Gathering our abandoned suitcases, we hailed two cabs and headed straight for the clan quarter.
I suggested stopping by a café on the way, but Sally immediately shot the idea down.
“You want to insult Aunt Mary?”
Sally always called her “Aunt,” even though in the family tree she was technically her grandmother. But she...
2025-09-16 09:05:00 +0000 UTC View PostI hesitated only briefly before opening my third eye. The world bloomed with magic—colorful sparks pierced the air, threads of various elements stretched from the compartments, and in the hunter standing at the far end of the carriage, a black, primordial darkness had taken root. The greatest concentration of it wasn’t in his lower abdomen, ...
2025-09-16 09:04:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy birthday had unexpected consequences—we were all invited to a wedding. Logan didn’t care—what’s another ten guests when you’re already inviting three hundred?
But the thought of babysitting our reckless company didn’t exactly thrill me. At first, I didn’t even take it seriously. Then, somehow, the girls worked their magic ...
2025-09-16 09:03:02 +0000 UTC View PostI woke up to a scream.
It felt like someone had jammed a needle into my ear.
I tumbled out of bed but sprang to my feet instantly, throwing up a shield from my ring—thankfully, I hadn’t taken it off for the night—and reached for the pistol in my shoulder holster.
Except… there was no pistol. No holster either. Through t...
2025-09-16 09:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostLord Loxlin Series:
Book 1 - Warlock's Last Exam https://www.patreon.com/collection/1254431?view=expanded
Book 2 - Wizard's First Lesson https://www.pa...
I couldn’t see the thinhorn’s smile under his mask, but his eyes were laughing. The look of someone who had everything under control.
“Oh!” he said. “One female did escape, actually. The second team’s playing with her right now.”
Bao and Denis turned to look at me. Both were tense, but they hadn’t fully grasped what w...
2025-09-14 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostI spent the entire first day diligently shovelling dung, avoiding the urge to activate any drones. For the first hour, I kept glancing around, trying to see if anyone was watching me. A fairly pointless exercise, really, a whole swarm of surveillance drones hovered overhead, and in my black-and-yellow armour, standing out in the middle of the be...
2025-09-12 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostSometimes, you need to stop and look at yourself from the outside.
Once again, I caught myself thinking that life was carrying me along with the current. I was flailing, spinning, clinging to the rocks jutting out of the stream, doing everything I could to stay afloat — yet the river of life was slowly but surely overpowering me.
I...
2025-09-10 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostFunny thing, while using Thousand Sparks of Awareness, I never felt any smarter, but once the technique ended, I definitely felt dumber.
Artem, once he pulled himself away from his own ‘breakthrough’, explained that this was normal. He even showed me some readouts on his tablet, none of which I understood in the slightest.
To be ...
2025-09-09 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Kate had calmed down a little, I offered to pay for the repairs, with great hope that she'd refuse. Thank God she couldn’t see my face through the closed visor, or she might have caught on to my sneaky little plan.
Kate told me to go to hell, and I exhaled in relief.
Then a medic peeked into the hall. Just one, though I was u...
2025-09-07 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostTo evaluate my new abilities, I needed a sparring session.
The obvious choice would’ve been Cinar — we’d sparred more than once before, and he would’ve gladly accepted my invitation. The problem was, Cinar was one of those who had a decent chance of beating the crap out of me — and he’d done it more than once already. I didn’...
2025-09-05 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe medic scanned my head first. He frowned and scanned again, as if something didn’t add up.
“Neural cortex is damaged. Multiple micro-traumas… Care to tell me what happened here?”
“I was practising a movement technique that lets you run through the air, forgot the limitations, built up too much negative qi, it blew up and...
2025-09-03 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostThere will be more tournaments (137 chapter+) — and I could use your input!
The first three readers to comment in the #characters-creation channel on my Discord server will be able to name and describe a character, and choose their roots (limited to School roots only).
My Discord is generally dead, but it’s the b...
2025-09-03 08:47:16 +0000 UTC View PostIt took me over a month. Thirty-two days, to be precise, since the day I acquired Sky in the Fist. I had less than three months left to collect dust in the Air Garden. And throughout that time, I’d been doing nothing but burning incense sticks. I must have burned through a decent-sized cart of them. But I still couldn’t separate Air Qi from ...
2025-09-02 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostThere was no essence available for units in the shop, but Novak had no trouble arranging a batch of thirty at cost price. Still, using them in batches for cumulative effect in the Air Garden required paying in points.
And in the halls where Air cultivators trained, there wasn’t any dust. But there was a lot of smoke. They all used specia...
2025-08-31 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostAs soon as I received the technique, Kiwi said he didn’t like my stats.
“Your Fist dominates too clearly over everything else. You’ll have trouble with sensitivity, which is crucial for dust collection, and with executing the technique itself. You need to raise your Air,” he said firmly. “The Garden lends essence. One vial equals...
2025-08-29 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostSo, what was on my plate right now: upgrading old techniques, studying new mental ones, and picking an ultimate. The last I’d postponed until I could reassert control over my reactor. My energy expenditure was already too high. Just working with Hook under Rene left me completely drained.
I’d started drinking more marigold tea to recov...
2025-08-27 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe annual auction had ended. Breakthroughs came in waves.
The total number of breakthroughs reached three hundred out of nearly two and a half thousand first-years. About fifty had already been weeded out for one reason or another. Another four crippled their cultivation.
My hole-ridden memory told me the auction was supposed to be ...
2025-08-26 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostBao and Denis reacted differently from Marlon. Much closer to how I had expected — formally friendly. The news soured their mood somewhat, but it didn’t shake their determination to reach their goal.
If Marlon was right and they didn’t make it, it would hit them hard.
Each of them had twice as many points as I did at the moment...
2025-08-24 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostI returned to my room with mixed feelings. After the shield experiments, Kate had me test the gap between our levels. She quite literally forced me to eat sand.
My reinforced body allowed her to hold back less. The electric bolts no longer hurt the way they used to, no longer made me arch in agony. Still, she got carried away to the point ...
2025-08-22 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostI sat in the chamber, unable to make sense of what I felt. The body was mine, and at the same time not. Every breath echoed in my chest not just as air, but as a wave of energy that now resonated in my bones, my muscles, even my brain. As though I’d been permanently plugged into a power grid, and all that excess energy wasn’t harming me, it ...
2025-08-20 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy breakthrough was to take place in the Hall of Meditation. But not the one I was used to. The Hall of Meditation, like the Halls of Order, Medicine, and Technology, was one of the school’s structural divisions. When a first-year spoke of the Hall of Meditation, he usually meant that utilitarian corridor lined with fifty cramped chambers that...
2025-08-19 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt turned out nothing like I had imagined.
The reactive shield enhanced the striking properties of the Monkey and the Iron Head, but it also had a drawback — a negative effect on the recoil of the technique. After executing it, I would freeze for half a second longer.
Layered shields, on the other hand, could potentially cut recoil...
2025-08-17 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostTariq was expelled. Not for using banned substances.
In fact, only two of the ‘zombies’ were found to have illegal substances in their blood — and they weren’t combat stimulants, but mild recreational drugs. Those unlucky ones were expelled too. However, there was no shortage of stimulants in the cadets’ blood — an ocean of per...
2025-08-15 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostNight had fallen over Verdis. The sky was strewn with stars, but neither Earth nor any other moon was visible from the window.
For the first time in a long while, I was able to take my usual seat at Novak’s tea table and gaze out at the impressive view beyond the glass — and, just my luck, as if to match my foul mood, it was the least ...
2025-08-13 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostI was standing in the middle of a mess of meat. Literally. Bones, blood, snot, broken teeth.
Some of the bullies were still twitching. One of them was even trying to get up despite a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder, and the fact that I’d definitely nailed him in the head with a Chain Punch projection.
I really wanted to ask my in...
2025-08-12 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostIn the infirmary they kept me for an extra day. Not in the pod, but in a room with an actual bed. I hadn’t even known they had those here.
Not that I spent much time lying on it, because the room also had a treadmill and a multi-purpose exercise station for bodyweight training: pull-up bar, parallel bars, wall bars. Zola made me work up ...
2025-08-10 23:36:01 +0000 UTC View PostWaking up the second time was easier.
And this time, I had underwear on — already a win.
For some reason, that was the first thing I remembered — not the failed tournament, not the demons, not the six days without cultivation.
The capsule hadn’t even fully lifted when I spotted Zola.
Something about the way she was ...
2025-08-08 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostGetting onto the arena without visibly limping was no small task. To move my nearly numb, frozen left leg properly, I had to tense my whole body, and risk another spasm. But I tried. Sweating, clenching my teeth so hard they creaked, I forced myself to maintain a facade of calm.
The pain was so intense, the darkness behind my eyes so frequ...
2025-08-06 23:36:00 +0000 UTC View PostA few drops of blood flew from the spike as Сinar’s fist went for another swing. My left hand was still pressed against his chest. I didn’t even realise how I’d activated the Monkey and pushed him away.
The spike had only grazed my armour, but the Monkey recoil was enough that I barely managed to stay on my feet.
Bloody nausea...
2025-08-05 23:36:02 +0000 UTC View Post