Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 235

The cartilage and skin pill sucked down about a quarter of his reserves while he was on wall duty. Its consumption was even more than that since he cultivated with his domain the entire night, causing the familiar halo to spread around him as he drew in cosmic energy.

Though he let his body enhancement happen passively, Hector observed the changes. His tendons, which had already been partially enhanced from the bone and gelatin pill he consumed months ago by this point, improved furth...

Chapter 234

Rather than stew in the stress of not knowing the aftermath of framing Lieutenant Ringo, Hector went to the command center to volunteer for the next special mission. A distracted corporal took down Hector’s name and bunker assignment, promising to put him on the next operation. As for when that might be? Possibly in two days. Though missions were being scrubbed more often than not lately due to extreme miasma levels in the environment.

Two days was sooner than four days, obviously, bu...

Chapter 233

Cosmic energy flooded into his soul through his domain aperture. Hector couldn’t help but cackle in joy at his success. Once he managed to go fast enough, some threshold was crossed and the cosmic energy he liberated stopped being scattered by chaos faster than he could absorb it. He still lost some to the environment, of course, but he estimated the losses as no more than twenty percent. That was so much better than losing ninety percent. It was a complete game changer.

Where be...

Chapter 232

The weeks flew past. Hector settled into an ambitious schedule of his own design. He would do a four hour block of cultivation immediately after breakfast. Then he would sleep between lunch and dinner. Then he would cultivate throughout the night as he stood watch on the wall.

Even lacking the System and the numerical analysis of its survey results, Hector could tell he was making rapid progress. His body statistic had been at five point five after consuming the Mother Elixir and t...

Chapter 231

Hector saved Mick in the battle against the rat deviants. Twice. That annoyed him. Maybe he should be above petty resentment, but he wasn’t. The asshole hurt one of his friend’s feelings, mocked another for having the voice of a eunuch, and was generally unpleasant to be around. Hector would continue to protect Mick, but he didn’t think he could make himself happy about the fact. The asshole should either be competent enough to protect himself or stay away from war.

It took about ...

Chapter 230

Their bunker was assigned to the ominously named Rage Patrol for this rotation. Fortunately, they wouldn’t have to trust their lives to Lieutenant Ringo. There were experienced leaders who ran operations on the patrols. Bunker G-B-22 received a patrol leader named George; an elderly Jinn cyborg who lived up to his designation far more than Conrad ever had.

Hector couldn’t help but compare George to RoboCop. The man appeared to be mostly machine, though that was hard to verify gi...

Chapter 229

Lunch was mass-produced Jinn slop: delicious, nutritious, and of questionable provenance. Hector had long since passed the point where he worried about such things, so he chowed down without complaint. Ajax and Nestor had introduced Hector to the other Titans in their bay and they treated him with a degree of respect. He didn’t see Esther or Mick during his trip to the dining facility. Then it was back to the bunker.

While the Titans slept, Hector settled down to cultivate. He s...

Chapter 228

Commanders lined everyone up to walk through a gate opened by the Sage of Transit. There were only a few hundred volunteers, so it didn’t take long to pass through. Hector had to be prodded by Esther to keep moving because of the distraction provided by Transit’s realm.

“It’s not that impressive,” Esther commented as they finally stepped through the gate.

That claim bothered Hector. “Can you feel what he’s doing to reality?”

“My insight into human bodies do...

Chapter 227

A/N: Volume 3, let's go! I'm going to post 2x a day this week as well. I have a huge backlog (writing volume 4 now), but it is unedited. I'm not being modest when I say they are not yet ready for the light of day. How long the editing takes depends on whether a chapter needs a quick polish or total rewrite. And writing is so much more fun than editing.... :)

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Darius and Riley insisted the three of them have a breakfast the morning of Hector’s departure. He was...

Interlude: Transit

Transit sat in his private room within the Svarga embassy reading through computer printouts he’d brought back from the Reconquest office building. The strict rules of the embassy forbade bringing Jinn technology onto the grounds in order to stymie efforts at espionage. Runes surrounding the property prevented the System from operating within the territory.

So the Arahants thought, at least. The System perceived of those runes as suggestions rather than hard rules. Per usual, it ignor...

Chapter 226

His day had barely begun when one of his neighbors knocked on his door. “Hector? You have a visitor in the lobby.” Those words were not typical on Promise City. They were especially uncommon in Tian Tower, which was an isolated community of outcast Xian.

He stopped cultivating and emerged from his room. “Who is it?”

His neighbor shrugged. “An Arahant big-shot asking for you. I wasn’t going to stick around to let her mess with my mind, so I volunteered to fetch y...

Chapter 225

The two Sages sat in a room within Promise City, unaware they were being monitored. Though had they truly wished for privacy, they would have hidden behind the protective runes that protected the Svarga embassy. The fact that they left the embassy must mean they intended to meet with another party. Who that party might be remained unknown. With near universal surveillance, that should never be the case. Though it was always possible the other party did not yet know of their meeting.

Chapter 224

All three of them were successful in their bidding. Zara received only a single item, but it was level ten meat from a dolphin, preserved with salt and powdered core dust. Dorian received his heavenly flesh pill. The remainder went to Hector. That was two sets of bone and gelatin pills and two sets of cartilage and skin pills – one each at level six and one each at level seven. There was also a level seven pinnacle organ pill and a gold elixir.

After paying the clerks, they were escor...

Chapter 223

The Lord Platinum gestured and the guards shoved Hector fully inside the room before slamming the door shut. Then it was just the three of them: Hector, the Lord Platinum, and Master Percival. This situation was so far outside of his expectations that he couldn’t understand how it had come to be. He knew enough, though. This was the death of him.

Understanding his fate was sealed didn’t mean he would go down without a fight. He couldn’t physically prevail against a lord, but Hecto...

Chapter 222

The sign read ‘silver plasma elixir, level 7’. That would certainly do wonders for Hector’s current body enhancement level. “Do they always list level for plasma elixirs at the auction?”

“Anyone selling elixirs had better list their level,” Dorian said. “If you receive one as a gift, it’s considered rude to comment on the energy density. Otherwise you need to know the quality of what you are spending your money on.”

Hector checked the lowest price on the chalkb...

Chapter 221

The three of them arrived in a receiving square within an orderly public market. Officials rushed forward to register them. Hector and Dorian stood back with hands clasped before them and head half-bowed in respect while Zara spoke through a translator. After filing the paperwork, they were shown to the auction house – a large stone box of a building lacking windows. It looked more like a fancy fortress than a place of business to Hector.

Staff gave a gold medallion to Zara. Hector ac...

Chapter 220

He’d overstepped his bounds. If the gasps from those who overheard his words weren’t enough to make that obvious, there was also the Lord General’s formidable scowl. One didn’t insinuate a lord was a shitty father. Hector took note of that in case he survived long enough to benefit from the wisdom he’d just acquired.

Zara appeared as if by magic and placed a restraining hand on her father. She offered no words, but the looming figure of Thrakkar backed off just a hair. “You ...

Chapter 219

A/N: I just realized I would be ending on a cliffhanger this Friday for the second week in a row. That's not cool and also I've been wanting to increase the number of chapters Patreon is ahead of other platforms to 50 (from 30) for a while. So double releases every day this week! That should finish out Volume 2 and let us start on the next one on Monday.

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The cookout was very similar to what Volithur had with Corey once upon a time. Hector couldn’t brin...

Chapter 218

Before returning to Tian the next morning, Hector checked his gains from the Mother Elixir.

Survey Results

Type: Xian

Level: 6

Body: 5.3

Mind: 5

Aura: 4

Domain: 3.6

Energy Reserves: 43%

Those were good gains in his body enhancement. It blew his mind that they came about from drinking just half a jug of the...

Chapter 217

Siegfried took one of the last available suites in Tian Tower. Eva got a small room. There was quite a bit of explaining about how things worked on Union Central. Esther did a lot of that, excited to have earned another commission on their housing.

The prince, when not engaging in his haughty act, was humble and even came across as thrilled by all the changes being made to his life. However the early years of his life had been, he spent the last nine posing as a refugee working menial j...

Chapter 216

Cleo’s announcement hung heavy in the air. She smelled tea. Here. Not in any of the places he’d been told to search. In a location belonging to the woman who sold him the information leading him elsewhere. The same woman who convinced him the Mother Elixir no longer existed.

“Well,” Hector said. “This is quite unexpected. The tea was in here this whole time?”

“Not in here.” Cleo’s voice grew muffled as she moved deeper into the tunnel. She rapped her knu...

Chapter 215

Cleo came through the very next day by sniffing out the rotting remnants of a large meal. The carcasses of a family of otters had been brutally ripped apart and partially consumed. Hector may have gained the title of hunter in Stein, but it was short for ‘treasure hunter’ and not a hunter of animals. Still, he felt pretty certain in his deduction that the animal responsible for the massacre of the otters was after the cores and had zero interest in the meat.

The real question: “Cl...

Chapter 214

Cleo walked around the pile of stone he’d dumped onto the ground, sniffing at the air like a human bloodhound. “I’m supposed to be sniffing out tea? Do you mean brewed tea or dry leaves or damp decaying leaves?”

“Any kind of tea,” he said.

“But just tea tea, right? No herbal varieties?”

Hector hadn’t even thought of that. “Just regular tea for now.”

The remains of the city of Rags stretched out around them. King Huron, also known as the Lord Annih...

Chapter 213

One-Shot Jerry fired a chaos bolt directly at Hector from close distance.

There was no dodging it.

His tangle of half-formed cables, directly between them, lit up brilliantly.

A crash of thunder.

Hector was thrown away. He sat up, coughing, blinking his eyes. Miraculously unharmed. The mess of cables he’d made was falling apart, still visibly glowing as he felt his domain perform the transformation of chaos into cosmic energy.

Jerry had been tossed aside as wel...

Chapter 212

A/N: Dear readers, be aware that this chapter ends on a pretty big cliff. I am writing this as a traditional novel and not specifically for serialization, so end of chapter cliffs aren't something I put much thought into. Anyway, a battle starts in this chapter and finishes in the next. The best reading experience would be to consume them together on Monday.

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He never slept that night. Fear, excitement, and everything in between kept him wired on the eve of battl...

Chapter 211

“Two hundred thousand credits,” Wayne said.

Hector stared at the beaker full of clear liquid. It glowed with cosmic energy in his mental sense. He reached for the rubber stopper and Wayne blocked his hand.

“I know your first impulse is to test whether this smells like a silver elixir. Resist the urge. We can’t predict how deadly this is to one of us. Mundane hydrogen cyanide kills unenhanced humans in minutes. This might possess a similar degree of lethality for us.”

Chapter 210

Men and women twirled about the center of the room with exuberant steps while trumpets and tubas and drums created a jaunty tune. Hector and Isabel gave a poor imitation of the spirited choreography around them. Neither of them knew the dance style. Neither of them cared to learn.

“Thank you for getting me away from Jerry,” he finally said.

Isabel wrinkled her nose. “I was not saving you. I am supposed to feel out your willingness to work with us. One level seven man cannot ...

Chapter 209

Hector cultivated for another couple weeks. During that time the maidens grew increasingly nervous. He noticed that they seldom left the hotel. A symptom of their declining funds, no doubt. Meanwhile, his energy reserves were rising. He was about half full now. Though the way that came about made his belly feel constantly empty. Skipping meals and reducing his protein intake felt like much more of a sacrifice than what he knew it objectively was.

He paid Eva in gold for information on t...

Chapter 208

His return to Union Central brought more stress. More specifically, Esther lost her temper.

“Hector, what the fuck is wrong with you? Both Riley and Darius are on Tian because why? You have every right to go on your insane adventures by yourself, but dragging your friends into life-and-death situations is unacceptable. Riley isn’t remotely equipped to handle violence. I can’t even begin to understand what goes on in your head. Are you really this impulsive? This type of behavior i...

Chapter 207

“I’d rather not stay in the same building as the maidens.”

Eva epitomized apathy. “You paid for a bed. What do I care if you use it?”

“Could I apply that rent towards another… never mind, I can tell you’re not interested.” Hector sighed. “How much for a bed somewhere else?”

“Foreigners all go to the same hostel. A private room is ten silver a week.”

Hector had the distinct impression this woman set him up so that he would have to refuse the be...