The world was silent and gray, frozen at the moment of the Patriarch’s death. From the tear in reality that had swallowed the sky in pitch darkness, The Infinite Host descended. It maintained its previous shape, a vaguely humanoid pillar of starlight, within which swarmed countless faces old and young, beautiful and grotesque.
Raine’s own voice, repeated tens of thousands of times, was unleashed in a psychic wave that was implanted directly into his consciousness. “It would appear...
2025-08-22 15:51:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Half the beams converged on Raine’s back, the rest spreading to block his escape. Each was capable of cutting him in half, and worse, the boss knew it would strike itself in the chaos and spread Splintering Carapace in advance. The areas each beam would strike turned brittle, preparing to fill the entire airspace with dangerous shrapnel. Raine didn't dodge; there was no point. He swapped to the Fraction of Solidity, invoking Unassailable Aegis
2025-08-22 15:46:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
A single bounding leap brought the Patriarch's flailing wall of roots into range. Before they could close in, Raine triggered his buffs in rapid succession. Guardians Embrace, Guardians Comfort, and Guardians Armament bolstered his defenses, resistance, and damage. He dismissed the skills from his mind; he would either exhaust his resources or claim the kill long before needing them again.
Their mental abilities clashed first; thi...
2025-08-22 15:44:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
The burning Fetch gave off so little heat that Raine and Selena were forced to run side by side the rest of the way down the hill. It was a moldering mess, barely alive and coming apart at the seams to the point the log stuck through its chest could no longer hold it. When the cold vanished between one step and the next, Raine cast aside the grotesque creature. It flopped about a few times before the flames from his armor finished it off.
Unable to stand next to him anymore for the same...
2025-08-15 15:20:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Just like the Morkits. Leave the rest to me.”
Raine’s demand was too much. Selena shook her head, terror squeezing the air from her lungs. The world boss—a monster fit to annihilate an entire detachment of knights—dominated her entire field of view. And it was not alone. Escape was impossible. It struck her then—these were to be the last moments of her life. “It’s too fa—”
Raine’s hand firmly squeezed her shoulder. “There’s no such thing as too far or im...
2025-08-15 15:19:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
It was a good thing the demonic flames from Raine’s armor only burned living tissue, or the tree wouldn’t have lasted beyond the hill’s halfway point. The Fetches came often, and in large groups, gliding down from the clouds above. They waited for the best moments to unleash their Ice Lances, firing with deadly accuracy before allowing the wind to whisk them away, and Raine let them go.
It was all too obvious that stopping to fight each one was a death sentence. R...
2025-08-15 15:18:51 +0000 UTC
View Post
A guttural rumble swept through the Primal Realm when Selena activated the eighth shrine. Nearby, Raine battled above heaving waves as the land tore itself apart. Cracks snaked through the ground, sucking away the lake’s water until only damp soil remained. Over two hundred Fetches were exposed to open air. Enraged, they hissed and turned their collective hatred on Raine, attacking with a unified shriek.
Without the water, they no longer had access to their electrified Water B...
2025-08-15 15:17:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
The haggling with Vought had been intense, nearly ending in death several times. In the end, they both got what they wanted. All Raine wanted to do when he fell back into ZionLine was lie back in the grass and catch his breath. Instead, he awoke to pain much more acute than his real body and an interface of strobing crimson with a long series of damage notifications.
[Critical hit! A Princess of Celendine has struck you for -2,981 unaspected physical damage]
<...
2025-08-15 15:14:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine would have jerked out of bed if he could. His injuries demanded vigilance. His eyes snapped open to find that the home defense system had already converted one of the walls to display several of the exterior cameras. As Raine pulled himself to a sitting position and ripped off his headset, a sleek, armored hoversedan touched down in the front yard. Within the vehicle was a blazing heat signature like a living sun.
A recent message from Morty strobed on the wall next to the video f...
2025-08-08 15:14:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine’s mace crunched into a Fetch so hard its neck was pulverized right along with the vines and roots it used for a head. He jumped back, pulling the weapon free with a sickening squelch. A geyser of Primal Energy jettisoned from the fresh rupture in its torso. The golden liquid wasn’t technically blood, more akin to watered-down sap.
To Raine’s bloodlust, the spray of liquid was close enough to what he sought. His fresh perspective gave each kill new meaning, new purpose, and b...
2025-08-08 14:38:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
Grandmaster Vought
- Carter City -
As much as Vought desired to rush straight to KongRu’s home and question him, there was an important task that demanded his attention. He left the tiny airport, soon arriving at the city’s official morgue. After a very brief introduction, a stiff-backed Captain Hemlock escorted Vought down several flights of stairs to a well-lit basement. They passed through a security door and several checkpoin...
2025-08-08 14:37:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
Selena's lips were set in a deep scowl as the ground continued to shake beneath her feet. Impressively, only a portion of her apparent fear colored her tone. “Your efforts to distract me are unnecessary. I am a Celendine. There is no such thing as an impossible ordeal, and I have trained all my life for this day. It is I who will deliver us from this catastrophe.”
Raine held in a snicker, not wanting to derail Selena’s momentum. It was good she was taking over the pep tal...
2025-08-08 14:36:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine leaned forward in an all-out sprint through dense jungle. His lungs burned from lack of Discipline, and his health was still strobing orange. The latter would change in seconds thanks to his aspect, but the rest of his worries would not be so easily allayed. Having traveled so far with Returners Privilege, he was no longer in combat, allowing his resources to recover at triple speed.
However, there were more valuable things than recovering from the exhaustion prom...
2025-08-01 17:32:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
Celeste Luu Rahn
- Continued -
If there was anything Celeste enjoyed about dying, it was the dark, empty space she was taken to each time. It only lasted a few minutes, but the quiet, comfortable darkness gave time to consider her mistakes while the memories were fresh. Her eyes drifted to a close, a deep breath filling her lungs.
She'd fucked up bad this time. As more and more people joined ZionLine, the need for low-level gear skyro...
2025-08-01 17:01:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
Whatever Raine had become revelled in the victory of his hatchet sliding deep into the Patriarch’s bark. Never in the past had he dreamed of clashing with a world boss one-on-one and landing a hit. It was impossible. Unthinkable. World bosses were existences that required weeks, sometimes months of research, and even more resources devoted to manpower, equipment, and items to face. Oftentimes, hundreds of Travelers and Vaaterrans would team up to bring them down, and there were always losse...
2025-08-01 17:00:20 +0000 UTC
View Post
The closer Raine drew to the boss, the fiercer their killing intent clashed. Unlike the previous noble, Raine was the one being pushed back. He growled deep in his throat, letting the killer free. Mental energy writhed in the air between them, an even match so long as neither erred. Raine was determined not to.
Whatever the Patriarch’s mental ability was, it wasn’t one he was familiar with. Each mental ability carried a flavor, a hint similar to a passing scent caught on the w...
2025-08-01 16:58:44 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine couldn’t lift his head. The mental pressure bearing down on him was an ocean of force, impossibly vast, and equally deep. The god that gently alighted before him was far more suffocating than the one he’d glimpsed in the past. Whether due to it being an ancient god or because its focus was entirely on him, Raine had no way of contemplating, for the power bearing down on him crushed all thought.
A flash of light announced the arrival of the same entity who threw them into the P...
2025-08-01 16:57:43 +0000 UTC
View Post
As Raine pushed deeper into the jungle, he charged straight into the eager vines of every Fetch he encountered. His efforts to adjust the many martial stances in his repertoire were less than successful, but that was fine. What Raine had in mind required a fundamental alteration to innumerable minute details spread across thousands of movements, attack combinations, defensive maneuvers, and counters. Each and every one of those changes required rewiring neural pathways formed over an extensiv...
2025-07-25 16:27:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
When Selena activated the statue, the Fetches waiting on the outskirts of the clearing scampered off into the jungle. It would hardly be fair to give him a chance to pick them off one by one, utilizing the protections of the shrine. The reaction was further proof that these beasts were little more than thralls of the entities.
Raine had been convinced they were being controlled after the last ambush. In his opinion, it was a good thing. Directly striking the assholes who messed wi...
2025-07-25 16:25:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine ran like his life depended on it, because it very much did. He dodged around trees, plowed through dense bushes, and circumvented the Fetches between him and whatever salvation these shrines represented. Selena’s half-assed explanation only left it clear that reaching them would help. Raine sure hoped that was the case. Already, his muscles felt uncomfortably full. It was now clear that the Primal Energy also saturated the air. With every breath, his condition grew worse.
Unaccu...
2025-07-25 16:23:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
[Primal Root Fetch (Ancient): (Level 42) (HP ???/???)]
The beast’s roar washed over Selena and Raine with dramatically different results. The princess reeled like she’d been struck. With blood gushing from her eyes and ears, she fell backward. Raine felt an uncomfortable tingle wash over his skin before the Soul Flame of Amanesh went haywire in his chest. Of its own accord...
2025-07-25 16:19:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Wait,” Raine’s hand lifted for a pause. They were still a good distance from the swirling portal, yet already its spiraling energies pulled at their clothes and hair.
Selena's wide, panicked eyes swiveled in his direction. “What is it now?” It was clear from her shaking hands and the tremor in her voice that years of anticipation had reached a climax.
Intending to give her a m...
2025-07-18 16:32:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Raine only had to wait a few seconds before a shower of loot bubbles exploded from the alpha’s rapidly decaying corpse. He scooped them up without delay, a glance to the side confirming Selena was staying put. Unsurprisingly, the noble’s drops were several steps above standard. For any normal group of level 49s, meeting that monster would have resulted in an immediate wipe. Risk and reward demanded that the gear be exceptional.
[Switch Claws (Fist Weapons): (Marvelous...
2025-07-18 16:29:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
“I have grown weary of that response…” Selena drolled, head on a swivel, scanning for the alpha as she padded after Raine.
“If you want to amend our agreement to include education, I wouldn’t decline.” Raine tapped his chin, crouching over a large paw print embedded in the soft soil. “One million gold sounds about right.”
Selena scoffed, squatting beside him to run her fingers through the inner edges of the print. The beast that left it was heavy, ran on four legs,...
2025-07-18 16:25:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
As the kilometers stretched on, plains spotted with forests gave way to yet more forested plains. Raine set a relentless pace, refusing to slow. Lyale would have no issues catching up to them, and Selena’s begging to wait for him was nothing more than another attempt at manipulation. Raine spent over twenty years being led around by the nose by Vaneese. There was no room in this second chance for more of the same. Whatever Selena’s end goal was with her wiles didn’t matter; she would no...
2025-07-18 16:21:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
Celeste Luu Rahn
- South of Mirror Lake Town -
Celeste was not having a great morning. Or was it night now? No, that was definitely the morning sun rising. It marked the beginning of another exhausting day. The damned time difference between the inside and outside worlds was just one more impossible detail to keep track of lately. Celeste wished she could go back in time to when she told Raine she wanted to be more reliable, so she c...
2025-07-11 18:40:38 +0000 UTC
View Post
Princess Selena's Cannon Thrust turned her into a red haze that streaked across Raine's vision. She was fast, too fast to catch by normal means. Yet, if he wanted to stop her before she reached the waiting Morkits, that was precisely what he had to do.
Raine leaned forward until his inverted head was pointed at where she was about to be. A full 40 Discipline per second coursed through his body, triggering the threshold boosts for each of his physical attributes. T...
2025-07-11 18:38:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
As Lyale and Selena charged, the beasts entered a ravenous frenzy. Thousands of throats screamed for murder with nonsensical, guttural fury. They climbed atop each other in their quest for violence. Dozens died in the opening seconds, killed by their own. Blood splashed across their bodies, the fresh scent driving the rest into an army-wide Berserk state that would grow in efficacy with each passing minute. The royals were already on a clock.
Lyale veered to the side, d...
2025-07-11 18:35:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
Princess Selena's haughty superiority at being the only one on a mount didn't last long. Mounts didn't have their own Discipline pool. They pulled from their rider, and at more than a trot, that drain was significant. It was she who called for the first break, and the second, and the third. There could be no doubt as to the authenticity of her need; sweat coated her skin, while heavy breaths and a vacant gaze completed the picture of exhaustion for both her and the mount. Each rest, Lyale and...
2025-07-11 18:34:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Instead of dreamily ogling at the second-floor items that were well outside his price range, Raine opened a call to Mel. She answered straight away, her too-attractive avatar throwing a wink in his direction. “Howdy there, stranger.”
All thoughts of the logical reasons he’d called for fled from Raine’s mind. The simple truth was that he missed talking to her over the last couple days. “Stranger?” Raine chuckled softly, “It's been what, an hour?”
“Not a chance! It...
2025-07-04 17:08:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
