Thinslayer

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

I added a bit more to that collab.

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

@Zerofighter On the upside, that means you have lots of quality content to read! :D

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

All right, I should probably do a bit of roll call. Who still needs responses? I gotta finish the collab with Dark Cloud, provide a reaction to Emperor Dragan's introduction, continue the negotiations with Chatak, and somehow link Elthrael into the story. Am I missing anybody?

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

I'm here, for what that's worth.

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

Location: Sealed Tower
Interaction: @Thinslayer The Witch

---

Lex's eyebrows rose with the first inhale of his cigarette as he watched the mysterious woman remove her hood. Her strands of hair caught his eyes. Silver and wispy… a great difference from gray and thinned. When her hands reached for her mask, he kept his eyes fixed on her. Enya stared too, remaining quiet to respect their conversation. It's not like she had anything to add. In fact, she desired to learn something from this interaction, from both the Witch and Lex.

He exhaled out of the side of his mouth as the mask was removed, and beneath it, a face was revealed. Her face. He blinked a few times, staring straight ahead while the woman took a seat beside him. His mind briefly flashed to the partially drawn sketch he worked on just before this. What really did this world mean to him? What did this woman mean to him?

He met her gaze and smiled back at the Witch. Her proposal seemed fair enough.

"I'll trade you the story, the plan, and my name for a cigarette."

"Deal. Nothing like a cigarette with company." He did wonder about the value of a single cigarette in this world. The woman knew what it was, sure, but maybe it wasn't a luxury here. "Good company." He added, still smiling as he passed her a cigarette. He held up the lighter, prepared to charitably light her cigarette with it.

Ha! I picked the coolest reincarnation ever! He might fight for us for sure! I just have to make sure he remembers who he's made a pact with. ME! I mean the Witch is great, but she has to come second. It's just the way these things work.

@FunnyGuy

She leaned closer to him to receive his offer, and the tip of the cigarette lit up with a soft golden light.

When she took her first drag, she nearly burst out laughing - only to break out coughing instead. "Wow. I haven't had one of these in centuries. Hoo! I almost forgot how much it burns the first time. Ha ha!" She took another drag and closed her eyes to savor the taste of it.

And I don't even have to worry about the adverse health impact. So nice being immortal. She shot Lex a sidelong glance and a pleased smirk. "My name is Ru. Ru Bain. It is a pleasure to meet you, Lex."

Ru took a moment to breathe in the aroma of her cigarette while she collected her thoughts. "As for the 'crisis,' I suppose the easiest way to explain it is to show you." She rose to her feet and led Lex and Enya out of the tomb. They emerged onto a walkway inside a staggeringly vast tower. Doorways to tombs just like theirs stretched for almost a quarter mile in either direction and looped around the corners of the tower until they hit the entrance, a set of imposing double doors. Layers of these tombs and walkways stacked up as far as the eye could see into the earth and sky to form a hollow interior. The wide walkway they emerged on formed a "bridge" over this abyss of tombs.

She escorted them to the middle of the walkway, where was found a magic circle in front of a central elevator. Goblins occasionally popped in and out of the magic circle carrying supplies. Ru withdrew a knife, cut her elbow, and dribbled blood on the edge of the circle. When the last drop struck the floor, they found themselves inside a smaller stone room.

"This is my fortress in Nazir. Dreary, I know. We won't stay long." As a pragmatic installation, the fortress had little in the way of decoration. The scorch marks, broken arrowheads, and dried blood in the cobblestone walls told of a place suffering constant warfare. Ru glanced back and grimaced a wordless apology. When they found themselves at seemingly a dead end, she pressed in a stone, and part of the wall trundled aside to reveal a hidden passageway.

Even before they saw the creature, they could feel their hairs standing up on end. Tightly chained up in a suspended steel cage, the shadowy visage of a creature resembling a man stared down at them, its murderous eyes glowing a faint crimson in the dim torchlight of the room. It made neither movement nor sound, and seemed for a moment like a just a creepy statue until its gaze shifted to someone else.

"He was once a young swordsman named Hallim Chaom," said Ru softly. And so began her tale:

---

@Scarifar
"Not too long now. With any luck, we'll find Cho and be out of here before you know it," Afki said, and flashed a reassuring smile.
"Okay. I'll do my best." Hallim released a hollow sigh and continued his dragging pace behind her, hunched over a little from nausea.

A scratching sound behind them drew their attention. Budam drew his sword and turned to face it. If the torches around the hive weren't still burning, they couldn't have spotted the shadowy creature trailing them at a distance. It resembled a black six-legged tarantula, bigger than two human hands laid end to end, whose shadowy aura and crimson eyes marked it as something other.

Budam breathed a sigh of relief. "It's only a Voidspawn," he muttered, and promptly cut the thing in two. Its body dissolved to ashes and blew away.

Hallim gulped hard and gathered his strength. "Do- do we normally- see them down here?" he gasped out.
Budam gave a negative tilt of his head, and raised an eyebrow at Afki to request an explanation.

Voidspawn, according to current wisdom, were believed to be "chaotic evil sprites," since they dematerialized like incarnated sprites and exhibited a similar kind of violent, reckless behavior only found in such hard-to-kill beings. Thus, it was thought that manablades and magical attacks, which could kill sprites, could dispatch them. Voidspawn typically attacked any surface-dwellers foolish enough to be caught out in the open, and would occasionally form packs to attack the roads. Whenever a nest was discovered, the Adventurer's Guild would post a quest to have it exterminated. A party of 8 novice adventurers was usually enough to handle the job.

The creatures were almost never found this far underground, let alone in the West Pelinor Labyrinth.

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

@ArmorPlated Updated the Discord link.

Naming is the bane of authors everywhere. I getcha. :)

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

I'mma have to tackle everyone's posts separately, as putting them all in one big post would make everyone wait too long.

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

Afki took a quick wide scan of the current party, her mind deep in thought, and quickly made a conclusion, "Let's form 3 groups of three. We'll each search a different area of the city for Cho and come back within, say, an hour and a half." Parshath silently agreed with Afki's proposal. If his train of thought was correct, the group of three rule was perfect for ensuring maximum search coverage while maintaining a sense of safety in numbers. Theoretically, at least one member would be able to rejoin the main party even in the worst case scenario. "We should keep an eye out for each other, as well as for Cho. And if we don't find him with the time limit, we can discuss what to do after we regroup. How's that sound?"

@Scarifar

---

Teleus folded his arms and nodded. "Hm, yes, that sounds like a good strategy. Okay, who wants to go with Afki?"
All of them raised their hands. Teleus facepalmed and groaned, "Come on, guys, we can't all go with Afki. Do we need to cast lots?"
"Yup." Law stopped spinning his knife to pull out a handful of sticks.
Gurden threw up his hands. "Yeah, sure, trust the rogue with a game of chance."
"And trust a noble with it instead? You wouldn't know honesty if it slapped your tit and called you mommy."
"Say that again, commoner, and you'll be getting more than just a slap."
"Knock it off, kids!" Teleus barked.
"Excuse you?" Law growled. "Just because our spat looks like it's escalating doesn't mean you need to butt in. Stay out of it, Shield Hero."
"Yeah, stay out of it," said Gurden.
Teleus threw up his hands. "Fine. Work it out. But no fighting."
___

Several bruises later, the party assignments were decided. Hallim, Budam, and Afki formed one party, Heizar, Grin, and Bron another party, and Law, Gurden, and Gio the last party. Teleus would watch from the city entrance.

Budam didn't say much, but his perpetual scowl lessened somewhat when he learned he'd be accompanying Afki. Hallim, on the other hand, looked like he would faint from relief. As they explored the winding tunnels of the Formic city, Hallim whined, "Miss Afki? Do you know how long this is going to take? I'm feeling really sick."

Budam gently squeezed his shoulder in solidarity as he watched for any sign of their missing spearman.

S E C O N D C H A N C E S (An Isekai Adventure)

@FunnyGuy
"Way too many if I'm going to be honest," he answered. "I think the two best questions to ask would be, why was I 'awoken' here? And is there some kind of crisis I should know about? It's usually the deal in stories like this. Name's Lex by the way."

She looked on with some envy as he lit up a cigarette.
Why the hell not.
The Witch removed her hood and touched her fingers to the edges of the mask. When the latches disconnected, she removed it.

The woman seated herself cross-legged beside him, leaned forward a little, and leveled her gaze at him. A slight half-smile played on her lips. "I'll trade you the story, the plan, and my name for a cigarette."

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

Isabelle Claire

Isabelle Claire

Age: 20
"IS": Human
Role: Healer, Seer
Features: ~5'8", hazy blue eyes, light blonde hair, fair skin
Description: Fair, svelte, and light on her feet, the young Isabelle carries herself with a quiet, unassuming grace befitting her role as priestess. Her soothing, gentle voice can lull a troubled soul to sleep, and her slender, calloused hands can manage anything from scrubbing floors to sewing patterns. She is blind to the physical realm, so she has to rely on touch and sound to navigate her way through the world.
Armaments:

• Sealed Crown: A relic mask with the ability to block magical energies and stop trans-optical powers from going in or out. Originally designed to prevent possession via the eyes.
• Echo Staff: A durable wooden staff with a hook on one end (like a shepherd's crook). She can tap around with it to aid navigation. She can also yank wayward adventurers out of harms way.

Teraterrificence:

• Spiritual Sight: While completely blind to the physical realm, she can see clearly into the spiritual realm, able to perceive a person's aura and spirit, any uses of magic, and the presence of higher spirits like angels, demons, or gods. Like all humans, however, she cannot fully comprehend everything she sees, and some things can drive her insane if she gazes at them for too long. To preserve her sanity, she wears the Sealed Crown when she does not need to use this power.
• Heal/Rot: She can pray for a specified individual to be healed, regenerated, sickened, or rotted. Use of this power consumes a small quantity of her blood. Using her eyes expands this ability further to target an individual's spiritual properties, such as binding a dying soul, curing mental conditions, or driving a person insane. At her strongest, she can resurrect the recently deceased or rip a person's soul right out of their body, though the resultant blood loss is liable to kill her.
• Bless/Curse: She can pray to grant a specified individual good or bad luck, whether for a particular endeavor or generally for the day. The specific effects are left to GM discretion. The blood cost depends on how much she wants to guarantee success.
• Artificial Exercise: A new application she's experimenting with. The idea is to empower the body's natural strengthening mechanisms with magic. The strain and regrowth of muscles strengthens them, and the breaking and healing of bones toughens them. So the application of Rot+Heal in rapid succession should yield improvements as if the recipient had undergone months of strenuous exercise. Any gains are temporary if they are not accompanied by corresponding lifestyle changes. Currently an expensive power to use; the blood expended would take several days to replenish.

Original World: Istvargrad
Backstory: For a family of priests to whom "clarity of sight" was a point of religious pride, blind Isabelle was a cursed child. Since birth, her eyes could only behold the spiritual realm, an ability no one realized until later. All they knew was that she often screamed at nothing, running away to hide from imaginary monsters nobody could see. She had a knack for locating their illicit relics and could often guess what their powers were. Embarrassed by the tormented girl, the Claires shut her away in a remote corner of their estate to hide her away from the world.

Her whole life was uprooted in the span of a day. When the Reclamation Branch learned of the Claire's relic trade, the Church raided the estate and threw the Claires out of the priesthood. As the inquisitors picked through the family's belongings, Bishop Nikolai Kozlov discovered six-year-old Isabelle cowering in a corner by a bookshelf. He took pity on the girl and formally adopted her into his household, and when she turned 13, admitted her to the Church as a novice priestess. There she blossomed in to a lovely young woman. At first, they had her doing janitorial tasks, like scrubbing the floors and patching fabric. It was difficult at first for the blind girl, but her stubborn diligence and determination to succeed earned her the admiration of her superiors. For Isabelle, this was her chance to show the world she could be useful.

She got her big break when the Church started sorting through its collection for counterfeit relics. Using her powers of spiritual sight, she correctly identified authentic relics for the investigators with impeccable accuracy. Thrilled to have such a valuable ability, they assigned her to the Reclamation Branch as a relic appraiser to ensure everything they collected was authentic.

Isabelle crossed paths with Jericho Cross when they tried to use her in a sting operation to catch him. They planted a relic where he was likely to find it and detained all the known appraisers to force him to seek her out. Then, she could probe him with questions about his methods and use her spiritual sight to pin him for lying.

They never counted on sixteen-year-old hormones getting in the way.

From the first moment she heard the rich, husky tones of his voice, she developed her first teenage crush. His swagger and confidence made her weak at the knees, and his mysterious aura excited her curiosity. His compliments made her feel in ways she never had before. And when he whispered his sweet lies in her ears, she wanted so badly to believe him.

Part of her understood, at some level, that he was probably just playing with her emotions. She was not a complete fool - the colors of his aura never quite matched his words. But she'd fallen in love with him, and couldn't bear the thought of seeing his free spirit chained up in the Church's filthy dungeons. So for the first time in her life, she bent the truth. She subtly let on that she was being used to catch him, and when asked by investigators about his honesty, she told them she believed him.

Thus began her four-year tryst with the mysterious thief. Whenever Jericho located another relic, they'd both slip out to a secret meeting place to appraise it, and Isabelle would return the following day humming and dancing. Some clergy suspected she was up to something with him, but they could never pin anything on her. Their tryst came to an abrupt end when the war between Kazzok and Istvargrad reached a climax at the monarch's palace. Isabelle had been recruited to heal the injured as they were brought to the back lines, and she would ask everyone she aided where Jericho was and how he was doing.

When she heard he'd tumbled into the abyss, she ran out to the edge and lifted her mask to find him. Strange, horrifying energies rose up to greet her, and she nearly vomited from their power, but there was the echo of his spirit, trailing off the bridge into the abyss.

Isabella leaped in after him to the screams of her comrades.