It is, in fact, the same gathering place we were almost not let out of yesterday. The guards are different, though, and don’t recognize us, so we don’t get any trouble. It’s still a lot of humans, but they seem to have expanded to a few nearby buildings, and more tents have been set up.
Organized. It’s organized, there is food, there is water. So what...
2025-12-26 17:54:41 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 280: Cult of Infernal Flames
“Hello,” Mercury said. “I’d like to join your cult.”
Chung Nam-Cheong stared at him. The young man, part of the Cult of the Infernal Flame, was just about to try to kill this pretentious, righteous looking wannabe cultivator. “Huh?” he asked instead, stunned into silence.
Mercury tilted his head. “Sorry, was I unclear...
2025-12-22 01:53:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe arrow in my shoulder pins me to the tree behind me.
It was shot with a lot of force, too, having penetrated rather deep into the wood. It hurts, so bad.
Jess screams. There’s a roar in the distance. My heartbeat speeds up. Adrenaline courses through my veins.
A second passes, and Inu is in front of me. Another arrow goes into her arm, ...
2025-12-18 23:24:21 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 279: Magic
/There are mountains beyond the mountains. There are skies beyond the skies.
There is no perfection. There is no pinnacle.
To cultivate is to challenge the heavens, but more than that, it is to challenge yourself.
Grow for the sake of growth. Want for the sake of wanting. Be greedy. Be selfish. Be kind. Indulge.
And seek out the heights as...
2025-12-16 04:16:45 +0000 UTC View PostCW: Gore
The way we end up defeating the slimes is with Jess’ help.
She freezes them using her skill, turning the critters into little more than blobs of ice. Then, they don’t explode when killed. I stomp another one of them into angry ice cubes.
[You have killed a lv. 2 Slime]
Thatch leads on and we follow.
Slowly, the ...
2025-12-15 20:47:31 +0000 UTC View Post[Congratulations!]
The text appears before my eyes again, just the same way it did during the night. It feels quiet, almost personal.
[You have gained access to your class through supremacy.]
[Additional details will be revealed. Brace.]
I set my teeth. A vice clamps around my head. It’s not… painful, at l...
2025-12-11 18:00:35 +0000 UTC View PostWe walk up the hill. It wasn’t there before, sprouting from in between damaged buildings. Green grass spilled over from jagged edges of the concrete, puzzle pieces being shoved into each other until they fit, the edges battered.
The terraforming is strange. Plants shouldn’t just be able to be fused into each other. If we assume they’re all the size ...
2025-12-08 02:01:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 278: A Lesson
“What even are you?” matriarch Joo Sung demanded.
“A cultivator,” Mercury said with a shrug.
Joo Jidong stared, wide-eyed at the remnants of the clash. All that remained was a trickle of metallic blood on the ground. “Fascinating,” he said. “You must have a strong metal qi technique. Are those the iron-forged bones of t...
2025-12-08 01:59:24 +0000 UTC View Post[Suppression 3 > 4]
The night passes and [Suppression] levels up again. With my enhanced senses I can see what changed. The way the mana moves changes a little. In fact, each time I cast it, I manually adjust the flow a bit, just to see what changes.
Now, with another level, it crashes down on the little parasite even harder. It ...
2025-12-03 23:04:38 +0000 UTC View PostThatch stares up at her. His mom is a tall woman, almost as tall as Inu, and built. He’d said she was a fitness trainer. Right now, I’m rather sure she could fold me in half. Unless I suppress her.
I blink. Right, I shouldn’t be thinking of how to deal with her that way. This was a problem to solve with words.
Reaffirming myself, I g...
2025-12-01 18:21:22 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 277: Icy Spirit Fog
It took Lucky a small while to retell the story, but in the end, it was nothing out of the ordinary. The two of them, him and the young mistress Ina of the Joo clan, were being set up for marriage. So, in one of their “dates”, she expressed frustration at the situation.
Lucky, being… well, not exactly a good guy, but a decent one back then, d...
2025-11-30 02:37:54 +0000 UTC View Post[Level up! 1 > 2]
Lv. 2
Heart: 2
Power: 1
Vessel: 7
I look at my stats. Vessel went up by one without me putting a stat in. I placed one in heart, since it seemed important not to be exhausted by all the walking we were doing. Two more into vess...
2025-11-28 18:21:30 +0000 UTC View PostHi. It's me. Kernoel77 here.
For the last little while, I have been preparing a new fic for upload. In fact, I have been working on this for, uh, months now. In fact, I started this project in February, then took a longer break to focus on finishing Tenets.
Regardless: For now, I am putting the first 3 chapters up for free. Chapters 4-6 will follow in a few days. I'll be doing chapt...
2025-11-26 21:19:30 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 276: Next Stop
About two hours later, Mercury gently apologized to an old, balding chef for the delay in his opening times. The old man grumbled a bit, but eventually handed over two pots that were worn down and rusty for Mercury to take care of, which he swiftly did.
No one from the Lilac Skies sect came to bother him anymore. In fact, most of the disciples now avoid...
2025-11-22 21:35:18 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 275: Merciful
Min sprinted down the stairs. His footsteps, more than anything, belied his feeling of terror. With painfully swift motions, he tore through the distance, panickedly knocking at the door to Mercury’s room. “Esteemed saviour,” he pleaded at the wooden slate, “please, come out. There is someone here to see you, there is-”
He paused, when the door...
2025-11-15 03:01:22 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 274: Bottom Line
Mercury felt his blood rush through his body. It was made from ice and wood and flesh and bone, and yet still, blood pumped through it. It may have been silvery, metallic blood, woven from light and flesh and ice and air, but it was blood, and it boiled.
So, with all that anger, he moved controlled. He rose gently, slowly, up from the table, walked ov...
2025-11-08 03:36:51 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 273: A Successful Day
The noodles were delicious.
That is an absolute truth that Mercury could not and would not deny. He hummed severely at the two bowls in front of him, thinking on which was better, because they had been so different.
Both were rich and delicious, but one had mixed in bits of not-quite-lemon zest, as well as softened fruits, giving it a tangy...
2025-11-05 01:19:20 +0000 UTC View PostTen years have passed since the death of Legacy.
It’s today. The day I’m writing all of this down.
My name is Fiona Bellum. You all know me as Fio. And I’ve come here to tell you about the effort it was to move beyond Eden and properly make this whole multiverse a better place.
Despite everything, the fight isn’t over. It never has been over, and I doubt it ever ...
2025-11-01 17:46:00 +0000 UTC View PostSix years had passed since the death of Legacy.
The world was healing, and so were we. All of us agreed to keep a house together. It made regular board-game nights a lot easier. And Beth loved it when she visited. Plus, whenever someone’s family caused trouble or infringed on our hospitality too much, it was easy to crack down on that.
Not that it happened too often. People ...
2025-11-01 17:42:36 +0000 UTC View PostA year had passed since the death of Legacy. My father was out of the hospital. My mother had gone on her cruise and came back. My incarnation on Neamhan had watched Beth, and it was a nice weekend. Genuinely lovely.
Beth was stunned when I injected her with a little Qi, and she could go outside without a mask. That brought her the greatest joy of everything. Just being able to embrace th...
2025-11-01 17:41:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe evening, eventually, ended. Hours drifted by. I loved it.
Despite everything, I loved it. So did my alternate selves. So did the others. And then, eventually, as it drew too late, Bat closed up the bar.
We went home. It was kind of funny to see how quickly we shook off the buzz. Alcohol couldn’t really do much to anyone with even a bit of power in them. We let it affect us, ju...
2025-11-01 17:40:47 +0000 UTC View PostWe went to Bat’s bar. It was just as tucked away as I remembered it being, which was good, because frankly, I did not want to deal with all the celebrity stuff just then. Ion went in first, giving the barkeep a friendly wave.
“Hey Bat,” she greeted with a smile.
“Hm?” The young man turned around to face us, then his hazel eyes widened. “Oh. Oh hell. Are you-”
... 2025-11-01 17:39:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 272: The Martial World
Travelling with other people was distinctly different from setting out on his own, Mercury found. The path was still just as kind to him, of course, but he also wasn’t willing to reveal his entire hand. So, he didn’t overly use <Itinerant>. Instead, they walked.
Not even particularly fast. Despite Zyl holding his burden, Min was ...
2025-10-25 16:32:38 +0000 UTC View PostChris looked at me with steel and kindness in their eyes. The request was both for my sake… and theirs. I looked across the battlefield and saw the reason.
The rock-hound that was one of their shells… it was gone. Pulverized. The granite had turned to dust. Dead, and never to be revived again. Chris had lost yet another piece of themselves, and yet, they smiled gently at me.
“...
2025-10-23 18:32:11 +0000 UTC View PostI stood in my astral realm, staring at the gateway. Cass was outside, fighting alongside Ion, my other self.
Some part of me felt gleeful at that. Watching ‘myself’ be in multiple positions, fighting on multiple fronts. No, that’s a lie. Some part of me was gleeful that it wasn’t me fighting. That someone else carried the load for once.
I breathed, looking at ...
2025-10-23 18:31:23 +0000 UTC View PostIon took a deep breath, brandishing Astraeus, and wiping a bit of blood from her lips. Her ribcage had been caved in a moment before, but was currently on the mend. The spear spun, just in time to deflect another lance of cold darkness.
Requiem clicked their tongue at the sight, quickly being distracted by Matt in melee. The warrior moved with an ultimate, perfect kind of grace. His sword...
2025-10-23 18:30:37 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 271: Travelling Rocks
Mercury liked being back on the road. There was just a particular kind of magic to it all. The way that civilization faded and broke away just a few hundred steps out. The way that roads wore away into thin paths maintained only by the steps of those who occasionally crossed them. Seeing things that were so remarkably… untouched.
Nature w...
2025-10-21 03:50:12 +0000 UTC View PostOlivia was not a good person. She knew that about herself. She was vain, she was brash, she had a horrid temper, and she didn’t care much for other people.
But she had grown.
Worth. That was her covenant, her creed, the thing that drove her every action. Worth. To be worth something. To do things that matter. To change life for someone.
Absent-mindedly, she ru...
2025-10-17 02:55:42 +0000 UTC View PostThere is something truly unsettling about seeing one’s home break down.
I’d not lived in the guildhouse with the others for very long. Just a few months. It was getting close to a year now. We’d begun to prep for a small celebration. Nothing big, just a movie evening. We could afford it without trouble.
Now, the TV laid in a head of rubble. The windows had all shattered....
2025-10-17 02:54:42 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 270: Outset
Mercury, very reasonably, should not have had a sunburn.
His regeneration Skill had just evolved. He was made of wood and ice and air and energy now. All of those things inherited material properties that made them suitable for being something living - apparently that also meant they degraded under sunlight? In a way, everything did but still… this seeme...
2025-10-16 03:12:41 +0000 UTC View Post