DarkTechnomancer

My Own Best Friend 23 - We All Want to Survive

Marching down the seemingly endless tunnel gives me a lot of time to think about things. Things like “Why is the stone here so flat and smooth?” and “How damn long is this tunnel supposed to ...

My Own Best Friend 22 - Calm Down for a Second

Allison and Maggie are quiet while I carefully butcher the dead lizard. In hindsight, it probably would have been smarter to remove the guts before draining it, but hopefully that won...

My Own Best Friend 21 - I Suggest a Compromise

Things are pretty tense after all the arguing, and even though we’ve only been awake for a couple of hours at most, I’m exhausted. I pull our cloak around me and curl up against the cave wall.<...

Art Update - System Lost Concept Art and Covers

Announcement - Volume 7 ebook and print now available!

Art Update - Volume 8 Cover

It's been a while since I did one of these. I promise that it's not because I stopped commissioning artwork for Fates Parallel! It's just that pieces like this one take a long time to...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 5 - A New Era

The night sky was easy to take for granted. It was a beautiful expanse of brilliant lights, colorful cloud-like shapes, and constellations, all presided over by the silvery illumination of the moon...

Epilogue 4 - The Center of the World

If asked where the center of the world was, most would answer Jiaguo. The city, not the empire. The empire had been short-lived, but Jiaguo remained an important location to the institutions that c...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 3 - Family Drama

It wasn’t always easy to find one’s place in life. It was an inevitable challenge for any young adult, and often even well into adulthood. Some went their entire lives without finding it. Some,...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 2 - Shattered Masks

It was an odd feeling, being back in the Grand Academy. When Fujikawa Ayumi was last there, Jiaguo didn’t even exist, and now it was the biggest empire in the world. For a long time, she’d felt...

Fates Parallel Epilogue 1 - A Meeting of Mothers

It always felt a bit awkward, visiting larger cities. Fang Xiu had grown up in a remote village where there were no buildings taller than a single story, the only point of interest was an unusually...

Fates Parallel Chapter 617 - Respite

The Dragon Lord had no idea how to respond to her, simply staring in mute incomprehension. Long Xiaofan was likewise dumbfounded, so it fell on Yoshika to elaborate on her audacious confession unpr...

Announcement - What Comes Next?

In just two weeks, Fates Parallel will be over. It'll take a couple of months for that to reach the public platforms, and longer still for Amazon to catch up, but here, for those of y...

My Own Best Friend 20 - Call Me Maggie

“So are you ever going to explain what just happened?” Violet asks testily.

I roll my eyes while I start sorting out the candles they brought. They’re mostly identical, but now that I k...

My Own Best Friend 19 - High School Biology

I wake up without remembering ever going to sleep. Again. That’s probably not healthy, but nothing about my life is healthy. I’m just glad I woke up at all.

Going to check my wounds, I fi...

My Own Best Friend 18 - Something That Is Red

This new tunnel is markedly different from either the caverns or the Worm Tunnel. The floor is unnaturally smooth and flat—which is honestly a relief after everything our poor feet have gone thro...

My Own Best Friend 17 - Well That Sucks

Hunting is an entirely novel experience for me, and even if it weren’t, what little I know about hunting involves tracking animals through forests and then shooting them. Something tells me that ...

My Own Best Friend 16 - Now We're Cooking

“So...” I muse, turning the candle over in my hands. “I guess we can boil water now?”

“In theory,” Violet agrees. “But we need a smaller, non-flowing source to test it on. Like ...

My Own Best Friend 15 - You Should Be a Scientist

I giggle a bit at Violet’s resigned sigh.

“Look, just hear me out,” I say, trying to suppress my laughter. “I actually have a good reason for this. Look at the class...”

2025-02-10 01:32:00 +0000 UTC View Post

My Own Best Friend 14 - Blinded by Number Crunching

I awake to the vague sense that I haven’t been out for very long. Not keen to repeat my previous mistake, I check my surroundings first, and only after I’ve confirmed that there are no lizards,...

My Own Best Friend 13 - No Pain, No Gain

[Allison: Tier 0 Human]

[Class Slot 1: Tier 0 [Unified Collective]* - Level 10/10

[Class Slot 2: Tier 0 [Wanderer]* - Level 10/10

My Own Best Friend 12 - The Abyss Awaits

[Allison: Tier 0 Human]

[Class Slot 1: Tier 0 [Unified Collective ]* - Level 10/10

[Class Slot 2: Tier 0 [Wanderer ]* - Level 9/10

My Own Best Friend 11 - We Have Different Things

I feel awful when I wake up. Once again, I have no memory of falling asleep and no idea how long I was out. We can’t keep doing this. Sleep deprivation is going to kill us as surely as any monste...

My Own Best Friend 10 - Do I Have To?

Thanks to Violet’s hard work securing us “food,” we’ve managed to pretty much get all of our physiological needs met. Sure, the food is disgusting, and we have to go on a dangerous hike eve...