Arimai
Curmudgeon
I don't remember the bint doing this at all
Project Gamer: Anime Adjacent
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
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Worm 97
How to Beat Fried Worms
Disclaimer: Worm is owned by Wildbow because nobody else wants it.
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Chapter 97: Hope
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For Alec, the week passed by in a blur. He'd wake up in the morning, send his Phantoms off to grind out his crafting skills, head up to the moon to work on using some magic to cheat at his goals, then he had to figure out how to grind up his non-combat skills.
Gift was a big one that he wanted to work on. It wasn't incredibly important for his long-term goals but it could be incredibly valuable in ensuring that Earth Bet had a chance to recover after everything was said and done.
Ten people? A hundred? A thousand? All with slightly better capabilities than normal at building houses? Repairing vehicles? Or entire schools full of children that could -actually- catch up to the best student in class?
Gift could change the whole damned world if Alec could dispense just a few of the powers he had access to.
But distribution was an issue. Alec had two options for it-
He could try and go around and hand out as many powers as possible by himself. Which would be sixteen powers offered at their minimal strength per minute.
Or... Alec could create his Wraiths to go and do it for him. They were, individually, much more limited than him. They had significantly less SP than he did and, he discovered quickly, their SP Regeneration was tied to Temporal Perfection rather than their Wisdom attributes. So they could pop off ten uses of Permanent Gift and then they had to wait two minutes to do it again.
But...
Alec could, and did, create his Wraiths in batches. Ten, then twelve when the ability hit level thirty. And they would last for an hour at a time. That meant that each Wraith had forty uses of Gift in them. Which meant that each Wraith could hit an entire classroom of students with On the Shoulders of Giants before they faded away.
Which was great!
But it didn't actually help Alec level up Gift.
The mage suspected, though he couldn't prove it, that the reason the Wraiths offered up crafting experience had to do with the crafted items technically being attributed to him. Basically, they were tagged as being made by Alec and then the experience was distributed.
Abilities, however, leveled up as -he- actively used them.
So, Alec needed access to a lot of people to hit with Gift. Which cut into his other training. Which would be a problem but he couldn't spend all of his time making things and then going into the Item World to make the things better.
It would burn him out and that would be a problem, so close to Canberra. He'd been managing a few items a day and that was already a heavy time investment.
Now, how could Alec solve that issue? Hospitals were too public and came with too many issues. Schools, while Alec was sending his Wraiths to them to hand out learning traits and crafting specialties, were likewise limited.
After a few days, Alec found an answer. He hadn't been hermiting, much as he would have liked to. His afternoons had been spent visiting various towns and cities to send out his Wraiths to empower kids with better capabilities for learning trades and life skills. And that was where he'd been reminded that, despite the looming disasters, life went on.
School sports were still a thing. As were professional sports.
So, for a few nights, Alec put on his stealth suit and went to a few different campuses where he pretended to be a door greeter. None of the parents, brothers, sisters and various other relatives recognized him but Alec very successfully shook several thousand hands over the course of several days and repeated-
"Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming tonight!"
Was it boring?
Yes.
Was it tedious?
Also yes.
Did it work?
Not as well as Alec had hoped but, overall, yes. Gift made its way up to level 25 and he felt it settle somewhere deeper than Terra's Paragamer system should have allowed.
Alec felt... not quite ready. He had a plan. A stupid plan, he knew that, but if it worked then it would be worth it.
As the Twenty-Second of February ticked over to the Twenty-Third, Alec was busy in the repurposed steel mill in Waldo. Spread out along the length of the facility was a giant, humanoid body made of strange, foreign materials.
Darksteel, forming both the bones and armor, impervious to all forms of damage.
Orichalcum, alchemical gold, it was used alongside Mithril to form the 'nervous' system of the machine for its incredible conductivity. Despite being seven meters tall, a whopping twenty-one feet, it could both feel and respond faster than a human could.
At the core of the machine, untouched, lay a massive, crimson crystal. It wasn't the ruby Alec had made, no, it was something altogether different. It was magic, his magic, condensed into a physical form to act as the bridge between the machine and his own will. To house him, body and soul, as he possessed the giant knight to go into combat.
The chest plate of the machine had been removed, and the armor covering its arms had been stripped as well. Alec and a large number of his Wraiths were working to manufacture and install the components needed for the upgrades to his Incorruptus.
The sound of hammers on steel rang throughout the facility as groups of men toiled away, rebuilding the armor. They couldn't manufacture Darksteel, not directly. It was, like Mangalloy Steel, unworkable.
But Alec did have another trick up his sleeve. One he'd been holding in reserve, hoping to find a local copy or version that he'd be able to use instead.
"What... is all of this?" a voice whispered, nearly inaudible through the hive of activity within the facility.
Alec looked up from his work, filing and sanding at the cavity within the new chest piece, to find Legend standing within the heart of his facility. The mage sent a glance to a number of Wraiths standing by the doorway and they just shrugged, wholly unconcerned.
Considering Alec had his workshop hidden under the effects of Dimensional Anchor, he wasn't necessarily worried.
He would have just liked a heads-up.
"My workshop here on Earth Bet!" Alec hollered at the man as his Wraiths continued to work. "Glad to see you pulled your balls out of your husband's purse, Keith!"
"...Things have been hectic," Legend said as he approached where Alec, covered in grease and metal shavings, continued to work. "What are you doing?"
"Putting together a little present," Alec glibly responded as he stepped back to consider the bare metal with a critical eye.
The chest piece would house one of the three forcefield emitters he'd built out of Dragon's hard-light emitters. So too would each bracer on the arms. The chest piece, however, was also where the two Gemini circuits would be situated. And above each forcefield emitter would be one of the rubies, further amplifying the phase-dimension field.
Between the core crystal, the sixteen attribute-bolstering Materia, now the Gemini Circuits and the added bulk to the front for the focusing crystal array?
It was about as cramped as a modern-day car's engine bay!
"I need to talk to you," Legend said, approaching Alec's workstation. "It's important!"
"Is it about the Birdcage being broken into?" Alec asked as he pulled a turned the Omni-Tool into a tape measure and checked the diameter of the ruby receptacle. "Fortuna turning into a vegetable? Major CEOs worldwide suddenly deciding to try flying from the rooftops?"
"...Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Keith asked, stress breaking through his voice. "Do you have any idea how hard we're fighting to keep everything together? The sacrifices that we've been-"
"HardHeart," Alec said. The compound word silenced Keith better than any argument that the mage could have come up with.
Legend clenched his jaw and he clenched his fists, the man looked down to the ground in shame.
"Sacrifices don't mean shit, Keith, unless you're the one making them," Alec said without looking away from his work. "I've given up my blood, my time, my freedom to try and help people, Keith. I have nightmares, I remember horrors that will never, ever fade. In comparison?"
Alec looked up, his slitted eyes boring holes into Legend's own masked orbs.
"You brain-dead, corpse-humping fuckwits have given up your morals under the vague notion that it'll be worth it if you win, and it won't matter if you lose." Alec looked back down and refocused on his work. It, at least, could prove useful. "All while Alexandria talks out both sides of her mouth, promising accountability if you all survive as she keeps on digging her damned hole deeper. Eidolon's too busy looking for a fight to give a damn about anything anymore and you?"
"What about me?"
"You're the morality pet. You might not be a good man, Manton proved that the only decent person among you went and died, but you can pretend to be." Alec turned the Omni-Tool into a file and got to work removing a bit more material. "You went from upset to furious to supporting whatever stupidity your friends had about Teacher pretty damned fast, Keith."
"...It was necessary," Legend mumbled.
"It was convenient," Alec corrected the man. "Now, either say your piece or fuck off."
Alec looked up and glared, his gaze unblinking and unwavering as Legend fidgeted in place. After nearly a full minute, Legend sighed and turned around, walking away with his tail tucked between his legs.
Alec was glad to see him go. And glad that the man chose the smart option.
The mage didn't have enough time to assuage Legend's ego or self-image.
He had shit to do that actually mattered.
Disclaimer: Worm is owned by Wildbow because nobody else wants it.
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Chapter 97: Hope
-----
For Alec, the week passed by in a blur. He'd wake up in the morning, send his Phantoms off to grind out his crafting skills, head up to the moon to work on using some magic to cheat at his goals, then he had to figure out how to grind up his non-combat skills.
Gift was a big one that he wanted to work on. It wasn't incredibly important for his long-term goals but it could be incredibly valuable in ensuring that Earth Bet had a chance to recover after everything was said and done.
Ten people? A hundred? A thousand? All with slightly better capabilities than normal at building houses? Repairing vehicles? Or entire schools full of children that could -actually- catch up to the best student in class?
Gift could change the whole damned world if Alec could dispense just a few of the powers he had access to.
But distribution was an issue. Alec had two options for it-
He could try and go around and hand out as many powers as possible by himself. Which would be sixteen powers offered at their minimal strength per minute.
Or... Alec could create his Wraiths to go and do it for him. They were, individually, much more limited than him. They had significantly less SP than he did and, he discovered quickly, their SP Regeneration was tied to Temporal Perfection rather than their Wisdom attributes. So they could pop off ten uses of Permanent Gift and then they had to wait two minutes to do it again.
But...
Alec could, and did, create his Wraiths in batches. Ten, then twelve when the ability hit level thirty. And they would last for an hour at a time. That meant that each Wraith had forty uses of Gift in them. Which meant that each Wraith could hit an entire classroom of students with On the Shoulders of Giants before they faded away.
Which was great!
But it didn't actually help Alec level up Gift.
The mage suspected, though he couldn't prove it, that the reason the Wraiths offered up crafting experience had to do with the crafted items technically being attributed to him. Basically, they were tagged as being made by Alec and then the experience was distributed.
Abilities, however, leveled up as -he- actively used them.
So, Alec needed access to a lot of people to hit with Gift. Which cut into his other training. Which would be a problem but he couldn't spend all of his time making things and then going into the Item World to make the things better.
It would burn him out and that would be a problem, so close to Canberra. He'd been managing a few items a day and that was already a heavy time investment.
Now, how could Alec solve that issue? Hospitals were too public and came with too many issues. Schools, while Alec was sending his Wraiths to them to hand out learning traits and crafting specialties, were likewise limited.
After a few days, Alec found an answer. He hadn't been hermiting, much as he would have liked to. His afternoons had been spent visiting various towns and cities to send out his Wraiths to empower kids with better capabilities for learning trades and life skills. And that was where he'd been reminded that, despite the looming disasters, life went on.
School sports were still a thing. As were professional sports.
So, for a few nights, Alec put on his stealth suit and went to a few different campuses where he pretended to be a door greeter. None of the parents, brothers, sisters and various other relatives recognized him but Alec very successfully shook several thousand hands over the course of several days and repeated-
"Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming tonight!"
Was it boring?
Yes.
Was it tedious?
Also yes.
Did it work?
Not as well as Alec had hoped but, overall, yes. Gift made its way up to level 25 and he felt it settle somewhere deeper than Terra's Paragamer system should have allowed.
Alec felt... not quite ready. He had a plan. A stupid plan, he knew that, but if it worked then it would be worth it.
As the Twenty-Second of February ticked over to the Twenty-Third, Alec was busy in the repurposed steel mill in Waldo. Spread out along the length of the facility was a giant, humanoid body made of strange, foreign materials.
Darksteel, forming both the bones and armor, impervious to all forms of damage.
Orichalcum, alchemical gold, it was used alongside Mithril to form the 'nervous' system of the machine for its incredible conductivity. Despite being seven meters tall, a whopping twenty-one feet, it could both feel and respond faster than a human could.
At the core of the machine, untouched, lay a massive, crimson crystal. It wasn't the ruby Alec had made, no, it was something altogether different. It was magic, his magic, condensed into a physical form to act as the bridge between the machine and his own will. To house him, body and soul, as he possessed the giant knight to go into combat.
The chest plate of the machine had been removed, and the armor covering its arms had been stripped as well. Alec and a large number of his Wraiths were working to manufacture and install the components needed for the upgrades to his Incorruptus.
The sound of hammers on steel rang throughout the facility as groups of men toiled away, rebuilding the armor. They couldn't manufacture Darksteel, not directly. It was, like Mangalloy Steel, unworkable.
But Alec did have another trick up his sleeve. One he'd been holding in reserve, hoping to find a local copy or version that he'd be able to use instead.
"What... is all of this?" a voice whispered, nearly inaudible through the hive of activity within the facility.
Alec looked up from his work, filing and sanding at the cavity within the new chest piece, to find Legend standing within the heart of his facility. The mage sent a glance to a number of Wraiths standing by the doorway and they just shrugged, wholly unconcerned.
Considering Alec had his workshop hidden under the effects of Dimensional Anchor, he wasn't necessarily worried.
He would have just liked a heads-up.
"My workshop here on Earth Bet!" Alec hollered at the man as his Wraiths continued to work. "Glad to see you pulled your balls out of your husband's purse, Keith!"
"...Things have been hectic," Legend said as he approached where Alec, covered in grease and metal shavings, continued to work. "What are you doing?"
"Putting together a little present," Alec glibly responded as he stepped back to consider the bare metal with a critical eye.
The chest piece would house one of the three forcefield emitters he'd built out of Dragon's hard-light emitters. So too would each bracer on the arms. The chest piece, however, was also where the two Gemini circuits would be situated. And above each forcefield emitter would be one of the rubies, further amplifying the phase-dimension field.
Between the core crystal, the sixteen attribute-bolstering Materia, now the Gemini Circuits and the added bulk to the front for the focusing crystal array?
It was about as cramped as a modern-day car's engine bay!
"I need to talk to you," Legend said, approaching Alec's workstation. "It's important!"
"Is it about the Birdcage being broken into?" Alec asked as he pulled a turned the Omni-Tool into a tape measure and checked the diameter of the ruby receptacle. "Fortuna turning into a vegetable? Major CEOs worldwide suddenly deciding to try flying from the rooftops?"
"...Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Keith asked, stress breaking through his voice. "Do you have any idea how hard we're fighting to keep everything together? The sacrifices that we've been-"
"HardHeart," Alec said. The compound word silenced Keith better than any argument that the mage could have come up with.
Legend clenched his jaw and he clenched his fists, the man looked down to the ground in shame.
"Sacrifices don't mean shit, Keith, unless you're the one making them," Alec said without looking away from his work. "I've given up my blood, my time, my freedom to try and help people, Keith. I have nightmares, I remember horrors that will never, ever fade. In comparison?"
Alec looked up, his slitted eyes boring holes into Legend's own masked orbs.
"You brain-dead, corpse-humping fuckwits have given up your morals under the vague notion that it'll be worth it if you win, and it won't matter if you lose." Alec looked back down and refocused on his work. It, at least, could prove useful. "All while Alexandria talks out both sides of her mouth, promising accountability if you all survive as she keeps on digging her damned hole deeper. Eidolon's too busy looking for a fight to give a damn about anything anymore and you?"
"What about me?"
"You're the morality pet. You might not be a good man, Manton proved that the only decent person among you went and died, but you can pretend to be." Alec turned the Omni-Tool into a file and got to work removing a bit more material. "You went from upset to furious to supporting whatever stupidity your friends had about Teacher pretty damned fast, Keith."
"...It was necessary," Legend mumbled.
"It was convenient," Alec corrected the man. "Now, either say your piece or fuck off."
Alec looked up and glared, his gaze unblinking and unwavering as Legend fidgeted in place. After nearly a full minute, Legend sighed and turned around, walking away with his tail tucked between his legs.
Alec was glad to see him go. And glad that the man chose the smart option.
The mage didn't have enough time to assuage Legend's ego or self-image.
He had shit to do that actually mattered.
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- Pronouns
- Mr
Legends gunna need some aloe for that burn
Are we doing the 100 chapters and it will be finished thing? Because that would be cool. Also, great because any further feels like… honestly I can't even describe it, but it would be nice to see Terra-chan give hime a million yard stare and suddenly do a 180 and break the 4th wall by saying "congratulations for finishing the 100th chapter, now get out!" With a creepy smile.
Lopezelpesado
Space worm best worm.
- Pronouns
- Something
The guy isnt really looking for a fight just cause, but at this point the fanon that Eidolon has a massive ego and only cares about is being a gloryhound while being an ass is so ingraned in peoples mind its baffling.
Id say that some of the stuff Cauldron did mattered considering humanity would be kinda screwed without them.
Well, they ended up kinda screwed anyways but that was cause zion snapped.
Also I wonder if Alec could grab Velocity power to build faster, well, after leveling it up.
Peggy
It Truly Peggs The Question
- Pronouns
- She/Them
Better yet, if Scion (NOT Zion!) just randomly has a brain fart and decides to absolutely kill everything immediately. And Alec only being able to grab Mouse Protector real quick like, before being yeeted towards the next adventure.
Maybe a quick stop in the Marvel - world would be neat. Not necessarily where all the other fics put their MCs (around the start of Iron Man), but after Infinity War.
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- Location
- Auckland, NZ
The problem, of course, is that taking down an Endbringer isn't worth the effort as Eidolon can summon a new one.
Ah, no. Eidolon really is a glory hound. He's like the fire-fighter who joins up to be the hero only to find that the job isn't non-stop excitement and then starts going out lighting fires to a) get that excitement and b) get his mug on the front page of the local gazette for being a hero - no matter how many people it kills.
Lopezelpesado
Space worm best worm.
- Pronouns
- Something
Yeah no, thats exactly the fandom im talking about.
Seriously its suprising how very few actually get Eidolon as a character.
Also no, Eidolon cant summon new ones himself. He didnt even want to summon the ones already out.
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I'm imagining your giant artificial endbringer as a pitch black seraphim. Same number of wings as The Simurgh but symmetrical, same height but opposing gender and colour.
Lopezelpesado
Space worm best worm.
- Pronouns
- Something
I feel like its more fitting if it was a demon, just fits better.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Just gonna point out, 1) Most channelers can't even summon enough power to use Balefire at all, 2) most Balefire uses only burns things back a few seconds at most, and 3) You need to be destroying cities(plural), weeks(also plural), back in the past, before reality really starts fraying and shifting.
Killing Leviathan an hour back in the past and having every single person in the city go what the fuck won't even make reality twitch, but it would work for removing the endbringer. Might not work on all future endbringers though, space manipulation can absolutely let you redirect and thus defend against balefire after all.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
Little Zizter is only about twelve feet without her wings, so no, the Incorruptus is nearly twice her height, more inline with Levi-tan if he didn't slouch like a hooligan. (I don't think it has wings, either?) Even Bemo-kun is only thirty-something as I recall... On the scale of kaiju, the Endbringers are Barbie dolls in the most generous interpretations.
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- Location
- Auckland, NZ
Link?
Or at least some logic and evidence to back up what you're saying. Until then I'm going with him being the problem he appears in canon.
He may have summoned the Endbringers subconsciously but he did summon them.
- Location
- Ohio
Thing is that Cauldron were invested in Scion/Zion snapping. So they could "force a confrontation" before all their strongest were expended and society fell too far. That was the whole brain dead idea for the Brockton Bay experiment.
They also showed they were never actually ready, cause once pushed far enough... Scion ended Eidolon with a couple words, and it took someone outside their little clubhouse (Taylor) to figure out how to hurt him. Though she defaulted to hitting him with everyone because of her shard taking too much control and her mentality degrading.
Thankfully Lisa came in clutch and taunted him with HER image, and then Taylor barraged him with her image....
Meanwhile Eidolon was desperate to get his full strength back so that he could be the hero/anti-Scion measure they promised he would be, that he would be the one to end Scion's threat and so on.
God no, Cauldron is the least competent secret society in the multiverse.
Their master plan is literally "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks".
Meanwhile the plan is a final showdown with The Warrior, who's unfathomably powerful. And the tools they're using belong to the enemy and they know for a fact that said tools can be limited by the enemy.
So with the massively complicated 'see what sticks' method the plan is to have a massive battle Royale with The Warrior. A conflict it's best at.
Meanwhile half the vials they hand out are some of the shittiest people on the planet, like Mama Mathers and multiple members of the S9. Oh and lets not forget that Endbringers wouldn't exist without them.
Cauldron is arguably the reason Worm has problems at all. Between Endbringers, and deliberately saving the lives of horrible people who have useful powers. No Endbringers makes the world massively better all on its own, and the S9 would look much different with no Cauldron capes like Siberian, Or Grey Boy, Mannequin. A lot of their muscle goes away, they may not even exist if they were taken out early in their attempts to be a horror movie trope.
With no Endbringers battering the world, Africa would probably still be full of warlords, but parahuman gangs would not operate with impunity in North America. Most capes are not bullet proof, and actual Organized Crime survives by being subtle. The E88 would be rapidly shot for resisting arrest in any sane world. A gang like the Merchants would have the DEA moving in and setting up shop faster than you can say 'cartel'. And who knows how many other problems don't pop up since the world isn't shitty enough to provide trigger events as often?
Cauldron not existing pretty much solves all of Earth Bets problems, except for Scion himself..... except he's also just brain dead and going through the motions. Its entirely possible he just keeps spinning his wheels until all the shards run out of energy.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Just gonna comment here, you forget Wildbow's misanthropy, and how his assumptions that having either competent or decent authority figures is literally impossible. We've gotten WoGs on how the world would have gone if not for Cauldron, and the answer is apparently everything collapses even harder despite the lack of Endbringers, because decent people or effective organizations or people trying to be better are all fantasies that don't actually exist.
So, what I'm getting here is that Worm would be better...
Without Wildbow?
I suppose that explains why there's so much fanfiction of Worm, similar to how there was just more and more Harry Potter fanfiction following the fifth book.
Without Wildbow?
I suppose that explains why there's so much fanfiction of Worm, similar to how there was just more and more Harry Potter fanfiction following the fifth book.
Since when did she do that?
They are 15, 30 and 45 feet behold the height chart.
colossal titan 60 m 196.85 feet
Eren titan / most of the nine titans 15 m 49.2126 feet
Female titan 14 m 45.9318 feet
Behemoth 13.716 m 45 feet
Leviathan 9.144 m 30 feet
Jaw titan 5 m 16.4042 feet
Ziz 4.572 m 15 feet
Cart titan 4 m 13.1234 feet
For general reference as well most power ranger megazords are over 50 m and 30 feet is apparently 2 stories in usual building height tho the thing I saw that in didn't specify if that's 2 stories of larger buildings or 2 story buildings so hence including the roof.
Er no while something like a dozen people including Lisa did come in with clutch saves after Doormaker's power ran out using the image was just Taylor giving up on winning by force and trying to twist the knife to make him hurt as much as possible before seeing how effective it was.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Ngl, I wanted Legend to be told off worse than that. At least mention that he was trying to actively stop the MC from saving a child from being tortured and harvested for materials...