The dungeon core hung from the ceiling of a cave like a singular massive tooth, a stalactite at least thirty feet across at the base. The shape wasn’t particularly surprising to Velik—cores cou...
2025-05-22 11:52:15 +0000 UTC View PostThey caught up quickly, with Torwin’s trip through many different areas taking longer to relate than Velik’s slug fest. Torwin was grateful he hadn’t been thrown into that. The sheer number o...
2025-05-21 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostSomewhere in the mass of thousands of kill notifications from his time in the arena, Velik had reached level 49. The enemies hadn’t been particularly strong, barring the champion at the end, so h...
2025-05-20 12:12:49 +0000 UTC View PostDungeon cores weren’t alive in the same manner that monsters of flesh and blood were, but they were closer to that than to slabs of stone they resembled. They were closer to a stimulus and respon...
2025-05-19 11:01:27 +0000 UTC View PostLosing a leg hadn’t slowed the champion down much, but it had forced the monster to hold its weight up using one of its arms, leaving only a single tentacle-like limb to smack at Velik with. That...
2025-05-16 11:26:55 +0000 UTC View Post“This is cheating,” Velik said as he drove his spear through the skull of some sort of furred bipedal monster that was seven feet tall and probably weighed three hundred pounds of solid muscle....
2025-05-15 11:48:08 +0000 UTC View PostSomething was not right with this scenario. There’d been nothing inside that window slit when Velik was climbing past it. The dark was no obstacle to his vision, and he knew it had just ...
2025-05-14 12:11:54 +0000 UTC View PostDespite their concerns, the trip to the Verdant Belt was a peaceful one. There were frequent monster attacks, but those didn’t really count in Velik’s mind. Monsters were everywhere, after all....
2025-05-13 12:11:46 +0000 UTC View PostSlokara didn’t look that much different from Ghestal, as far as Velik could tell. The trees were the same. The fields were the same. The only real change was that the mountains were on the north ...
2025-05-12 12:39:40 +0000 UTC View PostVelik didn’t recognize the mountain beneath him. An avalanche had dropped tons of snow down the slopes, presumably taking Torwin with it since he was nowhere to be found. A crater half a mile wid...
2025-05-09 13:23:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe snow yetis had been an anticipated hazard of the climb, but Torwin was still surprised to be attacked in such numbers. Yetis were tribal creatures, usually consisting of two to four families th...
2025-05-08 12:30:45 +0000 UTC View PostVelik occasionally had an issue where certain monsters were too well defended to be easily killed. Usually, this was some combination of high physical, thick natural armor, and some sort of skill t...
2025-05-07 13:46:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe cold air was bracing, but the snow flurries… less so. It wasn’t the chill that bothered Velik. It was that they were obstructing his view, and the damn yetis knew it. He was almost certain ...
2025-05-06 12:32:34 +0000 UTC View PostTorwin was content to let Velik take the lead. Much as he hated to admit it, a thousand-mile run had more than worn him out. Even in his youth, he doubted he could have done something that punishin...
2025-05-05 13:34:54 +0000 UTC View Post“How’s Sildra’s new druid circle coming along?” Velik asked that afternoon as they sat down for a break next to a creek. Velik was eating travel food—cheese, apples, and a chunk of bread ...
2025-05-02 12:02:07 +0000 UTC View PostAn old woodsman relaxed in his camp, one he’d used a thousand times over a forty-year career. He’d lived in the region his whole life. He knew the dangers. He knew what to look out for. He knew...
2025-05-01 11:17:14 +0000 UTC View PostTorwin stood on a stone patio, hands on his hips, and glared out over a flower garden flanked by two big shade trees. Wood benches stood over the flower beds on the edges of brick paths, and everyt...
2025-04-30 11:29:16 +0000 UTC View PostVelik wasn’t entirely clear on the exact reasons Jensen had decided to move his operations from Cravel to Ashala. It had something to do with trying to put some distance between himself and his f...
2025-04-29 11:48:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe wyvern was massive, easily twice the size of anything else Velik had seen over the last few weeks. It had scales like steel plates and teeth like sabers, and its breath was imbued with nauseati...
2025-04-28 12:59:36 +0000 UTC View PostFor all the grief the Monster Hunters Guild had given him, Velik had been generously compensated at the end of their relationship. He’d been allowed into their vault to take his pick of some of t...
2025-04-25 12:14:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe engineers stared up at the massive golem, slack-jawed and speechless. Their lanterns cast harsh shadows across the machine, but even in that flickering illumination, they could clearly see wher...
2025-04-24 12:06:34 +0000 UTC View PostVelik figured he knew what Jensen wanted long before he ever got back to the base camp. As it turned out, the golems he’d dismantled could repair themselves, and pretty quickly, too. Halfway ther...
2025-04-23 13:02:15 +0000 UTC View PostA great wolf stood in the empty hallway, peering through the slice of doorway that wasn’t really wide enough for it to get through. It could squeeze through, but that might leave it vulnerable. <...
2025-04-22 12:25:34 +0000 UTC View PostTempest’s magic had its limits, and Velik quickly found them. He’d pulled the dust-laden air out of the tunnels and blasted fresh air in, but the farther Velik got from the base camp, the thick...
2025-04-21 10:50:46 +0000 UTC View PostThey called it a sky bridge, which didn’t make much sense to Velik, since they’d had to dig several hundred feet into the side of the mountain to get to it. Without Jensen’s [Treasure...
2025-04-18 13:23:54 +0000 UTC View PostAs much as it pained Bertrim Nelspir to do it, especially after the idiot boy had basically abducted their monster detector, he couldn’t deny Velik and his team a proper reward for not only destr...
2025-04-17 13:04:44 +0000 UTC View PostVelik beat Healer Greenbaum’s predictions for his recovery time by over a week, though in all fairness, the moment he was able to access the energy granted to him by his mystic stat, he activated...
2025-04-16 13:31:34 +0000 UTC View PostVelik woke up in a strange bed in an unfamiliar room to the all-too-familiar sensation of things hurting. Every part of his body was raw, except for what was so numb that he couldn’t feel it at a...
2025-04-15 13:37:55 +0000 UTC View PostThere were still plenty of lizards alive, but Torwin and Aria had thinned out the herd. Velik wasn’t worried about getting swarmed by them, not now. Of more concern was the fact that he didn’t ...
2025-04-14 13:33:51 +0000 UTC View PostI need to find a way to gain access to all my gear at once, Velik lamented as he used his ring’s [Power Surge] to help him leap all the way up to the dungeon core. He’...
2025-04-11 13:49:26 +0000 UTC View Post