You look human.
That shouldn’t mean anything. But it meant everything in that moment. She held those three words. Clutched them tight to her chest.
I don’t know if this will help, he said in the long pause that followed. But I was not a demon before all this. I will not pretend it's the same. If nothing else, I am still Nyxdran even if I am not a Nyxdra. But, I understand the disconnect. To feel like one thing, but be told by the System you are something ...
2024-02-07 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass woke up gasping like she couldn’t breathe. For a moment her lungs didn’t respond. For a moment, it felt like she had no lungs.
That passed as she inhaled and she felt them inflate. She held the breath and counted to four before slowly releasing it. Hold for four. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold.
She repeated the exercise until she was sure her lungs could be trusted to work at their own pace.
Only then did she really notice where she was. Only then did she notice the sta...
2024-02-05 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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He breathed a sigh of relief as she agreed and a deeper sigh as her lungs became his. It was a strange feeling like he’d been lying at the bottom of a murky pond only to finally be allowed to come up for air. Air that was moist and warm, filled with the smells of soil and the tang of iron.
Her body settled around him, reforming into his physique, her glaring wounds disappearing with her control. Her fair skin darkened to his midnight blue. Her hair, long and braided down to her middle...
2024-02-03 23:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Elemental Manipulation has increased to level 6.
There was only pain.
There was so much pain.
Her ribs were crushed. Splinters of bone dug into her lungs. Every breath was a ragged, drowning thing.
Her legs were torn to shreds. She couldn’t look at them. Couldn’t look at the exposed bone and flayed flesh. Couldn’t even acknowledge how the left ankle was snapped in half.
And the blood loss.
Oh, she was still bleeding out, wa...
2024-01-31 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Her foot shifted back a hair. This fight was unimportant. She needed to get away.
Don’t! the demon’s voice ripped through her and arrested her movement. If you run now, they will chase. You must kill them if you wish to live.
She wanted to scream. What the hell did he know? It was his fault she was here. If he hadn’t startled her she would have slipped around them without a sound.
He might be right though. Bears were known to chase down fleeing prey b...
2024-01-29 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass packed up her camp, sticking the hot vineroot back in her pocket for later and throwing her mat over one shoulder again. She checked the outer cavern with care and, upon finding it empty, squeezed out through the narrow entrance.
She stood in front of the crack for another minute or two, watching her stats. She needed to know how long her Focus would last with Soul Guard running. It didn’t drop, but it did not rise either. So it was being consumed at about the same speed as her ...
2024-01-27 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Stats distributed, death for the moment forestalled, Cass settled a little more comfortably in her cave. She placed her last vineroot potato in the bed of coals in her fire pit, unrolled her mat--which had somehow survived intact, despite the chaos of the centipedes--and rolled onto it. She was mentally exhausted and she just wanted to sleep.
Her body was uninterested in the concept though. Turned out that almost getting possessed by a demon just didn’t tire your body out that much. I...
2024-01-24 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Get back here! the demon screamed, his words raking against her soul like a rasp over exposed flesh. Cass doubled over in pain, a whimper leaking from her grit teeth.
“Never,” she growled.
You cannot win, he hissed. How much Focus do you have left?
Focus: 24/198
It was already dropping. The strain was building on her eyes and pounding in her head. And it was only getting worse.
How long can...
2024-01-22 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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“This is your last warning,” Cass said, her attention snapping back to the demon. “Go away and I won’t hurt you.”
One of his gold eyes twitched. “That’s a lot of bluster from the child curled up on the floor in pain until a moment ago.”
Cass shrugged and charged him, her staff ready.
He summoned his sabers again, easily batting her off with his superior skill. She didn’t let up. Energy coursed through her. She was safe here. She would not be beaten. Her sta...
2024-01-20 23:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Cass screamed. She had no mouth, yet she was screaming. She had no body, yet it was on fire.
There was only pain. Pain ripping through her. Pain tearing her apart.
Her attacker, a shadowed man with gold eyes, drove his dagger down again and again and again, cackling louder with every crazed stab.
What was happening? Where was she? Why did it hurt?
You are under the effect of Soul Poison.
[Would you like to attempt to resist with Poison...
2024-01-17 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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He shoved her soul aside, settling comfortably in the seat of her Soul Well. The child didn’t even resist. Her body shifted around him, her fair skin darkening to the dark purple of the nyxdra, her soft features sharpening to his pointed ones, her fat slipping away until there was only his lean muscle.
He cracked his neck and rolled his newly claimed shoulders, luxuriating in the feeling of possessing a body again after so long. How fitting that it was another spirit body and could re...
2024-01-15 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass jerked awake and slammed her head against the low ceiling above her. That jogged her memory real good. Right. She had passed out after a fight again. She really would like to stop doing that.
Everything hurt, but it was the general soreness she was beginning to associate more with healing than with immediate injuries.
Stamina: 28/39
Focus: 62/126
Health: 4/30
She groaned. How had Health...
2024-01-13 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Cass’s eyes went wide. What!
In the cavern below her, she heard clicking. She glanced out to see the young centipedes were moving. They had left their corpse piles and were slithering down the corridor toward the temple and her.
That was bad. That was very bad.
She glanced around the temple again. No secret escape hatch had manifested since last she’d checked.
She could fortify a position here. Elemental Manipulate the opening closed so only one centipede could app...
2024-01-10 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Cass regretted her decision almost immediately. But she was unwilling to let herself fall into indecision by second or triple-guessing the choice. The only absolutely wrong option was to still be standing there when the Herald came back.
She kept Stealthing forward, her senses sharp. She almost wished they weren’t. The further in she went, the worse it smelled. Rot and iron hung heavy in the air, overwhelming her stat-heightened senses.
The only consolation was there were no mon...
2024-01-08 23:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass walked as quietly as her injured body would allow, weaving between the narrow stalks of tall mushrooms along the sides of the chasm. Another group of cockroaches waited ahead. Four more.
She held her breath. Would she need to turn around? If there was a Lookout she wasn’t going to make it past. If there was a Lookout or even a particularly perceptive Lesser she might die here.
She identified each, one after the other.
Lesser Titan Roach (Lvl 4...
2024-01-06 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey all! Thank you for enjoying Stormborn Sorceress!
This marks two weeks since I began this journey and two weeks of daily releases for those of you who joined up since then. Cass has already been through so much and there is so much more to come.
Today was the last day of daily chapters, going forward there will be 3 chapters a week (Mon, Wed, Sat).
You will still be 6 chapters ahead of what is available on Royal Road (which means you all get to read 2 weeks ahead of...
2024-01-03 23:05:00 +0000 UTC
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Cass looked up and down the cavern, wondering what next. Her goal was still to find people, eventually. People seemed unlikely in an underground cavern like this, so she probably wanted to get out again as soon as possible.
Atmospheric Sense informed her the air was sinking into the chasm, and even if there was enough wind to Wind Step, she’d just end up right back here.
As for walking… The cavern stretched in both directions as far as she could see, the ends disappearing into...
2024-01-03 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Cass looked up at the tear of grey skies far above. She was at the bottom of a very deep, very long, tear in the ground. And there wasn’t much in the way of wind down here. Just a tiny draft slowly spinning from one end of the cavern to the other.
The cavern ran more or less straight in either direction, with shelves of stone lining the otherwise shear walls. Occasionally, those walls were dotted with cave entrances. In the distance, she could hear the gush of water, though she couldn...
2024-01-02 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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She briefly considered trying to butcher her kill. Boar was a meat people ate, wasn’t it? She needed to eat to survive.
Cass stared down at the dead pig. It was a gory mess. Nothing like corpses in video games. Her stomach twisted and she took a step away from the body.
Corpses in video games were tidy affairs. Usually the same character model as the living version. Usually just rag-dolled across the floor. And that was if they didn’t explode into a cloud of pixels leaving onl...
2024-01-01 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Despite deciding to move on, Cass didn’t just up and leave right away. Instead, she packed up her sleeping mat, rolling it into a long tube. She made herself a strap for it from a vine and slung it over her shoulders.
She left her pot and tea cup. They were heavier than she wanted to carry and were easy enough to make again later with Elemental Manipulation.
Only then did she set out, staff in hand, sleeping mat over one shoulder, pockets full of herbs and potatoes.
She wa...
2023-12-31 23:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Not thinking about it was easier than trying to convince herself of something, so she threw herself into her next task. Armed with her tea, she braved the creek again, walking quietly under Stealth to collect more plants. Thunder Sorrel, Vineroot, and Dreamweed lined her pockets along with handfuls of other interesting plants her higher level Forage reinforced by her new Herbal Concocting identified.
There was no time to worry about how the skill could affect her if she was busy keeping...
2023-12-31 00:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, Cass woke with a killer headache and the ringing of system notifications. Was this going to be a common occurrence? She hoped not.
This time at least, her fire was still burning low beside her and the sky was bright. Cass added another log to the fire and poked it until it was burning happily again before turning her attention back to the pinging notifications.
Dreamberry poison Resisted
Oh, this must have been from yesterday...
2023-12-30 00:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Cass’s pounding head woke her in the night. That and the freezing cold of the dark and the insistent beeping of the System. Thunder roared in the distance, adding to the ringing in her ears.
The fire had gone out. The stone had cooled around her and was now doing its best to sap the little heat left in her body out instead. She shivered, chilled to the bone.
The trembling wouldn’t stop as she inched closer to her fire pit. Not an ember still burned. Her hands shaking, she clum...
2023-12-29 00:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Cass poked at her fire, already glad for the barrier against the encroaching night.
Her head hurt. A glance at her Focus showed it wasn’t magic-related. Was it just good old-fashioned dehydration? Had she drunk anything since arriving?
Cass cupped her hands and summoned a ball of water in them. Her hands were stained with dirt and worse, but so were the clothes she would have wiped them on.
The water was cold. Like from the fridge at home. Was that because it was summoned ...
2023-12-28 00:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Cass didn’t know how long she lay there, listening to the distant thunder and the creek spilling over the cliff’s edge. She didn’t know what she was going to do next. There was no sign of civilization on the horizon. No obvious short-term goal to work toward.
The sky was only getting darker. Was it time to give up for the day? Try again tomorrow? Maybe an obvious city would spring up from the forest in the morning?
Cass wasn’t hopeful, but she could fantasize about it rega...
2023-12-27 00:00:05 +0000 UTC
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The creek wound through the forest. In the distance, the sky rumbled with thunder. Cass continued to flare Foraging as she walked, finding more sorrel and vineroots at every turn.
Eventually, the trees thinned, the tall lightningwood giving way to the madrones and scraggly brush. Moist forest soil was replaced with rocky gravel, the incline of the ground sloping down before her. Sorrel became less and less common until it was replaced entirely by a weedy-looking plant with fuzzy leaves ...
2023-12-26 00:00:03 +0000 UTC
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It was only when Cass was a good distance away that she relaxed again, though she kept Stealth active. Was every animal in this world enormous and bloodthirsty? She just wanted to go home.
She shook her head. She wasn’t any closer to that than she’d been when she’d gotten here. She was alone with no idea where she was or where she should go.
Would she even find people today? What about tomorrow? Should she reprioritize to surviving the night? What time was it anyway?
C...
2023-12-25 00:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Cass’s eyes widened as she read her reward. Magic! She’d been given magic!
She almost laughed. Here was the fantasy nonsense finally working in her favor! She tried it immediately.
Or, she tried to.
She focused on the skill the same way she focused on Stealth or Identify, but she could feel something was missing.
Elemental Manipulation! she thought with force.
Nothing happened. Her Focus didn’t fluctuate. Instinctively, she could feel that this could be use...
2023-12-24 00:00:02 +0000 UTC
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The beep of an alarm woke Cass. She sat up in a panic. She was late to work!
Her head swam with the sudden movement, her vision blurring what must have been her bedroom into what looked like a smear of plants. Her confusion compounded as she searched for her blanket to toss from her body and the mattress to roll off of, only to find neither. Only empty air and muddy dirt.
There was a frustrated caw of a crow and the flap of wings.
Only then did Cass remember she wasn’t hom...
2023-12-23 00:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Alyx Veldor slammed her fist into the reinforced stone of the wall by her bed, her teeth clenched in fury.
“It went that bad then?” her personal guard, Marco, asked. He scratched his stubbly chin with a wince.
“It could have been worse,” Telis, her maid, said as she followed Alyx into the room.
Alyx spun on her. “He’s sending me to Uvana to die. How could it be worse?”
Telis didn’t quite roll her eyes. She was quite good at encapsulating that look witho...
2023-12-22 00:05:00 +0000 UTC
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