“He just argued with a wall of eyes. Ashrot didn’t say anything. It kind of rumbled a bit but I don’t think it was a positive response. So we’re going with Plan Number One. That’s final,” I said. This council of war was making me feel like a kid trying to get permission from my mum to play out late.
“Mond-” Jandak started.
“You guys an...
2025-04-04 19:30:58 +0000 UTC View Post“You have no records?” I asked in shock. The Legion had better records than your average tax enforcement organisation back home.
“We have records of the events and the ones who fell but we have no record of a Harvester dying of anything other than old age or violence. None of them went back, as far as we can tell,” Pertabon replied slowly.
I was jogging alo...
2025-04-02 19:48:11 +0000 UTC View Post“Wash first!” she snapped as I opened the door to follow her into our tent. I looked at the barrel of cold water next to me and grimaced. I stripped off and began scrubbing the soot off my skin. Once I was done and dressed I entered and found the tent smelled far more herbal than was the norm. The tea Fay had brewed smelled bitter, the dark liquid swirled in a bowl a...
2025-04-01 06:34:51 +0000 UTC View PostWilson had skulked over to where I lay and licked my face. He whined slightly but I reached up a charcoal-black hand and patted his snout.
“No worries, bloke. Not your kind of fight,” I muttered as I pulled myself upright and leant against the wolf’s shoulder. “Where the hell is–” I began before something slammed into the back of my knees, sending pain echoin...
2025-03-28 22:42:36 +0000 UTC View PostI led with a fireball from a ring, and the blue white ball of fire shot ahead of me towards the side of the thing. It was monstrous and constantly shifting its form but it was at least as high as a four storey house and almost as broad across at the bottom.
Rows of eyes blinked open for a moment then vanished back into the roiling flesh. As my projectile struck the side of the...
2025-03-26 20:57:49 +0000 UTC View PostI looked at my stat sheet and fought back a sigh. Just over four thousand Souls left. Sure, I was terrifying, I’d had to demonstrate my new abilities for the Fangs and Kril last night while I was handing out tens of thousands of Souls to long lines of nomads. I was still worried about what would happen when we met the main armies of the south. I wouldn’t be able to c...
2025-03-24 22:29:03 +0000 UTC View Post“Sorry boy, you scare the aurox,” I said. Wilson looked at me and whined faintly. “It’s probably the smell?” He sniffed his right foot and looked up before cocking his head to the side and giving me a look that made our link unnecessary.
“I know what my feet smell like,” I muttered, pointedly not looking at my bare soles. “G...
2025-03-21 21:36:27 +0000 UTC View PostWe headed back south far more quickly than we’d come north.
“How’s the ride?” I called, earning some harsh curses in response from the others. Somewhere, about fifty miles behind us, were two thousand freshly trained nomad cavalry following us to the muster point.
“I’m glad we got cushions!” Fay grumbled. 2025-03-19 20:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We slipped into the Pass unchallenged after blending with the other traffic. We passed the wooden palisades, towers, and the stone walls I’d made myself without anyone trying to confirm who we were. This struck me as an issue that would need to be addressed.
“Slack security,” I muttered, mostly to myself, but the others heard me.
“Mond, it’s not as though a ran...
2025-03-17 22:34:19 +0000 UTC View Post“You nearly bloody killed me so I could take your own bloody Source!” I snarled at the door. The avian face somehow shaped the beak into a grin in response to my complaints.
“These are powerful artifacts! No Harvester is allowed to just waltz in and claim them without a struggle, boy.” Aresk replied from the bird-faced door he was currently inhabiting.
“Great.&...
2025-03-14 20:40:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe first died not long after I started exploring the warren of tunnels that shouldn’t have been possible beneath the barrow. They moved up and down and if I’d been able to pour liquid metal in the opening and get a cast of the system I suspected it would look like an ant’s nest.
Various side rooms had yielded nothing, just barren spaces filled with dust. I was using the...
2025-03-12 20:46:17 +0000 UTC View PostIt took over a week to locate the entry point to the underground sections of the barrow at Hellath. In the end it came down to me running around with Shape Earth activated and mapping the substructure of the palaeolithic construction. Fay had given up complaining about me not wearing shoes.
I’d learned a lot of pretty useless information about how to layer monoliths and buil...
2025-03-10 21:21:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe thing that emerged from the Shape Soulbound Servant spell this time was markedly different compared to what I had done to Mulius. Marbo had eventually won the “opportunity” to let me turn him into an even more titanic monster than was his natural state of being.
Marbo was now ten metres long, perhaps fifteen metres tall, when he reared up on his hindlimbs. His long fel...
2025-03-07 20:43:50 +0000 UTC View Post“That’s a lot of vile-cats. How far did you go?” I asked as I loaded another half a dozen corpses into my storage space.
“Not far,” said Kos nonchalantly. I knew he was lying, I’d watched them rushing around in a twenty mile radius, clearing out all the forested areas as fast as they could. I had spent my time arguing with Mulius and casting heal on him. He w...
2025-03-05 20:48:39 +0000 UTC View Post“You’re first choice is that you tell me everything I want to know. This will earn you a painless death. The other is that me and the boys here make your life very painful. We’ll keep you alive using Heal and when we think we’ve gotten as much as we can from you we’ll hand you over to the women. Kos, remind me what the women do to shit-sitter prisoners again?...
2025-03-03 21:25:22 +0000 UTC View PostWe slipped through the night like ghosts. The Fangs and myself were sneaking closer and closer to the enemy camp while Mulius moved as quietly as possible a mile to our west. Glimpse could see him, he was hard to miss after all, and he was almost in position. I flashed the hold sign to my friends and we all slid to a stop, barely five hundred metres from the sea of undead that...
2025-02-28 20:43:30 +0000 UTC View PostI rolled off his back as Wilson leapt into the centre of the swarm of undead and came to my feet. As I was rising, I snatched one of the zombies by its leg with my left hand and carefully avoided gripping too hard. I didn’t want to turn the limb into paste like last time.
I spun in a circle, using the ambulatory corpse as a club to scatter its compatriots while I drew my sword wit...
2025-02-26 20:30:19 +0000 UTC View Post“Nuk, Mulius. I want to speak to you,” I called as I returned to the Legion camp. The feral- wild- Huskar both looked up from the lessons one of Bon’s officers gave the wild giants, then immediately glanced back at their instructor. That was a good sign.
The officer glowered then looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“It's important,” I said as ...
2025-02-24 18:50:51 +0000 UTC View PostSulk started a shuffling run after Klip, but I leapt over and snatched him up with one hand. I turned him to face me, and he dangled with his feet six inches off the ground.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. His legs swung back and forth as he kicked to be set free.
“They cleared the collapse! I need to be there now! That prick can’t be the one to cl...
2025-02-21 20:53:36 +0000 UTC View PostAuthors Note:
Apologies, I meant to add a note at the end of the last chapter but I've switched back from daily releases to the three a week that I planned as the norm. I'll keep you guys ahead and if i build more of a backlog... you'll be the first to know!
Thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy the story!
Chris
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2025-02-19 22:22:53 +0000 UTC View PostWhen we reached the pass I was riding a giant bronze wolf at the head of a long column of Huskars all garbed for war. Towards the rear were a couple of thousand smiths and crafters to bolster the productivity of the Pass and Riverwheel. Looking down from Glimpse I was at the head of a twisting serpent of Huskars that trailed kilometres behind me. The warbands of feral Huskars ...
2025-02-17 21:36:55 +0000 UTC View Post“How- Mars told you?” asked Pertabon. “No matter. Fine, we’ll make it available to you. Follow me.” The big friendly giant seemed a little less friendly once he became aware I knew about the stash, whatever might be in it. He led us slowly back down the winding trail that twisted along the cliff face until a few hours later we were once more on solid grou...
2025-02-16 20:28:33 +0000 UTC View PostThis wasn’t like the previous times I’d been exposed to Poseidon’s aura. This was a physical thing, pushing and pulling at me like I was standing waist deep in the sea. I was forced back against a wall that I was confident had been the tunnel entrance a moment ago. No escape, it seemed. I was committed.
I spent some mana on Enhancement and staggered forward a...
2025-02-15 20:52:42 +0000 UTC View PostIt had taken us two days of constant travel to get here. The Fangs and I had dozed on the giants shoulders as they ran tirelessly all that time. The air was constantly getting colder and thinner as we climbed from low rolling hills into a true mountain range. The Fountainhead lay at the base of one of the largest mountains I’d ever seen. As we grew closer to the damn thing s...
2025-02-14 21:28:07 +0000 UTC View PostMy tame Huskar fanned out to encircle the settlement as the fangs and I approached. They let the ones fleeing north escape but rounded the rest up and dragged them back into the central area of the town.
It was an almost perfect duplicate of the North Star settlement, rings of massive yurts interspersed with cooking fires and work areas. The survivors were generally smaller th...
2025-02-13 18:33:10 +0000 UTC View Post“What happened to the rest of your band?” demanded a particularly massive Ur-vile who had strode out from the camp to greet Nuk’s much reduced groups of warriors. The tents were massive, at least seven metres tall at their peaks and covering what seemed like huge areas compared to the Mondyn versions.
”We met a Harvester,” growled Nuk. The other giants had formed a b...
2025-02-12 18:21:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe Ur-viles had all started with C tier Body stats! No wonder they were considered unkillable by the tribes of the steppe. Their Mind stats were all at E grade or above as well. These things really were monsters compared to normal humans. I’d forced them to enhance their Body to B grade and to spend the left over Souls on upgrading their basic spells. They would...
2025-02-11 19:29:03 +0000 UTC View PostGlimpse had found something interesting. Our journey had been well timed as a warband of giants had been making their way south, no doubt with ill-intentions in mind. To be fair to them I had slaughtered all the little bands chasing me when I went mammoth hunting and the big bastards had probably taken it as a bad sign when forty odd of them suddenly vanished overnight. My con...
2025-02-11 19:27:48 +0000 UTC View Post“It’s impressive,” I muttered, shaking the sooty hand off my shoulder. “What’s production looking like?”
“That’s it? How much have you made me and why isn’t it more? This is the finest forge north of Jakervi! All I get is how much and why not more!” Klip grumbled as he led me towards the main building built alongside the wheel on this side of the town...
2025-02-11 19:23:37 +0000 UTC View Post“Jandak, follow Glimpse. He’ll lead you to the other sentries that are lollygagging. Break their left arms and send them back into town. We’re at war and screwing around rather than patrolling properly could kill a lot of our people,” I said. Glimpse circled down and brushed the top of Jandak’s steel helmet with his talons, causing a tinny screech. The bi...
2025-02-11 19:20:37 +0000 UTC View Post