Ashtoreth stood on an invisible floor in a void of perfect darkness. She could use her flight to move, but there was nowhere to move to. She could use her abilities, spend her [Bloodfire]... but there was nothing to affect with them.
“Dazel?” she asked.
There was no answer. She tried to summon him, but couldn’t. Was he coming for her? Or was she stuck here, perhaps forever?
She kept thinking back to her fight with Pluto, but she couldn’t think of how...
2025-03-08 06:10:00 +0000 UTC
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“Pluto!” Ashtoreth called out. “Let’s talk about this!”
“Talk we will, dearest sister!” Pluto said, removing her top hat and pulling her real baton out of it to twirl in the air. “But first: watch in awe as I wave my magic wand and make your humans….”
“No!” Ashtoreth cried.
“...Disappear!”
Pluto abruptly halted the motion of her baton, and a dozen shards of azurere hellfrost appeared in the air before her and ...
2025-03-08 06:09:01 +0000 UTC
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Both Frost and Kylie made bitter, dejected sounds.
“This was your plan all along?” Frost asked.
“Uh-huh,” she said quietly.
“And you said nothing!” he said. “You weren’t going to ask us until the very end?”
“Come on,” said Kylie. “Use your head, Frost. She was never going to ask. She’s probably going to use whatever her stupid thing is whether we said yes or no.”
“Why would she have told us this way if she didn’t care what...
2025-03-08 06:08:00 +0000 UTC
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“You’re right,” Ashtoreth said, assessing the red wall of wavering energy before them. “This isn’t good.”
It was a barrier spell, one made by runes that ran along every side of the wall. It would prevent anything from passing through it, and her guess was that it had been placed here to keep them from surfacing near the bridge that led to the castle.
It was also a trap.
The barrier distorted the runes that were carved along the walls of the stone ha...
2025-03-07 18:08:00 +0000 UTC
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“[Hellfire], please!”
“Not your racial?” Dazel asked.
“I know what two of my racial advancements are,” she said. “And I don’t either right now. I’d be getting offered one new thing.”
{Advance [Hellfire]}
{Choose an upgrade to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
Upgrade [Hellfire] with [Hellfire Efficiency I]:
The cost of conjuring hellfire i...
2025-03-07 06:08:01 +0000 UTC
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The guardian was below her at a distance of fewer than twenty meters: she lowered her cannon to aim down toward it and took the shot almost as soon as she saw it.
The air around her shook with the sound of her cannon as fire bloomed from its muzzle.
{You gain 1 [Vivinsect Hive Guardian Core]; Tier 1}
She let herself fall back onto the stone below her as she fired the weapon, and she saw the energy of the guardian’s spells disperse harmlessly across the cei...
2025-03-06 06:08:00 +0000 UTC
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I'm going to be filling the third tier with some of the promised chapters soon!
Tonight I'll be finishing writing up to chapter 58 (it's half-done now). I just need to edit what I've written so that it's fit to share.
I like to let chapters sit a couple of days before I share them, as even just a few days to rethink certain lines (especially jokes) will improve the final product.
But so far so good: it's looking like I'll have that tier at 20 / 25 chapters ahead of RR within...
2025-03-05 06:08:01 +0000 UTC
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“We need to kill another boss, asap,” Dazel said. “For Hunter’s sake.”
“So I can maybe get a shadowflame resistant shirt?” he asked.
“No? What? No,” Dazel said. “So you complete your gear set with a fishnet top and three pounds of hair products.”
“These pants boost my [Dexterity],” Hunter said stiffly. “And the magic doesn’t work if they don’t without all the extra straps.”
“I think they look great,...
2025-03-05 06:08:01 +0000 UTC
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“I’ll take [Vampiric Archfiend], please,” she told the system.
She’d replaced an option last time she leveled, and so was eager to see which two options there would be this time around.
{Advance [Vampiric Archfiend]}
{Choose an upgrade to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
Upgrade [Blood Drain] with [Blood Memory]:
You can glimpse some of a creature’s memo...
2025-03-04 06:08:03 +0000 UTC
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Ashtoreth grinned as she saw the new arrival, giving the smile a sinister caste. “Have we met before, archdevil?” she asked.
Gethernel wore a tightly-fitted white robe that was embroidered with gold. An orange light seemed to inhabit him, glowing beneath his skin and eyes and giving a strange, waxy look to his features.
Even so, it was easy to tell that he was furious.
“These souls were commended unto me, fiend!” he shouted. “I&n...
2025-03-03 17:52:50 +0000 UTC
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Dazel lay on Ashtoreth’s back, nestled between the powerful spans of muscle and bone where her wings met her shoulderblades. He braced himself, sure that even if the sound of her ridiculous cannon didn’t burst his eardrums, it was at least going to hurt.
He’d decided that this was his chance.
“Almost...” she muttered. “Almost….”
Her cannon rested on its bipod, and she was aiming over the cliff’s edge at where the skygorger demon hovered just out of...
2025-03-03 06:06:07 +0000 UTC
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While her allies absorbed the violet flames that burned around them, Ashtoreth tended to her progression:
“Armament, if you please!” she told the system.
{Advance Armament}
{Choose an upgrade to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
Upgrade [Conjure Luftschloss] with [Luftschloss: Energy Drain]:
Luftschloss now affects enemies with a milder form of your [Energy Drain] attack. Some ...
2025-03-02 17:40:15 +0000 UTC
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The skygorger demon clawed its way toward her across the forest floor, moving with the lurching grace of a crawling insect.
Ashtoreth pushed against the force that held her immobile, ready to spring into action the moment she was free, but the spell held her longer than she expected—more than a second, even with the resistance bonus from her new clothes.
Soon the doom loomed above her, reaching for her frozen head….
Then its clawed hand exploded in a blast of pale blue l...
2025-03-02 06:08:00 +0000 UTC
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“Everyone spread out,” Ashtoreth said. “Those skygorgers probably have AOE. And Kylie, don’t be alarmed, but I’m going to cover you in hellfire now.”
“What?”
She held out a palm and shot a gout of hellfire toward the ground in front of Kylie, who instinctively shrank back as the grass and bushes in front of her burst into flame.
“What the hell?” she cried, taking a few steps back.
“It’s okay, my fire won’t hurt you!” Ashtoreth said,...
2025-03-01 06:08:01 +0000 UTC
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Dazel stepped out of the rift, flaring his wings and then arching his back in a stretch. “Hey, boss. So did you kill the necro—wha?!”
His sentence was cut off as Ashtoreth picked him up and pulled him to her chest. “Dazel!” she crooned.
“Okay—okay, affection levels are supercritical here, boss.”
“The way you screamed earlier when the construct struck me with lightning, that felt genuine.”
“—Getti...
2025-02-28 06:08:01 +0000 UTC
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“You’re level 23?” Ashtoreth asked incredulously. “That’s… fantastic! Kylie, you’re amazing!”
“I’m also not five years old,” she said. “So you don’t have to talk to me like that.”
“I talk to everyone like this!” Ashtoreth said. “It’s just… I don’t get it. You’re so down on yourself but you’ve done better than any other human here—they threw a whole dungeon at you!”
Kylie scoffed and looked away. “If I d...
2025-02-27 17:08:01 +0000 UTC
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The air around one of the woman’s hands seemed to fracture and darken, as if it were being seen through broken, tinted glass. She raised this hand, pointing it toward Ashtoreth with a quick, decisive motion, and the orb of splintered darkness broke into four shards that moved to position themselves above her head in an array.
“Bad idea,” Ashtoreth said, beginning to conjure her greatsword. “Look—”
“Freeze,” the woman commanded, and Ashtoreth felt a...
2025-02-27 00:28:11 +0000 UTC
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The devil screamed. She dropped her bow as Ashtoreth leapt the distance between them, raising her hands in futile attempt to stop the [Mighty Blow]. Her armor and body seemed to crumble around the sword as it sheared her in half and beat both halves into the ground.
{You receive 1 [Diabolic Soldier Core]; Tier 1}
“Think we should go back yet?” Dazel asked, sounding a bit bored.
There was only one more Devil nearby, and Ashtoreth fell to ...
2025-02-27 00:25:51 +0000 UTC
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Ashtoreth laughed as she looked down on the blaze of hellfire burning before her, devils and demons still fleeing out from its center. Then she ate a heart, began conjuring another round, and pulled the bolt back to eject the cartridge case onto the ground next to her. She took her eyes off the sights to examine the battlefield below.
Hellhounds and carnage demons ran amok, engulfed in flames. Even a few of the devils seemed unable to cope with the pain, though many of them were now run...
2025-02-27 00:24:39 +0000 UTC
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{Advance [Armament]}
{Choose an upgrade to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
Upgrade [Conjure Luftschloss] with [Luftschloss: Energy Drain]:
Luftschloss now affects enemies with a milder form of your [Energy Drain] attack. Some abilities, like your [Mighty Blow] and [Mighty Strike], will heighten the intensity of the [Energy Drain].
G...
2025-02-27 00:23:53 +0000 UTC
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Inside the chest was a folded piece of clothing. Ashtoreth took it and held it out, examining it. It was a robe and a pair of breeches that seemed to be made of a strange, silvery form of silk.
{Ashtoreth’s Mercurial Costumery}
Any glamour you use to change the appearance of your clothing gains a very high bonus to its effect strength and does not deplete or count against the charge of your [Ashtoreth’s Glamourous Diadem].
This c...
2025-02-27 00:21:56 +0000 UTC
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The construct began to move toward her with long, powerful strides. She could see why it would: its gigantic obliterating beam had been its least effective weapon so far. Its close-range, anti-personnel lightning had been far more powerful, and she could only imagine that its controller was eager to get near enough to use it again.
She conjured her sword once again, then pulled a heart out of her locket and consumed it in midair, topping up her [Bloodfire] before diving...
2025-02-27 00:20:41 +0000 UTC
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Ashtoreth fell, flesh seared all over her body, her muscles spasming instead of obeying her.
Before she hit the soil, she reached out and pushed against her sword. She didn’t know where it had fallen, but that wasn’t the point: the counterforce threw her back across the ground. She skidded, bounced, and tumbled violently away from the place she’d fallen, then felt the massive force of the construct’s followup stomp shake her whole body a moment later, an attack that surely would...
2025-02-27 00:19:34 +0000 UTC
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“I’ll work on keeping that thing from turning the battle against the humans!” Ashtoreth said. “You two work your way around the battlefield and get to the base of that tower, then kill any demons who manage to make it there after you! Travel close to the dead when you can—they’re on your side! And watch out for the devils—they know what they’re doing!”
“You sure you’ll be all right?” Frost asked.
Once again the klaxon rang out across the battlefield like a ...
2025-02-27 00:18:40 +0000 UTC
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“I don’t know where the second army came from, but it looked like it was also demons,” Ashtoreth said.
They were jogging through the forest, making a lot of noise as they crashed through the underbrush toward the site of the battle.
“So your kind are infighting?” Frost asked. “I mean, other than just you? You think some of them are also on our side?”
“No,” she said. “The only explanation I can think of is undead—some of the humans built th...
2025-02-27 00:17:30 +0000 UTC
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“Okay,” Ashtoreth said as they plodded on through the forest, searching for more humans and more enemies to kill. “Crash course on understanding Hell. You’ve got three different types of infernal,” Ashtoreth said. “The demons, the devils, and the fiends. The ones who are really special get an ‘arch’ on the front: archdemons, archdevils, archfiends. We’ll start with the demons. They’re the most varied. Also the weirdest.”
“Hey, thanks,” said Dazel....
2025-02-27 00:16:23 +0000 UTC
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Frost stepped forward, levelled his shotgun at the enemies, and began to open fire. His weapon loosed plumes of blue flame both from the end of its barrel and where it struck the demons. His aim was good: he’d felled three of them in quick succession as they dismounted whatever they’d been eating, causing their fellows to shrink back from the sacred flames.
As he did this, Ashtoreth braced herself against the ground my falling to her knees, then launched her sword toward the group o...
2025-02-27 00:15:17 +0000 UTC
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“No one move,” Ashtoreth hissed, her eyes on the sky. She formed one hand into a claw because the points of her fingers allowed for finer, more precise manipulation of glamour, then began to weave an illusion about them, covering them in false bushes.
It only took her a few seconds, but her heart thundered in her chest as she did it, her eyes on the dark shadow that was coming nearer to them, flying over the edge of the lava-lake.
{Black Dragon Crucifect — L...
2025-02-27 00:14:21 +0000 UTC
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“Ding!” Ashtoreth said. “You know the nice thing about getting [Hellfire Aura] is that it might also make it more likely for me to get good auras.”
To the system, she said: “[Hellfire], please.”
{Advance [Hellfire]}
{Choose an advancement to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
Upgrade [Hellfire] with [Hellfire Efficiency...
2025-02-27 00:12:54 +0000 UTC
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“—So,” Ashtoreth was saying. “Once I get the [Hellfire Aura], it’ll be fine! You won’t have to worry about interfering with my fire. There’s no explosive blast when I ignite a corpse or burst my weapon, so I won’t knock you over or anything. And the fire doesn’t burn air, it burns [Mana]. Well, [Bloodfire], now.”
“Uh, right.”
She tore a heart out of one of the vivinsects, tucking into her satchel before mov...
2025-02-27 00:10:46 +0000 UTC
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