BleedingTears

Arcanist - Chapter 109

Warm air splashed hard against his face. Lights gleamed painfully bright all around him. Golden lights. Stabbing lights. Lights meant to kill rather than illuminate. The hymn of the Priests echoed deep in his ears.

Valens’s chest rose in the heat of it, crawling and creeping chills over his back. He cast his gaze around and saw young fac...

Arcanist - Chapter 108

Valens bolted through the streets, one hand over his burning chest, feeling his mana pool fast recovering as the ground fissured across their path. Nomad and Celme carved a path open while they followed with Selin from the back. The Berserker did seem she got some new moves, but nothing was more stark than the change that happened to Nomad.

Arty Art of Templars

Never been much of a fan of AI images, but a friend did this one after reading the last chapter, and it just so happened to align with the image I had in mind of our dear Templars. Figured I should post it before the next chapter. Here's Edric in the middle, with Mas and Dain keeping him company.

Arcanist - Chapter 107

The mere light of Edric’s inner flame was enough to force the tides of the undead to cower senselessly back to the skirts of their Liches where they stood, shivering, blinking, sucking deep breaths from the Everfog to stop their bodies from twitching.

There were hundreds of them pressing into the main gate of the Golden Cathedral, which ...

Arcanist - Chapter 106

Valens didn’t know how he patched the end of the street with Gravitating Earth, raising a giant block of soil to block the rush of the endless horde. He adorned it with spikes to make it difficult for Shifters to climb before turning back to the scene.

Damp air burnt a painful path down his lungs. His fingers tingled. His chest heaved. B...

Arcanist - Chapter 105

Burning flames blasted the creatures into pieces, scorched the rot out of them, and scattered their blood hissing against the earthly walls rising about him. Dozens, hundreds of them rushed toward him in mindless fury, red eyes scathing, the tips of their claws gleaming, the fog churning and rolling around him.

He sucked in a deep breath a...

Arcanist - Chapter 104

A lump of rotten meat clad round a skeletal frame came stumbling closer to him, bony fingers clasped tightly around a sword. A bastard of a sword, Garran reckoned, reeking of death and wrong. Something very wrong as the straps of his golden plates flapped against his chest. He ducked under the weapon, lunged in, and caught the fool by the torso,...

Arcanist - Chapter 103

When Valens was about to open the clinic door, he caught a subtle shift in the Resonance. It was early in the morning, the sun's first lights barely flashing from beyond the thick swarm of clouds, the air foggy and the paved roads slick with dew. He’d left Selin in the house since it was still early, and told William on the way that she’d be...

Arcanist - Chapter 102

Martha Bell breathed in the fog seeping through the shutters of the house, an old place by the Knuckle Alley that hadn’t seen much use for the last few years. She breathed in the fog, then turned and smiled widely across the living room.

Red eyes gleamed in the dark as the Hemlings faced her.

“This is a celebration,” Martha sai...

Arcanist - Chapter 101

In the following days after opening the clinic, Valens found himself in a monotonous rhythm of healing patients and trying to spread his image amongst them. He made a point of coming across as shady, noisy, and a touch crooked in the mind to fit the image of a Healer hiding from the Church in plain sight.

Garran, Dain, and even Mas took tu...

Chapter 100

 Nomad blasted through the front gate, Heartstone thumping in his chest, the leathery handle of the sword scraping against his bony fingers. He ducked down as an arrow whizzed toward him, stretched a hand out, and caught it as it passed by over his head.

He caught it hard in the palm of his hand and turned and stabbed its pointy tip i...

Arcanist - Chapter 99

Foggy morning time, and Valens was busy handling the mold gathered from the box of bread laid by the side. He had already distilled the alcohol and prepared the rest of the ingredients for penicillin, which would be ready in a few days' time.

The monotony of the work lifted the great weight settled across his mind. Working in the silence o...

Arcanist - Chapter 98

Vireth pulled at the chains around the doorknob, checking for one last time to make sure she would be left alone during the Assembly. Her collection of shadows, lined across the shelves in the room—each one placed neatly in vials bound by her [Soul Threads]—stirred slightly as she lay over her couch.

She counted the days for the last w...

Arcanist - Chapter 97

The edges of the portrait creaked and shifted as Mr. Gray stared at his own image displayed magnificently between the shelves. 

“I appreciate the intent here,” Valens broke the silence a moment after. “Keeping to a certain air of mystery. I have found in my time here that almost everyone likes this sort of arrangement, but I’m...

Arcanist - Chapter 96

The Hexsurge threads flashed along the wavering lines of void-tinged flames, pounding over them like beasts out looking for prey, the fleshy walls of Valens’s chest stinging in response. One by one, the ethereal threads tore apart the outside influence and cut short their desire to reach Valens’s chest cavity.

Since the battle was foug...

Arcanist - Chapter 95

The young servant led him through a set of colorful corridors, down a pair of spiraling steps, across the under halls of the mansion where portraits of important-looking men and women dotted the walls. He was silent through all of it, with only their steps resounding about the walls.

And yet Valens knew, due to prior experience, that the l...

Weekly Roundup #5

Hey there, it's me again.

It's been a busy week, as like others, and I'm all up for it.

Writing a ball was quite the experience, even if it hurt the pacing a little, but painting the picture of a Victorian town and its strangeness, considering the backdrop of a LitRPG System, was fun! And we have our clinic here coming up soon, and c...

Arcanist - Chapter 94

“Val, wait!” Celme stumbled clumsily out into the hallway, the hems of her dress clasped tight in her hands, lips stretched into a tight frown. “I’m talking to you! Wait!”

Valens sighed as he saw through the sound vision the Berserker struggling with her pompously designed dress that left little room for her to maneuver, and stop...

Arcanist - Chapter 93

A quartet of strings played in the backdrop, music soft and easy on the ears, just high enough to shade the low murmur of conversations being shared among the guests. The light of the mana lamps, all decorated specially for the purpose, changed with each shift in the rhythm.

Tap, tap, and tap. Valens clicked the heels of his pumps as he ta...

Arcanist - Chapter 92

Valens leaned against the walls of the main door, taking in the view of his clinic.

He’d been at it for some time, as there was a lot to appreciate about his own work after spending most of the morning and part of the afternoon going over the little details.

The circuit he managed with the manastones was expertly hidden from...

Arcanist - Chapter 91

Valens swept the cloud of dust with a Gale, filtered it through a Blockage, and was confronted with the pair of laborers staring agape at the recently grown one-story building that clearly lacked an expert's touch.

“Too crude,” he lamented as he gestured at them to halt, since he wasn’t done with the job. Growing a house from ...

Arcanist - Chapter 90

The next day, a group of specialized personnel, supposedly from the Department of Internal Affairs, arrived from the Cathedral to start the operation. They parked their horse-drawn carriages by the door and began hauling off what was left from Miss Martha’s legacy to the extensions strapped behind them, while Valens and Selin watched un...

Arcanist - Chapter 89

Valens spent the rest of the night scribbling in his diary a list of things he would need in the clinic. Sanitary conditions were the first thing that came to his mind, though there was an inkling of suspicion in his mind whether they could find a decent place in the slums of Belgrave. Likely, the conditions would be harsh, and he would spend hi...

Chapter On Sunday

Hey everyone, I'll be handling some important business today and tomorrow, so I'll post today's chapter on Sunday. All good here, just want to let you know!

Cheers :3

Arcanist - Chapter 88

Night fell by the time they finished with the other houses. All different cases with eerie similarities between them, mainly the victims being widowed women who suffered from terrible losses in recent years. Vulnerable souls who sought a final nudge to do something forbidden.

Mas and Garran’s report was more or less the same when ...

Arcanist - Chapter 87

Valens sat in the wooden chair, creaking along with one hand over the table, peering silently out into the empty walls, waiting for Percival to bring him the licenses. It was past morning time, but not quite afternoon yet, and it took them an hour to get to the company from the Golden Cathedral, which was situated somewhere between the middle-cl...

Arcanist - Chapter 86

He was in a house. Dusty floors were broken in a few places, cracked in others, where a host of worms squirmed impatiently to climb up through the wooden planks, making their way to the door visible ahead in a long, wriggling black line. The door was open. It allowed the light from the outside to fill the place.

Jack sat right across from ...

Arcanist - Chapter 85

“There have been a few complications. We’re not giving you a tour of the city today,” Garran said, and glanced at the captain whose hat seemed like a rat being squashed in between his arm and his torso. Valens didn’t blame the little thing, nor did he blame the suit that seemed a second away from being torn into pieces by the sheer densi...

Arcanist - Chapter 84

The next day Valens woke up and came across a peculiar, but not in the least undelightful, sight in the main hall. Placed atop the wooden table was a plate with two sausages steaming hot, a perfectly cooked egg tucked neatly between them. On the side were some beans and lettuce, with a singular glass of water waiting beside it.

“M...

Arcanist - Chapter 83

It was a dark, foggy night outside, and Valens walked with a spring in his step through the deserted streets of Belgrave. His visit to the Magi’s Guild had taken a much different turn than he’d expected, and hence it took him the greater part of the day to conclude his conversation with Master Archibald on an interesting note.

T...