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48 - Impurities

There was no place for an Exclusion Zone scavenger’s instincts alongside her own, she wasn’t a subsistence survivalist.

The pressure, the heat, the tension, it all grew to what felt like what would be a breaking point, like a colossal fu...

47 - Necrobeast Elixir

His brow furrowed, he looked up at the homunculus in the jar, then at the homunculus that stood before him. Zel bent down to get a close look at the liquid, tracing the individual strands of blackness within the elixir. Transferring it from contai...

46 - Re: Opus

The sun rose over a pale morning.

A knock at the door yanked her from the haze of sleep. Her senses flooded in one by one - the warmth of the sun on a small portion of her face. Zef’s back pressed against her chest. Something soft gripped ...

45 - Dawn of Another Fateful Day

“Bullshit,” accused Sodan.

“Straight, just like I said,” the governor reassured.

Sodan looked aside again, taking a drag of the cigar, “I’ll think about it.”

“No time,” Crovacus pushed him. “I need an answer.�...

44 - Call me Strake

The guards nodded and eagerly retreated, closing the door behind themselves, leaving the two men facing one another. Despite the perfect lighting of his office, the Prisoner’s wild hair cast an impenetrable shadow over his face, only a pair of p...

43 - Breath of Change/Prisoner

It would be the third Renegade Inquisitor in the history of the order, and facilitating the process would either burn many bridges for him or help him cut the scaffolds out from under his political rivals back home if they tried to twist the Inqui...

42 - Proof of a Craftsman

With those parting words she walked upstairs and finally dropped off the groceries she had bought, mulling over her brief conversation with Sigmund. Makhus really wasn’t good in a fight with anything other than a sword. She had had more than eno...

41 - Accustomed to Violence

It was one thing to adapt to killing in circumstances like an active warzone or a targeted extermination expedition, it was a whole nother matter to do so during an errand run and remain largely unmoved.

Though a small part of her wanted to ...

40 - Just an Errand

Neither was she willing to risk approaching him, just in case, and there just wasn’t enough time to wait until he bled out and thus became a non-threat. The guards would, in a best-case scenario, want to drag him away for questioning.

So s...

39 - Emperor's Mercy

...All with a heavy Pateirian accent and an utter lack of genuinity, as if he’d phonetically rehearsed everything he’d said up until now. Just to be careful, out of pure instinct, Zefaris took a breath of Fog and willed her Homunculus Eye to d...

38 - Soapboxing

On her way back, Zefaris continued to think on what it was that made her feel uneasy. Perhaps it was the people in the street? Perhaps the distinct absence of zipperheads every couple hundred meters resentfully observing the pedestrians, aggressiv...

37 - Bherad

They were foreign and unexpected, but it was perfectly on-brand for nomads like them. The street-vendor even had that little hole in the temple of his skull plugged by a silver coin, answering how he could’ve conceivably gotten here. A lone Fog-...

36 - Re:Cogs in Motion

At first, it was the loss of contact - a missed daily check-in over the aether wave. Then, a second one, and a third one. What had happened? Surely the dungeon couldn’t have stamped them out, and it certainly hadn’t sunk - if it had, His Divin...

35 - Make it So

“I signed your employment contract, cherry boy,” she said before urging him on. “Now c’mon, what is my mother paying you for?”

Reluctantly, the young bodyguard came over and helped her wrangle the couch through the doorway, getting...

34 - Serpent's Head

It had been twice now, that she hadn’t recognized someone until she heard their voice. Twice that one of her peers had foolishly allowed the essence of a beast run rampant on their forms, thinking that just because some alchemist had purged its ...

33 - Resentment for Complacency

It wasn’t until years later that Ezaryl had learned the truth of the One-week War, of the automaton that she now knew would come to be known as a tankman. The one used in the exhibition was an unfinished prototype, scarcely able to move under it...

32 - The One-week War

There had been precisely one time when a foreign power plunged into the heart of the steppe and touched its heart. It had been that man, the one who called himself the Sage of Fog, one who spoke of lands afar greatly similar to those regaled as ho...

31 - Karga

Zel looked around and guessed, “It’s either the owner or the kid in noble’s clothes up on stage.”

“Bingo, it’s the guitarist,” the singer grinned. “He’s older than me n’ drinks like a carp, but homunculus organs take damn...

Training Arc Complete Artwork (very minor spoiler)

30 - Homunculus

A brief silence, wherein he sipped of his ale and furrowed his brow in remembrance before continuing, “That was some… Three millennia ago I think? Two? Don’t remember. Anyway, things were pretty good fer a while, until folks realized they co...

29 - Drunken Folklore

Festivities of decadence such as the one which would inevitably come in the next few weeks were the best time to resupply, to get some interesting new trinkets and go unnoticed all along.

That was not to mention the child-like curiosity that...

28 - Mine's Bigger

“Ooh, lemme guess. It’s somethin’ real personal ain’t it. Like a lover’s body odor or somesuch,” he replied with a knowingly facetious tone right after downing a big gulp of his liquor.

She knew that he knew, and that was that. Z...

27 - Speakeasy

The speakeasy was a single large room perhaps three or four times as long as it was wide, with the entrance being on the narrow end. The height of the ceiling, the positively chilly ambience, and the presence of old wine barrels betrayed this plac...

26 - Old Quarter

Eventually, after nearly half an hour of following Strolvath’s unwavering lead through the city’s tangled veins, he stopped at a steep staircase from the bottom of which loud music and hollering echoed. At the top of the staircase, around some...

0.5 - Codex

For the sake of new  readers (and at the suggestion of a reviewer), I’ve decided to put  together a basic codex for in-universe terms/concepts. This list isn’t  comprehensive and only covers basic explanations. I'll update it ov...

25 - Strolvath's Caution

The older man let out a barking, coughing laugh, like gravel in a cement mixer, followed by the clattering of coins against the counter. Once the last coin left his hand, he grabbed a seal-bottle.

“I would, werghck- Were it not that ev’r...

24 - Citronade

A/N: Sorry for the break in posting. Someone suggested that I put together a codex/glossary for the sake of new readers, and I kinda annihilated my time management while I did exactly that. 

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23 - Understatement

“That’s…” he trailed off, having stopped himself from even beginning to say the word “impossible”. A deep sigh. There was as much point to questioning Zel’s inhuman capabilities as there was to questioning why old folk rituals actual...

22 - Traits

She’d chosen to cover her top half with a completely unfitting dark greyish-blue dress shirt, clearly one of Zef’s pieces of clothing. It was honestly impressive that she’d managed to make it even remotely fit - the usually loose sleeves wer...

21 - March to Opus

Yes, soon enough the pieces would be in place and he could - wait. If the Philter’s current stage had already finished, it must’ve been at least an hour and a half since those two were down here last. Indeed, a glance at the clock confirmed hi...