noct

263. Level Up!

262. Let Us Proceed

261. Undoing

260. Clearing the Mark

259. Trashed Intents

258. Make Mistakes, Get Messy

257. Palace, Sweet Home

256. A Complex Joke

255. Feeding Time

254. The Hunger

253. Filth Pillar

252. Big Fat Pillars

251. Made of Filth

250. For Science!

Rhys deliberately tripped his impurities over a line of the mana circuit, killing it. He held his breath, waiting for the dead man’s switch to activate.

Nothing happened. The mark remained the same as ever.

He frowned. Huh. I guess it’s got a bit of tolerance for breakages. Then again, if it didn’t, with circuitry this fine, it’d be blowing up mages left and right whenever they got in a battle and took a blow to the neck. Still, it was interesting that it did have...

249. Four Peaks are better than Two

Rhys left the first peak behind and headed toward the second one. His trash star was still burning hot, but it was slowly burning less hot. He still wished he’d had to exert a little more energy to fight the men, but, well, he couldn’t style on them and work hard at the same time, so he’d just have to push his limits a little more at the next pillar… or maybe defeat all the men and then double back to absorb the pillars. He didn’t have to do both simultaneously. He could do...

248. Wanna Talk?

The man licked his lips, then snarled. “Dammit! This is all that idiot Blanc’s fault… and now he’s dead, anyways, so why did I even bother?”

“Yeah, why did you bother?” Rhys asked.

The man gripped his robes and pulled them down, showing Rhys his neck. A small mark stood there, the same as Bast’s in both appearance and aura. “There. That should tell you everything you need to know, right?”

Rhys’s eyes widened. He sucked in a breath. “Oh.”

The A...

247. Get 'em, Boy!

“Let’s go get ‘em, boy.”

The men charged, and Rhys… Rhys lounged. From all directions, men raced toward him, drawing swords, axes, hammers, or even firing strange magics toward him and his skelly boy. He lazed in their midst, supremely unconcerned even as the weapons and magics closed in on him. As the first man reached him, Rhys lazily reached out and tapped the flat of the sword hurtling toward him. To the man, it looked like just a tap, but Rhys forcibly imbued the...

246. To The Square

The old man nodded. He turned and led Rhys down the mountain, toward the more civilized parts of the peak. Rhys followed happily, totally unworried. He had unleashed his full power earlier, so he was pretty sure the old man knew he was Tier 4, but he cut his tier back to around 2 anyways, just in case. He’d rather be underestimated than overestimated. Even if this grandmaster knew his tier, there were still plenty of other weaker fighters who could make mistakes.

He extended his subtl...

245. Becoming Trash

He sat there before the pillar and absorbed the toxic mist the way other mages sat in a mana well and absorbed mana, soaking it in for hours, then days. No one came by to disturb him, but that wasn’t surprising; even if they knew about this place, even if they’d created it, it would be too toxic for anyone but Rhys to approach. He absorbed nearly all of the mist, but not all, and nearly all of the gunk flowing from the stone pillar, but not all, and plenty of gunk still coated the surroun...

244. Deep Shit

Rhys raised his brows for a moment, considering the possibility, then shook his head. Hopefully he wouldn’t run into anyone up here, because if that was the case, then whatever grandmaster or schoolmaster had done this, likely wouldn’t take kindly to someone who wasn’t supposed to be here knowing all about their secret pollution stream. But if he was just the filth fairy, and spirited away their problem, then ran before anyone saw him, he totally circumvented that problem. It sounded li...

243. How Dangerous?

Rhys quickly left the frozen wastelands behind, changing into his ordinary robes when the fur ones grew too warm. Even if he didn’t feel the temperatures that much anymore, comfort and discomfort were still a thing; he only felt it as a mild twinge as opposed to the sweaty hell he was used to overheating feeling like, but then, not only was he a mage, but he was also a few hundred pounds lighter. He’d be shocked if heat felt the same without all his blubber locking the heat in, let alone ...

242. Getting Away

Rhys reached out to his impurities. He wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but it was a gambit worth trying… and also kind of his default move. He took a deep breath—

A wave of killing instinct burst across the room, freezing Rhys to his bones. A quiet, almost childish voice sounded out. “Ravin, I like that person.”

Rhys and Ravin both froze. Slowly, they looked at Sid.

“You asked for me, didn’t you? And he brought me. That was the deal. So why are you hurting...

241. Beneath the Ice

“What?” Sid asked, his voice as cold as the ice tunnels they stood in.

“Skill issue. I had a problem with my skill at first, but I resolved it,” Rhys explained earnestly, as if his words could not possibly mean anything else, while simultaneously enjoying Daran’s invisible-to-everyone-else meltdown in the corner of his vision.

“Oh.” Sid nodded and wandered away, exploring the space supported by the pillar.

Rhys breathed in and out, feeling the difference in his...

240. Lock In

Rhys dove down the hatch. Sid followed after him, in no particular rush. Beneath the ice, Rhys started dragging out items from his trash star—things that were sturdy and adamant, which emanated a desire to stand and survive. He piled them against one another, quickly building a shabby lean-to or hut.

He could run deeper into the ice and avoid the herd, hope that the depth of the ice would save him, but on two accounts, he refused. First, if the ice was going to collapse anywhere, it w...

239. Not Today

For reasons that Rhys thought were entirely reasonable, he didn’t take the insane bug monster several realms higher than him through his secret teleport escape holes, but instead took him the long way back, through the ice and the snow. It wasn’t as bad going back as it had been coming out, thanks in part to him knowing the route and how long it was between places, and in part to his much higher cold resistance thanks to his training on the way out. For Sid’s part, the bug man didn’t ...

238. So Much For That

Mirai came barreling down the street toward them, her fluffy skirts flapping around her. She leaped into the air and bounded to a halt right in front of Sid, spreading her arms in a big pose. “Hi! You’re really creepy. I’ve always loved the goth vibe, though! And you’re killing it!”

A vein throbbed in Grave’s forehead, but at the same time, the same expression appeared on his face that Rhys sometimes saw on himself when he faced a difficult puzzle that engaged his p...

237. Stuck

Rhys turned to go, only for his feet to stick in place on Sid’s web. He opened his mouth to ask Sid to release him, then paused as his anxiety spiked even without him calling on the cursed senses. I feel like if I ask him to help me, he might just help me off this mortal coil.

Sid was dangerous. Crazy dangerous. He definitely lost the crazy contest to Sid, even if Sid wasn’t the kind of crazy he’d expected. He’d been thinking of a certain purple-and-green-suite...

236. Following the Trails

The trails twisted around the town, overlapping and passing through it many times. Rhys stood back a ways, atop a nearby hill, and gazed down at the town from above. It was absolutely seething with cursed energy from this vantage point, its streets squirming with the stuff, a thousand worm trails curling through the town. From up here, though, he could see where the lines ended, and where they kept coalescing to: the cellars and sewers around town. Repeatedly, the lines vanished underground, ...

235. To The Tavern

Contrary to Mirai’s wandering path, Grave led him swiftly and confidently to a tavern. It wasn’t the kind of tavern Rhys was used to, with a rowdy and down-at-the-heel atmosphere, but instead a refined establishment, with perfectly arranged décor. A man stood at the door, dressed in a neat suit and carrying a cloth over one arm. As they approached, he gestured, clearly offering to show them in, but Grave lifted his hand, politely and silently requesting to show Rhys and Mirai in instead....

234. Meeting New People

Grave vanished somewhere while Mirai bounded off, leading him out of the café and across the city. She wasn’t wearing much more than she’d been wearing before, though she’d ditched the uniform in favor of a fluffy pink layered tutu-slash-skirt and a tight pink-on-pink bodice, both laden with deco pins, clips, and ornaments, but it made her stand out even more in this frozen land for her to be tiny, pink, and not wearing thick, fur-rimmed clothes. She didn’t seem to mind it; if anythi...