Sofia still did not dare to look away from the Veik King, and with the lack of air, she could not speak, so, for a lack of a better option, she used her back as a writing board. She flattened the back of her bone armor and let her words carve themselves upon it.
‘Hello. Yes. Please help.’
The sunless laughed. Her chuckles were light, almost musical in nature. Sofia felt her coming closer, she stopped at a reasonable distance. Any closer and Pareth might have decided to come ou...
2024-04-04 16:00:13 +0000 UTC
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In the end, the plan to try to communicate was too much of a stretch. Even assuming she could single out the Veik princess and that she was willing to cooperate, Sofia couldn’t find a proper way to cross the language barrier, not when the other person looked so different.
She only saw two possible ways to make it work, either to spend a significant amount of time trying to learn the written Veik language, or to try to get a message across through drawings. In both cases, results were ...
2024-04-03 16:04:47 +0000 UTC
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The tunnel took her straight down for a few hundred meters, further confirming that the graveyard’s range limitation was bypassed by her new trick, and she then found herself above another cavernous room.
Four more guards on this side of the tunnel. It would really be impossible to brute-force this place for someone at my level. Still, I wonder what the intended solution is for someone without the ability to go through walls.
Maybe the dungeon’s name is a hi...
2024-04-02 16:01:10 +0000 UTC
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Sofia fell deeper and deeper into the hole, while the unending swarm of Veik made their way to the outside.
Just how deep does this hole go…
Sofia was falling straight down, but she could not look too far under herself, as tilting her head to look would cancel the [Master Thief] title’s invisibility.
At the very least, the hive of these things will be considerably emptier by the time I land there. They’re really going all out, just l...
2024-04-01 16:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Author note:
Ahoy! There you have it, a last chapter before my week off. I'll be taking some nice vacation time to rest (and play Dragon's Dogma 2), and I will be back with chapter 424 on April 1st.
Happy Reading! (｀• ω •´)b
Sofia stood atop a tower of bones.
Was the plan, but I have to admit, it looked better in my head. Sofia thought as she ...
2024-03-22 15:14:47 +0000 UTC
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Veil jumped off from the company drone he had hacked into, this was a big airborn delivery drone meant to transport industrial equipment, it was easy to hijack with the right tools and knowledge, and could fly very fast with a load as light as a single person.
He barely had any recollection of anything that had happened after he spoke with Medika, he did not even remember actually hacking into the drone, but as he was currently on his building’s rooftop, with the...
2024-03-21 23:55:28 +0000 UTC
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Sofia and Ihuarah’s discussion kept going throughout the morning going into a variety of topics until they looped back to the trial itself.
Ihuarah stood up from the rock he was sitting on. “Fenrir, yes, that would be the closest of the three moons. Be on the lookout for unnatural landscapes and points of interest, such as if you were to find, let’s say a giant tree, sometimes I have found things in the middle of nowhere,” Ihuarah explained while turning his head in...
2024-03-21 15:35:47 +0000 UTC
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Sofia, Ihuarah, Pareth and Bookie were sitting around a bonfire in a valley not far from the tower. The conversation had drifted away to a great many topics, with Ihuarah taking his turn to ask a lot of questions about the last year’s events, as well as Zerei and Alith’s current whereabouts.
In between two bites of Firebird roasted meat, Sofia brought the subject of soul-offsprings back up.
“Can you tell me more about the Spiritually-reproducing races?” she aske...
2024-03-20 16:29:24 +0000 UTC
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“Always the gentleman. How is your trial going, Iwa? Found a Sunless wife? They do look a lot like shades.”
“Funny you should mention that,” he answered in a suave tone. He adjusted his hair, which had changed style since the last time Sofia had seen him. “Perhaps I did,” he hinted.
“Did you, now?” Sofia asked again, shocked that this was his answer to her joke. She knew that Ihuarah was not the kind to jest.
“I am unallowed to say more, I’m afraid. A lot...
2024-03-19 15:38:50 +0000 UTC
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After some reflection, Sofia decided against continuing to pursue space flight, and chose to wait for the shuttle.
She felt that with [Runeforged Overlord]’s flight and help from the Engineer skeleton, she might be able to actually leave, but then she would face the problem of having to chase the moons as they flew through space and to somehow land without killing herself, and that felt like a lot of things which could go wrong. Too many things. When she could just wa...
2024-03-18 16:23:45 +0000 UTC
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Eventually, the third moon rose. The night was actually quite bright with three moons up, they were almost three ‘full moons’.
If they always move with the sun they’ll always look exactly the same, right? The question would be whether they actually do, or if this is just a coincidence today. One thing is for sure, they are not behaving like the moon I crashed into.
Spending more time observing the moons, Sofia noted a few interesting things. First of all, the moons ...
2024-03-15 15:56:02 +0000 UTC
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Tiangou…
“A hidden planet they detected but couldn’t find, perhaps? That reminds me of something… Did the admins predict the Phageid?”
Sofia stared at the map and sighed, “I shouldn't stand here drawing lines in my mind… I really need to focus on the trial. I’ve been here for like half a day already.” She finished packing all the maps from the room and decided it was time to finally leave and get back to business.
One last thing.
Gra...
2024-03-14 16:18:26 +0000 UTC
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Sofia went around the room blindly waving her gloved hand around to bring back all the things which weren’t there. Slowly but surely the not-so-clean bedroom came back to life. It was messy in a different way compared to Anna’s room. While the supposed Goddess’ room was just a bit lived in, this one was something else entirely, littered with opened books, ink covered papers, and maps.
Lots and lots of maps.
I think a certain someone liked exploration a bit too m...
2024-03-13 15:06:52 +0000 UTC
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The new celestial object depicted by the floating image was quite a bit larger than the moons, although not as much as the planet itself, it looked like a black round ball with cracks in its uneven shiny surface and white light leaking from them. It was surrounded by a thin , uneven layer of that white light which seemed to leak into space in long and thin wavy plumes.
“Interesting… I’ve been looking at the moons a lot while I flew around and not seen that anywhere in the sky, but...
2024-03-12 16:15:08 +0000 UTC
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Sofia approached the last door in the corridor which she had yet to open. It was another of the metallic doors without a handle, but when she came close, it did not open by itself.
Is this one broken? Maybe it’s locked somehow?
Looking around for a button to press or something like it, Sofia found nothing.
This doesn’t leave many options… I can try graveyarding my way in, maybe, but that might break the electrical things around. I could just brute force it...
2024-03-11 17:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Sofia was thankful that there was no one to watch her at the moment as she thought she was probably looking quite a bit crazier than usual laughing by herself in a kitchen with all the drawers and cupboards open, some of which she had broken in her precipitation.
No knives!
What kind of lunatic does not have a single knife in their kitchen?
That’s right!
Sofia brought [The third Key] out of her storage and threw it slightly...
2024-03-08 17:00:23 +0000 UTC
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Anna.
I think I’m starting to understand a few things…
Anna, huh.
Maybe this isn’t an admin’s house after all. But something close to it. If the owner was still around, thus not an admin, that would explain why the place is still in such pristine condition. Not to mention the other thing I shouldn’t be wording out.
Or it’s still an admin, and the place was preserved from time, somehow. Could also be one of the high sc...
2024-03-07 17:00:13 +0000 UTC
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The noise stopped, and a circle of mana formed in front of Sofia. The mana collapsed into a single point before extending into a circle again, forming a strange hole in reality, with a brightly lit corridor on the other side.
That’s the same space magic they used to open the room of artifacts in the second trial.
Sofia stepped in, and the hole closed right behind her. Leaving her stranded in a small corridor that was unlike anything she had seen before. If anything, it ...
2024-03-06 17:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Sofia was about to receive what she thought might be the strangest handshake of the century, when the Sprite Dancer’s color turned back to yellow all of a sudden, and it took a few steps back looking left and right as if looking for some invisible enemy.
What is it? A Sunless?
Sofia also looked around while Pareth was keeping tabs on the Sprite Dancer.
A loud and uncanny sounding voice blared inside of Sofia’s head before she could see the source.
2024-03-05 17:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Sofia ran through the flowery field of blue grass, slaloming between the rising drones, she stopped where she had seen the light, a spot near a few of the rare trees dotting the meadow’s grassy landscape.
Nothing out of the ordinary here…
Sofia switched between her layers of vision, but both her mana senses and her eye’s heat vision failed to find anything that stood out. The plants growing near the three trees here were a bit strange, but so was everything else on ...
2024-03-04 17:45:02 +0000 UTC
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Sofia absorbed the imprint and sat on Tarren’s chair before her transformation ended. Her body reverted back to her ‘human’ form, and she now had to deal with her left eye’s issue.
“Did it break? Can’t see anything… It was working fine until my mana hit zero during the fight. I’m still at zero… Richard said it should automatically enter maintenance mode when I’m out of mana, but I should still be able to see in maintenance mode even if it’s just regular vision. Is ...
2024-03-01 17:00:24 +0000 UTC
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With twice the swords came twice the number of blue trails of light to avoid. It was hard to find a place to stand, but Sofia’s demon body was very flexible and able to contort in weird ways to avoid all the trails.
The orb floor from the second trial was way worse in terms of shit to avoid. I just hope Pareth and the snake can survive this.
Sofia’s senses came back, and the two Sunless warriors flashed around, their sword cutting through the trails of light at breakn...
2024-02-29 17:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone! (｀• ω •´)
So, I've had this idea about a cyberpunk style story just running around in my head for a while, and tonight, I was quite bored, so I just scribbled some stuff. It's like... A proof of concept? What could become a first chapter with a lot of work?
Anyway, if you're curious, you can have a look. There isn't any certitude that there will ever be a continuation or anything serious stemming from this, it's literally just me having fun, for now. I ...
2024-02-29 01:17:50 +0000 UTC
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The warrior’s body extended from both sides and glued itself back together in an instant. He charged at Pareth while his sword was still on the ground, but failed to hit him, as he had to raise his sword to deflect an arrow of light coming from Bookie. His momentum lost, he teleported again.
Sofia followed his teleportation trail, and let go of her piercing bolt, which struck the Sunless warrior as soon as his form reappeared within the arena.
The hole left through his chest ins...
2024-02-28 17:01:14 +0000 UTC
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Sofia made her way back to the entrance of the dungeon and took a one hour break there. With no ambient mana, she needed that much time to restore it all, not to mention Bookie needing to restock his fog.
Her bone shield was re-built and re-blessed, Bookie was summoned again with the high-priest form, and the group was ready to get back to exploring the dungeon.
Scripture really gave me a huge boon with that high-priest skeleton. It’s been consistently the best out of Bookie...
2024-02-27 17:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Sofia braced herself behind her large bone shield, with the mithril kite shield as a core and the [Bone dominus] blessing on top of it, she was confident that it would stop the drones’ attacks.
The hundreds of black orbs crashed straight into the shield as Sofia rammed into them on her way down. The sound of the impacts was deafening but the damage was minimal. The bone layer of the shield cracked but did not break, and Sofia was mostly safe. She did lose some life fo...
2024-02-26 17:00:13 +0000 UTC
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The giant flying Sunless creature was nowhere to be seen when Sofia and Bookie resurfaced, so they ran to the spot where the rat was. Bolting a few Sunless drones on the way and realizing that extra skill shards for [Relocate Core] were completely useless as the mana hearts wouldn’t even absorb them.
Finally, reaching their destination, they did not even need to dig down as there was actually an iron hatch at the surface, just sitting there in the middle of the frozen...
2024-02-23 16:57:53 +0000 UTC
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It took Sofia all day to catch three more Sirhellions. Finding them had been the easy part, as two of them had attacked her during her first fight, and she had simply asked her bird to follow their clouds, but fighting them safely had been another story entirely.
The main issue was that these three Sirhellions were aware of her now, and they stayed relatively close to each other. It was impossible for Sofia to attack one without having all three of them on her back, showering her with a...
2024-02-22 17:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Sofia flew closer to the suspicious cloud, an array of fifty seven miniature sandworm skulls flying beyond here like an organized squadron of scary tubes.
The skulls all charged their attack and when Sofia felt she was close enough, she launched the assault. A barrage of energy beams shot toward the slow drifting cloud. Before they could reach their target, Sofia felt something coming for her. Despite the space warping from [DODGE - ME] being active, the instincts that ...
2024-02-21 17:00:14 +0000 UTC
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How much can I push without losing any health?
I remember that around 200 000 the heat was starting to get pretty bad. Maybe if I made heat shields with bones…
I can charge much faster now at least. About five thousand a second.
After about forty seconds of channeling, the bolt on Sofia’s scepter started changing appearance, becoming smooth and glossy. The waves of heat were not nearly as bad as she remembered, and the dragon-scale arm perfectl...
2024-02-20 17:00:10 +0000 UTC
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