Author's Note: I'm sorry for the cliff. It gets resolved tomorrow in the next chapter.
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The two participants charging at Caen were Body-enhancers, though one of them had a Fire magic affinity cluster suddenly grow prominent in his soul. A fire whip erupted out of a rod he was holding. Caen had brought spores with him in his bag of holding, but h...
2025-10-22 12:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe waiting area had never felt larger. With so few people left in the trials, the hall was no longer closely packed. Of the fifteen thousand participants who’d begun the first trial, only eight hundred and seventeen remained.
Participants appeared far more solemn than ever before. There was hardly any loitering, and the hall was quieter than usual.
The projections on the wa...
2025-10-21 12:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post“Happy wake day, runt!” Uncle Vai said, zooming over on his rocking chair and hugging Caen.
“Welcome to tier 9,” Uncle Teiro said with a smile.
Caen laughed. Uncle Teiro had a post-latency tier of 9, and so did Caen now. It was simply a system used to measure how many years a person had lived equal to their awakening age. The common age of spirit-awakening was between 8 and ...
2025-10-20 12:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post“Fahptis is so unbearable now,” Zeris said in Code, as she tore open another bag of holding with a knife and damaged its enchantments. Dozens of them lay shredded on the bed around her, where she sat. “He keeps talking about how he fought you to a standstill and would have whittled you down if he’d had more time.”
“Well, he’s not entirely wrong,” Caen said, as he restitche...
2025-10-19 12:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostAnomis’s bag of holding contained nearly five times the number of heartstones that Caen had obtained himself.
Each heartstone corresponded to a monster slain, and after redeeming all the heartstones, Caen left the haul hall with a large sack slung over his shoulder. It held a ton of monster carcasses but wasn’t too heavy, as it was a spatial storage device.
Limping, ...
2025-10-18 12:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostSo many segments of the arena were hysterical, some from rage, others from shock, and even more from excitement. That had been one of the more thrilling fights Meeka had seen in this year's trials. Around him, spectators were still chanting “Blight-eater, Blight-eater!”
It’d been years since that moniker had been ascribed to anyone. The commentators argued over the sound encha...
2025-10-17 12:00:32 +0000 UTC View PostAwakened weapons were sapient and could convey their experiences to others. If it ever came out that Herb Mask could communicate with Stormsong clearly, that wouldn't raise many eyebrows. Most people would consider it a matter of compatibility.
If it came out that Herb Mask could also communicate with other awakened weapons, now that would be a serious problem. It was the sort of th...
2025-10-16 12:03:20 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: I just wanted to say thank you guys so much for your support, comments, and reviews! Reading them makes me so happy. I will respond to your questions and comments very soon. Just been a bit busy with writing and planning things out. Alright. Bye.
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The silhouette creatures moved fast and could vanish out of sight. They left illusory copies to distra...
2025-10-15 12:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe fake night sky above them held two moons. Shabby wooden shacks and mud huts littered the stretch of hard-packed dirt; a village of some kind. There was debris lying all around: clumps of stone, twigs, heaps of sawdust, glass shards, dry leaves, and broken pieces of various objects. A great many of these were animated and loitering around.
Sprites.
Caen felt a surge of panic and ...
2025-10-14 12:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post“No, he’s just a brute,” Ayula said, as he and his friends watched a projection of Fahptis and Herb Mask fighting. A glass panel blocked out most of the sound from the arena below, which was partitioned into eight very eye-catching zones. The architects had outdone themselves this year.
“He’s the most legendary brute, though,” Dolo retorted from her sofa. “He literally unshe...
2025-10-13 12:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post“Better. Much better,” Stormsong said as Caen laid waste to every hostile creature in their path.
Caen could feel… something. But fully comprehending it was out of reach.
“More speed. You should use more speed.”
Caen layered modifiers to his Kinesis and Body-enhancements spells, allowing him to move even faster.
Out of the corner of his eye, h...
2025-10-12 12:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostThe identifier necklace, which Caen had been given at his registration, was tucked beneath his armor. The small bead pendant grew warm.
Caen Mimicked resilience, and the next instant was wrenched through space and deposited on a patch of wet grass.
Resilience helped him withstand the discomfort of spatial transit far better than he could have without Spatial passive augmentations. 2025-10-11 12:00:17 +0000 UTC View Post
On the morning of the third trial, several hours before dawn, Caen inspected himself in front of a mirror. He’d shaped Chasma to cover his breastplate and backplate, as well as his entire left arm, where the fragment formed a round shield only a little bigger than a buckler and far less unwieldy than what he’d been using so far.
Chasma had grown quite a bit in the past week, gai...
2025-10-10 12:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe world around Caen was a severely blurred version of the restricted section of the Ser-gwu library. Rithya sat across from him, a blurred table between them. They were in the sub-Astral: the lowest layer of the Astral Realm. It intersected the Material Realm and served as the primary conduit for most forms of mental communication.
A lesser portion of Caen’s mind controlled his body i...
2025-10-09 12:02:16 +0000 UTC View PostVai watched a projected memory of Herb Mask routing his ambushers. He laughed, slapping his knee.
Swuswujaswuswuteptep—or Teptep for short—hovered in the air beside him as she watched the combat sequence along with Vai. “He doesn't… fight like an Astral user,” she mused.
“Eh, he's not quite there yet,” Vai said. “Still rough around the edges and can't quite use offen...
2025-10-08 12:00:21 +0000 UTC View PostCaen felt a few more souls wink out as he ran through the wall, which was growing increasingly hot as fire spread from behind him. He coughed violently, having inhaled some spores in his brief exposure to them. He could only imagine how terrible it was for the others out there.
From within the wall, he flickered Soul-sense at a nearby Body-enhancer, attacking him with vines and plant tend...
2025-10-07 12:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostCaen cast a few spells to boost his processing speed. He split his mind in four, taking Chasma off his back.
The walls here were made up of plant matter. Tree ferns with their spores lined the walls. Surface roots, vines, and thorny thickets covered much of the ground. Caen had chosen this location for a specific reason. It was the worst possible place that anyone but a Flora practician c...
2025-10-06 12:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post“You have each been given a bag of holding with which you may store whatever treasure and resources you manage to find. The rules for this trial are simple. Listen carefully.”
Caen stood with nearly a thousand participants on the trial grounds. Various entrances to a vast maze loomed before them, its walls almost thirty feet high.
The maze was divided into different elemen...
2025-10-05 12:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostOludlana Ereshta'al, Caen's great-grandmother, had a very imposing personality, in the manner of all Percipients.
She was taller than even Vensha and looked to be in her fifties, despite being over four times older than that. Oludlana often wore her black hair in the same elaborate style, held up by golden pins and clamps. The emblem of the Faithful Descent faction—which she ha...
2025-10-04 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostCaen made a show of giving Rithya’s offer some thought, but he knew that in truth, this was an opportunity he couldn't turn down.
He had seen an all-round improvement to Mimicry when the core four disciplines of magic had risen out of abjection: Spirit-healing, Blood-healing, Dream-guarding, and Body-enhancement.
This caused him to start thinking about what other disciplines of ma...
2025-10-03 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThe successful participants were assigned rooms beneath the arena. Their room numbers were displayed on the walls, and many stood to depart, but the first trial wasn't entirely over, per se.
Duels were currently being conducted. At the end of every trial except the last, successful participants could challenge their peers on grounds of honor or whatever else.
Quite a num...
2025-10-02 12:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostTeleporting into the victors’ lounge was no rougher than going through the trial gates had been. Caen resisted the urge to double over.
He was relieved to be free of the suppression field. The disparity between his experience in the trial and the memories he'd viewed made him wonder if something else was going on.
Maybe they increased the intensity this year for so...
2025-10-01 12:00:22 +0000 UTC View PostCaen had consulted several memory crystals, and not a single one had prepared him for the intensity of the seventh zone. The effects of the suppression field were certainly getting worse.
He solved gates one after the other: Flora, Spirit-healing, Body-enhancement, Dream-guarding, Blood-healing, Fire, Vibration, and Gleam.
He made his way to his ninth gate in the zone, heaving and...
Author's Note: We're so back! I am well. Turns out I ought to have adapted the healing spells before falling sick. Classic rookie mistake. Live and learn, they say. Thank you so much for the kind words and support. I owe you chapters, and I will make good on that debt. You have my word. Now let's see what this trial is all about.
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It was...
2025-09-29 12:00:20 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Hey. Some slight bad news. I am getting better, but I'm still sick. I'll be needing a few more days for recovery. I am so sorry about this. Wish I had some sickness abeyance spells. I will do my best to make it up to you for all these lost days once I'm well again.
Uploads will resume on Monday, the 29th of September. Thank you so much for you...
2025-09-24 11:52:31 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Hey, I have been sick for a few days now. I've been burning through my backlog, hoping to get better soon, but I think I need a few days to rest up so I can recover quickly. I sincerely apologize for the delay. I'll do my best to make up the lost chapters when I'm well again.
Uploads will resume on Wednesday the 24th of September. Thank you so much...
Passionfire submerged the entire structure, but Caen withdrew his Impassioning lest he drain his volition. The structure remained on fire, however.
The monster shrieked again, with more animosity this time, but frailer somehow.
Caen was already backing away from the building when the monster ran out of it and straight for him. Its fur was burnt in some places, but it wasn't on fire....
2025-09-19 12:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe ropes binding the final captive in the barn came undone. They slithered on the grimy concrete to join the long train of ropes that Caen had been fashioning into two separate units, both of which were now wrapping themselves around his torso.
The two men whom Caen had paralyzed lay bound, blindfolded, and gagged with ropes.
There were nearly fifty villagers here, mostly werepeopl...
2025-09-18 12:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostAbout two hours into their flight, Chasma told Caen that it was tired… and hungry.
They had covered quite some distance in that time. Caen got off his fragment and retrieved some deep-fried meat. Chasma enveloped the container of meat and engaged absorption by itself. Caen stuffed the fragment into his bag and continued the journey on foot at a sprint.
An hour later, he was very w...
2025-09-17 12:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe glyphs came more frequently, at his family home. Caen isolated himself in Vensha's cottage, and the glyphs only showed up there for a time, but whenever he went outside, he'd see them on trees, walls, the train.
While he and Hshnol went over numbers, they’d find a trio of glyphs scrawled onto a window or on the furniture. Caen recognized a few of them, even.
He'd intende...
2025-09-16 12:00:50 +0000 UTC View Post