After Alice’s experiment was over, she left the room in order to handle her System notifications. Alice hadn’t discovered anything revolutionary, beyond the fact that monsters reacted to some kinds of System mana and totally ignored others, but she hoped Ethan could still get something useful out of her test results. At the very least, the f...
2023-11-25 08:39:38 +0000 UTC View PostThe four of us spent a few hours running through the sewers, before we exited from the same building we had entered from. Along the way, we almost ran into three other groups of people. The exceptional hearing Sallia and I possessed saved us from all of those potentially dangerous encounters - and also saved us from leaving behind any witnesses....
2023-11-25 06:24:18 +0000 UTC View PostLeon, head researcher of the ancient institute, stared at the reports he had received of the break-in a few hours ago.
They left him scratching his head in utter bewilderment.
According to the surviving soldiers, last night the test subject ‘Felix’ had broken out of his confinement. In addition, Aplos had also broken free… only...
2023-11-24 06:42:46 +0000 UTC View PostSo, update.
My thumb still hurts.
It has been about a month now.
It still hurts.
I will probably go to the doctor this weekend or early next week to see what they have to say, since some of the other injuries from a month ago have largely healed, but my thumbs still quite hurts. Depending on what the doctor says, I may ne...
2023-11-23 06:37:22 +0000 UTC View PostThe hallway where Aplos had come from turned dark. Not as if someone had turned off all the light, but as if something had simply eaten every single speck of light in the world, leaving behind nothing but an inky void. I felt something tug at my mind as I looked at the creature, as if the very essence of whatever I was looking at was twisted. It...
2023-11-23 06:34:34 +0000 UTC View PostAfter spending the rest of the day with Milo and father, Alice felt refreshed. After a good night’s sleep, she felt ready to think again. Her thoughts, which had started to feel muddled and choked, felt clear again.
Ethan had one of the servants give her an update on the letters and information he had received from nearby towns. Through ...
2023-11-18 08:44:04 +0000 UTC View Post<It’s good to see you again,> said Felix, smiling at us.
I looked at Felix in surprise.
He looked… different.
Not just a little different. Anise had looked different, with two eyes and strawberry blonde hair.
Felix, however, didn’t look like the same person at all.
He had a slimmer, more delicate-looking...
2023-11-18 05:52:41 +0000 UTC View PostI blinked in surprise when I felt the presence of Manifestation Essence in the corridor.
The existence of manifestation essence in this world clearly wasn’t natural. According to the Market’s analysis of this world, the two essences that existed in this world were binding essence and absorption essence - and the presence of absorption ...
2023-11-17 07:22:14 +0000 UTC View PostWe continued jogging through dark, stony underground corridors for several minutes. Near the beginning of the jog, the fetid smell of rotting vegetation and old, weathered stone was distinct and hard to overlook. If we hadn’t been following the guards, I might have wondered if we were really going in the correct direction. However, the guards ...
2023-11-16 06:31:47 +0000 UTC View PostWith that unnerving realization, the incident with the monster swarm at the walls came to an end.
However, even though the two monster swarms had withdrawn, they didn’t leave Alice’s mind.
Monsters had worked with each other. Monsters had used some sort of facsimile Perks during a fight. Monsters were potentially using s...
2023-11-11 08:34:47 +0000 UTC View PostI looked at the underground lab and fell into thought. The guards pretending to be alchemists were more numerous than I had been expecting. There were almost two dozen people at the entrance.
I grimaced. If there were this many people just outside of the entrance, how many more people were going to be inside of the lab? Direct con...
2023-11-11 05:57:19 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Sallia noticed that Miria took a few extra moments to rejoin her and Anise, she smiled to herself.
She was pretty sure that meant Miria had decided to steal the potions.
Sallia hadn’t been planning on pushing Miria to take the potions, since Miria seemed pretty uncomfortable with the idea. But… Sallia was glad that ...
2023-11-10 07:16:49 +0000 UTC View PostAfter leaving Old Mo’s bakery, I took a closer look at Anise, before I remembered something.
“By the way, Anise, what are your stats like this time? I know that you had decent intelligence - at least, higher than mine. But what are the rest of your stats like?”
“Here, let me show you,” she said. A moment later, Anise’s st...
2023-11-09 05:51:04 +0000 UTC View PostAlice stood on the wooden walls of Cyra, looking at the giant pack of wolves that sat at the edge of the forest while throwing giant fireballs at the wall. Their bodies were half-hidden by the trees, making it easy for them to dodge the stray arrows and missiles that the other Mages on the walls were throwing at them, and while some wolves occas...
2023-11-04 08:22:20 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I told Sallia that I thought it was time to bust out Felix, she reacted with enthusiasm and excitement.
When Anise heard us talking, she immediately jumped in to help.
Felix warned us to be careful and run if things looked dangerous, but otherwise seemed a bit relieved that a proper rescue was materializing. We had been forced t...
2023-11-04 04:53:42 +0000 UTC View PostThe following two months were spent making another rune ability and trying to find better or more reliable ways to locate Felix without Sallia wasting a rune ability on it. Sadly, we couldn’t find a reliable way to search for Felix that didn’t involve magic from out of this dimension.
However, my attempts at disguise and shapeshifting ...
2023-11-03 05:41:31 +0000 UTC View PostSallia and I left Old Mo’s bakery a few hours later, though I felt dazed for a lot of it.
I had never seen a modern war. The closest I had ever come to experiencing a war was the conflict between the islanders and the Megailian Empire. However, if there was a war between modernized nations with gunpowder, mechanical prosthetics, and flyi...
2023-11-02 05:26:53 +0000 UTC View PostThe group docked in Cyra less than a day later. Alice was actually looking forward to seeing what had become of her first stopping point in this world, an emotion that surprised her. She had grown so much since her days in Cyra, and Alice wondered if Cyra was the same as it had been since she had left it. Had Cyra also undergone shocking changes...
2023-10-28 07:56:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe supplies Sallia and I had secured from Old Mo’s store were more than enough to last me for a few weeks, and Sallia’s noodle bowl could extend that time to over a month if I ate cautiously. My mother’s condition wasn’t urgent either, and Felix’s situation could wait until I got a bit stronger.
The most important thing I did wi...
2023-10-28 05:14:18 +0000 UTC View PostAfter a few minutes of just letting my friend hug me, the two of us separated again, and we finished eating. However, a few questions kept swirling around in my head. Ones that I had never considered before. Now that I felt a little bit less bad, I had time to really think about my own actions, and what I wanted in the future.
When was I o...
2023-10-27 05:40:09 +0000 UTC View PostIt proved much harder than expected to find a restaurant. After all, in the middle of the slums, while it was still possible to get food, this area was relatively impoverished, and so there weren’t exactly bakeries lining the streets.
However, after a bit of searching, Sallia and I ended up in the place where my mother most likely worked...
2023-10-26 05:47:41 +0000 UTC View PostOne day later, Alice, Cecilia, Illa, Ethan, and the five Mages that Cecilia was training set off towards Cyra. The last day was mostly filled with packing bags, stuffing bags into storage Perks, and arranging last-minute guard details. Even though Ethan and Illa were both competent combat Mages, it was never a bad idea to have more eyes to watch...
2023-10-21 07:38:25 +0000 UTC View PostAfter that, Sallia and I began roaming the streets, looking for an injured person I could use to prove my healing abilities. I was a little surprised that Sallia managed to slip away from her house so easily, since her parents seemed rather worried about Sallia’s safety. However, Sallia simply shrugged.
“I spent a lot of time testing h...
2023-10-21 05:02:37 +0000 UTC View PostOver the next hour, I made my way towards Sallia’s house. I also periodically used my rune ability to scan the area around me, to check if someone was following me. I had already realized that asking people in this area for directions was unlikely to be productive - after all, the people in this neighborhood seemed afraid of interacting with s...
2023-10-20 06:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostOutside of our tiny little three-room shack, I could see that the streets of the city we lived in were rather run-down. I scanned the surrounding area, and quickly realized that we lived in a row of tiny, cramped shacks. Furthermore, my mother and I could be considered somewhat lucky, since we lived near the ground. Most of the shacks on the str...
2023-10-19 05:42:26 +0000 UTC View PostAfter Alice finished processing the information from her new Perk, she took a few moments to realign her thoughts with the present again.
Originally, she had been wondering if there was a reason to go to Cyra with Ethan. After all, going to Cyra would represent a huge time commitment, and during that time, Alice wouldn’t be in Metsel. 2023-10-14 05:25:05 +0000 UTC View Post
The days of hunger and productivity continued. I spent a fair amount of time working on building up my attunement and establishing my first rune. When I had time, I also tested out my healing ability on my mother, to see if it was possible to cure her drug addiction. My deepest fear right now was that my attunement might not be able to heal some...
2023-10-14 03:58:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe next few days passed quietly. I was finally aware of my surroundings, and so I decided to mess with my abilities a bit. {Echoes of the Deep} let me choose whether to embody life or death, and I immediately chose to embody life, since none of the bonuses from embodying death were useful right now. This gave me a 1-grade boost to my Fortitude,...
2023-10-13 06:13:51 +0000 UTC View PostA few moments after I ended the call with my friends, a woman walked through the front door of the house. She had dull copper-colored hair, a vacant look in her eyes, and a vacuous smile on her lips. She didn’t wear very much clothing - her clothes seemed more designed to show off her body than to cover anything up. Her expression looked…str...
2023-10-12 05:16:54 +0000 UTC View PostAfter the more concrete negotiations between Alice and Illa ended, there was a strange pause in the conversation. Alice hadn’t seen Illa in months, and it almost felt like a lifetime ago. The negotiations had given her a topic to focus on, but now that it was over… Alice felt strangely blank. She simply didn’t know how to interact...
2023-10-07 05:50:06 +0000 UTC View Post