《The Only Real Cultivator》Chapter 18
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My veggie truck crushed everything in its path. It climbed mountains and jumped over boulders. It scaled vertical cliffs with its tentacles tougher than steel.
The monsters that we came across were far less menacing than the ones in the White Dragon Forest. I pointed this out to Chen Wei.
“The monsters in the White Dragon Forest are too powerful,” she responded.
“How come?” I asked.
“The most popular speculation is that it’s because of higher Qi concentration in the forest. Supposedly, it seeps into the animals and makes them stronger. The second most popular speculation is that it’s the food in the forest. Some think it’s both.” she replied.
“Cool, are there other places that have the same problem?” I asked.
“Many, too many to list, though most of them don’t get as bad as the center of the White Dragon Forest,” she said.
I nodded. “Was I at the center of the forest?”
She shivered. “Yes. Only somebody like Grandmaster Jin could survive living in a place like that.”
“Thanks?”
We would’ve had to take many detours to avoid danger zones and unscalable terrain, but we cut through them with my truck. We saw one more village and many mountains before we finally arrived at the city.
Chen Wei told me it was called the Grand Flames City. As I approached the city, it rapidly became obvious the name had not been given for dramatic effect.
The unbelievably enormous city was visible from hundreds of kilometers away. Only when I saw the city did I realize my failure to comprehend the state of this world’s civilizations.
The place was less a city and more of a mountain range. Civilization seeped into the valleys spilled down the side of every mountain. The center of it all was a gigantic volcano, hopefully dormant. Hundreds of mountains varying in size lie at its feet, but they were all smaller than the central volcano. There were still some parts of the mountains left in their natural states. One particularly odd patch of four mountains were all left untouched.
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Previously scattered roads all converged at the Grand Flames City. Chen Wei and I were still far away when I decided to stop. I didn’t want to attract attention, and the wooden truck wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.
I looked down at a contraption at my feet. I had been adding to it for the last couple hours while we waited to get to the city. It was a combination of perhaps thirty plants all melded together. Parts of it were cactus, I think there was an apple hidden somewhere behind the sea of fluff and Pluto Flytraps. It was an abomination, such a thing could never be created by nature.
“Hey, hey, watch this.” I grinned at Chen Wei. I touched a stick hanging off the side of the plant.
The stick hardly moved. At the other side of the plant, a grape exploded. Shortly after, a piece of cactus fell off. Then one of the spikes poked a bit of string.
Each of these motions shouldn't have had any effect on the rest of the plant, but they did anyway. This was the effect of the Program skill. As long as they touched each other, different plants would be able to affect the others, even though it shouldn’t be possible.
For now, they were just a collection of “if-then” statements. If I touched a stick, then the grape explodes. Nothing too complicated. But there were other uses too. For example, I could put a switch on a Glowing Pineapple. If the switch is touched, then the Glowing Pineapple switches on.
Actually, it was completely useless when I was around. Program was a strictly worse version of Control. I wouldn’t even need to touch the pineapple if I was around.
However, the skill was very useful if I wasn’t around. It could be used to create anything from intricate traps to pineapple lights. But I could activate those traps or turn on the lights with control if I was nearby.
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Most importantly, it was really fun to play with. I grinned childishly as I watch the contraption slowly unfold. Another cactus part fell off, bumping into a vine. Halfway across the plant, a Pluto Flytrap chomped down. It was supposed to snap a stick but it missed by a millimeter, ending the chain of events.
“Aww,” I whined.
This Chen Wei woman was a terrible influence on me! Even though she was obviously faking it, her maturity was rubbing off on me. I’ve even stopped swearing!
I wished she would return to talking casually, she had been so much more fun back then.
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A World Worth Protecting
By the year 3029 CE, Earth’s technology has developed rapidly, borders no longer exist, and Earth has been unified, marking the beginning of the era of the Federation. At that time, a huge sword flew from the heavens, piercing the sun and causing a huge sensation on Earth. Perhaps because the scabbard of the sword was already in tatters, countless shards have broken off from it following the collision with the sun and spread across the universe. Many of these shards have landed on various places across Earth. With the arrival of the bronze sword and its shards, a new unlimited energy source has suddenly appeared on Earth. This energy source has since been named Spirit Qi. Spirit Qi is like air, thick in some places and thin in others. As the Federation and other factions gather more shards, they discover more information on cultivation, pill refinement, Spirit Stone refinement, and other techniques. The words on the shards have an ancient feel to them, making it a trend for people to use ancient language. The appearance of Spirit Qi rapidly makes the original energy sources obsolete and has completely changed people’s lives. Not only has the Spirit Internet been formed, Spirit Qi has also changed the course of Human Civilization, causing the world to enter a civilization of cultivation. This would later come to be known as the Spirit Inception Era.
8 259Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
8 153Planetoid: The Legend of Aya Volume One
Elven warrior Aya Tintel is one of the remaining survivors from the destruction of her home-planet Tarabos. Taking refuge with her caretaker, Jeeg, she brings balance to the wildlife and space-farmers on a tiny planetoid because to her all life is precious. One day, a mysterious and handsome space traveler shows up and sets nature off balance, and fearing the worst for her new home, Aya sets out on an adventure to fix things, an adventure that would end with her becoming a legend among her people. Follow the Legend of Aya from her humble beginnings in this Avatar and Princess Mononoke inspired light novel.
8 68Headbutter
I hate my (new) life. Who the hell sticks a man in a tunnel with flesh eating insects an unknown amount of distance beneath the ground with the nerve to say they're offering you a 'better chance in a second life' with no further explanation. If I ever find the HR department responsible for this ridiculous relocation I will simply punch all of them in the face multiple times- actually screw that. If I ever find any of these idiots i'm not just gonna punch them in their face, I'm gonna head-but them in their soon to be bloody, crooked as can be noses.
8 207Horror King
-slice of life -school life -unsaid abilities -lack of plot armor -? hes just strong Hmm a ghost girl haunts their school and they have to find a way out.
8 118SMG4: Super Mario X Meggy Galaxy
Alternate title: SMG4 Mario X Meggy: Welcome New Galaxy Mario and Meggy's date during the Star Festival gets interrupted by SMG3 and Desti. They tie up Mario and Meggy and put them in a cannon, shooting them into space. The couple now has to stop the bad guys from taking over the now-stolen Mushroom Kingdom. They just have to get Power Stars first.
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