Kernoel77

Chapter 167: Lifeline

[Hall of Mirrors has reached (Great)!]

[Unyielding Metal has reached (Great)!]

[Parallel World Manipulation has reached (Intermediate)!]

[Beat of War [New!] (Basic) (Your heartbeat is the drum. Hear the rhythm, master the flow, and be untouched among war.)]

The battle had forced me to grow. [Beat of War] was my first resonance-based technique.

Resonance had formed a new section on my stat sheet - a sort of disconnected little window in the same w...

Chapter 269: Stronger

Chapter 269: Stronger

The night passed quietly. Starlight glittered on puddles of blood. The moon hung in the window, casting ghostly sheens of white. Mercury looked like a corpse, though his slowly regenerating organs quickly made that impression fade. If anything, he looked more like a zombie, or some other kind of undead.

Now, that was for most of the night. The far, far worse part came when he realized that Skills grew with desire and use. Right now, he wanted ...

Chapter 268: Sometimes we Suffer

Chapter 268: Sometimes we Suffer

[Evolutionary Fusion confirmed. Engaging. Please pick an option to evolve the Skill into. The price will be the same (1100 Skill points), no matter which you choose.]

[1. <Steel Spider>

2. <Carve>

3. <Reap>]

[<Steel Spider>: Your web is magnificent, and you weave it from metal. Each of your threads is thin enough to slice through blood and bone, and the individual’s control over it is impeccable. E...

Chapter 166: To Break a God

Ru came at me like a missile. 

It was a brutal, violent motion, the rock shattering beneath him as he launched himself forward. He was wrapped in scarlet fire, cascading down him like rivers of magmatic blood. The sword grew in his hands again, metal warping with a screech, going from a rapier to a longsword, before growing some more, into a montante.

The metal howled as divine fire reshaped it, and glowed an angry red as it crashed into my spear. Ru had not summoned anything...

Chapter 165: Divine Descent

Now, I think there are very few words for describing how novel an experience it is to get struck by divine lightning. It is nothing like getting zapped by any lightning cultivator. I’d know - I later on asked Rae to zap me, just to confirm. 

But this was far different from that. Like all powers, Divinity played by its own rules. And what it excelled at was breaking down the powerful. I was not as powerful as the divines, looking purely at my cultivation realm, but with E...

Chapter 267: Shifting, Cracking, Breaking

Chapter 267: Shifting, Cracking, Breaking

Mercury stood in front of the statue of gold, and he demanded an answer. His Skill triggered, and it pulled at the thing that was an avatar of three sins. It was a thing of voice, of expression, and it had to reply.

“We,” the statue started, for it was not truly one thing anymore, “are alive. We live. Is that not enough?”

That was as much of an answer as it was a deflection. Mercury took a long, deep breath, and felt t...

Chapter 164: Symphony

Where there was nothing, there started a song.

It echoed across strings of glass, mirror-diodes and hearts. Across a shared connection, both intimate and distant. A promise to look into the future together.

The song sought the connection and swam across it. Ann was sitting in the living room, reading from a book she’d picked up a few days prior. She was resting, sitting comfortably, when her heart thrummed.

Mana-glass pulsated with power. It was so loud she heard it, and t...

Chapter 266: Workaholic Recovery Center :)

Chapter 266: Workaholic Recovery Center :)

When Mercury woke up, he found himself sitting in a hot springs, with a towel gently draped across his cloak, like a soft, warm, heavy blanket. Blearly, he blinked open his eyes, getting greeted by a flit of notification he quickly waved away, noting to check them later. Instead, he looked around himself.

And found… snow?

The air was pleasantly chilly. Enough so to make the water steam in the cold. It made him want to sink ...

Chapter 163: Metamorphosis - Uncaged

Saph sat with me, in the frozen mountains, and there’s a strange half-calm that lingered between us. 

It was bizarre to think that we’d been trying to kill each other just a little while ago. I’d broken many zurulen, the giant, living piles of rock that apparently spawned from Saph. They were still a nest, after all. 

That was my first question, too. “You create the zurulen, right? They’re your offspring, in a way. Are you not angry that I broke them?”

...

Chapter 265: Respite

Chapter 265: Respite

The portal to Sloth was different from the others. They had all been invasions - violent attempts to take from this world and bring to theirs. To feed and gorge themselves on things that did not belong to them. Violence, theft, hunger. 

Sloth was not quite like that.

Mercury stood in front of a thin, purple gate. It was lazy, like a scraggly pencil line no one had bothered to erase. It was small and thin, and yet, it stood open as an invitati...

Chapter 162: Better Choice

There was something that I appreciated about violence.

This wasn’t exactly a new development. I’d beaten up bullies before. I’d gotten into a fair share of scrapes with my brothers, too. Ivan, Jacob and I hadn’t exactly been easy kids. I was probably a better sister for Beth now, but the boys and I had gotten home with scrapes and bruises often.

And now, all that had changed was the scope of violence. Breaking things was peaceful, sometimes. I hated that I took so much ple...

Chapter 264: Futureproof

Chapter 264: Futureproof

Ihn’ar was understanding. It was vision beyond vision, comprehension of things not meant to be understood. It was breaking the veils and looking past them.

Zeyjn was the splitting of the mind into perfect pieces, able to operate and rest and focus on different things, all working in harmony as one whole. It was preparation, malleability, and quantity.

Ystirs were structures. Tiny pieces of maintained order, rigidly holding something in place...

Chapter 161: Loathing

The hospital was sterile and white, and I felt horribly mundane as I walked in. My memories are blurred, but I know I talked to a receptionist at some point, who pointed me at a nurse, who pointed me at my dad’s room. Third floor, room seventeen.

I remember that because I spent what must have been an eternity staring at the door. I didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to see what laid behind it. In the end, it wasn’t even me that opened it. Another nurse - a guy this time - saw m...

Chapter 263: Reshaped Dream

Turns out, putting magic into metals was hard. 

The simple reason was that controlling anything on a molecular level was usually a delicate thing, and often reserved for sterile processes. There was nothing sterile about working with a forge. Sure, it was clean, but then you’d hit glowing hot metal, and slag and chips would come off it. Simply the way it was.

Weaving in magical lattices, especially ones that would mimic filters, attunements, or full-on spell structures was ...

Chapter 160: Crashing the Party

“Hi Lyra, this is Matt speaking,” the swordsman spoke into his phone. “Yeah, I’m going to break into a building. Yes, it’s a good reason. We’re suspecting Echo research.”

The chattering on the other end went silent. When the voice spoke again, it was a lot more serious. Matt smiled and nodded along. “Yes, yes. I’ll turn on my gps. Just send a squad our way. Yes, I’ll avoid load bearing walls to break through.”

And then he hung up. Took a deep breath.  2025-08-20 02:30:29 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 262: Threats and Cats

Chapter 262: Threats and Cats

Pride. Greed. Lust. Sloth.

Those were the remaining sins. Realms of excess and debauchery, of want and desire, of self-embodied perfection and demands of respect. They were rifts in the world, caused by human folly and primordial twists. How did other realms come to be, after all?

Did they spawn, spontaneously, out of nowhere? Did dreams and half-realities follow the laws of energy conservation? Could damage come from nowhere, or did...

Chapter 159: Puppets

Richard Terril, son of Jonathan Henney, had a lot of things to clean up. 

His father had been a brilliant man. No one, no matter how much they hated him, would deny that. Mr. Henney had been incredibly sharp, able to find opportunities and generate social and financial capital where others would have cut their losses. He’d manipulated, bribed, and tricked his ways into people’s hearts and granted himself a position of immense power.

So immense, in fact, that he c...

Chapter 261: Surrounded

Chapter 261: Surrounded

[Main Quest: “Rends in Reality” advanced!

Partial Reward granted by entity: <Dream Manifestation> mastery.]

[<Dream Manifestation> has levelled up! <Dream Manifestation lv. 2 -> 3>]

As he stepped through the void and arrived back in the mortal realm, there was another notification, too.

[<Itinerant> has levelled up! <Itinerant lv. 8 -> 9>]

He breathed in the fresh air and enjoyed the sun...

Chapter 158: How to Repent

I woke up, eventually, and I was rather warm. 

We were still in the north. The mountains were still covered in ice. But there was a blanket draped across me. A blanket that… looked strangely dark.

[Treasure: Flicker of Regret

Owner: Emilia 

Description: From darkness blossoms fire, from fire blossoms warmth. This temperate blanket will automatically adjust to consume the ambient temperature, returning the person under its cover to a comfortable state. It wi...

Chapter 260: Incandescence

Chapter 260: Incandescence

Breeze did not enjoy the feeling of the wind.

There was something about it that felt so unnaturally freeing, so easily cruel. It made it easy to forget. To get lost. To run and run and run and break everything in its way.

Now that he knew what to look for, the feeling was uncomfortable. Not because it felt wrong, but because it felt so right. And Breeze hated it. He hated the way he revelled in it. The way that his body unr...

Chapter 157: To Drown a Demon

There is a simple way to fight fire, and that is with water. Drowning the giant seemed like an easy choice, given that we were fighting on a frozen over lake and that Chris’ human shell used water and ice Qi. 

Instantly, steam hissed up from the lake, black fire cresting its surface. It tried to reach up with a hand, but then, the ice grew and shifted to cover the surface of the lake. Emilia stood next to it, grinning. “Ice is a rock, too, didn’t you know?” she said calmly....

Chapter 259: Ash and Redemption

Chapter 259: Ash and Redemption

/Crowns. 

These things have a reputation among any sufficiently large people, don’t they? Crowns. They’re a symbol of status, of superiority, of being the greatest. A ruler, a champion, a monarch, yes? 

So often when people are concerned, they are placed on the heads of the unworthy. Those made to rule who never should. Among people, those who covet crowns should never have them. Those who covet ruling are those who will f...

Chapter 156: Upon an Icy Lake

Black fire crested the horizon. 

I looked out at that flame, and felt what it caused in me. I felt the rage that spilled, the throbbing ache that was still there. The horror of loss and despair that I’d felt when things had gone wrong. My ears rang with emotion, and the hair across my body stood up in goosebumps. 

There was so much that the simple sight of the giant caused in me, even when the place we fought was so different. Now, we were further up north, even furthe...

Chapter 258: Sprawling Spiral

Chapter 258: Sprawling Spiral

There was something both haunting and meditative about unmaking a person.

Sitting among an endless nest of threads, Mercury felt a little bit like a spider. He didn’t have as many limbs, of course, but his mind and Skills made a good alternative. In fact, with <Force of the Hecatoncheires>, he kind of had a thousand hands. Which was way more than any spider he knew of, quite frankly.

And so, using his ghost hands, Mercury reached ...

Chapter 155: To find Closure

This new version of myself looked around the world with curiosity. Her mouth was open with wonder, and her eyebrows raised in surprise. It made her look a little silly. Did I look like that, too? Is that why Ann teased me sometimes?

Her gaze snapped to me, and she rolled her eyes. “Hey, don’t give me that. Wait. Don’t give us that? Eh, who cares! It’s the look Ann gives me, and I will not stand for it!” she said, then had the audacity to pout at me. 

I blin...

Chapter 257: Personhood

Chapter 257: Personhood

Otto was not a bad person. Mercury felt the need to remind himself of that fact. 

The man was gentle, almost all the time. Sometimes, he was unaware of his strength, but almost all the time, he held back. He moved slowly, just to make sure he did not break anything. He never ran, never yelled, never hit things. He opened doors as if handling a delicate butterfly.

All of that is to say… seeing it drop away was terrifying.

When Otto ...

Chapter 154: Herald of the golden Tide

Hive-Mother had found a wonderful place to thrive in.

When it was young, it was always weak. Lonely. It felt cold and small, and only thrived by eating scraps from the floor. Slithering, crawling over sparse plants under red skies. It could hardly see, but it wanted to devour and grow. 

It wanted to thrive and spawn more hivekin, to spread and devour and see its children spread all over the world. And it had never been able to do so.

Thrown in a cage. 

That w...

Chapter 256: Cleansed with Blood

Chapter 256: Cleansed with Blood

And so, a little over a year passed.

Mercury collected another 100 Skill points from <Skill Point Generation>, and the Skill levelled up once more. Some things happened. 

Bael, against all odds, built a vacation house in Stormbraver. About half the council members fainted from the news, and one of them had a heart attack, but it was nothing that couldn’t be treated by a little bit of Lucia’s flame. Did she maybe set them...

Chapter 153: Hope

While Eden was safer now that the eclipse had passed, that by no means erased all the impact it had. Multiple cities laid in ruins, and the usurpers had claimed far, far more land for themselves. They’d claimed gateways that had been in those cities, and established gigantic nests, breeding more and more forces to send against the cities.

And, with Orvan dead, there was a lack of combatants in Eden. Of course, there were the other archmages and angels, but their talents were different...

Chapter 255: People

Chapter 255: People

CW: Grief, Brief mention of suicidal thoughts (2nd section of the chapter)

Humans are vain creatures. 

Bael sat in her room, thinking. It was a plain room, with a single bed in it, a nightstand, a small table, and a dresser. There was a small bathroom attached, but she hadn’t showered yet.

There were small rainwater stains on the floor, in the shape of her clawed feet. That human facade that cracked and crumbled away. Because, at t...