Maksym Pachesiuk

Old Grudges and Treachery - Chapter 5

Gathering our abandoned suitcases, we hailed two cabs and headed straight for the clan quarter.

I suggested stopping by a café on the way, but Sally immediately shot the idea down.

“You want to insult Aunt Mary?”

Sally always called her “Aunt,” even though in the family tree she was technically her grandmother. But she was far too young for the title. That was because my father and Uncle Gordon were born from my grandfather’s second marriage, coming into the world...

Old Grudges and Treachery - Chapter 4

I hesitated only briefly before opening my third eye. The world bloomed with magic—colorful sparks pierced the air, threads of various elements stretched from the compartments, and in the hunter standing at the far end of the carriage, a black, primordial darkness had taken root. The greatest concentration of it wasn’t in his lower abdomen, in the elemental source, as I had expected, but in his spiritual heart, where the darkness had squeezed out even the last remnants of the blood magic ...

Old Grudges and Treachery - Chapter 3

My birthday had unexpected consequences—we were all invited to a wedding. Logan didn’t care—what’s another ten guests when you’re already inviting three hundred?

But the thought of babysitting our reckless company didn’t exactly thrill me. At first, I didn’t even take it seriously. Then, somehow, the girls worked their magic on their families—I have no idea how—and suddenly, it was too late to back out. Their families had called Aunt Mary, and I had simply been present...

Old Grudges and Treachery - Chapter 2

I woke up to a scream.

It felt like someone had jammed a needle into my ear.

I tumbled out of bed but sprang to my feet instantly, throwing up a shield from my ring—thankfully, I hadn’t taken it off for the night—and reached for the pistol in my shoulder holster.

Except… there was no pistol. No holster either. Through the transparent plane of the shield, Ellie’s terrified face stared back at me. She had pulled the blanket up to her chin.

"Riiight…" I tried ...

Old Grudges and Treachery - Chapter 1

Lord Loxlin Series:
Book 1 - Warlock's Last Exam https://www.patreon.com/collection/1254431?view=expanded
Book 2 - Wizard's First Lesson https://www.patreon.com/collection/1282311?view=expanded
Book 3 - Old Grudges and Treachery

It was my first birthday at the Anvil. Outside the w...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 142: The Puppet

I couldn’t see the thinhorn’s smile under his mask, but his eyes were laughing. The look of someone who had everything under control.

“Oh!” he said. “One female did escape, actually. The second team’s playing with her right now.”

Bao and Denis turned to look at me. Both were tense, but they hadn’t fully grasped what was happening yet. Their interfaces were silent too. Total isolation.

“Demon?” Bao asked, slowly shifting into a fighting stance.

I rai...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 141: In the Trap

I spent the entire first day diligently shovelling dung, avoiding the urge to activate any drones. For the first hour, I kept glancing around, trying to see if anyone was watching me. A fairly pointless exercise, really, a whole swarm of surveillance drones hovered overhead, and in my black-and-yellow armour, standing out in the middle of the beetle fields, I was about as inconspicuous as a flare in a cave.

I gave up on that by the start of the second hour.

Shovelling dung wasn’...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 140: The Scarab Herd

Sometimes, you need to stop and look at yourself from the outside.

Once again, I caught myself thinking that life was carrying me along with the current. I was flailing, spinning, clinging to the rocks jutting out of the stream, doing everything I could to stay afloat — yet the river of life was slowly but surely overpowering me.

I had far too many goals and tasks. The further I went, the more they tangled and blurred together. I’d cling to what worked, or, conversely, stubbor...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 139: Bug Fly

Funny thing, while using Thousand Sparks of Awareness, I never felt any smarter, but once the technique ended, I definitely felt dumber.

Artem, once he pulled himself away from his own ‘breakthrough’, explained that this was normal. He even showed me some readouts on his tablet, none of which I understood in the slightest.

To be honest, I didn’t entirely trust him anymore, not since the medics found significant damage to my cerebral cortex.

Especially considering he wa...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 138: Dust and Wind

After Kate had calmed down a little, I offered to pay for the repairs, with great hope that she'd refuse. Thank God she couldn’t see my face through the closed visor, or she might have caught on to my sneaky little plan.

Kate told me to go to hell, and I exhaled in relief.

Then a medic peeked into the hall. Just one, though I was used to seeing them in pairs. Apparently, the alert system had reported more about injuries than I’d assumed.

The interface in all its glory. 2025-09-07 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 137: Just Another Spar

To evaluate my new abilities, I needed a sparring session.

The obvious choice would’ve been Cinar — we’d sparred more than once before, and he would’ve gladly accepted my invitation. The problem was, Cinar was one of those who had a decent chance of beating the crap out of me — and he’d done it more than once already. I didn’t want to reveal my capabilities before the tournament.

So, I called Kate.

Yes, she was no longer my mentor, but now she was my fellow dis...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 136: A Little Reward

The medic scanned my head first. He frowned and scanned again, as if something didn’t add up.

“Neural cortex is damaged. Multiple micro-traumas… Care to tell me what happened here?”

“I was practising a movement technique that lets you run through the air, forgot the limitations, built up too much negative qi, it blew up and I kissed the ceiling first, then the floor.”

“Then why’s your cortex shredded like that?” the medic asked.

“You’re asking me?...

⚠️ Another Tournament Arc Incoming ⚠️

There will be more tournaments (137 chapter+) — and I could use your input!

The first three readers to comment in the #characters-creation channel on my Discord server will be able to name and describe a character, and choose their roots (limited to School roots only).

My Discord is generally dead, but it’s the best place for direct communication. I will need to clarify some details during the creation process, so you can leave the server afterward if you wish...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 135: Smashing Enlightenment

It took me over a month. Thirty-two days, to be precise, since the day I acquired Sky in the Fist. I had less than three months left to collect dust in the Air Garden. And throughout that time, I’d been doing nothing but burning incense sticks. I must have burned through a decent-sized cart of them. But I still couldn’t separate Air Qi from Fist Qi. Just like I couldn’t get Thousand Sparks to work. At some point, Artem cut our training sessions in half, and now they were down to a quart...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 134: Catch the Smoke

There was no essence available for units in the shop, but Novak had no trouble arranging a batch of thirty at cost price. Still, using them in batches for cumulative effect in the Air Garden required paying in points.

And in the halls where Air cultivators trained, there wasn’t any dust. But there was a lot of smoke. They all used special incense sticks, though none held them between their teeth like Alan. And this smoke had no scent. Training took place in individual transparent boot...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 133: The Dust

As soon as I received the technique, Kiwi said he didn’t like my stats.

“Your Fist dominates too clearly over everything else. You’ll have trouble with sensitivity, which is crucial for dust collection, and with executing the technique itself. You need to raise your Air,” he said firmly. “The Garden lends essence. One vial equals four kilograms of dust.”

Judging by the rate I got when purchasing the technique, 90 kg for 90 points, the Garden’s essence came in at a po...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 132: Air Garden

So, what was on my plate right now: upgrading old techniques, studying new mental ones, and picking an ultimate. The last I’d postponed until I could reassert control over my reactor. My energy expenditure was already too high. Just working with Hook under Rene left me completely drained.

I’d started drinking more marigold tea to recover, to the point where it made me nauseous, but at least it gave me enough of a boost to work with mental techniques right after Rene. That said, my h...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 131: Thousand Sparks of Migraine

The annual auction had ended. Breakthroughs came in waves.

The total number of breakthroughs reached three hundred out of nearly two and a half thousand first-years. About fifty had already been weeded out for one reason or another. Another four crippled their cultivation.

My hole-ridden memory told me the auction was supposed to be a grand affair — a gathering of powerful families flaunting their wealth to one another. An apotheosis of pomp and envy, with threats and backstabbi...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 130: Eyes, Ears, Beetles

Bao and Denis reacted differently from Marlon. Much closer to how I had expected — formally friendly. The news soured their mood somewhat, but it didn’t shake their determination to reach their goal.

If Marlon was right and they didn’t make it, it would hit them hard.

Each of them had twice as many points as I did at the moment, but they hadn’t broken through yet. Depending on their choice of materials, that could drop their balance to zero or even below, whereas I was due...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 129: Coin and Qi

I returned to my room with mixed feelings. After the shield experiments, Kate had me test the gap between our levels. She quite literally forced me to eat sand.

My reinforced body allowed her to hold back less. The electric bolts no longer hurt the way they used to, no longer made me arch in agony. Still, she got carried away to the point where I had to remind her that my body also needed rest.

So she changed tactics and let me hunt her instead. I quickly drained my reserves down ...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 128: Power, Control, Balance

I sat in the chamber, unable to make sense of what I felt. The body was mine, and at the same time not. Every breath echoed in my chest not just as air, but as a wave of energy that now resonated in my bones, my muscles, even my brain. As though I’d been permanently plugged into a power grid, and all that excess energy wasn’t harming me, it was simply searching for an outlet.

My first small breakthrough had had rather unpleasant side effects — every sound too loud, every light sta...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 127: Break or Fall

My breakthrough was to take place in the Hall of Meditation. But not the one I was used to. The Hall of Meditation, like the Halls of Order, Medicine, and Technology, was one of the school’s structural divisions. When a first-year spoke of the Hall of Meditation, he usually meant that utilitarian corridor lined with fifty cramped chambers that looked more like gas chambers or shipping containers.

Kate brought me to a different hall. This one bore no resemblance to an industrial facili...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 126: Rats, Cats, and Demons

It turned out nothing like I had imagined.

The reactive shield enhanced the striking properties of the Monkey and the Iron Head, but it also had a drawback — a negative effect on the recoil of the technique. After executing it, I would freeze for half a second longer.

Layered shields, on the other hand, could potentially cut recoil by a quarter of a second — an eternity in battle.

Black Dragon’s Blood was out, along with the Fire Ginseng Root, Black Pine Resin, and Val...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 125: The Final of Three

Tariq was expelled. Not for using banned substances.

In fact, only two of the ‘zombies’ were found to have illegal substances in their blood — and they weren’t combat stimulants, but mild recreational drugs. Those unlucky ones were expelled too. However, there was no shortage of stimulants in the cadets’ blood — an ocean of perfectly legal enhancers which were strongly advised never to be mixed. It was precisely this mixing that created the zombification effect.

Every ...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 124: No More Tournaments

Night had fallen over Verdis. The sky was strewn with stars, but neither Earth nor any other moon was visible from the window.

For the first time in a long while, I was able to take my usual seat at Novak’s tea table and gaze out at the impressive view beyond the glass — and, just my luck, as if to match my foul mood, it was the least impressive view I’d ever seen from the big boss’s office.

Novak began pouring the tea, and I turned my head away from the night sky.

T...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 123: No Relief

I was standing in the middle of a mess of meat. Literally. Bones, blood, snot, broken teeth.

Some of the bullies were still twitching. One of them was even trying to get up despite a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder, and the fact that I’d definitely nailed him in the head with a Chain Punch projection.

I really wanted to ask my invisible companion a question.

Adam? What’s the situation? Can I relax and breathe now? Or is this exactly when it all kicks off?

Silence...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 122: Stairwell Zombies

In the infirmary they kept me for an extra day. Not in the pod, but in a room with an actual bed. I hadn’t even known they had those here.

Not that I spent much time lying on it, because the room also had a treadmill and a multi-purpose exercise station for bodyweight training: pull-up bar, parallel bars, wall bars. Zola made me work up a sweat on both, just to make sure my body had fully recovered and responded the way it should. All so I’d be ready for the fight.

Tariq knew ...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 121: Marked Again

Waking up the second time was easier.

And this time, I had underwear on — already a win.

For some reason, that was the first thing I remembered — not the failed tournament, not the demons, not the six days without cultivation.

The capsule hadn’t even fully lifted when I spotted Zola.

Something about the way she was standing set me on edge. I wasn’t sure I was even fully awake — my body felt sluggish, nothing responded quite right, and everything around me was...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 120: Lights Back On

Getting onto the arena without visibly limping was no small task. To move my nearly numb, frozen left leg properly, I had to tense my whole body, and risk another spasm. But I tried. Sweating, clenching my teeth so hard they creaked, I forced myself to maintain a facade of calm.

The pain was so intense, the darkness behind my eyes so frequent, that I no longer believed I’d make it to the fight.

Who gets third place if both candidates are too injured to continue?

The one wh...

Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 119: Not Down Yet

A few drops of blood flew from the spike as Сinar’s fist went for another swing. My left hand was still pressed against his chest. I didn’t even realise how I’d activated the Monkey and pushed him away.

The spike had only grazed my armour, but the Monkey recoil was enough that I barely managed to stay on my feet.

Bloody nausea! Bloody spinning world!

Сinar had done his homework, too. He’d watched my fights. He’d figured out how I worked. And he’d found my weak ...