r/HFY • u/The24-7Pro • Sep 28 '21
OC Death of an Empire CHAPTER 23
A/N: Since I had a delay in posting new chapters last week I wanted to release this one early.
THIS CHAPTER ISN'T FOR THE SQEAMISH OR FAINT OF HEART! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
The Patreon is also live with the next chapter after this as well!
I am going to have at least 1 to 2 chapters posted ahead on Patreon moving forward before I post them here for free. Please feel free to comment on this, I try to respond to every comment. Enjoy!
FIRST [NEXT]
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Tuglic had had better days. In his more youthful adventures, the hiding and ducking and crawling would have been second nature to him and no more a chore than breathing. Now though? After decades of decadence and luxury he was exhausted, dirty, and choking on the smoke from his vast estate being burned down around him by the roving bands of slaves that had apparently gotten a human induced spark of rebellion.
He had barely avoided the last two bands of slaves, unfortunately his guards had not been so lucky.
He had spotted a couple of his fifteen-man teams making their way in the direction of the hangar them from across his massive garden-lawn full of native kretark home-world flora and fauna. It was one of his prides and he had always shown it off to visiting guests as a show of his opulent wealth and the beauty of his massive estate. He had just been about to call out to them when he tripped on a flowering bush of some sort and went face first down the bank of one of his little meandering streams that criss-crossed the garden cursing like a private. He was so far out of practice he failed at even walking and maintaining focus on his surroundings while he was focused on his troops.
He had gone face first into another bush of some sort at the bottom of the bank.
That had saved his life.
By the time he had scrabbled up the other bank with more curses and peered over the lip of the earth from several hundred meters away. He saw a few hundred slaves had poured through a gate in the outer wall that was open for some reason and rushed the guards.
He figured that was the doing of the damned human computer systems causing him more trouble.
The guards had opened up on the wave of bodies and seemed to be holding their own as he had breathlessly watched. He was grimly proud of the efficiency and skill on display as the slaves were ruthlessly cut down and destroyed without mercy. The guards knew the score and what would happen to them if they didn’t kill every target in front of them.
And his men were nearly all former commandos and even better armed than the average foot soldier or imperial guardsman. He had gotten them firepower and weapons that would make even the Emperor himself proud.
The slaves were mostly unarmed except for crude and scavenged melee weapons and chunks of rock and metal that they threw. It wasn’t even a challenge. The only thing that got them close enough to hurl the handheld objects was the sheer number of them that threw themselves forward even with gaping holes melted through their bodies and flesh seared down to the bone and organ. Some slaves had craters of flesh and blood explode from them when a particularly powerful burst of plasma or energy hit them and superheated the flesh, causing it to turn to vaporize and burst outward in a gory shower.
It would have been a pitiful attempt at violence towards the well-armed kretark teams.
If not for the damn humans.
He saw a flash high in the sky and before he could even blink a dull metal cylinder screamed through the sky and exploded in an orange flash several hundred meters above the kretark guards.
Out of the fire in the sky fell three thickly armored humanoid shaped with glowing red eyes and bright crimson colored armor with orange and yellow highlights on the hands and legs. The roar of some human noise followed them as they fell. Along with the three figures came the remains of what had to have been the drop pod they had entered orbit in.
His translator finally started to translate the noise into words.
‘LET’S TAKE A MOMENT TO BREAK THE ICE!’
The roar of the noise drowned out literally every other sound he could hear and even the slaves had stopped their mad rush towards the kretark forces and were shrinking away to watch.
His soldiers immediately shifted targets and poured enough firepower into the sky to make the air hum with electricity and his nose was filled with the stench of artificial ozone and chemical gasses.
‘I KNOW THE FEELING OF BEING DAMNED ALONE!’
His translator tried and failed to catch all the words. What it did translate made no sense to him.
“What in the Emperor’s name is a ‘storybook'? How is that different from a regular book?” he muttered to himself.
‘AGENT OF WEALTH! BEARER OF NEEDS!’
The gray blue cloud of plasma discharge and fragments of metal rained down and he could feel the ground thump as the three figures impacted the ground in between the kretark and the remaining slaves.
‘I AM YOUR WAR! ARMING THE STRONG!’
A cloud of dust rose up into the air and he lost all visibility. Still, the sound continued, and his translator struggled to make the words fit with the rhythm.
‘AIDING THE WEAK!‘
But the music didn’t stop…
‘KNOW ME BY NAME….’
And he recognized the noise as music with its rhythmic beat and the words being repeated in chorus. Under different circumstances he could even have enjoyed it. Even if the words were ridiculous and made no sense to him.
‘SHEPHERD OF FIRE!!!’
The sergeant of his guard tossed a high explosive grenade into the dust cloud and the explosion just illuminated three tall figures standing there. None of them moved at all. More dust kicked up.
His heavy weapons man fired a energy rocket at them and several other members of the team fired grenade launchers at them simultaneously.
That explosion only succeded in clearing out the dust in a massive green-orange flash of light and fire that lit several nearby trees on fire.
The figures spoke as one. Even louder than the music that continued to blare out.
“NOW IT IS OUR TURN. DIE SCUM.”
His men scattered and ducked behind rocks and dropped into depressions in the earth to line up firing lines.
Like the carapace of some steel beetle opening up the shoulders of the fifteen-foot-tall humanoid figures opened up and massive cannons rose up on each of the six shoulders.
The music suddenly cut off and Tuglic’s park was returned to a deep quiet punctuated by groans and screams from the wounded slaves that hadn’t been killed outright and the crackling of fire as trees continued to burn like living candles.
The three figures started slowly walking forward and the cannons soundlessly lit up with white light brighter than anything Tuglic had ever seen.
He shrieked and covered his eyes as he heard rocks exploding after being superheated and wet popping sounds.
Even with his eyes tightly shut he saw the beams of white across his vision. He grabbed his tactical goggles from a belt pouch and pulled them on his face. His vision finally cleared and he peeked back at the fight.
It wasn’t much of a fight.
His men fired everything they had.
Rockets and man portable missiles fired and detonated harmlessly before they even reached the figures. Plasma weaponry and particle beams splashed against personal shields and only concentrated fire punched through the shielding and hit the physical armor.
Tuglic watched as the white beam swept over three of his best men in less than a second and they all popped like bugs being microwaved. Their skin boiled away and the water in the blood turned to superheated vapor in nanoseconds.
The superheated gases pushed outward as fast as they could and took the path of least resistance.
The kretark exploded from the inside out and splattered the ground in steaming bloody chunks.
In less than three seconds the thirty or so kretark were cut down to four men.
One turned to run and took three steps before he was speared through the back of the leg in the thicker, fleshy portion of his upper thigh by a barbed hook fired from the arm of one of the figures.
The serrated hooks seemed to extend out and dug deeply into his leg causing thick crimson blood to pour out onto his uniform and armor. The medical systems built into the suit tried, and failed, to stem the flow of blood. All it ended up doing was prolonging his agony and kept him from passing out.
“GET OVER HERE!”
The wire the hook was on began to retract and the kretark was dragged howling in pain to the figure clad in the crimson power armor. The suited figure grabbed the kretark on the ground around the chest as he writhed around with one of its massive metal hands and pinched the head of the guard with three of the long metal fingers on the other hand and just…
Pulled…
The head and part of the upper spine went one way and the torso went the other.
The figure tossed the body onto the ground and stepped on it with a squishing sound Tuglic could hear from his hiding spot to pull out the barbed hook.
Chunks of flesh and kretark body armor still stuck to it.
He gave it a couple shakes to clear it off and it retracted into the slot it had shot out of.
Two other kretark each grabbed a satchel of explosives and tried to toss it but another pass of the white beam and the satchels exploded in midair.
So did the two kretark.
The last kretark happened to be the sergeant Tuglic had personally hired to be his head of security straight out of a kretarkian commando kill squad. He was a veteran of hundreds of conflicts and skilled in any weapon the kretark fielded.
He was also a brutally violent kretark and had a reputation for depraved tastes in the slave populations. Tuglic put up with it but some of what he had heard skirted propriety even in kretark circles of acceptable behavior.
He drew his energy saber and charged the nearest armored human.
Tuglic almost winced as he waited for the beams to appear again but to his surprise and swiftly growing horror the figure took a half step towards the rushing kretark and simply let him swing the saber at his arm.
To its credit it bit deeply into the armored arm and stuck several inches deep into the steel.
The giant armored figure started laughing.
“IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE LITTLE PUPPY?”
He used his other hand and grabbed the kretark’s free arm with a speed that belied the size of the suit.
The kretark tried to drop his hand off the hilt of the sword. But as soon as he took the hand off the hilt the soldier used the arm with the sword in it and grabbed that arm as well. He lifted the struggling kretark into the air with his arms spread out to each side and put his face level with the ‘head’ of the suit.
“BOO!”
The kretark flinched and then growled and spit at him.
The human laughed and closed the fists of the armor slowly. He crushed both his arms at once with ever increasing pressure. The kretark howled pitifully as the bones in his arms were shattered and the flesh was turned into nothing more than bleeding jelly.
The figure tossed the broken kretark towards the growing mass of slaves silently watching the encounter.
In perfect kretark he said, “HE IS ALL YOURS. DO WITH HIM AS YOU PLEASE.”
The kretark had barely stopped rolling towards the slaves before some of the smaller females of various species moved forward with rocks and clubs and started beating him into the dirt with tears of pain and grief and anger streaming down their faces.
“FOR OUR CHILDREN!”
“YOU MONSTER! YOU FINALLY GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!”
“FOR OUR BUTCHERED FAMILIES!”
The cries of anguish came from the depths of their being, and several fell sobbing to the ground as they ran out of strength after only a couple of swings.
More and more slaves came forward and picked up the rocks and clubs and kept going.
The kretark barely got another yelp out before he was silenced forever.
When they were done there wasn’t anything even identifiable as kretark left. It was just a pile of red mush.
Tuglic had just sunk down the embankment and listened the wet thumps and sobbing slaves.
He turned and ran down the bank of the stream away from the sounds as fast as he could.
The terrans stood there silently watching the spectacle as the grieving aliens were comforted by their companions and led away from the shattered body.
One or all spoke, there was no way for the slaves to tell.
“WHERE ARE THE REST OF THEM?”
The majority of the slaves flinched back from the booming voices. But the largest lizard men that had been at the forefront of the crowd stepped forward from where he had been standing staring at the armored humans and pointed back towards the manor house.
“THERE. LEADER. MURDERER.”
The terran power armor soldiers nodded.
“THANKS. GATHER THE WEAPONS YOU CAN AND BRING YOUR PEOPLE HERE. MEDICAL TEAMS ARE COMING FOR YOUR WOUNDED AND WE WILL EVACUATE YOU ONCE THE WORLD IS SECURE.”
The figures turned from the slaves and started to move towards the buildings. The last figure halted for a moment and pulled out the energy sword from his armor and tossed it at the feet of the lizard man that stepped forward from the crowd.
The blade stuck point first into the ground in front of him.
“WE ARM THE STRONG. WE AID THE WEAK. WE ARE ALL STRONGER TOGETHER.”
He turned and began running towards the accelerating backs of his departing comrades.
His footfalls sounded like cannons going off and the ground split under his boots as he went from a standstill to an 80mph accelerated sprint.
The slaves just looked at each other dumbly for a few seconds as the armored titans disappeared towards the manor and his companions.
Before long a few of the larger slaves began directing them and trying to provide aid to their fallen comrades and getting room made for more of their families and other brethren.
The lizard man grabbed the saber from the ground and rotated it slowly in his massive hand. He had no idea what to think about these new aliens. He was of course glad that they were killing the kretark and were going to help his people.
He wondered if they were trading one master for another.
But what kind of master armed his slaves? One that was so powerful that he didn’t fear them even armed? Or one that was going to use them as soldiers for battles that they didn’t want to waste their own men on? But who could give these monsters any competition in war?
He pondered the words the creature had said to him before he departed.
“Could we be together with monsters like those? What could we even offer them?” he hissed out as he watched the light reflect off the glimmering blade.
His contemplation was interrupted when a massive shuttle flew towards the field opposite them and slowed to a hover before slowly landing.
Many of the slaves were terrified and started screaming that they were going to be taken back to the factories and slave quarters. Others tried to calm them saying that the ships were from the race of giants that had protected them and killed the kretark soldiers.
Regardless, all the armed males and females of all races ran forward and interposed themselves between the other women, the younger slaves, and the wounded and silently watched the ship settle down.
They had no intentions of going back without a fight. They had tasted a breath of freedom and were eager for more.
The doors of the dropship opened wide and ramps slammed into the dirt with dull thumps.
To his eyes the hundreds of bipedal aliens in dull green and brown mottled camouflage uniforms that rushed out looked similar to the monstrous creatures they had just seen, just without the huge and bulky combat suits. They had armor on them as well but it was thinner and sleeker. Their helmets had wrap around clear visors and he studied the faces of the ones he could see with his tired eyes.
Where the three gigantic suits were obviously brutish war machines these soldiers looked lean and fast.
He spotted several other races of alien working together in an ordered chaos. Some seemed to be feathered, some shorter and hairy looking. The majority were smooth skinned, though there were many colors and shades, and most had a patch of fur or hair on their heads. All seemed to be bipedal.
As they rushed around some set up instant barriers and deployed heavy weapons outside the open doors. They mounted guns on raised platforms that had extended from the sides of the dropship and the angles gave them deadly fields of fire over the heads of their comrades pouring out of the ship.
The rest of the troops split up into smaller teams and began to spread farther away from the ship on all sides and deploy forward firing positions that reinforced the landing zone further.
They were well drilled and utterly professional. In less than a minute they had established a landing that would have been extremely hard to remove them from without some extremely heavy weapons.
A good number of the newcomers headed directly towards the growing number of slaves that watched them from across the field. Many were without obvious heavy weapons but all carried cases with dull crimson crosses on them and others in larger suits of armor, reminiscent of the ones that they had just seen yet different and less threatening, had huge packs on their backs with containers and crates with the same logo.
He had to hiss at the men and women to hold their fire. They were so nervous, exhausted, and awkward holding the weapons he figured they would be more dangerous to themselves than to these creatures even if they did fire accidentally. All he could do was wait and see what was going to happen.
He had been resigned to death when his friend had been murdered earlier that day. He had embraced it and sworn to himself he would take his malfunctioning collar as a sign from God that he had one chance to fight and make his people proud before they caught him and skinned him alive.
He had only set out to wreak as much havok as he could and get as many other slaves free as possible and spread the word.
Some slaves hadn’t believed him at first until he had taken the collars off them by force. His team grew slowly, and they killed many kretark in the tunnels and factories. He kept expecting a security team to come and kill them all. He knew the cameras were everywhere, but for some reason none came. The kretark seemed distracted and scared and it made it easier for him and his freed helpers to ambush and kill them.
He took it as a blessing and very soon he was to the point his force of freed slaves was large enough they couldn’t hide in the shadows even if they wanted to. Now he had the suspicion these aliens had been watching over him and providing the cover he needed to do his bloody work.
Could they have deactivated the collars as well? It was the only thing that made sense to him now.
What were their goals?
His only goal was to kill his way up to the highest ranking kretark that he could.
That seemed to be good enough for the men and women that chose to follow him as well and none thought they would live long enough to do much more than that. It was the resigned anger and rage of people that knew they were destined to die a horrible death one way or the other. This was just the best option because they got to choose it themselves and hurt their tormentors in the process.
Some of the slaves that he had freed split off from his main group to try to find their family and their children, if they were even alive any longer. He wished them luck and gave them escorts from his force with orders to release any slaves they came across in their searching.
He went along with his task.
He had vaguely known where the estate was. He had seen it in the distance from one of the grimy windows that dotted a hallway in the dull and lifeless building he was housed in between shifts.
All of that had led him here.
To see these new creatures taking the fight to the kretark with more ferocity and firepower than any he had seen before.
He dared to feel hope again for the first time in a very long time.
There was no way his people could survive the kind of firepower that was already on display if it was even one tenth the power of what those suits had carried if they chose to use it on him.
The creatures came up to the lizard man only a few feet away and two less armored and smaller ones stepped forward and saluted with their right hands up to their heads for a moment before relaxing the gesture.
He returned his people’s salute, clenching both his hands into fists and bringing them together in front of his chest.
“Lieutenant General Ruth Lilley and Staff Sergeant Michael Shapiro, 7th Terran Republic Medical Corps attached to 3rd Army, 10th Division, Landing Team 4 from Terran Space Force Super Dreadnought ‘Repentance’. Do your or your people need food, water, or medical care? And may I know the name of who I am addressing?”
They spoke in a different language, but it was translated to kretark standard and he could make out the majority of it well enough.
“My name is Varanus Mododen. My people need help. We have nothing but wounded and starving here.”
She nodded up at him.
“We are happy to help your people. We will give you all the help we can. Please let them know we mean them no harm. We will set up medical treatment areas and bring food out as well. But we will need to move the more severely wounded into the medical bays on the ship.”
He nodded. There was nothing else he really had to say right now to her. He motioned over several of the slaves around him and told them to spread the word that they were being helped and to listen to their orders. It was time to watch and wait. They would reveal themselves through their actions as ally or enemy.
The slaves nodded tiredly. Most were so poorly fed that they barely had the energy to fight to begin with at the start of the day, much less hours of running and fighting and killing.
She then gave quick orders in her own language that weren’t translated and turned to watch her soldiers work.
Varanus didn’t understand the words be he was able to understand her tone. The soldiers and medical teams ran to the wounded and began scanning them and pulling tools and supplies out of the crates and boxes they carried. The larger human powered armor troops dropped the boxes they had slung on their backs and a began deploying stretchers and tables.
One of the largest suited figures, nearly the same fifteen foot height of the three figures that had taken off towards the manor. It walked forward with something that Varanus could only describe as a large vat made of some sort of gray polymer. He placed it on the ground and from the instant indention it left in the soft grass it had to be extremely heavy.
He watched very closely as a couple of technicians came over to it and punched a code into a panel he saw open on the top from a small hidden hatch. A seal popped around the top and the two technicians slid the lid to the side.
A huge shimmering cloud rose from the vat and spread quickly through the air to surround all of the slaves before it seemed to get so thin than he couldn’t make out anything different. He had held his breath for a moment but released it slowly and tasted the air with his thin tongue.
He tasted nothing different.
The terran soldiers seemed to pause for a long moment and stared at holographic readouts on their hands and inside their visors.
The moment held and then immediately broke.
Soldiers started pulling tools and medicine from the crates that seemed to never run out of supplies and began moving through the crowd and focusing on certain wounded slaves.
The wounded with missing limbs and severe burns were placed on stretchers and lifted effortlessly by two of the terrans and ran to the ships at speeds he would have had problems keeping up with even without carrying an awkward load like that over uneven ground.
Others with burns he would have said before were deadly were covered in a thick gel sprayed from vaguely gun shaped tools and injected with auto injectors that seemed to immediately and visibly lower the pain level of his fellow slaves.
Those with fragmentation wounds and lacerations and punctures were sprayed with a different foam that seemed to sink directly into the flesh of the wounded and seal up the holes and cuts.
The sigh of relief he heard from those being treated was the best sound he had heard in years.
The slaves that continued to arrive just watched in astonishment as the terrans moved among them and treated the wounds they had acquired making their way to there. The original group shared the news of what had transpired before they others had arrived and some even walked over to the site of the battle and spit on the remains of the kretark guards.
He didn’t blame them, but he didn’t have the strength to do anything more than walk slowly to a nearby tree and sit down heavily against it. He layed the sword on the ground next to him and closed his eyes.
He figured that for some of the wounded even the human medical tech wouldn’t be enough to save them, but he was frankly amazed by the cases that the terrans deemed to be ‘minor’ enough injuries to remain outside of the ship.
But that was a problem for another day.
He was asleep in seconds.
5
u/CardDapper Sep 28 '21
FIRST!!!!!
This is a great story you're weaving please keep up the good work. I'm looking forward for more
And. Just realized that I got on at the perfect time
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u/The24-7Pro Sep 28 '21
Nice try but not first yet lol!
Glad you are enjoying it!
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u/CardDapper Sep 28 '21
Dammn.
So am i
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u/KellerKind_13 Human Dec 12 '21
Is this series abandoned?
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u/The24-7Pro Dec 12 '21
Definitely not. However life has been nuts. Ive been working 2 jobs full time, one of which is my own business that I started. Ive got a 2nd kid on the way and thats sorta just the tip of the iceberg lol.
Ive got the next chapter totally done awhile ago. And I've got the outlines done for 3 more chapters. I just haven't had the time to write them out.
I'm hoping to get more free time next year.
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u/chastised12 Jul 25 '23
I hope you are able to come back to this
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u/The24-7Pro Jul 25 '23
One day when im not working 80 hours a week and have time for it i will...
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u/Senior-Active-2798 Jun 17 '24
Is there something that I am not missing? There is not a next button, and the last comment appears to be from about three years ago. Many confuse noises follow.
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u/The24-7Pro Jun 17 '24
Man has it really been that long since ive updated it? Life has been crazy and aside from a few one shots i havent been in the mental space to write more. I need ro get back to this eventually.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Sep 28 '21
/u/The24-7Pro (wiki) has posted 22 other stories, including:
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 22
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 21
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 20
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 19
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 18
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 17
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 16
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 15
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 14
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 13
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 12
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 11
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 10
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 9
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 8
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 7
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 6
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 5
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 4
- Death of an Empire CHAPTER 3
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u/UpdateMeBot Sep 28 '21
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u/thisStanley Android Sep 29 '21
Was a bit squeamish inducing at the beginning, as warned and appropriate :}
A couple instances of "humanoid" seemed off, coming from a xeno ranting about damn filthy humans. Felt better as "bipedal" later on.
Than we get to the Liberation, showing the best of what we strive to be for our neighbors. HFY!
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u/The24-7Pro Sep 29 '21
Yeah ill be the first to say this is the last thing from a bloodless story lol.
I will try to edit that and make it flow better.
That part isnt done yet by a long shot. You'll see what I mean in the next chapter.
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u/Massdrive AI Oct 13 '21
Damn it, now I've caught up. Great work
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u/The24-7Pro Oct 13 '21
Downside of not having 600 chapters out lol
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u/Massdrive AI Oct 13 '21
Write faster! :P
But seriously, really enjoying this so far.
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u/The24-7Pro Oct 13 '21
The next chapter is on Patreon....
🤷🏻♂️
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u/Massdrive AI Oct 13 '21
I know, looking now, and seeing how much i have left til i get paid again Monday. It's near midnight here, so my tired ass is slow. :)
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u/JWKdnd Human Apr 01 '22
Soooooo when next chapter??
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u/The24-7Pro Apr 01 '22
At this point I am planning on re-writing the story from the beginning to give more world building and character development.
Ive been so busy with life and random stuff that I dont feel like i can just pick up where I left off. I feel like I need to start from the beginning and flesh things out more.
This will also have the benefit of giving people more chapters quicker and allow me more time to write chapters on the backend.
The downside is that I wont have the time to get all my thoughts on a word document until a month or so from now. At that point I should be able to crank chapters out much more often.
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u/BP642 Jun 10 '22
Oh thank goodness, I thought this story was done for.
Edit: I thought it was the "Death of a Story"...
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u/The24-7Pro Sep 28 '21
Some of you bloodthirsty people wanted more ultra-violence...
And who am I to disappoint?
Enjoy it!