JaceVAmor

Chapter 316: Blast from the Past

Marcus, the Viceroy of Ghost Reef and chief diplomat of the Lighthouse, stared at the peculiar flock of pink flamingos. He was perpetually astonished by their presence. The kitschy plastic lawn ornaments were the last choice of decor he would have predicted for such an important gathering, but there they were, in all their flamboyant glory.

He had already attended countless conferences, fundraisers, and meetings in his lifetime, but representing Ghost Reef during mana’s assimilation had sent him to the most unique venues b...

Chapter 315: Hovering and Hiking

It turned out that Coop’s travel speed was quite a bit higher than that of the Avatar of the System. She couldn’t keep up with his ability to completely bypass obstacles, combined with the fact that he consumed no resources while flickering across the landscape.

Coop’s ability to step through the world of mists, shifting himself by way of spectral mana was exceptional, especially when bolstered by his excessive investment into multiplying his stats such that his Strength and Agility were both absurd relative to his sup...

Chapter 314: Hungry Hungry Humans

Coop shook the water from his hair, then wiped off his shoulders and flicked his hands dry before he began his approach toward the Avatar of the System and her worm-like companion. Even he would put a bit of effort into his appearance when it came to the Avatar, though in his case, that just meant drying off a bit.

As Coop walked back up the shore, barefoot, shirtless, and covered in bruises, he watched as the tiny alien creature leaned back and forth, like it was dancing to a slow mysterious rhythm. Lyriel seemed mesmerized...

Chapter 313: Depths of Madness

Coop used both hands to cup some river water and soak his face, but his hands lingered just a bit longer than necessary. Both palms gingerly rested against his cheeks, covering his eyes with his fingers as droplets fell down. He wasn’t sobbing, but he certainly felt like he should.

After a few moments, he released his face, letting his hands sink back into the chilly river, and took a steadying breath. He watched his reflection in the ripples as the surface settled down. Staring back at him was, thankfully, a regular, basi...

Chapter 312: One with the Abyss

Coop fell to his hands and knees, crying out in agony as pulsating tendrils threatened to rip out of his bruised skin from the inside. Through his blurry vision, he watched in horror as prehensile stems bulged beneath the surface, creating ripples that flowed across his forearms, surging and twisting until they reached into the back of his hands and caused his fingers to twitch uncontrollably.

It was the kind of awful sensation that he never could have imagined before experiencing himself. He was living a nightmare that was ...

Chapter 311: Fatal Reckoning

Coop firmly planted his left foot, generated torque through his hips, and braced his right arm as it supported his spear. His jaw was clenched tight as he incorporated every muscle in pushing his weapon forward, not wanting to leave any doubt about his own limits when compared to his target. The spear attack was aiming to sever the Icon of Mana’s right uppermost wing, just beyond the shoulder of the monster.

He kept the Icon of Mana at his absolute maximum range, just hoping to puncture its defenses by a few inches at most...

Chapter 310: Reckless

Coop took his place back on the hazy beach, alone with nothing but his shield, spear, and ethereal armor. He kept his eyes on the rippling rift as it hovered just above the surface of the water, off in the distance. The flat plane of light was steadily growing brighter while bursts of white sparks surged to life all around it, creating tiny rainbow flashes as they drifted away.

A steady flow of energy was being sucked into the disc, seemingly from all directions and Coop found himself squinting as his eyes watered while he o...

Chapter 309: Edge of the Abyss

One hundred and one warriors fought on the broad coastline of the Mississippi Sea, kicking up gritty dirt with powerful lunges and calculated cooperative defenses. They were swarmed by black glass covered enemies that were twice as tall, with limbs twice as long, who sought to abuse their stealth abilities and gouge out the vital areas of their opponents. Their slender arms terminated in spear-like hands and were perfect for slipping past defenses to pierce exposed flesh. More frequently, they were shattered by the unyielding counter attacks...

Chapter 308: Breaking Barriers

Rows of spectral gladiators slammed into the beach, one after the other, their greaves driving into the ground as a prelude to their formidable presence. They were solid manifestations that had come to this plane of reality at the beckoning of the Mistwalker himself, forming a bulwark of resistance deep within the Fallen Zone. Dark sand, dirt, and gravel splashed in waves as they arrived and shifted into strict formations.

No words were necessary to establish a level of organization that would have taken years of training to...

Chapter 307: The Omega

Coop stood on the dark colored beach beneath an even darker sky, his stance a picture perfect depiction of defiance. It wasn’t an ideal location to be caught standing, as he was completely exposed to the elements, but he didn’t shy away from the uncertain situation.

He squinted into the dim evening light, ready for whatever would come next. His gaze was unshaken, partially obstructed by sweat soaked hair, but he kept his chin up and his breath steady. His motivation was a simple refusal to allow the Primal Constructs to ...

Chapter 306: The Hunter

Could the manifestations of Primal Constructs experience fear? It was a question that Coop couldn’t definitively answer on his own, though he was pretty confident the answer was no.

Based on all of his time in the assimilation, he was comfortable accepting that minions were effectively mindless and manifestations were only marginally more sophisticated, always fighting to the death in simple ways. They were all more like pieces in a board game than individual beings, using their particular set of attributes to claim territ...

Chapter 305: The Hunted

As the daytime temperature faded, a light ground fog further coalesced within the forest. An even coat of vapor radiated from the earth. It was far more noticeable than the light wisps of spectral energy that constantly trailed the Mistwalker, but the two combined to add a haunting feeling to the area occupied by the Revenant of Ghost Reef.

Coop stalked through the grassy clearing, steps disturbing the initial thickening of natural mists as if he was wading through shallow water. He was slowly turning his head side to side a...

Chapter 304: Needle in a Haystack

A once serene sanctuary of towering pines, flowing rivers, and rocky outcroppings had been transformed into a chilling, unpleasant domain. Winding trails weaved between jutting boulders, overlooked shallow, stone-filled creeks, and were criss-crossed with moss-covered fallen logs. They were untouched, lying dormant, ever since the assimilation began. The air was heavy, contaminated with alien mana that shrouded the region in a murky gray, and what should have been clear, sparkling water was black and syrupy.

This was a place...

Chapter 303: Layovers

Jones helped Coop aim the tip of his ethereal spear toward where they believed Empress City should be located relative to their shared position. The pair stood together atop the modified northern outer wall of Ghost Reef, at the highest point of the fort, above where the bat colony had relocated. Somehow, miniature dunes of fine sand managed to form gentle waves on the leeward side of the solid stone foundations, making the walls seem like they had risen straight out of the coral rock below.

Coop and Jones were doing their b...

Chapter 302: Sweet Dreams

The serene harmonies of gentle winds flowing off the sea soothed Coop down to his core. Outstretched palm fronds swayed in the light ocean breeze, reacting to oscillations in the ephemeral currents, and bathed the island with a musical salve that fully immersed his mind in tranquility.

Coop was in a state of consciousness somewhere between dreams and reality, enjoying the natural wind chimes and subtle bustle of his tropical home while all of the stresses of his life completely washed away. He needed what was essentially a f...

[Status Update]

Just a little bit longer!

I'll be posting chapters again starting on Wednesday of next week (Nov. 6th).

My little break from posting was a mixed bag, I guess, lol. I am once again feeling mostly better after aggravating my injury and wasting another 8 days re-recovering in bed. It looks like I'll be three chapters short of the goal I had set because of that, but that's close enough for me.

Hopefully, this will be the last non-chapter post from me until we're at or near the end. I'm still in awe at the absurdity that I ...

Chapter 301: Forgiveness

Hai Yun squeezed her eyes shut, ignoring the sounds around her. She sat on her knees with her head down, completely depleted, unable even to weep. The burdens of leadership had already exhausted her emotions. The lives she had become responsible for would be lost, but in the end, that’s what they had all expected. What more could she have done?

She had exhausted her mana in an ultimate attack that had been snuffed out with hardly any effort by their opponent, just as he had negated all the others. Without any resources to ...

Chapter 300: The Underking

Somewhere in the Underlayer, in the company of an unweathered stone pillar, half a dozen arguments welled up from a group of despairing individuals. The column stood like a silent witness, roughly the width and length of a football stadium while they debated amongst themselves. The pillar, with its mana dense atmosphere and the sprawling landscape of unspoiled dirt was indistinguishable from a thousand others that occupied the underground layer. There was nothing special about this one in particular.  

For the part...

Chapter 299: New High Score

With no more enemies remaining in the Underlayer, Coop flopped to the ground and laid on his back in the middle of the transitioning control point. He released himself from the Inheritance of the Mists, bidding the Apparition of the Pillar of Heaven farewell, though with the way Coop was connected to the mists, it seemed like they were never really gone.

The massive sigh that escaped Coop’s lungs caught him by surprise. He knew he was tired, but he hadn’t realized just how much the exhaustion had permeated to his core. I...

Chapter 298: The Pillar of Heaven

Coop’s ethereal morning star smashed through a fortified Field Boss that skittered along the surface of the ground, using its many legs to navigate the battlefield with unsettling efficiency. It had surreptitiously crawled into range, using the cover provided by the parties of Elites to try and catch its target by surprise. The monster bore its pointed mandibles, aiming to drill into its victim, only for the heavy mace to catch it unprepared, sending shards of its metallic body splashing in all directions. All eleven primary legs were spla...

Chapter 297: Burdens

Coop watched as the army from Shinjuku Gardens begrudgingly vacated the Underlayer. Most realized that it wasn’t worth defying his order to leave and risking the consequences, having personally witnessed how easily he destroyed the Primal Constructs, but that didn’t stop them from stealing spiteful glances at him as they went. He let them see him, standing unbothered at their backs.

None of the soldiers had the right combination of courage and stupidity to test his resolve. Coop wondered if perhaps that was wisdom, but t...

Chapter 296: Lord of the Abyss

Mists were coursing into the Underlayer and Coop flowed along with them. He practically danced through the billowing clouds, letting the rhythm of his strikes dictate his movement. The streaming motions added a transformative hint of elegance to the Revenant’s typical brawling.

His stats had been elevated to such high default values compared to his opponents that his actual combat style was altered. As a result, he was developing a measure of gracefulness that would have surprised his friends back home. Pure aggression was...

Chapter 295: No Tea Party

Coop took a moment to admire the vast armies of Primal Constructs as they milled around their castle-like fortresses. The legions of invaders created a dramatic sprawl of gray metals. As they swarmed protectively around the final objectives, they established a stark contrast to the desert of dark brown dirt.

It was quite the scene when viewed from a distance.

The fortresses that the invaders surrounded were islands of activity within the otherwise stagnant underground. The directionless light illuminated the...

[Status Update]

Hello again!

This last week I've been easing into my previous schedule. I'm hoping that next week I'll be back to normal, productivity-wise. If everything goes well, I'd expect the pause in chapters to last 3 weeks, starting after Chapter 301.

It seems like it'll be a while until I am physically recovered, but I'm definitely trending in a positive direction. I can't really bend and I move like a snail. Thankfully, I just need to sit and type.

On a side note, before this interruption, I had worked on Unchosen Champi...

Chapter 294: Turmoil in Gangcheon

Cho Sang-hoon was having trouble tamping down on his concerns as time went on. The turmoil in Gangcheon had been escalating for a long time, and to make matters worse, the Underlayer Event was a total disaster.

They barely made any progress beyond their initial probes on the Primal Constructs. After their failed assault on the Siege Boss, they had been unable to properly regroup. Different factions within the settlement, organized into companies, challenged their strategy and demanded accountability while avoiding any commit...

Chapter 293: Super

“Super” Siwarak Supitaya was doing his best to keep busy. He was resting after a set of 1,000 crunches, just laying in the endless dirt, watching his chest rise and fall as he caught his breath. His pair of shadow companions mirrored his actions at his side, despite being unreal manifestations of himself. They weren’t really tired. The act of imitation was meant to make fun of him for even being able to feel exhaustion.

He ignored them, as usual, instead staring at the ceiling while his breath slowed. The vapor high in...

Chapter 292: Inquisitor of the Deep

Coop thought that it was about time to wrap things up in the Underlayer. Sure, there were still officially three weeks remaining in the duration of the event, but the Primal Constructs simply weren’t up to the task of maintaining their invasion, and not just because of his personal growth. Several other forces of humans had proven they were capable of stemming the tide against their would-be alien conquerors as well.

Many of those that managed to access the Underlayer had entered the underground prepared to grapple with wh...

Chapter 291: Sorceress of the Storm

Charlie’s eyes sparked with electricity as energy swirled through her. She had become the embodiment of the storm, hovering over the expectant battlefield: a conduit for storm mana. One hand gripped her staff while the other pinched her fingers against her thumb, holding back the first bite of lightning.

Bolts crackled far above, warning them all of what would come, responding to the mana she expelled as she directed it to flow through the Underlayer. A vortex was building, using her as its anchor. The amount of power that...

Chapter 290: Tea Party

Coop lifted the fanciest teacup he had ever seen toward his lips, uncomfortable with the delicate porcelain between his fingers. Compared to the sturdiness of his ethereal weapons it felt unnatural, like his hands weren't meant for gripping such a fragile item. He gently blew into the liquid, before taking a hesitant sip.

Despite trying to avert the tea party, Coop had been unable to avoid it. The expensive rarities that were brought out belonged in a museum, but the man who kept him company insisted that valuable items were...

Chapter 289: Divine Messenger

“Champion of the Unchosen.” The person who approached Coop spoke. Their voice was calm and they waited until they drew close to speak, still completely hidden beneath their loose clothes.

The soft tone of the words revealed the first hint that the figure was a woman. Her robes had completely masked her form, and other than the hand holding the walking staff that doubled as a falcon perch, there were no other clues that a human was beneath the pile of fabrics at all.

She used her empty hand, hidden by a w...