C_Mantis
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Chapter 176
🕑 Added 2022-09-23 19:00:06 +0000 UTCTIER 1, 3, 5, PATREONS READ THIS. Somehow in the chapter oddities all of you have gotten one chapter further ahead of where you should be. That's on me but I do need to fix it. So we will have to skip next Fridays chapter. I'm sorry about this but best to fix it now that I've seen the discrepancy.
Chapter 176
Minkalla didn’t try to restrict their flight as they descended into the hole, and Matt was grateful for it. The last hole they found had a no flying restriction and spikes at the bottom, after all. Still as they descended they stayed near the wall just in case they needed to grab on in a hurry.
The hole did send a mass of nearly invisible bats at them like a swarm of locusts, but Matt easily took care of them with [Flamethrower] and [Fire Manipulation]. The Genesis Energy he got was a pittance, but it seemed to be more of a check of their ability to sense the monsters rather than a concentrated attack from the hostile planet.
When they reached the bottom of the hole, they found a pair of pyramids on the ceiling and floor, like a pair of stalactites and stalagmites. The tips of the pyramids seemed connected by two hands of Genesis Energy that gripped each other as if one of them was preventing the other from falling. The reason why became apparent as the top pyramid started to draw them in, with gravity warping and inverting before placing them at the foot of the pyramid.
As they came to a halt, Matt found that his flight ability was completely locked down once again.
Liz sighed over their AI comms. “Well, we aren’t flying out of this place. Let's see what this cavern looks like. Aster, you’re with Matt… let's circle the pyramid and see what we can find. Hopefully, some other way out.”
Aster scampered into Matt’s shoulder and laid herself down, facing away from the pyramid and the empty space to their left. Without their eyes working because of the floor restriction, it didn’t matter how she situated herself, but they had trained with her keeping her attention on their perimeter, and that was an easy habit to fall into.
The trip around the pyramid told them exactly nothing. There were no entrances, and nothing that seemed to be interactable along its edge. All they could sense in the surroundings were the flat rocks that made up the cavern's ceiling, so they just moved along without stopping.
Once they completed their half of the trip, they waited about two minutes for Liz and Susanne to make their way around the corner.
When they did, the four of them reconnected with their AI, and Aster was able to ask, “What did you guys find?”
Liz, who just stepped into range of his spiritual perception, stopped at the corner and said, “The entrance. Or what we believe is the entrance.”
Matt jogged over and followed them to where he could see a black, seemingly endless hole in the bottom of the large stone that made up the pyramid.
It felt ominous and wrong somehow, but he couldn’t put a finger on exactly what the problem was. Minkalla was keeping him from looking beyond the surface, but that only indicated that it was hiding something. Something he wasn't eager to find with his face.
Susanne asked, “You feel it as well, right?”
Matt and Aster nodded in unison. “Yes, and I don't like it. Do we try to bypass it?”
Liz looked from the hole and back to Matt. “If we could. Go ahead and try to climb the stone.”
Aster remained in place as he walked over the ten-foot-tall brick of stone, and in a small leap, jumped to the top of the first layer.
Except when his feet landed, they were on the ground once again.
Matt looked to Aster, and while he couldn't feel it, he could see her snuggle deeper into his neck. That had been unsettling.
He had felt himself jump, but when his feet had been about to touch the stone, reality had warped around them so subtly, they hadn’t noticed it initially, and it sent them back to their original position.
“Ok, so climbing is out of the question. I don't like this door. We’re clearly in a puzzle area, which means stepping into this first entrance would be suicide.”
Liz tapped her foot, but Susanne spoke up. “First rule of puzzles in Minkalla is that our AIs will either be shut down or ineffective at solving said puzzles, if they’re even allowed. Since our AI still work as much as they ever do, it's either not a puzzle, or our AI won't help.”
Aster offered up her idea, “What if we do a lap together?”
They all agreed, but before they left, they stacked a series of stones to indicate where the entrance was. This place was already warping space, so having a marker wouldn’t hurt.
What they found as they made another lap around the pyramid was disconcerting. Where Matt had found nothing on his first walkaround, they now encountered a new entrance. Their little pile of stones was also noticeably absent.
The entrance, while blocked off from this spiritual perception, was noticeably less dangerous than the last one, but all of them agreed that it was still noticeably off.
When they returned to the spot where Liz’s and Susanne’s entrance should have been, they once again found nothing but bare walls. No stacking of stones, and no entrance.
Matt paused and looked around for a long second.
He had realized something on his trip around the pyramid, and he didn’t like the implications.
Wanting to be proved wrong, he asked Susanne, “When did we get married?”
As he asked, he projected the thought, ‘Right before we came to Minkalla, in case something went wrong.’
It was something he and Liz had considered, but discarded. They wanted a proper wedding with all their friends in attendance. That wasn’t even considering her parents, nor the fact that they would want to be there. But they were incredibly busy due to Emperor Emmanuel's absence. As the Empire’s only two Tier 48’s, they were his second in command, and had their plates full with his attending of Sword Saint Hastor's and Dicomaty’s Ascensions.
Dicomaty had ascended not long ago, and last he heard, they were just arriving at the Clans capital, but Sword Saint Hastor still hadn't completed his ascension yet.
Susanne, as he expected, said what he feared. “Are you ok, honey? We got married right before we entered here.”
Hearing that, Matt crushed the talisman he had in his fist and summoned his sword, just as ice appeared around him and Aster.
He seemed to take the fake Liz and Susanne off guard, because his sword and Aster's icicles took each of the fakes in the chest.
A wash of Genesis Energy hit him and Aster, and he sighed, looking at his friends' mutilated corpses. Or at least, the copies that Minkalla had created.
It took returning to Liz and Susanne's location for him to realize the issue. If walking around the pyramid brought you to a new location each time you turned a corner, he should have never met up with Liz and Susanne.
Either the rules hadn’t happened to work for them, as they were separated, or the two of them were illusions. Thankfully, Minkalla couldn’t read the past and didn’t even try, so simple tricks like projecting thoughts about one falsehood was usually enough to expose its lies. It was worrying that Minkalla could so flawlessly act as his friends, complete with their AIs. But if it was from the higher realms, even the most secure messages would be like child’s play to intercept.
The fake duo vanished in a second now that he had taken the Genesis Energy from them, leaving two-quarter circles of stone in their places.
Aster whined as he picked up the drops. “That was scary. Can we go back to where we were?”
Matt nodded, and at his fastest boosted speed, sprinted around the pyramid to their original landing spot. He was reassured by the fact that he encountered both false entrances and a stack of stones along his way.
When he and Aster returned to where they split, they ended up waiting for nearly half an hour before Liz and Susanne came around the corner.
Matt readed his sword and cast his strongest [Bulwark], keeping his mind as blank as possible as he demanded through their now established AI connection, “Report?”
Liz and Susanne both handed their weapons at the ready, which comforted him, and even though Aster kept her summoned ice at the ready, they were both fairly sure that these were the originals.
“Encountered false you’s that tried to lead us on a trip around the pyramid, which was creating new sides or something.”
Matt hunkered down as he asked, “Did you get anything from the false copies? Two-quarters of a square?”
Liz’s answer reassured him slightly. “Half of a circle. When did you buy me the ring on your finger?”
Matt smiled as he answered the trick question. “We earned it together.”
Their paired teleporting rings weren’t in fact earned by the both of them; he had earned them himself. But if Minkalla was creating copies, the lie would hopefully be easily noticed.
A double lie about their rings was one of their preset answers that they had established before they entered Minkalla.
Liz didn’t approach at his lie and asked, “What city did we meet at?”
This time Matt told the truth. “A training planet hardly counts as a city.”
Liz lowered her weapon and approached cautiously. “What is your favorite ice cream.”
Aster answered this one. “Right now bananas and strawberries. No… actually that was last week. Right now I really want some apple fritters ice cream. Mmm that sounds good… did I pack any of that away? Oh, of course I did!”
Liz was reassured at the rambling answer and approached.
Dropping his guard, he and Aster met up with the real duo. Now that Minkalla had started to make copies, they would need to do this testing any time they left each other's spiritual perception.
Putting together their quarters of the stone circle, the pieces clicked into place as they neared each other, then released a small pulse of energy. The wave revealed an entrance right on the face of the pyramid, mere feet from where they landed.
This entrance didn’t have the signature Minkalla veil over its depths, and they could clearly see a chamber room inside the gloom of the pyramid. At least, as clearly as the Eternal Darkness would allow for.
Matt took the lead and was ready for any traps, but they found none.
As they entered the interior of the pyramid, the stone circle fell apart and crumbled into dust before vanishing.
The room around them was cluttered like a pack rat's storage house, but there were three stone pillars standing in a triangle in the center of the room.
None of them moved, and were careful to avoid touching anything.
Matt reviewed his AI downloaded list of traps and puzzles, but found nothing similar to particular room they were in.
The fact that the lists didn’t have any leads to pull from wasn’t very surprising, in and of itself. Minkalla seemed to have an endless list of puzzles to pull from, and it was rare for anyone to encounter a puzzle they previously were aware of. Even if they found one they recognized, it was all but assured that the planet would stop their AI from solving it.
Matt stepped through the room and made a lap around the pillars.
There were no distinctive markings on any of them, and they seemed as identical as any rift-made item. The problem was that the Eternal Darkness floor theme rendered them totally blind. Even with their spiritual perception, they didn’t have color sensitivity. The room's challenge could be as easy as finding the items in the clutter that matched the pillar's color, but they couldn’t know that with their limited perception.
Still, that was a big if. Minkalla never had an impossible puzzle, even accounting for floor themes, but that didn’t mean it wouldn't make the puzzle a million times harder.
It took them two and a half hours until they fished through each and every piece of clutter on the ground to find the matching junk that each pillar wanted.
When they finished, Matt was sure that the room had been a color puzzle. The Genesis Energy they received as a reward was quite a bit more than they had earned from killing any single monster besides the queen ant and giant monkey.
The next room they encountered had an altar with bones and corpses scattered around it, along with another podium where the bodies had been sacrificed upon.
Liz said, “I feel blood, namely dried blood, caked on the pillar. Anyone have an idea what this is except a place to sacrifice one of us?”
Susanne answered, “I don't think that's right. Look at the walls, they have murals carved into them.”
Matt joined her and saw what she meant. Along the wall, a tapestry of sacrifice had been carved in a progression, depicting a story.
People gathered around the altar, sacrificed something, and were then rewarded.
Small sacrifices meant that all the worshipers were killed, but if the rewards were high enough, riches and wealth were awarded to the acolytes.
People always seemed to be at minimum a satisfactory reward, and not one out of the thousand carvings had a single one of those rewards rejected.
None of them were willing to kill one of the others to progress, and it didn’t even seem like they needed to. Not necessarily. The murals had a number of people offering personal items and being rewarded. Sometimes more so than the groups who offered an actual person up to the chopping block.
Aster was horrified. “Do I need to sacrifice my ice cream?”
She silently yowled into the sky in sadness as they discussed what they needed to do.
Since none of them were willing to turn on each other, they reckoned they each needed to give up one of their more precious items.
Aster was easy. She had a storage ring filled with ice cream, but despite that giving up even one of the cartons was hard for her. So had a limited supply for the foreseeable fortune after all.
“Mr pyramid, I hope you enjoy Apple Fritter ice cream. It's one of my favorites.” Aster lowered her head as she offered the ice cream. When she used her Concept to put the carton on the altar, it was immediately sucked into the pillar.
At the same time, a rush of Genesis Energy hit Aster as she was rewarded for her offering. Considering the reward was abundant, they were able to confirm the fact that the more precious of an item, the better their rewards.
As the Genesis Energy stopped rushing into Aster, a door opened in the side of the wall, but everyone other than Aster was prevented from even crossing the threshold.
Matt was considering what he would sacrifice when Susanne moved forward and laid a strip of cloth on the altar.
She was rewarded with a rush of Genesis Energy almost equal to Aster’s, but when they asked what she offered, she would only say, “Something I’ve carried for too long.”
Liz went up next and put a picture of her, Matt, and Aster at an amusement park. She didn’t receive as large a Genesis Energy reward as the others, but she did get one.
Matt stood up and put one of Liz’s mana concentration potions on the pillar.
It was a failed product, but he kept it anyway. She had tried to improve upon the formula for months, sacrificing her little free time over their last three years. She hadn’t succeeded, but he appreciated the thought, and had kept just one of the vials despite her protests.
To anyone else, it was a standard vial of Tier 12 mana concentration potion, but to him, it was proof of her love.
The altar still rewarded him somewhere between Liz’s reward and Susanne’s, but he was on the lower end. Still, it was enough, and they were all able to progress after their sacrifices were accepted.
In the next room, they encountered a forge that Matt was sure was glowing with heat.
[Fire Manipulation] allowed him some minor control over the inside of the forge, at least.
There were four pillars surrounding the forge, on which stood four small statues.
When Liz approached one, she gasped through their AI. “I think these take Genesis Energy. It tried to take a little, at least when I touched it.”
Matt thought it over before saying. “Let me test it.”
He put all of his Genesis Energy into the ring with the pressure gauge before extracting a thimble full, then handing the ring off to Susanne.
Then, he repeated Liz’s action of putting his hand on the statue, and in front of his eyes, he was treated to a vision of the statue's life.
The statue was once a warrior who lived in, as far as Matt could tell, a mundane realm.
The man was born as a smith’s son, and he would have continued down that path, but his country was being invaded by its neighbors, and he was conscripted.
While he was away, his village was raided by the enemy scouts, and his family was captured as slaves.
The person whose life Matt was reliving didn’t know that until he returned from his time on the battlefield, after the five-year campaign, to find a village trying to rebuild itself.
Filled with hate, he took his sword and rushed back into the enemy lands.
At first, he intended to buy his parents freedom, but he quickly learned that they were nowhere to be found.
No one was willing to admit where they had been brought to. Matt simply watched as the man searched high and low, before eventually finding a slaver who told him that his parents had been sent to the mines, and neither had lived.
The man reacted with rage and killed the slaver and his entire family before burning down a large portion of the city that he was in.
After that, he moved around from village to village killing anyone native to the county that he could find.
It was just him, his sword, and his grief as he slaughtered hundreds.
Finally, he was trapped and caught by that country's government, and tried for murder. In the end, he was killed with his own sword in some form of poetic justice. Or at least, that's how the locals thought of it.
The vision only lasted an instant, but Matt explained what he saw, and all the others tried the same, watching the same life with no variation.
After that, they found that the other pillars each had a unique weapon, and contained some version of a tragic, mundane life of struggle and blood.
There was a sword, an axe, a hammer, and an odd, metal bow.
Each statue was missing their unique weapon. After seeing the four lives, the forge made more sense, and Matt stepped up to the blaze. Along with Susanne as his assistant, they began to forge a size-appropriate weapon for each of the statues.
Susanne was only proficient in smithing to the point that she could do some general repairs to her armor, but she was a willing assistant to Matt. He wasn’t as good a smith as he was an enchanter, but he had picked up more than a few of the tricks of the trade over the years.
It took him a few hours, but Matt made, refined, and polished the small weapons until they were as close to the items in the visions as possible.
He was sure that a dedicated smith could make something much better, but the veritable figurines were close enough for the task at hand.
When they placed one of the weapons on the pillar, the statue reached out and took it before testing it with a practice swing, or in the bow’s case, a draw.
After the weapon was tested, the statue sunk into the ground and vanished.
There was no Genesis Energy reward, but a door opened on the far side of the wall. They didn’t know if that meant they only just passed the test or if there was something more to it. They looked around but found nothing so chose to move one.
They didn’t leave until after they took everything that wasn’t nailed down, which meant a few dozen bars of Tier 14 metals and the tools. They needed some reward after all.
Matt wanted to take the anvil, but it was rooted to the spot.
In the next room, they encountered another puzzle, and their AI completely shut down after the entrance door closed tight. They could only communicate with prepared hand gestures, which was annoying, but doable.
Seven stone sticks were extending off the far wall that pulsed with Genesis Energy in a flashing pattern. It only took a little trial and error for them to learn that they had to repeat the pattern back after it flashed in its entirety.
That would have been a simple and easy challenge, but they had to use their own Genesis Energy to light up the sticks. And while activating a single stick was easy, the patterns started at twenty lights, and only got longer with each stage passed.
Matt cheated shamelessly.
Using his channeled boosting skills along with his armor, he was able to increase his mental faculties and perceptions to a point that he could catch even the smallest flickers of Genesis Energy in the sticks, and with enough mana in [Mage’s Retreat], he was able to keep up with the patterns.
He actually had fun, as it was reminiscent of his training with Luna in the early days, when she took them to the desert. He and The Unbroken were put through her own little version of bootcamp.
Matt only messed up once, on his first attempt of the third pattern, which meant he didn’t lose too much Genesis Energy. It was a worthwhile investment, though, as they learned that he needed to match the pace of the flashing sticks. He couldn't rush through it, or pause and take his time.
If their AI worked as usual, it would have been as easy as following its prompts, but that wasn’t an option. By the time Matt reached the point where the patterns were fifty flashes long, with multiple sticks to light up at once, he had fallen into a near trance-like state.
When he beat the pattern with two hundred flashes, they were all rewarded with a flood of Genesis Energy.
Nearly half of it went to Matt, but none got less energy than their reward from the Queen ant.
The next room returned their communication, and with it, a sense of ease. Complete isolation was hard on him, and it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with very often.
The next room had three stone gargoyles. When they entered, the stone mouths moved, but no sound came out, and after ten minutes, they were attacked.
As fresh Tier 14’s, they were easy enough to kill, but the four of them complained endlessly.
Minkalla had clearly given them a riddle challenge, but with the floor theme, they were unable to hear said riddle, which meant that they were attacked for failing the puzzle. To add insult to injury, they didn’t even earn any Genesis Energy from the gargoyles.
After searching, they found a number of pictures carved on the wall that they interpreted as the questions the gargoyles asked, but none of them were able to identify the question or guess the answer. The puzzle may have been theoretically possible but it might as well have been impossible.
Eventually, they succeeded and progressed on, spending another three days working through various puzzle rooms while climbing ever higher with each completion.
If they weren’t earning large amounts of Genesis Energy for each successful completion, they might have resented the time loss.
Still, they estimated that they were doing well in their collection of Genesis Energy, considering that they had only been on the planet for less than a week. Most people took months to complete a single floor, after all, though Pathers were expected to take less time. But a floor in this context meant the three sublayers that comprised each true floor.
Finally, after they solved a complicated puzzle room where they needed to direct a flow of water to a reservoir through a series of broken and blocked pipes, they were given an exit to the top of the pyramid.
They hadn’t been able to see it from the ground, but along the top, near the peak of the pyramid where the two hands seemed to clasp each other, there was a little ledge for them to stand on.
Liz pulled out a mana stone, and before it was drained by Minkalla, she tossed it into the clasping hands. Once it passed the point where they met, instead of falling back to the ground at their feet, it fell onto the pyramid above them.
Gravity had righted itself on the other side of the pyramid, it seemed.
As the others discussed the best way to cross the plane of changing gravity with no ability to fly by either item or Concept, Matt was focused on the hands.
Even with just his spiritual perception, they seemed too real.
When they had been at the bottom of the pyramid, the hands looked as if they were made from Genesis Energy, and served as a connection.
Matt got a feeling these hands, or rather the gloves, were the real reward of the pyramid, more so than the Genesis Energy they earned.
Interjecting, he said, “I think the gloves are the final puzzle, and if we complete said puzzle, we get the gloves.”
That caused the three of them to pause.
Aster spoke first, “That seems probable enough, but how do we get them? My Concept can’t grab them at all.”
Liz asked, “Should I test it with blood?”
Matt and Susanne easily agreed that it was worth a shot, but they found that Liz was entirely unable to get her blood to approach them. It was like she was trying to push two magnets of the same polarity together.
No matter how hard she pushed, they refused to touch.
Except, it was worse for her blood; it was unable to get closer than within five feet of the gloves.
Susanne tried next with her manifested sword, but even its non-physical self could approach the gloves any closer than Liz. Her spatial abilities got it two feet closer, but that was all.
Aster tried to use ice to encase the gloves, but her ice just shattered as she tried to approach.
Matt went through all his manipulation skills to the same result, and eventually, they decided it was better to just move on.
They secured a rope to the stone pyramid before tossing it up and through the plane of gravity change, where it fell down and kept itself pulled up from their perspective.
Liz tried to grab the gloves, but while her physical body could get closer, she was still repulsed by a few inches.
Matt went next, and paused between the gravity changes that let him hover with only an arm wrapped around the rope to anchor him.
His gut told him that there was a way to take the gloves, and he wanted them.
If his suspicion was correct, this was their reward, and they just needed to figure out how to take it.
When he got close, he could feel the Genesis Energy flowing from the pyramid they had exited and the one above him.
The flows of energy felt distinctly different. The one from the pyramid they had solved felt somehow… completed.
It didn’t take a genius to suspect that they were supposed to enter the other pyramid, complete all of its puzzles, and then return here.
That would have been the normal and acceptable answer, but Matt refused to spend another three days doing inane puzzles for the gloves.
On a hunch, he sent a little Genesis Energy into the gloves, but instead of being absorbed as he expected, it was just eaten by Minkalla.
Next, Matt tried mana to the same effect.
Cursing, he tried to reach the gloves once more, but he found that he was still repulsed.
Sighing, he climbed down the rope and let Susanne and Aster make their own attempts, but neither had any success.
The problem they found was that the door that had let them out on the previous pyramid was entirely absent on this pyramid, and they would need to climb down the second pyramid's outer steps to reach the bottom.
Liz looked up at the gloves but shook her head. “I don't think it's worth going through the pyramid again. We need to move deeper.”
Matt fully agreed.
He was about to step down and follow the others when he turned around and grabbed the rope.
Leaving the gloves was against everything he knew about Minkalla, and he asked, “Give me five more minutes to do some tests.”
He climbed the rope to reach an equilibrium and spread his spiritual sense in a tight net around the gloves, but found nothing new.
Matt locked down space, and while it didn’t let him fly, it gave him a bit of leverage, and he was able to get within inches of the gloves.
As he strained to edge closer, he felt a repulsive force trying to shove him back, and he growled into the silence that Eternal Darkness put over him.
As Matt neared, he felt that there was a challenge he was supposed to overcome, and the very world around him started to warp as he broke the rules of the test.
Seeing that, Matt knew there was an answer, and used his Concept’s repulsive effect to counter the power around the gloves.
Doing that set something off with the defenses, and they grew a dozen times stronger, but with Matt’s own repulsive power, he was able to get within an inch of the gloves.
At that point, he was at an impasse. He was giving everything he had, but Minkalla was pushing back just as hard.
Minkalla wasn’t going to make it easy for him to cheat.
But he was so close.
I won't give up.
Matt narrowed his useless eyes and flexed with everything he had, both magically and physically, trying to push past the restrictions.
While locked in an intimate struggle with the planet’s restrictions, he was able to get a better feel for the forces at work that prevented his progress. With every centimeter of ground gained, he could sense that there was a way to get the gloves.
The first and most obvious was to complete both pyramids, but there was a second, hidden condition. What that condition was, he didn’t know, but he could feel that it existed.
That knowledge was more than enough to spur him on.
Liz, Aster, and Susanne couldn’t return to the top step, but they were able to send their Concepts to help him.
That actually made the restrictions stronger, and his fingers that were only an inch away were pushed to a foot away.
Through gritted teeth, he sent them a message to stop.
With their interference removed, the resistance he encountered lessened, and slowly, his fingers neared the gloves once again.
Whether it was the puzzle itself or Minkalla as a whole, Matt didn’t know. But slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed through the restriction as he refused to give up.
I am Endless. I will not give up.
As Matt embodied his Concept, his fingers neared the gloves. He could feel that he was cheating in some way, and whatever mechanism Minkalla was using to make sure its puzzles were challenging was resisting his attempt.
At first, Matt thought that he was overpowering the restriction, but that was a bit too egotistical, even for his own private thoughts.
Minkalla was a place where even Tier 50s were rebuffed. His little Tier 11 power meant nothing in the face of Intents and Aspects, but he felt that something was making way for him.
It almost felt like Minkalla wanted to test him, but didn’t necessarily care how he was tested.
Digging deeper, his fingers crept forward, and the strain on his spirit and willpower started to force his consciousness to slip. Feeling himself fading, and still acutely aware that he was literally holding on to his spot in the equilibrium zone by a thread and could easily fall. He dug deeper pushing past his limits until he finally touched the gloves where they clasped hands.
Just like that, the resistance was broken, and Matt started swinging back and forth on the rope wildly. That stalemate lasted for an instant before the restriction of flight and the gravity shenanigans vanished.
It also meant the giant pyramid that was on the ceiling was now affected by normal gravity, and started to fall.
On top of them.
The four of them were powerful for their Tier, with quick reactions to match. Matt’s most of all, with all his stats boosted by his channels. He cranked his speed-enhancing buffs as high as they would go and grabbed Liz, using his Concept to fly the two of them in the wake of Queen’s space bending to clear the falling debris.
They cleared the danger area easily and floated together near the ceiling, but not so close that anything could easily drop down and grab them.
Liz looked at the pair of gloves in Matt’s hand and chuckled. “Well, you got them alright. Are they worth it?”
Matt didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.
Comments
Jonas
Thanks for the great chapter
Ninetails
@Buzz1089 While I can see how that makes sense, I do not agree with it. Original the site was a place to share fan stories and stories of armature writers on niche topics that would be very hard to sell to the general public. A place where such authors could share the stories, feed back on their writing and have their passion grow, as they were mostly subjected to nice fans. Sure, some would eventually get good enough that they could write stories that were worth doing more traditional publishing with. What was not expected at that time was those training hobby projects themselves being changed over into professional projects, if for no other reason that the author over their journey would have grown so much that the new things they produced we be so much better than their old public hobby projects. One thing that did happen though, was RR doing more and more to support authors getting donations, with Patreon eventually becoming the big thing. Now a days there are quite a few authors there who more to a lot more than a typical salary in the western world, and doing so reasonably stable thanks to Patreon. The kind of people I see (with patreons I bothered to check) that have done this kind of move were not those just earning a little and wanted to get enough to live by, but rather those already earning enough to be considered to have a good income and be comftably able to live of that income, in other words people who can be considered to be professional writers already. This shows that RR is actually now a place where you can be a professional author by publishing your stories there and collect Patreon income. The major difference with more standar publishing, aside from the lower bar of entry and expectations, is that the income model is more skind to "free to play" games than "cost up front" games. There is a good reason that so many uses the former format compared to the latter nowadays, and that is because the earning potential is quite good by just getting more money out of those willing to pay more money for it. Compared to a lot of those games the Patreon format for stories like these have found a much more ethical way to make use of the same payment scheme. Instead of making the game partially misserable without spending money, they just dangle be able to read chapters earlier, possibly together with some other less important benefits. To make people pay so much for those things, they also instead habe set up things to work like donations instead of just payment for services. It is the difference between paying abnormal sums for charity events and just paying a lot for an exorbitant luxury, the former makes people not bothered too much by the cost benefit ratio, while the latter has people still weighting their options that way. Doing such a charity PR trick does have some other consequences though, and one of those is that the cause should generally be seen as mainly public good, and not just greedy padding of pockets. The main way stories like these do so is by giving back to the public, in terms of free public story content, that way patreons are basically doing a "pay it forward" investment in good karma, that they typically already benefited from when they were reading the public chapters. In a sense Patreon works on expectations for the future "I was thankful for what I have read, and I want you to generate more of it and grant it to the public, here is a donation to help you do that", which naturally comes with the expectation that what you thought you were donating to help make happen is also more or less what will happen. Pulling public content like what is required by KU, betrays the "pay it forward" idea, and it damages the trust that forms the basis for the expectations of the donation actually ending up helping the goal you want it to. Lastly, once people start transitioning a story in this way behind such a paywall, then it is also a signal that they are changing the relationship with their audience, to one where they are now buying goods from you, and as such it becomes a relationship where one should be fully weighting the cost benefit of transactions. If the author is good enough to create a successful business setup that way, good for them, but now I am a consumer in that relationship, and will act appropriately. For how that is difference, think about how much you would want to give charity donations to say McDonald's Vs a soup kitchen giving soup away to the needy, I at least would think it makes sense for people to donate to the latter, while I would be calling the former all kinds of greedy bastards if they publicly tried to gather donations for causes like "so we can develop more tasty food to sell to you".
Ninetails
Have you come considered how large a fraction of those dozen of millions are interested in the kind of genre you are writing? While RR might be smaller, that is partially because it is gathering those that are interested in just this and related genres. KU is much more based on the general population, and they have markedly different tastes, so instead of writing something that is mainstream for the side, you are moving somewhere where your story will be relatively niche. Furthermore, the way KU works, it makes its readers focus on just a few stories at the time, which compared to RR which heavily encourages exploration of new series it means each user/reader will be interested in fewer stories. Once you also consider that RR does a lot to help stories be unearthed to the public (in terms of site exploration), then you will see that making it on a site like KU is likely going to be a good deal harder than making it on RR, though if you really do make it there, then you could maybe reach more people.
Buzz1089
The only people really affected by this are potential future fans who don't want to pay for content. The point of sites like RR are to help first time authors with things like crowd editing, building a fan base, and increasing writing skills so they can publish and make money. Once those goals are achieved (which has clearly happened in C. Mantis' case) then KU is the natural next step. We Patreon fans are here to support the author so they can achieve these goals. We should be celebrating them taking this next step, not condemning them for removing free content we've already gotten past.
StarWolf
Mmm that sounds good… did I pack any of that away? Oh, off course I did!” Should be OF course I did!
C_Mantis
There will be an audiobook coming out the same day.
C_Mantis
I fully understand that. Sadly if I want my story to get out more I need to move to a larger platform. I want people to read PoA. RR has around 1 million unique viewers a month. Kindle Unlimited has dozens of millions. But I really do get it.
Obbu
Super excited for your success - and genuinely hoping that the kindle unlimited release brings wider acclaim to your story. Have you thought about having an audio version done at all? Edit Suggestions: but all of them agreed that it was still noticeably off. ->(remove double space) They looked around but found nothing so chose to move one. -> They looked around but found nothing so chose to move on. Story Critique: The gargoyle puzzle being described as effectively impossible, then the next paragraph saying "Eventually, they succeeded and progressed on" feels odd. It might be better to downplay the impossibility of the task if it is going to be timeskipped out of, or possibly to describe the solution briefly as part of the timeskip.
Ninetails
The problem is not releasing an Ebook and getting money from a more well edited version. The problem is taking down important part of the free content on RR, which KU requires you to do. Personally I am lucky enough to not get affected very much, because I already read all the way up til patreon chapter, but if I had found your story a couple of months later I would have consider it dead, because that is what happens to stories on RR when they go to KU, all that is left is a final dwildling part of readership that falls off. I am also not sure if you are aware, but the cost of patreon subscriptions are way above the value of what you provide here (for comparison, KU subscription is similar to what we pay you, and do I need to mention how much more you get out of KU compared to what we get here), most of the reason people like me are still willing to pay such a high amount is because we partially see our subscriptions as a kind of charity, where we crowdfund authors who create art we love. This means that it only really makes sense to subsidice authors who you find are a worthy cause, and authors who actively write series I love to read and who otherwise makes them freely available are the category I consider worthy causes, and even then I only pick out the top ones. Doing this moves you thoroughly out of that category. I know that if I had found your story a couple of months later - after you had moved the first book to KU, then I would have taken a look, saw that there was a bunch of chapters missing, read some kind of announcement on the KU, then closed the tap and forgotten about the series and moved on to something else. I expect most other RR readers would have a similar experience, and that kind of leftovers of "free" content is not something I want to actively finicially support in charity style.
Tjark
Good luck on KU! Since you only talked about the first 40 chapters I guess you'll slowly go over the content while writing more and leaving it on RR for a long time still? I wonder with the way Matt got it, will the gloves synergize with his Concept's repulsion effect or maybe gravity like the pyramids? And with his Intent phrase MAYBE being I will not give up, I could see it going in gravity/repulsion direction too. Not giving up and overcoming something is similar to gravity/repulsion. Would definitely like that direction for him.
Rhys Rathbun
So is it just me or did the line Matt said at the end seem like a glimpse into what his intent will be?
Andrew Goudie
Interesting insights into Minkalla it's purpose is. To challenge and push people - sifting talent for the next realm? Are there any ascenders who didn't go to Minkalla?
Sean McClain
For art, find some one with DALL-E account and try AI generated art
C_Mantis
I understand your feelings. But remember. The version going to KU isn't the exact version you read. Its been professionally line edited and I content edited the entire thing to make it cleaner. ALso that same argument can be made for Pat and RR. The story will always make it to RR and be there for at least a year before pulling it down. KU just lets me fix all the mistakes I made along the way and get the book out there in a better format.
Azulmar
I'm happy to see the book coming out on ku. While far from perfect it lets authors have a chance at making a living while allowing avid readers like myself discover hidden gems that we may have otherwise overlooked. Though with something like PoA that I'm likely to re-read several times I'll just purchase a copy.
Xavier Joanblanq
PREACH FLEET. PREACH
Fleetpanda
It’s still open to the public. Just open the discord. The patreon is still for weekly chapters being released early. You’re just throwing a hissy fit over the author not using the patreon for what YOU want. I mean really, god forbid the author receive more money for their hard work 🙄 Get over yourself. Ps. If you’re going to complain about an author making money, maybe go after the ones who make millions and then stop writing without any intentions of returning to finish their stories. Don’t go after the ones who give fantastic content weekly
Fleetpanda
Argh now I need to know what the gloves DO. Something gravity related? Something concept related? Are they a new growth item? We need to KNOW! 😭 Also they 100% should go to Matt. I know they’re a team and some things might benefit queen more, but this was his win.
Ninetails
As I really hate what KU does to stories with their exclusivity, I will be pulling my support for this story. I also find it quite disgusting to double dip with both Patreon and selling the final product on closed platforms - we pay way more than the worth of the service we get, and a large part of why we do this is to support authors who are providing otherwise free content. Since the content will no longer be free in general, I find no reason to financially support the effort in this way. All in all I am disgusted by all these authors that are well supported by crowd funding withdrawing the content to then put it on restricted platforms, while they were crowd funded to keep it open to the public.
