《Bloodshed》Flashback: Loki
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“You sent for me, father?” he asked entering the throne room.
“I did,” his father replied dismissing the others in the room.
He furrowed his brow. He was rarely, if ever, alone with his father. This alone, was cause for concern.
“Relax Loki,” his father said picking up on his confusion. “I didn’t want prying ears is all.”
“Pray tell, what would they be prying into father?” he asked.
“This girl you cursed and that Freyja favors, why are you so fascinated by her?” his father countered.
Loki stood in shock.
“You didn’t think I’d not noticed your odd behavior?”
“I hadn’t realized you were paying that much attention to my behavior, father,” Loki managed to answer.
Odin had laughed at that.
“It was your wife who brought it to my attention,” Odin told him.
He cursed under his breath. He’d have to speak with Signe after his father was finished with him.
“Why would she bring it up with you?” he barely managed to avoid gritting out.
“She’s concerned that your interest may not be as innocent as you make it seem,” his father had answered.
“Something about her pulls me to her and I intend to discover why that is,” he murmured pacing in front of the throne.
“Do you have any answers?”
Loki shook his head. That was his whole problem; he had more questions than answers.
“Perhaps she is part of your soul,” Odin mused.
“As in my soul mate?”
“That would be impossible, you are a god and she is a mortal,” Odin pointed out. “But there are old stories, ones older than even me, that tell of us sharing our power with a select few mortals in order to ensure their survival. Our power is in their blood. This power calls to us in different ways; it is a part of us after all. It would certainly explain why if not how she survived over a thousand lashes and blood poisoning.”
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“Are you saying she possesses some of my power and that is why I am drawn to her?” he demanded.
“It is entirely possible, though it has been many millennia since the last god blessed walked in Midgard,” Odin answered. “It would behoove you to look into the this possibility.”
“Of course, father,” he nodded. “Is that all?”
Odin nodded and waved him away.
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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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One world, split by time and war. One girl, torn between her past and present. Miles below Earth’s surface an android soldier wakes, eager to take the place of her fallen predecessor and fulfill her role in helping mankind retake the planet. Except the rules have changed, and she hasn't got the memo. When she discovers the central database has been mysteriously crippled, God Gier 11 finds herself emerging into a world changed beyond her recognition and clueless as to how it has come to be. But before she can work out why coffee no longer exists in this strange new place, 11 stumbles heart-first into a gorgeous elf with a smile that makes her head spin, a crazed vampire claiming to be a relative, and an ancient conspiracy that threatens to unravel the fate of humanity and everything 11 thinks she knows about herself. Caught between duty and desire, waging war and pioneering the first cappuccino, 11 must make full use of her newfound autonomy to uncover the secrets of her past and save the people she has come to care about. But without the excuse of being an emotionless machine, will she be able to cope with the truth of what she really is, and the things she has done?
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The War had left the world destroyed and barren. Mankind was on its knees, weak and doomed to extinction. The only comfort was the knowledge that they had won and that their enemy had been destroyed… or so they thought. Thirty-five years ago, the Obcys had invaded Ziemia. They were monsters from another world and brought with them pain, desolation and the Taint. As Isyd and his companions led the last expedition to destroy the remnants of the Obcys forces, they activated a trap that killed the entire party… and sent Isyd back to the past! Now years before the War even started, Isyd swears to change the future he had once lived. Only, the War had profoundly changed Isyd… Tainted him…
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✧─── ・ 。゚★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧life for shin aera was supposed to only be comprised of two things: her, being a complete perfectionist due to the upbringing of her childhood, and her very loyal best friend, ham dan-i.therefore, when the universe suddenly took a turn and threw both girls into an unknown world filled with ethereal people who claimed to be part of their mundane lives, shin area simply didn't know how to say no.✧─── ・ 。゚★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧[inso's law x female!oc][reverse harem x female!oc][warning: book will contain mentions of anxiety]
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"They're just kids, man. We can't leave 'em here to die.""So, what? We risk our asses to try and keep 'em alive?".the otani twins.
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