Chapter 20: Smooth Criminal
You know that old expression: there are weeks where nothing happens, and there are hours when weeks happen? I might have paraphrased that slightly from the true saying, but you get the gist of it, right? Long stretches of boredom punctuated by brief, intense periods of mayhem: something anyone who ever worked in a customer facing job can likely...
2024-10-22 08:59:20 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 192: Golden Ticket
Emma was alone in the boss chamber now, facing an enemy that just refused to die. Even the Hydra was gone, vanishing moments after Saint disappeared, clearly due to being tied to the same summoning. The Time Eater’s body had been thoroughly dismantled, but the portal that it had subverted remained, just as impervious to Emma’s arrows as it h...
2024-10-22 00:13:09 +0000 UTC View PostAN: Patreon looks like it's working again. Enjoy the chapter! Next one Monday night.
Chapter 191: Tank Swap
[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 22 minutes.]
Emma frowned at the popup, now finally visible in a moment of calm. That was objectively a good thing, as the last thing she needed in the heat of c...
2024-10-20 04:49:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 190: The Gravity of the Situation
Now in possession of a viable plan, the party was quick to spring into action. The Leech King started off with a beam of pressurised air, forcing the Time Eater to focus on absorption, bringing its healing to a halt. Saint took advantage of the window this granted, vanishing with a pop to reappear behind the boss. Crevices opened ...
2024-10-18 03:42:51 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 189: A Timely Discovery
“Alright then.”
Emma cleared her throat, stepping out of the stairwell in her armour, with one eye on the clock.
[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 50 minutes.]
“There’s not really time to explain how we ended up in this situation, so I’ll keep it short. We...
2024-10-17 04:39:52 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 188: Gather Your Party
[The Eternal Wind blows!
Emma calls for aid.
Do you answer?]
The sudden notification came at an unfortunate time, the momentary distraction nearly costing Astrid an injury. She recovered, just barely, throwing herself to the side to avoid the incoming prongs of a taser. Ram...
2024-10-16 03:20:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 187: The Aristocat
Night combat, traditionally, was regarded as among the hardest forms of combat to master. Of the five senses, humans relied upon sight most of all, and in the absence of light, all aspects of soldiery were seriously hampered. This was true both at the individual level, in the form of significantly degraded accuracy of fire, and at the tactical l...
2024-10-15 01:03:59 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 186: Eternal Wind
Emma doesn’t like it, the idea of exposing her fragile homunculus body to such power. It would take little more than an errant breath to knock her over, and that would be the end, not of herself, but a considerable investment in time and effort all the same. She still does it, in the end, because against all odds, the Time Eater has yet to turn...
2024-10-11 23:04:13 +0000 UTC View PostAN: Sorry for the late chapter today. Was planning out how to approach this, the big final boss fight of book 1, starting now. Enjoy!
Chapter 185: Locus
Descending a staircase backwards proved a unique exercise in frustration, particularly given the constraints involved. Each step required Emma to adjust for curvature, in a way that brought her precisel...
2024-10-11 00:50:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 184: She Was Only Seventeen
[42 EXP added.
Level up!
Level 17 Damned Apostle.]
Emma barely noticed the level up, in her sudden disorientation. She managed to stay on her feet after a bit of backpedalling, just a bit, to find herself in a corridor that was both familiar and not. Familiar in style ...
2024-10-09 23:43:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 183: The Last Question
“Thank you.”
The space station began to fade from sight, signalling the end of the memories of Liberation, the end of another simulation. Emma emerged with her guard up, expecting a hostile reception upon her return to the robot-filled city that served as the main hub between individual stages. Belying her expectations, ho...
2024-10-08 20:57:30 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 182: Red Sun in the Sky
To Emma’s vague surprise, the other side of the door to Ideological Training was much like what came before it. Wider, perhaps, now easily able to accommodate her flying sword, whereas before she’d had to take care, exactly where she flew, so as to avoid bumping into obstacles. More long corridors, continuing in zero gravity, with the o...
2024-10-07 14:49:26 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 181: To Infinity and Beyond
Soon after Astrid noticed her would-be kidnappers, they too detected her presence. Under her watchful eye, each member of the party palmed a straw effigy, wrought in a crude facsimile of each man’s likeness. A grid of black and white squares appeared, like a chessboard’s flying cousin, with an image of herself in the centre square. ...
2024-10-04 18:26:57 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 180: House, M.D.
To Emma’s annoyance, she immediately hit a hurdle the moment she opened Internet Explorer: the computer wasn’t connected to the internet, nor were there any networks available to join.
[The planet blew up, I’d be more surprised if there was a connection.]
Emma didn’t disagree, but it certainly put...
2024-10-03 17:57:08 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 179: One Small Step For Man
Emma began a methodical search of Magus Austere’s dwelling, one that looked much more like the inside of a student residence, rather than part of a hidden space station. The main room pulled double duty as kitchen and living space, the cupboards and drawers boasting a varied collection of cutlery, tableware and non-perishable goods. T...
2024-10-02 14:26:29 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 178: Voyager
Emma was on guard as she drifted toward the open airlock, wary of it being yet another trap, the latest of many. She’d switched back to her armour as soon as the space station appeared, and true to her expectations, it remained visible even with Magus Austere’s mask shoved back into Eden’s Echo. Emma couldn’t claim to know what the various fil...
2024-10-01 14:50:24 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 177: Starliner
Drifting alone on her flying sword, several hundred miles above the vaguely planet shaped cloud of cosmic dust that was, until recently, a vast ecumenopolis, Emma felt incredibly alone in the world. The System was silent, providing no guidance whatsoever except to remind her that yes, the clock was still ticking down until the Dungeon’s untimely c...
2024-09-30 22:19:43 +0000 UTC View Post