A/N: As a quick note, I've moved the Jerome chapter to Book 2, so the chapter numbers are different - content is all still the same. This is the new chapter 11. Thanks for reading!
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"We did what."
Talking to himself was still... uncomfortable. Xothok saw in this other version of him all the things he could have been, and something about that was deeply uncomfortable. It didn't help that Kothos — as they had decided to call him, since it was sli...
2023-01-02 16:14:45 +0000 UTC
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Clyde returned in short order with a small fistful of reality shards clutched awkwardly in his fingers. He was holding them gingerly, almost, like he was afraid they were going to explode. Belle stared at him.
"Why are you holding them like that?" she asked.
"You said they're pocket universes," Clyde said. "I didn't think it was safe to toss them around."
"I said almost!" The scientist rolled her eyes and grabbed the shards from a grinning Clyde, turning to deposit ...
2022-12-30 15:21:47 +0000 UTC
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"You have to understand, it's been getting harder and harder to make new glyphs," Clyde explained.
It had taken a while to get everyone calmed down. Clyde himself had to start herding people back to town, though many of them insisted on staying and seeing what the effect of the new glyph was. There his wife Belle had taken charge, insisting that testing a new glyph surrounded by civilians was a terrible idea.
In fairness, Derivan's Sign was unlikely to cause harm to anyone — but...
2022-12-28 14:36:58 +0000 UTC
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As bold a statement as Vex had started with, there wasn't yet much for him to go on — the idea that magic drew from a physical place, even, was something that was new to him. Vex had told Derivan he wanted a bit of time to mull on it, which seemed like a better plan than Derivan's own thought of "push as hard as possible in Shift and try to take them to this new place".
They needed to stay here, and they needed to avoid breaking things in the bonus room for as long a...
2022-12-26 17:42:56 +0000 UTC
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Derivan stared at the field ahead of them. Vex had absolutely scattered the place with glyphs — some of them from the basic set, others theoretical, and still others combinations that he had already tried, that embodied new and distinct concepts. He'd even shown off some of the ones he'd used against —
—Well. Against the echo of his father.
Derivan noticed the shadow that fell across Vex's face whenever he looked at one of those glyphs. He almost told Vex he didn't ...
2022-12-23 17:30:45 +0000 UTC
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Both Norams stared at the system window. Neither of them knew how to react — neither of them knew what a soul link was. Just from the name it seemed too intimate a thing to share with a stranger they'd only just met.
But the system is capable of great things, one Noram's mind whispered to him. You've only seen it in action for a short amount of time, and already you've seen how much it changes the people that have access to it. They grow so much more quickly than...
2022-12-21 16:23:47 +0000 UTC
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It wasn't all that long ago that Noram had begun to notice.
There wasn't really a better word for it. The nice lady had explained everything to him more than once, and he just hadn't... noticed. For some reason, every time she looked at him, she seemed sad. She looked vaguely familiar, too. But he could never really place where he knew her, and so he smiled at her happily. She surely just wanted to join him on his adventures!
That was all she talked about, after all. She ...
2022-12-19 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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"Can't help you with the Aspect thing, I'm afraid," Clyde said. He'd joined them at their breakfast table after serving up their breakfast — a surprisingly hearty and comforting meal, though Derivan couldn't taste it himself. From the sounds Vex was making, though, he assumed the food was good. It was some sort of assortment of egg and fried meats; it was still crackling by the time it reached their table, no doubt assisted by the fire-aspect mana circling around the plates. "I know what ma...
2022-12-16 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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"Sorry about last night," Misa said. She didn't look like she'd managed to sleep much — Derivan suspected that they'd all had a rough night, really. Vex hadn't slept until late into the night, after he'd finished explaining everything that had happened with Irvis and the echo of Karix. Derivan hadn't known what to say, but he hadn't needed to. Vex hadn't wanted anything more than a chance to talk about it without having to worry about what it meant for them in terms of strategy, or what it ...
2022-12-14 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
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"Me?" Sev asked, a little incredulously. "I've never met you guys in my life."
"No, but you're under the same effect we are. Or you were. It's mostly faded now." Clyde glanced at him, his eyes glowing that faint off-yellow again before changing back to white.
Sev stared at him, then into the air, presumably at a system window; he tore his eyes away after a moment. "I didn't know what it was," he said softly. "I just knew I couldn't talk about it. I still don't know why it...
2022-12-12 14:30:39 +0000 UTC
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"Wait, no, hang on," Sev said. "Back up. The universe did what now?"
"It ended." Clyde cocked his head towards Sev, a flicker of shadow dancing across his eyes; his equivalent of a blink. "Do you not know about that?"
"No?" Sev said, the lilt at the end of his words turning it into a question.
Clyde frowned at him slightly, then leaned back against the counter, apparently debating what to say next. "You're visitors, I know that much," he said, his eyes flashing briefly. Deri...
2022-12-09 17:12:02 +0000 UTC
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Jerome sat next to Kestel. He'd taken to visiting the head researcher of the dungeon team every few days, just to see if he was doing better, ever since he'd learned about what happened to him at the dungeon; his own men turning against him the moment he hesitated to report back, wanting to first ensure the safety of his men...
Harold and the others had left, last he'd heard. They were worried about Kestel, too, but none of them were really aligned to anything related to healing and rec...
2022-12-07 16:11:27 +0000 UTC
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Jumping was much easier said than done. Derivan peered out of the hole to see exactly how viable jumping would be — it was not. Sev, on the other hand, just stared at Misa with one brow slightly raised.
"What?" she asked. She managed a small grin. "We're a Gold-ranked team. We shouldn't be afraid of a little fall."
"It's not exactly a little fall," Vex said, peering out of the hole alongside Derivan and shuddering slightly. "Somehow that's so much worse when I don't hav...
2022-12-05 16:04:14 +0000 UTC
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"I feel like ass," Misa grunted, pulling at her shoulder as she slowly sat up — she protested when Sev went to help prop her up, which in and of itself was already alarming, Derivan felt. "We still alive?"
"Barely." Sev took the initiative to answer, there. "But we're safe for now."
Misa relaxed just slightly. "Good," she said. "Now why the fuck does everything burn so much."
"You might want to check your status," Sev said gently. "You took a lot of damage in that fight."<...
2022-12-02 17:50:38 +0000 UTC
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Derivan regained consciousness in the exact same room he'd passed out in.
He wasn't exactly sure when he'd lost consciousness. That was not, as far as he had known, something that was even possible; the closest he'd gotten to passing out was the strange semi-meditative state he had ended up in all the way back when his link with the system had first been destroyed and then rebuilt so that he wasn't recognized as a monster. The dreams he'd had back then were strange — Derivan was almos...
2022-11-30 15:36:57 +0000 UTC
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Vex was working with an increasing sense of impending doom, not that he knew exactly what was going on. He'd regained access to his system interface a while ago, but that didn't do anything for him — none of his teammates were responding, and there wasn't any way for him to get into contact with them otherwise. He'd tried everything, from using the Communication glyph (which required an anchor, and thus still didn't work) to contacting the Guildmaster directly, but even she didn't have anyo...
2022-11-28 13:56:47 +0000 UTC
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Derivan was more hurt than he had ever been.
He was still alive, crucially. His chestplate, where the runes that kept him alive were etched — that was still entirely intact. But it was only intact because he'd made sacrifices elsewhere. Because when Irvis forced him to choose between damage to his chestplate and damage to something else, he'd always chosen something else. He was fairly certain he'd survive even if Irvis managed to take off his head.
Not that he...
2022-11-25 22:03:01 +0000 UTC
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Vex was in the Ashion section of the tower, doing his damndest to ignore Irvis' frozen body.
Something about it was unnerving. There were times he looked away and could swear that Irvis' eyes were following him, somehow — those eyes remained full of hate, in a way that made him shiver. But anything he did to interfere with his father's magic might also free Irvis early, and Vex wasn't ready to deal with him.
The more time he had to study Irvis, the more uncertain he was...
2022-11-23 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Irvis began by exploding into action.
Derivan saw Misa open her mouth, presumably to respond to Irvis — but she abruptly tensed instead, her expression flashing into focus in an instant. No time for banter. The two Irvis-creatures lunged towards them, their bodies flattening and spreading into a mess of flesh and teeth in a fraction of a second. Misa flashed forward once in a block, her body distorting slightly — Derivan felt the intensity of the shift as she flickered thro...
2022-11-21 17:33:29 +0000 UTC
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There was a certain satisfaction that came with being proven right, sometimes. Derivan found that this was not one of those times. Animated potions attacking them were one thing; they'd chosen not to deal with them because the effects were chaotic and unpredictable, and that made them more dangerous fighting animated swords and slightly malformed boots.
Animated potion golems were... a little bit more of a threat. The upside of it was that all the salves Sev had made with his '...
2022-11-18 16:41:33 +0000 UTC
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"Two of you," Irvis snarled; his face twisted in a raw, sudden sort of fury that almost made Misa take a step back. "Two of you! The mage I understand, but you? You don't have any magic!"
Shit, he's hit Vex. Misa's first thought was worry, before it resolved into a more determined narrowing of her eyes. Irvis had waited for this. This man — or whatever he was — had known about them at least since she'd blocked his attempt at killing Elyra's delve ...
2022-11-16 17:19:58 +0000 UTC
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Derivan paused, awkwardly, after the blade struck him in the back; he didn't know how to react. The monster that attacked Sev was... well, it was like him.
In a manner of speaking, anyway.
It didn't seem like it was intelligent the same way he was. Its sword struck him, and it did not react to the lack of damage; it simply stepped back and then moved again in a traditional stab. It didn't take much effort for Derivan to simply step to the side and move Sev with him, though he kept...
2022-11-14 16:06:03 +0000 UTC
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Karix staggered forward. His face twisted into a rictus of anger and betrayal — Vex saw that the wound wasn't healing. Did this version of his father not have health? The system shouldn't have been this broken down already; a dungeon-created monster of all things should still be connected to the system...
Unless this Karix wasn't dungeon-created.
It still wasn't the true Karix. Too many details were wrong for that, unless someone had captured and altered his fa...
2022-11-11 15:38:02 +0000 UTC
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Vex woke up leaning against a door.
It was a nice door, at least. There were no splinters digging into the scales on his back or the leather on his armor, which was a nice step up compared to some of the doors he'd had the misfortune of sleeping against in the past. Those doors had all been old, decrepit doors in ruins he'd been investigating, though, so the bar wasn't exactly set high on him for the 'sleeping against a door' category.
Part of that, to be fair, was because every t...
2022-11-09 16:58:52 +0000 UTC
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############
[Dungeon Spawner]
Mental static ripped through Vex first. He'd forgotten that this was a product of the system, and it didn't tap into the same library of knowledge that glyphs were contained in; this was something he should have known. The lizardkin nearly collapsed as sudden pain ripped through his skull, and he only barely heard the alarmed sound that Derivan made as metal arms wrapped around him and caught him just before...
2022-11-07 10:29:03 +0000 UTC
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This time, when his memories were once more torn away from him, Xothok was awake to see it.
In a way, it helped that he was choosing for this to happen. The Guildmaster was standing too-close-for-comfort, for someone of her level, one hand hovering just an inch in front of his chest; Xothok was struck once again by that odd impression of familiarity, like this was someone he had known once. Not something intentional on the Guildmaster's behalf, he was pretty sure; she seemed to be a pre...
2022-11-04 09:23:34 +0000 UTC
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A dungeon to some small degree reflected the space around it when it first came into being. The Prime Dungeons, though — the dungeons that were the core of every Kingdom, and powered most of their supply of mana crystals — those were the exceptions to the rule. Over time, they'd grown to reflect the kingdoms they belonged to, though those kingdoms had been built long after those dungeons appeared.
The dungeon that now stood before them was one example of three. Vex had no idea what ...
2022-11-02 19:20:10 +0000 UTC
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If there was anywhere Vex hadn't expected to be about an hour from where that battle started, it was being carted around the city in a wagon. Particularly not in a small crawlspace underneath the floorboards of a wagon, lit only by illusion-enhancing ghostflame.
All four of them were being carted around, in fact, piled together in the same cart. A tiny bit of spatial magic gave them just a bit more space than they appeared to have, but it was really only enough to make them fit...
2022-10-31 17:54:17 +0000 UTC
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It started with a fireball, which told Vex two things: one, that this was almost certainly a noble house attacking them, and two, that they didn't care about casualties. The fireball was packed with enough mana to level several blocks of houses, and was cast despite the fact that they were surrounded by civilians.
Misa blocked it, of course.
She snapped in front of the fireball with a strange object balanced on her shoulder, a sort of cylinder decorated not with runes but with
2022-10-28 18:25:31 +0000 UTC
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