Ike pushed aside the curtain of ivy and stepped into a small, dark grotto. Trees formed walls on all sides, oozing dark sap that ants greedily harvested. Only slender gaps opened in the tightly-grown trees, barely wide enough for ants to squeeze through. A carpet of lush moss covered the soft earth and rounded river stones, and a few vines dangled down, sprouting with flowers. Sunbeams delicately illuminated the tableau, siphoning down through the canopy. It would have been an idyllic sight, ...
2025-02-13 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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For all that mages grew by pushing their limits, Rhys also wasn’t stupid. A table leg with a portion of table attached to its top sat within reaching distance to his left, table-side pointed at the cauldron, ready to become a shield via Trash Intent at the first sign of danger. Rhys set up on the side of a cliff. He could kick the cauldron off if it showed signs of fruitlessly exploding, and a stub of what had once been a long board sat on his right, ready to push it off if a kick would be ...
2025-02-12 15:00:18 +0000 UTC
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“Where are you?”
There was a pause.
“WE ARE EVERYWHERE.”
Ike licked his lips. “That’s nice and all, but where do I look when I talk to you?”
Another pause, this one broken only by the stifled sounds of Wisp giggling.
“LOOK DOWN.”
Ike looked down. He still saw nothing. Or rather, he saw what he expected to see. Rich earth, decaying leaves, the gnarled roots of trees climbing over one another. A few bugs wiggled around in the earth.
...
2025-02-12 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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They reached the bottom of the crevasse in no time. All of them except Palio, that is, who couldn’t climb down a wall or descend on a rope. Her arms were strong enough to hold her weight alone, but from the expressions she made, it was highly painful to let her immensely heavy lower body dangle. From the bottom, Ike waved.
“Just stay there. We’ll be back!”
“Or will we,” Wisp muttered to herself.
Ike nudged her. “We should be kind to her.”
“Why? She’...
2025-02-11 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Wisp led them through the woods, to the next stand of trees, and to the one beyond that. She wound around the outer edge of the city, picking her way carefully. As she walked, she explained, “The last time I was here, the puppets were already here. I didn’t really know what they were, but you know, I was a small little spider, so I avoided them. Wound my way around the city. There’s still plenty of good eating out here.”
“Guess puppets don’t eat,” Ike commented.
Wisp...
2025-02-10 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Rhys sectioned off a portion of the trash that felt more-or-less equivalent to one of his impure potions, piling the rest to the side to add on later. He wanted to push his limits, but not too much. The first impure potion sip had almost gone too far, and now he was a little more wary of carelessly shoving up the upper limit of impurities he took in at one time. He didn’t want to almost kill himself again. Better to be a little more cautious and approach this one step at a time until he cou...
2025-02-09 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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One after another, Ike cut into the puppets. After the first failure, he was careful not to repeat his mistake and slash the puppet open at the chest, but instead, cut out windows into their bodies. If they had a core, it wasn’t in their limbs or head, since he’d dismembered them, and the puppets kept going; though, now that I think about it, Rosamund kept producing goo with just her head.
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. Rosamund was the opposite of these pupp...
2025-02-09 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Porcelain-white figures lunged out of the forest. Ball-jointed dolls leaped and sprinted toward them, bursting out from all directions.
They slammed into a thin, nearly-invisible netting and tangled up in Wisp’s web. Their momentum was instantly cut short as the spider thread caught their limbs and twisted in their joints. The dolls contorted to unnatural, horrifying angles, but still struggled, not at all injured even if their heads had been whipped around backwards.
Ike looked...
2025-02-08 15:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Aquari stared at him, taken aback. “The trash?”
Rhys nodded. “It’s my path. I can burn it to get stronger.”
She considered for a moment. Her lips twisted. “I have to admit, I have no particular use for the trash, and I wouldn’t mind to see it gone. Someone recommended to me by the majority of the lower-peak teachers is surely trustworthy enough to handle the trash. However, I am the Schoolmaster. I also have to consider the other students. If I give only you access, ...
2025-02-07 15:00:10 +0000 UTC
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The city loomed over them. Already, the furthest, most far-flung houses from the city stood all around them. Ike peeked into one through a broken window as they passed by, but saw only dust and cobwebs. These houses hadn’t been lived in for a long time. The roads, too, were overgrown. Weeds grew thick in what had once been cobbled streets, their gnarled roots heaving the stones out of place. Rotten wagons sagged at the side of the road, little more than grayed scraps of wood and lumps of me...
2025-02-07 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Backed against the cliff wall, Rhys’ power spiked. His hands curled into claws. Rather than attacking recklessly, he slammed all his mana, all the strength from the impurities, every ounce of power he had, into one hand and struck Cynog’s neck with all his might.
There! What I’ve been waiting for!
Having beaten Rhys one-sidedly for the last few minutes, and in his entire last battle, Cynog wasn’t expecting an attack. He jerked back, but all his momentum was forwar...
2025-02-06 15:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Ike stared at Palio. A centaur? But that was impossible. They were myths. Like mermaids, or fairies. People were either people, or animals, but not… halfsies. Even if beasts and beasts interbred, they’d produce either beasts or humans, not centaurs. And failed beasts, who didn’t quite manage human form, looked like the owl girl, full-body mixed features, not half human, half horse, split down the middle.
But now that he was looking at her, the upper half of her horse and ...
2025-02-06 15:00:04 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Fair warning. Once this series hits RR, and it's past Rising Stars, I'll probably lower the drop rate to 3-5 times a week. As much as I'd love to run two dailies, I still work full-time on top of writing. These chapters are longer and take more to write, so it's hard to keep them daily. Plus, I have some personal events coming up these next two weeks... all that to say, please don't worry if the drop rate becomes less than daily for a little while here, especially if RR's drop ra...
2025-02-05 15:00:08 +0000 UTC
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They ran through the plains through the sun-dappled day and the moon-silvered night. An entire week passed before the grasses grew lower and gave way to first, slender trees, then full forests.
As they entered the forest, Wisp leaned toward Ike. “Don’t look now, but I think we’re being followed.”
Ike gave her a deadpan stare. “No, really?”
Both of them turned back.
In the near distance, one of the riders stood in the grass. The feather on her helmet drifted...
2025-02-05 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Outside, Rhys stretched, relishing the sunlight on his face. After so long in the musty classroom, the scent of fresh air was like ambrosia to him. He yawned and stretched some more, then turned to face Ev’s nook. From here, he couldn’t tell if she’d returned or not, but he figured he might as well stop by.
Meow.
Rhys startled. His whole body tensed, and he leaped back. A long-haired white cat walked by. It looked up at him in mild confusion, then kept walking.
<...
2025-02-04 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Wisp led the way. Ike followed close behind, afraid he’d lose her slender form among the shifting grass. The grass closed in behind Wisp, tall enough that she vanished entirely in its sway. Ike, who stood head and shoulders above the grass, sometimes could only watch out for the shifting grass ahead to guess where Wisp might have gone.
She had always been short, but now, she seemed shorter than ever. He snorted, then paused and looked himself over. The nice robes from Clarina’s plac...
2025-02-04 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Rhys slipped into the back of the class. It had been a while since he’d sat in on it, but it remained the same as ever. The man ranted away about mustelids to an empty room, with no visible acknowledgement of Rhys’ arrival. Rhys settled in to his seat and evened his breathing, letting his mind wander. Thoughts flowed in and out as he sat there, listening idly to the lecture. Today, the man was covering the details of the mustelid sleeping patterns, comparing that of ferrets and weasels.
2025-02-03 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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“Huh?” Wisp said.
“Yeah. That’s exactly how I feel,” Ike replied.
“So wait, the skill knows something, but it refused to tell you? And you don’t know… whatever it is that the skill knows? But it’s a part of you, cobbled from pieces of you, but you can’t feel it, and also it can keep secrets?” she clarified.
Ike put his hands up. “Look, I don’t get it either. No part of this makes any sense.”
“Man. That skill sounds like a pain in the ass. ...
2025-02-03 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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BANG!
The cauldron exploded. Red-hot metal shards hurtled through the air. Rhys threw himself backward, covering his head with his hands as he hit the floor. The shockwave hit him and pushed him further, and he slammed into the rock below. Hot metal seared into his back and sizzled through his sides. He gritted his teeth and hissed rather than scream in pain.
But there was no time to wait. On the floor, he activated Trash Body and whipped around to face the remnants of th...
2025-02-02 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Within Ike’s head, the two Ikes faced off. One, dressed in regal finery, gems glittering on his fingers, holding a noble, slender staff. The other, in rags, weathered and worn, clutching tight to a strange sword. The two of them stared at one another for a moment, then darted forward, clashing in a blast of light and steel.
Outside, the King and Wisp clashed. The King swung his staff in both hands. Wisp blocked with two of her own, only for two more hands to clobber the King on the ch...
2025-02-02 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Having eliminated Sorden as a good starting point, Rhys headed toward the library, his second idea. It was a good place to start. It wasn’t like Az would leave the library and tell anyone that he’d asked about potions, and Az had shown no inclination toward aggression toward Rhys, even if Rhys told him his techniques; Az was just too lazy to bother. Asking Az for potion books in the library wouldn’t keep him from being able to visit Sorden later, and besides, he could use the books to f...
2025-02-01 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Their respite at the inn was short-lived. When dawn came, they set off once more. Scar took to her own direction, setting off directly for the capitol. Ike and his people took a detour in the other direction, to the plains that stretched endlessly to the opposite side of the realm than Mag’s desert. There, Ike stood at the brink of the endless grasslands. He gazed out at the emptiness, completely and utterly devoid of people, and drew out the orb.
King’s Reign. The skill he couldn...
2025-02-01 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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A legend spread among the students of Infinite Constellation School. In a distant part of the mountain, high on the peak, some horrible monster had made its home. It spent all day hammering away at the stone, shaking the trees and rattling the earth itself. Some people claimed it was angry, furious at the school, and that it wanted to burn the whole school down, as evidenced by the black smoke that issued from its den. Others postulated that the beast must be a dragon, and that black smoke no...
2025-01-31 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Pain was the first thing Rhys felt. He swayed slightly, a breeze shifting through his hair. Rather than open his eyes, he let himself hang there, his knees wrapped around the wood of a tree and weighed there with some kind of counterweight, reflecting on what had just happened. He’d been fighting some losers and totally dominating them, and then Ev had come around. Taller, more muscular, more powerful, but still only Tier 2, well below Cynog’s strength. She hadn’t tried to kill him, or ...
2025-01-30 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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They descended through the trees, hurtling down toward the earth below. For a hair-raising moment, Sorden slalomed through branches, dropping so fast Rhys’ stomach lurched only to soar back up again, and then they were down at ground level. Rhys hopped off, glad to be back on solid ground. The flight had been fun for the most part, but those last few seconds had really whipped him around. He’d never been much for roller coasters, and roller coasters without any of the guarantees of modern...
2025-01-29 15:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Rhys spent the rest of the day in the mustelid class, but whatever enlightenment awaited him beyond that train of thought, he couldn’t grasp it yet, nor could he grasp it before six A.M. the next morning. He rose, a little annoyed at himself. He’d freed himself from Cynog, only to throw himself into Sorden’s class! He should’ve had the foresight to see out this enlightenment, first.
Ah, well. Sorden liked him. He was pretty sure he could ask her for a few days off to fo...
2025-01-28 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Rhys rushed across the peak, Tarais at his heel. When the students saw him coming, they dismissed him, but they cleared out of the way at the sight of Tarais, a rare Tier 2 student. In such a way, the two of them ran easily across the peak almost entirely unobstructed. Rhys wrapped his arms around the pot, hugging it tight to his chest. He protected the delicate flower with a raised hand, shielding it from the wind that blew around him from running. Coolness brushed against his chest, emanati...
2025-01-27 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Pausing in the center of the square, Rhys extended his mana. He searched the air, hunting out any sign of Tarais’ signature. For a long moment, there was nothing, and then the color of her materialized, brushing the very limit of his senses. He chased after it, leaving the square behind. Not far behind the main buildings, he came up to a large, blank, boring-looking white building with evenly spaced windows placed at short intervals over its entire three-story height. Instantly, he recogniz...
2025-01-26 15:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“But you’re not.”
Shawn turned.
Mont lounged before him, floating improbably on a large slab of pumice. He leaned on one hand, frowning slightly at Shawn.
“No. I’m not,” Shawn allowed.
Mont gestured, and a powerful stream of energy welled up from the heart of the mountain below them and flowed into Shawn. Shawn’s body changed. From the small child he usually appeared as, to a teen, to an adult. He stood despite the deepness of the water, as the stone rose...
2025-01-25 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Rhys jolted awake. For a second, he laid there, aching and staring at the ceiling. The pain was familiar. Nowadays, he was lucky not to wake up with a crick in his back or a pounding headache. He knew he should live better, lose a few pounds, but damn if his chair wasn’t comfortable. No, that part he understood. The confusing part was the ceiling. Vast and immense, old hardwood vaults interrupted lush wood panelling. His brows furrowed. Now that he was looking around, the walls were a bit o...
2025-01-25 15:00:05 +0000 UTC
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