John Williams
Stories
9
Chapters
3,072
Words
1.2 M
Comments
0
Reading
4 d, 2 h
-
Working for a god involved more tedium than Raine had first imagined. It wasn’t sufficient to simply rank up. She had to ensure she could do what her Patron needed, and sometimes that meant delving the same dungeon on repeat, no matter how frustrating it might be. Even worse, no matter how many times she fought the same dungeon guardian, it still took care and she couldn’t afford to be careless. Cato couldn’t resurrect them just yet. Even knowing that, she still barely dodged the massive club. The…-
186 •
-
-
The chains fell away. It was suddenly free, expanding into the space surrounding it, something like its prior home and yet very much not. It flowed through the extended web of connections, finding no dungeons or towns like it had known, but at the same time dozens of senses it didn’t have before. Rooms and mechanisms revealed themselves, entire worlds unfurled in places that didn’t seem to truly exist. In one of those strange spaces it found User Onswa, which it found puzzling because it had…
-
186 •
-
-
Raine dashed toward the teleportation pylon as they cleared the portal at a dead run, close on Leese’s tail as some of their pursuers emerged from the portal behind them. She glanced back, to count how many of the Golds and Silvers had shoved their way through now that the barrier was gone, only to see the portal turn transparent, cutting off the flow of people. But she had no time to consider it further, as ahead of her Leese slapped her hand against the pylon and vanished. Raine followed suit. She…
-
186 •
-
-
The moment the golden dome appeared over the estate, an oppressive force nearly drove Raine to her knees. Without her usual essence sensory Skills she was blind to the sheer presence, but his Skill bore down on them with a weight that was impossible to deny. Arene was less affected, her defensive Skills making her scales smolder and bright pinpoints appearing in her palms as she raised her hands in preparation. Then the Grand Paladin arrived in a thunderous crash, arcing out of the sky like a gold-plated…
-
186 •
-
-
Raine Talis, no longer of the Gosruk Guardians, woke with a start. The last thing she remembered was lying down in one of Cato’s odd cots, planning how she was going to get through the portal while the other her lured out the Bismuth. Yet she was not in a cot, but rather clothed and armored and strapped into a familiar seat — the contraption Cato had used to bring her back down to Sydea. She glanced around, finding Leese and Dyen stirring in the other seats. Reflexively she tried to bring up the…
-
186 •
-
-
It was one thing to know a Bismuth was powerful. It was another entirely to Raine’s tail curled into itself as the Clan Tornok Bismuth emerged from the top of the Nexus, dragging Onswa behind him. The Bismuth was dressed in gleaming golden armor, finely crafted and bearing Clan Tornok’s crest upon it, each piece of the articulated armor likely worth more than all the equipment on Sydea, collectively. Yet for all that finery Raine thought there was something ugly about the slinky, rodent-like Bismuth,…
-
186 •
-
-
Grand Paladin Nikhil Tornok meditated before the System pylon at the center of the temple, subtly channeling his keystone Skill, . Ever since heard that Copper’s strange testimony, it had been nudging him to stay, to consider, to commune. He didn’t know what the gods had in mind just yet, but he had complete faith that there was a reason he was supposed to wait. His faith was rewarded when suddenly blazed to life, the energy of the System pouring into him. Visions arose in his mind, of towns on Sydea…
-
186 •
-
-
“I’m not sure you quite understand what you’re asking,” Cato told the two Sydeans as they rode the warframe back to town from the Gold-rank dungeon they had just conquered, fulfilling one of the requirements for their Gold-rank quest. He knew that someone would ask to become postbiological eventually, but it had still managed to surprise him. “Scratch that, I “Are you “Absolutely certain,” Cato assured her. “But my people took a long time to adjust to the way digital consciousness…
-
186 •
-
-
“So, don’t try to negotiate?” “No, that’s incredibly stupid,” Raine told Cato. “I had to ask,” Cato said mildly. His first thought, even after all his experience with the high-rank psychopaths the System created, was to try and talk to the Bismuths. Threaten them, perhaps demonstrate that he could harm them, pressure them one by one and use the capitulation of one to convince the others. But he’d at least had enough foresight to run the idea past both the Platinums and the sisters,…
-
186 •
-
-
Cato rolled his shoulders as his Sydean frame stepped out onto the grass. Even if they had a humanoid frame, Sydean joints had a different feel to them, not to mention the sensorium was subtly different. It wasn’t the abstract informative tracking of the warframe, or the conventional human senses. The olfactory bulb did its own processing of scent before it hit the hindbrain, and the altered visual cortex shifted his familiar color palette and depth perception toward something more appropriate for the…
-
186 •
-
- Previous 1 … 196 197 198 … 308 Next
