Downstairs, Rhys immediately got to work. Their new influx of workers needed to be familiarized and put to work on the farms, or in the shops. Unfortunately, they all had to be back-of-shop workers...
2025-07-19 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sun filtered in the window. Birdsong filled the air. Rhys opened his eyes and breathed deep, enjoying the pale light of early morning. He felt wildly refreshed, far more comfortable than he had las...
2025-07-18 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Of course, now that they had people, what they needed the most were cores. With about forty left, and a conversion rate of 3-ish kills to one core (assuming a Tier 1 core—the price was lowered by...
2025-07-17 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Mouse fought the mages in the forest; or rather, it looked far more like an elaborate game of backwards hide-and-seek was going on in the forest, with all the low-tier mages as the seekers and Mous...
2025-07-16 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
The fireball flew forth. It loomed large in Rhys’s vision, eclipsing the moon, then the sky, then everything. He reached into his trash star, and called back to his earliest days. It was time to ...
2025-07-15 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys finished up at that camp, wiping out the Tier 1s and 2s with ease. Several of the mages wanted to join them, though a few only wanted to escape and simply leave the Empire forever. Rhys restor...
2025-07-14 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys crouched at the edge of his camp, or rather, the one he’d assigned to himself. It was the most hazardous of all of them: a filthy mine that handled stones that exploded, sometimes, leaving t...
2025-07-13 14:09:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
They arrived back at the base in record time. Lira, who’d taken a different route that involved more water, had gotten back first, and Sable wasn’t long behind them. Rhys gathered all his fight...
2025-07-12 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Honestly, he should’ve seen it coming. The void wasn’t somewhere people were supposed to be. It was most akin to outer space. When he was a soul-slash-mana-construct, that didn’t matter. He w...
2025-07-11 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Come here, you!”
The curse scudded away from him, as if it knew what he was going to do to it. He chased it down, refusing to let it escape. Gripping the lump of trash and impurities tha...
2025-07-10 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
It was frustrating that the solution was right before his eyes. If his core wasn’t broken, he would have no problem compressing his mana. He could cultivate this energy like normal, and everythin...
2025-07-09 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys rushed into the sunlight. Thanks to Mouse’s warning, he was braced for an attack, but none came. Instead, he found himself at the end of a short path. At the other end, three mages stood aro...
2025-07-08 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
A/N: Realized I made a mistake RE: the Warden's tier last chapter, and adjusted some of Rhys's internal thoughts to match. Sorry about that, folks! Thanks for letting me know. Better I fix ...
2025-07-07 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
The place the woman had led them was in the next city, Anabita. It was an old, decrepit-looking two story tavern at the very edge of what could be considered the city proper, and as she pointed it ...
2025-07-06 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
Lira, Mouse, and Sable caught up with him halfway to the nearest criminal-run farm. Rhys was so lost in his thoughts, working out his plans, that he barely noticed, even with the clatter of Sable...
2025-07-05 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
One cursed bone and a well-load of trash and impurities later, Rhys raced home in the skeleton rider’s grasp, urging the rider on faster and faster, to higher and higher speeds. Someone might be ...
2025-07-04 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
They marched on. Or rather, the skelly boy marched, while Rhys lounged in its arms like some lazy waste of space. He’d stopped pondering the new technique a while ago when the cursed energy seeme...
2025-06-27 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Trash can distribution was easier than Rhys had expected, but then, perhaps he should have expected it to be easy, when he’d already taken control of a multi-city criminal logistics network. The ...
2025-06-26 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys charged into the void before he could think about it any longer. He burst out of the confines of his core into a by-now-familiar darkness and immediately stopped. There were things in the void...
2025-06-25 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
He spent some time explaining to the Water Syndicate the basics of what he expected from them. The general mood in the camp went from tense, to confused, to totally lost. He hadn’t expected them ...
2025-06-24 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Two Tier 3 mana signatures closed in on them, looping toward them from either side. Rhys devoured another tomato and pulled out a third, eating it so fast that tomato juices ran down his face, ming...
2025-06-23 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys leaped away. His bones creaked and his joints ached, but the quick patch-job he’d done to heal his legs held for now. He needed more time to let Self-Regeneration properly patch him up, but ...
2025-06-22 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys would have liked to keep the banter up for a little while longer, personally, but there was no time. The other high-Tier signatures were rapidly approaching. If he waited any longer, he’d be...
2025-06-21 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Stop.”
Rhys stopped obediently, always a rule follower when it was convenient for him, anyways. A figure approached him from dead on, a slender woman who narrowed her eyes at him. “Who...
2025-06-20 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
Snake Robes reached into one of his sleeves and withdrew a long, coiled whip. He released it, and the coils smacked the ground one after another with more weight and heft than a whip that size shou...
2025-06-19 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Mouse had given him a map and a very detailed rundown on how to reach the Water Syndicate, and it wasn’t hard for him to locate it with her map and description. He wasn’t directionally gifted h...
2025-06-18 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys didn’t hesitate. He’d already made up his mind, so he had to move immediately. After all, there were two options: he waited until they forgot about Lira, then attacked, or he attacked imme...
2025-06-17 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys hovered in his core, contemplating the void. He thought he had a good enough comprehension of it to manipulate it, but that clearly wasn’t the case, when it refused to so much as come when h...
2025-06-16 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Rhys wandered through the sewers, absorbing trash as he went. This was close enough that he could return in a flash, but not so far that he had to worry about the others handling a member of the Wa...
2025-06-15 14:00:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
“To the northeast!” Leonard burst out.
Rhys blinked. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Was Leonard lying? Well, it doesn’t matter. I have enough men to verify without going m...
2025-06-14 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
View Post