The marble columns drew closer as they walked. It didn’t matter which direction the due walked towards, for all roads led to the center of this astral/mental space, and indeed as the pillars of white stone became taller and more imposing, sparse vegetation began to also appear. It was not green, ...
2023-11-10 16:06:24 +0000 UTC View PostJeff, talk to me. Did it work?
Affirmative. However, cohesion is lower than expected.
Albert looked around, having found himself along with Scrappy in an unknown place. He was surrounded by whiteness all around, but with hints of shadows and reds in the ...
2023-11-08 14:44:58 +0000 UTC View Post“Ah, Lina isn’t feeling well. I had to put her to sleep.”
Scrappy wasn’t stupid, of course. “Why was she attacking you? I saw her, that I did. Is she ill in the head?”
Albert nodded. The girl was quite smart, and she must have had balls of steel not to have succumbed to utter ...
2023-11-06 17:43:27 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert was aware that someone was watching: he had felt a presence hidden somewhere when he arrived in the cave, but he had been unable to do anything about it. Now he was struggling to protect the girl from the onslaught of flaming bullets coming her way, straining his Power to the extreme to simply tank ...
2023-11-04 15:48:09 +0000 UTC View PostScrappy weaved through the obstacles, straining her muscles and her limbs in ways she didn’t think possible. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was the opposite of easy. It was painful, tiring and extremely taxing on her mind, but the more attempts at the course she took, the better she became at i...
2023-11-02 17:05:13 +0000 UTC View PostScrappy read the contents of the mysterious box in front of her with sparkles in her eyes. Tears too, if she wasn’t mistaken, but she barely noticed that she wiped them away with her hand. When she was done, she read the content of the quest again, for good measure.
Beside her, Albert w...
2023-10-31 16:25:38 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert sat cross legged on a small stone that was cold but, fortunately, not frozen over. He was thinking of ways to get the job done, giving Scrappy enough magic so that he wouldn’t have to worry about her survival. True, she still had the Defense Handbook and had done the procedure for the day...
2023-10-29 14:32:39 +0000 UTC View PostSlowly the narrow dark tunnel of the catacombs morphed into a more natural-looking cave. Here and there, spent torches lined the walls, coming to life with bright orange flames before the duo passed thanks to a subtle flex of Albert’s Power. It took barely any effort to light the torches, he noticed, both ...
2023-10-24 21:26:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe city quickly turned into a prison for Albert, at least in his mind. It was fascinating to see how quickly his mood could change given the different circumstances, and although he had the Power to leave if he wanted, it wasn’t worth the risk. As such, the walls he was walking towards w...
2023-10-19 11:24:07 +0000 UTC View PostWe need to go back to Bastion. We are being chased by five A-rankers, judging by their tokens, and no amount of creative use of Power will ever even the odds if we come to blows again. They know me and my strategy now.
Agreed. However, you might want to perform the experiment...
2023-10-14 14:35:07 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert groaned. The world was, once again, spinning. But he had escaped the A-rankers, if barely. There had been five of them, armed to the teeth. Two cultivators, one mage, and two others he could barely classify. It did seem like magic was different for everyone. He even thought he saw the f...
2023-10-09 12:05:07 +0000 UTC View PostScrappy suddenly stopped walking, perking up and sniffing the air like a cat. Her ears seemed to twitch ever so slightly, but they were covered by her hair and it was hard to tell. It was clear, however, that she was straining her senses to the extreme. Albert studied her for a moment, seeing that the magi...
2023-10-05 15:01:24 +0000 UTC View Postjust a heads up: i broke my collarbone yesterday and... writing is not easy with the injury. we still have a healthy dose of backlog for the patreon, even more so for RR, but I wanted to let you know just in case
Albert learned that when he set himself up to do a task, important like escaping B...
2023-10-01 17:44:01 +0000 UTC View PostAs soon as Albert name-dropped the Kirkesis Core, the guild master’s whole demeanor seemed to change abruptly. Albert was not so clueless as not to realize when he made a potential mistake, and with a budding headache already lessening his focus, he very well considered bolting out of the ...
2023-09-27 20:19:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe man crumpled to the ground even as a faint hint of a headache made itself known to Albert’s sensibilities. The man’s power was clearly below Albert’s own 33, and it was easy to tell even without a scan by the way magic acted around him. Everyone in this world was either magic or Doom...
2023-09-25 16:47:03 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert woke up with a groan. The edges of his vision sported the familiar blackness to them that he had, unfortunately, gotten used to as of late. Feeling the pain in every inch of his body, he tried to pull himself up, hearing the sound of scuttering feet closing in.
Panic threatened to take ov...
2023-09-21 17:21:14 +0000 UTC View Post“A room for two.” Albert said. “No, wait.” He looked at the boy standing next to him like a puppy. “That came out wrong. Two rooms.”
The innkeeper nodded without speaking, and produced two keys. Albert took them, and offered one to Scrap. The boy took a moment to understand the meaning be...
2023-09-19 15:24:42 +0000 UTC View PostThe large stone gates of Bastion hung wide open, and the paved road – which did not extend more than a hundred meters away from Bastion before reverting to a bland dirt road – was devoid of people so that the large convoy could pass through without issue. To the side, standing in the fields and...
2023-09-15 12:30:26 +0000 UTC View PostYou overdid it again.
Show me logs. What happened?
Power +1
Critical failure: Focus dropped below 8%
Power +5
Bending successful.
New stat: physical power ...
2023-09-12 13:51:00 +0000 UTC View PostReality Bending Power: 14 -> 19
You might be happy to hear that I have enough data to correlate Power growth with Focus drops.
Ugh. Albert groaned in pain. His head felt like it had been pried open with a crowbar, filled with explosives an...
2023-09-09 18:55:05 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert’s Focus dropped to 55%, and he flooded the mana that gathered in front of his body with Intent. Intent to transform the tree he was staring at into a horse.
Nothing happened, and the mana lost cohesion.
Cross it off.
The long list of failed attempts gained a new en...
2023-09-07 12:59:24 +0000 UTC View PostThe air was cool and d...
2023-09-07 12:59:04 +0000 UTC View PostOn the way back, Albert encountered the same monster he chose to escape from. However, despite only a few hours had passed since th...
2023-08-29 14:07:06 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert focused inwards. He pictured the process of fortifying his mind, holding the image in his brain as best he could. Mental Fortress was a passive skill back when he still had a system, which meant that he never got to observe how it acted in real time, especially because whenever it kicked in ...
2023-08-27 12:25:26 +0000 UTC View Post“Did I build this?” Albert asked out loud, examining the cube. He was nothing short of mesmerized, despite the situation he was in.
He laughed weakly. If his theory was correct there was no need to speculate, he could ask Jeff himself.
“Jeff, did I build you?”
The cube did not answ...
2023-08-25 13:45:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe knife stopped in mid-air. There was no magic being expended, no pull of energy from his now absent core. Albert simply willed the knife to stop, and it did. A faint outline of a faraway headache began to appear in his mind, but it was too distant to tell for sure.
He blinked, opening the ...
2023-08-23 12:17:01 +0000 UTC View PostAlbert felt the ravaging Alignment Energy sear his mind and his body. He convulsed on the ground, whimpering in pain.
His mind felt like liquid fire. A distant part of himself was vaguely aware that he only had a few seconds before Kainen and Hyvrlat’r realized he was fooling them.
Th...
2023-08-22 14:24:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe present.
“The central spire of Sitea, ancestral home of the Scarlet Sorceress.” Kainen said.
“Yep.” Albert replied, looking at the small gleaming tip of black metal, barely visible behind a tall hill. “What remains of it, at least.”
“You know it?” Kainen ...
2023-08-20 23:05:57 +0000 UTC View PostThree years ago.
Albert sat contemplating what he saw when he leveled up. Close to him, Kainen kept watch, walking in a circle around the crackling fire. Often times he stopped, peering into the darkness, as if to try and sense something nearby. But there seemed to be nothing, and Al...
2023-08-18 12:32:34 +0000 UTC View Post
