Dan clenched his jaw and weaved side to side as he tried to avoid the sudden influx of shots directed his way. Only a handful of second had passed since he began charging Best’s powered armor, but his regret was immediate. Unsurprisingly, most of the defenders focused on him as soon as he charged past the battle line.
He was moving fast enough that most of the shots missed him entirely, the fifty caliber repeaters leaving a wake of torn and destroyed asphalt b...
2020-06-29 23:01:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey guys!
I noticed a lot of new faces so I wanted to say hi to everyone and welcome you aboard. You'll notice a lot of posts related to my other (much longer running) web serial, Viceroy's Pride.
I am updating Blessed Time in a different fashion, namely periodic PDFs with arcs/partial arcs.
My manuscript is up through Chapter 32 right now which is a good chunk into Arc 3 but I don't know if all of Arc 3 will be written soon (I am slowing down on timeskips as...
2020-06-27 19:41:26 +0000 UTC
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Dan frowned into the binoculars, adjusting them slightly to compensate for the lurching mech beneath him. It was hard to tell which of the squat concrete buildings clustered on the outskirts of the City were built by Peter Best’s forces, and which had already been there. In the end it didn’t matter. Whatever the numbers, they had to clear Best out and keep going. Use the surprise and momentum of their attack to clear both Best and Drummond from the boa...
2020-06-27 19:34:48 +0000 UTC
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With a whir and a crunch the fifteen foot tall robot plowed forward through the drab scrub next to the highway. They only had about ten of the mechs retrofitted to run on mana, and at William’s suggestion they weren’t running them on the roads. According to William they were too heavy for the blacktop. Given the way they tore up the bland California countryside, Dan suspected that the interstate wouldn’t be able to hold up to their heavy footfalls.
Behind them, a hand...
2020-06-27 19:34:09 +0000 UTC
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San Francisco lay smoldering in the early dawn light. Dan took a sip of coffee, wincing at the liquid’s heat and bitterness as he took in the devastation. Between the drones and the Viceroy, a good portion of the skyline was leveled in attempts to break up clusters of resistance from Best’s defenders.
The sounds of the City waking up wafted toward him. It was strange to see such a large mass of people shaking off the violence of the night before without the omn...
2020-06-27 19:33:36 +0000 UTC
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Dan fumed in the Viceroy’s engine room. They’d have to find and train another spatial mage sooner or later because he was absolutely sick of being sidelined during important battles. The Viceroy could fly and fire its main cannon without him, but a voidship without its teleportation drive was like a fencer with a baseball bat. It still might be a threat, but it was out of its element and neutered.
Technically, even with modern technology, shooting a vo...
2020-06-27 19:32:46 +0000 UTC
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“I’m really not sure how I feel about being turned into glorified construction equipment,” Dan massaged his wrist, trying to work the pain from repetitive runecrafting out of the protesting joint.
“Look Thrush,” Abe replied leaning back in the conference room’s chair with a shit eating grin on his face. “If I have to be human resources, it looks like you get to work the assembly line. Plus, I’ve heard that it’s good for morale to have the boss down there w...
2020-06-27 19:31:52 +0000 UTC
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Dan walked through the small factory, the whir of efficient machinery a pleasant backdrop as he inspected operations. It’d taken them almost a month to raid labs and auto manufacturing plants across the former United States to acquire all of the equipment they needed to equip the place. Even then, it took them a couple of weeks to import the workers they needed and upgrade the machines. As advanced as the welding and assembling robots they found were, none of them had the preci...
2020-06-27 19:31:00 +0000 UTC
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I know that I have some readers that are interested in advanced chapters of Blessed Time (which I actually have a substantial backlog for).
I am editing these as I post them on Royal Road, but attached please find early pdf versions of Arcs I and II of Blessed Time
2020-06-14 19:19:41 +0000 UTC
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“Please don’t” the stylized face on the screen shook its head worriedly. “Doing so would kill me and I’d very much prefer to avoid that.”
“You’d be surprised how many people say that to me right before I kill them,” Abe replied, craning his head around to look for the speaker.
“Twice in Caracas, once in Djibouti, and four times in Jakarta,” the face replied, smiling brightly. “Look, we don’t have to be crude about this. I am...
2020-06-05 05:41:25 +0000 UTC
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Dan grunted slightly as he cleared the lip of the building. Overhead, clouds obscured the moon and stars. In stark contrast to the dark nights of Miami, brought on by rationed fuel and electricity, San Diego was bright enough to see from orbit. Dan smiled slightly. That wasn’t a euphemism, they could literally see the city.
He didn’t know what sort of generator Drummond had in his compound, but the man clearly wasn’t afraid of running out of re...
2020-05-29 05:12:08 +0000 UTC
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Dan squinted as he tried to make sense of the report in front of him. At some point the numbers blurred together into an incomprehensible smear. He knew that the tallies of ammunition, equipment, food, and combat ready soldiers probably made sense to someone, but to him they were just numbers. He still didn’t understand why a unit with two thousand people in it might only have fifteen hundred that were combat ready.
Sighing, he put down the paperwork and...
2020-05-27 02:27:14 +0000 UTC
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Four hours came and went in a flash. No one attacked their landing site although Abe’s men noticed a couple of wary scouts keeping an eye on the major streets leading in and out of the area they’d claimed, but by and large they left Dan’s companions alone.
They used the time well, digging through the wreckage of the building and extricating body after body. Each one brought another twinge of guilt to Dan’s face. From their intelligence reports, may...
2020-05-22 05:15:00 +0000 UTC
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“Hold up,” Dan put up his free hand to stop Abe. “We should probably get William out here. He has more clout than me among ex-soldiers and frankly he just talks a better game than I do.”
“Fair enough,” Abe replied before turning to the armored soldiers still sifting through the rubble. “Huntman! Get Bill Finch over here.”
“Bill?” Dan raised an eyebrow at Abe. “Since when do you call him Bill?”
“Everyo...
2020-05-18 06:42:43 +0000 UTC
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“They’re moving awfully fast,” Dan remarked to Abe before he started jogging toward the gunfire.
“I guess,” Abe replied, each one of his armor’s longer strides accounting for one of Dan’s. “We made a lot of noise when we came in. Appearing out of nowhere and firing a gigantic laser cannon from the sky sure seems like the sort of thing to grab attention.”
“I thought we blew up most of the regional command and control outposts arou...
2020-05-16 20:58:22 +0000 UTC
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“I still think we should have bumped ‘Big Willie Style’ for this operation,” Abe groused while slouched in an overly ornate chair on the bridge of the Viceroy’s Pride.
“Once you and the rest of the ground forces have touched down you can put whatever you want on your speakers,” Jennifer replied from the captain’s chair. “Until then, my ship, my rules and that means no touching my radio.”
“It’s Dan’s ship,” Abe muttered, refus...
2020-05-14 05:11:22 +0000 UTC
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“How the fuck did you get the entire 432nd Operations Group,” General Richard’s seat crashed to the floor a second after he bolted to his feet. “Did you just walk into an airforce base and walk out with it?”
“More or less?” Dan shrugged while William snickered next to him. “People keep forgetting that we have a spaceship. William had heard that the entire force walked off the base once they ran out of food. Some local toughs took it o...
2020-05-11 06:05:39 +0000 UTC
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“This feels illegal,” Jennifer said for the fifth time as they snuck through the airbase’s perimeter.
“And you sound like a narc,” Abe whispered back. “What laws are we breaking? We’re in no man’s land and the troops stationed here abandoned this place a week ago.”
“I’m still using a wire cutter on a chain link fence,” Jennifer replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “I really can’t think of a time when that was the star...
2020-05-07 06:16:05 +0000 UTC
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“I think that we’ve been operating aimlessly for too long,” Dan stood, addressing Abe, Sam, Jennifer, and WIlliam in the boardroom of the Viceroy’s Pride. “It’s been brought to my attention that these last couple of months we’ve been ‘running around like headless chicken’ and I’d like to try and bring some organization to this chaos.” Dan nodded toward William who gave him a thumbs up, beaming at being quoted.
“Does that explain ...
2020-05-04 06:19:37 +0000 UTC
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Dan growled in frustration as the electricity running through his palms and into a pair of metal rods grounded out with a flash of ozone. He’d forgotten how frustrating developing a new spell was. By now he could cast all of his favorites as if they were second nature. He simply thought of the effect he wanted and the nanites in his body did the rest, triggering muscles and mana pathways to enact the spell.
Looking at the metal bars, he sighed. The...
2020-04-30 06:03:04 +0000 UTC
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In addition to Viceroy's Pride I've been writing a couple other books. Burning Stars Falling Skies is reaching the end of book one, but I've also been working on a more traditional LitRPG. Sort of.
I'm not sure I'm physically capable of writing a vanilla LitRPG/Isekai (I like reading them just fine, but for some reason I always need to add my own thing). This story (that I'm going to start putting up on Royal Road around when I have 20 chapters written) involves limit...
2020-04-27 08:01:18 +0000 UTC
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“I owe you HOW much money,” Mayor DuBlanc massaged her temples as she sat across from Dan in her office. “That’s literally twice my annual discretionary budget.”
She paused squinting at Dan before sighing. “I suppose you’re going to want that in goods that are more durable than dollars too. I don’t know where the hell you expect me to find that much gold but it sure aint happening anytime soon.”
“Just out of curiosity Thrush,” s...
2020-04-27 07:49:29 +0000 UTC
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Dan walked tiredly out of the landing craft, dragging the severed head of the Orakh leader behind him while Jennifer fiddled with the oversized gauntlet. Unfortunately, the damaged armor and dead soldiers were far too heavy for the two of them to extricate on their own. Around him, the smell of smoke and ozone filled the air, evidence that his squad had been busy without him.
He sniffed the air again. Either that or he was still smelling smoke from ...
2020-04-23 07:16:13 +0000 UTC
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The remainder of the Orakh spread out, allowing Dan to approach but cutting Jennifer off. They formed a rough ring around the hall, blocking Jennifer out but not taking any action against her. The gigantic Orakh dropped the armored body and hoisted its axe, quickly crossing the ground toward Dan with casual but long steps.
“I can feel the mana pulsing off of you human,” It spoke, its voice a deep rumble that Dan could feel in his chest. “You feel mor...
2020-04-20 07:46:59 +0000 UTC
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Both of the .50 machine guns opened fire at the same time, drowning out the boats’ engines. The bullets scythed through the band of Orakh milling about the landing craft. Abe didn’t even have to aim, the Orakh were so densely packed that most of the bullets passed through one monster and hit another. They tried to charge off of the embankment of dirt and mud surrounding the ship toward Dan’s team, but it only served to make them easier targets for the gunn...
2020-04-14 05:23:39 +0000 UTC
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The boats were silent other than their outboard motors as they drove toward the sounds of shooting. Dan took in the murky afternoon light and the brackish swamp water as they wove through the cypress trees. He wasn’t exactly excited to go back into combat without a full resupply for the suits, but General Richard had been adamant. The Army of New Orleans was getting hit hard up and down their battle line, and they needed immediate relief.
Dan grudgingly ...
2020-04-13 05:22:45 +0000 UTC
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They waited. Honestly, Dan wasn’t very upset. Jennifer, Abe and him ended up playing cards while William kept an eye on the recruits to keep them from doing anything stupid under the influence of mana. Of course, Jennifer wiped the floor with both him and Abe, but Dan knew what to expect by this point. Abe on the other hand became more and more comically unhinged at his losing streak before storming off to ‘take a leak.’
No more supplies...
2020-04-09 14:43:58 +0000 UTC
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Dan walked toward the sound of yelling. Around him, the seventeen remaining recruits were stacking Orakh bodies under Abe’s supervision. The work was dull, sweaty, and occasionally messy when a body would twitch a little too much and have to be ‘rekilled.’ He wasn’t one to pull rank, but the good thing about being the boss is that nobody asked you to contribute to the crap work so long as you didn’t volunteer. A smile tugged at the corner of his ...
2020-04-08 05:38:27 +0000 UTC
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The giant Orakh shouted something incomprehensible at Dan while clearly pointing at him. He grimaced slightly, wishing he still had one of the translation helmets that they used on Twilight. He’d stopped using the clunky thing when he returned to Earth. After all, his System understood Elvish well enough and it wasn’t like the Orakh talked. The shamans could, they just never bothered to.
Except this one did. And now it was making a clearly ...
2020-04-06 05:35:19 +0000 UTC
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The steady chatter of machine gun fire drowned out the usual sounds of the swamp. Both of the 50 calibers mounted on their landing craft’s prows swept back and forth across the island, trying to clear enough space of Orakh for the rest of the team to disembark. Occasionally the staccato thump of a suit’s autocannon marked one of the soldiers gunning down a submerged opponent before they could board a boat.
More than anything, the swimming Orakh were what wor...
2020-04-02 03:52:47 +0000 UTC
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