“Come quickly!” Dad yelled while I was in the workshop.
Over the past three days, enchanting daggers is what I did. There wasn’t a particular enchantment I favored over all the others. Though—as I only had four of them—the daggers held some form of fire, lightning, or wind enchantment. The one based on Spark wasn’t suitable for combat in my opinion, so I avoided that one.
In that time, I gained a level in my profession with almost enough experience for a second...
I was surprised the officer hadn’t noted down our names or anything else. There was no way I would say anything. Poking Smokey was not a wise decision on the best of days—and today was not a good day. I could only imagine the chaos happening everywhere. In some respects, it was shocking that the police were able to dispatch someone to watch over the dungeon. While I had no idea how many dungeons were around, it seemed like a huge drain on their resources when they could be off doing more ...
2025-05-19 16:40:45 +0000 UTC View PostMom looked disgusted by the dead monsters. Now that the fight was over, she faced away from their corpses in a purposeful manner.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
“I can’t believe I just did that!” she exclaimed.
“They’re monsters, Mom. If we don’t kill them here and now, they’ll come knocking at our door.”
“I know. I know! But I’ve never killed something before. It feels wrong.”
“It’s alright, Princess,” Grandpa Joe said...
The fictional world of the tutorial faded. I was back in the living room of Mom’s house with both her and Grandpa Joe. Their eyes regained focus around the same time as mine did—give or take a second. The tutorial process didn’t perfectly pause time. It was compressed significantly so that it took only a handful of seconds on average. Someone who stuck around to practice more might take a second or two more.
My shield, spear, and fire starter were placed next to me. I looked a...
Satisfied with the way my status looked, I moved on to the notifications. The first was a congratulatory note about picking a class and explaining that I should go through the door to try fighting with the new skills I had gained—or hadn’t, as the case currently was. The next notification was about those skills I hadn’t yet gained.
You have chosen your class. Now it is time to pick your first skill. Please select one of the skills in the list below. If you want to l...
2025-05-12 16:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostSeveral things happened at the same time. First, all the remaining experience was sucked into my skills, class, and profession. Second, the levels and skills I’d had vanished. Finally, I appeared in a small room with a chair, a desk, a couch, and two door. In front of my eyes was a message. All of this happened within a fraction of a second. I read the words in front of me—something I had added to help ease people into the process.
Magic has arrived on Earth, bringing...
2025-05-09 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t know what the economy would look like after the apocalypse hit, but I knew that continuing to rent was not the way to go. I helped Mom and Dad each buy a place that was close by to one another. The chances of everything being normal after the tutorial was not a gamble I wanted to take. I would much rather plan for an eventuality that didn’t happen than have to deal with it having not planned at all.
With a home base—or two—I felt a lot more comfortable building out ...
And getting better is what I did. Though progress was slow, it was steady. After a year of practice, I was comfortable making knives and other blades out of steel. I was able to make them the easy way—using bars and cutting them into a rough shape first—as well as the more labor intensive method of forming the weapons from billets of steel with only a hammer and the forge.
In that time, the money I’d been dumping into pushing the idea of mana and monster forefront of human cul...
Testing the curved enchantment was more difficult than I had thought it would be. Using metal was out—simply because I did not have the requisite skill to make the bowl out of metal to the degree of perfection I needed. A wooden bowl was easier to find and would be relatively easy to carve into—especially with all the extra practice in recent days.
The skill fractals in my mind were mostly-flat. Figuring out how to impose that onto a curved surface was not easy. Eventually, Seba...
The tools came a little over a week later. To get quality tools took time. I would much rather wait to have quality than have shitty tools right away. If it worked like I hoped, I would be using those tools for a long, long time. Sebastian had me making nails for hours during the intervening week. While I wasn’t ready for making a knife yet, I felt a lot closer than I had just one week earlier. When I walked into the workshop for the third time, I showed Sebastian the tools.
“Go...
Unlike with woodworking—where I had to join a formal class—metalworking was easier to get into. Relatively speaking. Finding a place that did it was easy. Convincing them to allow a child to work a forge? That was another thing altogether!
Mom took me to the closest workshop to where we lived. The inside was an inferno even in early spring. There were two men working different forges. The ringing of metal hitting metal was deafening. We waited by the entrance for one of the two ...
After two months of practicing my thrusting, Gregory was satisfied enough with my progress to begin teaching me more. Due to the nature of the weapon itself, the majority of the other forms were about blocking or parrying. The moves differed somewhat depending on what the foe would do, but they all followed the same basic idea: block, parry, and feint. The end goal was to lodge the point of the spear somewhere soft because that was what killed. Smacking them over the head with the haft could ...
2025-04-25 16:00:27 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I spoke with Jack a couple weeks later, I was feeling better than I had in years. Yet, there was still something bothering me.
“So, how are you enjoying the woodworking class?” he asked.
“It’s great!” I said. “It’s fun to actually create something instead of always destroying things. I’ve made a toy car and a spoon so far. And now I’m working on a bowl!”
“That’s wonderful. And your training?”
“It’s going well enough,...
The week after I finished my wooden car, Gregory was ready to begin teaching me. The place he had rented—with my money—was what used to be a dance studio. The space was large enough to accommodate whatever exorcises we would be doing. That it had good air conditioning was a plus. The last thing I wanted was to be hot and sweaty while learning!
“Good afternoon, Eddy,” Gregory said when I came in.
“Hey! I’m glad you got all of this set up. I’m excited to learn!...
Finding someone to teach me how to fight turned out to be more difficult than I had initially thought—and I had thought it wouldn’t be too easy. The simple fact was that eastern martial arts—typically hand-to-hand—was most prevalent. Finding someone who practiced weapon arts was like finding a needle in a haystack. There were clubs for people who already knew the basics, but nowhere near me had anyone that taught lessons. The only thing I could do was expand my reach farther in the ho...
2025-04-18 16:00:25 +0000 UTC View PostFinding someone to teach me how to fight was more of a challenge than finding a place to learn how to do woodworking. So that’s where I started. The local public university ran classes. Signing up was easy—even if I had to smooth over some of the permissions with Mom and Dad and the school.
The university wasn’t either of the two I had been to so long ago. This one was large, with many buildings. The one I went to was a small garage-like building. It was as if it had been a pl...
“I see their faces,” I told him. “I see the people who died in the explosion. I feel the humiliation from when my parents knew it was me. They’re not stupid. And when I understood that they knew, I wiped their memories of me and fled.”
“So it sounds to me like you need to confront these memories. At least on your own. Your parents don’t know what you did, right?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“And they don’t have to. You’re not planning...
Sorry this took so long! With the business trip I was on and the fact that I couldn't ramp up writing quickly when book 3 started, I didn't have any chapters going into last week. I usually work from home, so while in the office, I couldn't write during the downtime as I can at home. Should hopefully be better starting Monday since I'm home again!
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I woke up screaming for what felt like the thousandth time in two years. I was in my bedroom in Mo...
2025-04-13 03:39:42 +0000 UTC View PostWith the revelation to my parents—and Grandpa Joe—dealt with, I dug into the work of getting a nest egg. There were a lot of steps to it—of course—but it was something I’d done before. Given that I started later, I didn’t get quite as much money as I’d done the previous times. That said, it was more than enough to do what I had in mind.
Before I could start my media blitz, I had to build out as much of the system as I dared. There were some parts I needed to think deep...
When the truck came to a stock, I unbuckled myself and hopped out. Dad did the same. As soon as we were near the front of the house, I put up my hand to stop him. He raised an eyebrow.
“Better to do it outside,” I clarified. “It might get messy inside.”
Dad nodded.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s see what you wanted to show me.”
“Magic’s coming to the world, Dad. I can use it now—and in a few years—so will everyone else. This whole ...
I opened my eyes to searing pain. I sat up, but it only got worse. My voice cried out for help as I pitched forward into darkness.
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I woke to a rhythmic beeping sound. I opened my eyes and looked around. There were medical machines all around, wires connecting them with my body. I was uncomfortably resting on a bed. Other than me, there was no one else in the room.
My mind was sluggish. The pain of all the lives I’d lived were still painfully cram...
So ends book 2. I will be taking 1 week off to plan book 3. Expect the next chapter on 4/4/25. I hope you enjoyed his descent into darkness. Let's see what dawn brings, eh?
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Crow led the others back outside. There were few houses in the area, but he could see the remains of their structures as the dark lines of ash on the ground. Others were visible by the pools of water contained by poured-stone upon which the structures had once stoo...
2025-03-26 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostThis is part 1 of the interlude between lives 3 and 4, with the other half dropping Wednesday. As it is about 3400 words, I split it in half. Following Wednesday's chapter, I will be taking a week off to plan book 3. Chapters for book 3 will begin 4/4. This is the final stretch!
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You have finished your second life. Did you enjoy this one more than the last? Before evaluating your performance, let’s take a look at what might have happ...
2025-03-24 16:00:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe heat, the smell of smoke… it hit me as soon as my consciousness returned. I bolted upright. Looking around, I could see the orange glow all around. The house was on fire—and so was everything nearby.
I ran to the nearest window. Flames were flickering on the other side of the glass. I debated going somewhere else, but it was the quickest way to get to the river. Water would be salvation. I just needed to get there.
I cursed when I went to open the window. The heate...
Along the way to figuring out the secret sauce that made the poison flavor, I discovered several other combination. The aforementioned earth, air, fire, and some others I hadn’t encountered before. I memorized their look and feel in case I came across them later.
It took almost a year before I figured out how the poison flavor was made. My discovery began when I saw tinges of it on the edge of a test fractal. It took a while to replicate the result—the next several attempts show...
The question was how. I had the building blocks. I could sketch the shape of the fractal I needed to work with for both skills. The issue was how to actually do it. Randomly circulating my blood was a recipe for disaster. I decided to try—but carefully.
I sat in front of a tree and closed my eyes. My intention was to imitate the way to cast a skill—except using the fractal I had built instead. I pushed, pulled, and prodded the blood in my veins. The energy began to move accordin...
Flight had the benefit of being a continuous skill. Unlike Heal, where I could only observe the skill as it activated, I was able to watch it as it continuously worked. It was a different perspective. It let me see the skill with a critical eye and get the whole picture—rather than just a short glimpse. I was able to put together a lot more of how it worked before my blood ran out.
Flight was a complicated fractal that was built f...
I hadn’t a clue what it meant to look into myself—or anything about hypnosis, for that matter. Still, it sounded good on the surface. I climbed onto my bed and closed my eyes.
Looking into myself was odd. If there had been anyone nearby to look at me, I would have died of embarrassment. They would have been able to see me making very silly faces. Thankfully, I was alone.
Every time I wanted my mind to still and focus on the problem at hand, it would wriggle through my ...
I got started at dawn the next morning. The idea that I had stuck in my head was seeing if there was a difference between using faith or blood for the skills. For that, I needed a test subject. I found some bugs under a rock and chose them as the targets.
First, I cast Toxin on one of them using blood, applying Contagion right after. The initial target died, as did the bugs nearby, but that was the end of the test. It petered out. Under another rock...
Building a roof was harder than I thought it would be. Even with my skill’s gentle nudging and almost instruction-manual level of help, there were two things I couldn’t make any easier. The first was felling the trees for the roof beams. While they were small trees, that didn’t mean they were insignificant. The knife I had was woefully inadequate for the task. The other thing was finding the right sort of rock. I needed large, flat plates, preferably. Slate or similar would have been id...
2025-03-07 17:00:20 +0000 UTC View Post