Day 26, 1:05 PM
We’re six lessons in, and we’re finally at the edge of civilization, such as it is, on the border of the corrupted lands.
“Remember, I can only use minor magic and those with mostly internal effects. I can heal you, I can enhance weapons, ignite small flames and such. Any larger show of magic would draw all nearby abominations towards us, and we would probably die. So, I’m not doing it.”
That’s the third time she’s sa...
2025-02-02 15:57:50 +0000 UTC
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Day 21, 8:20 PM
Edna enters the hut. She was probably right outside the whole time, crying in the rain, but I left her alone, she certainly needed some time to reflect.
“How are you doing?”
“Better, thank you.”
I nod in understanding. She’s still feeling like crap, best not to smile then.
“I have a bit of news which should cheer you up.”
She gestures towards me with her chin.
“I’m now an apprentice mage, m...
2025-02-02 14:10:58 +0000 UTC
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Day 21, 4:15 PM
“One must travel a long path if they wish to become a mage.” Edna’s voice is solemn, and I have to kneel on the ground before her as she teaches; because that’s the way things are done. I don’t mind, even though it’s kind of annoying. A nice cozy lecturing hall with soft, leather seats would have been better for the students’ morale. Less distracting for those with lower physique, too. But I guess you lose that whole moment of lo...
2025-02-02 14:09:29 +0000 UTC
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Day 21, 10:30 AM
“Hello, Edna!” I greet the witch as I enter her home, surprising myself with the sincere cheeriness and the fact that I actually missed her. Edna’s inside, cooking, not one whit surprised I barged in. She didn’t even flinch. Meaning, she knew I was coming. The only question is when did she start monitoring me.
“I come bearing news, most of it useless to you, though.” That catches her attention, and I continue.
“Do yo...
2025-02-02 14:08:09 +0000 UTC
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Day 19, 5:20 AM
The thirty-eighth floor is dark already, but my darkness intuition is helping me navigate around trees and bushes without a sound. It’s a neat skill, lets you see in the dark, kind of. It’s more like letting you be aware of your surroundings. The range is miserable, around one foot, and it has even more quirks.
I tried it in full light after closing my eyes; it didn’t work. There’s a threshold in illumination when it kicks in, so...
2025-02-02 14:06:51 +0000 UTC
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Day 14, 10:30 AM
With the kids safely heading for the surface, it’s time to focus on myself. What do I want to do with my life? The answer is magic. But the most immediate question I need to consider is whether I wish to continue advancing the weapon master class.
The skills I got from it are great, but the requirements for each level were steep and getting steeper. I don’t know what I did to get the third level up notification in the chain, but it ...
2025-02-02 14:01:42 +0000 UTC
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57th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Heroes have dramatic fights in tournaments, full of twists and turns, winning against impossible odds, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and advancing realm to rise to the challenge. A beautiful lady or two or nineteen see him, and he sees them, and things happen. Newt had turned eighteen, so maybe he could consider some companionship.
His gaze lingered on Elder Woodhopper. Her beautiful features, pale face, ...
2025-02-02 05:15:09 +0000 UTC
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Pick what you want in tomorrow's chapter. I'm off to have a snack and will return in an hour. If there are no responses, I'll toss a die.
Cheers!
2025-02-01 15:50:26 +0000 UTC
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57th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The core disciple trial was taking place in an arena. Newt had no idea the Explorer’s Gate had an arena. When viewed from the street, the Chamber of Instruction’s main building completely obscures the giant structure.
Beyond the initial investigation into sect rules and what various divisions did, Newt paid little attention to the workings of Explorer’s Gate. So, the fact that the sect had an arena for life and ...
2025-02-01 05:00:08 +0000 UTC
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47th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Elder Flameax took a full day to come to terms with Newstar’s sudden realm increase. He was disappointed. He had expected better from someone of Newstar’s talent, there was no need to rush, to force things, and yet…
I thought I had gotten over it. But it was difficult to accept the situation. Whatever the young man had done had certainly threatened his health and was almost certainly detrimental to his ...
2025-01-30 06:03:55 +0000 UTC
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30th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“You are trying to trick me!” Magmin hissed. “If I climb to the surface, the blazing pterosaur will attack.”
Newt stared at the creature. I did not think of that.
“What if I brought its corpse into the tunnel? Or its head?”
Magmin hesitated. The lindworm looked like it was about to pounce Newt, but the question confused it.
“All right. Don’t attempt to deceive me, I will be r...
2025-01-29 05:57:45 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The dark, oppressive mine shaft was no longer dark, nor oppressive. It was a mere hole in the ground, the air thick with earth energy, tinged with extinguished fire of the ancient volcano. The wounds and humiliation attached to the place no longer stung Newt. In a handful of moons, he had grown beyond what he once was. Beyond what fate had in store for him.
Deep underground, the double core thrummed with power. No lig...
2025-01-28 02:00:04 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
After conscripting the terrified locals to help carry the unconscious Blood Cult victims to his clanhold, Newt and his friends went back up the slopes of the Dragon’s Rest volcano.
So, could you guys not tell Elder Stronggrow about what happened? The thought passed through Newt’s mind half a dozen times in less than five minutes it took to climb the mountain. He knew it was silly and unreali...
2025-01-26 05:48:32 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“They’ll kill me.” The flabby mortal squealed, hanging upside down.
Elder Flameax had heard plenty of inane things in his long life, but despite that he had trouble believing his ears.
“You can’t be that dumb, saying something like that to a man who has a choice between roasting you slowly, piece by piece, or handing you over to the heresy hunters. Now, I know you’re a mortal and know next to nothing...
2025-01-25 05:20:05 +0000 UTC
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AN: Warning, in case you skipped the message in the previous update, this chapter has some horror elements and possibly gore, if you're extremely sensitive. This is a one chapter thing, and it will appear rarely or not at all in the future. Demonic cultivators and something called the Blood Cult has to be scary, bloody, and, well, culty. :) Without further ado, zee chappy...
29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
“Help,” the girl whimpered, snap...
2025-01-23 04:00:03 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
While deciding that Newstar’s safety was paramount was well and good, Elder Flameax still had choices to make. Important choices. A nearby city had a library, and a library was an imperial outpost, technically. Each library had a senior librarian at fourth realm or higher to evaluate the worth of knowledge shared, and that senior librarian was also the representative of the empire. Kind of.
If I fly over there a...
2025-01-22 08:06:42 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The four lower-layer cultivators drew strange sabers. The weapons’ flat sides were jagged, covered in barbs and hooks, striking or grabbing the usually safe sides with bare hands would cost Newt a chunk of flesh.
“I’ll handle them.” Newt growled at his teammates to stand back, and they did, while the two guards trembled by the door, still petrified. Newt glanced at the poor mortals and retreated so as no...
2025-01-21 04:00:04 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt and his team stood out in the streets. The yellow and green camouflage robes designed to blend into the jungle clashed with what regular mortals wore on a busy day. In part, it was because mortals wore browns and grays. The more important part, however, was that few wore matching sect uniforms when going to the market.
Mortals cleared the way as Newt moved down the once familiar path. Memories of how he had walke...
2025-01-19 04:00:03 +0000 UTC
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29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Harvesting eldenroot took slightly longer than Newt and his team had expected, but they still had plenty of time to spare for a visit to the Blazing Salamander clan.
The group stuck to the lower portion of the mountain, never challenging the velociraptors nesting near the top. Their careful approach was rewarded with one slightly more serious attack before the dinosaurs cut their losses. And with the chore-like missio...
2025-01-18 05:29:03 +0000 UTC
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19th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
How did it come to this? Newt sat in the hot-pond with Obi and the girls, staring at the stars above. Everyone was decent, in their underwear, but decent, and the water was near boiling point, hot enough to relax a low-realm cultivator’s body.
Newt hardly felt it. His physique was a realm higher than his friends, combined with his affinity for fire, made the water feel lukewarm. He never tried it, but given...
2025-01-16 08:42:33 +0000 UTC
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17th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt was at ease. On the first day, his team had collected a tenth of their quota. They could complete their mission in nine days, assuming their luck held up, then spend ten more hunting for spirit beasts and resources the sect had approved for collection. The forbidden ones were missions for other disciples, or plants significant in some other manner to keep the environmental spiritual energy harmonious.
“Another ...
2025-01-16 08:26:12 +0000 UTC
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16th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The captain of the airship had a stern face, cold, brown eyes, and kept her back straight. Her most striking feature, however, was a fierce burn, which painted the lower left half of her otherwise pristine face a furious red. Newt wondered whether the injury was like his malnutrition, something the spiritual energy found a part of the body and cemented into his appearance, or if it was a wound she had suffered after she beg...
2025-01-15 04:13:35 +0000 UTC
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13th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt and his teammates were checking available missions at the Chamber of Instruction. Outer disciples and laborers had a considerably more diverse spectrum of missions, ranging from ones as basic as cleaning to those requiring advanced skills assisting master artisans.
Inner disciples had monotonous, militant jobs. Harvesting resources in dangerous areas controlled by the sect, helping their vassals or subordinate fo...
2025-01-14 05:33:20 +0000 UTC
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47th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Half a season stormed by in a bustle of inconspicuous activity. Newt had devoted his days to improving his proficiency with spell formations, both theoretical and practical, as well as reading books at the library.
A huge rock had fallen off his chest after he had cleared his looming debt, and since nobody mentioned anything about the damage he had caused the sect on the summer solstice, Newt played along and pretended ...
2025-01-12 04:00:03 +0000 UTC
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84th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt returned to his dorm room, his nervousness made manifest as serpents dancing in his stomach. After he had learned that his friends were safe, they disappeared from Newt’s mind. Then he wanted to consult his master about what he had learned, but he found out he could not. He wanted to pay off his debt, but he found out it was not urgent.
So, with his master’s kind reminder, his friends were once more Newt’s p...
2025-01-11 06:47:47 +0000 UTC
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84th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
The Chamber of Punishment was bare. It looked like the base model all other Chamber buildings used for their layout before filling it with furniture and life. All furniture in the Chamber of Punishment was sculpted out of the same material as the walls, then Newt realized it was fused with the walls. It was impossible to move or reposition anything.
“Those visiting the Chamber of Punishment rarely deserve comfort.”...
2025-01-09 09:31:53 +0000 UTC
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83rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Greenbow or First, as she seemed to prefer to be called, appeared angry with him. Newt knew why. She waited for him to leave the Valley of the Lost for weeks, and when he finally left, he told her next to nothing. And the bit he did tell her, she did not seem to believe.
After narrating the parts he deemed safe to share, she would have dismissed them as utter nonsense, if not for the fistful of fourth realm cores. Than...
2025-01-08 04:00:05 +0000 UTC
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83th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Four weeks had passed since Newt got separated from his teammates. He had taken to meditation at the strangest of times, in the strangest of places. The fourth realm area of the Valley of the Lost was no longer a danger zone to him.
He slept, ate, and meditated without a care in the world, often right next to his kills, relying on his ever growing danger sense to warn him in time, to snap him out of sleep or meditation...
2025-01-07 05:13:46 +0000 UTC
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59th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Alabaster listened to Newstar’s teammates’ story with furrowed brows. At first, she took their words at face value that a wandering dinosaur had snatched her disciple, but there were too many holes in that story. The visibility was much greater than the length of rope, they would have heard something, they would have seen the dinosaur. Yet, they saw nothing. There was no blood, and they failed to see Newstar, despite him being a ha...
2025-01-05 09:55:23 +0000 UTC
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59th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt dodged a split second before the stegosaurus launched a volley of icicles from its tail. The frozen javelins whizzed by harmlessly, but rather than being happy with his success Newt felt frustrated.
Now that I’ve confirmed it, I can see that attack coming before my danger sense warns me, and I can’t use it for training. Newt rushed towards the dinosaur’s head. The dash was mad and suicidal, but his ...
2025-01-04 07:57:16 +0000 UTC
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