I stepped into the mirror.
Glass filled my face. Liquid glass pushed against the air in my nostrils, pressed against my lips. But I kept my eyes open.
One moment I was in a temple made from cold stone, the next I was on an ethereal road in the midst of infinitely reflecting space. I took a step, towards the other world, towards where Ann would be waiting for me.
An...
2024-11-25 16:49:36 +0000 UTC View PostI fought.
Y’know, it’s a strange thought now. Back then, everything had been so difficult. It had taken every ounce of willpower I could muster to even drag my tired body out there to fight at all. Yet, now? Looking back at it, it doesn’t seem that hard.
In a way, it wasn’t really. After all those talents from the archmages? My world had shifted again. No one in the we...
2024-11-23 16:53:37 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 224: Rust Red
The court was made of vast fields of rust and decay. Pieces of rotting trash being consumed by waves and salt. Pieces of metal, beacons of civilization and progress, broken against the ebbing edifice of age.
Mercury took a deep breath, smelling iron on the sea air. The statue of liberty didn't stand; it laid among the rubble, shattered to pieces. Mercury...
2024-11-23 01:06:34 +0000 UTC View PostOne after another, I looked at the archmages.
Saif Zolycc, war mage, a wind spirit in a wheelchair. Her hair floated behind her in the air, her eyes of radiant purple boring into me with kindness. She had two right arms, both her left ones missing. Her legs were covered by a blanket.
Erasmus Pulie, the seer, a human whose head was shaved bald and whose eyes were milky and dull. He w...
2024-11-20 02:12:45 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 223: Practice makes Perfect
Mercury read the letter over a second time, then placed it down. The moment it left his hands, it burst into flames, reducing itself to ash, before that ash turned to air. All that remained in the wake of the letter was a small draft within Mercury’s log.
Its contents, though, were seared into his mind. Some of the fae were going to die. ...
2024-11-17 20:41:00 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 120: Memento
The monster, a blur of electricity and razor sharp metal wings, was lightning fast. Each of its strikes brought about a gale of wind and lashed out at me with a thundercrack. It was like a dance. My Wanderer’s Key warped the attacks faintly at a cost to my Qi, and I wove past them, avoiding the arcs of power by a tiny amount each time.
Whenever I dodged, Astra...
2024-11-11 16:28:27 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 222: Benefactors
A name had been granted, and now there was the price to pay. Mercury felt his focus being consumed like a wildfire burning against his consciousness. The darkness boiled, and somehow, he understood every inch, every movement, every moment.
Ciarski, ruler of Shadow, being of darkness born anew. An ancient shadow, reshaped and known once more. More ...
2024-11-09 01:03:55 +0000 UTC View PostAs every night before, Ann eventually woke up. She felt like absolute garbage. Each bone in her body ached from the hard floor, and somehow, that sensation felt strange. Like sleeping on a hard surface shouldn’t bother her.
That, then, marked her first cohesive thought of the day, and it was instantly one dealing with her missing memories. Wrenching her tired eyes open, Ann pushed...
2024-11-04 16:34:27 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 221: Someone’s Truth
[<Oceanic Consciousness> has levelled up! <Oceanic Consciousness lv. 3 -> 4>]
At the end of the night, Mercury still felt well rested. What wonders that Skill did for him. His minds, despite each one being put to rather heavy work, had taken it all in stride. Really, compared to the absolute mental battering that the surgery a...
2024-11-02 00:12:14 +0000 UTC View PostEventually, after an amount of time I didn’t really keep track of, Cass let go of me. We split apart. I was left leaning against the bed frame, sitting on the floor.
There were more aspects of my growth to change, but as I looked at Cass, something in my vision sputtered. As I focused again, the [Budding Nova] of my talent reignited, and I saw it bloom within her.
A star.&nb...
2024-10-31 01:56:58 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 220: Shadows
Mercury faintly nodded at the fae welcoming him. He was curious to see how long his stay in this place would be. How long would it take him to find out Shadow’s real name? Would he reshape things here, or just help them rediscover themselves?
What a fun little thought.
“It is a pleasure to meet another one of you,” Mercury said to th...
2024-10-29 11:00:17 +0000 UTC View Post[Name: Fiona Bellum
Class: Superimposed Paragon (20)
Techniques
Spear Techniques
Spear Technique - Fundamentals (Inevitability)
Swift Spear (Intermediate)
Momentum Shift (High)
Qi Techniques
General
Aura Suppression (Intermediate) (...
2024-10-21 21:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 219: Through the Fae Realm
Mercury spent a rather peaceful time sleeping. Of course, he found himself in his inner world, with Kim, the gardener, working away at the landscape. Whisperstar flitted across the sky. Mercury smiled.
Having something living, something moving in this inner world of his was rather pleasant.
The landscape had many features now...
2024-10-19 15:17:54 +0000 UTC View PostMy hands were shaking for the entire duration of the journey. There were no more usurpers. The giant of black fire was dead. I had absorbed the shards of its gateway, and the rest of that fire had been absorbed by [Transference], and crafted into some kind of magic item.
But I ignored the pull of the Gift. I felt entirely too numb to interact with it. My heart thumped in my chest, beating...
2024-10-15 22:26:55 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 218: Rules and Rulers
Mercury stood before Oberon, the king’s might weighing down on him like a heavy blanket. He faced it calmly, breathing slowly.
Not that he did it effortlessly. After the surgery, Mercury felt tired. Drained of effort and interest. Still, he thought about the favour closely.
There were lots of things he needed help with, but his ...
2024-10-12 15:15:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe fight had been over, the giant broken and dead, yet now it moved once more.
Flesh writhed, then dissolved as it was shedded. Black flames flickered forth from the corpse, surrounding a perfectly polished abyssal sphere. It called out to me, as if screaming for help - gateways. Corrupted and twisted, their fragments broken and melded together again, into this.
“Back,” my own ...
2024-10-09 23:34:57 +0000 UTC View Post“Let’s go.”
As the words left my lips, I didn’t even need to check whether or not my guildmates would be with me. I knew they were, from when I took the first step towards the giant. And they were still there as I took my first step into the air.
I stepped down hard on the Qi platform, using my enhanced manipulation to slingshot myself up into the air. As my foot landed I to...
2024-10-09 23:33:15 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 217: Surgery
Mercury drew in a deep breath. He took a long, still moment to stare at the dead tree. The way the wilting leaves still clung to pale husks of dried bark. He slowly dragged his healthy front leg over the wood he stood on, at the heart of the gigantic corpse. He felt the bumps and grain, the fibers still attached to one another.
The air left his lungs,...
2024-10-06 00:18:30 +0000 UTC View PostI felt like a shooting star.
Every day that passed, I could feel the constellation within me roar. I could feel my Qi scream. Feel the world buckle at my demand, feel reality itself become malleable to my power.
Every day that passed, more people survived. More usurpers fell. The walls held. They stood strong against any and all assault. We fought and we thrived. ...
2024-10-01 23:51:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 216: Perspective
It had been a long while since Mercury last rode a carriage. It had been… with Zyl? All that time ago? What a strange thought.
When reincarnated into a somewhat medieval world, Mercury had expected a lot more… well. Horses, knights, dwarves and elves. Instead what he got were entirely alien creatures beyond mortal comprehension. Well, an...
2024-09-28 23:29:24 +0000 UTC View PostI don’t quite know how we survived those days, not to mention how we managed to keep morale generally high. Every day was a grind. We still hardly slept, though more than when just marching. Battle was tiring, after all.
Every day, I would empty out my wellspring multiple times over. In sparring, in fighting. Once, I awoke in the middle of the night, and found Astraeus floating besides ...
2024-09-24 23:18:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 215: A leaf in the Wind
Time passed. Despite everything, despite the work to do, despite the fact that Mercury knew the fae realm was struggling, he didn’t rush.
There would have been no point. In order to find out the rulers’ names, he would need to spend time with them, anyway. It wasn’t like he could conveniently kill them to see it on a sheet. It was no ...
2024-09-24 23:17:35 +0000 UTC View Post[Golden Wellspring advanced to 5th Step.]
[Mirror Wellspring advanced to 5th Step.]
It took little time more on the frontlines for my combined talents to begin truly shining. Seeing the stars resolve in the usurpers was strange. I could see theirs were different, colours that I could not describe and that made my eyeballs itch on the inside.
T...
2024-09-19 18:31:54 +0000 UTC View Post“Fio,” Ann told me, holding her face in her hands. “You have to stop recruiting people who tried to kill you.”
“You know, if I had nickel for each time you brought over an ex-assassin and asked if they could join the group,” Matt said, “I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”
Ann had her arms crossed, while...
2024-09-16 19:50:56 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 214: The Beginnings of the Fae Accords
It always came down to names with the fae. Remembering them, changing them, their meanings, owning them… all of that. Calling a ruler simply by the name of their court was, in a way, the same as removing their identity.
Of course, not all decay in the courts could simply be explained by who knew their name and who did...
2024-09-14 14:28:51 +0000 UTC View PostWith more force on our side, we were able to split the tide of enemies. Break the waves against us. My team was a spearhead, diving deep into the ranks of the usurpers, taking them down by the dozen.
At some point, the city mages began relaying messages to us through telepathy and voice projection, similarly to how Liam usually did it, and we began hunting down priority targets.
Mat...
2024-09-10 19:12:56 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 213: Memory
Mercury had 1600 Skill points. The fused evolution of <Unbroken> and <Unfatigued> would cost 900 of those. His other option was between evolving <Dreamwalking> for 500 or <Adaptable> for 700. Mercury used the former quite a bit, but the latter was more important in his day to day, so he decided to evolve <Adaptable> first.
Chapter 108: Rousing Dragons
The march was fine. It wasn’t easy or fun, but it was fine.
I hadn’t lost my love for travelling at all. But part of what I enjoyed was seeing new sights at the destinations, and that… was taken away. Most of the landscape we passed through was not in a pleasant state. Trees had been razed, broken apart. There were carcasses, still dissolving into ...
2024-09-02 19:33:52 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 212: Evading the Courts
Mercury breathed, the old realm of Yearning now gone and torn apart. The space they were in was slowly dissipating into a white void. Appreciation would take root here if everything went well, slowly spreading out to occupy the freed up space and hold it together again.
Had Mercury done a lot of damage? Yes. He had absorbed the vast m...
2024-09-01 00:11:36 +0000 UTC View PostIt turns out not all rifts were made equal. In fact, the vast majority of rifts were small, tiny tears.
The danger was that they did not greatly enjoy staying small. Even as I watched the tiny tear in the air, it expanded. A hand reached through, and I felt my heart stop in my chest.
Before I had the chance to experience any more fear, Matt moved. Instantly, there was ...
2024-08-26 16:53:00 +0000 UTC View Post