever did. Now he knew.
“Do you fancy getting some swords, Jul?” Tuk asked under his...
2024-11-11 14:24:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
Seeing how her words were not having any effect, the woman swore and turned to talk with a big morsvar. The guy held a shield and a mace, just like Gad.
Why is she so close to the guardians, though? That’s so dangerous, Nar thought.
She should be more at the back, as he deduced, based on the scepter and buckler in her hands, that she was a party leader, like Kur.
“Should we head back?” Tuk asked.
Nar tutted.
“I want to, but I don’...
2024-11-11 14:24:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Up! Up! Up!” Kur shouted the next morning. “I warned you guys that there would be no sleeping in.”
A chorus of groans and half-woken mutters met his words.
“Come on, come on!” Kur said. “We’ve got another amazing day of walking through these same corridors we’ve been in for the past month, and fighting some more crazy, deadly guardians that will kill us at the slightest slip up!”
Ugh… Really? That’s your way of getting us up?
Nar pushe...
2024-11-11 14:24:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
When Cen came too, she made Kur’s anger look like an amicable disagreement between two team leads.
Nar hadn’t known she could be so loud.
She had Tuk almost in tears, apologizing. She made him swear that he was going to be training every single night into the AMs, and informed him that from now on, she would be personally supervising him. This was pending his full recovery, and she would be the one to deem him ready to start practicing again.
Eventually though, she relen...
2024-11-11 14:23:53 +0000 UTC
View Post
Nar was starting to get the hang of it.
He was letting less and less bolts pass him by, and was even considering rushing the poisoner to attack the little guardians supplying it.
A few fights and a couple of gains later, he was now even faster, and his [Reflex] higher. Soon, he would be able to stop all of the bolts. And this was no longer just a hope of his. It was soon to be reality.
Almost time, he thought.
That fight had dragged on longer than the others. ...
2024-11-11 14:23:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Cen, hold back for now,” Kur said. “Let’s see how we do first!”
“Got it!”
Gad had stopped the soldier guardian’s charge, and Viy and Mul moved in.
Nar shifted his foot a smidge forward. His legs were bent and his back leaned forward. And on his hand, supported by a fully healed shoulder, was his sword.
“Nar!” Kur shouted.
He shot forward.
Within a second, he was at the soldier. The legs and blades thrashed wildly around it, but Nar plun...
2024-11-11 14:23:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
He felt the cut. It stung and shrieked against all the others that he had accumulated across his ankles and shins.
“Again!”
The cuts would heal. They didn’t matter.
Tuk spun his ring and flicked it at Nar once more.
Nar swung his sword, slashing in a diagonal cut.
A hair’s breadth. For a moment, he had seen it. He had felt it. In his heart. In his mind. On his grip. Not too tight, and not too loose. Just certain. He believed that he was going to mak...
2024-11-11 14:22:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
He gazed at his weapon for a long time after she was gone. The colors swirled and shifted. Hypnotic.
Gad’s words burned in his mind, roaring like the Pressure, shredding all doubt and hesitation.
Even her steps taught him about the kind of person she was. The kind of person he aspired to be.
It was enviable.
Unlike him, she didn’t doubt herself.
No, that doesn’t sound right.
They were all sentient here. All subject to the same failings and we...
2024-11-11 14:21:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
“How are you feeling?”
Nar glanced up.
“Gad?”
“Who else?”
“Sorry, I was thinking.”
She snorted.
“I know! It’s been three hours,” she said. “I thought I’d come check on you, before you melted what little brain you have.”
Nar frowned at her.
“I’m messing. What are you thinking so hard about?”
Nar sighed. “I’ve realized that I can’t tank. Not like you anyways.”
Gad sat down next to him. “Why d...
2024-11-11 14:20:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Voices floated around him.
“Nar!”
“It’s over…
“We need to…”
Nar groaned and opened his eyes.
His shoulder screamed and a whimper escaped his lips.
“Nar?” a voice asked. “Nar’s awake!”
Nar…
Nar’s…
Awake…
The words rattled around his brain, like loose shards of aetherium, and he squinted hard against the raging pain.
“He doesn’t look good,” the voice said.
“It’s a good sign he’s...
2024-11-11 14:20:20 +0000 UTC
View Post
Soon, they found another batch of corpses. And another, right after it.
The Pressure had long faded away, taking its orange, weight and heat with it, but they were still finding more dead cannibals.
They walked well into the night, past what had to be at least a couple thousand corpses.
Kur kept them going, hoping that at some point they would hit clear corridors again.
Instead, he eventually had to give up.
Jul, now only using her full range of senses in short b...
2024-11-11 14:20:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Nar skewered the guardian from side to side. He pushed with all his [Strength] and dragged the machine the three steps to the wall, where he pinned it.
The guardian spasmed and thrashed, and Nar covered his face with his arm. The guardian’s wild blades drew shallow stinging lines across his skin, but they barely touched his HP.
“Nar!”
He twisted to the side, and Viy’s spear slid into the guardian.
It spasmed once, and went still.
Nar let it fall down the ...
2024-11-11 14:19:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
Part 2 - The Mid-Levels
“You don’t know darkness, little man. Not like we do.” - Anonymous delver morsvar tank, ex-Climber, The Goliath, S739DAF88L46Y, popular drinking establishment for ex-Climber tanks
Excerpt from “Life in the Depths – A Study of the Life Conditions in the Between-Nexus”
Status: Unpublished. Censored by the authority of Truth Praetor Alastor Ghabn
Notation: Level 4 Breach of The Tenets for Scholarly Condu...
2024-11-11 14:19:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
“These are the last ones,” said one of their guides.
The person he addressed turned their way, and Nar saw that it was the Admin himself.
“Good, thank you. You guys report to the Doors,” he said.
“Yes, Admin.”
“As for you, Climbers, this is where you’ll rest. You have used the facilities and will not be leaving this place unless it is to leave my cubeplant. Go ahead, and join your peers.”
Kur and Nar waded into the gathering of Climbers.
C...
2024-11-11 14:18:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Of the things that Nar had expected the Climb to involve, fighting for the survival of, and then actually going inside another cubeplant, had not been on the list. Now that he thought about it, what had he expected?
He snorted.
It wasn’t this for sure.
Walking in that familiar, warm and stuffy darkness, guided by the even more familiar white glow of a crystalight, he couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t dreaming. Or was stuck in a nightmare.
Tuk still helped him...
2024-11-11 14:17:44 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sound slowly returned to him, as his ears healed.
The cries of the injured and the dying filled the air, and the Climbers who hadn’t followed the fleeing of cannibals, now roamed the massive room, putting an end to any cannibal that still drew breath.
Nar watched them, with a weariness that threatened to bring him under.
His arms had long gone numb, and despite still having stamina, he found he couldn’t move, not even to better adjust Viy on his arms. At the very least, ...
2024-11-11 14:16:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
Flashes of purple.
Screams.
Grasping hands tearing at his clothes and filling his sight.
Bodies pressing him from all sides.
Rotting breath nearly blinding him.
In the distance, seeming so far away, the spear still danced, glinting purple above the press of heads.
Someone had his hair in a grip and his head was jerked back.
Kicks landed against his shins, trying to bring him down.
No… I can’t! I… I
Nar roared with his entire...
2024-11-11 14:15:58 +0000 UTC
View Post
The cannibals left the defenders well alone.
There was enough to distract them in the middle of that massive room, and the occasional scream still reached Nar.
The thought of being out there, surrounded by cannibals, with no hope of escape, only that it would end quickly, made him grip his sword ever tighter.
All the while, the enemy’s numbers swelled.
Nar shifted his weight to his other leg, and wiped his eyes yet again.
He pressed them closed and opened them,...
2024-11-11 14:15:41 +0000 UTC
View Post
The purple lit corridor faded in and out of focus.
Nar held Jul’s hand in an unyielding grip, and dragged the crying scout behind him.
His lungs screamed for him to stop and his heart beat painfully, barely hanging on. But his brain commanded him to run, and the noises now coming from every dark mouth they ran past, only made him run faster.
On either side of the feeling party, purple paths converged into theirs, though they never spared them more than a glancing look.
...
2024-11-11 14:15:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
