“And how do you survive an aura attack?” Torat said, speaking to a room full of young adults. The oldest wasn’t more than twenty-five years of age.
A room full of over twenty Order recruits stared silently at him. No answer came. Torat knew for a fact that all eight of them knew the answer to the question. He’d taught them this enough times to expect results.
One of them raised her hand. She had copper colored hair, freckles, and pink eyes popular to the southern region of...
2025-04-21 21:45:54 +0000 UTC
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The door opened silently. It was like the whisper of a gentle wind on a quiet night. Doors as old as it was usually groaned and creaked from the weight of their age. This one did not. Tsuyoshi stepped inside. His legs moved slowly, sluggishly, they shuffled along the ground as he walked in, closing the door behind him.
He smacked his lips as the old often do, wetting them where they had once been dry. He was draped in a long. Embroidered robe that brushed against the polished floor. It ...
2025-04-20 23:39:21 +0000 UTC
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For the third time, the woman with him gave Melmarc an odd look.
“You’re sure you haven’t been here before?” she asked, skeptical.
Melmarc nodded. “I did my mentorship program here, but I didn’t stay for the entire duration. I ran into a bit of a mishap.”
The woman’s jaw twitched and Melmarc knew that she didn’t believe him. He couldn’t blame her for it. It was often an impossible thing to believe a piece of information when everything happening in front ...
2025-04-19 04:25:36 +0000 UTC
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“And you must be Detective Alfa,” the lady said, softly, as the door slowly closed behind her. “I’ve heard much about you.”
Alfa did her best to keep the frown out of her face. She’d been told that her meeting would be with someone important to decide her fate. But the commissioner had not given her any other piece of information besides that.
Looking at the woman, Alfa was impressed. She looked like a woman in her late thirties, a woman that was no stranger to the gym...
2025-04-13 16:15:54 +0000 UTC
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“Tall, grey, and ugly,” Aurora muttered under her breath. “Too many stairs, too.”
Standing beside her, Melmarc turned up a puzzled look. He looked at the stairs, then the building, then her.
“It’s ten steps, mom,” he said, like a child who suspected there was a hidden meaning to what he had just heard.
“Big people shouldn’t have to climb too many stairs.”
Melmarc cocked a brow. “I’m not fat, mom.”
Aurora looked at him and smiled. Wheneve...
2025-04-06 15:23:51 +0000 UTC
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“Why?” Valdan’s voice was firm despite his confusion. “Was this morning not enough?”
Ted yawned like a boy too tired to deal with the stress of the morning, which was funny since it was night, late enough for there to be stars and for the moon to be out, and he was at level forty-nine. He could stave off sleep for days if he really wanted to.
Aiden gave him a suspicious look. “Have you been meditating or sleeping?”
“Meditating?” Ted shrugged. “At this poi...
2025-04-06 06:39:08 +0000 UTC
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The gentle air that came with the rising morning was tinged with the smell of pine and leaves. There was no pine of any kind within the Giant’s Garden, yet it always carried pine. Aiden had spent enough time here in his past life to remember it. Always the smell of pine and leaves. Sometimes there was also the smell of leather.
But leather was a bad sign in this forest. It was a sign that the monster had, for some reason, ventured beyond their territories. In the Giant’s Garden, the...
2025-04-05 02:31:12 +0000 UTC
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Silence was an old friend, a quiet friend. In the last few days that had seemed like forever, Naymond had sat in it, allowing its presence comfort him, envelope him.
It would come as a surprise to most people who knew him, but Naymond didn’t like noise. He didn’t like the constant existence of bustling life as people tried to live as they slowly died. The only noise he liked was the one he was making or orchestrating.
If he was not responsible for the noise, then silence was b...
2025-04-04 08:09:43 +0000 UTC
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Mouth open and lungs full to bursting, Valdan let the skill rumble from him like a thousand giants on a stampede. An ear-splitting roar fled his lungs, filling the air like a thousand flies clashing against each other, if flies were like the sounds of crashing waves.
It shook the air and the world around him, took purchase in the heart of the trees and scared the starlight into silence.
[Enraged Roar] was the skill he had gained for reaching level sixty. It was a brute’s skill b...
2025-04-04 03:05:19 +0000 UTC
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Valdan’s grip was tight, a little too tight. Certainly tighter than a swordsman’s had any right holding a sword. Lightning coursed through his veins and muscles. He felt it in his gritted teeth as they served as conduits. It was in the air around him. His placid rage. His unbridled pride.
When he brought his sword down on Aiden, he thought he heard thunder in the air.
No one dies tonight.
The boom of his falling ...
2025-04-03 04:05:47 +0000 UTC
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“What title did I gain before we encountered the Time Mage?” Ted asked. “What did I become?”
Aiden froze. It was a momentary thing, a harmful thing. He felt his chest seize and his hands threaten to ball into fists. It took him a moment to realize what was happening. A rare occurrence, his body genuinely thought he was in a dangerous situation. It was funny because he hadn’t felt this way even when he had been fighting the [Sage] in the palace.
Shit, he thought.
He...
2025-04-02 01:37:58 +0000 UTC
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Mornings were always an interesting time of the day. They began it, rousing people from their sleep, pushing them into the tasks at hand. If there was not a task pending from the day before, there would be a new one to handle with the rise of morning.
In what he liked to call his short life, Oyedi Mbaku hated mornings. He was not a morning person, had never been, and never expected that he would ever be. His father said it had been that way since he was a child. As an infant, whenever h...
2025-03-23 18:02:39 +0000 UTC
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Running fast was a confident trait of children. As you grow, you learn that at some point in time, speed is a necessity, whether it be to escape bullies, to catch the person you wished to bully, or just to win a race. Growing up, speed—at some point—is an attribute of the healthy young.
Aiden spun around a child like a basketballer trying to make his way to the hoop. One of his feet snagged against something, threatening to throw him off balance. But he was not some simple human wit...
2025-03-22 12:44:40 +0000 UTC
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“Hello, Princess.”
Sam’s voice was smooth and soft. On a more handsome face, it would’ve been soothing, almost sensual. On him, it was not. This was not because he was not handsome, as much as Elaswit hated to admit it, Sam was actually quite handsome, all those summoned from another world by her father were handsome and beautiful even if to varying degrees.
The disgust she felt from Sam’s voice was less about him being handsome and more about her knowing that at the cor...
2025-03-20 10:36:36 +0000 UTC
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The echo of pain filled the air in the form of sound. Pain struck flesh as an open palm struck hardened cheeks. A small audience stood witness, a handful of people—six men and one woman. Seven witnesses in all.
They winced with each sound that echoed through the entire forest bouncing off the barks of trees, dancing on the top of leaves and swinging from branch to branch. By the fourth blow, the entire forest had taken on a terrifying calm. Leaves no longer ruffled under the breeze of...
2025-03-18 17:46:29 +0000 UTC
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After only a few days of sitting on the bare floor, Melmarc was growing accustomed to it. There was a part of him that considered the possibility that he was not actually growing accustomed to it. There was always the likelihood that his instincts that led him to sleeping on the ground were still a part of him.
Uncle Dorthna had said that he needed therapy but nothing more on the matter.
Melmarc sighed, staring out at the night sky. Since he’d become Gifted, a lot of things had ...
2025-03-13 07:14:10 +0000 UTC
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Valdan grunted as he ran into a tree, shoulder first.
“Fuck,” he swore as he turned himself away from the tree, rolling off its bark.
Aiden ignored Valdan’s word. The knight rarely swore. Now, it happened quite often. It seemed like the time he was spending with him and his brother was corrupting him in his own way.
Ted shot out of nowhere. His feet slammed into a different tree, and he jumped off it, throwing himself to the ground. Hitting the ground in a roll, he thr...
2025-03-08 09:48:58 +0000 UTC
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Valdan held a hand over his eyes as he gauged the position of the sun in the sky. It was perhaps an hour past high noon. With no time piece in sight, this was the only way he could accurately keep track of time. At least, as accurately as he could.
“Is it hot?” Ted asked from beside him.
Valdan shook his head. “Once you are beyond level fifty, the natural weather does not affect you as much. I was trying to figure out what the time is.”
“Oh, I see.” Ted sighed. ...
2025-03-06 08:53:54 +0000 UTC
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The throne room was no longer the breath of fresh air it had once grown to be. Brandis sat, a solemn man, as he stared at the space he had come to call his own. The red carpet that trailed from the entrance, up the stairs, and the platform leading to his throne had been walked upon by predecessors before him. Woven from the intestines of the dragon slain by the first king of Bandiv, it was a powerful thing.
Or so everyone liked to think.
The truth was that nobody knew anymore. Tim...
2025-03-02 19:26:19 +0000 UTC
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Detective Dantani walked past a handful of police officers in uniform. He kept a stern face as he moved. Greetings thrown his way were received with nods and barely comprehensible grunts. He had grown up in a small town where adults, for some reason, were obsessed with being greeted. As such, he had grown to hate greetings.
It had first started with him vowing that his personal, insignificant contribution to society would be becoming an adult that didn’t demand greetings. Somewhere al...
2025-02-26 20:13:04 +0000 UTC
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“Here. Try not to abandon this one, too.”
Melmarc took his phone from Uncle Dorthna happily. The entire thing was extravagant. There was a gracious bow at the waist, and he received it with both hands. Like a subject accepting a gift from their superior.
“What happened to the other one?” Uncle Dorthna asked, ignoring his dramatic display. “Don’t you kids always keep your phone on you?”
Melmarc nodded. “We do, but communications between the portals and here te...
2025-02-25 22:03:57 +0000 UTC
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“What the fuck did you say?”
Aiden swallowed. It was a little difficult with Torat’s hand on his neck but his anxious saliva went down nonetheless.
Still, he did not show his fear. The first rule of lying that he had learned in life was that just because your lie was called into question or your victim showed doubt, it did not mean that you had to cave. Caving and telling the truth at the first sign of doubt was the purview of good people. And if you were a good person, then...
2025-02-24 23:18:00 +0000 UTC
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Fjord was on his knees. If anyone was present, they would’ve seen the pain in his eyes.
Maybe thirty minutes ago, he’d gone from following the knight who had killed one man and apprehended the other to running away. When he’d seen the beast that had come for the knight, he had been in no hurry to stay in the bushes and see what would happen. The last thing he wanted was to go gaining the attention of a monster when he didn’t have the combat class.
So, he had run. His legs ...
2025-02-23 01:33:24 +0000 UTC
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“What do you say about this one?”
Melmarc was currently looking at a dummy phone. From what he could get from the information written under the dud, the phone’s price was on the high side of things. As for the phone’s specifications, they didn’t look worth it.
Raising his head, he turned his attention to his brother.
They were currently in a large shop. It was like a small hall. The ground beneath his feet was white as snow. The same could be said of the walls and ...
2025-02-21 05:26:49 +0000 UTC
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Melmarc watched his mother go through his father’s clothes in a hurry. With the door closed behind him, he took a few more steps deeper into the room. His eyes glanced over at his father, but he didn’t allow it to settle on him.
A lot of people liked to talk about how peaceful people were in their sleep, sometimes even about how peaceful they were in their coffins. As for Melmarc, he couldn’t really say anything about how peaceful his father was in his current sleep. The reason wa...
2025-02-20 00:12:58 +0000 UTC
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Instinct was such an interesting thing. At least, those who dabbled in the study of the body and of the mind would claim so. It was the part of the being that sought to protect them. However, it was not all right. Sometimes, in its attempt to protect you, it could also deviate from your initial plans.
Anyone who knew half of anything would also know that at its simplest core, instinct was merely an involuntary need to perform habitual actions.
Aiden found himself fighting against ...
2025-02-17 23:18:01 +0000 UTC
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The room was bright when Melmarc opened his eyes again. Someone had left the curtains open so the light shined directly into his eyes. Wincing from the discomfort, he turned his head to the side.
His throat was dry, parched. If he was to liken the feeling to anything, he would liken it to a man who had been in the desert for far too long or someone new to hiking who’d found themselves on an eight-hour hike with no water in sight.
It was annoying.
When he tried to make a so...
2025-02-17 18:40:45 +0000 UTC
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Aurora had tears in her eyes. It had been a significantly long while since Dorthna had seen her cry.
“Please,” she begged as her husband bled out quietly on the floor and his teammate stood there completely confused and helpless.
A second ago she had just offered him her life. It reminded him of the same offer her husband had made many years ago when she had been lying helpless on a hospital bed, dying from the loss of her Oath.
Madness had come to him with the same offe...
2025-02-17 05:19:24 +0000 UTC
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Mildly put, Aiden was scared.
The idea of Ted dabbling in demonic mana since the town of cannibals in his former life was a very worrying thought. It meant that his brother had either been intentionally keeping secrets from him or that he had really not been paying much attention.
Considering the kind of person he had been at this point in his past life, the latter didn’t seem very important. In truth, anything Ted would’ve told him short of him dying or Aiden himself dying wo...
2025-02-15 23:12:02 +0000 UTC
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Uncle Dorthna’s spell was simple. Melmarc didn’t feel anything in the beginning, just the simple poking and prodding as his uncle worked his way up his body up to a very painful spot on his head that Melmarc had not even been aware of.
“That’s going to be a heavy one,” his uncle muttered under his breath when Melmarc groaned from being poked in the head.
“A heavy one?” Melmarc asked. “Why do I get the feeling that what you’re about to do is going to hurt?”
<...
2025-02-13 20:30:54 +0000 UTC
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