《Crystal Skies》Preface: Another Pandora's Box
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Being a scavenger is dangerous, but nobody in the Two Worlds was safe, really. The blasted lands were the worst of it, but decade by decade, they were shrinking. The only people who understood why or how were the Administrators, and well, they didn't talk to people much, least of all scavengers.
Teddy was a remarkable man in that he was born in the safe zones and still chose to make his life outside of them. His father was a chef and his mother was a mechanic, but he couldn't follow in their footsteps. Everyone agreed that his mother had shown him the blasted lands too early, before she had a chance to explain what they were and why they were dangerous, and somehow, ever since then he could see right through them, as though the lands were not covered with living clouds of hell-bent black and white fuzz.
Which, of course they were. Teddy saw them just like everyone else did. You had to see them to avoid them, and he did. He knew that his mother had made a very different mistake, and she and he had made a very quiet promise to keep it secret.
So now Teddy picked his way over a pile of junk that probably should have been a building on its side. Ahead, a static monster rippled through the side of a building, turning brick into sand and sand into glass and glass into brick, and steel into copper and copper into diamond and diamond into rubber, on and on until there was no knowing what the world had once been made out of.
None of that was worth scavenging even if the static monster went away. The Administrators provided stocks of raw materials to anyone and everyone. They didn't provide finished goods anymore, though. Rumor had it they came from "before," and they didn't give quite so freely as they used to. They still gave a lot, so they must have done a lot more.
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No, what Teddy was looking for was in the corpse behind the monster. It was a corpse, no question, a good one or two centuries old, but it was an Archon, so it looked the same today as it did when it died in the falling of the world. As long as the static monster didn't trash it, Teddy would be sitting pretty on a pretty good find.
Naturally, the thing didn't want to move on, but finally, after a good hour and a half, two hours worth of sitting and watching, it passed clean through the pile of rubble it had been rebuilding and moved on somewhere else. So after waiting another half hour to be sure, and listening intently all the while, Teddy approached.
The woman would have been beautiful, if she were alive today. I mean yes, the coat of dust and dirt on her wasn't exactly becoming, and at some point a steal beam had come down and torn her torso into pieces, but she had regenerated, and whatever immortality the thing gave her made sure that when she regenerated, her body twisted into a position where it had enough room, leaving only the torn remnants of her clothing where she had once been. Her exposed skin had glowing patterns of lights embedded in it, a graceful set of glyphs that meant something to someone--he had it on good authority different kinds of Archons had different patterns, but some said every set was different.
Some people got off on finding an Archon corpse, but Teddy had a girlfriend. Well, ex now, but he wasn't desperate, and what he was looking for was inside the body anyway. So with exceptional care and a muttered apology, he turned her head and tore into her neck with a knife.
Not many people could do this. Yes, the gore was a part of it, and it took a real kind of crazy to knife what looked like a sleeping woman, even when you knew she was dead. But on a technical level, most people simply couldn't get the thing out.
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The thing was ethereal. It was a pocket dimension anchored inside each Archon body, and only an Administrator should be able to command one. They... didn't really clean up Archon bodies, though. But every now and then, people who went out into the blasted lands came back with something inside them. Teddy had been a young boy when he went out there, and he felt something just hanging in the air. Being a boy who didn't know better, he reached out his hand and grabbed it, and it never left.
Now he reached in with his fingers to a spot inside the woman's skull and commanded the thing to come out. When he retrieved his bloodstained hands, he felt it it there, at his fingertips.
Just another Pandora's Box to add to his collection.
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END BOSS: SHEPHERD
Tired of the bickering about his life decisions 17 year old Shepherd Highlander finds himself leaving his parents to nearby wilderness. Having finally found some semblance of peace Shepherd is suddenly startled by a voice coming from no clear source or direction. The voice which calls itself Benevolent proclaims "SYSTEM INITIALIZATION" a slew of supernatural events unfolding in its wake. Now Shepherd finds himself in a peculiar situation. Due to irregularities in his circumstance he's posed with a challenge of sorts by the system, a challenge titled -BOSS TOURNAMENT-. Fighting his way through beast after monster after beast he gains perks other individuals would soon come to covet in this world anew, perks which although great eventually cost him his place among humanity...
8 122Unique Delivery System
The cruel conditions of the bet put him on edge! Can the smart, energetic and fat hero find the right path to the customer? Where will the great and almighty Delivery System lead him? Translation of the original work by Michael Dulepa. The original is here.
8 199First Contact: The Legacy of Val'Dornn Book 1
YOU MUST BE 18+ TO READ THIS STORY IT CONTAINS ADULT THEMES FAMThe Val'Dornn, a race of nearly all male aliens, have traveled galaxies at the behest of their deities, taking part in their age-old tradition of Temani Bercari in an effort to find the other half of their soul on a tiny blue planet in the arm of a small galaxy.Esayr is an Empath Val'Dornn, one who is in tune with the emotions of nearly all of those around him. After more than a year above the tiny blue planet, the humans call Earth without any matches to prove their Temani Bercari successful, Esayr and the rest of the Val'Dornn start to worry. When Esayr finds a possible soulmatch in a female down on Earth will it prove a true soulbind and lead the way to find the rest of the Val'Dornn's matches as well?Addison Kane is a normal human girl living on Earth, a planet that's well on its way to collapse. She lives in an apartment with five other girls all struggling to survive. When the silver Val'Dornn ship appears in the sky and the government offers $2000 to any unattached woman willing to donate her genetic material, it sounds too good to be true. One night of drinks with her friends and she ends up in the genetic lottery. Will she end up winning big or will the Terran Government's misleading documentation of what the lottery really entails prove itself to be more than it's worth. ******It's about to get Deep Space Fine up in here.
8 90Blue Screen Blues
When Ryan Glasser, (an emo kid by heart) kills himself after having a good day at school turn horribly bad, he is forced to stand before his maker for final judgment of his soul. With Ryan Thinking life was just a game he could just end and throw away without any consequences, he is offered a deal to live his next life in a real-life RPG world full of swords, magic, misery, memes, and Mondays with nothing to help him along the way but a magical cellphone full of his music to get by in his afterlife. A real-life RPG you say? That sounds like perfect place to spend eternity! What’s the catch? Well first of all, this “Server” is in a nightmarish beta stage that has two trapped goddesses engaged in an everlasting brutal holy war between each other that has recently turned into a stalemate. Ryan is supposed to kill one of these goddesses somehow. (Technically there is a third goddess, but no one really cares about her) Secondly Ryan can’t die in this world without completing his mission here. If he does, straight to hell he goes. Thirdly, right from the start of spawning into this world, he has an annoying clingy emo/scene cat-dog rogue girl fall in love with him. This would be great in all If Ryan didn’t hate furries. Ryan will realize no matter how hard he tries he just can’t lose this clingy disaster. Forth: Living in an RPG world is great and exhilarating but when the class you choose to roll seems to be just as emo as you are, interesting things are going to happen. You better hold on tight; destiny holds in store for Ryan a Twisted Romance, tons of betrayal, a life full of dark twists and turns, and an adventure that will make or break him in this strange new world. Welcome to Lectioterra Adventurer! (Please DO NOT buff the Raid boss) (Please note i am quite aware that book one was written with quite a few thousand errors. I took a break from writing for ten years and had to relearn a lot of things. I learned quite a lot from writing 100+ chapters so far. I will go back and edit book one’s chapters after I get book two finished. If you all want to point out the errors in the earlier chapters I will gladly edit those things ASAP)
8 119(Un)Prophesied Heroes
A regular guy in his 20s gets sucked into a world full of levels, monsters, gods, and propchecies with nothing but his ukulele and the clothes on his back. Uke in hand, Wesley made his way to the local branch of the Bard College to pick up a few levels and hit the road to travel the new world. For a while its all magic forests and incredible sights, but as time goes on it seems more and more likely that Wesley is actually one of these "prophesied heroes" that the lore on this world is full of. Fortunately for him, whatever Dark Lord he was supposed to duel didn't seem to get the memo and the world seems to be at peace. So it's probably nothing, right? This is the story of Wesley's adventuring party as they do their best to get him to fulfull his destiny. A power-hungry [Rogue], a slightly evil [Cleric], a [Mage] that just wants to go home, and a [Lord] who just wants to study the blade. Hopefully destiny is on their side, because the gods seem content to watch them struggle. Author's Note: This story should update once per week, but it might update more. Please leave any constructive criticism/typos I might have missed in the comments. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think!
8 171The Strongest Slime
Strength, it has a different meaning to all of us and it can take form in many different ways. Whether it be the financial strength to be able to live without the need to worry about our next meal, or the emotional strength needed to carry ourselves through difficult situations. The only thing that matters is that you are able to posses it. Follow our protagonist as he loses the strength that he worked so hard to obtain only to realize that maybe it wasn't the type of strength that he needed all along.
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