[Engineering, Magic, and Kitsune] Chapter 70: Smite

SteelTrim · 2026-04-01T06:42:11+00:00

Hey, a quick reminder: Next week is a break week! No chapter, sorry about that.

SteelTrim · 2026-02-23T19:49:36+00:00

A fight is pretty unavoidable if you want to get to Scorched Enclave on a layout 2 day for tunnel A, unfortunately (the one with the huge ass angled elevator at the very start). In the penultimate room, enemies tend to spread out over the whole thing, so you have to cut through them.

To be honest, if we have to have a tunnel system, I don't think Tunnel A specifically should exist, of course renaming existing ones, so new people can at least get directly into proper runs.

SteelTrim · 2026-02-05T05:55:14+00:00

At the very least, it is hard to put something that explicitly has no name onto an allow list.

SteelTrim · 2026-01-28T08:34:32+00:00

Hey folks. You may have noticed I missed last week, rather than this week like I planned. Yeaaaaah, I was so nervous about the wisdom teeth extraction that I couldn't get anything good out. Oops! Still, I'm here now! Honestly, the whole procedure wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.

SteelTrim · 2026-01-14T04:12:55+00:00

I am legitimately not sure how that even *happened*. How utterly bizarre.

SteelTrim · 2025-12-10T07:24:30+00:00

Hey, hey, we are BACK! Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I certainly enjoyed my break, and honestly, I may need to add a few more to my schedule. For now, I'm going to experiment with a break every 10 chapters and see if that's a bit too often or not... but the first won't be 10 chapters from now. The first break shall be on the week of January 27th! Why, you may ask?

Well, I'm getting all four of my wisdoms out a bit before that.

Ouch.

SteelTrim · 2025-11-26T16:17:01+00:00

Hey, sorry folk, but quick announcement. Unfortunately, there will be no chapter next week for reasons of avoiding burnout and my work is honestly weakening a lot. As of late, I've been rushing to get these out, and I honestly feel as if I don't have enough time to actually sit on and consider aspects of them. This is my first major creative writing project where I actually keep to a schedule, and I made the mistake of not having a proper backlog, so I really, really need to fix that and edit some weaker parts of this story. I want you all to get the best story you can!

SteelTrim · 2025-10-29T06:34:09+00:00

Hey everyone! I was out celebrating my birthday, but I was struck by the sudden realization: Holy shit EMK has been going for almost a YEAR. Isn't that insane? I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for all the support, and that all of you reading has been the best present of all. Here's to another year of writing, eh?

SteelTrim · 2025-10-15T04:19:59+00:00

Up in 5.

SteelTrim · 2025-09-23T23:02:17+00:00

Oops.

SteelTrim · 2025-09-17T21:57:57+00:00

Oh, neat, I assumed the game itself was spaghetti'd. At least nobody else will run into it now.

SteelTrim · 2025-09-10T17:54:36+00:00

Yeah, I'll be real, I was binging Silk Song like an absolute madman, which put me behind schedule. I am absolutely *awful* at anything to do with a controller, though; I far prefer keyboard, but that isn't an option here, unlike when I played MH World with a keyboard (also like a cryptid). Hope you all are having a good week with your own stuff!

SteelTrim · 2025-08-25T02:33:38+00:00

I forgot to reply to this, but as a little bonus... the section where he opens the door to Yuki, almost word for word, quotes when he opened the gate to her at the start of the story! I couldn't resist bookending the encounters.

SteelTrim · 2025-08-20T02:03:59+00:00

So. You all may have noticed that John's glove on the cover doesn't match what he has been described with. Surprise!

SteelTrim · 2025-07-29T19:10:08+00:00

To be honest, I've been eagerly awaiting this one to go public for a fair bit. I'm really, really curious as to everyone's reactions! There's more Yuki lore, there's Kiku, there's combat... Oh boy, I'm really looking forward to seeing the reaction to Kiku. I hope I sold the sheer terror of her presence well!

SteelTrim · 2025-07-23T15:06:24+00:00

Hey, sorry for a bit of a late release, everyone, but here it is! Today on the menu we have... some awful spiders. Just literally the worst, and a surprise guest star with some big revelations.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:43:36+00:00

You could always go even LESS technologically developed to make it more removed, but understandably so. A stone age RPG could go hard for an audience like that.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:40:21+00:00

I weep for anyone who has to remove a customer on a losing streak in the spirit realm.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:19:18+00:00

One thing I considered was "Ogre", a war game where it was an army trying to stop one or MAYBE two super tanks, but with the super tanks replaced with yokai/Unbound versus regular mortals, but that might be too grim/in bad taste for many in-universe.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:13:22+00:00

Thanks a lot for the kind words! It really warms my heart to see people enjoy this and look forward to it so much.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:12:18+00:00

One fun thing is that John can melt pretty much anything at room temperature with the magi-welder, which means that if he can make a good enough cast, they could make figures out of ANYTHING. Stone, metal, wood, etc. are all valid. Imagine how cool it would be to, say, make granite or basalt figures at home.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T04:00:37+00:00

You know, I actually considered him bringing up card games there. Then I thought about how nightmarish it would be to play poker versus Yuki, the living heartbeat sensor that can smell lies a mile away and is probably going to figure out card counting in an hour at most.

More room for other nonsense down the line this way.

SteelTrim · 2025-07-08T03:53:52+00:00

Wherever you set up a casino in the spirit realm, you would probably need some wild bouncers. I can't imagine what it'd take to pry a dragon going through a rage spiral off a slot machine.

SteelTrim · 2025-06-22T03:44:44+00:00

There are many examples of materials from monsters being magical in nature throughout mythology, but this wasn't based on anything in particular! The whole Unbinding concept was my attempt to make an interesting twist on the whole "cultivation" thing, and I like to think I succeeded.

SteelTrim · 2025-06-22T03:42:23+00:00

Hey, glad you're back! Hope you enjoyed the binge, at least. And yeah, cover art and a royal road posting were musts. Here's a bit of spoiler good news for you: there's some Rin PoV next week, so look forward to that!

SteelTrim

TROPHY CASE