).-. Beatrice .-.(
A self-satisfied smile was plastered to her face, and she sipped sweet brandy out of a metal cup.
The power-armor golems had performed nearly flawlessly - and the 'soulcrusher' served himself to her forces on a silver platter. On her tactical map, more units approached the engagement area where the small group of locals was already struggling to cling to life. They would soon be no more than smears on the ground. She chided herself a little for ...
2025-09-10 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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/-__+ Talcinor Debrine Jr. +__-\
His fingernails pressed hard enough into his palms to make himself bleed.
Stupid. Unfair. Again.
He was here, and ready to fight, and he couldn't.
A trickle of blood ran down to his wrist.
He'd only agreed to stay back and out of the fray when they were set to be up against the giant worms. This was Belar. The people that had killed parts of his group before King Hugo saved them....
2025-09-08 14:00:25 +0000 UTC
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)+\( Hugo )/+(
Seven sets of footfalls crunched and scraped against the dirt. Their soft sound echoed off the tunnel's dark walls and joined a tense chorus of heavy breaths, shifting equipment, and whispers.
His attention flicked back to the group that trailed him.
He had agreed to let Tal shadow this beast hunt, but he was still worried for the boy. He had so much promise. But Tal also carried the anger of his situation, guilt at his 'causing' the ...
2025-09-05 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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A brilliant, yellow-orange light shone from the top of the mountain like a new sun. It heralded the rise of something new and powerful. Something Legendary.
Reid exhaled.
The heat from his breath left wispy trails of condensation in the air, lit from behind. He flexed his back, and felt the pull of muscle against the bone anchors holding his wings.
A look over his shoulder confirmed how things felt. Bones connected with glowing, visible mana rose up and out of the sockets on...
2025-09-03 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
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)+\( Hugo )/+(
Hugo finished frothing the simple shampoo into Vidita's hair. She wiped suds from her eyes, then motioned for him to turn around as she grabbed a handful of the powdered substance and whipped it into its active state. Her fingers scraped and massaged his scalp. Hugo had experienced his fair share of spas and pampering. Nothing he remembered there compared to the simple task of you and your partner washing each other's hair.
Vidita split from the usu...
2025-09-01 14:00:23 +0000 UTC
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).-. Beatrice .-.(
Figures and maps flitted by onscreen as her Orbital Fleet Admiral, Isard, spoke to each piece of information with barely-suppressed glee.
"Your advice to practice against orbiting bodies was key to our early success here, ma'am. After forcing the JBPC's to drop approach speed early on the approach vector, we were able to use the orbital batteries to put an unavoidable amount of debris in most of the gravity sling lanes we could identify. T...
2025-08-29 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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+ Reid +
After elite orb weaver spiders came guardians. Deja-vu of the Salamander fights aside, Reid figured it would be a good thing that the system gave a standard set of ranks to denote who the strongest forces were inside of a beast's group. For most, knowing the foes you were fighting were near the peak of power for the given quest or area would be a comforting thought.
For Reid, it was just an additional indication that he was getting close to the top of the...
2025-08-27 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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+ Reid +
Reid dropped the ropes pulling the bone chests with his pair of captive spiders, and brought Bonewall to the front just in time to have one of the incoming beasts slam headfirst into it. He heard the spider's head pop itself on his shield, and flung the body to the side as he swung Requiem down in an overhead strike.
You have defeated Elite Volitant Orb Weaver - lvl 37
You have defeated Elite Volitant Orb Weaver - lvl 43
2025-08-25 14:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Reid wrinkled his nose at the smell of the spiders' latest meal, and walked an extra few hundred feet into the forest before he sat down.
His stats were full to their potential, and that meant it was high time for him to get to the next items on his list - equipment. Marrow had been a good set of armor, but Reid now felt it was time to retire the old set and move onto something new. The purpose of Marrow had been to take big hits and make them less impactful, while keeping his high-dama...
2025-08-22 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
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).-. Beatrice .-.(
The pen Bea tapped against the scratched and dented surface of her desk snapped halfway through the video. She hurled it into the wall and grabbed another from the cup her aide, Uzochi, now struggled to keep full. This cascade was an absolute mess. It caused spontaneous beast evolutions that threatened and completely overwhelmed entire outposts on the planet's surface, and the list of injuries and dire reports rolled in at a blinding pace. She needed ...
2025-08-20 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Reid shouted, and every word punctuated a swing of his mace into the corpse of his defeated foes.
"FUCK. YOU. GOD. DAMN. HORROR. SHOW. BULL. SHIT."
He stopped, looked at his notifications and his map again, and panted heavy breaths. The fight was over. It had been over for minutes now.
"That was a LOT of screaming."
Reid's whole body shivered as he looked over the ground.
"Nyx, how do I quit a questline?"
"Oh,...
2025-08-18 14:00:15 +0000 UTC
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)+\( Hugo )/+(
A chorus of footfalls on the old, sealed stone roads echoed off the damaged facades of the surrounding buildings. Storefronts where he had passed an afternoon with tea or shopped for small gifts were broken and burnt. Each stayed with him like a pebble in his shoe.
More screaming came from their vanguard, and Hugo rounded what he remembered to be a pale green corner store to see another transport craft under heavy fire. One engine was smoking, but t...
2025-08-15 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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+ Reid +
Reid surveyed the area around him as the difficulty increase - or the planetary cascade - continued to literally rain down from impossibly grey clouds.
Despite Nyx telling him that he would be transported to a random spot on Vuxarina's surface, he still hoped to see something similar to the first few hours he'd spent on the planet. Unfortunately, there were no signs of the wide-pond dotted plain that had been filled with colorful, corkscrewed grass. Reid was instead surro...
2025-08-13 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
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||+|| Auluwin ||+||
The grey-robed figure slowly counted the physical currency she'd handed him, then held out a hand. A thick stack of photographs, newspaper articles, convoluted financial reports, and old memos wrapped in wax paper popped into existence, and fell into her waiting hands. It was assumed, of course, that an informant of their caliber would have some sort of storage device or skill - but showing it off was another matter. It spoke to a brazen, unprofessio...
2025-08-11 14:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Reid used the wall of the mountain to scrape lizard guts mostly off his arms. The corpse of Crinoptera was a mess of partially frozen, partially steaming remains. Its head was largely untouched, but the rest of it was haphazardly butchered down to ribs, spine, and tailbones. He'd left some potential meat there, but the majority was safely in his storage. Queens Vault was a massive storage space, and Reid was going to need even more of it once he started properly processing and cookin...
2025-08-08 14:00:17 +0000 UTC
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Please select distribution.
-
You have completed [The Beast Lords] questline with exceptional performance. You may now choose to distribute rewards to your party or faction, bestow them on yourself, or transfer them to a known and validated contact. (Note: contact transfer highly limited). Your banked rewards and difficulty increase have unlocked new options. Final questline experience will be awarded once reward distribution is complete.<...
2025-08-06 14:00:16 +0000 UTC
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You have defeated Beast King Crinoptera, the Peerless Scourge - lvl 50 +
Reid panted, and let himself slide down until he sat on the edge of Crinoptera's wound. The glow faded from his body, and with it, a flood of exhaustion and suppressed pain flowed through him. He had pushed himself during this fight. Whatever that more intense glow and light represented, it left him spent... and there was something else about the fight that slipped away from his mind when he tried ...
2025-08-04 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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)+\( Hugo )/+(
The faint scent of active kitchens drifted through the air and tugged at his nostrils - beckoning him to breakfast. Hugo sighed, and placed his hand against the stacked stones before he rose to his feet. The small burial site was nestled between two thickets of trees, its own sanctuary away from the noise and clamor of the tutorial proper. That silent, reflective place faded behind him, replaced by the cacophony of the settlement.
He entered their growing town at a ...
2025-08-01 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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"Round two, motherfucker."
Crinoptera answered Reid with a cycling pulse - but it took a full three seconds for the ice breath to manifest.
Reid's new spiked boots crunched into ice as he sprinted forward. When the attack came, Reid rolled to the side and used the slickness of the ice to slide even further away from the beast's attack. As soon as he was out of the worst of the cone, he dug a heel into the frozen ground and kicked himself back up to his feet. Crino...
2025-07-30 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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The first ice lance in the barrage to hit Reid slammed into his armor and knocked him face-first into the ground. The second and third followed soon after, crashing against his armor with ominous shrill cracks. Every moment, ice impacted the rock all around him, plunging into stone and breaking as they landed. Shattering shards of ice threatened to put a lucky chunk into his face, or through his eye.
Reid covered his face in the crook of his elbow and crawled forward while he stayed pro...
2025-07-28 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Reid felt strength and power coursing through his body as it glowed. The beast lord still looked disinterested, but had one eye open and trained on Reid.
He used the extra few seconds of peace to resummon his thrown projectile - and charged a shrapnel brock.
Above, the grey clouds continued their lazy swirl. Maybe they were a natural feature of the landscape - or maybe they were the environment's reaction to or impact from the beast. His musing only lasted a few seconds, but he fe...
2025-07-25 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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It was too far for details, but he'd seen Crinoptera. An impossibly large shifting mass moving amongst the rock. The skinks he'd taken down were mere ants to this thing's size.
What kind of attacks would something that big even use? What could its magic do? How should Reid defend himself against something that large - and what should he do to kill it? Organs were a good thing to damage, and even at that size, the thing still had to have similar anatomy to the smaller skinks he'd butcher...
2025-07-23 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Reid coughed a mouthful of blue blood that melted down through the snow.
One hand was pressed hard against his face. The other pushed against the ground and prevented him from falling completely prone. He blinked one eye, and probed a half-shredded tongue over his mouth. He was missing a few teeth - and a good portion of his cheek. Part of his lips were also mangled and bleeding, and he had cold pain near his ear that was making him dizzy. The eye - felt wrong in his hand. He took anoth...
2025-07-21 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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+ Reid +
The ice encroached and tried to swallow him as he launched himself up and through the hole made by his vertically thrown slug. He had to kick off the side of the hole halfway up to keep himself moving, and then again to launch himself up and free from the ice.
These stupid lizards had changed the landscape. There was an actual hill made of solid ice, sitting atop his simple bone shelter. Thirty-nine beasts, arrayed with the majority in a crescent, moved a...
2025-07-18 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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There were a few things that drove Reid to an immediate, somewhat irrational level of anger.
People trying to harm his friends.
Phone calls on speakerphone in cramped public places.
God.
Damn.
Lizards.
Sure, yes, fine, he was still very much aware that salamanders weren't lizards, so he had no reason to hate actual lizards that much. But those facts ignored something more important, and that was the simple truth that lizard monste...
2025-07-16 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Reid's breath steamed against cold air. The past two days of travel had been mostly silent. He stayed in his own thoughts, and spent a good amount of the time just feeling himself, and all the changes his breakthrough had caused. Nyx's silence mirrored his.
The temperature had dropped precipitously, and he now felt stinging cold against his arms and legs if he left himself unprotected. Just like the volcano, the environment here affected him the same way weather had back before he awake...
2025-07-14 14:00:12 +0000 UTC
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+ Reid +
The final barrier shattered, and yellow-orange energy roared forth. It streamed around and through Reid, and propelled itself far away in the other direction, then each surging wave came back around to him and crashed together. The energy around him rose, and he could feel it all. Each one of his metaspaces was connected to one another, newly empowered by the connections that now formed a continuous circuit through his metaphysical self. He could fly from wher...
2025-07-11 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
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^+ Nyx +^
Her hands - thank the leviathan for hands - danced out and helped to finely manipulate her energies. It was the only reason she'd been able to make this much progress, this quickly.
In her... not so infinite wisdom, she'd made messages to Reid. Many, many messages. Then, she'd made it difficult to delete the messages - because why not? It made sense that she was going to need to protect and preserve her captured knowl...
2025-07-09 14:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Reid had grossly underestimated the time it would take to travel to the final beast lord.
Days melted away as he plod a simple course over varied terrain. Mountains rose, and fell away behind him. Rivers roared with churning empowered water. He passed by two separate empty Belar bases - one was abandoned completely, and the other showed the obvious signs - or lack thereof - that let him know Hugo had cleared the thing. Every guard was dead, and nearly all of them seemed entirely uninju...
2025-07-07 14:00:17 +0000 UTC
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Reid spent days alone in the woods. Truly alone. He worked to keep his emotions tight to himself, to not allow Nyx to be disturbed by his feelings. He made sure his stat affixation work didn't tire him out too much, so she wouldn't feel that either. When she proclaimed herself ready to go back, he obliged without question. If she'd wanted to share more, she would have.
He did not get the same treatment. Brinkha, Gerald, and Norton were all incensed that Reid had off and walked into the ...
2025-07-04 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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