《Into the Shadows》Chapter 6: The Langham Room 333 Pt. 1
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I sat in stunned silence for a moment. Then shook my mind free of the thought that the man in front of me had just disappeared like a ghost before I headed out to meet up with the group.
"Are you sure you're okay, Lia?" Colby walked beside me as he headed out of the building after asking the front desk to send the big camera's case up to the room before heading off to see the town with the vlog camera.
"Please stop asking." I must have still looked pale or something, "I promise, I'm fine! I'm not going to collapse or something and leave you without a camera man if that's what your worried about. It's just the jetlag, it's normal."
"Okay," he sighed running a hand through his hair as he jogged to catch up to Sam at the front of the group. He came back to grab the vlog camera though.
The guys talked about their thoughts on what the experts said and I just nodded along. When they asked for my opinion I just shrugged. I wasn't feeling very talkative right now.
I saw Jake whispering to Sam about something and could have sworn that I heard my name, but I just wrote it off as me being paranoid.
We explored the area around the hotel. We got dinner, saw the iconic red telephone boxes, and took a whole lot of cool pictures that I made sure to send back to my mom.
When we got back to the hotel, the boys decided they wanted to sit down with a camera for a bit and just talk about some of the lore surrounding Room 333 specifically to help their viewers understand what we were going to be doing tonight. They said they didn't need me for this and told me I was free to go chill. I decided to just sit in the hotel lobby on one of the couches near the fireplace and take a nap since I had a horrible headache.
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"Hello? Miss?" a voice asked as someone shook my shoulder lightly. The voice was heavily accented and jumped a bit, startled by their presence so close to me when I had just woken up.
"Can I help you?" I asked him. It was the concierge from earlier when we checked in.
"Your friends, the men you checked in with are waiting for you upstairs. One of our bellhops is taking your group's luggage up to the room now. He can show you the way if you like."
"Yes," I smiled, standing up, "that would be fantastic, thank you so much!"
"Right this way," he motioned for me to follow him.
He lead me to the elevator bank where a man was waiting with a cart full of luggage. I recognized the case on top and the Vera Bradley tote as my own.
"Right this way, miss," he headed off with the luggage cart when we reached the third floor and I followed behind cautiously. This place was already giving me a really bad feeling. I could hear the boys yelling through the room's door down the hall.
When we reached the door, the bellhop wanted to knock but I stopped him.
"Sorry, but they're my bosses and this is my one and only chance to try and scare the pants off of them before I'm trapped in this freaky room all night."
He laughed, "Go ahead, love," he motioned me forward.
"Thank you," I smirked, "You can leave if you have stuff to do, I can bring this cart down to the lobby in a bit."
"Sure, alright, thank you!" he tipped his hat to me and headed back off towards the elevators.
I put my ear to the door and heard them talking about how the window was finally working and opening even though it wasn't earlier. I waited for a good opportunity and then I heard Colby say, "I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that two people died here."
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I slammed my fists against the door and heard them all yell like little girls.
"Open up, scaredy cats! I'm here with the luggage!" I yelled back through the door.
"Holy crap!" Sam said opening the door, "You got us so good!"
"I think I almost pooped." Jake said holding his head in his hands.
Corey was laughing when he gave me a high-five, "That was good!"
"You timed that so perfectly!" Colby was in utter disbelief.
"You guys were being loud I could hear you talking when I put my ear to the door so I just waited..." I felt my shoulders shake as I stifled a laugh, "That was awesome."
"Alright!" Sam said, "Now that we've got our blood pumping, let's go explore! Before we get in trouble for being out in the halls all night."
We went to the other room with Corey and Jake's bags to drop them off after we pulled Sam, Colby, and I's off the cart. Then they guys started yelling about birds and I didn't get that until later when Colby explained it to me. I had thought they were referencing that time that birds attacked them and people made fun of them for being afraid. Unfortunately there seemed to be a strange and eerie bird theme through out the hotel in its decor.
They vlogged as they marched around filming different things in the room like the windows, how they wouldn't open, which also took an explanation, like the birds.
"Do you guys want me to film?" I asked as they continued to explore the hotel.
"No, that's alright," Sam said, "You can chill out for now, just wait until we go back to 333 later. Then we'll definitely need you to film."
"Okay, I just feel like I'm doing a crappy job since you're doing all the work," I laughed.
"Honestly, I really needed most help with editing and an extra hand to lug around the big camera, so don't worry, you're doing your job just fine. You can come around with us if you want or you can go hang out in the room if you want."
"Umm," I thought about it, since I do have a headache right now, "I'll go back to the room. Do you want to give me the SD though and I can start sorting through footage of today? I have a spare blank one in my pocket."
"Sure! That's a great idea!" Sam ended the video and we switched out the cards and he gave me one of the 333 room keys.
"See you later guys!" I called as I headed off to the room.
When I arrived, I started to get creeped out so I turned all the lights on and closed all the doors, like for the bathroom and the closet. I sat in the chair at the desk, but I didn't like having my back turned to the rest of the room, so I put my computer up on the window ledge and turned the chair to face the rest of the room.
It started to get chilly, so I put a big, baggy, fluffy sweatshirt on and got to work. I had my headphones on with the audio blasting so I didn't miss anything.
I had sifted through about ninety minutes worth of footage, which was nearly half of it, when I started to drift off. I unplugged my headset from my computer and decided to just rest my eyes for a bit before the boys came back while playing some soft IU music from my phone.
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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.
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Three factions oversaw the continent of Jumana. They were the Palace of Anima, Church of Arbor, and Seditio. The Palace of Anima worshipped Fate. A divine principle by which the order of events has been inevitably predetermined. The proxies of the Palace were the Moirais as they were blessed with precognition, great mana talent, and high affinity with Fate. The Church of Arbor revere Conscience. A moral principle that inhibits or influences the thoughts or actions of a person. Their advocates were the Fae, children born from the Tree of Truths. An ancient, sentient tree who bore the Fruit of Good and Evil. The third, Seditio, a clandestine society that was established by the Enlightened One. A peculiar individual who ate the Fruit of Good and Evil and lived to tell the tale. Seditio believed that comradeship was thicker than Fate and that Man should seize their own destines without the help of the Moira. Athos Dimitte Ferre, heir to the throne of the Palace of Anima. Was blessed with the gift of foresight and talent for mana. On one fateful night, however, he was cast away by a tragedy, and all was slowly taken away from him. "Why did the Seditio attack us? Why couldn't I see this, did my foresight fail me? Or perhaps, the Church of Arbor interfered?" A man who fell from grace learns to bare his fangs. ~~~~~ Updates every MWF 5PM EST ~~~~~
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