The rest of the day was uneventful. Several boar leapt from the bushes to find themselves skewered on either Cass’s spear or Alyx’s sword. If there were other monsters out there, they avoided the women.
Eventually, night fell. Cass Set Camp as had become second nature. With little fuss, the fire went up with some fallen logs and a couple of applications of Elemental Manipulation.
Alyx had butchered one of the boar and roasted it thoroughly on their fire. The meat was str...
2024-04-17 22:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“And you’re sure this is safe?” Cass asked, looking at the return portal. As she had guessed, the octagonal, stone platform in the Safe Zone was the portal out of the Deep.
However, she found herself less than thrilled at the prospect of using it.
Alyx glared at Cass. “What kind of question is that?”
Cass gestured to it in answer. It and the black, tentacle-like tendrils undulating around it. It and the glowing red sigils crisscrossing the surface in a ...
2024-04-15 22:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“I don’t think there is anything for us here,” Alyx said after another minute of searching through the shelves of the hidden room.
Cass nodded in agreement. It was disappointingly void of clues to get her home.
“Did you get the (gem?) from the Lord when you killed it?” Alyx asked.
“The what?” Cass asked. “I don’t know that word, (gem?)?”
“Do you have all your (ideas?)?” Alyx tried.
Cass shook her head, “I don’t recognize that one...
2024-04-13 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass and Alyx backtracked to the hidden room once Alyx was done eating. Neither had spent much time looking around previously, both badly injured and more focused on putting one foot in front of the other than looting ancient books. Ancient books did seem to be all there was though. Maybe if Salos was awake, he might have been able to find something in the mess of decayed paper and leather, but as it was, they didn’t find anything still legible.
“A shame,” Alyx said, poking ...
2024-04-10 22:00:11 +0000 UTC
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It must have been an hour later when Alyx finally opened her eyes.
She put a hand to her head and cursed loudly. Cass didn’t need the translation skill for that one, she recognized an expletive when she heard it. Blinking blearily, Alyx said, “That was worse (...). How long out was I?”
“An hour,” Cass said with a shrug. She skewered one of the mushrooms she’d been keeping warm by the fire and held the stone skewer out for the woman. “Hungry?”
Alyx blink...
2024-04-08 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“Hey, you still alive?” Alyx said, nudging Cass with a foot.
Cass grunted. She didn’t know how long she’d been lying there. Long enough for the minor cuts to scab over and for the general head trauma to have coalesced into a pounding headache.
“Eat this,” the swordswoman said, nudging Cass again in the ribs.
Cass groaned and flipped over.
Alyx stood over her pressing a mushroom in her face. A raw, glowing mushroom. Cass raised an eye...
2024-04-06 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Experience poured into her. Just as she’d imagined, it was rich and powerful, but not quite enough to level up. She took a deep breath.
The world around her stabilized. The madness settled.
Pain reasserted itself.
Absolutely every inch of her body hurt. Cass lay on the floor amid the Caretaker’s corpse barely able to move.
She was drenched in blood. A lot of it was hers. More than a few wounds were actively bleeding.
How had she been moving ...
2024-04-03 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass took a step back from the pool to sprint back to the passage they’d entered from. This was a lost cause. They needed to escape.
But two sentences echoed up from her memories.
Error: Target “Lord of the Deep” has not previously been Identified, unable to target.
That’s what the system had said when she had tried to use Forage to find the Lord earlier. But she had since Identified it successfully. Shouldn’t it work now?
2024-04-01 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass blinked and read the notification in front of her again.
Demonic Possession Broken.
Everything snapped back into place, the world suddenly sharp. She lay in a pool of water, the surface less than a foot above her face. Blood swirled around her, likely her own.
A shiver ran down her spine. What the hell had she been doing?
Demonic Possession?
She could still feel that destructive desire bubbling in her core. It pul...
2024-03-30 22:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Cass spun on the noise. Across the room, a pair of doors thudded shut. Before them stood a gangly, humanoid figure.
It was wreathed in a cloak of purple light. It hung from its body like a heavy fabric yet was translucent and iridescent. Its head was crowned in a spiked halo of the stuff. It radiated danger.
Its head was square, its eyes beady and glowing that same color. Its face had more in common with a bear trap than a human head, all jaws and teeth.
It remin...
2024-03-27 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass waited only as long as it took to recover her Focus to get back to making air pockets. As soon as it was full again she stood.
But pain laced up her leg as she put her weight on it.
She staggered but caught herself with her staff and the lip of the fountain.
Alyx said something, concern heavy on her voice.
Cass waved it away, an even smile plastered over her lips. She was fine.
She pointed at the fountain.
Alyx nodded and ...
2024-03-25 22:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Creating the air pockets was far easier than Cass had expected, but far less interesting than she’d hoped. It was also just far more time-consuming.
She had made four of the ten to fifteen that Salos had estimated Alyx would need before she started running low on Focus. It was time to head back to Alyx to rest and recover for a bit.
Cass pulled herself out of the fountain to the sound of conflict. Spiders screeched their unnatural arachnid screams. They filled the ro...
2024-03-23 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Things went easier from there. Trap detection didn’t automatically flag traps, but while she was using it, she could feel it tugging at her attention when there was a trap nearby. She successfully activated four additional traps before stepping near them with its help and even gained another level in the skill.
They passed through two more rooms on their way, one was empty, the other containing two much smaller and weaker spiders. Alyx disposed of both before Cass had even had a...
2024-03-20 22:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Cass let the conversation die. It didn’t matter what she wanted if she couldn’t get Alyx through the underwater section anyway. She had the vague sketch of a plan but needed to think through the details a little longer before she suggested it to Salos.
That was fine. She had some time still before her Focus was fully recovered.
Teach me the language at least, Cass said. I can’t rely on you for translating forever. It's already annoying and I’ve barely had to s...
2024-03-18 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass leaned back against her pillar, the fire was nice, but there was more she could do to help with the recovery process.
It was time for tea.
She shaped a pot from the stone around her and filled it with more water, all with Elemental Manipulation, then set it in the fire amid the burning Flintshrooms. While she waited for that to boil she retrieved her foraged plants from her pockets. Half her remaining Aster and a couple of the new Spones she’d found in the Safe Zone went in...
2024-03-16 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Alyx stumbled as she spoke. Cass scurried to her side, slipping her shoulder under the other woman’s arm and catching her before she fell.
“Woah! You okay?” Cass asked, not waiting for Salos to help with translating. It wasn’t a sentence that needed an exact translation, the concern in her voice should have been more than enough to convey her point.
Alyx took a steadying breath before pushing herself off Cass. She shook her head and said something. Her tone was bitter.
...
2024-03-13 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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The memory of the trapped person was like cold water to her system. There wasn’t time for congratulating herself. She needed to free them.
She scooted up beside them. They were wrapped tightly in thick strands of spider silk. Cass put a hand on the silk’s surface experimentally. It was smooth to the touch and cold.
The person struggled within. They made a noise that might have been grunting or it might have been cursing, but Cass couldn’t make it out through the layers of si...
2024-03-11 22:00:03 +0000 UTC
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The spider stalked through the chamber, slow and deliberate, the hairs on its legs standing on end, searching for her with every skill and stat at its disposal.
Cass padded around it, paying extra attention to the signals from Dodge and Stealth as she moved from the shadow of one pillar to the next.
The spider’s path spiraled through the room, tighter and tighter, until it walked along the edge of the pool in the center of the room. It stopped beside its prey, at the point where...
2024-03-09 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass slunk around it, keeping to the shelter of the pillars, only braving the open spaces between when she was sure that it was looking in another direction.
You should move on, Salos said. You can’t beat it like this.
Cass scowled, slinking up to a pillar flanking the spider. He was right, of course. Somehow she had survived up to this point, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. No one would fault her for cutting and running now.
You tried. You cannot ...
2024-03-06 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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She paused. It couldn’t be another person? Could it?
She hadn’t seen another person in all the time she’d been here. Salos was the closest she’d gotten. And while he was a person, he was also only in her head.
That might be another real, physical person.
And they were well on their way to dying. Probably horribly.
She had imagined a lot of ways to die since arriving. Wrapped up and devoured by a spider was one of the worse ones. Especially if they were still al...
2024-03-04 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass was back on her feet and tapping her way down the corridor a short while later. It was slow but effective. She found another two spike traps and another blade trap in this hallway alone. Her path crossed four more chambers, most much smaller than the room she’d first encountered the living shadows in, all packed to the gills with the things.
“Am I still going through this section backwards?” Cass asked as she cut down another wave of Shadows.
More or less, yes....
2024-03-02 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The upside was the Temple was essentially backward, which meant the path to the Lord’s chambers was maybe a quarter as long as it would have been had she challenged it at another time of year. The downside was everything was more dangerous for it.
The traps were plentiful and deadly. The living shadows were ubiquitous.
The shadows were not actually that big of a problem now that she had Mana Blade and had figured out how to use it with Wind Blade. She’d even figured out how to...
2024-02-28 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Level Up!
+ 1 Dex
+ 1 End
+ 1 Ala
+ 1 Wll
+ 4 Free Points
Dodge had increased to level 5.
Soul Guard has increased to level 7.
Wind Blade has increased to level 5.
Mana Blade has increased to level 2.
Mana Blade has increased to level 3.
2024-02-26 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Unable to continue onward, she turned around and followed the right-hand path. They were able to follow it for a solid ten minutes before it widened into another room.
“Either I missed all the traps, or there were no traps,” Cass said.
I think there were no traps.
“So what now?”
Poke your head into the next room?
Cass rolled her eyes but obliged.
The room was wide, wrapping around to the right, out of sight. Pillars filled the room...
2024-02-24 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The remainder of the way to the Temple of the Deep was uneventful. Cass never shook the feeling something else was following them, but if there was something there it never showed itself.
There were a couple more patrols of cockroaches. Cass slunk around them with Stealth. Salos was silent the whole time except for his directions at each turn.
Cass’s cheek had scabbed over by the time she stood in front of the temple’s entrance.
It was built in the same style as the stru...
2024-02-21 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Titan Roach Lookout (lvl 9)
Titan Roach Hunter (lvl 10)
Titan Roach Hunter (lvl 9)
Titan Roach Hunter (lvl 9)
Titan Roach Hunter (lvl 11)
Titan Roach Hunter (lvl 9)
[A Titan Roach specializing in tracking and hunting prey for the colony. Not content to simply scavenge detritus, Titan Roaches augment their larders by hunting weaker prey. ]
Tita...
2024-02-19 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Decision made and unable to find any other useful mushrooms, Cass ventured out of the Safe Zone.
She could feel the exact moment she exited the system-designated safety. The sourceless warmth in her core evaporated, like walking from a heated house into a blizzard outside. The hairs on her arms and the nape of her neck stood on end.
At the same time, the staff in her hands became more comfortable as Staff Mastery re-engaged. A certainty wrapped her that she could handle the weapon...
2024-02-17 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“Is it safe to bring you near the demon hunters?” Cass asked.
Probably not. Not if you tell them about me. Or if they figure out I am with you. Salos sighed. But I also have no other ideas.
“Well, what about if we fixed your thing first?” Cass asked.
‘Fix my thing?’ You mean how I am a demon? Salos laughed. Oh, my. Cass. No. It is sweet of you to think that is something we can do, but no. That’s not reversible. You cannot fix a gl...
2024-02-14 23:00:06 +0000 UTC
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“So, what now?” Cass asked, flopping back into the moss.
You should kill the Lord of the Deep.
Cass scowled. “You said that earlier. Why is that so important to you?”
It would be the easiest way to leave the Deep, for one. The rewards it would provide would be another.
Cass shrugged. “I don’t know how much I care about the rewards. Leaving sounds good, but I don’t know if it's the ‘easiest’ way out. I’m sure I could find my way bac...
2024-02-12 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass stood with a stretch. She’d expected to be stiff from two days of inactivity, but she felt better than she had in days.
“I’m not stiff?” she muttered more to herself than to Salos.
No, I expect not, he replied anyway.
“Why?” She smiled despite her confusion. How good it felt to ask a question and actually expect to receive an answer?
I was using your body for much of the last two days. It has only been yours again for a d...
2024-02-10 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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