《Tales of Idiots.》Interlude - War Meeting
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"The war meeting shall now begin."
Odin scans the room. Here were the Solstice Empire's generals, advisors, the spymaster.
"Spymaster Rose, what have your spies reported?" Odin asks.
"Your imperial majesty, while the Bronach Kingdom shutting down their border have been annoying for my spies, but they have been able to send reports through bribery and sneaking through gaps between their patrols," Spymaster Rose said. "They have reported that the Bronach Kingdom is moving their armies to the Dead Land and that they've been drafting every able man into their army. My spies report that Bronach has around one hundred thousands more men than us, most of it is foot soldiers."
"I see," Odin said. The members of the war council were talking amongst themselves.
One of the generals however scoffs.
"What is it, Damarius?" Odin asks.
"Your imperial majesty, Bronach may have more soldiers than us, but most of those are untrained soldiers since they are men who never have any training that was suddenly drafted for war and compare that to our trained soldiers, elites, and knights," Damarius said. Many in the rooms were nodding in agreement with him.
"While it is true we have quality over quantity compared to Bronach, we still shouldn't underestimate Bronach," A young man in glasses said. "The real danger doesn't lay in Bronach's army but the Cult of the Righteous One. We all remember Justin the Fanatic and Barbara the False Saint."
The room quiets down. They know of the Cult of the Righteous One ever since they declare that all non-human are to be killed twenty years ago and the two that the young man listed were the strongest in that cult. It was also Bronach's main and only religion. It was called a cult by others but was called the Church of the Righteous One in Bronach.
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"That is true, Lewis," Odin said facing Lewis.
"Thank you, your imperial majesty," Lewis said. He was a talented individual who had quickly raised in the ranks in the military and was a genius.
Odin then faces the entire room. "Is there anything else I should know?" he asks.
The other members then began to talk.
*Few Minutes Later*
"War meeting has now ended."
With that, everyone left except for Odin and his personal bodyguard, hawk beastman.
"May Helios burn us all." Odin mutter.
"Is something wrong?" His bodyguard asks.
"Nothing Chase, just tired. I was hoping for the rest of my reign to be peaceful and then I would hand over the crown to my daughter." Odin said to his bodyguard. "What wishful thinking."
*Bronach, The Church of the Righteous One*
"The time to cleanse the land of evil has come. Are you ready?"
The pope turns and faces two individuals.
One of them was a man who had an eyepatch and was wearing armor with a symbol of an eye covered with wings and the other person was a woman wearing a religious white robe that also has the same symbol as the man has.
These two were Justin the Fanatic and Barbara the False Saint.
"Of course your holiness! For this is the purpose the Righteous One has given us!" Justin exclaim.
"Yes, your holiness," Barbara said.
"Then go and cleanse the land in the name of the Righteous One!" The pope said.
The two bows and left the church.
*The Lunar Kingdom*
The Queen of the Lunar Kingdom, Crescent look over the papers and took a sip of her coffee. Her phone ring and Crescent answered the phone with the person calling was the commander. "What should we do your highness?" He asks.
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"We'll be staying natural of course," Crescent respond. "This war has nothing to do with us. We'll only get involved if it gets out of hands." She then cancels the call.
She then went back to doing paperwork.
She heard the sounds of knocking at the door of her office. "Enter." She said.
A man enters the room. He bows and hands over a letter.
As she read the letter, Crescent frowns and crumples the letter, and threw it into the trash. She wrote a letter and hand it to the man. The man took the letter, bows and left the room. Crescent went back to doing the paperwork that covered her desk.
*Rustsbrough*
Riems, the president of Rustsbrough sighs as he went over the reports that had been handed to him. "What a mess." He groans.
Why did a war had to happen during his time as the president. Even worse, the Solstice Empire had stop trade temporarily to stockpile supplies for the war even though they already have enough supplies to last ten wars and Riems knew that the emperor would not budge from this decision.
This gonna create a shortage of certain items since they had to been imported from the Solstice Empire, and they were needed since it was things like lumber since not many trees could be found in Rustsbrough.
"I need a drink..." Riems grumble as he stamps another paper.
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Sword 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 153100 Ways to Make Money in a Fantasy World
Harrogate, a nervous aging assassin and Cecil, bold-hearted barbarian, have one job and one job only. To make one million Gold before the International Regal Society or IRS as they're known, imprison them for failure in paying their debt. The task is simple; Harrogate's got to keep Cecil in line long enough for them to make some easy money through odd jobs and simple work. Simple, but hard. Cecil's got other ideas in mind. Glory, fame, and merchandising that compels her to do what she does best, adventure. One goal - one million Gold. Two ideas. What could possibly go wrong?
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"My throat became dry; my tongue felt like sandpaper scraping against the top of my mouth. My mind became fuzzy. I had no chance of survival against this, this thing, and It was toying with me. It seemed to see the fear in my eyes and laughed, the metal sounding voice screeching like nails on a chalkboard. " I wrote this when I was young, and I haven't touched it since 2019, so don't worry about it.
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