“So this is your dropout classmate?” Eve’s boyfriend asked. He faced me with his arms crossed as I entered the Sunken Crypts.
[Cupcake Crew] Sullivan clearly went to the gym in real life. He was a few years older than Eve and I, with a short-shaved intimidating head. His arms were thicker than my legs, and his dragonskin leather armor complemented the shape of his chest muscles. Being buff in real life gave a small stat boost in game, and buff players generally ju...
2025-10-25 16:05:59 +0000 UTC
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“How was your night?” Mitch, her personal assistant, asked with a wide smile, though fake, as he took off his shoes. “Did you sleep well?”
Veyra lay lifelessly in her game pod. She smelled horrible. Her face must have been a mess. She still felt sick to her stomach.
Did she fucking sleep well?
“No,” she said curtly. “I did not.”
Mitch looked sad to hear that. “Another night gaming, then?”
She snorted, shaking her head.
The dark-skinned m...
2025-10-25 15:47:02 +0000 UTC
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Rayshire was the opening city of the Ray Dragon event. I spawned at the end of the tunnel in the volcano that separated the event from the regular game. On this side, the humongous volcano appeared more like a gigantic wall spanning well into the sky.
A few players were climbing down, having crossed the volcano from above. Nothing stopped players from entering the event grounds in whatever fashion they liked.
Ahead, the city spanned a few miles ahead, and the buildings only got ta...
2025-10-25 15:31:04 +0000 UTC
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He looked like he liked me… Veyra thought.
It was a sad thought. The assassin player had been pretty good in terms of controlling his character. He’d clearly practiced combat for many many hours, just like her. He was moderately funny, and he had a nice face, at least in game. Black hair fit him well. He could have been a good ally. Maybe a friend.
And now he was just another enemy, after she betrayed him for money.
Everyone is different online, Veyra r...
2025-10-25 15:03:57 +0000 UTC
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The lid of the game pod opened. Ender’s Cafe was still silent, with customers still in their game pods. My dad didn’t seem to be present.
I stretched, feeling aches here and there, as if I’d just woken up from a quick nap. The feeling wasn’t awful. Playing in game pods was much healthier on the body compared to headsets.
I spotted Evelyn resting her chin on her hand behind the counter. She gave me a quick, tired nod. I walked over and with a huge grin, said, “I just kill...
2025-10-25 14:33:21 +0000 UTC
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“You defeated them!” Olaf, the dragonborn village chief, gushed. “You actually did it. I can’t believe it!”
A system notification suggested two dialogue options again, which were, “Of course, I’ll help any day!” and “So where are the rewards?”
Veyra spoke first, choosing neither option. “Yeah, we’re kinda awesome like that,” she said. “Can we see the egg now?”
“Of course!” Olaf smiled like some servant. Now that our affinit...
2025-10-25 13:56:47 +0000 UTC
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The misty mountains fell quiet with everyone dead. A wyvern screeched somewhere in the distance. The humid air felt a little chilly. Monsters didn’t seem to attack us, and the area felt safe.
I’d never held this much money in my inventory at once.
I let out a stupefied laugh. “Did we just beat a full guild? Mythforged?”
A gust of wind grabbed Veyra’s hair. She shrugged at me, amused. “They weren’t very good for a top guild. Most players up here are much tougher...
2025-10-25 13:42:00 +0000 UTC
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[Time Eruption] dealt area damage to everyone within fifty feet of its caster. A wide-scale AoE spell, dealing more damage the more it was charged. Like most time magic spells, it ignored 50% of the targets’ armor, and I knew I’d die if I got hit.
I had, however, seen one way to dodge it in a clip online. The method was a bit stupid, but it was better than dying,
I got up close and hugged Veyra right before [Time Eruption] went off.
The shockwave of time magic exploded i...
2025-10-25 12:30:12 +0000 UTC
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Blades collided, and Vivi was blown back, crashing against a wall behind her.
The wall was, of course, really just a part of the behemoth’s intestines. It buckled inward by Vivi’s weight, as if she’d hit a soft pillow. Ether began welling up all around her. The wall tried to trap her.
Vivi growled, pushing ten thousand ether into Lucius’s reserves as she slashed wildly around herself, hitting the wall. Her sword cut in—and like popping a balloon, ether released from the ...
2025-10-25 12:05:38 +0000 UTC
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The carriages were about to intersect at the exact same time. The coincidence was definitely curated by the system AI to make the quest work.
I hid atop a misty tree branch a few hundred feet from the intersection, where I hoped I’d be hidden from both sides. I activated [Eavesdrop], and my hearing greatly increased.
The mist made it difficult to see, but the two participants were becoming aware of each other by now. Mythforged’s formation turned cautious as their focus was dr...
2025-10-24 17:47:59 +0000 UTC
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The moment she entered the tunnel within the behemoth, tendrils with sharp tips lashed out at her like a wall of spears.
She turned sideways, giving the spears less points to pierce her, and held Grandpa’s greatsword as a shield. The move felt silly, but natural at the same time; one spear collided with the sword, the rest thrusting past her. They whipped around in an attempt to strangle her.
Vivi slashed wide overhead, cutting down two, but one tendril grazed her back. It burne...
2025-10-24 11:23:40 +0000 UTC
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I wished Olaf goodbye, promising to defend the holy spring by any means necessary, though I knew full well that his precious egg would most likely end up cracked in someone else’s quest completion screen. If I could defend it, that would be a dream—I’d actually close in on the gap between the top players, and I could pay rent for multiple months, but I wasn’t counting on success.
I headed south down the mountain road, where Olaf had said the carriages would be arriving. The cobb...
2025-10-23 17:04:34 +0000 UTC
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I woke up inside a small, shabby wooden cottage with a straw-bed. The window was open. Or rather, the window was just a hole in the wall. Mist from outside flowed in, filling the cottage with humidity.
In real life, the mist probably wasn’t healthy for the building itself. The wooden walls would have taken in the moisture and started rotting. In Wonderwind, however, the mist gave me a refreshing wakeup in a perfectly cool room. I wore pyjamas while sitting in bed.
A system pop-u...
2025-10-23 17:01:26 +0000 UTC
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Ender’s Cafe wasn’t the best by any objective metric. Their pods weren’t even that cheap to rent. But when stepping in, it was clear that this place just got it.
The entrance led straight downstairs. A wooden scent welcomed me into a dim and atmospheric basement that used to belong to a club. Floor lamps offered just enough light to see where to step, and the rest of the lights came from computer monitors. Most seats were vacant with the monitors playing flashy advertisem...
2025-10-23 16:40:13 +0000 UTC
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The motors of my virtual headset buzzed as I was forcibly logged off of Wonderwind, sent into the real world.
A jarring change of scenery followed. The scents of pleasant forestry from in-game were all replaced by the very real smell of forgotten cup noodles on my nightstand. I woke up in darkness, the only light coming from the blinking red light of my headset.
“Low battery,” it read. I stared at it blankly.
The headset was connected directly to a wall...
2025-10-23 16:22:49 +0000 UTC
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Magma sprayed from Oblivara’s greatsword onto the trees behind as the giant knight [Swung] at me.
The blade slashed with superhuman force, but its trajectory was predictable. I ducked underneath. My muscles were tested to their limits, but I managed to dodge with simple movement alone, no special skills required.
No, I didn’t use [Dodge]. That would have left the fight up to chance. I dodged by actually moving out of the way like one would in real life.
My opponent was a...
2025-10-23 16:19:13 +0000 UTC
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Hello again! I've been cooking up a new story for the last month or so, and I think it's time to start posting. Everything is still a bit of a work in progress, including the cover, which is currently AI, but I hope you like it!
The schedule is a bit of a question still, but I'll drop chapters as I have them ready and edited. The first ten or so chapters will be free to non-supporters as well, so feel free to check them out!
Book title: Assassinate Wonderwind
2025-10-23 16:18:57 +0000 UTC
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The greatsword glowed inside, taken straight from the forge—though the veins were hard to decipher. Just like with Abyss Destroyer, the surface of the sword appeared alive by the ether flowing within, though this sword was not the color of a dark void. It was a pale, heavenly white. Parts of it appeared like a rainbow. A wave of ether passed, and a subtle orange glowed within the metal.
The cross-guard had a gemstone attached. It, too, switched colors with the sword’s flow ...
2025-10-23 10:47:14 +0000 UTC
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“It’s not firing!” a panicked voice shouted, coming from one of the former ballista operators, now an engineer of the slingshot launcher.
The second iteration slingshot launcher was connected to its triangular support platform, designed to receive recoil instead of blowing it all on the shooter’s face. Despite that, a string was attached to the trigger for a safer test run.
Assembling the weapon together outside Shivenar’s walls had taken over thirty minutes, half of whi...
2025-10-22 11:28:57 +0000 UTC
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Coshi charged forward, slingshot launcher in hand.
Another thorn vine released; she jumped to the side. Carefully, to not shake the missile inside the barrel, as that could apparently destroy the weapon. She dodged, the shockwave of the impact behind her flaring her hair.
She continued running. The boss was so large it felt as if she was already right beside it, four hundred feet must have been between them.
A dread raven dove down at her. Coshi unsheathed Darkness Slasher...
2025-10-21 10:39:42 +0000 UTC
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Vivi discussed with Civar regarding the possibility of creating true ascension skills for metal using the enhancement strings. After a lengthy session of theorizing and attempting different combinations, they agreed that ascending metal was most likely possible, but achieving it would be too complex given the timeframe of one day. Going forward, Vivi would draw an ascension skill for Civar, and his team would attempt to reverse engineer how it worked.
If the walls weren’t bla...
2025-10-20 10:08:21 +0000 UTC
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Thomas’s eyes were spinning as he sat on his anvil, staring at the set of veins balanced upright on his vise. The veins created a tall and thick network, easily larger than the greatswords Vivi seemed to wield, but Thomas couldn’t exactly make it smaller, considering the sheer amount of stalks and branches inside. The blacksmithing process would be a nightmare, he already knew.
The ability to shape ether would help a little, but it would still probably kill him.
Did the veins ...
2025-10-19 11:16:24 +0000 UTC
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Patryn wiped the sweat off his forehead, handed over his slingshot launcher to the reloading team and called, “Reload!”
The command was self-evident, of course. The single job of the team behind him was to apply the enhancement string to missiles, and to safely reload Patryn’s launcher after he fired. Nonetheless, he shouted the command. Whenever dozens of monster auras coated the battlefield, like now, he found that his loud voice spread some of his confidence to those around him...
2025-10-18 11:03:26 +0000 UTC
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The girl wore some of the nicest clothes Vivi had seen. The idea of teleporting away was forgotten as Vivi admired the outfit.
The girl’s raincoat was black like Grandpa’s, though hers was also colorful, with bright pink flowers drawn onto the fabric. The colors shone vaguely with ether, taking in some of the girl’s aura. Dark green leaves mixed with the flowers along with a yellow glow that vaguely resembled honeybees. The colors matched the deep black of the raincoat surprisingl...
2025-10-17 09:58:22 +0000 UTC
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“No, the barrel will overheat in an instant from the spin,” Freyven was saying to his team as Vivi walked up to their U-shaped table. “The grooves are most likely the best choice, though inside-carving will be required for the rifling to withstand the missile.”
The demons barely spotted her coming, too engrossed in work. The table was even more cluttered than before, not only with blueprints and tools, but prototypes as well. Vivi spotted ether roots with runes on them, prototyp...
2025-10-16 10:35:29 +0000 UTC
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“I can now ascend safely with around eight thousand wisps,” Vivi said.
“No you can’t,” her teacher said immediately and with his arms crossed.
Vivi waited for him to continue, but Tsarvan left his statement at that, as if accusing her of lying. The staredown became awkward, and Vivi’s eyes wandered to the hardstone walls of the palace.
“It’s true, though,” she said, bringing her eyes back to him. “It felt safe to me in the dream realm. I think my body can...
2025-10-15 11:04:16 +0000 UTC
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The sword crushed the sand golem to bits. One slash—one effortless little swing across its chest—and the blade ate its skin like cutting through yoghurt.
Nevermind the fact that the sword extruded no aura and only had two runes with no veins lining its surface, having been delivered to him less than two days after Fang placed his order. And nevermind the fact that golems were the toughest tank monsters of the desert, with skin so tough that Fang’s last sword lost its edge when he ...
2025-10-14 10:22:09 +0000 UTC
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“It has been confirmed now that a storm is building three miles outside Ranewal’s outskirts,” Helegar, the sub-sovereign of Ythar’s north canton, said.
He was dressed casually in a sweater and vest, watching the view outside of his palace window and facing away from Veronica. The man was one of the three canton leaders of the surface, directly underneath Ythar himself on the hierarchy, a position which was above even the hunters themselves, though his authority spanned only acro...
2025-10-14 10:21:30 +0000 UTC
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Vivi was strangely nervous as she headed up the street, toward the mines. It had been a while since she checked up on Eem. Multiple days. Enough that Eem was probably panicking, wondering if she’d been abandoned again.
She had hoped to visit more often. But with storm season as hectic as it was, she just didn’t have time. So far, however, she hadn’t received any complaints from upset miners. Eem must have, at the very least, been manageable. Hopefully useful as well.
Approac...
2025-10-13 10:01:56 +0000 UTC
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With the monsters cleared from their immediate surroundings, the ballistics team performed more test fires. The durability and reliability of the slingshot launcher was further stressed, and the accuracy was calculated.
Neither scored particularly amazing. The smaller parts of the slingshot launcher tended to break on just about every launch. The barrel itself already received deep scrapes on the inside from each launch. Freyven guessed that something would break catastrophically in abo...
2025-10-12 10:28:40 +0000 UTC
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