Thereafter followed a sound that resembled none heard by a living soul upon this earth, a tremendous KCHRACHCK, a noise so terrible and profound it shook the earth as easily as Ubul’s own quakes and made the animal inside all those who bore witness think that the world itself was ending, that the firmament was being torn asund...
2022-03-28 03:53:56 +0000 UTC View PostIn favor of moving quickly, the dismembered body parts moved cautiously, arriving into the immediate vicinity of one another with minimal risk of being noticed amidst the chaos.
When, and only when, each and every disparate part of the body was within a few meters of the next, having reformed a basic connection by means of blood-tendril, d...
2022-03-26 20:08:20 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: I've unfortunately been struck with a bout of hay fever (rather, cat hair fever). Were the circumstances different I would've tried to power through and grind out a chapter regardless, and would've only done this had I been unable to reach my writing goal for the day, but I am not willing to risk a drop in quality in this critical part of t...
2022-03-24 18:49:39 +0000 UTC View PostThis could not come to pass.
Even if Ubul could survive, even if he could pretend to be defeated and lie in wait again, there was no doubt in his mind that by the virtue of this defeat alone, the Emperor would see him as a liability, a failure, a sacrificial pawn at best. It was true that he had eliminated one of his priority targets, but ...
2022-03-23 21:22:59 +0000 UTC View PostRaising a hand, the great general produced several dozen hardened stones, shaped into fine points and tipped with artificial cold-iron, launching them in a barrage towards Zefaris, a defiant gesture meant to parody her own projectiles. In the moments it took him to do this, the three-meter jet of rigormantic energy escaping the blonde’s left e...
2022-03-22 17:31:54 +0000 UTC View PostAnother, larger seal came after it, one which would temper the resultant projectile, hardening it with selective Gelum saturation much like Ubul hardened his own stone with Terra saturation, while also imparting “Stillness” into the projectile to render it more like the stillness of death, thus more resistant to change.
The third seal ...
2022-03-21 18:11:31 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: I need to take a bit of extra time for polish, so no chapter tomorrow.
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The cold numbness which had washed over her now grew into the feeling of absolute cold, a thin jet of blue-white Gelum Fog escaping the Philosopher’s Eye, progressively growi...
2022-03-19 19:10:33 +0000 UTC View PostFive flashes were seen overhead once more, now much closer, so close they were discernible as coins. Each of them was struck by one comet in turn the arcane glyph upon its surface focusing the energy of the supercritical core at the heart of the comet, and reflecting it directly into Ubul’s own core as a singular lance of five elongaged twin-t...
2022-03-18 17:08:53 +0000 UTC View PostWhat felt like a bonfire started up in his stomach, the burning pain spreading all throughout is body as the stench of sulphur filled his breath and a rising sense of blazing anger overtook him, this time his own, mixing and blending with Zero’s rage within the man known as the Steel Comet as he slipped his left arm out of the interface sleeve...
2022-03-17 18:25:01 +0000 UTC View PostEven with his strength, it took considerable effort to make the woman’s flesh come apart, to make the joints of her thigh and shoulder pop out of their sockets, to garotte and sever the spinal cord right at the bottom of the neck. Letting go with one of his arm-tendrils, he formed an edge at its tip and disemboweled her, piercing her lungs and...
2022-03-16 18:55:00 +0000 UTC View PostUbul wasn’t a fool. He was extremely and rightly so confident in the capability of his new form, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew when to go on the defensive, and that time was now. His fortune was the fact that spraying blood from one’s mouth somewhat prevents one from invoking the name of a complex Fulgurkinetic technique, thus affording hi...
2022-03-15 18:16:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe flash of steel was too fast to see, and beyond even Ubul’s ability to react to. In a single slash, a cut whose speed surpassed sight and sound while being elegant enough to not produce a thunderclap, Makhus severed a chunk of Ubul’s upper-left torso alongside a third of his core and half his head, only for the general to appear unfazed a...
2022-03-14 18:18:07 +0000 UTC View PostHis body now even more closely mimicked his petrified form, for despite the presence of a left arm it was merely floating at the shoulder, his back was still littered with dozens of bayonets. A single crystalline core shone embedded halfway in his breast, right where his heart ought to be, plain for all to see. It seethed with such terrible powe...
2022-03-13 18:15:50 +0000 UTC View PostIndeed, a gust of wind, one so terribly powerful and focused it even made Ubul step back. The wind mage detachment had followed Sigmund's example, concentrating all their capabilities into supporting the Hobbyist Wind Mage, allowing him to once more form the anthropomorphic dervish that was the Howling Wind God. It ripped across the battlefield,...
2022-03-12 17:51:00 +0000 UTC View PostLilac glow was overtaken by green flame, flooding out of the Guardian’s eyes and filling the many cracks now spreading all across the statue’s form, burning the arms which grasped it and forcing Ubul to drop the Guardian lest he lose more limbs.
Zelsys, meanwhile, embedded the Lightning Butcher into Ubul’s back, bracing her feet agai...
2022-03-11 18:12:59 +0000 UTC View PostYet again, the world came to a crawl for the historian. Despite Sigmund having learned how to focus a beamwand’s output into a single blast, only now had he truly pushed it in any real way, let alone one as significant as this feat. With this, the technique was forever branded into his being.
THE FIRE OF HEAVEN REMADE THROUGH MAN...
2022-03-10 17:53:24 +0000 UTC View PostHe wouldn’t have had the time to do any of this were it not for the bravery of a particular insane norseman, the giant man having brought his hammer to bear upon Ubul’s knee and shattered it, climbing atop the general and smashing away at his stone skin, freezing it and rendering it fragile, causing the water within it to expand and pull Ubu...
2022-03-09 19:12:09 +0000 UTC View PostTaking the opportunity, Strake turned his tank around and leapt atop the general as well, using a solidly-stuck arm segment to stand on while he fired Zero’s pilebunkers into the shoulder of one arm after another, sending the giant stone serpents tumbling to the ground. Zefaris, even with her left eye constantly busy carving a kinetic mirror g...
2022-03-08 18:58:16 +0000 UTC View PostEven if the statue couldn’t overpower Ubul in a contest of strength, Blackstone reinforced with Azoth-auric Amalgam superseded any mundane rock no matter how rickly infused with Terra, and the edge of the Sister’s Sword bit into the haft of Ubul’s polearm, enough for the general to feel the need to kick the statue away. It sailed overhead ...
2022-03-07 17:44:30 +0000 UTC View PostCrovacus simply downed a cocktail of various painkillers, high-concentration medium-suspended essentia, and alchemicals designed to ease its otherwise lethal toxicity. Despite the fact both of the noblemen possessed stormward talismans, neither planned to fight Ubul, rather deciding - independently of one another - to shore up the battle-line an...
2022-03-06 17:34:52 +0000 UTC View PostDespite the passing of nearly a full week, none in the growing camp felt that enough time had been afforded to them. Even with the aid of mages and machines, even with tanks of bleeding-edge geopolymerase to turn dirt and clay to solid rock with, their fortifications were still barely comparable with that looming mass of rock and stone at the ce...
2022-03-05 18:09:51 +0000 UTC View PostIn the end, the statues turned out orders of magnitude more important than thought. They were not merely a hardened frontline with functionally zero logistical overhead, they were also not a mere autonomous weapons system. The Revered and Reviled among them understood commands, they merely chose to ignore them if those commands did not clearly l...
2022-03-04 18:17:37 +0000 UTC View PostNo ideas came to mind. No sudden empowerment from the belt, no sudden epiphany. Only crushing darkness and pressure. He felt the few portions of his suit that were not attached to the exoskeleton being squeezed in tight and tighter, crushingly so. Bits of clay started pushing their way in through the gaps of his right arm’s plating. He held hi...
2022-03-03 19:29:07 +0000 UTC View PostFirst, she would split the beast open, and for this, the Butcher was ideal. Its heated edge baked the clay as she cut it, rendering reconstitution difficult if not impossible. She carved away, repeatedly invoking Heartbreaker for guidance.
Once she had a deep enough gash in the clay to stick her entire arm in up to the sho...
2022-03-02 18:11:34 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Apologies for the lack of a chapter yesterday. I had decided to take a nap around 5pm, and it happened to turn into a 12hr sleep.
__________________________________________________________________________________Without a split-second’s rest or hesitation he turned around, severing the tendril which threatened to grab him before he ...
2022-03-01 18:27:37 +0000 UTC View PostThis was amazing. True chaos. Death and destruction all around, rattling his bones and threatening to blow out his eardrums even though he knew his helmet would protect him against even directed sonic attacks. An environment where, under any other circumstances, he would’ve hid and tried to find gover. It didn’t matter. Inside this steel ski...
2022-02-27 17:22:24 +0000 UTC View PostElsewhere, within Willowdale, deep underground, Kanbu floated in a sensory deprivation tub he had borrowed from a Fog-sailor, his body covered in complex paint and talismans which directly linked him to the great statue. He didn’t have to be present in body or soul in order to render assistance, and enabling the Watcher to reach its full poten...
2022-02-26 18:59:33 +0000 UTC View PostThrough aetherwave comms, loudly-shouted commands, and even words exchanged between defenders, the knowledge spread that the Clay Soldiers’ cores could be discerned from the outside, and thanks to their possession of direct aetherwave, it was the tankmen who knew first, with the artillery-men being second. And, this information, had come from ...
2022-02-25 18:12:32 +0000 UTC View PostArtillery crews scrambled to load their mortars and field cannons, tankmen put their machines into first-gear and began spinning up their engines, training their weapons on the treeline. Mortars were fired at the marked target zones, one after the other, spreading out to cover as wide an area of the forest as possible while giving the scouts opp...
2022-02-24 16:35:33 +0000 UTC View PostStormward Talismans had long been distributed, save for the few spares Zel had, and these she kept for herself, to give to whoever proved to be particularly capable in the impending battle. Despite these discordant forces, by some miracle, a cohesive battle-line managed to form. Heavy machinery, First-model tankmen, statues, and cultivators at t...
2022-02-23 20:55:11 +0000 UTC View Post