I will never forget the first moment I walked past those walls. Those walls that climbed higher than the sky itself. Those walls that cast shadows so long they could drown mountains. Those walls grander than any fortress and greater than anything I could have dreamed…
To think that they were things built by the hands of man was both humbling and inspiring. And those walls were only the beginning of wonder, not the end, for past them lay the heart of the future, the heart ...
2025-10-16 18:31:25 +0000 UTC
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The most important thing when it comes to duels of words and rhetoric is control. If you can control someone's emotions or the flow of the topic, you can win. For ultimately, it's not about a debate of truth, but more often, who can make the other betray themselves, to debase themselves in public? Who cedes more power to their adversary?
This is why there is a base wisdom to children. They see the world for what it is on the surface, and from there, they glean our deepest f...
2025-10-15 18:07:48 +0000 UTC
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To be a recruiter for Phoenix Academy is to dedicate oneself to hunting for golden needles in a grand haystack. The students are remarkable individuals. Though young of age, many of them have already demonstrated their virtues and potential. After all, though life is harsh, and the consequences are dire, there are always those who rise to the occasion and make a name by slaying beasts that threaten their community, by proposing theorems and building the walls of their home, be it residenc...
2025-10-15 15:22:28 +0000 UTC
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Phoenix Academy is not the only academy on Earth. It is also not the greatest academy, despite how often I boast of its great achievements and magnificent alumni.
If you want to seek the oldest academy on Integrated Earth, then you're heading far east to Moonwall. You will ascend the Yun Wei Mountain there, and only if you pass a final examination administered by the so-called spirits which guard the place can you enter those grand and hallowed walls. I've seen the grounds,...
2025-10-14 18:44:24 +0000 UTC
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Hm? Oh, yes. Headmaster, I'm aware that Master-Instructor Heresine is a spy. And a spy of Aviary, no less. One of their so-called Sparrows. Long-term, deep cover. Not meant for active combat.
I commend you for noticing, but the Inquisition has the matter well in control. As such, I recommend you leave it be.
Why, you ask? Because this is simply what is done between rival nations. You understand this. I know why you wish to stamp this out, but it's a little bi...
2025-10-13 18:34:40 +0000 UTC
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Students of the Phoenix, my job here, as headmaster, is not to get you to adapt by the time you graduate. It is not to ensure that you become Masters in ten years, five years, or whatever ridiculous sum of time you imagine. It is not to make sure you eventually become Heroes. It is not to make sure that you become Legends after a century and become icons of the Republic. My job is none of those things, for none of those things can be guaranteed.
Look at me, and look upon ea...
2025-10-12 19:10:42 +0000 UTC
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It is a double-edged thing, being a non-martial. You can see this in the name itself. You are not martial, not someone capable of fighting, or at least not as capable as someone dedicated to the art of combat. And in a world ruled by strife, that makes you less than.
It doesn't matter that you are the core of any nation's economy, that you produce the most goods, that you're in charge of manufacturing, that you grow all the crops, that you offer the bulk of the arts, that t...
2025-10-11 20:06:15 +0000 UTC
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Some judge a nation by how many legends it possesses under its banner. Others by how vast its territories are. A few even use esoteric means, writing theorems to guess at mana variabilities. But I reject all those metrics in exchange for just one: How much does a nation give a shit about its own children?
And how much effort does it spend trying to make those children proper path-bearers? Academies, sects, cults, whatever you want to call them—halls of learning and traini...
2025-10-10 19:08:44 +0000 UTC
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It always starts the same way: desperation.
Desperation for revenge, desperation for money, for a new lease on life, to break free from who you were—be that because of a mistake or because you can't quite get out of that stink that clings to you. You know the stink. The stink of poverty, the stink of your parentage, your bloodline. The stink that comes with being called a bastard and being called the son of a traitor. Desperation. Desperation makes you give yourself...
2025-10-10 15:29:17 +0000 UTC
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Shells and false semblances are one of the most illegal, but also most valuable commodities offered by the Neath. When one seeks to establish their position in life, they usually arrive at one of a few following places: What is your tier? How wealthy are you? How connected are you? And what can you provide with the skills you do have?
For most, life is a catch-22. You won't be able to gain grand skills or level quickly because you simply aren't important. You haven't gotten...
2025-10-09 18:02:24 +0000 UTC
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Neath is shorthand for beneath; it is also the name attributed to the greater criminal underworld of Integrated Earth. Though there are cutthroats, thieves, smugglers, and more within every major nation or empire, the true underbelly of crime is organized and governed by the Dragon Brokers, an enigmatic group of path bearers who have existed since time immemorial.
Under their management, the desperate and powerless have another option rather than participating in the rules ...
2025-10-08 19:30:49 +0000 UTC
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Faith is a thing of grave importance, acolytes. Faith allows us to maintain security in our great cities. Ask yourself, what do we have that most other nations don't? Why don't we suffer the indignities of constant brutality and the miseries of meaningless mass death?
Practical faith—with emphasis on the practical.
When we call out to the Ascendants, they are listening, and they are not so far away, not like so many gods who are inscrutable and waywar...
2025-10-08 13:15:14 +0000 UTC
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Across Integrated Earth, there are many cities that boast grand claims regarding their opulence, safety, and power. In the eastern hemisphere of the world alone, there is High Harbor, ruled by the Dragon Brokers. It operates in tandem with its sister city of Hong Kong to serve as a perfect neutral territory for neighboring powers to negotiate trade or even formally declare war. It is also the commerce hub of integrated Earth's surface nations, or so it's often proclaimed.
T...
2025-10-07 18:57:45 +0000 UTC
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The system has a plan, and it is one of statistically maximized chaos. Never is this plan more evident than when someone gets an equipment reward from a successful quest. To put things plainly, the system remembers everything that you do, but more than your successes, it remembers your failures, it remembers your limitations, and it plays with them.
I recall the first time I gained a piece of Heroic-Tier equipment. It was relatively early on in my life, after I murdered my ...
2025-10-07 12:06:55 +0000 UTC
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Attention, citizens. An unexpected disaster has occurred at the Yellowstone Rubix Well. Please seek immediate shelter and prepare arms. Repeat, please return to your house or nearby shelter and prepare arms.
Wait for the alarms to subside before emerging. This is not a drill. Find shelter. Seek the protection of a member of the Prismatic Guard if shelter is unavailable, and you are incapable of combat. Prepare for active combat if you are martially capable.
D...
2025-10-06 18:43:48 +0000 UTC
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I don't know why so many people curse the system. If you have any knowledge of history at all, you would have noticed that the world, and all of existence for that matter, was cruel, cruel, and indifferent long before the system's arrival. Yes, it demands that we strive, fight, and shed our blood ceaselessly, but at least it cares for us. At least it has its eye upon us, and at least it favors those of us who are willing to be daring.
That is why it gives us such wonderful ...
2025-10-06 13:22:40 +0000 UTC
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Hello. We're moving into V5.
As we do, we will probably return to a more two 5k chapter format like the earlier volumes. They will be delivered at two points across the day. No major changes aside from that.
Also, with my recovery going better on break, I'm going to get ahead of the messy squire and pathless scheduling. I know that's been a mess. That will unfold as I restart writing for other stories.
Finally, I will start offering 2 advanced chapters for free users as we a...
2025-10-06 04:49:11 +0000 UTC
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"It could have worked, Veronica. You have to believe me. It could have worked. The ritual, so much of it, was going well. But, but..."
"Enough, dearest Ascendant. Let's just say that you are creating a building, and one of the structural supports gives out at the end, causing the entire building to collapse. Now, the rest of the building is pristine, wonderful—a thing of artistry to behold. I ask you now, would you still call that building well done? And would you have ra...
2025-10-05 20:17:45 +0000 UTC
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Euthanasia. Mercy killing. The hardest goodbye.
It's got a lot of names, but functionally, there's gonna be a time on the battlefield where you're going to have to put your knife in your friend's heart.
It could be because you don't want them to be captured. It could be because their injuries are too severe. It could be because a plague is wiping everyone out and your friend just doesn't have it in them to finish things out themselves. It could be any o...
2025-10-04 19:34:51 +0000 UTC
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There's really no way for me to hurt you more than your life already did. I know about what you did to your brother, his family. I know it was because of jealousy. I know that you hate him, but you remain jealous of him still. And I know you regret killing him, despite hating him so much. Despite all he took from you.
My words tore your body in half so easily. I probably could have done that if I focused my power long enough. But I really didn't. You wanted to come apart. Y...
2025-10-03 19:03:53 +0000 UTC
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Trust is both complicated and simple at the same time. The thing about trust is that it is an immeasurable quality. Sometimes people simply trust you. Whether it's because of foolishness, honor, or some other reason, it is hard to tell. All people are different. All people are shaped by specific experiences. And thus, you must trust your own judgment when it comes to matters of trust. That is why trust is ultimately a thing best reserved for desperate circumstances.
We wish...
2025-10-02 18:54:19 +0000 UTC
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Listen, kids, the easiest way to claim a high-tier Pathbearer as a prisoner is to blackmail them or to bribe them into surrendering through asymmetrical means. Trying to overpower them usually requires you to be much stronger than they are, have a lot more resources than they have, or be willing to throw lives until the job is done.
I strongly recommend against the last option, because lives matter. There are commanders and soldiers who do...
2025-10-01 20:42:22 +0000 UTC
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Inconsistency is the greatest wound a soul can sustain. Beyond just damage, beyond losing parts of your own history, there is the danger of being seeded by someone else’s Legend—for your soul will see to right the scales by destroying the inaccurate. If the progress of your feats, challenges, successes, and failures are rendered compromised, then your skill will be as if a cancerous tumor rather than a power you can wield.
Such is the greatest danger posed by Anim...
2025-09-30 19:43:17 +0000 UTC
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Animancy might just be the single most complicated art form anyone can learn. On top of being an art form, it is also a science, for it has to do with every magical lore in existence and every natural law in existence. In summation, it is a collision between the mutable and the historical, coming together to form the fullness of someone's legend in relation to the system.
This is also why most practitioners of Animancy have a tendency to kill themselves when things go wrong...
2025-09-28 19:22:49 +0000 UTC
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"Father, why are other people so... pathetic?"
"Pathetic? What do you mean, Udraal? Expand your statement. Tell me what you're really thinking."
"We just met with the Priests of Noor. You said they were powerful Pathbearers, credible mages, men of wisdom, and women of wisdom. Yet, all of them seem so desperate to be slaves."
"Is that how you view their commitment to the Great One? Or their idea of what the Great One is?"
"I've go...
2025-09-27 19:39:54 +0000 UTC
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Like all learned Pathbearers, I love the divine and hate the gods. The separation is quite simple.
Divine is about the shaping of rules and the setting of one's own laws. They are edicts that you decide, that you compel to be. To be divine means to be the lawmaker, the sword holder, the rule giver.
But to be a god is to drown in your own hubris, to think that you are beyond all, that you are above all. No, gods are apart from all. You all have stepped aside, ...
2025-09-26 20:10:29 +0000 UTC
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It is a mistake to think that social skills belong to an entirely separate category as their martial counterparts. Everything is interconnected. All skills build on each other. All skills influence how you use other skills, though they are as if silos within our soul. The experiences you have and the triumphs you will reap are enabled just as much by the breadth of your capabilities as it is the depth. And more importantly, as you use skills in tandem, they merge. So eventually, the barri...
2025-09-25 18:46:35 +0000 UTC
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To my esteemed adversaries at Aviary:
I have recently come across a few of your agents. Please don't blame them for being discovered. These things happen sometimes, especially when you train your little birds a little too well. Hence, I think I would like to offer some constructive criticism.
Firstly, people have flaws. People don't have these neat and unproblematic personalities. The receptionist you sent to serve me in replacement of my last one was a littl...
2025-09-24 18:37:33 +0000 UTC
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Harlock the Midnight claims to be a God of Darkness and Stealth. I would believe him if it weren't so easy for me to slip unnoticed through his domain as a shortcut between worlds.
Darkness is not stealth. Darkness at its simplest is an absence of light. It makes things hard to see. Conceptual darkness is an idea of something being hidden, an obfuscation against senses. But this is where Harlock’s childish notion of the unseen collapses. Because prior to his transformatio...
2025-09-23 18:23:09 +0000 UTC
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I despise those who dub themselves god after claiming a paltry pittance of power. “God” should mean something more than just being a Pathbearer. Some argue that ascending to Legendary ascends you to a sort of demigodhood. I would retort that some are simple-minded creatures who are easily awed by charlatans conjuring flames and spitting pretty words.
A Legend is not a god. A Legend is merely someone who is capable of affecting the concepts sustaining their Legendary-Tie...
2025-09-22 18:12:56 +0000 UTC
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