《For Grass and Glory》Chapter 19
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Norma sat in her re-leathered company car inhaling the vape that came out of the vaporizer in her hand. How her dad could still smoke those disgusting tobacco death sticks she didn’t know. The smell alone made her sick to her stomach. It was one of the many reasons she didn’t feel like visiting all that often. Also, one reason she paid for his cleaning lady so she could visit without throwing up.
Even though she did not visit often, she enjoyed his company. If he was not in one of his moods, he could be a very charming father. a bit rough around the edges. Why he had to bring up her more than average appetite in men all the time was also beyond her. But he had always shown his support in one way or another for her every move. Even if he liked to joke about it in the most embarrassing ways imaginable. It was something no one else had done so far in her life. Not even her late mother. May she rest in silence.
It was late in the afternoon already. The cloudy sky produced infrequent drops of water that splashed on the windshield. It was getting dark, the lights beside the road were on and traffic was a mess. It all did nothing to elevate Norma’s mood.
She was driving home from work and the day had been a bit too eventful for her tastes. Well, It was not the work that was so eventful, per se. The wife of the CEO she was screwing to get a better position came by. That wasn't such a big deal, wives do such things. But when she screams at your desk and calls you a filthy whore, it gets more uncomfortable than is desirable.
She looked up from her pensive stare and straight into the traffic. She didn’t know how long she had been reminiscing. It seemed that during it all the automatic pilot, driving her home, had made little progress towards its destination. Absentminded, she blew out another lung fool of nicotine filled water vapor. Bored, she took her phone and scrolled through her regular entertainment. She could have asked the car to project it in front of her but she liked the motion. It calmed her.
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She came across an article decimating George and his recent form. A small smile could not help but creep on her beautiful face. Bastard deserved it all. It had been a month since the memorable birthday of the little chicken nugget. She hadn’t spoken to them ever since. It didn't feel good, not seeing the little guy anymore. But what the witch had done had crossed a line.
She sighed and looked at the navigation. Still an hour to go. She reached out and typed in the address of her father. It was only ten minutes from where she was. She was stuck in traffic anyway and she was getting hungry.
Fifteen minutes later she knocked on his door with little response from the inside. Annoyed she tried again but still there was no sound coming from within. Did something happen? She looked through the mail slot in the door but could only see the empty hallway. His ancient raincoat on the floor like the piece of crap it was. Worried now she got the spare key from underneath the mat. The mat told everyone to wipe their damn feet when you stood on it. She thought it funny it looked so clean after giving it to him two years ago. With half a smile on her face, she opened the door.
Once inside it smelled less oppressive of tobacco but more so of sweat, a surprising shift in odors. Surprising as it might be, she didn’t know what was worse. It made her walk a little faster towards the living room, coat still on. Worry showing on her cold and expressionless face. When she entered the living room though she saw him lying in his chair with a digitize helmet on his head. Breathing like he was asleep. Calm.
A smile broke through the worry and a melodic laugh rang through the room. “This man, using a digitize helmet. Now I have seen it all...” She said. The noise didn’t seem to reach the old man still lying there as if no one had come in. He seemed less fat than she remembered he was a month ago. It didn’t surprise her. If her father got into something he enjoyed he would not come out until forced.
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He should be deep into T.E.A.M. by now, or porn... The thought brought a cold shiver traveling down her spine. Walking to the kitchen and looking into his trash. It was overflowing with deep freeze pizza boxes. “Living the life I see, no wonder you lost weight. If I remember correct, we had to vacate the premise every time you ate pizza…,” She mumbled to herself, but couldn’t help but laugh out loud again.
She should make him something good tonight. To wash away the dirty underwear he promised to eat the day he ever got digitized.
With a broad smile on her face, she opened the fridge and gagged. A sense of instant and intense regret making its way on her face. Turning away in disgust she grabbed her phone from her pocket, still wrinkling her nose. Now that the fridge was out of the picture she needed alternatives. Remembering that she came by a local superstore she went to the app and ordered the ingredients. While she waited for her order to arrive by drone, she decided on calling that useless cleaning lady. She might even call that opinionless brother of hers to check on the little chicken nugget. She smiled and asked the phone to dial the cleaning lady, ready to dish out some karma. It might still be a good day.
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Hunt and Heroes
Heroes are the last line of defense against those who would destroy society. After graduating from The Academy, Liam has finally achieved his life's goal of joining those protectors and becoming a Hero. Moving to a sleepy town in Iowa, he looks to prove his worth. Only for a series of murders to shake the city. Working with his new team, Liam sets out to solve the crimes and uncovers a secret. One that threatens to destroy everything he’s fighting to defend.
8 188Sword 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 153Titama
Titama's crew runs illegal clones on the streets of Neo Francisco, grown in vats with only brain stems intact. But with her boss, Muturangi, wanting to spread his tentacles of influence and greed, his latest venture takes things a step further. Over one bloody night, Titama will be forced to fight for her life, and for what she hopes is right.
8 173[HIATUS] Re:Turn, The Legend of the 4 Swords
Hiatus Note: Currently on planned hiatus while I finish planning the next section of the story to make sure I know where it's going. Chapter 10 will release soon, and 11 and beyond are ""Part 2"" of the story. In the meantime, check out "Clockwork" my other slice of life LN that I will update regularly. Cryo is an average 18 year old, just graduated high school and is transitioning into college. One notable factor about him is he is incredibly unlucky. Over the summer gets extremely invested in a gacha game known as “Ultima Online” and plays it every single day with his real life friends Gig, Yuso, and Shigeto. Cryo becomes a well-known member of the community because he uploads videos online and livestreams and is especially well-known because he almost never pulls good units from the gacha due to his terrible luck, which makes his anger fun to watch. One day, Admin (Administrators/Developers of the gacha game) send him an email inviting him to their facilities to tour them as a thank-you for making content for the game. On his way to the facilities Cryo stops at a gas station to get some snacks and the gas station is stuck-up by a robber. The robber takes a cute girl hostage and threatens to kill her, so Cryo steps in and bodyslams the robber, causing the robber to aimlessly shoot a bullet which bounces off a rubber tire, just when Cryo thinks he saved the day, the bullet hits him in the head with a lot of force, but not enough to kill him, putting him into a coma. Cryo is then transported to purgatory where a cute goddess decides his fate to be transported to a realm that needed help, promising Cryo if he found 4 legendary swords in this world he would gain re-admittance to the life he once lived. Before being transported to the world that needed assistance the goddess tells him that he can maximize any of his traits, procuring thought into whether Cryo should choose looks, strength, or another trait. After being reminded of his terrible luck in which a flashback to his family dying in a house fire is shown, he decides maximizing his luck trait should be the best choice. He is then transported into this new world, which turns out to be the world of his gacha game, Ultima Online. He meets friends and foes and is tasked with collecting 4 swords that appear as lolis to Cryo. Using the gacha system, he creates a party of strong allies to aid him on his quest to return.
8 89Inside Metsys
Inside the universe of Metsys, life is chaotic, cruel and crazy. People with Stats have power and everyone wants to be a Player. Meet Corn, a slave who has no memory of most of his past and doesn’t know how most of the world functions. This doesn’t stop him from escaping the bonds of slavery by risking his life on a gamble. After all, he would risk everything for freedom and the right to be a mage. But how’s a scrub to learn Magic and get power? Why, join the magical under belly of the city, of course. And eat all the mana that he can get. Two Disclaimers: 1) This is a work of fiction. Any characters, places, organisations and everything else in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance between anything in this novel and the plane of reality we live in is purely coincidental. Was that a bit over the top and a wee bit unnecessary? Maybe. 2) This story features an antihero with a slight hint of villainy. So, sooner or later, it’s going to get dark. Very dark. Hence all the tags. If you are prone to be squeamish, this might not be for you. Well. You were warned. ;)
8 107Empty Boxes
George and Oliver are the perfect couple, but after a messy breakup that leaves George heartbroken and Oliver moving on scarily fast, Sapnap and Dream both travel to England to take care of their friend amidst physical and mental damage, and an ex boyfriend that can't seem to leave George alone.
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