Before making his final decision, Lukas checked what conjunction abilities Biomancy and Stormdragon’s Eye spawned together. It wouldn’t influence what he or the other clones received, but considering the complete future arsenal felt sensible.
Draconic Biology: Morph will either adopt draconic features like scales or claws, or grow arcane organs unique to dragons and their descendant species. Specimens or remains aren’t necessary like with animances, but they ...
2025-10-15 21:51:48 +0000 UTC
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The ritualists fell one at a time.
Only the first of them turned into dust. Then, anyone who strayed from their position around the ritual circle’s edge was torn to shreds. It looked like a giant invisible bird was taking chunks out of them. The most unnerving part of it for Lukas was that none of them bled. It looked like something was cutting neat chunks out of frozen corpses.
“What did you do?” Irma asked. All hope had left her voice. She was among the few who hadn’t mo...
2025-10-13 09:42:45 +0000 UTC
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Things started going wrong as soon as the ritual began.
All eyes went to the ceiling, ignoring the banging on the door. Muffled yells came through them, accompanied by the clashing of metal. None of the ritualists seemed to care. They had trust in Ephram’s guards. It wouldn’t surprise Lukas if the powerful artisan also brought in his Aquila agents to provide extra protection during their ritual. The Revolution was bound to know that he and the ‘shadow golems’ would put up ...
2025-10-10 18:09:12 +0000 UTC
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Lukas’s head was foggy. One moment, he was on the rail connecting the plateau with the Shadow Seeker’s fort to the district, the next, he was in a dark room, bound, gagged, and on his bottom. He tried to use his arcane senses and the sixth sense granted by Spellweaver to feel his surroundings, but failed. His brain was foggy. It felt as if he had indulged in too much to drink or was just recovering from a bad cold. The latter hadn’t bothered him in several decades, but he still remember...
2025-10-09 23:23:30 +0000 UTC
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The Shadow Seekers guild house had become a familiar environment. Lukas visited it to update Ogden on the investigation. The resident shopkeepers were always eager to appraise Eins and Zwei’s latest creations. He also liked checking their shard and essence stocks.
After recent clone projects, Lukas had Essence of Dragon, Essence of Dusk, Essence of Force, Essence of Beginnings, Essence of Bonding, and Essence of Quicksilver in stock. He had resolved not to hold onto them unless he fou...
2025-10-08 17:16:13 +0000 UTC
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If there were a happiness index of clones, Ace believed he would be at the top of it. Morph would come next since he had the most significant degree of freedom after him. Eins would follow as he genuinely loved everything to do with Arcane Smithing. However, that was likely to change in the near future when El-Prime turned him into Thor, the armored frontliner god. It was a fun mental image, especially given the beauty of the Storm Gauntlet and its still-work-in-progress armor.
They...
2025-10-05 20:14:56 +0000 UTC
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Alter Metal Mass has progressed to Rank 7!
Steel Weave’s flexibility and durability have increased at both weight extremes.
Spellweaver has progressed to rank 2!
Assistant Spindle’s arcane capacity has increased.
Lukas laughed, reading the journal messages.
“What is it, boss?” the newly resummoned Flukas asked. “Did Thunderstorm’s Eye make it to the threshold?”
“...
2025-10-04 18:21:47 +0000 UTC
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[Sorry folks. I've been down with a super high fever. Spent most of the last few days delirious and in bed. I'll make up for it with chapters throughout the weekend.]
It was no fun being a Stalker with Alter Metal Mass. El-Prime shoved clones like him into one of two roles.
Primarily, they functioned as scouts, reconnaissance, or infiltrators. Low mass gave them the ability to move at incredible speeds, which not even the obsolete speedster or rogue clones c...
2025-10-03 22:37:13 +0000 UTC
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“Why won’t it reach the fucking threshold?” Flukas groaned, slumping back in his chair. Lightningfire spheres floated around him, and a Shadowfire hovered in front of his floating hand. The clone had hoped that using two different kinds of magic at once would help push his Heart Pillar to wherever it needed to go, but he was wrong. “What more do we have to fucking do?”
The mage clone with Thunderstorm’s Eye shrugged. “I don’t know, substitute-boss. The books said Heart P...
2025-09-29 22:19:43 +0000 UTC
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Never enough clones.
The ‘special’ clones already used almost half of Lukas’s clone slots. Eins continued to toil in the workshop, crafting weapons and tools of varying strength and complexity. His fellow artisan clone didn’t have a unique shard, but was almost always spoken for, dividing his time between Irma and helping Eins complete his projects.
The ‘Infiltrate Aquila’ plan was going brilliantly. Morph was already a member, and there were talks of another ...
2025-09-26 06:25:10 +0000 UTC
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“Fight!” Shouted a woman from the floor above.
Xander moved first, charging. He slid along the stone floor without moving his legs, knees bent, and one round shield held in front of him. Morph had watched the man closely during the recent mission and was sure it was one of his primary shard abilities. It allowed Xander to move at high speeds in a straight line and stop at a moment’s notice without having to slow down or suffer whiplash. It wouldn’t surprise Morph if the ma...
2025-09-25 10:33:02 +0000 UTC
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“Rolls that add up to four or multiples of four are bad news, boss,” the new clone said. Playing with a pair of black metallic dice. Gold studs planted on all the sides served as the number markers. “Don’t ask me why. You probably read somewhere that in some cultures, four is a bad omen or something of the sort. And the dice have decided they’re bad news.”
“And your instincts tell you that?” Lukas asked, taking notes. He recalled a summer trip to China following his firs...
2025-09-24 05:39:04 +0000 UTC
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“We expected bad, not this bad,” Ogden said, slumping in his heavy metal armchair. It appeared uncomfortable, but didn’t seem to bother the man. Sections of it looked like joints, leaving Lukas to wonder whether it too was one of the guild leader’s mechanical exo-suits. “Can the former auditor’s death be connected to you?”
“The fire consumed most of the evidence, and Tori is the only witness,” Lukas answered, closing the office door. He caught sight of Tori wiping her ...
2025-09-23 07:25:10 +0000 UTC
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More notifications awaited Lukas when he returned home. He dispelled the clones still in the city and resummoned them straight away.
Arcane Smithing has progressed to Tier 5!
Strength and toughness have increased.
Minor ability upgrade available.
Arcane Smithing has progressed to Tier 6!
Magic metal creation abilities have improved.
Arcane Smithing has progressed to...
2025-09-22 05:31:56 +0000 UTC
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Lukas loved his spindle.
The only reason he accepted a familiar was because he loved the idea of a spell-casting assistant. It manifested as a forearm-wide wooden cylinder with a half-as-thick metal cylinder growing out of it. The latter had luminous threads wrapped around them. There was an equal division of colorless and black, and a small distribution of electric blue speckled with grey.
Stitch, as Lukas called it, wasn’t intelligent and lacked the necessary parts...
2025-09-19 08:52:16 +0000 UTC
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Lukas couldn’t be more pleased with his growth.
It went without saying that he owed it all to the clones. They were the reason he had covered ground that others had taken years to overcome. Apparently, the true barrier appeared after tier three. Esther had claimed progress slowed to a snail’s pace afterward and demanded significantly greater effort and breakthroughs.
Lukas checked the individual pages. The growth was substantial. He liked the Biomancy page the best.
The ...
2025-09-18 06:23:12 +0000 UTC
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Lukas’s theory proved correct.
The victims of the Void slugs all resided in the neighborhoods along the river. All basements and cellars contained evidence of body-snatched individuals. It seemed they remained in a dormant state until their master was threatened. The Void Lord was undoubtedly intelligent. It only used the individuals who were residents of Reistein for its purposes, saving the rest for when military mobilization was needed.
Leisel and Tori, the recently promoted ...
2025-09-17 05:07:28 +0000 UTC
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Lukas had hoped his role in the battle for Reistein—and Fracture since they were dealing with the Void—would be over after he took care of the ritual and set the floor on fire. Much to his disappointment, other concerns awaited him when he fled the building.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Master,” hissed the auditor’s apprentice. “He’s one of us. The guild—”
“The guild knows what we tell it,” the auditor replied. “Now, hush. Let me concentrate.” Haima sto...
2025-09-16 09:22:07 +0000 UTC
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Lukas looked inward, focusing on Spellweaver, and left the clones to their work. He trusted them to keep the enemy busy and off his back while he played with the threads of magic. The weave was far more complicated than anything he had encountered before, looking more like a dense tapestry than the cat’s cradles he had dealt with before. Lukas worried that tugging on a misidentified segment of the ritual would make things infinitely worse. He let his arcane feelers fiddle with them, trying ...
2025-09-15 08:25:36 +0000 UTC
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Lukas let the clones enter the building first. They used the same roof entrance as during their previous infiltration. The party intended to enter through the ground floor, as there were too many of them to go unnoticed, especially since both mages had prepared spells to assist with their infiltration. Bright and noisy weren’t ideal when stealth was of utmost importance. He waited until Haima and Xander had noisily rushed into the ground-floor workshop, giving any souls on the first floor t...
2025-09-13 15:21:37 +0000 UTC
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The auditor and her apprentice were both subjects of concern. Lukas set a clone on the pair while having Mira teach him psychic defense exercises. It was a good excuse to spend time with her, which didn’t set off Xander or Liesel’s alarm bells.
“That Morph is a character, isn’t he?” Mira commented, drawing on a piece of parchment. Her fingers moved with the precision and grace of a practised professional. It looked like a machine was printing the spellform on paper. “I don...
2025-09-13 07:40:00 +0000 UTC
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“What do you mean they tried to kill you?” Liesel demanded, frowning. The party had gathered in her and Mira’s suite. The auditor and her apprentice weren’t present, preferring to stay in their wagon. Neither Morph nor El-Prime had seen much of either of them since their arrival in Reistein, or at least didn’t remember interacting with the pair.
“I mean, they bonked the back of my head, slit my throat, and threw me in the river,” Morph answered, like it was no big de...
2025-09-12 19:08:26 +0000 UTC
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Using rituals to train Spellweaver was an expensive endeavor. Having the clones cast spells and unraveling the threads didn’t help as much as he had hoped, confirming Lukas’s suspicions that ascension required using all of an ability’s functions, not just repeating one element of it repeatedly. He left it alone for the time being, convincing himself to be patient and not rush. Even if he reached the threshold, Lukas wouldn’t get the opportunity to ascend until he returned to the Gray....
2025-09-10 21:54:52 +0000 UTC
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Lukas stirred from a deep slumber almost a full day later, still feeling exhausted and mentally drained. The ritual had taken more from him than he expected, awakening a new respect for Penelope. The sorcerer continued after casting as if it were just another spell. Lukas had almost lost consciousness half a dozen times during. The clones had to jump in and help him keep everything stable. One of the three had no choice but to dispel himself after his arcane shell started to destabilize, and ...
2025-09-09 22:47:50 +0000 UTC
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Morph didn’t really care that he didn’t get to visit the hot springs. He was constantly experimenting with his physiology under his clothes and wasn’t too keen on showing off the changes. Compressed lumps of biomass also covered his back and vitals. Morph had hardened their outsides, turning them into armor and padding.
I need to find some magical beasts. Copying special organs like dragon lungs would be incredible. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and El-Prime will give me the E...
2025-09-08 22:44:51 +0000 UTC
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Reistein came into view during the fifth day of their journey. The party hadn’t faced any trials following the giants’ attack. One of the stalkers sighted a warband of snowmen across the river. Their scout seemed to have also spotted the human group. Neither side attacked the other. Instead, both sides moved on, travelling in opposite directions.
“No point in attacking them if they’re not a threat,” Liesel commented. “The tribes war with one another. I wouldn’t be su...
2025-09-07 21:00:41 +0000 UTC
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Lukas couldn’t tell whether it was a part of the Aquila guild’s training regimen or if Mira and Xander were equally dedicated. The pair rose an hour before the rest of the party every morning. While everyone clung to the final minutes of slumber, they exercised and ran individual combat drills.
Xander split his shield into two so it looked like he was dual-wielding tower shields. Bashes, thrusts, and swings followed. Every surface, edge, and corner was a weapon to him. A clone...
2025-09-06 16:29:07 +0000 UTC
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“My name’s not Hammer,” the hammer-wielding vanguard member said, wincing as the auditor’s apprentice tended to his wounds. “It's Haima. Hai-Ma. Is that clear?”
“No need to get testy, Hammer,” Morph said, soothing the goats. He stroked their woolly necks. “What do your golems say, Sneak?”
“Four sets of giant tracks,” Lukas answered, glad that Morph was playing his persona well. “Fifteen warbeasts. Six survived and fled. I wouldn’t let our guards down, t...
2025-09-05 21:35:42 +0000 UTC
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“You’re on vanguard duty,” Xander whispered, rushing past Morph. It seemed the man had something akin to a Charge ability that allowed him to move at incredible speeds but only in straight lines, regardless of terrain. It wasn’t a spell. Otherwise, threads of arcane energy would’ve stood out to the clone. No matter how hard he tried, Morph couldn’t figure out Xander.
One moment, Morph thought the shieldbearer was an egomaniac who wanted to play hero. Next, he was a mysteriou...
2025-09-05 06:51:59 +0000 UTC
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Unlike the rest of the party, Lukas was delighted when the caravan came under attack. At first, it seemed like a swarm of burrowers had found the road. Leisel announced it was unusual and commanded a defensive formation straight away. They avoided frequently traversed regions, preferring areas heavy in stone and solid ice. Her seismic magic forced the swarm out of the ground. Xander, Morph, and the clones took them out swiftly.
Much to Lukas’s surprise, Morph masterfully used Sh...
2025-09-04 10:09:02 +0000 UTC
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