[Hall of Mirrors has reached (Great)!]
[Unyielding Metal has reached (Great)!]
[Parallel World Manipulation has reached (Intermediate)!]
[Beat of War [New!] (Basic) (Your heartbeat is the drum. Hear the rhythm, master the flow, and be untouched among war.)]
<... 2025-10-11 16:34:33 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 269: Stronger
The night passed quietly. Starlight glittered on puddles of blood. The moon hung in the window, casting ghostly sheens of white. Mercury looked like a corpse, though his slowly regenerating organs quickly made that impression fade. If anything, he looke...
2025-10-06 01:34:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 268: Sometimes we Suffer
[Evolutionary Fusion confirmed. Engaging. Please pick an option to evolve the Skill into. The price will be the same (1100 Skill points), no matter which you choose.]
[1. <Steel Spider>
2. <Carve>
3. <Reap>]
[...
2025-10-03 03:06:04 +0000 UTC View PostRu came at me like a missile.
It was a brutal, violent motion, the rock shattering beneath him as he launched himself forward. He was wrapped in scarlet fire, cascading down him like rivers of magmatic blood. The sword grew in his hands again, metal warping with a screech, going from ...
2025-09-27 16:57:47 +0000 UTC View PostNow, I think there are very few words for describing how novel an experience it is to get struck by divine lightning. It is nothing like getting zapped by any lightning cultivator. I’d know - I later on asked Rae to zap me, just to confirm.
But this was far different from t...
2025-09-26 05:06:28 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 267: Shifting, Cracking, Breaking
Mercury stood in front of the statue of gold, and he demanded an answer. His Skill triggered, and it pulled at the thing that was an avatar of three sins. It was a thing of voice, of expression, and it had to reply.
“We,” the statue...
2025-09-23 03:04:29 +0000 UTC View PostWhere there was nothing, there started a song.
It echoed across strings of glass, mirror-diodes and hearts. Across a shared connection, both intimate and distant. A promise to look into the future together.
The song sought the connection and swam across it. Ann was sitting in the livi...
2025-09-19 02:45:50 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 266: Workaholic Recovery Center :)
When Mercury woke up, he found himself sitting in a hot springs, with a towel gently draped across his cloak, like a soft, warm, heavy blanket. Blearly, he blinked open his eyes, getting greeted by a flit of notification he quickly waved awa...
2025-09-18 03:02:57 +0000 UTC View PostSaph sat with me, in the frozen mountains, and there’s a strange half-calm that lingered between us.
It was bizarre to think that we’d been trying to kill each other just a little while ago. I’d broken many zurulen, the giant, living piles of rock that apparently spawned from Sa...
2025-09-10 05:51:26 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 265: Respite
The portal to Sloth was different from the others. They had all been invasions - violent attempts to take from this world and bring to theirs. To feed and gorge themselves on things that did not belong to them. Violence, theft, hunger.
Sloth was not q...
2025-09-10 05:50:06 +0000 UTC View PostThere was something that I appreciated about violence.
This wasn’t exactly a new development. I’d beaten up bullies before. I’d gotten into a fair share of scrapes with my brothers, too. Ivan, Jacob and I hadn’t exactly been easy kids. I was probably a better sister for Beth now, bu...
2025-09-02 19:42:11 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 264: Futureproof
Ihn’ar was understanding. It was vision beyond vision, comprehension of things not meant to be understood. It was breaking the veils and looking past them.
Zeyjn was the splitting of the mind into perfect pieces, able to operate and rest and focus on ...
2025-08-30 22:51:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe hospital was sterile and white, and I felt horribly mundane as I walked in. My memories are blurred, but I know I talked to a receptionist at some point, who pointed me at a nurse, who pointed me at my dad’s room. Third floor, room seventeen.
I remember that because I spent what must ...
2025-08-28 02:19:11 +0000 UTC View PostTurns out, putting magic into metals was hard.
The simple reason was that controlling anything on a molecular level was usually a delicate thing, and often reserved for sterile processes. There was nothing sterile about working with a forge. Sure, it was clean, but then you’d hit gl...
2025-08-26 03:36:31 +0000 UTC View Post“Hi Lyra, this is Matt speaking,” the swordsman spoke into his phone. “Yeah, I’m going to break into a building. Yes, it’s a good reason. We’re suspecting Echo research.”
The chattering on the other end went silent. When the voice spoke again, it was a lot more serious. Matt s...
2025-08-20 02:30:29 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 262: Threats and Cats
Pride. Greed. Lust. Sloth.
Those were the remaining sins. Realms of excess and debauchery, of want and desire, of self-embodied perfection and demands of respect. They were rifts in the world, caused by human folly and primordial twists. How d...
2025-08-16 17:00:34 +0000 UTC View PostRichard Terril, son of Jonathan Henney, had a lot of things to clean up.
His father had been a brilliant man. No one, no matter how much they hated him, would deny that. Mr. Henney had been incredibly sharp, able to find opportunities and generate social and financial capital...
2025-08-14 03:17:02 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 261: Surrounded
[Main Quest: “Rends in Reality” advanced!
Partial Reward granted by entity: <Dream Manifestation> mastery.]
[<Dream Manifestation> has levelled up! <Dream Manifestation lv. 2 -> 3>]
As he stepped through the void and ...
2025-08-09 16:38:40 +0000 UTC View PostI woke up, eventually, and I was rather warm.
We were still in the north. The mountains were still covered in ice. But there was a blanket draped across me. A blanket that… looked strangely dark.
[Treasure: Flicker of Regret
Owner: Emilia
Description: From da...
2025-08-07 04:47:44 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 260: Incandescence
Breeze did not enjoy the feeling of the wind.
There was something about it that felt so unnaturally freeing, so easily cruel. It made it easy to forget. To get lost. To run and run and run and break everything in its way.
Now that he knew what t...
2025-08-05 00:01:20 +0000 UTC View PostThere is a simple way to fight fire, and that is with water. Drowning the giant seemed like an easy choice, given that we were fighting on a frozen over lake and that Chris’ human shell used water and ice Qi.
Instantly, steam hissed up from the lake, black fire cresting its surface....
2025-08-02 17:34:15 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 259: Ash and Redemption
/Crowns.
These things have a reputation among any sufficiently large people, don’t they? Crowns. They’re a symbol of status, of superiority, of being the greatest. A ruler, a champion, a monarch, yes?
So often when people ar...
2025-08-02 01:18:30 +0000 UTC View PostBlack fire crested the horizon.
I looked out at that flame, and felt what it caused in me. I felt the rage that spilled, the throbbing ache that was still there. The horror of loss and despair that I’d felt when things had gone wrong. My ears rang with emotion, and the hair across m...
2025-07-26 16:00:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 258: Sprawling Spiral
There was something both haunting and meditative about unmaking a person.
Sitting among an endless nest of threads, Mercury felt a little bit like a spider. He didn’t have as many limbs, of course, but his mind and Skills made a good alternative....
2025-07-25 02:22:01 +0000 UTC View PostThis new version of myself looked around the world with curiosity. Her mouth was open with wonder, and her eyebrows raised in surprise. It made her look a little silly. Did I look like that, too? Is that why Ann teased me sometimes?
Her gaze snapped to me, and she rolled her eyes. “Hey, d...
2025-07-17 00:01:59 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 257: Personhood
Otto was not a bad person. Mercury felt the need to remind himself of that fact.
The man was gentle, almost all the time. Sometimes, he was unaware of his strength, but almost all the time, he held back. He moved slowly, just to make sure he did no...
2025-07-15 14:08:25 +0000 UTC View PostHive-Mother had found a wonderful place to thrive in.
When it was young, it was always weak. Lonely. It felt cold and small, and only thrived by eating scraps from the floor. Slithering, crawling over sparse plants under red skies. It could hardly see, but it wanted to devour and grow. ...
2025-07-09 01:19:39 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 256: Cleansed with Blood
And so, a little over a year passed.
Mercury collected another 100 Skill points from <Skill Point Generation>, and the Skill levelled up once more. Some things happened.
Bael, against all odds, built a vacation house in Stormbr...
2025-07-08 22:38:44 +0000 UTC View PostWhile Eden was safer now that the eclipse had passed, that by no means erased all the impact it had. Multiple cities laid in ruins, and the usurpers had claimed far, far more land for themselves. They’d claimed gateways that had been in those cities, and established gigantic nests, breeding mor...
2025-07-04 15:36:38 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 255: People
CW: Grief, Brief mention of suicidal thoughts (2nd section of the chapter)
Humans are vain creatures.
Bael sat in her room, thinking. It was a plain room, with a single bed in it, a nightstand, a small table, and a dresser. There was a small ...
2025-07-03 03:49:22 +0000 UTC View Post