For a moment, the Spirit looked like it wanted to say more. Then it got a good look at his face, and thought better of it.
Alright it said. …I hope you realize what you’re in for, kid.
And it unleashed the Thunder Demon on him.
But this time Zane already felt stronger going in. And he was ready this time—he felt shocked awake, felt his heart pumping strong now, warmed up, tingling hot all over. A new vigor coursed through hi...
2024-05-26 01:29:04 +0000 UTC
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The Spirit considered him for a while. It looked pale, which was impressive for a ghost. Then—
That… should not have been that easy, it said.
Zane blinked at it.
That should have been a chance to temper your Shield. it choked. To face adversity! To Level and Evolve your Skill! That…
They stared at each other. They seemed to be doing that a lot. The Spirit started puzzling at him.
“Hmm,...
2024-05-24 22:28:20 +0000 UTC
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The words SHIELD OF THE BLOOD MOON appeared in devilish red letters over the spirit’s head.
The mists thickened. Another vision flashed o view.
Disciple! It was the Spirit, big again here. It is time to learn the foundational technique of the Red Moon Pagoda. Unlike most techniques, it does not merely make use of your own essence. It wields the Red Moon Pagoda itself! Which makes the Blood Moon Shield a uniquely potent Sk...
2024-05-23 21:43:58 +0000 UTC
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A/N:
Revised Emperor Red Moon to Level 522!
//
The door was set deep into an archway. A mural ran over its surface in bare gold lines. It was simple yet vivid—it almost seemed to move as Zane looked at it, like an optical illusion.
It was the Red Moon Emperor, sketched out. A bright-red disc flared behind him, a big halo. Before him stood a field of enemies. They were casting thick gold lines at him—lines that bounced right off his red ...
2024-05-23 01:40:15 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Two bloodline power-ups in one seemed a bit much pacing-wise so minor retcon—especially when I really thought about how much stuff organs entailed—so leaving organs for the next bloodline level-up!
//
Zane ran into a second building. The wall exploded in a shower of cobblestone and wood. He stomped, halting himself before he did any serious damage. …Which left a giant crater in the road.
By now there was lots of staring and pointing and shou...
2024-05-21 20:23:15 +0000 UTC
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It was weird. Zane knew he was not invincible. But in a battle, he fought like he was. He would never go in doubting himself.
In his mind, once he committed to a battle it was do or die. Then belief was everything. He would always believe he could not be beaten. Somehow, in those close hard fights, that made the difference.
He could choose his fights well though. Be judicious like Reina would say.
This was not really relevant right now. There was no fight he could not pick o...
2024-05-20 16:42:27 +0000 UTC
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“Today I’ll tell you two secrets. The first is a great strength of the Titan Rhino. The second its greatest weakness. Listen well! If you were meant to wield the Titan Rhino's power, you likely share this weakness.”
Zane frowned at that.
“I certainly do.” The Barbarian Sage thumped his bare chest. “I have the scars to prove it.”
His body was riddled with them. Ugly black things. Some went a finger deep—deep ridges of flesh carved out of his biceps...
2024-05-18 01:34:40 +0000 UTC
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D’Angelo Hall hit High Peak.
Light and dark blew out of him in equal measure. He stood, blinking. One pupil white, the other black.
When he powered his Skills, they seemed to defy space. Zane couldn't tell if it was an illusion—he threw his fist one way, and it came out somewhere else—seemingly with double the power. The same with an experimental kick. His body would bend in ways bodies should not be able to bend, and portal all over the place to land their shots...
2024-05-16 01:09:09 +0000 UTC
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The last hardest game Reina came up with was to do it all over again. This time in the Astral Plane.
Less than a quarter of the World Rankers remained to try it. Mostly the ones with the most powerful souls.
This time they would use essence in place of snow. They’d pack it the way they’d packed snow—the shaping would use the same principles.
They wouldn’t use any Skills they already had though. That would give the essence structure. They would go in...
2024-05-15 00:56:48 +0000 UTC
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A/N: After thinking about just how big each floor in the Superdungeon is I’ve retconned it so the full route, start to end, is four floors long
//
When planning for the lecture, Zane and Reina had discovered a basic problem.
Most of what Zane knew, he didn’t know. Consciously that was. It was like riding a bike. He didn’t know how he did it, he just did it. It was all deeper down.
When Zane was trying to teach Reina duri...
2024-05-13 23:07:23 +0000 UTC
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It was an exclusive camp. Every top-200 World Ranker got an invite. So did the bigwigs of every major Faction. Reina had a full list—it was a who's who of the most powerful humans alive.
They chose a big ice sheet in the middle of nowhere for the same reason scientists chose an empty desert to test nuclear bombs. It was a lot of nowhere. Lots of room for bad mess-ups.
Reina also liked how it looked. The endless stretches of ice gave her a bitt...
2024-05-12 20:28:10 +0000 UTC
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In the meantime… the only thing to do now, besides eating whatever steel he could find, was to do the last real effective way of Leveling. Which was Reina.
Level up!
Essence Level 209 -> 210
Skill up!
Mephisto’s Pleasure Sutra VI -> VII
It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t have to get up to do her very important job the next day. But with what he put her through som...
2024-05-12 01:00:13 +0000 UTC
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A/N:
Bonus chapter day! Second chapter sometime late evening EST
Also: retconned in that they get tomes along with the Bloodlines as rewards
//
60 days.
That was how much time everyone on Earth, including Zane, had to get ready for the biggest threat their world had ever known.
There was a log jam in the World Rankings. Zane wasn't the most talented Leveler. He got there by brute force. Tons of folk were in the Level 190s, itching to break ...
2024-05-11 16:14:03 +0000 UTC
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It was a lucky thing that they'd evacuated so thoroughly. Hundreds of miles. One target.
You could see the eruption from space. It looked like a flower blooming stark blue-white. Colors you'd only see in the fiercest, most violent of thunderstorms. Spreading slowly over the face of the Earth.
Only half a flower. Blooming in a crescent. The other end hit a hard wall. Some tremendous soul was guiding its path, curving it away—shielding everyone on the other side...
...
2024-05-10 18:15:49 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Thanks for the feedback all! 3k was an interesting experiment but I think I’ll stick to 2-2.5k chapters with a few bonus chapters a week (will aim for 3) for now. Easier for me to stay consistent with
//
Zane ran Asterion straight over.
He started fast—and ramped even faster, like his body were a huge performance muscle car, shifting gear after gear—he slammed straight into it. And the Minotaur couldn’t seem to mak...
2024-05-09 19:13:25 +0000 UTC
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Zane took a heavy breath.
Rivers of essence gushed into him. Core Monsters had so much to give. It all merged into an ocean with him at the center, soaking in the light….
Level up!
Essence Level 200 -> 201
A week ago he would’ve thought it a wealth of essence. But now he needed far more essence than before. He had to feed his Core. It felt like shoveling fuel into a high-powered furnace.
These Core Monsters fel...
2024-05-08 03:21:37 +0000 UTC
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Every Faction there—from the Shaolin monks, to Vanessa’s North Star, to Eze’s Earth Mages—stood frozen.
Then, all at once, there was a great swelling of feeling.
Their moods had been nearing hopeless after those long awful hours; now it was moving faster and faster, swinging toward a bursting, an almost hysterical joy.
Everyone knew exactly who Zane Walker was.
He was that man. It was a surreal scene—when all of humanity had failed, they looked to one m...
2024-05-07 02:46:28 +0000 UTC
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He woke to a notification.
Level up!
Essence Level 200.
He felt his Core instantly. A sphere of shining light—more in the Astral plane than in the physical, but he felt it. Tied deeply to his body. All his essence flowed through it the way his blood flowed through his heart.
And this heart pumped strong. It was hard to look at straight-on. It took a moment to adjust. Essence wa...
2024-05-06 04:25:54 +0000 UTC
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18 hours later...
Reina stumbled back from one of the worst days she’d had in months. She’d had to pull three teams out of nearby dungeons, evacuate whole sub-Factions, manage all the teleportations and the resettling. She’d just finished getting the last of the emergency tents set up.
She was swaying a little on her feet, woozy by the time she came back home, bone-weary. She was ready to collapse right into Zane and relax at last, and let herself drift off....
2024-05-05 05:00:50 +0000 UTC
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Zane made his way to the Warrior Dojo. Irina Volkova’s last stand was still stuck in his mind.
He saw how easily the Minotaur had crushed her. She hadn’t been weak at all either. It just wasn’t a fair fight.
That level of power… he had never seen anything like it. The Minotaur was labelled a ‘Monster Knight.’ He had never seen that either. It wasn’t just any Level 255. The kind of Law, of Essence, of Bloodline that ...
2024-05-04 03:42:57 +0000 UTC
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A/N:
Chapter 1 of 2 today
//
CRACK!
A single white seam raced down the obsidian peak. Blinding white light spilled out, highlighting every crag of it—and it kept striking lower, lower. Burrowing into the earth, splitting down the sides of the mountain. Thickening. Widening.
There came a violent rumbling, a rumbling so loud it swallowed all sound. And it seemed like whole mountain was coming apart at that seam.
2024-05-03 16:12:00 +0000 UTC
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His next two Levels came in the same night over the course of about nine intense hours.
Level up!
Essence Level 196 -> 197
Level up!
Essence Level 197 -> 198
After she tapped out he lay there as her pillow, drinking vials of elixir nonstop.
Level up!
Essence Level 198 -> 199
He w...
2024-05-02 22:04:29 +0000 UTC
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We are prepared to offer you:
- 1 Complete Tier 4 Electricity Inheritance.
- The S-grade Sky-ranked Treasure White Lightning Lotus Petal, a treasure exclusive to Mount Thunderclast. It blooms once every 100,000 years, carefully tended by generations of Thunderclast gardeners—all for your consumption.
It should grant you a great headstart on the Lightning Paths—enough to wipe out whatever deficit you m...
2024-05-01 23:33:39 +0000 UTC
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A/N:
Today will likely be a 2-chapter day. This is the first!
//
“The second Concept,” said Patriarch Azure Flame, “Emerges where lightning strikes fire! It is called Chain Combustion.”
The Patriarch nodded, stroking his beard.
“Chain Combustion goes hand in hand with Plasma. A Stormfire with Chain Combustion creates itself anew, multiplies like never before…it makes the world its fuel. Come with me....
2024-05-01 16:49:44 +0000 UTC
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A/N: Dungeon name changed to Heaven's Peak!
//
Zane had a handful of days before the Superdungeon. In that time he and his friends settled into a training camp.
Reina started working on that Regeneration buff Skill—' Evergrow.'
Avery munched essence-dense foods until she passed out from a food coma. Evan was bouncing off the walls, trying as hard as he could to get faster.
They sectioned off their own little training grounds,...
2024-04-30 19:19:12 +0000 UTC
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The notifications poured in in a rush.
Skill up!
Promethean Noose II -> III
Skill up!
Emperor’s Soul II -> III
Level up!
Essence Level 186 -> 187
Level up!
Essence Level 187 -> 188
The Final Boss has been defeated
S-rank Dungeon Call of the Abyss has been cleared!
Zane was a little too woozy to clock all o...
2024-04-29 22:20:50 +0000 UTC
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Zane fought, and felt viscerally what he was up against. Those tentacles were like a glut of pythons coiling over him, sinking fangs into every inch of him, digging into him, pumping him full of numbing, burning feeling, a cloud of it seeping through him—
The Jellyfish was so close Zane could feel its emotions almost as clear as if they were his own. Feel the triumph burgeoning in that tiny soul…
***
The Giant Nebula Jellyfish knew exactly how its victims felt when...
2024-04-29 04:11:33 +0000 UTC
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(2/2)
The Reaper Queen was still reloading. It had burned itself out. It needed to recharge. There was nothing it could do but watch, horrified as Zane closed in. It was too big. It couldn’t even turn away in time.
He cocked his fist all the way—straining in one vicious chain from his legs, to his back, to his arms, big muscles bulging with essence, with sheer wound-up power.
And unloaded a Stormfire Smash.
BOOM!
2024-04-27 05:01:21 +0000 UTC
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A/N: double chapter day! :D
getting back into a rhythym..
(1/2)
//
Every fiber of muscle in his massive frame lit up with essence. Tensing. Power coursed through him, raw untamed power, so much of it running down his arms, going into his hands he couldn't sit still. His big hands began to tremble. Stormfire erupted down his knuckles.
But that was just the beginning.
His body kept going. Shifting gears, revving faster and faster, seemingly e...
2024-04-26 17:30:16 +0000 UTC
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It wasn’t burning just one or two drops of Blood Essence. It burned hundreds, maybe thousands. The foundations of its power. Soaked so deep into its muscles it changed the very structure, made it part-flesh part-machine. An engine of tendon and bone and sinew. Its aura flared out of it, burning with sheer brute power…
The Titan Rhino bellowed. And charged straight into the path of the avalanche.
It exploded up the mountain, mowing down a line of trees, smashing throu...
2024-04-25 22:10:21 +0000 UTC
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