“Is it that bad?” Sonia asked, surprised at Sofia’s reaction to whatever was beyond the door.
Sofia turned around, her eyes still closed, “Worse than bad, they’re everywhere, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, so many eyes that there are even tall piles of them on the ground…”
Sonia pulled a strange face hearing that, and quickly made her mind, “let’s seal this up and leave. It’ll be a disaster if those get out and start turning the entire zone into a gigantic ...
2026-01-26 17:00:19 +0000 UTC
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At Pestle’s remark, Sofia looked up from piles of gold and into the next room.
Pareth? she called out in her mind.
She could not see or hear him in the next room over, her link to him was still nearby, but in the forbidden layer, it was too blurry to pinpoint. What was really surprising was that there seemed to be no answer to her call, just silence.
A bad feeling in her heart, Sofia rushed over, jumping through the half-collapsed doorframe, she entered the next r...
2026-01-23 17:00:23 +0000 UTC
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Author note:
Was dealing with some water damage today from last night's heavy rain, sorry for the lateness 人´∀｀)
Standing on the edge at the end of the tunnel, Bookie pointed at the ledge where he and Crowie had died.
“Hmm, I see the pieces of mithril scattered about, but no traces of a monster around there,” Sofia told the others, easily able to clearly see somethin...
2026-01-22 17:41:42 +0000 UTC
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Before going, the group endeavored to test everything they could and could not do, to be sure not to miss anything. What they found was rather depressing.
As they had guessed before, the vast majority of everything was suppressed to a point where they could barely be used if at all. There were a precious few outliers not impacted by the zone’s restrictions. In Sofia’s case, she was the least affected. Her specializations [Heat Death] and [Sovereign of Unshac...
2026-01-21 16:17:38 +0000 UTC
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Although the desert was becoming a frozen wasteland under their eyes, there was no excessive panic among the group. The unseen ice creature from before was clearly going wild now that there was no more heat to suppress it. For Pareth and Sofia who were immune to cold damage this was not too worrying, as long as the creature did not directly attack them again, there would likely be no danger. Even for Sonia, when she compared this cold to the forced underworld water bath from before, it was st...
2026-01-20 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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Sofia threw the cursed sword in a corner before her dagger could start a rebellion and strip away her title for touching another blade too much, and bent over to grab the flaming book on the altar.
“Honestly I am almost surprised you managed to eat that. Are those white flames going to stop or are you just a burning book forever now?”
Bookie summoned himself, his short skeleton also surrounded by quiet white flames. He looked a bit different, his bones closer to Sofia’s Lumi...
2026-01-19 17:00:23 +0000 UTC
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I’ll play dumb.
Sofia had only froze for a fraction of a second, decisively she continued, ready to transpose herself away to the statuette of her Pareth carried if need be. She took a step in the air, over the skeleton.
The swirling curses around the sword latched onto Sofia, seeping into her armor, melding with her mana. The philosopher’s stone felt slightly cooler inside of her glove.
Seeing the skeleton was still perfectly still, she reached for the claymore...
2026-01-16 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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Although Sofia was eager to add another skeleton to her collection, she did not rush to enter the room, crouching in the hole in the wall she had just created, observing the ever burning skeleton on the altar.
If there was one field Sofia was starting to be relatively knowledgeable in, it was the notable high level creatures griffins, basilisks, hydra, drakes, Kleptran drones, and of course, the mythical Phoenix. It was already something she had some interest in since the time she was a...
2026-01-15 17:00:20 +0000 UTC
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Sofia and the group tracked the discovery of the birds after almost half an hour of exploration. The crows led them to a region of the desert that was even hotter, where it was starting to become a bit unbearable. While the skeletons weren’t normally too cognizant of heat, it was getting so bad there that the surface of the desert almost looked like it was melting, sand glistening, while the ambient air warped from the heat. It was still not dangerous for anyone involved, but it was certain...
2026-01-14 17:00:18 +0000 UTC
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“A prison? For that thing?” Sofia reacted, “First of all, I hope you are dead wrong, or things are not looking great for us, but also, how did you even get to that conclusion?”
“Three– No, four things,” Sonia answered, while she fixed her wings’ feathers one by one, “The loop is clearly there to trap something or someone, then there is that thing down there which, with how aggressive and weird it is, I could see someone wanting to imprison. Following that, it attacked ...
2026-01-13 17:00:23 +0000 UTC
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“You go ahead then…” Sonia told Pestle, as she slowly spun in the air, scanning the horizon, “I’ve got nothing this time. Best I can think of is waiting for night and hoping it’ll change something.”
“Pesle is go!” the fairy said, disappearing from view.
“Or we can find whatever is maintaining the loop, right?” Sofia asked Sonia, opening the visor of her helmet.
“Maybe…” Sonia said before falling silent for a few seconds as she thought of a proper ...
2026-01-12 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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“So we traded like that, and that’s all there is to it. Honestly I would have liked to trade for the corpse of one of the giant ants but it really did not look like it wanted us around any longer,” Sofia finished her story as the group flew close to the underground sea’s charred ceiling toward a hole they had located from the leyline before the ambient darkness had fully returned.
“I see… You ran out of schematics to trade anyway so who knows what it would have asked f...
2026-01-09 17:00:27 +0000 UTC
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For Sofia the easiest way to organise all the spells she knew was just chronologically. Hence why, pulling bone strings from her armor, she started drawing the rituals from Scripture’s necromancy grimoire one by one, all except the knowledge rune of Pareth’s and Sorrow’s ritual. When she was done, she presented the stack of bone disks, each a sculpted ritual circle, in front of the wooden giant.
With a glance, he made the disks fly up to his face, and observed them one by one. In ...
2026-01-08 17:00:20 +0000 UTC
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AN:
Happy new year! Welcome back, and don't forget to get a quick look at the previous chapter if you need a refresher on what's going on :D
Sofia barely had time to react, in front of the huge monster of wood and mushrooms, she was like a bug, and apparently, she was treated as one. The m...
2026-01-07 17:00:22 +0000 UTC
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Ant-aur note: And this is it for this year, I wish everyone a merry Christmas / happy holidays, and see you soon on January 7th ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊
(Sorry for the cliff, you know I just had to :^) )
“So how do we find the seed from here?” Sofia asked, “We search for a place with a lot of big ants?”
“Pretty much,” Sonia answered, “it s...
2025-12-19 17:00:25 +0000 UTC
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Sonia made everyone rub themselves with sticky leyline sap to mask their smell from the ants, and they took their time looking for a safe way to go up. They observed for a while, spotting a few possible tunnel entry points that very few ants seemed to use, and waited until there was an approach opportunity.
After a long wait, one last ant turned away from the hole, and the group flew up without a word. They all entered the same leyline root tunnel, Pareth first followed by Pestle, Sonia...
2025-12-18 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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The second ant went down much faster than the first. The crow led it into an ambush, before it could react, the ant was pinned down by Pareth and Crowie as a horse-sized dragon. A pre-charged hundred million mana piercing bolt drilled a hole in its back, and an exploding arrow landing into that hole the next second turned the ant’s insides into a scrambled mush.
Somehow it still lived through that, but then all Pestle had to do was enter the wrecked ant to enjoy some free meat p...
2025-12-17 17:00:23 +0000 UTC
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“Tough motherfucker,” Sonia spat, flying up to the dead ant, “Now imagine getting swarmed by twenty of those.”
“Let’s not,” Sofia immediately said, washing away the sticky goo on Pestle and Pareth with pressured splashes of summoned blood. “Hmmmm?!”
“Something up?” Sonia asked, watching Sofia suddenly freeze.
“My aura is reacting to the ant.”
“Your aura… Bones?”
“Yes. The bark! It’s… It’s not quite bone, but it’s apparent...
2025-12-16 17:00:24 +0000 UTC
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Sonia looked up, failing to see much since her vision was still limited to fifty meters. “So… How much do you know about leylines?”
“Not a ton, to be honest, I did not get much time to research that.”
“Alright… I’ll stick to the essentials. Leylines are like… Underground trees, basically. They absorb mana from the surface, build up an immense stockpile, and gradually spread it throughout all of the planet’s layers. The roots we’re on do not actually absorb an...
2025-12-15 17:00:29 +0000 UTC
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Getting a closer look on the giant mosquitoes made Sofia wish she hadn’t. Their hideous appearance made it crystal clear that they were indeed from the same place the Kleptras originated from.
Sofia realized too late that her saintomancer’s stars would bring more harm than good with their current range of two meters, and even Sonia’s physical arrows somehow disappeared into thin air two meters ahead when they left her bow. Because of this, they were forced into close quarter...
2025-12-12 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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It’s alive?!
At Pestle’s warning, Sofia wanted to run back over the edge to reunite with the others, but before she could, she felt mana stir beneath her feet.
A faint tingle brushed her senses, [Heat death] reacting to incoming magic. With no hesitation, Sofia activated it, her mana instantly tanking by half.
A hundred million?!!!
The cube’s magic was interrupted, and the gigantic thing shook underfoot.
It took a back...
2025-12-11 17:00:18 +0000 UTC
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The tunnel was abuzz with the vibration of the giant insect wings. Each the size of an ogre, they flew over the group’s small bone bunker. Since all the bone had to be sourced from her armor directly, Sofia had only gotten time to build a small cube with no two doors on opposite sides and no windows. The [Blessing of permanent frame] made the cube quite sturdy, but it wouldn’t stop monsters of a filter above the group’s.
They all stood ready inside of the cube, de...
2025-12-10 17:00:20 +0000 UTC
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“Empty,” Bookie told everyone, “our rats are not finding any danger.”
“Makes things easy. Let’s go,” Sofia said, gesturing for Pareth to take the lead.
They had first thought there was no ‘real’ ruin when they landed in the lower valley and found no entrance. But it looked like some monster had broken into these ruins from a different point not very far, Sonia had found the hole as they were getting ready to leave. They had found the real, non-mirrored ruin, righ...
2025-12-09 17:00:22 +0000 UTC
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Rather annoyed at having to look up at the machines, Sofia used her aura to hold her feet against the ceiling. She did feel like she was upside down but at least now she could have a proper look at the machines.
Let’s see… There should be two slots…
Oh, here.
Sofia pushed one of the mithril rods into a round hole, it slid inside with a click before popping back out.
Wrong hole?
She pressed the other mithril rod into the hole...
2025-12-08 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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After a short silence, the greediest person of the group stepped forward. Sofia entered the vault proper with light steps. Before long, the machines on the ground and ceiling around the glass pillar came alive. Electricity and mana coursed together through the contraptions, moving parts separating and clicking together with soft sounds, and a thin trail of blue light appeared in the air, connecting Sofia and one of the machines on the ceiling. It was pulsating gently, motes of brighter light ...
2025-12-05 15:58:52 +0000 UTC
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“That should have been the last of the stragglers,” Sofia noted, watching a dozen of her skeletal grayskins tear a live one the rats had found into pieces.
“Hmm. At least now we can relax a bit. It should be night soon, so we better stay here until daybreak anyway. Is the thing your rats found still far?” Sonia asked Bookie.
“Not far! We just need to climb the stairs here!” Bookie answered, pointing at a dark gateway at the end of the corridor.
“We’ve been go...
2025-12-04 17:03:25 +0000 UTC
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New year's break notice:
Finally got the flight tickets ready, but I'm still unsure of what days exactly I want off. Currently thinking on publishing this year's last chapter on Friday the 19th and coming back on a Wednesday, January 7th. I'll see how it goes, got to work on Book 5's editing during the vacations so hopefully that much will be enough. Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the current arc even if it's been a bit low stake. I'm trying to get a bit a of made in abyss vibe but I'm ...
2025-12-03 17:00:21 +0000 UTC
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All at the same time?!
That can only mean one thing.
Sonia understood at the same time, “We’re surrounded!”
Sofia grabbed the book at her waist, tearing off several pages at once without even looking. Her mana dropped as a horde of skeletons appeared around the group.
She had summoned Dragon Crowie, the dwarf, the chimera, the three templars, and two hundred guarding Kidjikkiks. The previously spacious room was instantly crowded. To top it all o...
2025-12-02 17:00:17 +0000 UTC
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“It’s the dwarf you sent against saint Tartaros, right? How strong?” Sonia asked, watching the dwarf skeleton eagerly venturing down the dark corridor near the ceiling, shovel in hand.
“That one, yes. He was already pretty strong before, but now that I’m up to his filter he’s basically on Pestle’s level. He retained basically all the skills he had when he was alive, unlike most other skeletons, really strong.”
“How’d you even get it, did some gravedigging in dw...
2025-12-01 17:00:26 +0000 UTC
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The Reviskiviel’s enraged hums shook the valley several times throughout the remainder of the night. It never found Sofia and Pestle. The creature seemed to have moved on, but still, Sofia dared not take any risk, only when it was well into the day outside, with the monkeys and forest creatures making a lot of noise, did she vigilantly leave her hiding spot in the tree.
Thankfully the lost health to the bubbles has finally come back when the day started.
Pareth has ...
2025-11-28 17:00:27 +0000 UTC
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