Talia saw it coming, but for the first time in years, she found that she was too slow to stop it. Just after the archer loosed his mana-enriched arrow, Talia reached him. She didn’t bother using any skills. Instead, she simply rammed her claws through his leather armor and into his ribcage. Bones shattered an instant later, but her hand kept going until she wrapped her fingers around his heart.
She yanked it away in a shower of blood.
But the damage had already been done. The arrow stre...
2024-11-19 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
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“Ain’t nothin’ ‘round here to get all worked up about,” Kurik grunted, kneeling next to the tunnel wall. “Don’t know why you decided to tag along.”
Miguel didn’t immediately say anything. Instead, he focused on the darkness just outside the circle of light created by their lanterns. He didn’t sense anything down there, but that wasn’t a guarantee that they were safe. Since his return to Ironshore, he’d grown accustomed to the increased senses that came with being so close to the grove, bu...
2024-11-18 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
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“I see it, you know,” hissed Ignatius. “The fear you try to keep hidden. The weight of expectations presses down on you. The pressure will be your undoing.”
Zeke ignored the man. Instead, he walked through the streets, looking neither left nor right. Every instinct within him screamed at him to murder the leader of the Imperium then and there. To crush him where he stood. Yet, Zeke knew that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t, and not just because of the contract he had signe...
2024-11-18 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Millions of dragons waged war all around Elijah, and for the first time in recent memory, he froze. He could scarcely think, much less move. The scope of the conflict was just too much to process, especially when the Eldertalon reached the mass of other dragons, snapped out, and devoured thousands in a single bite. At the same time, countless black dragons descended upon the Caretaker, burying her under a mass of onyx scales.
“We must flee!” screamed Zaka, latching onto Elijah’s torso with her claws and ya...
2024-11-17 16:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Elijah had almost forgotten how strange the core visions were. Not only was he surrounded by unfamiliar sights on an entirely alien world that, as far as he could tell, was comprised of an unfathomably large city of innumerable towers, but he also wasn’t entirely in control of his own actions. Certainly, it felt like he was in charge. When he wanted to move his wings, they did what he told them to. However, he knew that the entire vision was on rails, that it was meant to show him something very specific.
<...
2024-11-16 16:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Elijah stared at the fantastic scene before him, unsure of how he was intended to react. He was perched upon a tall spire overlooking an enormous city of ivory towers, marble platforms, and domed palaces. Delicate bridges stretched between them, bearing countless tiny figures. A green haze hung in the air, while a half-dozen moons hung in the sky, each with a subtly different hue and brightness.
The air practically buzzed with atmospheric ethera so dense that it put even the ambient energy of his cultivation cav...
2024-11-15 16:00:06 +0000 UTC
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“You should not do this,” Adara stated. “We can just wait them out.”
“I concur,” Tucker said. “There’s no real benefit except time, and a whole lot of ways it can go wrong. We have no idea what this is going to look like.”
Jasper added, “That’s not true. The Radiant Host has a long history of solving their grievances via single combat. There is a list of rules they must follow.”
“These are people who enslave innocent people and would prefer killing them rather than all...
2024-11-15 14:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Controlling the ethera in his body was no easy feat, but everything leading up to that moment had prepared Elijah for it. That was part of the reason core cultivation became easier when the other aspects of cultivation had already reached that next level. Making those leaps had forced him to understand ethera in a way that, otherwise, never would have been possible.
It had also driven him to develop his willpower. Despite that not being a verifiable or trackable ability, it was one of the primary determinants of...
2024-11-14 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Zeke crushed a knight’s head in his hand. It burst like a melon, sending brains and other gore oozing from the eye openings of the man’s helmet. Once the knight was dead, Zeke tossed the man’s body aside like the trash it was. It clanged against the ground before rolling to a stop next to all the others.
He’d lost track of how many he’d killed. After destroying that first group, he’d been beset by another. And another after that. Each instance was complicated by their protective enc...
2024-11-14 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Elijah watched via Soul of the Wild as Miguel completed his sword. The weapon itself was nothing particularly special, and Elijah had difficulty not jumping in to help with the carving. However, because of the advantages associated with working in the grove – and of being tied to it as strongly as Miguel was – the final product had turned out quite well.
“It is not so different from your first staff,” Nerthus said as Miguel fell asleep. After staying up for three days, he’d fallen quickly into unconsci...
2024-11-13 16:10:30 +0000 UTC
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Miguel hunched over his project, his face only a few inches away from the blade he’d spent the last couple of days carving. He didn’t have the patience of his uncle, and what little he did possess had long since worn thin. As much as he valued the end product, crafting just wasn’t something he enjoyed. So, instead of sinking into what Elijah had described as a crafting trance, Miguel had been fighting against his own nature since the very beginning.
Still, he was too stubborn to give up, especially when he was s...
2024-11-13 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Just a quick message, and then we can get to today's chapter. It seems that we've once again been hit with a bunch of 0.5 ratings on the second chapter on Royal Road. As I've said before, those ratings could have occurred for a variety of reasons, but based on the comments, I have to believe that at least some of them are there because certain people object to "woke" ideology (the existence of a lesbian couple qualifies as that, in their minds). Which is fine. They have the right to rate a story bas...
2024-11-12 16:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Abby leaped to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled by a descending spear. Its blade still sliced through her calf, eliciting a strained shout. She landed in a roll before springing to her feet. The wound she’d just incurred was only one of many inflicted upon her over the last few weeks, but still, she struggled to ignore the pain lancing through her leg. However, Abby couldn’t afford to let it affect her, so she pushed through the pain and limped into a hobbling sprint.
An arrow thudded into a t...
2024-11-12 14:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Elijah sat upon the tree limb, high enough that no one could see him, and closed his eyes. Placing his hand on the rough bark, he pushed his awareness through his expanded channels and into the tree. Only the thinnest tendril of ethera – barely perceptible even to his trained and powerful senses – extended from his fingertip, but the moment it passed through the outermost layer of the tree’s bark, a wealth of information flooded his unprepared mind.
He let out a silent gasp as he nearly toppled from his perch, b...
2024-11-11 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Athis spun and heaved a large knight across the street. The man crashed through the reinforced wall of a building, though due to some sort of magic Tucker didn’t understand, the damage was confined to the point of impact. Despite being structurally unsound, the building remained standing. A common enough scene across the entire city.
Even as Athis threw himself at another knight, Tucker nearly lost his balance from an earthquake emanating from the other side of the city. He knew Zeke was involved, though...
2024-11-11 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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A cacophony of noise washed over Elijah, forcing him awake. He clamped his hands over his ears, though the gesture did nothing to protect him from the avalanche of formless sound. That was when he realized that the noise – if that was even the right word – was no audible thing. Rather, it was in his own Mind, the result of being overwhelmed by the weight of near-infinite feedback from the world around him.
If taking the Connection specialization had given him a whisper of insight into the natura...
2024-11-10 16:00:05 +0000 UTC
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In the Shape of Venom and cloaked in Guise of the Unseen, Elijah perched in the branches, watching his nephew training with Trevor. The two moved in sync, fighting invisible opponents as they raced through the forest. Elijah focused on One with nature, and as the two practiced, ethera fluctuated within them. After a few moments, he recognized it for what it was.
They were working on their cultivation.
That simple realization opened the door in his mind to how varied cultivation methods could be. For ...
2024-11-09 16:00:16 +0000 UTC
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“Don’t talk to me,” Carmen groaned the moment Elijah walked in. His first stop had been the build-site for the Great Forge, but when he’d found it vacant, he’d rightly assumed he could find his sister-in-law working in her original smithy. He stepped inside, watching her bang on what looked like it would one day become a sword. After only a few minutes, she let out a sigh, then shoved the cooling blade back into the forge. Then, she turned around, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Just standing there a...
2024-11-08 16:00:12 +0000 UTC
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The earth shook as Pudge led a group of nine Inashi into the depths of the city. They’d already passed a half-dozen layers, each of which had been broken up into at least ten floors, but he sensed that they still had a long way to go before they reached their destination.
Before he could rescue his brothers and sisters who’d been enslaved by the wicked Imperium.
Over the course of the war, he had grown increasingly furious with what he had seen. Every conquered town, every victory for the forces of the Crims...
2024-11-08 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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As she leaned back in her chair, Carmen let out a long sigh before downing the last contents of her mug. The beer was bitter, with a hint of ethera and an undercurrent of roasted caramel that set it apart from anything she’d drunk before Earth’s transition into a post-World Tree era. Her chair tipped back, and if it wasn’t for a recent influx in levels that gave her a few extra points in Dexterity, she would have fallen. As it was, she managed to hook her foot under the table’s support, which arrested her momentum a...
2024-11-07 16:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Zeke hit the knight with a shoulder tackle, sending him ragdolling across the square until he hit a pile of rubble. He followed that up with a spinning, backhanded swing of Voromir that launched another knight into a long arc that ended hundreds of yards away. The collapse of the building where he landed was like music to Zeke’s ears. However, he was quick to note that he didn’t receive any experience.
“I hit that guy with enough force that he should have burst,” Zeke remarked as a greatsword dug into his side...
2024-11-07 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Elijah certainly didn’t recognize his reflection in the mirror, which was probably understandable, given that it was an entirely new form. If he was forced to come up with a comparison, he would have likened it to a salamander, though one that walked on two feet and featured a pair of crests starting above his eyes, extending down his back and to his tail. The impression of the shape’s amphibious nature was also supported by the presence of moist skin as opposed to scales.
It was only after he saw the coloring –...
2024-11-06 16:10:00 +0000 UTC
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Elijah lay back, drifting lazily as he rode the subtle rise and fall of the waves. He knew he had things to do and obligations to meet, but there was value in immersing himself in the moment. Not only was it relaxing, but with the benefit of a Connection-boosted One with Nature, he felt more connected with his surroundings than ever before. He sank into that, feeling every microorganism suspended in the water.
But there was more to it than that.
Ethera was part of it, but those connections went much ...
2024-11-06 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
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I just wanted to let everyone know that the latest Death: Genesis book is now available on Kindle and Audible (print too, but I only ever sell a few of those!). You can find them at the following links:
2024-11-05 22:19:15 +0000 UTC
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Elijah knew the grove had grown, both in terms of literal size as well as density. His domain was about ten feet wider than when he’d left, which according to Nerthus, was due to his increasing levels as well as the steady spread of the ancestral tree’s roots. That was cause for celebration on its own, but what was even more interesting was that the heightened ethereal density had finally started to change the island. Never was that clearer than when he knelt beside a rabbit the size of a golden retriever.
H...
2024-11-05 16:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Bursts of fire erupted overhead, bathing the city streets in an orange glow. The world rumbled as other skills tore between the enemies and through the alleys, eviscerating anyone who found themselves in their way.
Most were slaves, but there were a few normal citizens of the Imperium who’d not made it into the shelters. They never would, because their own soldiers were indiscriminate in their defense of the city. Anyone left outside was fair game. It was just one more reminder of just how cruel the Radi...
2024-11-05 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Benedict sat at the somehow still-intact table, his legs crossed as he sipped his tea. The cup was chipped, and the tea itself was of poor quality, but it was a moment of normalcy amidst a whirlwind of a return to Earth. Seven imps – the lowest of the low – were there too, though they sat upon the table itself. Benedict had claimed the only chair for himself.
“Burn?” asked one, pointing to the kettle.
“Not now,” Benedict responded. “Behave.”
“Behaving is not fun,” the ...
2024-11-04 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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A hundred thousand kobolds stood in the Entry Hall, each one equipped identically with long spears, heavy shields, and segmented armor. Their gear was the product of years of work and development for the Crimson Tower’s crafters, and its quality was second to none. However, as well-equipped as they were, the real strength of that massive army was the obsessive dedication of the kobolds themselves.
They trained with the sort of single-minded commitment seldom seen among the more accepted races of the world. Man...
2024-11-04 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Elijah’s staff clacked against Miguel’s sword, and even though he’d barely put any strength behind it, the blade went flying backward. He followed that up with a gentle tap to his nephew’s chest. “Too slow,” he said.
Miguel’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword as he took a step back and grunted, “Again.”
“I think you’ve had enough for –”
Elijah didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before he saw the thrown dagger Miguel had whipped in his direction. He sideste...
2024-11-03 16:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Elijah let out a sigh as he sat in his favorite chair and looked out across the grove. As much as he enjoyed a bit of adventure, he couldn’t deny the contentment of home. It was hard to believe that, only a few short years before, the best the island could offer – in terms of creature comforts – was a mostly collapsed shack. Now, his treehouse was as luxurious as any place he’d ever lived, and it came with the added benefit of feeling more like home than any of his old apartments. Even his childhood home could...
2024-11-02 15:00:10 +0000 UTC
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