“What’s this from again?” asked Nate, removing a little of the tender meat from his teeth with his tongue. “Oxenaw,” answered Wulfgar, rubbi
“What’s this from again?” asked Nate, removing a little of the tender meat from his teeth with his tongue.
“Oxenaw,” answered Wulfgar, rubbing his tattooed head with his spare hand. “It’s so good that we made a deal with the Dungeon Spirit that manages the Dungeon to make sure it keeps a stock of them separate from the...
2025-07-24 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat across from Aisling, a piece of torn paper between them lying flat on the table. “Looks like it’s pretty far away,” commented Nate.
Nate sat across from Aisling, a piece of torn paper between them lying flat on the table.
“Looks like it’s pretty far away,” commented Nate.
“It is. Not quite the opposite side of Galle but still… a long way. Will you build a portal to get yourself there? Assuming you’ll answer the call. You will, won’t you?” asked...
2025-07-22 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Kiri strode through the mud, her eyes fixed on the castle walls before her. Spears were launched in her direction and she carefully picked a
Kiri strode through the mud, her eyes fixed on the castle walls before her. Spears were launched in her direction and she carefully picked a path between them, occasionally catching one and spinning to launch it back at the thrower. The Legendary Dungeon of Etrua was finally hers to explore and she was using it to explore her new Path.
Now, e...
2025-07-20 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat in the middle of his art gallery, his eyes drifting from one artwork to another as he considered his actions from the night before. Those of his paintings that depicted war and strife received more of his attention. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was his thoughts of the Nameless and Gashana that kept dragging his eyes to those particular renditions, or that those particular artworks kept bringing his thoughts back to the likely outcome of what he had set into motion.
He di...
2025-07-17 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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The assassins made their move, answering Nate’s provocation. He sensed their movements as they dashed forward, using shadows to cover and co
The assassins made their move, answering Nate’s provocation. He sensed their movements as they dashed forward, using shadows to cover and conceal themselves, even the shifting of the sand beneath their feet muted by their Skills. They might as well not have bothered. Nate admired the synchronicity of their attacks as four daggers skittered acro...
2025-07-15 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Nate stood at the edge of the living room observing the dinner party he had organised. Weirdly, it made him feel like something of an adult.
Nate stood at the edge of the living room observing the dinner party he had organised. Weirdly, it made him feel like something of an adult. He could recognise that he was an introverted individual. That didn’t mean he was antisocial, just that he normally preferred to deal with small groups, and of course, that he needed time alone with his own ...
2025-07-13 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Nate finished sending off the last invitation, watching as the small piece of paper flew out the window, carried by a bird made of paint. He glanced at Frick curiously.
“Now that they’re all gone, are you going to tell me why you so desperately wanted to do Luc’s invitation?”
“I’ll tell you later, Boss. For now, gotta go!”
Nate watched as the blue goblin spirit zipped off after the painted bird. He had a bad feeling about what the little goblin might have impri...
2025-07-10 20:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Nate stepped out of the portal in the middle of the forest, right where they had set up the previous portal emplacement and almost been accosted by three, old Lesser Divinities. That single step was like moving from swimming in an ocean to trudging through a desert. The ambient mana on Galle was so thin by comparison with the Wild Realm that it was no wonder that the place was considered a backwater.
Kiri was next to him. Her stance was one of readiness, as though she expected them to b...
2025-07-08 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat on a stone bench staring out across the vista of the lands below. Ankh’Aris’s mountain continued to stretch above, with a layer of clouds concealing the peak. Even so, they were high enough up the mountain slopes to have a few clouds drifting below them. The archipelago they had found themselves in stretched into the distance, picturesque and perfect. Normally Nate would have taken the time to paint such a beautiful view, but they were preparing to leave and so he was focused on ...
2025-07-06 20:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Nate could understand Ankh’Aris’s disappointment. The ancient dragon could almost certainly sense the Divine Energy Nate had been accruing over the last month or so. Between Nate’s slowly growing understanding of the Concepts of Reality and their relationships, coupled with his creative pursuits, he had been glutting on Divine Energy at a truly astounding rate.
In addition, and it was just a guess, but Nate suspected the dragon could also to some extent assess Nate’s devel...
2025-07-03 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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IMPORTANT: If you haven't read Chapter 259 stop reading here as there are spoilers below. Good? Good!
Now that that is out of the way, I am planning out Nate's future path and am curious about my readers preferences.
So, the question is how much do you want to see Stats and Skills in the future basically?
2025-07-02 23:03:06 +0000 UTC
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Nate looked at Frick as his Familiar dutifully worked to expand their house.
“What was the Third Hell like?”
“It was like being eaten by maggots and dying of thirst while you tried to gorge yourself on a hunk of meat. The only mana to be found was in the cores of the demons themselves. But the sense of hungering for something, anything, was so thick that it was like I could taste it.”
Nate nodded along.
“And how did that help you?”
“Demons are very ...
2025-07-01 20:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Nate brought up the first notification for his new Skills.
Skill Synergy discovered between your Permanent Alterations (Epic) Skill, Spacetime Manipulation (Epic Skill), Conceptual Automated Existence (Divine) Skill and Artistic Creation (Legendary) Skill. Combine these Skills to gain Art Imitates Life (Divine) Skill.
Proceed?
Art Imitates Life (Divine)
The pinnacle of art is to represent an idea with such clarity that your audience cannot help but see pieces of...
2025-06-29 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate was dying. Approaching the Divine Artifact of Erosion had been as painful and deleterious as approaching Ruin and different to approaching Change. Cataclysm had felt explosively destructive but its waves of destruction had, interestingly, been easier to avoid with his Concept of Space. Nate was now forced to walk towards the final Divine Artifact within Ankh’Aris’s realm. That artifact was killing him faster than he could replenish himself with Divine Energy. His understanding of Cre...
2025-06-26 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Nate stood before a fire pit carved into the black sands of the realm that Ankh’Aris had catapulted him into. The obsidian stone of the firepit rippled like water, bowing to the demands of the divine artifact sitting at its heart. Within the crevice was a single piece of blackened wood. As Nate watched, the wood turned into a pile of dark ash, the incineration releasing a burst of destruction that washed over him, seeping into his pores as it did so. Inside of his body, creation fought agai...
2025-06-24 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat naked in the sands of Ankh’Aris’s destructive cultivation realm, as he fought for his own survival. The blasts of sand had stripped him bald, his beautiful blond hair evaporating into nothing. His skin would be pockmarked by an errant blast of wind, or wither beneath the slightest of gusts, only to reform a moment later as Nate spent his Divine Energy, focusing on the Concept of Life as he did so. Then some sand would alight on him and he would grow scales where it landed, or hav...
2025-06-22 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Kiri lunged at Ankh’Aris the moment he appeared in front of Nate. Even imbued with soul energy she was too slow. One second she was throwing herself at Ankh’Aris and the next she was dangling above the floor, a claw covered in black scales wrapped around her throat. Stillshe fought, trying to lash out with her tethered arms and daggers. The daggers vanished like dust, followed by her tethered arms as a pulse of pure destruction rippled across her form. Pockmarks appeared across her Mythic...
2025-06-19 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Nate was giving Lord Ankh’Aris’s offer a great deal of thought, among other things. The problem he was experiencing was that those other things kept jockeying for his attention. They had just been told that The System was basically handing out easy developments to the universes near the Source of Mana just so it could dump more mana into their Reality.
Nate didn’t like the idea of it, but he also found it hard to hate The System. That wasn’t to say he didn’t desire to be...
2025-06-17 20:00:09 +0000 UTC
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The question reverberated in Nate’s mind. What did he desire? The obvious answer was clearly developing his Destruction affinity. Something Lord Ankh’Aris seemed uniquely capable of providing. Had The System known all along? Of course it had, he realised. It could see his thoughts, read his hopes and dreams like it was reading a book. So, it had maneuvered him into this position, both for his own benefit and for its own plans. Reciprocity bound it so it had to offer him something in retur...
2025-06-15 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Nate pondered Kiri’s question about why Arikanvil was in a research station floating around Galle.
“The other three I get,” continued Kiri. “They’re Lesser Divines. Probably somewhat like us. Somewhat because, you know, they suck. I bet they didn’t evolve to Divine till level one-hundred-and-eighty.”
“Not two-hundred-and-forty?” countered Nate, playing devil’s-advocate.
“Nah. Think about how much mana the Etruan Royal Family had to siphon off just to us...
2025-06-12 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate loved creating art. To use his imagination, a canvas and some paint to make something from nothing always left him feeling accomplished. Even when the work itself was mediocre, though he was his own harshest critic in this regard. That being said, while he loved creating art, sailing through the sky on a flying ship with Kiri sitting next to him was probably a close second.
The wind whipped through his unbound blond hair that had grown long enough to tickle the nape of his ne...
2025-06-10 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate looked across the City of Pinoreth as he made his plans. Reciprocity was silent as he contemplated dealing with the beasts assaulting the walls and he instantly recognised why. Those beasts were here for him. The Divine Energy they had sensed was like blood in the water to them. The Calikex and their city were merely obstacles. With the beasts coming for him, they had initiated the attack and he was free to respond.
Paint swirled out of his robe as he began forming runes with the f...
2025-06-08 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Kiri moved like an awkward hunting hawk through the skies. A beam of light shot at her and she activated Shadow of the Soul, creating a shadow of herself to take the blast. The impact lit up the sky between her and her target and with a burst of Soul Energy she teleported to where she sensed it was. Striking down at the empty space before her, she expended a unit of Divine Energy, tripling her Soul Slayer’s Aspect strength bonus. The empty air screamed in response as blood flew free and the...
2025-06-05 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate stared out over the bay and towards the horizon as his Grandmaster-tier Space Sigil hung in front of him. Keeping the bath of paint around him flowing while maintaining the separate colours, he activated Conceptual Insight and then pushed Divine Energy into the Skill. Thirty units of Divine Energy vanished instantly and the Space Sigil before him began to change. Even at the Grandmaster-tier the Sigil had pressed against Reality, constantly shifting gravity and time as i...
2025-06-03 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone. It's been a hot minute since the last amazon release and I am excited to see how far the story has come and am eternally grateful for everyones support.
Book 3, A Shade Closer, releases on Amazon today (it was already out in Australia but we live in the future...and also upside down). Links are below for both the Kindle and Audible books and as always I would really appreciate any exposure you can help provide the book, be it Amazon/Goodreads ratings and reviews, spruiking ...
2025-06-02 13:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat atop the cliffs overlooking Pinoreth, bathed in paint. With a rune made of the Shape, Paint and Control Sigils he kept the different colours of Mythic paint separated around him, like multicoloured islands. Not too far away, Kiri was working through attack patterns that made use of her new shadow and echo Skills with Frick playing the part of dutiful dummy or, in this case, pincushion. If it wasn’t for Kiri using another of her Skills to enhance Frick’s durability, the little Spi...
2025-06-01 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Nate sat down across from the Elders of the Depths Walker Temple before him, the air alive with the pressure of the Heart of the Sea all around them. Reciprocity pushed at Nate to repay the answer to his question.
“Do you understand what you do when you meditate on the nature of the Heart of the Sea?” he asked.
“We do not meditate on the nature of the Heart of the Sea, Ascendant,” answered Elder Seeking. “We meditate on how it relates to us, to our Path. To try and encap...
2025-05-29 20:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Nate slid beneath the water's surface. His barrier kept the water at bay as he formed it to the contours of his body. Conceptual Runic Mastery allowed him to create a rune of Water Shaping to control his position within the sea beneath the city of Pinoreth. This close to the city there were only small fish, the largest no bigger than his forearm. Clearly they were using the cover of the wooden walkways above to protect themselves from aerial predators, while larger fish likel...
2025-05-27 20:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Hey all! Time moves on and Book 3 is going to Amazon in a week (Kindle and Audible). Normally I would've put this up earlier but time got away from me. Attached is the epub file for The Runic Artist - A Shade Closer for those of you who don't like Amazon.
Thanks for reading and hope you're still enjoying the story.
Note: This post will have to come down in 6 days.
2025-05-26 00:21:38 +0000 UTC
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Nate stood on the balcony, enjoying the cool, ocean breeze as he mentally probed the remains of his right arm. His first thoughts were to remove the Fire Concept embedded in the wound, but he was finding that the Concept was tenacious. There were Subconcepts within the fire that were similar to others he had encountered. At first, he’d wondered if it was Devouring again but in the end he’d determined that it was Consuming. With that realisation, Divine Energy had flowed into him once more...
2025-05-25 20:00:05 +0000 UTC
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