
Santiago
Author
Novels by Santiago
![URBAN AWAKENING [FROM COURIER TO DEMI-KING]](https://acfs1.meganovel.com/dist/src/assets/img/common/00c104e6-cover_default.png)
URBAN AWAKENING [FROM COURIER TO DEMI-KING]
Three years after the Great Resonance shook the world, New York City has become a war zone.
Skyscrapers have turned into monster-filled dungeons. Central Park has mutated into the Green Abyss. And the ancient bloodline families hidden for centuries now rule the city like ruthless kings.
Kai Vance is a nobody.
A broke bike courier with no pedigree, no power, and no future.
Until the day a monster horde corners him and a calm, mechanical voice speaks in his mind:
<< Aura Ascendancy System initializing… >>
Suddenly, Kai’s life is rewritten. The System grants him quests, perfect techniques, and refinement paths the elites spend years mastering. While noble heirs struggle to reach Level 11, Kai is being pushed toward the unimaginable Level 13.
His rapid rise draws attention and danger.
The Astors want to control him.
The Guan Yu clan wants to recruit him.
The Tammany underground wants him dead.
And a dormant bloodline within him marked only as is awakening, one that terrifies even the oldest families.
Worse, the monster attacks are becoming organized… almost intelligent. Earth itself seems to be evolving, and the noble families are ready to sacrifice the rest of humanity to survive.
Armed with a System designed for the ordinary, Kai must master every refinement stage, rally the scattered System-Blessed, and fight through dungeons, beasts, and corrupt aristocrats to claim his destiny.
From a nobody courier to the Demi-King of the city, Kai will rise and rewrite the fate of a reborn world.
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Chapter: Aegis in the Toxic Night
They definitely weren’t expecting me to sit here in the middle of their patron clan’s poison plant, waiting for them.I didn’t wait long.Moonrise showed as a faint sickly green glow through the toxic haze outside when I finally felt them arrive. Not a sound just a shift in the room. The chaotic Aura around me didn’t settle. It started copying. Parts of the purple-black fog lightened, turning into muddy grey patches that looked way too much like my own energy.It was like staring at a dozen warped versions of myself in a broken funhouse mirror.>>>Good. The System was actually helping.Core resonance. Deep Stone Song. Right.I closed my eyes and ignored the visual tricks. I dropped my awareness inward, into the slow, steady hum in my bones the patient rhythm I’d
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Chapter: The Price of a Principle
His eyes red and tired in the dim light narrowed.“Words?” he scoffed. “I need a real method. A pill. A crystal. Something that works.”“Methods built on bad understanding will only break you faster,” I said, repeating a line from my mother’s journal. “I’m offering the understanding. What you build from it? That’s up to you.”Something flickered in his expression interest wrapped in desperation.“What’s the price?”“Three high‑grade Aura crystals,” I said. “Or the same value in food and clean water.”He barked a dry laugh and started to walk away.“For words? You’re insane.”“Your liver is refining out of sync with your kidneys,” I said softly.He froze mid‑step.I kept going. “You’re forcing wood‑element Aura for growth while trying to sharpen yourself with metal‑element Aura. They’re fighting inside you. You’re not cultivating you’re hosting a civil war in your organs. Keep this up and you won’t last a month.”He turned back slowly. The arrogance was gone. In its place was fear.“…H
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Chapter: Presence Opens the Door
I stopped forcing it.I let the frustration sit there. I let the fear and the hunger sit too. I didn’t try to shove them away or pretend everything was fine. I just… let them make noise in the back of my mind while my marrow’s quiet hum kept going underneath it all steady, slow, stubborn.And that’s when I felt it.A vibration not in the air, not in the metal deeper than that. It felt like it came from the bones of the world itself. Slow, ancient, patient. The Song of the Deep Stone.My own marrow-hum suddenly felt like a nervous mosquito buzzing next to a mountain. I didn’t try to force myself to match it. I just let my awareness sink toward that deep, steady thrum. I pictured my bones like roots, reaching downward, settling into that massive rhythm.My breathing smoothed out. The mental noise didn’t disappear, but it faded into the background like it finally understood it wasn’t in charge.For a moment, I didn’t feel like a hungry, stressed-out runner with too many enemies and not e
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Chapter: The Song Beneath the Stone
Her gaze softened just a hint.“And Kai… trust the stone. But question every hand that tries to shape it.” A faint smile. “Even mine.”And just like that, she was gone leaving the old journal sitting on the sticky table like it weighed a thousand pounds.I stayed there for a while, heart hammering. In five minutes, I’d been warned, tested, manipulated, and handed something more valuable than any Aura Stone. Liana was dangerous. Smart. A chameleon. I couldn’t trust her.But I also couldn’t pretend this journal wasn’t calling to me.I slipped it into my jacket and headed out. The walk back felt like a nightmare. Every alley felt too dark. Every footstep sounded like it belonged to someone following me. I kept imagining Tammany eyes watching, Astor blades waiting.When I finally reached my shelter, I locked everything, sat under the weak Aura-lamp, and opened the journal.The handwriting froze me. Firm. Graceful.My mother’s.I read the first line out loud, barely breathing.“The first p
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Chapter: Aegis in the Shadows
She left me in the quarry, stones in my pocket, new techniques in my head, and a fresh layer of paranoia weighing on me.That night, back in my shelter, I didn’t rush into cultivating. I just sat in the dark, thinking. Elara was training me to be a better tool maybe for her but she was also giving me a fighting chance against the storm that was coming. I had to be smart enough to use the tools without becoming someone else’s pawn.I pulled out one of the Earth-Aura Stones and started the Marrow-Temper’s Hammer. The familiar, brutal vibration hit my bones, grinding and purging. But tonight, I tried something different. I remembered Elara’s lesson: it wasn’t just about enduring it was about control.Could I steer the vibration? Focus it? Direct it to the spots that needed it most?I pictured the spot in my spine that always throbbed. I willed the resonance to cluster there, to hit the impurity square on. It felt like trying to herd wild cats with a stick. The energy thrashed, resisted,
Last Updated: 2025-12-11
Chapter: Shape the Stone, Break the Wind
He crouched lower, hands circling, and the wind around his chest spun faster, roaring. He was building something big his finishing move.I only had one shot left. The dead zone. The Aura here was scrambled, weak. His attacks needed flowing Aura. Maybe I could turn that to my advantage.I didn’t have air blasts. But I had earth. And the faint hum of the Marrow-Temper’s Hammer still thrummed in my bones.As he drew in that massive breath, I dropped to one knee and slammed my fist into the ground everything I had, marrow and all.Not to break it. To resonate.I sent the Hammer’s vibration, not into me, but into the earth itself. A single, raw pulse of stone-aligned Aura ripped through the dead ground.The effect was instant.The scrambled Aura of the dead zone flinched. It didn’t explode it stuttered. The air itself wavered, twitching like a glitched screen.The Gale Fist’s perfect vortex wavered. The wind he was pulling in went chaotic. He gasped, his deep, amplified inhale cut short. T
Last Updated: 2025-12-11
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