emergencycomplaints

Chapter 97

Luke backed away from the tree slowly while Zea scrambled to stay low on all fours as she fled its reach. Twice more, branches that had just been normal, bark-covered limbs suddenly sprouted razor thorns and became as flexible as willow switches. ...

Chapter 236

Author's Note: Tomorrow's chapter will be the final update for this story.

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He felt… hollow, empty, without purpose. For so long, for sixty years, if Rizin was to be believed, Nym had been strug...

Chapter 96

They rushed straight north as fast as they could, using System as a pseudo-compass to make sure they didn’t get too close to the absolutely massive cluster of hundreds-foot tall trees jutting up out of the forest like some great wooden mountain....

Chapter 95

The mountains loomed in their vision, blocking much of the eastern and northern sky and forcing them to push farther and farther west in an attempt to circle around them. Since that was an expected complication to their journey, Luke hadn’t thou...

Chapter 94

Luke ranged back and forth in a zig-zag pattern while Zea marched straight ahead. Every few minutes, he’d loop back and check in before starting another lap. They kept this up for days, and without the XP split or the slow pace, he quickly jumpe...

Chapter 93

“First things first,” Luke said, “System, how do I make it so that Zea can see you too?”

“You will first need a skill that lets you modify other people’s systems called [Remote Access],” System told him. “It ...

Chapter 92

The ritual itself was kind of boring, at least from Luke’s perspective. Zea did all the work, which included walking around the circle repeatedly, chanting something that sounded ominous at first but which quickly became kind of boring and then ...

Chapter 91

By early afternoon, they’d walked ten miles and picked a few fights with various monsters. Luke had just finished extracting his mace from the skull of a badger-looking thing the size of a grizzly bear when Zea said, “That did it. I’m level ...

Chapter 90

Luke’s back slammed into the tree hard enough that he felt the wood crack. The whole trunk groaned and shifted, with a few roots popping up out of the ground when it tilted backwards. Stars flashed across his eyes, blinding him, and he did the o...

Chapter 89

Luke sat next to Zea by a small campfire and tried to pick the tufts of hair out of the flanges of his mace. Normally it wasn’t a problem to clean it out, but his latest kill had hacked up some sort of glue-like snot ball at him, which he’d ba...

Chapter 88

Zea was quite satisfied with her shopping trip. Not only had she managed to find everything she needed both for the ritual and her own enchanting needs, she’d even negotiated free use of an enchanter’s workbench to make the masking enchantment...

Chapter 87

Chapter 87

“Someone down there?” Luke called out.

“Gedin? Nenda?” Avlir added. “You two alive down there?”

Silence stretched on, broken only by the sound of debris shifting as it settled into its new position. Luke sc...

Chapter 220

The modifications went well. They weren’t terribly dangerous, but mistakes could have unacceptable delays, so Nym was glad to have performed them all properly in the first attempt. More accurately, he was glad to have not made any irreversible m...

Chapter 219

That little vacation had done wonders for Nym’s mental health, but now he was back in the box. Rizin had given him some valuable hints, and he was determined to milk them for all they were worth. First, he was planning to resume his attempts to ...

Chapter 86

“A favor?” Luke couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah.”

“Why would I do a favor for you after you made me chase you to get back what you stole from me? Just because you stopped running?”

“Well it’s not like I was reall...

Chapter 218

“I don’t understand,” Nym said.

“You don’t need to understand to do it.”

“But-”

“Are you willing or not?”

“I mean, sure, it’s not a big deal. I just don’t get why.”

Rizin just stared at Nym...

Chapter 217

The cage didn’t work. Despite everything he’d done to reinforce it, it seemed to lack the weight needed to withstand the arcana. As soon as the first fissure opened, it got blasted around every bit as easily as Nym himself. It wasn’t a physi...

Chapter 85

Now three coppers lighter, Luke stood on the inside of the gate and took a deep breath. The city smelled, well, if he was being honest, it smelled awful. Maybe the wall prevented fresh air from circulating through, or maybe too many people were du...

Chapter 216

Nym didn’t trust any of the other ascendants at this point. Niramyn would no doubt send new hunters after him, and if Myzalik ever learned that someone had witnessed his god killer spell, Nym was sure he would immediately jump to the top of the ...

Chapter 84

Luke didn’t understand why they needed a silver bowl inscribed with a circle, or an athame of obsidian and blood silver, or anything else that the ritual called for. Zea assured him that most of the expensive objects were tools that they’d onl...

Chapter 215

There were only a handful of ascendants at the twelfth layer, powerful enough to be called Exarchs. Of those, there were only two who would be actively hostile towards Ferro and Valicin. One of them had a blanket hatred towards everyone and would ...

Chapter 214

Nym promptly abandoned the sanctuary he’d constructed for himself. He also abandoned the front he’d built, a sort of decoy sanctuary that he gave out as the place to go in order to see him. The copy that manned that returned to him, as well as...

Chapter 83

Luke had gotten a look at a map before he’d left Valtira when he was preparing to walk, and he hadn’t much cared for what he’d seen. There was a giant blob of mountains blocking off a chunk of the coast, which limited access to the sea so mu...

Chapter 213

From what Nym understood, advancing to the next layer after ascending wasn’t a simple matter of finding a fun new way to manipulate a conduit so that it was stronger or more flexible. What exactly he did need to do was still up for debate. That ...

Chapter 212

Nym sat at the table with Kazie while Analia fended off the Earth Shapers’ combined affection. “So, do you like this kind of work?” he asked.

“It’s alright. I don’t have the passion for it that Nomick does, but I’m capable, and...

Chapter 82

“I- Thought- You- Were- Dead,” Zea said, punctuating each word by throwing handfuls of the gold and silver coins at Luke.

“Hey, stop that. Stop! You’re making a mess.”

Luke caught as many as he could, but he couldn’t snatch...

Chapter 211

Analia stayed in Nym’s sanctuary for a week. When he’d finished his work and allowed her to wake up, she was as physically healthy as she’d ever been, more so than when he’d started even. Analia had run her body into the ground repeatedly ...

Chapter 81

The guy in charge of the bandits wasn’t physically imposing. He was a few inches shorter than Luke with a slim build and a thin, dark mustache over his lip that matched equally thin, dark hair. If Luke had to describe the feeling of the XP comin...

Chapter 80

The bandits were already scrambling to their feet before Luke showed up, but he buried them before they could organize any sort of defense. The first bandit took a mace to his ribs and was smashed backwards into the wall. The second one got kicked...

Chapter 79

Luke knew he sucked at sneaking around, that he lacked the skills to hide his XP, and there was only so much agility and [Stealth]could do to help. His current strategy was just to get as close as he could and then close the dista...