“I swear,” said Aiwë. “That's the first time I've passed out from exhaustion.”
He seemed exhilarated by this.
“That just means you weren't trying hard enough before,” Zane informed him.
Aiwë considered this. “…I suppose I wasn’t.”
Zane was pleased to see he'd made a difference.
***
The mo...
2025-03-05 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostHe did another four hundred.
“You’re a machine.” Aiwë was speechless.
He wheeled up to study Zane, who was busy chugging down some of the Barbarian Sage’s recovery drinks between sets. He started inspecting Zane’s heaving chest the way he’d done the Interspatial Ring, eyes glowing.
“It’s tempered just like Prim...
2025-03-04 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostZane blinked.
He felt the heat passing by his face—an incredible outpouring of energy packed into a pure, clean-cut pillar.
Then it struck flush and vanished.
The steel shone like a rising sun.
Aiwë took a deep breath and grinned.
Zane gave him another look.
He felt the fellow’s aura in that moment—his ...
2025-03-03 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Hey there,” said Zane, stepping casually out of the key-portal.
“You’re back!” said Aiwe.
He sat by the forge, heaving a hammer, with a copper welding mask pulled up. He sounded delighted, if tinny.
“Just one moment.”
He set down his hammer, donned some heavy gloves, picked up some tongs, and began straight...
2025-03-02 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThat name rang a bell.
He’d definitely heard it before, but he wasn’t quite sure where…
Eh. He figured it’d come to him.
In the meantime—“I’m Zane.”
“Well, Zane, let me welcome you to my home for the foreseeable future.”
It was a well-made place. All the shelves and workbenches looked hand-carved...
2025-02-28 21:22:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe Imperial Mark 10 was a castle with a hull. Its smokestacks rose like towers, and above them lay a field of billowing masts. Up on the ropes, wind mages pulled on Spirit Weapon gloves, ready to throw up a current. Below decks, fire mages stoked the forges.
It looked to be half shipping vessel, half passenger vessel. There were so manyma...
2025-02-27 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostA/N Really appreciate the kind words folks!
//
He unlocked strand after strand, falling into a rhythm. Before he knew it, another year had gone by.
One day—"Senior Zane, Senior Zane!”
He knew that voice.
Zane turned, and sure enough, there Jin was, looking all spiffy in imperia...
2025-02-26 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostAfter the Temple, King Four Winds wanted to invite the mysterious expert known as Zane to court and make him his Champion. But Zane vanished as quickly as he'd come.
A few weeks later, a traveler with a straw hat and an odd stick wandered the remote fishing villages and beachside towns in the far south of the continent—so far south, ther...
2025-02-25 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostBang.
For the second time that decade, a rift blew through the Sealed Demon Continent and changed the very skies.
A rift that ruptured out from one clenched fist—a rift that ran straight through the Monster Prince.
Havoc looked down at his chest in puzzlement.
…Oh.
The dunes blew open, and all man saw was horror.
Waxen skin draped on gigantic limbs, some on three legs, some on eight, some on none at all. Misshapen skulls, hollowed-out eyes, and rows after row of drooling, gleaming teeth…
That first wave almost broke them before the battle began.
They hadn't been ready,bowed inward...
2025-02-23 02:30:04 +0000 UTC View PostA/N:
Bonus chapter x2! It's been a good week
//
“Horseshit!” said Skyhammer Kang.
“The signs were there,” said the Wandering Monk. His face, normally as blank as a placid pond, grew dark.
Tatsuo screamed and punched the ground, searing white claws into the sand.
“That prize was mine,...
2025-02-22 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Bonus chapter!
//
Almost as soon as they went in, folk started getting spat right back out.
“Ho!” said Old Rao, the bookie. “And there goes the first exits—at point-five seconds!”
The great majority of them couldn't even last the full minute. Clumps were ejected at the ten-second mark, and ...
2025-02-20 19:15:03 +0000 UTC View PostHe’d thought Burnwater was just saying things when he said there was a special charm to these little worlds. But he kind of got it. The place was fragile, sure, but the more time he spent here, the neater he found it.
He trekked across peaks of seven-colored greenery and across peaks belching fire. He crossed a bare red-sand desert where...
2025-02-20 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostIn the years since the mysterious Zane’s disappearance, much had changed in the Sealed Demon continent.
On the frontier, in the never-ending wars between man and monster, the Four Winds army had produced a new hero—the dashing Li Zhang. As valiant a warlord as they came—it was said he’d never lost a battle, even outnumbered nine to...
2025-02-19 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostNot long after, Jin Wei became the first in his family’s history to ace the Silverwind Sect’s entrance examination. It qualified him to be a Chosen and go off to the main Sect in the Imperial capital.
He would soon be off to the big city.
Zane would be here for some seasons yet. He was making good progress, but he still had a way...
2025-02-18 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe folk of the town watched as plumes of dust avalanched down the mountain, rising to make new dark clouds.
Then a man walked out of the murk.
By now everyone there knew what kind of man they were looking at. They saw five of the Yi Family’s best go up that mountain.
One man came back down.
“It’s him! It really is ...
2025-02-17 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe hunchback looked up and saw a great deal of chest. And higher, he saw a thick neck and jaw. And higher still.
Hunchback Lang had never cried, even as a child. He had never known fear in his life. How could you fear when you could not hurt?
So when he met Zane’s eyes, he felt something very strange, something he’d never known,...
2025-02-16 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Bonus chapter!
//
Zane sat cross-legged and weathered the storm.
Collisions ran through his mind. Waves crashing and crossing, and in their violent wakes, making new and dangerous energies.
Energies he mastered, line by line.
He saw flares screaming out of newly-born stars, spi...
2025-02-14 19:47:40 +0000 UTC View PostHe came upon a cavern ringed with steel pillars. Faceless pillars, perfectly smooth, making a pentagram—as though meant to summon some deep-earth demon.
The bulk of their power wasn’t shown. To the eye, they were dormant. But to the soul, they were a vast angry sea, a sea of raw force scouring the craggy steel-stone walls.
Those ...
2025-02-13 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“I’m gonna be just fine,” said Jin, putting up a brave smile. “Don’t you worry about me, senior!”
“Sure,” said Zane.
They trudged up the winding, mossy path.
A few minutes passed like this.
Something was unusual. It took a moment for him to place it.
The little fellow was quiet.
“Um. Senior?...
2025-02-12 02:30:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe goon looked up.
A Zane-sized shadow fell across him.
He wondered what he should do about this guy. He was a bit worried he might break a little too much. The world, that was. He still hadn’t figured out how much this place could handle.
If letting out a bit of aura was like setting off a nuclear bomb here…
Maybe i...
2025-02-11 02:30:54 +0000 UTC View Post“Sure! My uncle runs the township’s store. This way.”
Uncle Wei was quite an old fellow. He looked over tiny wire spectacles with cloudy eyes. It took him a moment to recognize Jin. He snorted at Jin’s bloody knuckles.
“Back for more salves, you little rascal?”
“Yup,” said Jin.
He turned to Zane. “Hardes...
2025-02-10 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostThere was a sound like a thousand reams of dry paper tearing at once.
Birds screeched into flight. Trees toppled in a circle, shattering like burnt-out coals as they hit the ground.
The Wraithcrow gagged. It turned tail so fast a puff of feathers came loose; as it flapped away, it made a sorry sight.
Zane grinned.
He’d ...
2025-02-09 02:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post“It means you shouldn't have to worry about them,” said Noughtfire. “Seek out the anomalies in those worlds—the places where Law is strong where it has no right to be. And there, you will find what you need.
Zane nodded. Seemed clear enough.
“In Astra you’ll have all you need to clear the last three Concepts. ...
2025-02-06 03:05:23 +0000 UTC View PostEDIT:
Wednesday's chapter will be up to an hour late again, sorry about that! Pulling late hours yesterday wiped me out for today--will get it done, though, and next week things should be on-time as normal!
//
Before long it was his last day back.
Evan had made little bandanas for their rescue tea...
2025-02-05 04:13:12 +0000 UTC View PostHe and Reina greeted them there, and were treated to a big hug and two little gift-baskets of cookies from Evan.
Evan could hardly sit still. It felt like every time they came back, he had something new for show-and-tell.
A few minutes later they were out on an empty bough—a field of leaves the elves used for trai...
2025-02-04 02:30:34 +0000 UTC View PostA/N:
Forgot to schedule this chapter sorry about that!
//
It felt like it’d only been a few weeks since he’d last been in the World Tree. But somehow Reina had transformed the place again.
The main thoroughfare, snaking up the main branch, was packed with carts. Carts stacked full of Interspatial Ring...
2025-02-03 03:04:16 +0000 UTC View PostA/N
Added a brief description of what his new Bone looks like to chapter 382!
He let out his Chains, and now they shared the presence of his Bone—that aura of natural grandeur, like he stood before an ancient mountain-peak shrouded in distant clouds. The Titan’s dark silver made the base colors. Asura red b...
2025-02-02 02:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostNot far off, Goloog the Living Bog kept up heavy fire.
Waves of acid waste battered the Barbarian Sage.
The Hydra froze it over. The Hydra was in poor shape, but it was still an Empyrean. It only had one head left—but it had essence to spare.
Bleak ice stacked heavy over the wastes.
It was a fortunate thing ...
2025-01-30 02:28:41 +0000 UTC View PostZane felt the exact moment he broke the lion. Felt the force ripple through the Monster, felt the muscles of the heart take the worst of it—and explode. First in force, then in flame. Felt that force charge through, shattering bone after bone…
Its huge mouth fell wide open, wider than its jaw should’ve allowed as it croaked. Its fles...
2025-01-29 02:30:03 +0000 UTC View Post