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Chapter 59 - The Bravado of Man

Chapter 59

The Bravado of Man

A voice cried out only for a moment before being silenced.

A’stul watched emptily as a listless body of a human fell, eyeless, before him, a stirring of shadows soon shaping into a rank of Spryaes. They stared at him expectantly, awaiting praise. But his lips remained mum. He but glazed over their looming figures before leaning back and closing his eyes. They were children still. Gleeful at the death of a single human, where ...

Chapter 58 - Changes

Chapter 58

Changes

Ethan cringed at the sight.

A splayed entrance of a tunnel that was doused in thick layers of fog and miasma stared at him from the screen, taunting. It had happened again–an anomaly.

Ronald had informed him in panic as soon as he’d returned, shoving the news into his face before Ethan could even take a shower. Some thirty miles north of Austin, just outside a smallish town of Georgetown, a Tunnel appeared last night while Ethan...

Chapter 57 - Hymns of Death

Chapter 57

Hymns of Death

Ethan pulled back the crimson blade, revealing a soft, old face that paled almost immediately, drained of blood. Colonel Quincy Jeeves lay dead in his bed next to a woman–likely his wife–who was wholly unaware of what had just transpired. Pulling back, he left the bedroom through the window, dismissing the notification that informed him that he'd managed to steal 0.02 Vitality from killing the man.

He didn't dilly-dally, immedi...

Chapter 56 - Dreaded Dark

Chapter 56

Dreaded Dark

It stalked.

The dark alleyways were its home, the damp, rancid holes between the buildings filled with trash and things unwanted. It, too, was unwanted. But it could become wanted. It could become anything. And anything it was–inscrutable, ephemeral.

“Hey, Julie!” its voice was perfect–a lullaby, a song, the grandly crafted replica. Nobody knew. Nobody heard.

“Oh, hey girl! Haven’t seen you in a while!”

Chapter 55 - Crimson Lullaby

Chapter 55

Crimson Lullaby

Michael and James stared flabbergasted at the man standing some twenty feet from them. He was being serious–he was effectively inviting them to kill him just so he could prove some hollow point. Neither came with that intent, not truly–they simply wanted to establish a power dynamic in which they were the drivers, at least to some degree. It didn’t take.

Though they respected the fact that the man was likely stronger than th...

Chapter 54 - The Tidings

Chapter 54

The Tidings

Michael put down the phone and, with a deep sigh, leaned back into the chair, his expression sombre and thoughtful.

“Any luck?” a voice spoke out from the slightly darkened side where a man in a black suit was standing, his expression equally thoughtful to Michael’s.

“Some,” Michael replied. “I threw him a bait, he threw one right back.”

“What does he want?”

“Some girl,” Michael said. “And Sar...

Chapter 53 - Deal With the Devil

Chapter 53

Deal With the Devil

The phone rang.

Ethan groaned himself out of sleep and reached toward the nightstand, grabbing it. The first thing he noticed was that it was 3 A.M., and the second was the caller–Elijah. Quickly muting the sound, he shuffled out of bed carefully so as to not wake Layla up and quickly left the lodge. Despite the fact that the night was quite chilly and that he only wore boxers and a simple tank top, he felt perfectly comfort...

Layla -- artwork

Chapter 52 - Necessities

Chapter 52

Necessities

Ethan withdrew a blood sword from the guts of a dying zowolf, digging into the creature’s corpse for a moment and taking out a small crystal, putting it into his inventory. Tian had informed him of the roamer that he’d spotted when taking Layla on one of their many excursions into the woods. It didn’t mean much–not really. It could be that there was a Tunnel somewhere nearby but it could also just mean that the zowolf in qu...

Chapter 51 - The Games Played

Chapter 51

The Games Played

“Y-yeah, it’s me,” Elijah spoke softly into the phone that Michael handed him. It was a secured one–though he could have had his men track the number on the other end, for the time being, he elected to play along. “No, they didn’t. Ah-uh. Y-yeah. Okay.” After a few more words, Elijah handed over the phone to Michael.

“Hello. This is Michael,” he said.

"So, you're the poor sack who's curious?" The voice on ...

A'stul artwork #1

Chapter 50 - In Blight and Blindness

Chapter 50

In Blight and Blindness

An array of golden light flew forward at blinding speeds, illuminating the dark-thatched forest around it. The barks of the trees shimmered in a faint sheen of aurelian, exposing the worm-like veins pulsating just beneath their obsidian barks. It was a forest full of life, the abandoned, unwanted, unholy kind.

However, just as the array of light illuminated the world, it collided with an ethereal something and was dissipat...

Chapter 49 - Truth Beckons

Chapter 49

Truth Beckons

The heart of mankind ultimately beat good–that was what Elijah always believed. Ever since he was a young little boy and his mom used to take him to work with her, where she drove ‘round town helping random stray animals and answering calls from people in need of a rescuer, he’d decided that people were good. His mom was good, all her colleagues were good, and his dad worked hard in the military to save the world. All people Elijah ...

Chapter 48 - The Spinning of Wheels

Chapter 48

The Spinning of Wheels

Everything was normal–least so far Ethan could tell after skimping over the internet for a while. While there was bombastic news galore, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t already expected to happen. A group of people in Germany, dubbed ‘The First Ones’, regaled their tales of going into the Tunnel and how they came out. They’d be proven as fakes in a couple of weeks when the first ones actually came out, ...

Ethan artwork #1

Chapter 47 - Mourner's Voice

Chapter 47

Mourner’s Voice

Ethan, Elijah, and Ronald stood in line just in front of their temporary base when the spacetime in front of them shuddered and, a moment later, a spiraling vortex not unlike the one they walked through appeared. A pillar of white light shot to the sky as Ethan took a step forward and walked through it, followed right after by Elijah and Ronald. The trio emerged back into the mountainous forest, their surroundings distinctly different...

Chapter 46 - Songs of Silence

Chapter 46

Songs of Silence

The bounty for clearing the Tunnel was massive. Even Ethan was taken aback when he had the opportunity to glance through the stream of notifications that had flooded his peripheral. The boss dropping 3 items was already on the better end of things, but that wasn’t even the half of it. He’d quickly shot all the way up to Level 16, gaining 4 Levels in one go, unlocking two majorly useful functions: Telepathic Communication a...

Chapter 45 - Memento Mori

Chapter 45

Memento Mori

Ronald didn’t see when it happened–he was too deep in shock, staring with parted lips at the sight that defied reason. He didn’t even notice until she was standing in the growing shadow, her back turned toward him, short hair fluttering just for a moment before she vanished. He felt something inside of him crack at that moment, at that particular sight. His stomach burned and he felt more sick than ever before in his life, as though ...

Aurion, the Last King -- Artwork

Chapter 44 - Hollow Heart Forsaken

Chapter 44

Hollow Heart Forsaken

A roar erupted into the seamless void of fire–the beast's obsidian fur kindled, sparks of fire like starlight beginning to dance around it. Ethan approached it head-on, a whip of blood sprawling into its full extension and squarely landing against the beast's snout. The latter pulled back and winced, roaring once more as it stomped toward Ethan.

Ethan creased the whip behind him and used it as a propeller, dodging the stom...

Chapter 43 - Aurion, the Last King

Chapter 43

Aurion, the Last King

Of all three types of foes, antelopes, strangely, proved to be the most challenging even for Ethan. It wasn't because they posed any particular danger but because they engaged in fleeing as soon as their Health hit 50%, and they ran really fast. So fast, in fact, that even Ethan was unable to keep up with them. As such, he devised a simple strategy to simply nuke them from 50% to 0% in a single hit, though that did lower ...

Tara -- artwork album

Chapter 42 - Song of the Crimson Death

Chapter 42

Song of the Crimson Death

Ethan escorted Elijah with a strange gaze as the boy sped out of the tent and down the tunnel. In some ways, he was being somewhat impatient with the kids. A few words of reassurance would cost him nothing, but he still held back from committing to them. In part, it was because of Elijah, because he'd already designated the boy into that role, but in part, it was because some further distance had to be curate...

Chapter 41 - Thus Unbecoming

Chapter 41

Thus Unbecoming

Tara stumbled and fell, her legs giving out, lungs surrendering. She couldn’t move any longer, slinking herself sideways and onto her back, sprawled on the scorching surface beneath. And yet, even the scalding pain of the burning skin couldn’t jostle her. It was impossible–beyond impossible to keep up with him. For every one step he took, they had to take ten; for every breath he took, they had to take fifty; and, as the ...

Chapter 40 - Hell Thus Began

Chapter 40

Hell Thus Began

Some six hours into their second hunt, the group, for the first time, ran into a different monster from the lions–it was a six-foot-long constrictor snake, coiled unto itself, seeping strange-looking liquid over its skin. Its hue shifted from blindingly white to cool azure, its body uncoiling as soon as they got within a hundred feet of it. It 'stood up', reaching the height of a grown man quickly, and it hissed lowly, its pair of bea...

Scorching Savanna -- artwork

Chapter 39 - Matter Over Mind

Chapter 39

Matter Over Mind

The night—or, at the very least, the Scorching Savanna’s version of the night—descended upon the flat plains. As it did, the four crawled out of the hole in the ground, less than well-rested after having laid down uncomfortably for hours. With the exception of Ethan who slept decently well.

The largest advantage of the 'night' was that the heat dissipated enough so that the visibility increased considerably while the illumi...

Chapter 38 - Boiling Alive

Chapter 38

Boiling Alive

Ronald grunted as he heaved himself out of a waist-deep hole, sitting on the edge and quickly taking out a bottle of water. His entire body was aching, his lungs were on fire, but even more importantly, he felt strangely alive. He and Ethan had been digging out a tunnel for almost six hours straight, and have made some amazing progress. Ethan was mostly the one who dug directly, simply carving out a hole, while Ronald fo...

Tunnel Entrance #1 artwork

Chapter 37 - Scorching Savanna

Chapter 37

Scorching Savanna

Ethan, Tara, Ronald, and Elijah stood about twenty feet from the surging vortex that had evolved over the last ten days. Rather than it being just a spinning swirl that distorted space around it, it was a bulging, vertical tunnel with expanding accretion-like disks projecting from its top mouth. It danced between bright, twilight colours at its brightest and obsidian black at its darkest. Due to the excess of the energy it was releasi...