Ace_the_owl

Gamble King Chapter 43. How

Man, the Heightening made everything so much clearer.

Max could see the individual fibers in the witch's white robes as she moved, the way they caught and released the filtered gray light. He could see the texture of her skin, not smooth like he'd thought before, but covered in a network of fine lines, like cracked porcelain.

Her eyes weren't just bright. They had depth to them, layers of color that shifted as she tilted her head. Amber at the center, fading to honey at the edges,...

Chapter 192. Shadow

Hey everyone,

Sorry about the absence lately. I finally had to get that surgery I'd been avoiding for way too long.

So apparently the RSI had built up enough pressure in both my arms that my doctor basically gave me an ultimatum: either I get it taken care of now, or I'd be looking at permanent nerve damage down the line. Fun times, right?

I learned a lot of medical terms, too. The procedure itself is called a carpal tunnel release, or more specifically in my case, a bilater...

Chapter 191. Official Visit .Final Part

The Gamble King's chapter is coming in a few hours, too! Sorry for the late chapters, they were meant to be uploaded in the afternoon, but I had to take care of an unexpected event today. Hope the chapter's enjoyable!

A vain, proud, and hypocritical man. The kind who'd lecture you about duty while stepping on everyone below him to climb higher.

That was what Arthur had said about the general when Adom asked him what kind of man Magnus was.

And Adom wasn't sure if th...

Chapter 190. Official Visit .Part II

So this was the famous Adom Sylla.

Magnus had heard plenty about Arthur's son over the years. The prodigy. The youngest magus in living memory. The boy who'd accomplished in five years what took most mages three decades, if they managed it at all.

He'd expected someone smaller.

The tales always made powerful mages sound like wizened scholars hunched over spell books, or thin-limbed academics who spent their days locked in towers studying theory. Good mages rarely had anythin...

Gamble King Chapter 42. Her (Part II)

Max was sweating despite the cold.

He wiped his palm on his pants and felt the dampness there. His heart was doing something uncomfortable in his chest, a rhythm that didn't feel right.

Welp, he thought. There goes my reroll.

Because there was no way to get out of this alive. None. He could see it playing out already—the witch tearing him apart, Bro screaming as the bond snapped, Tarak watching it all happen. The kid would probably die next. Or the White ...

Chapter 189. Official Visit .Part I

Adom looked at his father.

He was expecting something. Anger would have been fine. Shock. Disbelief. Even laughter, though that seemed unlikely given the circumstances. Arthur could laugh at a lot of things, but treason wasn't usually one of them.

Instead, his father just sat there.

Silent.

That look on his face.

Adom hated that look. Ironically, he'd inherited it—taken it straight from Arthur and made it his own without meaning to. He knew exactly what it mean...

Gamble King Chapter 41. Her (Part 1)

Max shoved the man forward. "Move."

The warrior stumbled, catching himself against a tree trunk. His whole body was shaking, not just trembling, but full-body convulsions that made his teeth click together in a rhythm that had nothing to do with breathing. The sound was loud enough that Max could hear it over the crunch of snow under their boots.

It was cold, yeah. Very cold. The kind of cold that made your breath fog and your fingers ache. But this wasn't that.

This was fea...

Chapter 188. Father-Son Moment

Hey everyone! So I've decided to split the Gamble King chapter into two parts to make the pacing more even and add a few more scenes for better coherence. They're gonna be uploaded in a few hours. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

A few hours after the assassination attempt...

The wolf had been drinking from the stream for forty-three seconds.

Adom counted because counting was something to do while he waited in the undergrowth, knees bent, one hand resting aga...

Gamble King Chapter 40. Escape . Part II and Final

Max woke up with jerky in his mouth.

The taste hit him first: salt and smoke and something gamey he couldn't identify. Then the cave. Warm stone at his back. Bro's faint glow painting shadows on the walls.

He gasped, sitting up so fast the jerky fell from his lips.

Tarak scrambled backward, favoring his wounded leg as he moved. The spear came up, tip pointed at Max's chest. The kid's eyes were wide.

"Sorry," Max said, hands up. His heart was hammering. He could still f...

Chapter 187. Never A Day Of Rest

Magic, for practitioners, had a distinct feeling.

It wasn't something you could explain to someone who'd never touched mana. Not really. The words existed—tingling, buzzing, humming, warmth—but they were all approximations. Shadows of the actual sensation cast onto the wall of mundane experience.

The best comparison Adom had ever come up with was heat from a candle.

Move your hand closer to the flame, and you feel it. The warmth increases. Gets more intense. Your skin st...

Gamble King Chapter 39. Escape .Part I

Ah, the sweet winter mornings in the north.

There was something special about them, really. The way the pre-dawn light turned everything blue and silver. The absolute silence that came with fresh snow. The crisp, clean air that burned your lungs in the best possible way when you took that first deep breath of the day.

Evidently, every place had its problems. The north's problems just happened to include monsters that would eat you if you didn't find shelter before nightfall. And t...

A Note About The Gamble King

Hey everyone!

So I received a DM recently asking about The Gamble King's status, and I was confused because I thought I'd made a post about this, only to discover that Patreon apparently never published said post. Oops.

Please don't worry! The story is very much alive and well. In fact, I've actually finished Book 1 of The Gamble King and will be starting Book 2 soon. The absence has been entirely about building up a backlog and making the story more coherent overall.

As it ...

Chapter 186. Tea Time

"Sooo, everything's going according to plan then, right?"

Biggins chuckled.

"Yes," he said, reaching for the teapot between them. "More or less. Though plans do have a way of developing personalities of their own, don't they?"

The pot was new. Or at least, Adom hadn't seen it before. It was glass—impossibly thin glass that seemed to shift colors depending on the angle of the light. Inside, the tea swirled in lazy spirals without anyone touching it.

Biggins poured. Th...

Chapter 185. The Die Is Cast

There was only darkness.

Total, utter darkness.

Adom sat cross-legged on something soft—a cushion—and tried not to think about how this was already going poorly.

"Diviners," Beth's voice came from somewhere to his left, "usually need to sit and meditate in order to reach a state of flow good enough to perceive the threads of time. To see the billions of possibilities woven within them."

Adom had tried this sort of meditation before. A few times. His most successful...

Gamble King Chapter 38. Options

Max's brain kicked into overdrive.

The young barbarian was thirty feet from the cliff base. The White Hands were maybe forty feet behind him, moving with that synchronized fluidity that made Max's skin crawl. The sun was almost gone. Darkness spreading like spilled ink.

Options.

Option one: Do nothing. Let them kill the kid. They'd do it while he was climbing—easy target, couldn't defend himself, would fall and break something even if he didn't die from whatever they did t...

Chapter 184. Gifted

There were two main reasons Adom, despite knowing the way to [True Archmage], had seldom practiced anything close to divination—both in this life and the other.

First of all, ironically enough, was time.

He didn't have it. In this life because he was busy avoiding the end of the world, and in the other because he was busy surviving it.

Now, those were very reasonable excuses. Most people would accept them without question. But Adom being Adom, he would have found a way to ...

Chapter 183. Divination

"Tell me, children," Beth said pleasantly. "What do you know about divination?"

Ada's hand shot up immediately, like she was in class.

Beth's smile widened. "Yes, dear?"

"Um." Ada's face scrunched up in concentration. "It's... when you know things? Before they happen? Like when mother knows I'm going to spill my juice before I do it, except... magic?"

Beth laughed—a warm, delighted sound that made her shoulders shake. She reached over and patted Ada's head gently. "A...

Gamble King Chapter 37. Separation

Clasp.

The sound of it was solid. Final. The kind of grip that said more than words could—callused palm against callused palm, forearms locked, the weight of shared experience in every second it held.

Bubbles met Max's eyes. "Farewell, Vanheim."

"Farewell, Thorne."

They held it for another beat, then released. Bubbles stepped back, adjusting the pack on his shoulders. His usual grin was there, but subdued. Quieter.

The crossroads stretched out around t...

Chapter 182. Ice Cream

Adom stared at his reflection in the mirror.

He'd activated [Resonance] a few minutes ago, mostly out of curiosity. He'd used the skill plenty of times now—with Bennu, even just earlier today when he'd accidentally made all those journalists stare at him like he'd grown a second head. But he'd never actually looked at himself while it was active.

He was looking now.

"You look like a human phoenix!" Bennu announced from behind him.

Adom glanced back. All thre...

Gamble King Chapter 36. Prey

Huff. Huff.

Pain.

The wendigo's lungs burned with each breath. The flesh around its ribs had been cooked, turned brittle and cracked. Every expansion of its chest felt like tearing wet paper.

It stumbled over a root it should have seen, caught itself against a tree trunk. The bark scraped against exposed bone where the fire had eaten through muscle and hide.

But it was away. Finally away.

The forest had gone quiet around it. No sound of pursuit....

Chapter 181. Rude Journalists

Back on the grind!

This little pause was really beneficial, I can actually use my hands again now without wanting to cry, which is a pretty significant improvement, lol. I've been alternating between typing and dictation, and I've also set specific hours for writing to discipline myself. Turns out having a schedule helps. Who knew?

We'll get back to a better posting rhythm now, so you can expect more chapters in the coming days (M-W-F). Both for this story and The Gamble King as w...

Chapter 180. If You're Scared, Then Do It Scared

I'm really sorry about the releases lately as I'm much slower than I'd wish I were right now. I can't really use my hands at the moment, so I've been editing through dictation, which is also the sole reason the chapters were slowed down even on Royal Road, as I couldn't edit them the way I wanted to.

This chapter was supposed to come out on Sunday, and here it is now. I'm seated and working on editing the rest of them. Will try to update the chapters, a...