Tsaimath

Chapter 1154

Once again, I was somewhat impressed by Sasha’s intuitive intelligence. There was nothing different about my overt actions when I opened the door and entered the room holding her, my routine just as it had been the previous times when I brought food or water for her. And yet, the moment I entered the room to let her out, hoping that she would follow as we continued our journey, Sasha’s reac...

Chapter 1153

“So, are we adding another being to our group?” Lia asked me as I was sitting on a high branch in the darkness, simply enjoying the slight elevation and the clear view of the stars it allowed me. Luna must have told her about her suggestion to take Sasha with us, maybe hoping that Lia would help in convincing me to accept it, or maybe Lia had realised that the methodology Luna and I employe...

Chapter 1152

It was quite curious. Normally, neither Luna nor I cared all that much about our test subjects. Sure, we generally tried to be careful with them, if only because breaking a test subject before the experiment was concluded and could be evaluated was a waste of time and effort, but also because neither of us took joy in the suffering of others. Unless those others deserved it, I had certainly enj...

Chapter 1151

While Luna and I discussed what we both had learned about our latest acquisition, I also watched how she handled the food and water I had placed in the room for her. Curiously, it wasn’t the food she was primarily interested in, nor was it the water. Instead, it was quite obviously the scent Luna and I had left behind after exiting, or maybe something more arcane. Either way, she had moved ov...

Chapter 1150

After telling Lia where Luna and I were going, causing her to sulk a little because the day was too bright for her to join us without fairly extreme protections, we made our way over to the new experimental facility, as grandiose as that title was for little more than a hole in the ground. But the extent of the facility didn’t matter as much as the contents, and, in this case, the content was...

Chapter 1149

Softly whistling to myself, I moved the captured Sasquatch over to a slightly different part of the mountain, somewhat close to our shelter but not right next to it. I had no plans to take the Sasquatch home until I knew the others wouldn’t be able to track her somehow. I had seen multiple abilities connecting members of a community in unseen ways and had no desire to have a gang of them show...

Chapter 1148

“Mom, you might want to look at that,” Luna’s voice pulled me from Sigmir’s embrace, despite it having been Hypnos who had embraced me. For a moment, I was disoriented until I could shake off the sudden switch from a wonderful dream to the slightly stark reality of our latest shelter. Sure, said shelter was quite comfortable, Earth Magic and the various pieces of furniture we had looted...

Chapter 1147

If there was one thing I realised about these brown-furred primates, it was that their senses were extraordinary. Even with my advanced abilities to conceal myself, I had to be cautious and take things slow if I wanted to sneak up on them. If I used abilities on them, like Observe, for example, they noticed me, despite my attempts to use Darkness Magic to hide the ability’s activation, forcin...

Chapter 1146

“Fascinating,” I couldn’t help but mutter as I observed some strange figures through my scrying construct. With the long days Lia had to spend cooped up in whatever shelter we had prepared for the day, I had taken to use my avian constructs to explore the area around us in a wider range than exploring it on foot would allow me. Using the constructs had the added benefit that I didn’t ne...

Chapter 1145

“So, Mom, I had an idea,” Lia’s opening statement somehow managed to send a shiver down my spine, and not the good kind of shiver. It wasn’t so much about her words; those were innocent enough for a given value of innocence, and she did present a few genuinely good ideas in the past, some of which had advanced my own research by leaps and bounds. Especially when she presented ideas rela...

Interlude: Distant Developments

Jack looked at the rest of his group, still using the name Search Group One, even if they hadn’t done a whole lot of searching for things in recent times, and let out a deep groan, trying to get rid of the pain and aches in his back. Even his knee was starting to ache, something he had heard his father complain about far too often for comfort. To feel such aches himself was not a pleasant ide...

Chapter 1144

It was quite fascinating to watch how Lia seamlessly slotted herself back into the group dynamic as if we had never split up. Sure, Luna and I had to relay a few stories to give her context for some of the things we said, and she occasionally needed a bit of additional information so she could understand what was going on with Luna’s lingering nightmares but overall, it was incredibly easy to...

Chapter 1143

Observing as Lia took in the massive structure around us was quite amusing. Sure, my daughter knew just how big I could build with my Earth Magic. Jademoon Tower was an excellent example of it, but the domed chamber within the First Dragon’s Temple was something else. While it wasn’t finished yet, I still wanted to add some form of artwork; the sheer size and open, cavernous structure were ...

Chapter 1142

Sealing up the tower was an utter triviality. The entire thing was formed with my power, and even now, months after the fact, enough of it lingered within the structure to allow me to easily manipulate it. Even without that, I could use some of my magic to shift stone around and seal the various openings, turning the entire tower into one smooth monolith of rock, at least from the outside. I di...

Chapter 1141

It took a few minutes of gentle prodding while holding Lia and carding my hands through her hair to get her to talk. Even once she started talking, her head remained lowered, her face hidden in my chest, muffling her voice just a little, but I could easily understand her. Slowly, at first, but then with ever-increasing alacrity, the words started to tumble out of her mouth, weaving a tale of di...

Chapter 1140

Stepping through the shadows across such a vast distance was something entirely different from my usual short steps. For once, I couldn’t just move through the realm of shadows itself; I would need to stay far too long in that realm to cross the distance we had covered in over two months of travel, so I had to project myself from the shadows into the Astral River, something I had done before ...

Chapter 1139

If there was one thing I had seen from the outside but never truly experienced myself, it was project creep. Back when I learned how to audit finances and trace funds, it was one of the biggest issues, trying to understand when the expansion of a project came from a true and legitimate need and when it was used to pad the pockets of somebody down the line, possibly with kickbacks involved. Ofte...

Chapter 1138

“You were quite busy, my dear Jade,” Lady Hecate’s voice interrupted my quiet contemplation, what some might have called a prayer, especially as it happened in the newly created and sanctified shrine of the very deity who was now addressing me. Somehow, a small part of me could find the amusing irony in the fact that when I entered a shrine, a deity was taking the initiative and talk to m...

Chapter 1137

“Holy shit!” Luna’s exclamation made me frown for just a moment, wondering if I should reprimand her for the language used or if I should accept it as par for the course, as an exclamation simply necessary in this particular situation.

Following her gaze, I evaluated for a moment before nodding to myself and simply accepting that ‘Holy shit!’ was a perfectly apt description of t...

Chapter 1136

Grinning to myself, I wrapped the latest prototype of our anti-mosquito collar around my neck. Hopefully, this one would work well enough; it certainly looked promising in its utilisation of a combination of Ice and Death Magic. According to some of our previous tests, the idea with the most potential was to create a chill within the insects, as they were generally unable to withstand the winte...

Chapter 1135

“I’ll have to admit, I did not expect that,” I muttered to Luna after we remotely released our latest experiment into the wilds. We had been trying to figure out the best elements to imbue into different animals, trying to see if some species were inherently more biased towards certain elements or if elemental affinities were an entirely individual thing in beasts. In humans, I hadn’t c...

Chapter 1134

If there was one good thing about our continued travel north, it was that the animals in the forests and mountains of Montana were quite vicious. Maybe it was thanks to the system; maybe these beasties had been as aggressive as they were now before the change; it mattered little. What mattered was that the wolves, coyotes, bears, cougars and wolverines were teeming in the forests, sustained by ...

Interlude: A Crone's Musing

AN: Not too happy with the chapter. Hope you enjoy anyway.

Few things ever changed in Neyto, and even if they did, fundamentally, everything stayed the same. The world kept slowly turning on its axis, even if some insane dryad was trying to alter reality for their convenience or if some mountain spirit had its own mind about the way it should turn. Ultimately, things stayed the s...

Chapter 1133

A strange noise caused me to interrupt the work I was doing on an improved version of my magic bag and investigate. It didn’t come from outside of our camp, in which case I would have focused on making sure nothing was trying to attack us during the night, but, instead, the sound came from within; to be precise, it came from Luna. Walking over, I realised that my dear daughter was in the grip...

Chapter 1132

Following the strange tunnel was simplicity itself, though we remained cautious, just in case there were traps or something like that installed. My raven construct wouldn’t set those off, given that its mass was fairly negligible; only a few parts I conjured out of Ice, like the beak and the feet, had any real mass; the rest was made from the semi-tangible shadow, which didn’t really weigh ...

Chapter 1131

“Gah;” I couldn’t help but curse, annoyed at my consistent failure to figure out just what the hel was going on in Belgrade. I refused to believe that the town just happened to be abandoned without some very good reason, especially given that large parts of it had decayed at a normal, maybe even reduced, rate, meaning that those parts were as intact as houses could be after being abandone...

Chapter 1130

As all the things near the farm happened, our journey reached what once was Montana. Well, unless the system had pulled a very fast one and somehow moved us to Serbia or moved the city of Belgrade from Serbia to wherever we might be and gave it signs appropriate for Montana. By now, I wasn’t completely convinced that the second was impossible, but I considered the first possible option more l...

Chapter 1129

A part of me, a fairly large one even, regretted my actions. Sure, I had learned some quite interesting new things about the system, things that scared me to my core, but the price for those secrets had been steep, though luckily, it wasn’t me who had to pay the said price.

No, that price was being paid by all those living at the farm, all those who had been marked Oathbreaker, who suff...

Chapter 1128

Over the next few days, Luna and I continued to travel north while I observed the ongoing events back at the farm. Luckily, the paths Luna and I were walking on were fairly nice, almost certainly old hiking trails and strangely untouched by the change and subsequent events, making me once again wonder about the rhyme and reason there. Why did some roads deteriorate at a pace that made one think...

Chapter 1127

Continuing to observe the people at the farm was a somewhat surreal experience but also a deeply fascinating one. The surreal part came with the continued exposure to the Oathbreaker effect hammering my brain with the knowledge that these people were not trustworthy, making me wonder what long-time exposure would do to a person. It also made me wonder whether this hammering was the only aspect ...