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The universe was a vast, empty, dark, and uncaring place. Then life happened, and the universe was changed forever. Only a teeny-tiny bit, but definitely different. Then again, the universe changes a teeny-tiny bit every second of every day. For instance, if someone were to get off the couch and randomly drink a glass of milk? Bam! One less glass of milk in the universe. Changed forever. Well, excluding any time-travel shenanigans, but anyone who puts a big old hole in the time-space continuum just to un-drink a glass of milk should really reevaluate their priorities. Unless, of course, they were attempting to prevent some massive catastrophe vis-a-vis said glass of milk. Such a scenario is by no means impossible, as one should never underestimate the importance of calcium.

Another important tip for any life forms out there is to keep things in perspective. Some look at the vastness of creation in relation to themselves and go, ‘Man, this sucks!’ These people really need to narrow their focus. Sure, they will never affect anything happening on the other end of the galaxy, but so what? That’s way the heck over there, where it doesn’t matter. Therefore, in order to maintain a healthy mindset, it is important to narrow one’s perspective to the things and people that affect them, and that they can affect in turn.

But what happens if one is an unfathomable cosmic being from beyond the veil of reality? What happens when such an existence is capable of influencing entire swathes of the universe just by its presence? A creature such as Magh'rathlak the Observer? That particular entity is only about average as far as reality-warping creatures from the dawn of time go, so its influence over the fabric of reality is rather limited. And it still struggles to keep things in perspective. That, among other things, is why it decided to narrow its worldview a bit by compressing the maddening vastness of its being into a single corporeal form. Magh'rathlak had never tried such a feat, but that wasn't about to stop it.

After all, how hard could being human possibly be?

https://www.rom.ac
You are walking west. You find a wishing well. You wish for it to grant infinite wishes for every human being on earth. The Universe is now broken. The current weather is apocalypse with chances of fallout and nuclear winter. Also, everyone is dead. Good job. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A post-apocalyptic, dark comedy that I've been working on since 2005.
Support RA at: https://www.patreon.com/captain
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/ngawayz

Cadence Lee thought she was a normal girl, perhaps a little well to do, but not exceptionally so.  She had her college classes, she had her job that her uncle gave her, and she had a nice boyfriend who was sweet if a little awkward.

Except, when a mugger accosts Cadence and her boyfriend attempts to wrestle a gun away from the criminal, Cadence ends up shot.  A normal girl, with the kind of wound Cadence had, would die.  Cadence managed to do that part.  But a normal girl wouldn't then open her eyes again and learn that death is not as permanant for her as it is for other people.  She can be reborn again, and again.  Each time stronger and with new abilities.

The catch?  Any world she is born into, she can never return to.  She has infinite lives, but only one life for each.

So begins The Many Lives of Cadence Lee.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

Domenic is a sailor who just wants a life at sea. A brewing war between nations turn the already dangerous seas into something perilous. Domenic is forced into an untenable position, one he escapes with his life – though there is a greater cost he’ll have to pay after his deal with the devil.

Join Domenic as he explores the meaning and cost of both servitude and freedom!

New content weekly!  (Sundays in the U.S.)

Jack Voraces is narrating this story - and doing a fantastic job of it!  Listen in on his work and you can even pitch in on how you think things should sound.  The artwork done by Clara while he narrates is awesome too!  Check him out at these links:

A puzzling encounter leaves Dimitry a beggar with a strange emblem on his wrist. Around him, people suffer as ruthless organizations, opportunistic nobles, and an overly pious church vie for power in a medieval land under constant siege by stone monstrosities rampaging from the coasts.

Can a kindhearted surgeon aid this ailing world with modern knowledge, resourcefulness, and magic? Or will rival powers crush Dimitry first?

A fiction that starts brutally grim and eventually transitions into technology uplift with a focus on science, magitech, and town building.

Warning: Technical terms abound.

Cover art by AbsolutePower.

A monster is born in the depths of the wilds, but she isn't like her siblings. Curiosity colors her every thought, and a hunger for understanding grows within this little creature. The world is full of wonders just waiting to be discovered! She's not just hunting for her next meal, her prey is something far greater: knowledge. But as wonderful as it is, discovery alone is missing half the point. After all, what joy is there in finding the next amazing thing when there's no one to share it with?

Aiming to update Monday and Friday!

Check out the Discord! Come over and hang out!

If you would like to read some chapters early, consider donating to my Patreon!

Cover art by the amazing Kailey!
Twitter @kbearart 

Full-size cover here.

Full banner pic here.

Gore tag for some somewhat graphic fight scenes.
Profanity tag because there may be some explicit language, it shouldn't be excessive.

A new, darker age is dawning. The greed of kings has ignited a seemingly endless war. As men fight, the monsters of the untamed wilds are devouring the frontier. Villages are abandoned as fields go fallow. Murderous bandits roam the desolation. 

None of that matters to a nameless goblin slave. He just wants to eat as much food as he can shove into his mouth when no one is looking, but fate runs a twisted course, so instead he is whisked away to the far off Iron Teeth Mountains. To stay alive, he will have to evolve into something more than a simple goblin, and carve a bloody path through the forests of the North. 

However, first he has to get over his crippling fear of trees, and survive in a place where everything considers him to be the perfect size for a quick snack...

Expanded and edited books are availible at Amazon.

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 is now on Amazon! 
mybook.to/dungeoncrawlercarl

Book 2 is also now available! 
mybook.to/dungeoncrawlercarl2

Royal Road and Patreon is where to get the newest chapters and releases. 

The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

DCC Discord! 

10/01/20

The first several chapters of DCC are now off of Royal Road because the book is on Amazon. I want to thank all of you for 9 months of amazing support. This is and Patreon will always be the place for the newest chapters and content, but to comply with Amazon's Kindle Unlimited policy, I can't have more than 10% of the story up here. 

This is a work in progress. Major editing will be done after the book is complete, so there will be egregious typos and parts that make no sense whatsoever. Please, please feel free to point any and all of these things out. Chapters WILL get edited, and that editing might break earlier chapters. I will attempt to keep readers apprised of all changes. Updates one-two days a week. 

In the year 2057, the world has become a corporate-run utopia for the super-rich, and a hellhole for all the rest. 

Catherine 'Cat' Leblanc is an orphan that is about as far from super-rich as one can be. When the Incursion alarms start blaring and the sky starts raining hungry xenos, it's just another blemish on an already piss-poor afternoon. 

A cyberpunk magical-girl alien-invasion LitRPG.

It’s exactly as wild as it sounds.

In the war-torn land of Cyraveil, four heroes strove to overthrow an empire. By cold steel and elemental sorcery, they brought peace to a warring land on the brink of destruction. As the flames died, the realm needed strong leadership, and who better than the champions who had saved the kingdom? But when the people sought out their saviors... they vanished.

Matt, Blake, Jen, and Carl: the four mysterious companions, who together had deposed an insane ruler and saved countless lives, were gone—spirited back in a whirlwind of magic to a sleepy suburb in Mellbridge, Oregon, never to return. The friends found themselves home in the real world, exactly as they'd been the night they were taken, as if no time had passed... except only three came back.

Hi there! This was my entry for National Novel Writing Month, because why only write one series at a time? The more the merrier! (meanwhile, my keyboard bursts into flames...)

I'm also the writer of The Last Science, an ongoing low-fantasy/speculative sci-fi series. If you're familiar with that, you know what to expect here: lots of character-focused drama and dialogue, not a whole lot of traditional action. However, I'm writing a bit differently than usual here, and in a very different structure, so there should be some surprises for returning readers. I hope you enjoy it!

 [Discord] — for those of you who want to hang out and chat.

Cover art (fullsize): Path of Revelation, by taenaron (Tobias Roetsch), modified by Etzoli. Normally I like to do my own cover art from scratch, but I was in a rush for the contest. Might be replaced down the line if I get time.

[winner of the NaNoWriMo Royal Road 2018 challenge—Most Favorites]

This story has not been posted or published anywhere else besides RoyalRoad.com, at this URL: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21374/epilogue

When humanity first encountered alien life, we were judged and found wanting.  

The Galactic Consensus interviewed our leaders and subjected us to a battery of psychological tests to determine our progress as a society.  They found us to be selfish, wasteful, impulsive, and boorish neighbors.  Earth was blockaded and our collective encounter with our extrasolar neighbors rapidly faded from memory.

All they left behind was a hypercomm relay and a handful of subscriptions to a massively multiplayer game that participants played in their sleep.  The Consensus said that it would let us interact with our neighbors in a controlled setting.  That it would teach us to be better members of the galactic community.

The megacorporations that controlled Earth ignored the game until they learned that the powers earned from clearing dungeons were just as real when day broke.  Magic, supernatural abilities and rumors exploded from nothing and a subscription to The Tower of Somnus became a status symbol.

Katherine ‘Kat’ Debs doesn’t have much, but it could be worse.  Born in an arcology, she was assigned a job in the megacorporation that raised her almost as soon as she could work.  Despite the stability of her corporate life, she wanted something more.  A chance to claw her way up the rigid social and financial ladder to make something of herself.

A chance that wouldn’t come naturally to someone as familiar with dark alleyways and the glint of steel as she was with office work and corporate niceties.

Cover art by Faewild

Coloring/shading by KrazeKode

- - - - - -



Book One was  a National Novel Writing Month/Writeathon entry.  Book one has zero editing or proofreading.

As a warning, this WILL eventually go to Kindle Unlimited (meaning each book will come down shortly before I publish it).

The world called out for a hero to purge it of a great evil. It received Broccoli Bunch, explorer, expert cleaner, occasional ghost-buster, and full time Cinnamon Bun. 

Features include:

Talking enemies into becoming friends

Hugging menu boxes

Awesome overpowered skills (such as Cleaning, and Gardening)

And more adventure than you could shake a stick at! 

 Follow Broccoli on her personal quest to make all the friends. All of them.

Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday!

Now Available in ebook and paperback formats here:

Volume One - Amazon

Volume Two - Amazon

(LitRPG/GameLit)

Born magically talentless, Prince Corvus is an embarrassment the royal family and is removed from succession. However, he still has a chance to win back his throne. The next man or woman to hatch a dragon automatically becomes the ruler. Each member of the royal family is gifted with a dragon egg, but it is the work of a lifetime to hatch it.

The first time Corvus touches his dragon egg, he receives an odd notification: He has found a soulbound item and is tasked with an epic quest to hatch it... but only if he can walk the winding path of the dragon mage.

Armed with notifications, skill increases, and levels only he can see, Corvus is determined to hatch his dragon.

A Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure with a realism-focused spin on gamelit.

Hump grew up believing his master was nothing but an ordinary hedge wizard. However when the old man unexpectedly dies, his book of spells binds to Hump’s soul. Now without a master, Hump sets off to find his place in the world, to discover the secrets of magic, and to understand the Book of Infinite Pages.

Book 1 - Crypt of the Wolf Dragon

Updates Tuesday and Saturday.

Discord: https://discord.gg/RNJWmVJVwx

How I learned to stop worrying and solve my problems with demons until demons stopped solving my problems.

-

A snarky villain and her heroic nemesis blow themselves up and land on a fantasy world. They find themselves faced with two prospects: learn to cooperate and respect someone they've fought against for years, or be swept away by the powers that be.

Because Pride always comes before the fall.

The world is in ruins. 

Extreme sub-zero temperatures suffocate the surface, making even simple survival an ordeal. Frozen derelicts of bygone eras span across massive ice wastes. And the elite few hoard any technology rediscovered within.

The only escape from the deadly climate is beneath the surface. But it’s another disaster underground. Monstrous machines lurk in the depths. Unhinged demigods war against them, dying over and over, treating it all like a game. The land itself shifts over time, more contraption than rock. And an ominous prophecy states that the key to everything waits at the last level - but nobody’s ever reached that far. 

When an expedition into the far uncharted north goes terribly wrong,  Keith Winterscar and his father get trapped together in a desperate fight for survival. Stumbling upon an ancient power struggle of titanic scale; the two will need to set their differences aside while they struggle against sinister gods, deadly legends, and the grand secrets of the realm that lies below.

Author's note: Updating Monday and Thursdays.

This is a long planned out fic. If you're looking for a power fantasy where the MC gets everything right all the time, this ain't it. Fights get hairy, people get greedy. Bad descisions happen on incomplete information - and I don't write fake-failures where those mistakes don't matter. When the whammy moments come, they'll be earned. 

[Dungeon-lite and gamelit-lite, though both start being relevant much later.]

Dungeon: A place full of monsters, traps, treasure, and death. Those are the Great Dungeons, with unplumbed depths below the roots of the mountains.

That's not for me.

Dungeon: A place of rape, torture, and death, to control and corral enemies and slaves. These are the Red Cores, from which the mage-kings draw their power.

That's also not for me.

I don't like monsters. I don't want adventurers. I want to stay well away from enemies and slaves.

Fortunately, there are alternatives...

(Includes explicit and consensual sexual content. Chapters containing such will be marked.)

Weekly release schedule.  Chapter releases start on Fridays, 5PM EST.

Join our Discord!

Name: Paradox

Species: Snake, ?

Description: A tiny snake with great potential.

That was who I was. That was what I was. A tiny snake with great potential. The sole creation of the Great Core.

It was just us, the Great Core and I, tucked away in our little corner of the World Dungeon. Together, we hid from the bad-things and the Coreless of the world outside - safe from the horrors that would consume us.

Until, one day, the Coreless found us. Until they tried to steal away my creator. Until, with no other option, I swallowed the Great Core that had made me.

Only after that did I become what I was always meant to be.

At last, I became the Great Core's Paradox in more than name.

[The Endless Cycle] began.

Thus begins the story of a little snake zealot and his journey to greatness.