The forest was a cacophony of screams as countless battles raged all around them, Eik’s team only one of many in the chaos.
Eik had already felt his wooden plaque vibrate inside his shirt, but there had been no time to take it out to check. The going through the forest was slow and there was little coherence in the advancement of the forces, teams running to catch up any time they could get away from the constant battles. They hadn’t even made it to the main stage of the Great Raid,...
2024-10-03 16:00:16 +0000 UTC
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“Yeah, I’ve got a problem with you!” the bowl cut yelled, getting into Eik’s face just as he was getting to his feet. “You’re a damn traitor, is my problem with you!”
Eik narrowed his eyes in confusion, the accusation taking him completely by surprise. “I’m a traitor? Since when?”
“Since you became all buddy buddy with that bitch with the pink hair.”
Eik couldn’t help but laugh. “Is that what all this dumb whispering that everybody’s doing has b...
2024-10-02 16:00:16 +0000 UTC
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His world was blue.
Around him a vortex of terrifying proportions spun relentlessly, feeding into itself to grow stronger with every revolution. As it grew, so did the pressure bearing down on him intensify, weighing down on him more and more, flattening his organs and stretching his skin taut over his bones.
Just as the point came where he thought the tension would rip his limps from his body, it all let up, from one moment to the next. The Profound Toxin dispersed as if it had b...
2024-09-30 16:00:15 +0000 UTC
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It was quiet.
It was dark.
Was this what death felt like? Had Sonja’s freaking new age mindfulness bull crap actually killed him? He’d be mad if it had.
As he slowly began to get a sense of his body, he tried to find his way in the darkness, but the moment he put out his hands to search for something to grab on to, his fingers rapped painfully against something.
Pain.
That seemed like a good sign. Or maybe not.
Putting the tips of his fingers forward, h...
2024-09-29 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
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In the box lay a legitimate work of art. It was a knife that looked equally beautiful and deadly.
The cheek of the blade was a darkened, matte metal with a silvery and highly polished edge setting a stark contrast between the two. From the choil near the guard to the tip, deep ridges ran parallel to the frighteningly sharp edge, the almost invisible gaps no more than a needle’s breadth. Along the spine, numerous tiny holes lined the spine of the blade.
The guard was sized well a...
2024-09-28 16:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Eik opened his eyes to a tiny, hairy paw jammed into his open mouth. Grumbling, he spit it out, jolting his cat awake. Mis looked at him accusatorially through cracked eyelids. The covers tempted him to stay for five more minutes but he had an appointment today.
Drowsy and wearing only his pajama pants he made his way down to the kitchen, where Mis was already waiting for him to pour some breakfast into her bowl. He stared at her uncomprehendingly, then up at his bedroom, ...
2024-09-27 09:54:49 +0000 UTC
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Fragments of wood rocketed across the room, bouncing off the opposite wall. A few of the sharper pieces even buried themselves in the wall, more than half of their lengths disappearing into the white, veneer-like surface.
“What the fu—”
“You murdered my son! Left him to be…”—She heaved a sob, her face a mess of tears. It was the woman who had fallen unconscious upon hearing of her son’s death earlier—“to be eaten by that freakish, abominable
2024-09-25 19:27:19 +0000 UTC
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“What did you just say?” Eik whispered, his brain unable to consolidate the urgent tone with the words.
“I think I’ve hit E-rank,” Heath repeated with a face split in two by the widest of grins.
“You scared the living crap out of us!” Sonja admonished, with uncharacteristic fierceness.
Sorry, sorry…” he mumbled apologetically, but only managing to hold the expression of shame for a moment before the grin forced itself back. “But Sonja, I’m...
2024-09-25 19:22:19 +0000 UTC
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Eik attempted to dig his heels into the cobbled street to break his momentum, but the lightning-quick backhand tore into his shoulder nonetheless, hurling him back through the garden fence of the house he had looped around.
He gasped for air as the battle continued to unfold on the street. Lying on his back, he raised his head to see the girl with the red skin, weaponless, heading straight for the cult leader, a crazed look in her eyes. The boy was right behind her. Heath was just getti...
2024-09-25 19:00:17 +0000 UTC
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For a moment, everything stood still as he sailed through the air. And in that moment, he became sure he wouldn’t make it, but the effect of Movement Boost pushed him further, until his fingers closed around the cold chain links. With the strength of a mere F-ranker, he was unable to keep a proper grip on the metal as he slid down the length of the chain.
With every link his fingers slipped on, the speed of his descent increased until it became impossible to save himself from a violen...
2024-09-25 18:58:03 +0000 UTC
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One good thing about descending into the black nothingness of an underground temple in a world they knew nothing about, was that the stone steps at least didn’t creak like the wooden floor on the surface. Furthermore, with each step downward the temperature fell, making the humidity more tolerable.
By the time the light from above faded completely, a faint sliver of firelight became visible further down as the staircase began to bend softly. Gradually, one flickering light became two,...
2024-09-25 18:50:52 +0000 UTC
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They set off after the missing team immediately—the bright, otherworldly moonlight providing the visibility necessary to navigate the forest—while following the marks left on the tree trunks by the children.
For a couple of hours absolutely nothing happened as they continued their march through the forest. Even at night, the humidity persisted almost unchanged, and to be frank, Eik didn’t know what was more annoying between the humidity itself and Heath’s constant moaning...
2024-09-18 18:27:47 +0000 UTC
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The first thing Eik saw as he crashed through the forest underbrush was Heath, on all fours, heaving up what remained of the dirt duck hot pocket. The second was Michael doing the same. Sonja had made it a few meters further to support herself against the trunk of a mossy tree but her condition was no better. All three of them had copious amounts of tears and snot running down their faces.
Eik checked on the boy, but he seemed much better off than the team. He gave a healing sphe...
2024-09-18 18:23:08 +0000 UTC
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“Not just one! We’ve got at least three of them coming up!” Heath shouted as he took a frontal stance, ready to finish the first one before the other two made it to them.
“Quadrupeds! Slim builds! Very fast!” Sonja added to Heath’s warnings as she drew her bow.
The first one barreled into Heath’s greatshield, a well-timed side step deflecting the monster’s entire body directly into the path of Sonja’s descending blade. Heath’s heavy slash followed with a...
2024-09-18 18:20:26 +0000 UTC
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“What do you think it says?” Michael asked as Sonja handed him the note.
“I think I can make a guess,” Eik said with concern, looking around the mossy clearing. “Look,” he added and traced a path along the ground with a finger.
Scattered bloodstains ran roughly from the initial direction the Alliance team had moved, a particularly dense concentration around the bloody slip of paper, continuing away and into the trees in the opposite direction. At closer inspecti...
2024-09-18 18:14:44 +0000 UTC
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When they managed to wrestle off the excited kids wanting to know what he had done to his sparring opponent, Mikla, the black haired man who could open fractures at will, took Eik to a room with a nice, springy bed, a sofa, tables, windows, a bathroom, and other amenities that made the whole place resemble a luxury apartment.
“What is this place?” Eik asked, biting into a round, red fruit from a bowl on the center table. It was so sour that he had to spit it back into his han...
2024-09-18 18:12:15 +0000 UTC
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Eik stared openmouthed at Atla, whose smile never faltered.
“You-You want me to what, sorry?” he stammered.
“I’m saying I want you to fight that kid over there. I want to know what the new guy is capable of, and it’ll benefit the kid’s growth as well. Win win, I’d say.”
Eik looked around. The lecture above had stopped and both the instructor and the kids were eyeing their conversation. “I, uuh… I don’t know about this, Atla.”
“It’s go...
2024-09-18 18:09:59 +0000 UTC
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Eik prepared to land on his feet, but the moment he entered the fracture, everything changed. What had been up became down. Left became right. Front became back. His brain could not make sense of what was going on. This was not something that should happen to a human.
But before he could even begin to comprehend what was going on around him, he got a mouthful of grass as the air was knocked out of him. With how much his head was spinning, Eik couldn’t quite seem to get his feet...
2024-09-18 18:07:07 +0000 UTC
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Eik stared open-mouthed at the regal woman as she spun in place, her robe billowing around her like the blossom of a colorful bell flower. Her smile was wide and completely unconcerned with the hostility of the onlookers. Her mannerisms reminded Eik more of a stage performer than the spearhead of an inter-dimensional attack force. Alien entity invading Earth through a spatial wormhole was not the first notion that would pop into anybody’s mind when they looked at her.
Bes...
2024-09-18 18:05:28 +0000 UTC
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Eik eyed Bart silently, the man squaring up like a temperamental third-grader. Everybody was staring, sensing the tension between the two men.
“What… is going on here, exactly?” Sonja asked with furrowed brows.
“It’s, uuh… It’s nothing, really—” Eik began, holding up his hands.
“This man had the gall to disrespect me, Rock Fist Bart, when I visited his establishment!” he announced to the crowd with another accusatory finger, putting on a...
2024-09-18 18:03:29 +0000 UTC
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“Can you use the protection thing on me again?” Eik asked Michael.
The healer shook his head. “Not for another two minutes… But I think the cooldown gets shorter as the skill levels up and evolves.”
“Alright, I’ll do without it.”
“I’m gonna go check up on Heath and Sonja,” the healer said and started toward the battlefield. “That bison looks like a pincushion, but I don’t think her arrows have the power to penetrate properly yet.”
“...
2024-09-18 18:01:32 +0000 UTC
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A part of Eik was excited to see all the different plants growing in the new stretch of woods. New species bloomed all around, as if they’d been there for years. As they continued through, leafy canopies overhead, it began to sink in just how much their world had changed, and that the implications might be severe.
Long grass crunched underfoot, making it difficult to traverse. Vines hung from the tall trees like nooses, just waiting for a careless person to get their neck stuck...
2024-09-18 17:49:20 +0000 UTC
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Eik, Heath, Sonja, and Michael circled the small plaza cautiously. They had not encountered any more monster since the two many-eyes bastards, and that was putting them on edge. With all the action tonight, it felt almost wrong for there to be nothing dangerous roaming the streets. Was it truly over?
“Why are the monsters not attacking each other anyway?” Michael asked suddenly. “They only go for us, even when they’re completely different types from one another.”
...
2024-09-18 17:35:19 +0000 UTC
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Eik was in pain.
Even with the short rest, topped with both healing magic and healing spheres, he still felt absolutely horrible. If there weren’t still monsters roaming Forest, he’d have loved to be asleep by now.
One of the Awakened at Mission Central was kind enough to set his arm and provide a sling for support, and once his plight was noticed, a D-rank healer stepped in an provided some much needed relief, practically numbing the pain completely. He promised that the pain...
2024-09-18 17:32:46 +0000 UTC
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The fiend must have known it was magnitudes more powerful than Eik and Michael, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken its sweet time like this. It would have rushed in and taken their heads in the blink of an eye. Instead, it was approaching them with curiosity, long, spindly fingers probing the air toward their faces. It continued to cluck strangely.
The thing clearly preferred quadropedal movement, with long, flexible forelimbs. Its thin, bony body should not possess the terrifying power...
2024-09-18 17:29:34 +0000 UTC
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The soaring monster clipped his shoulder painfully as he ducked and dove, rolling and falling, the ground coming up to meet him with a meaty thud. Despite having the air forced from his lungs, Eik got to his feet and ran. If the dumb bastard had leapt for him at full power, it might well have cleared the roof entirely, allowing him a window of time, albeit short, to put some distance between them before it made it back to him.
This time he went for one of the watchtowers within the terr...
2024-09-18 17:27:27 +0000 UTC
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Eik left the library feeling hopeful. After finalizing his choice of [Profound Toxin], a seemingly unique ability, the script had faded and displayed a new message.
[Acquired Resistance: Toxin lv. 24]
Against any of the toxic monsters that had appeared in the past nine years, at least around Forest, a [Resistance: Toxin] skill of level 24 would neutralize the venom to the point where it would do no more than sting.
In the sinkho...
2024-09-18 17:26:06 +0000 UTC
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Eik stared down at the sheet of paper in Harry’s hand, brow furrowed, rereading the scribbles over and over.
“What does it mean?”
“We’re not really sure what it means.”
“What’s this ‘Unified Mass’, then?”
“Don’t know that either,” Harry sighed with a shrug of his shoulders.
“The expansion mentioned? ‘Phase 2’?”—The expression on Harry’s face was answer enough—“So that’s all we get?”
“It seems so, yeah...
2024-09-18 16:58:00 +0000 UTC
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[Inherent proficiency considered—Acquired Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 14]
Relief was immediate, the skill kicking in as soon as the letters appeared on his arm. The sting as they etched themselves into his skin was minor, relative to everything else. The feeling of resisting the toxic substance coursing through him was something else. It felt like magic. It was magic, through and through. It felt amazing. Addicting even. His body...
2024-09-18 16:57:21 +0000 UTC
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How deep was this hole going to be?
It felt like hours, although it couldn’t have been more than seconds. The earth was crumbling slower than his own descent, providing a soft, albeit debris-filled cushion that carried him downwards without the risk of a fatal fall. Something was rapidly swallowing the material under him and the cause wasn’t a mystery. This was a sinkhole opened by a fracture.
The fractures always opened underground, much like what he was currently experiencin...
2024-09-18 16:02:33 +0000 UTC
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