Malcolm Tent

A Novel Approach chapter 129

Wish upon the Stars chapter 974

Arranging Perit’s resurrection took longer than expected. We had to arrange things with the body, wait for my points to be available, then wait until someone could be sent by the family to take care of everything, which given all my relatives who had been present had their OWN points to cash out, wasn’t exactly quick and easy to arrange.

But we’d finally reached the point where we were ready to perform the resurrection, even if this one seemed…different than the last.

“I...

Secret Ending chapter 103

Wish upon the Stars chapter 973

The rest of the ceremony was mostly just smiling and nodding, unfortunately. I shook the hands of an endless parade of relatives, and they definitely took me up on my open door policy. My head was aching from the sheer number of subtle overtures and attempts at backroom dealing. The politicking started early, and after announcing that I wanted to be hands on, I couldn’t very well pass the buck like I might have otherwise.

By the time we got back into the shuttle, I was leaning back, m...

Secret Ending chapter 102

Wish upon the Stars chapter 972

Stepping out of the shuttle, I took in the location of the ceremony with fascination. I’d expected something ostentatious, maybe a huge castle or some kind of formation. Instead, we were standing in what appeared to be a soothing garden. Rock features, ponds, topiaries. It was…soothing.

“Perfect,” my mom said from where she arrived next to me. “They wanted to put you in some gaudy auditorium. But that’s so…expected. This is more impactful, I think. I told your father that ...

A Novel Approach chapter 128

Wish upon the Stars chapter 971

It was the day of the ceremony. Not my coronation. That had been made clear. The actual anointing of my position would be undertaken at a later time, in front of a LOT more people. This was more of a confirmation. An award ceremony for the succession war rather than a passing of the torch as per the leadership of the faction.

Still, it felt…weighty. My thoughts from earlier felt heavy, but unfinished. I hadn’t really come to any conclusions, had I? Hadn’t really made a decision. I...

Secret Ending chapter 101

Wish upon the Stars chapter 970

It took a week for the competition to officially come to a close. The succession war wound down in the background, and I didn’t do a single thing to participate. No alliance meeting, no trials, no recruiting. I had twenty five hundred people to free, and while most of them were D-rankers who would only cost a single point, we had a few hundred C-rankers and about a dozen B-rankers.

The only upside was that given our impressive showing saving the planet, a decent chunk of our people ha...

A Novel Approach chapter 127

Wish upon the Stars chapter 969

Making it back up to the surface was exhausting, but not in the one you would expect. The slow, plodding rise out of the depths of perdition should probably have been grating. A pool of dread filling my stomach as I inched closer to the surface and the results of the competition (which wasn’t over, granted, but I was probably far enough ahead not to have to worry about much). But that was kind of the opposite of how it felt.

It felt like…liberation. Each step brought me further from...

Secret Ending chapter 100

nsfw mind the tags

Wish upon the Stars chapter 968

When Wise rose from the shattered remnants of the mirrored wall, his face was…wrong. Broken like the glass. The visage of me that he’d been using was cracked, and black mist leaked from inside of it. He snarled, his hands coming up to his face, trying to press the flaking shards back into position. It didn’t work, and he finally gave up, tearing the worst offenders free and tossing them aside.

“That seeming was EXPENSIVE,” he hissed at my mother. “Must your whole family be a...

Secret Ending chapter 99

Wish upon the Stars chapter 967

“You want…to surrender your forces?” he said slowly, his tone obviously disbelieving. “The ones with all your friends and your PARENTS in them? Those forces? You want to just…hand them over to the Void?”

I was panicking. Or rather, I would have been panicking if I could fucking THINK. Instead, my entire godsdamned brain was lighting up like a theme park of agony as my Danger Sense tried to clobber me over the head with the fact that I was SPEAKING to an enemy S-ranker. I was...

A Novel Approach chapter 126

Wish upon the Stars chapter 966

Down, down, down into the deeps. The ritual, to no one’s surprise, was taking place on a much lower level, one much closer to the center of the planet. Not TOO close, mind. Our B-rankers and those of us with Chronicles were able to withstand the pressure, and Zeke had lent a few masks to the others to offset the strain for them, but it was much deeper than we’d been so far.

Which I supposed made sense. The Void Ladder was using the entire length of this stairway as a focus. In fact,...

Secret Ending chapter 98

Wish upon the Stars chapter 965

I expected my dad and mom to leap into action. His shadowy black soul army spread out around them, taking up a sort of formation shaped like a series of concentric stars, easily thirty of the things. But rather than join him in combat, my mother hummed consideringly. “I’m thinking of a number between one and ten,” my dad said with a grin.

“Six,” she responded instantly, clearly more aware of what that meant than I was.

He barked out a laugh. “Nope, it was four. Go wait...

A Novel Approach chapter 125

Wish upon the Stars chapter 964

The next day was hectic. Arranging the full court press of searchers we needed required calling in a lot of favors with a lot of people. Some of those favors I called in personally, some my parents called in, but the result was the same. We had officially gathered enough people to head down to clear out the anchors.

Of course, we weren’t going in completely blind. We had the two anchors we already knew about documented, but more than that, we had an army of Wyndhams, and that meant a ...

Secret Ending chapter 97

Bet nobody was expecting that lol.

Wish upon the Stars chapter 963

Creating my scrolls the next day was anticlimactic. There were nine of them now, which was new, and they were C-ranked, which was new, but they were…just scrolls. The same ones I always made. After getting that done and kissing my wife goodbye, I headed for my meeting at The Empty Room.

I left everyone behind except my dad. The current master of The Empty Room was a man named Vacant, an A-ranker of considerable power with a very mysterious nature. Of course, being a Void specialist wh...

Secret Ending chapter 96

Wish upon the Stars chapter 962

I regained consciousness slowly, seeing a familiar cheerful red haired face hovering above me, a wide grin on her lips. “Hey there little lord, how ya feelin?” She backed off as I sat up, groaning as I tried to get my head to stop doing its best impression of a six piece orchestra.

“Like someone hit me in the face with a bus full of dynamite,” I spat sourly.

She snickered. “Oh, no, that would have done WAY less damage.That was my Starbreaker Smash. It’s my own personal...

A Novel Approach chapter 124

Wish upon the Stars chapter 961

“This is your worst plan ever,” my best friend informed me cheerfully as I stood across the ring from my mother’s apprentice. “You know you’re going to lose, right? Like yes, you’re the same rank now, but she’s got ten times the stats you do, and probably has a Chronicle. Not to mention she practices the martial arts style that made your mom famous. You have no chance.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a TERRIBLE hype man? I’m ...

Secret Ending chapter 95

Wish upon the Stars chapter 960

We headed back up to the surface after a bit more searching. We’d found two more anchors leaving, but since we knew the levels wouldn’t shift for another two days or so, we just recorded their locations for our wide purge later. Two anchors wouldn’t matter in the long run, but if we tipped our hand too early we could screw over the whole plan.

After that, my parents reached out to The Empty Room, and the rest of us turned in early. Callie and I were exhausted after everything we�...