elra

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I barely know how to use Paint

An Otherworldly Scholar - 274

Red mana particles formed a bright halo around my head, and the crowd stepped away, freeing up a circle around me. [Foresight] told me it was a mere marking spell, so I ignored it for the time being and focused on the prompt that floated between Holst and me.

System Quest - Kill Lord Robert Clarke, Thane of Farcrest.

Rewards - 1 Rank S skill, 3 Rank A skills, 5 Rank B skills, 10 Strength Points, 10 Dexterity Points, 10 Endurance Points, 50 levels....

An Otherworldly Scholar - 273

The tunnel went on for a long time. Without [Foresight], I might have lost track of time. Other than the occasional scratching sound of the rats against the stone floor, there was complete silence. Holst moved like a shadow, and Talindra had silenced her hooves with leather sandals. At some point, and without a word, Jorn’s agents took a side exit. Prince Adrien’s men followed shortly after. The three of us kept going until we reached a stone wall with metal rungs embedded deeply into it....

An Otherworldly Scholar - 272

“We’ll be fine!” Firana said, pushing me into the carriage.

Although she was at least fifteen levels below me, Wind Fencers had a greater strength growth than Runeweaver Sages.

The day of the anti-nobility rally arrived quickly. I wasn’t planning on taking any of the kids with me, and I had expected some resistance, especially from Firana and Ilya. Even if the girls disagreed on virtually everything, they were pretty much on the same page when it came to world-saving endea...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 271

AN: I don't know how so many grammatical mistakes made it into the last chapter(I damn you, Grammarly). Fixed a lot(all?) of them. Hopefully, this one is more sanitized for your eyes.

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I read the invitation to the anti-nobility rally for the tenth time. [Foresight] had already burned it in my memory, but I felt unease. The relation between Byrne, the Zealots, and the anti-nobility rally was faint at best, merely a hunch, but I couldn’t help but feel paranoid about it. Byrne ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 270

AN: Edits. I don't know how so many grammar mistakes went through this one.

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“Leiv Fletch is dead,” Prince Adrien said as he walked around the room.

I had discharged myself from the House of Healing, but before I could leave the royal palace, Adrien’s personal guard had ambushed me and ‘invited’ me to a reunion with the prince. The dark circles around his eyes and his displeased expression were enough for me to get an idea of the situation.

“Leiv Fl...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 269

I was alive, and I had tinnitus.

Sunlight entered through a window, and the room was warm, but my vision was blurry, and I could barely tell the shape of the things around me. I blinked repeatedly and, to my relief, the room slowly came into focus. White walls, shelves with Alchemist’s tools and potions, the sharp sting of disinfectant. Then, the memories flooded my mind. The Red Crystal, the Sound Bandit, the ritual, the explosion. A quick bodily inspection told me I still had all my...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 268

The prompt floated before my eyes.

Leiv Fletch. Human. Location: 50 meters, south-southwest.

“Don’t turn around,” Prince Adrien said.

My [Foresight] drew a crude map of the cathedral’s layout based on what I saw from outside. The cathedral’s entrance faced east. Twenty meters south-south-east from our position was beyond the wall to my left. 

Leiv Fletch was only a couple of dozen meters outside the cathedral.

“I can get him,” ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 267

I wasn’t beating the allegations anytime soon.

The baby faun cried for a minute before deciding it was too much trouble and falling asleep instead. His cheeks were perfectly round, his hooves firm but soft, and his horns wide and stubby, encompassing a good chunk of his scalp. Talindra said he would have huge, beautiful horns. His hair was red and curly like Talindra’s, but a darker shade. 

Faun newborns were way cuter than their human counterparts.

“Are you sure,...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 266

Astur aimed his modified telescope at the sun. He had been working on the contraption for half a decade, but somehow, he no longer felt the tingling sensation he used to get when he tested his ideas. The light passed through a narrow slit and the diffraction grating, projecting a rainbow onto the absorption sheet. He counted to ten, closed the telescope’s eye, and removed the sheet. Splitting the picture of the rainbow, there were hundreds of sharp dark lines.

The experiment had been ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 265

AN: edit - wrote the title incorrectly

Ilya’s Spirit Animal dropped a small note in my hand. There was no suspicious movement on Byrne’s side. Now that we knew his plan involved installing a hundred enchanted metal plates, we could easily surveil him. If he wanted to surprise us, he would need a hundred helpers installing the plates all over the city at the same time. Ilya had pointed out that Byrne could use the members of the Arcane Circle, but that would raise a lot of questions ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 264

Ghila, Holst, Rockman, and I took turns to fight the cadets until Holst’s teaching assistant, an old elf with a similarly dry personality, joined us. The cadets had to survive for thirty seconds, and although the fights had been mostly unilateral, I was happy with the grit they had put into the exercise.

By the end of the session, every cadet had managed to survive the thirty seconds at least once. Rockman was Lv.29, and although the power gap between him and the cadets was immense, w...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 263

I woke up late. 

The astral trip had taken hours of real-life time, and I had barely been able to exit Prince Adrien’s quarters at dawn without being detected by the guards. If I had been alone, it would’ve been easier, but I couldn’t just leave Althea behind without raising suspicions. Everyone had seen the two of us leaving the party together, so it was better not to leave loose ends.

Hours after returning to the real world, I kept seeing the mana spire whenever I clo...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 262

Prince Adrien and Althea cowered like little children. Their natural confidence slipped away the moment they realized what I truly was. [Foresight] highlighted the details of the scene. Color returned to Prince Adrien’s face, and his heart raced; the pain and exhaustion lifted from his body as adrenaline shot through his veins. Althea clutched his arm, her eyes jumping from me to the shards of the bed pillar lying on the floor. For the first time since I met them, they looked small. Neither...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 261

“Why do you have the key to the room of the most powerful men in the kingdom?” I asked as I peeked through the door gap into the waiting room. 

It was pretty clear that Evelisse wanted us to be left alone.

“I will have you know I was Adrien’s favorite cousin even before Prince Ragna’s death,” Althea replied, full of herself, her head below mine as we poked through the door. “Going incognito to watch the performance of the Arts Circle is a fairly common occurrenc...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 260

I spent the morning in the Library, digging through piles of land grants.

Teleportation machines require hardware. A couple of small metal plates were enough to teleport a paper ball. However, the hardware required to teleport living beings over large distances scaled exponentially, and it had to be installed with extreme precision. 

If Byrne wanted to teleport Cadria, he needed to ensure his enchanted metal plates were undisturbed during the teleportation process. 

An Otherworldly Scholar - 259

“We need privacy.”

“What you need to do, Lady Talindra, is to ignore this bum,” Mildred replied.

Talindra stood her ground in silence until the grumpy doula left the room.

As soon as the door closed, I felt a tension lifting from my shoulders. It was hard to tell if that weird sensation was a skill prodding my mana pool or just the weight of the woman’s presence. Mildrad, after all, wasn’t any woman; she had helped give birth to Prince Adrien.

I sat on a sm...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 258

I needed to know the truth about Byrne, and to that end, I was going to infiltrate his study.

My heart raced, but I pushed forward. Byrne had the ability to teleport, so any speed I could exert thanks to [Minor Aerokinesis] felt slow in comparison. I moved as fast as I could, but the trail beneath my feet seemed eternal. Finally, after hours of feeling the cold wind against my face, I reached Cadria’s walls just before dawn.

The guards let me through the northern entrance withou...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 257

Zealots didn’t learn skills like other classes. The System gave them the right tools to accomplish their Quests, which made them highly dangerous. 

I pushed Rup behind my back, wondering if the Zealots would get a power boost if I were deemed an obstacle to their Quest. There was only one thing I could do if the System decided to issue a hunting order against me: pray.

‘If you are listening, I really need your help,’ I thought, focusing my mind on the figure of the Syst...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 256

Leonie felt an overwhelming need to turn around. Her seventh sense told her to look at the dangerous presence behind her. Her jaw stiffened. No matter how hard she tried to speak, not a word came out of her mouth. Slowly, she turned around just to meet Instructor Clarke’s eyes. Mana surged through his body. The ground shattered under his boots.

“I’ll handle this.” 

Leonie had never heard such a serious tone coming out of his mouth, not even when Nessa Morag-Vedras tri...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 255

Leonie was barely managing to fend off the Ice Mage.

Two factors determined an individual's power: physical and magical prowess. Physical prowess began to become noticeable closer to the Lv.20 softcap. Magical prowess was more variable; even from Lv.1, it depended on the Class baseline mana, titles, and skillset. Leonie’s Lv.11 Sorcerer Class, her [Fae Curse] and [Mana Regeneration], mixed with a powerful skillset, could, in theory, defeat most cadets.

She had done so with the o...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 254

“You owe her money!” Fenwick shouted as they ran away from the dropouts.

Dolores croaked in Yvain’s hands, but it was almost impossible to determine a frog’s intent from her croaking alone.

“You are playing with me!” Yvain shouted back at Fenwick.

The Osgirians weren’t known for their humor, and since Yvain had grown up among them, neither nature nor nurture had made him a jokester. In fact, even by Osgirian standards, Yvain’s sense of humor was rather dry. 2025-09-05 21:29:55 +0000 UTC View Post

An Otherworldly Scholar - 253

I paced nervously around the white monolith. Three cadets didn’t reach Station Six by their scheduled times. One of them was Odo, and the other two were cadets from the Basilisk and Gaiarok squads. They were supposed to arrive half an hour ago, even by my most pessimistic approximations. 

Things at Station Six weren’t looking pretty either. The monolith had turned out to be a dangerous place for cadets. Many dropouts had realized that the top of the hill, devoid of vegetation, ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 252

Two hundred first-year cadets departed with the break of the day, their badges pinned to their chests. A similar number of dropouts waited for them in the depths of the wooded hills that extended between the camp and the mountain peaks. The great distances between stations were a blessing and a curse. Even with all our preparations, there was a chance our cadets would never meet, but there was also a chance for the dropouts to miss them. Or so I hoped.

This was my first time seeing so m...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 251

Ghila stormed into Astur’s luxury tent with the rest of the instructors glued to her heels. I exchanged a knowing look with Holst, and we followed inside. The tent was more spacious inside than its outer perimeter suggested, with armchairs and a coffee table. Maybe an expansion enchantment? If teleportation were possible, subjective spaces might be as well, but no matter how much I looked around, I didn’t find the enchanted item that allowed the spatial buckle.

Ghila’s dangerous a...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 250

AN: wow, those are a lot of chapters. As always, thanks for coming along on this trip!

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Ilya looked at me with disgust.

“I’m telling the truth. The baby isn’t mine!” I said for the tenth time since the caravan with the first-year cadets merged with the squads sent ahead to clean the area of mid-level monsters. After months trapped inside the invisible walls of Cadria, the change of ambiance was appreciated, if not for Ilya’s intransigence.

“Then whose i...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 249

The hairs on my nape stood on end. The environmental mana in the observatory buzzed as it reacted to Byrne’s runes, and the thin layer of water inside the granite bowl made small waves. I forced my body to stay still. The effect created by high-rank runes resembled the Lich’s area spells too much to be comfortable. An instant later, the sensation disappeared. 

I leaned forward as the surface darkened and became still as a mirror. My stomach turned. [Foresight] told me to stand ...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 248

I read in the Book of Classes that Sorcerers were the most powerful magical Basic Class. Many people considered it as powerful as an Advanced Class, although its growth rates were similar to those of other Basic Classes. Sorcerers even have the disadvantage of not being able to cast elemental spells. However, their raw magic had an innate advantage: exceptional penetration power. That didn’t explain why Leonie could use so much mana so early in her levels.

Leonie entered the circle an...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 247

I have seen Zaon frown in the past, usually when he was deep in thought or trying to bear self-inflicted embarrassment, but never out of anger. The girls of the Rosethorn Squad pressed against each other while Zaon lectured on proper sparring etiquette. They were shocked. Even the Cabbage cadets lowered their heads to avoid his anger. 

To my delight, the shy elf from Lowell’s Orphanage had grown fangs.

I offered Yvain my hand. “How did it feel to face your first monster?�...

An Otherworldly Scholar - 246

I was starting to think that Scholars weren’t the homogeneous mass of bookworms and introverts I had envisioned in my head. Lip was neither one nor the other. He was the youngest of four siblings and the problem child of the Greymarch family. Our lunch was quick, because I had to return to the Academy, but it took me half an hour to realize why Firana had fit so well in his group. To say Lip had a thousand and one stories was an understatement.

Before me, the plate of beef soup gave o...