Leaning forwards, Kaius peered around the shattered jewel-encrusted gate that led to the final district of the dwarven city. Like a mountain with its top shorn clean off, the pinnacle of the dwarven city was a flat and open space.
Great stone tiles as large as a house paved its surface, while equidistant ridged stone columns surrounded the edges of the constructed plateau. Noth...
2024-11-14 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius lounged on a settee, made of finely lacquered wood that was engraved and embossed with solid gold inlay; it was long enough for him to lie at full extension. It was also probably more expensive than the entirety of everything in Three Fields village combined, with cloudy padding that seemed to cradle him from every direction. Blood, green and red both, seeped from his armour to...
2024-11-13 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius did up the last buckle of his cuirass, the cold alloy wrapping him in a comforting protective weight. They’d stopped by the gate to the city, the shattered and twisted steel blown inwards to reveal a familiar arterial road lined with austere and blocky buildings. Rows of barracks and smithies, the military industrial backbone of the fortress.
The walls of the fortress c...
2024-11-12 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius slid his feet through the loamy soil, twisting in place to allow the goblin serf’s adze to dig into the meat of his thigh. He took the wound with little more than a stoic grunt, even as the ice cold metal tinked against his femur. The depths-born ripped its weapon free with a sickeningly jubilant cry.
That pissed him off.
He stepped ...
2024-11-11 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostBarely more than a few hundred long-strides into the fungal fields that surrounded the dwarven city, Kaius spotted his first goblin. It was a good way off, far enough that it wouldn’t notice them unless they actively tried to get its attention.
It was an ugly, wretched thing. Dressed in little more than rotting cotton and scavenged burlap, it looked even more twisted and maln...
2024-11-10 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius chewed his lip. The Depths had been explosive for his growth, but even for him, the gains he had made over the day had radically launched him to a few strides from the finish line. One Honour, one legacy skill, one special evolution, and one racial trait.
It was almost too much, it felt unreal. Like something he heard about in bard tales, not the sort of thing he...
2024-11-09 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius came to with a groan, every inch of his body aching like he had been trampled by a dozen draught horses. Everything about the last hour was hazy, as if he had witnessed it in a drunken haze. From a distance, at that.
He pushed himself up, shaking his head as his bleary eyes struggled to take in the utilitarian kitchen that sat in front of him. Porkchop wasn’t much bette...
2024-11-08 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostLook, I promise I am not sitting behind my computer twirling my moustache while I concoct the most brutal, heart wrenching cliffs possible.
It's quite genuinely just how I write, and avoiding cliffs would mean chapters wildly swing between 500 and 9k words. I'm not trying to inflate word count or anything, there's just a crap load of character, skill development, and pay off to fit in...
2024-11-07 23:47:37 +0000 UTC View PostFeeling the searing heat emanating from their soul, they knew they had to work quickly. Stabilise the link, before it collapsed and left them crippled. They needed the skill. Now.
One half still floundered, unused to the rigours of true mental communion. The other knew what to do. They trusted, and they acted.
It was time for the bloodrite.
Kaius leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he thought about what he wanted to ask Porkchop. The fact that his friend’s secret skill was a binding one was a shock. The fact that it wasn’t one of the predatory command and control types even more so. He was incredibly interested, and had already made his mind up. Sure, it would mean that he would have no dedicated g...
2024-11-06 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius snapped his eyes open as his final legacy merge settled into place around his soul. Everything was prepped and ready for his final skill, the nexuses of power orbiting his soul locking into an equidistant formation. A single place remained in their circle, waiting for his last selection.
Father had told him how it would work. When his final skill was chosen it would slot ...
2024-11-05 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe washroom available in the austere bunk rooms that dotted the biome were distinctly unpleasant. A narrow cubicle tucked around the corner from the kitchen, it was a far cry from the warm rainfall he had come to appreciate in the dwarven manors.
For one, it was freezing. Kaius had thought he would never be caught dead shying away from a cold wash. Afterall...
2024-11-04 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostKaius stood rooted to the spot, looming over the shattered remnants of the cat-like abomination he had just slain. He couldn’t take his eyes off the system notification that he had just received. Another Honour.
“Did you get that too?” Porkchop asked, his voice quiet as it crossed their link.
“...Yeah.” Kaius replied, breaking t...
2024-11-03 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostAfter they finished their food, Kaius moved on to reinscribing his runic hymns as he sat by their bags in the little laboratory adjacent to the grand hall that held the menagerie of abominations. He decided to stick with thirteen casts of Explosive Arcane Dart. It was the best fit for the ridiculous regeneration of the abominations of this biome. He was curious if fire would work as we...
2024-11-02 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostFour arcane needles slammed into the Champion. All but one hit Kaius’s intended target. Kaius grinned from where he lay slumped onto the inscribed glass that made up one wall of the enclosure. Two of its shoulders, and one in a knee, though he had missed the final arm, the remaining needle flying past the giant to slam into the stone brick behind it.
Not bad for a guy with a ...
2024-11-01 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostStepping aside so that Porkchop could join him in the airlock that led to the giant's enclosure, Kaius pulled closed the first steel door and locked it tight. As he’d originally suspected, the second door wouldn’t open if the other was left open. A precaution on letting any specimens escape, he presumed.
He turned, looking through the enchanted glass tunnel to focus on thei...
2024-10-31 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius looked on in awe as his friend crushed the skull of the bear abomination. Watching Porkchop’s battle from within the glass airlock had been rough, not the least because this fight had been far more brutal than the last one. More than once he had had to hold himself back from ripping open the thick steel door and leaping to Porkchop’s defence.
All that tension...
2024-10-30 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostPorkchop waited beside his brother who was turning the wheel to open the last door of the airlock. He kept his eyes pinned on the bear that prowled through the empty space. It was watching their every move, but had yet to try anything.
It didn’t even bother to wait for them to exit, nor try to ambush them when they would be hampered by the confines of the air...
2024-10-29 20:30:11 +0000 UTC View PostKaius groaned as he stared at the system notification that had appeared when he had identified the four armed horror that occupied one of the sealed enclosures that flanked the hall. He knew, now that they had confirmation that it was a Champion, that the other two still living specimens most likely were too.
“I assume that it is, in fact, a Champion?” P...
2024-10-28 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt took them six hours of pushing through isolated rooms of flayed horrors and twisted teratomas before they found another rest stop. Hours of bloody work, hacking apart the twisted flesh of depths-born, getting coated in more gore as they progressively grew more and more exhausted. When they finally stumbled into the room of bunks Kaius slumped as he sheathed his sword.
With l...
2024-10-27 20:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostStanding at the base of the stone pit that had been strewn with the gorey evidence of Porkchop’s battle with the Cystic Failure, Kaius stood at the edge of a particularly large pool of viscera and bile.
The pooling fluid in his boots from cutting open the corpse of the monster had been forgotten, his focus on the artefact that Porkchop had spotted in the mess.
A/N so apparently I accidentally double posted this morning (this chapter was added to the end of the last one lmao.) - Will just treat this as a free bonus chapter. Schedule will continue as normal tomorrow
Letting out a roar, Porkchop barrelled towards the champion. Its entire existence offended him. The unnatural melding of discordant body parts, the violent...
2024-10-26 02:17:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe latest Champion that they had found on their journey through the Depths ambled at the base of the pit. As far as flesh abominations went, Kaius didn’t see how it could get more grotesque. A misshapen blob of eyes, mouths, hands, and other random body parts smashed together into a drooping ball.
A bigger, meaner, cousin to the twisted teratomas that they had encounte...
2024-10-25 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius pushed his way through another door, quickly scanning the room for threats. They’d been traversing through the laboratory for the better part of a day now, and he had grown used to flesh horrors lurking in pools of the treacle like alchemical fluid that was so pervasive in the biome.
Thankfully, this room was clean. It looked to be some sort of worker dormitory, a narro...
2024-10-24 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius sat at the writing desk in the mezzanine library, staring at the finished inscription of his newest runic hymn. He itched to test it out and saw no reason to wait.
“Going to test my new spell,” He said to Porkchop as he rose from his seat. “fair warning, it might get a little loud.”
Porkchop grumbled and rolled his eyes at him, but made no real mo...
2024-10-23 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostKaius charged into the room, confronting the full presence of the flayed horror for the first time. A full head taller than him, the skinless giant groaned in fury as it smashed aside tables laden with glassware with ease.
Racing forwards, Kaius kept the tip of his sword trained on the abomination. One arm rose as it reached him. Danger flared in his mind, prompting him to move...
2024-10-22 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy friend path has over taken me on Rising Stars. This is a code red.
I repeat, code red. Maximising bonus chappies hinges on maintaining first place for three more days! Just a little longer... we can do this.
Advance reviews and favourites could tip us over the line, regaining ground. Onw...
*Biome Entered: Fleshwarper’s Laboratory*
Kaius winced as he read the alert that appeared in his vision as he crossed into the new biome. While he couldn’t be certain until they started to encounter some of the biomes depths-born, he was almost certain that they would be running into abominations of the fleshy variety.
He had never...
2024-10-21 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostBacktracking their way through the city took days. Though thankfully their pace was faster than their ascent, as they no longer had to worry about clearing out goblin depths-born.
As they walked through the city, Kaius took the time to burn the sights into his mind. Despite the dusty and aged stonework, the weathering of time was not fully able to fade the bones of grandi...
2024-10-20 20:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Hey folks! Just dropping in to say thanks for all the support! I'm entering my final week before I start getting booted from RS, and this is a super important time in a stories growth. Long term, most story growth comes from getting on the front page of popular this week (very difficult without the view boost that comes with RS), and from being on the first page of best ongoing (al...
2024-10-19 20:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post