9 - Two Masks (3)
It wasn’t just humans and human-like monsters being torn apart and put back together in here.
Ellen coughed, trying not to gag as we looked down at a pit filled with…something. They could have been big rats, small wolves, or spiders. But instead, they were all three; four legs to the ground, a pink tail and too-long teeth, and four flailing, co...
2025-07-17 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post8 - Two Masks (2)
“Okay, your team is cleared to proceed, Delver Carlson,” the Governing Council rep said from the shadows around the blazing yellow portal that had appeared inside Chase Field. The old baseball stadium hadn’t housed a professional game in twenty years, and it had fallen into disrepair, but the portal still needed to be cleared; the last thing we nee...
2025-07-16 13:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post7 - Two Masks (1)
I hadn’t been to Jeff’s house since high school, so I hadn’t known he’d moved.
And I didn’t expect him to be slumming it even more than I had.
But when Deimos finally parked next to Jeff’s truck outside his apartment complex on the north side of Peoria and I looked at the run-down, pre-Portal Blitz motel he was living in, I couldn...
2025-07-15 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post6 - Pack Bonding (4)
Kade: Hey, Jessie woke up having a bad pain day. We’re going to take the bus so we can get her chair to the GC center. Don’t worry about picking us up.
Ellen: No problem. I’ll see you there. Ariette’s Grimoire and Brendan’s Hymnal, right?
Kade: Right, and anything you can find about Paragons, ranks beyond S,...
2025-07-14 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post5 - Trial of Consolidation (2)
I’d expected the Stormsteel Core’s interference.
But not the God of Thunder’s.
The dragon’s wings beat the sky overhead—how he’d gotten here, I had no idea, but the wind from his hovering slammed into the ground hard enough to shake it and forced me back, step after step. He was driving me away from m...
2025-07-13 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostHello, free members. I confused a couple of you folks last time I did this, so here's a heads-up. I'm going to be climbing a mountain tomorrow, and I won't have coverage, so I'm unlocking tomorrow's chapter today! Yippee!
4 - Trial of Consolidation (1)
With Jessie’s safety in less doubt now that she was doing…something…with Ellen, I had nothing stoppi...
2025-07-12 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post3 - The Storm's Laws
I sold the core to Jessie.
It hurt to do it, but she paid me fair market price, minus my percentage of the five percent fee.
Then I handed the money right back to her the second we were back in our apartment and she put the tablet down. “Do you have a fund for guild stuff? If not, we need to start one. That’ll be a good start.”
2 - Soloist (2)
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as I finished killing a pack of wolves at the edge of a clearing in the pines. From the moment I’d finished my fight with the hunter mound, I’d been traveling down a rocky slope with treacherous footing and muddy paths. And the whole time, I’d been fighting this pack.
There had been at least a dozen wolves, ...
2025-07-10 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post1 - Soloist (1)
Queen Mother Yalerox, Paragon of the Hurricane, remembered.
She’d ruled a continent, from sea to acidic sea. Her wants were her minions’ needs, her innumerable children swarmed forth from the searing-hot breeding pit at the center of her floating palace, and the world trembled anytime she so much as glanced its way.
And then, she was here. ...
2025-07-09 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post59 - The Gauntlet is Thrown (2)
User: Kade Noelstra
E-Rank
Stamina: 300/300, Mana: 400/400
Skills:
1. Stormsteel Core (D-03, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)
2. Thunderbolt Forms (D-01 to D-02, Altered, Merged)
3. Mistwalk Forms (E-10 to D-01, Altered, Merged)
4. Cyclone Forms (E-08 to E-10, Altered, Merged)
5. Sunbeam...
58 - The Gauntlet is Thrown (1)
When the S-Ranked portal appeared in the middle of downtown Phoenix, Angelo Lawrence’s day went from bad to worse.
He stared at his phone for a moment. So did everyone else staged outside the A-Rank portal at Sky Harbor. They hadn’t gone in. Not yet.
“I am making a strategic decision,” he said slowly, thinking over his o...
2025-07-07 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post57 - The God of Thunder (3)
“What?”
The question escaped my lips before I could stop it. More followed. “Your pupil? What does that mean? And can I say no?”
“Kid, you won’t want to say no, trust me. The Stormsteel Path’s a tough one to walk. Tallas was one of the better ones on it, but not the best. You’ve got the potential to be better tha...
2025-07-06 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post56 - The God of Thunder (2)
I couldn’t beat Tallas directly.
He was too strong.
I needed an idea. I needed time to think of one.
So, as I focused on the Stormsteel Core and appeared, already sitting cross-legged, atop the mountain in the desert, I deliberately ignored the pounding rain and driving wind. Today, there was no lightning, t...
2025-07-05 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post55 - The God of Thunder (1)
My body shivered, my clothes drenched through completely. I lay on my back in a puddle, but bright sunlight pushed through my eyelids.
No. Not sunlight. It was…wrong. Too white, not yellow enough, and there was no warmth to the glow. I forced my eyes open, expecting to be blinded by whatever was causing the intense light.
I stood ...
2025-07-04 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post54 - Surge (5)
One second, Ellen’s hands were covered in Kade’s blood as she desperately tried to put pressure on his severed femoral artery. Yasmin was yelling at her, and a golden light was all but searing her eyes, even through her eyelids.
The next, a dozen electrical burns sent waves of pain up her arms, and she was wrist-deep in the pool of blood—both Ka...
2025-07-03 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostPatreon has reverted the text uploader, so I can once again include ePubs. I don't know how long this will last, but for now, we're back in business!
◄▼►
53 - Surge (4)
The empty city was just that—empty.
We pushed deeper into it, past the half-timbered buildings with stone first floors and through a market. Blood covered the cobbles the...
2025-07-02 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post52 - Surge (3)
Thunderbolt Forms had hit E-10 in the fight against the Blood Orc Revitalist. Since then, I’d been on the edge of a revelation. It had felt like torture. The skill wanted to rank up, the Law wanted to be learned, and it would either happen now or it would happen later.
There were valid, good reasons to delay it—like being able to ...
2025-07-01 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post51 - Surge (2)
I was correct.
Things did not get any easier as we approached the besieged city’s walls.
If it weren’t for Cheddar and Pepperoni, flying high above us, they would have gotten a lot harder. The trenches weren’t a trap. But they were a maze of bridges, crisscrossing ditches, and fortified bunkers that all looked li...
2025-06-30 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post50 - Surge (1)
Governing Council Private Message:
Status: Extreme Emergency
Due to a lack of teams and an unclaimed, low-difficulty C-Rank portal in the Peoria area, your team has been temporarily authorized to delve C-Rank portals. Your team’s leader has approved the authorization and confirmed a group of six is available for this clea...
2025-06-29 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post49 - Final Skills
The next morning, after Jessie got on the bus for school, Ellen and I met at the Peoria GC.
It was shocking how dead it was. The library was completely empty; it seemed like every delver in Phoenix was on duty, and honestly, I couldn’t blame them. With the surge running, there were more than enough portals opening to go around—it was an opportu...
2025-06-28 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostHello readers. Patreon has once again changed the system for uploading files. I don't see a way to upload ePub files within it. I'm working on finding a solution, but in the meantime, if you're an ePub enjoyer, I'm sorry.
48 - The Final Merge
We ended up clearing three more: a second and third D-Ranked portal, then two blue-light E-Ranks. Jeff got increasin...
2025-06-27 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post47 - Pizza Party (4)
The actual creation of Dimensional Anchor took less than a minute. I simply marked the location I wanted anchored—the hilt of my Stormsteel rapier—and followed the steps in the book. A single-use Script to make the Binding permanent. The Binding itself, etched into the portal metal. And enough Mana to force it to activate.
F...
2025-06-26 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post46 - Pizza Party (3)
“Why?” I asked.
Jessie smiled widely, almost like she’d just told a joke and was expecting a laugh. Then the smile turned into a smirk. “I mean, you promised. And also, Ellen’s is going to get named Pepperoni.”
“Why?” I asked again. I had no idea how Ellen would take that, but it likely wouldn’t be good.
...
2025-06-25 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post45 - Pizza Party (2)
“Crap, crap, crap!” I yelled.
“What?” Jessie shouted from the other side of the door.
I shook my head and focused on the hatchling. It was writhing in agony, thrashing hard enough to scrape its soft, fragile scales free on the bathroom cabinet and bathtub side. But all that was physical pain; it’d be able to fix it with Health la...
2025-06-24 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post44 - Pizza Party (1)
Ellen Traynor was ‘driving’ as fast as she could.
In actuality, Deimos was doing the driving. The AI-powered car was pushing thirty over the speed limit on the 202, weaving in and out of traffic like a professional racecar. Under normal circumstances, Ellen would have simply been excited. But Deimos’s driving was the farthest thing from he...
2025-06-23 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post43 - Spellblade
My next opportunity for skill leveling came in the form of a portal break—an instantaneous, D-Ranked one. It unleashed monsters across the old canal from the Colorado River and into some of the north-side neighborhoods, and an all-points bulletin went out to help hunt them down. They didn’t want S-Rankers. Low-ranks only. A perfect leveling chance.
... 2025-06-22 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post42 - Speed Kills
Ellen and I had no time to lose.
According to her, the eggs could hatch any day, at any time. Taking the heat lamp away might buy me a couple of hours, but not much more than that. I had to get this next skill merged, and fast.
If anything, she was a bit ahead of me, since she’d found a team to run with and had a couple of E-Rank portals und...
2025-06-21 13:13:11 +0000 UTC View Post41 - A Very Merry Birthday
Five days later, we hadn’t seen any signs of Roadrunners.
The GC rep had gotten them all to the hospital, collected the Council’s five percent from us, and left me with my next core. And after that, we’d all laid low—except for Ellen. She couldn’t afford to stop.
I pulled up my status, staring at the ceiling in my room.
... 2025-06-20 13:14:26 +0000 UTC View Post40 - Traps (4)
Portal Collapse In: 58:13
Carter stared at the timer as it ticked down. He’d been hoping that the boss would kill Kade and his team. That’d have been the simplest solution—a clean, honorable death for Kade, and his own hands free from blood.
Lacking that, he’d hoped to ambush the other team while they were fighting. That...
2025-06-19 13:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post39 - Traps (3)
Mardou, Tower Scriptsmith: D-Rank
The boss was weird. For one thing, he was named. Most bosses weren’t named until B-Rank portals; that was when the shift from unknown monsters to ones with reputations occurred. There were horror stories about some of them: dragons, orc warlocks, and insanely powerful knights whose blows could crate...
2025-06-18 14:12:44 +0000 UTC View Post