《Alma's Dreams are Default》Chapter 41: Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
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"Is that…a chain? I don't remember any mention of that on any of the sites. Why do I trust those blogs?” Alma was stuck pondering what to do about the eerie new addition to the demon’s body. Why did it suddenly appear like that? She knew for certain it definitely hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. It couldn’t be some new attack, right? It would’ve done something with it by now. But… it looks like it’s crushing him. Those chains are digging in pretty tight. Did Heli do this? No. This doesn’t seem like her kind of magic. What if I shoot it? Can I shoot it? What if I end up making it stronger? That would be embarrassing. Instead of saving my best friend I end up getting her killed. She’d probably haunt me for that. Then I’d never get her stupid voice out of my head. That’s the last thing I’d need.
“Heli!” cried Alma after much pontificating.
“Alma?!” Heloise shouted back, in the midst of conjuring a spell to launch Hwalín into the air with a risen block of dirt per her request. The Hecatian came down on the demon’s back with explosive force, barely scraping by the swing of its blades. “You’re okay! I’m so glad! —Wait—I mean-What are you even doing here? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a hunt?! Nobody…Ngh! Asked for your help!”
“Cut the crap, Heli! Listen! What do you know about that weirdly glowing chain wrapped around the nuckelavee?”
“The what?! Chain? What the fuck are you talking about, connasse? Ta gueule !”
Huh? It’s right there! Does she really not see it? Alma squinted. Am I the crazy one? Wait…
“I don’t know! I think it’s my eyes! I can see something there, clear as day! Some kind of long chain wrapped around its body! Binding him maybe?”
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“Binding him…? Wait! That’s it! That must be the magic tethering it to this world! Alma, you can see that? Azotha’s wounds! I could kiss those eyes of yours! Shoot it, Alma! Shoot it!”
“Are you sure? It’s not like, suddenly gonna get stronger, is it? Maybe it’s holding its magic in check?”
“Alma…!” roared the red elf.
“Just do what I say, bitch! I’ll explain later!” Heloise then signaled to Hwalín to take cover so she could cast something big. Digging her staff into the ground, she tapped the ruby gem atop it with the bottom of the second ring on her middle finger.
Terrae Murus Moliti Ex Natura!
Two towering slabs made of dirt and stone rose upwards towards the sky, one on each side of the demon. The witch raised both her hands and swiftly clapped them together, bringing both walls rushing towards each other with the nuckelavee caught in between.
The demonic creature stretched out both of its bladed arms and pushed back against the charging walls, the point of each blade penetrating deep into the stone, preventing the walls from completing its pulverizing duty but also confining the demon in place.
A deafening bang accompanied by swirls of fire belched out from Alma’s rifle as she fired, the clip pinging as it ejected outward. A well-placed shot drove home right between a link in the ethereal chain and somehow hit, breaking it in two. A kaleidoscopic pattern disseminates impossibly along the demon’s body, freezing it in place. Starting from its lower hoof, small shards gradually chip off and dissolve into nothing—its body slowly disintegrating from their current plane of existence. The nuckelavee rose its head and looked over at where Alma was crouching, staring directly at her position despite hiding behind multitudes of branches and leaves. Alma shivered under its demonic gaze. A string of unknown words spewed from its mouth, seemingly directed at Alma. What it tried communicating to her, none of the girls could surmise. Had it been gratitude for freeing it from its binding summon? Or a threatening curse to never call upon it again? Before she could hazard a guess, the fragments making up its head had already begun breaking apart.
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"Ah! Wait! Its horn!" yelped Heloise, unleashing a quick sunbolt towards the nuckelavee’s horn only for it to pass through harmlessly as the last of its form dissolved into the ether. She was too late. Pulling at her hair, she swore as loudly as she could, “FUCK!”
Alma breathed an exasperated sigh, sitting up and watching the last remnants of smoke wafting up from the end of her rifle. A rustling of leaves next to her alerted her to the presence of Qu’l-Nia standing next to her. How long had she been there?
“Quite impressive, Alma. I did not think your ability had evolved to such a degree.”
“Whaaat? T-That was nothing.” Alma bashfully pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I wouldn’t say it evolved… Wait, where’ve you been?”
“My power would have been a bit too much for this fight. I sensed that you had this battle well in hand and therefore reasoned I keep myself in reserve. A simple magical creature would scare warrant my intervention compared to say, an eldritch being, and while I am in agreement that they do share certain commonalities, that is, being foreign to your dimension for example, the former still being something that was born within a common universe, as opposed to the latter, there is more than a slight incongruence in the inherency of capabilities, such being—”
“Okay, okay. I get it. You’re better than us. Just… let me know next time?”
“Very well. On another note, I do believe there was a caveat for our little excursion here?”
“Wha—?”
“Your friend is waiting for you.”
Alma picked up her gun and peered through the scope, searching desperately for the witch she had come to rescue. She thought she had heard her scream a certain word earlier but that was usually to be expected from her during a hunt. Finally she spotted her saying something to Hwalín—rather than chatting with her, since it seemed like the Hecatian wasn’t quite listening. Alma felt like she should probably go down and meet with her as soon as possible.
Clumsily making her way down the grassy knoll, Alma called and waved towards Heloise. The witch turned to her with a look of growing elation before running towards her with the energy of a puppy. The sniper greeted her old friend with open arms only to feel a sudden impact against her chest.
“D-Did you just slap my boob?” stammered Alma.
“Well, I would have slapped your face if my nails weren’t fucking broken!”
“Aww. You do care.”
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- In Serial20 Chapters
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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