Brand-Bound: Hallowed Be The Menu [Fully Available through April 12th -- stubbing soon!]

<p><em><strong>He can fix her. (But she can make him so much worse.) </strong></em></p> <hr/> <p><span>Rank. Class. Purpose.</span></p> <p><span>All of creation </span><span>must </span><span>be bound to the divine System Interface. So proclaims the divine authority of the Church of the Most Holy Menu.</span></p> <p><span>A stench of heresy wafts over the pilgrimage stations! Thieving apostate Jelena is hunting for holy relics to pawn off, even prying them right from the hands of murdered priests. Calaf of Riverglen, sewer-grate guard and aspiring Paladin, vows to bring the heretic to justice for the good of all faithful. Armed with an inherited, holy Brand, our hero shall rise in levels under the rigid structure of the Church of the Menu and its sacred System.</span></p> <p><span>Calaf pursues his quarry through hot spring groves, forests, and dungeons. As he learns more about this relic thief's past, the pair unexpectedly find themselves fighting together through rebellion, inquisition, and a rising tide of undead.</span></p> <p><span>The hero's faith in the Holy Menu is unshakable, while the villainess lost all faith long ago. Who will warm up to the other first? <strong>Can Calaf fix her? Or will Jelena make him </strong></span><strong>so much worse?</strong></p> <p>[Usually posts Saturdays. Currently building a backlog for Volume 3!]</p> <hr/> <p>What to expect: </p> <p>   + Satirical LitRPG Shenanigans.</p> <p>   + Slow Burn Enemy-to-Lovers Rivalrymance morphing into proper long-term battle couple. No harem or love triangle. Yes occasionally-steamy romantasy and slow-building fantasy romance. </p> <p>   + A world fully built around and reverently adherent to the System: its level rankings, skills, classes, and sacred strictures of the Menu and its Most Holy Interface. </p> <p>   + Pithy, spiffy item descriptions and monster names. Dire-rats, dire-pigeons, and much dire-more. </p> <p>   + Unsubtle Trails in the Sky, Honkai: Star Rail, and Final Fantasy references (among others!).</p> <p>   + Dungeons: of 'fake tourist trap', 'gauntlet of traps' and 'endurance test' varieties. </p> <p></p> <hr/> <p><strong>ARCS:</strong></p> <p><strong>Volume One: Hallowed Be the Menu (Posted: April 2024-February 2025)</strong></p> <p>     - <strong>Synopsis</strong>: Calaf, current rat-slaying sewer grate guard and aspiring Paladin-in-training, embarks on a quest to apprehend a cackling, heretical apostate who is out to murder priests, steal relics, and, no doubt, hates the very concepts of faith, freedom, and liberty themselves! Verily, no quarter shall be brokered with this vile and unrepentant villainess. The pilgrimage path is perilous, and as he pursues the fiend he finds his perspective changing (and his quarry to be surprisingly hot). Can he maintain a Paladin-aspirant's sense of chivalry and right when calls for crusading suddenly feel wrong, and being with his fated rival suddenly feels so, so right? </p> <p>- <a href="https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0FQ4543ZX?maas=&amp;ref=pe_93986420_775043100" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Check it out on Kindle? It's on Kindle Unlimited again from April 12th!</a></p> <p>     </p> <p><strong>Volume II: Heist of Many Centuries (</strong>February 2025 - July 2025<strong>)</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>     - <strong>Synopsis:</strong> Calaf or Riverglen was tasked with bringing Jelena Turandot, most-wanted heretic in the churchlands, to justice. He was certain of his role and steadfast in his faith... until he got a good look at her. Now the pair and their posse roam the Pilgrim's Path, stealing church relics and maintaining an <em>altered</em> Paladin sense of honor. </p> <p>Love has won out over duty. Sinister forces and scheming officials take advantage of the naive people of the land. All the while, the Heist of the Century looms at the center off church power itself! Can this fallen knight reconcile his chivalrous upbringing with his new paramour's life of crime? Or will this sinfully seductive lifestyle catch up to them before the church's peerless arbiters do? </p> <p>-<a href="https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0G6B918W2" rel="noopener ugc nofollow"> Pre-order Volume 2 now!</a></p> <p></p> <p><strong>Volume III... (August 2025 -- April 2026) </strong></p> <p><strong>   </strong>  - Synopsis: Our heroes barely survive the Heist of the Century by the skin of their teeth! Now trapped at snow, literal rock bottom, Calaf and Jelena have to recover sans access to the Menu, get back to the churchlands, and stop the sinister machinations of the latest scheming, scammy archpope. It's a story about revenge and role reversal. Hallowed be the Menu~</p> <p><strong></strong>Down but not out, the mission is simple: get back on the dire-horse, recover from their grisly wounds, avenge their losses, kill the archpope. The full Pilgrim's Path must be ran in reverse, and fast. For a world cleansed of sin is nigh... </p> <p><strong></strong></p> <p>[Participant in the April 2024, November 2024, April 2025, AND November 2025 Writeathons!]</p> <p><span>[Cover courtesy, as always, of GetCovers]</span></p>