Two weeks until the Krysali deadline. Six weeks until the incursion, hopefully. The elite deadline wouldn't change, but the incursion very well could.
Kai couldn't always wait until the elites had a teleporter ready, so he sometimes flew between cities using Thunderbird's Wings. It felt good to push himself, though in the long stretches he wondered if he was just running from his problems...
2025-09-11 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostCorpses didn't generally mean much to Omilaena. They were a fact of life, maybe a message of some kind, maybe just materials for someone, maybe absolutely meaningless. This one, however, left her standing and contemplating for longer than she cared to admit.
The body that had once been Boreas still glistened slightly.
Even though she had been the one to fight him, Omilaena respected...
2025-09-09 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostThey arrived hovering over the mobs, only a crystal ship between them and the chaos.
Though the mobs were just chaotic masses at first, Kai had experience with such battles, especially in Krysal. This wasn't the nation he'd left, but the sides were still representing themselves according to old allegiances: the ex-crystalliers wore masks of arrogance, while the ex-slaves carried an aura o...
2025-09-08 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostWanting to help Krysal was well and good, but the problem was that everyone else was trying to help too, often in opposite directions. Kai could make a difference in any given location, yet he still felt as though the city states were tilting toward chaos. It got to the point that whenever he was interrupted by anyone, he assumed that another disaster had struck.
That instinct almost made...
2025-09-05 17:00:28 +0000 UTC View PostIt was just the three of them in the room, finally free of crowds, distractions, and hopefully politics. Normally, this was home for Kai, the one place he could truly relax. Given the recent revelations, it might not be so restful now.
"Is it true?" Zae Zin Nim asked. Her face was nearly expressionless, except her eyes were slivers of obsidian.
"I already told you," Omilaena said, "...
2025-09-04 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostAt first, Kai struggled to even understand what he had heard. For all that he'd grown up from the young man he had once been, the idea of having a child - much less a child that he was completely unaware of - was baffling.
Was it possible? He looked first to the mother, trying to remember if she was among the ex-slaves who had joined in him the raucous celebrations, and felt ashamed to ad...
2025-09-02 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostAs Omilaena decanted the qi crystals, she was, in a sense, pretending to work. Oh, she was actually processing them, and this was a meaningful part of research, but her mind wasn't focused on it. She checked the intensity of the qi, made a little note to herself, and then peered over her equipment.
Her real project, basically ever since they had left Irun, was observing the other two.
... 2025-09-01 17:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostWhen they teleported into Krysal, for a moment Kai felt a strange sense of disorientation. The city in front of him was familiar, yet he couldn't put a name or even any experiences to it. Presumably it was one that he must have fought in during the revolution, one of many he had gone through in a haze of exhausted bloodlust.
The problem was strange but immediately obvious: the city's guar...
2025-08-29 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostZae Zin Nim was an unparalleled cultivator, with an unprecedented level of strength at Earth Soul. She had crushed multiple sects and was feared as a matriarch across all the Eastern Plains. Currently she was exploring the paths of power with her spouses, who were if anything even more formidable, and she saw only a bright future ahead.
Somehow, she ended up acting as babysitter.
Ev...
2025-08-28 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostIrun was a fucking mess. A more powerful mess than when Omilaena had gone unconscious, but she was still a bit irritated at how many things had gotten off track. Since the others had gone to so much effort to help her, she tried to spin it as a positive challenge. Not very successfully.
Everyone on her original Ironbody Physique path was doing fine: they could absorb metal from her new po...
2025-08-26 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostAs they lay together in their bed in Tusquo's home, Kai emerged from the warm haze with a strange sense of clarity. Despite the stereotypes, he realized that the sex was far more important to him than just reinforcing that Omilaena was alive and well. He was driven, on a level he hadn't understood, by a fear of loss: of his friends, his home, and now his relationships. For all that he went on a...
2025-08-25 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostJuray was losing blood at a terrifying rate and her eyes were unfocusing, so they might not have much time. Kai held her neck steady and opened her lips while Zae Zin Nim tried to force the potion into her mouth.
For a terrible moment he feared that it wouldn't work and he had just killed Juray.
As some of the potion made it into her throat, she swallowed, slowly at first and then m...
2025-08-22 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostThey returned to Omilaena's pool, which normally would be under higher security, but no one stopped Kai as he marched in with Juray. There, they found Zae Zin Nim still over Omilaena's body, snarling at an Irunian who was trying to extract some metal. Her cultivation left her looking as elegant and composed as always, yet something in her eyes and the slight dishevelment of her hair gave her th...
2025-08-21 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Kai hit the ground, he roared, and devastation surged from him. He hurled more attacks than he ever would normally, blasting in all directions. Anger deep within him longed to unleash Baleful Breath that would annihilate everything in his path, but he restricted himself to slashes, spines, and tail strikes, all deployed at much weaker than their normal strength.
The Irunians running ...
2025-08-19 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostHaving done all he could, Kai stood still as chaos unfolded around him.
There was lots of shouting from the Irunians, but the sound that hurt most was the quiet strangled sob from Zae Zin Nim. She threw herself forward, embracing Omilaena with little regard for the liquid metal staining her robes. With desperate energy, she placed a hand over their wife's stomach, her own qi surging out.<...
2025-08-18 17:00:34 +0000 UTC View PostDirectly approaching Quinta had clearly not worked so, feeling vaguely creepy the entire time, Kai arranged for them to meet "accidentally". Like all noble Irunian women, Quinta engaged in regular weapons training, so Kai found out her schedule and then arrived there first for his Physique training.
The first day she didn't arrive - not even a hint of her, though that would have been her ...
2025-08-15 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostOmilaena was deep into her work, practically in a trance, when the other two showed up. Part of her was almost annoyed for a moment, since she was so busy that she had no time for distractions. And yet their expressions...
She remembered that these two were her lovers, not a distraction, and removed her goggles. "What is it?"
"These are for you." Zin Nim shoved an armful of syringes...
2025-08-14 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostOver seven years ago, Kai had been in the wastelands with Zae Zin Nim, contemplating a barrier within his soul, and now he found himself in basically the same place. True, he was an order of magnitude more powerful, and they were married, and this was as elites instead of as exiles, but the parallel amused him.
In theory, actually obtaining the soul-expanding material was the difficult pa...
2025-08-12 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostOmilaena admitted that she had been arrogant. Oh, she freely acknowledged that in general, it was just that usually she considered her pride to be entirely justified. But this... there had been a part of her that had assumed she could easily outperform one of the Frontier elites with just part of her attention.
Apparently not. She'd needed a decisive win and instead she'd gotten something...
2025-08-11 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostSoon the stone arena was filled with two Irunian units, mirror images of one another in body and uniform. There were differences in their souls, and those differences were the key to the whole competition, but Kai saw Pourila walk out between the sides and focused his attention on her.
"We have only months until the incursion," she began, "and Irun still needs to prepare. With limited res...
2025-08-08 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostKai had been in a lot of tight situations in his time, but usually had a fair amount of control over them. No matter how much fate stood in his way, no matter how overwhelming his opponents might be, at least he could fight himself. Now the competition with Yuinafal would be decided by the Irunian trainees and he could only watch.
Omilaena had been taking point on this, and that made the ...
2025-08-07 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostDue to being banished, Kai had never actually gotten to take on the role of a senior hunter, guiding the next generation through the Hunter Trials. He supposed that technically he had helped Zae Zin Nim awaken a Class, though that had involved stealing the mana pool and had only worked due to her talent. This time he'd done things more properly... yet he still worried as he paced outside the gu...
2025-08-05 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostThere was enough going on for Omilaena, which meant it was too much for everyone else. So many political concerns, so many events and deadlines, even three separate lines of projects. Another woman might have been confused, but she simply split herself...
.
..
.
As valuable as it was, as unquestionably beneficial as it had been, as fortunate as they were to do it... robb...
2025-08-04 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostGunjin's promise was more than just words: Kai immediately received a scroll that could communicate to all its sibling scrolls, creating an elite network, which granted him the ability to request teleportation at will. It was a huge privilege, and he felt a grateful impulse not to waste it. So, as much as he wanted to go visit Zae Zin Nim, he restricted his teleportation to mission critical tri...
2025-08-01 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostDespite the promise of conversation, they said nothing for some time. Gunjin conferred with Pourila, picked up a wrapped package, then opened another portal. When Kai stepped through it, they stepped out atop the Frontier wall. Wasteland stretched in all directions, nearly featureless. The two men stood side by side, staring out, saying nothing.
Had conversation ever come easily for them?...
2025-07-31 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostAs they jumped through the layers of security, Kai wondered how many other non-Irunians had been allowed to see the nation's most desperate secret, much less multiple times. It was familiar to him by now, but Mariyay watched in wide-eyed astonishment as they were teleported to hide the location, then entered the ominous corridor.
When they reached the metallic pool itself, she was amazed ...
2025-07-29 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostNormally when Kai needed to hit specific timing for moving around the continent, in this case via Irunian elites, he reached the location and cultivated until they arrived. Competent teleporters were valuable, after all, and he didn't want to waste their time. Today, however, even though he needed to meet Tusquo at the top of the hour, he lingered with Omilaena.
She had spent most of the ...
2025-07-28 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostWhat followed was a meal that was technically hospitable and felt utterly icy to Kai. The strange thing was that Tusquo seemed unbothered by it, and his wife was so difficult to read that he couldn't be sure what to think of the entire affair. She was unfailingly polite, and Tusquo had clearly spoken well of them, yet Kai was left with the clear impression that she disliked him.
During th...
2025-07-25 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostUnlike their other trips, Kai was teleported into Irun with little idea where he was going. His only previous trip had been to the western regions, near the Frontier, and he knew a little about the northeast near Birtaegal. But this time the elites dropped off Mariyay in a southeastern city before leaving Kai and Omilaena in the far regions of Irun.
And the reason for that lay ahead: a st...
2025-07-24 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Cognosticon here. Four chapters a week is weird, but I like having Wednesdays to throw in announcements, questions, or in this case a cover reveal. This is the planned cover for the fifth arc/book. I've held off on putting all three main characters together, and on reprising the skull theme, for this climactic arc.
Chapters tomorrow as usual.
2025-07-23 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post