Chapter 118: Divine BankruptcyDid you forget?The voice did not just speak; it poured into the crevices of his mind like molten gold filling a mold. The System’s query rippled through Kael’s synapses, carrying a weight of affection that felt dangerously close to suffocation. Before he could formulate a retort, reality was overlaid by an intrusion of light.A map manifested.It was not a simple cartographic projection; it was a breathing, living topography of the city constructed from wireframe mana and surveillance omniscience. Green dots pulsed with the rhythm of heartbeats, yellow markers flickered with caution, and red insignias burned like angry sores against the grid. It was a god’s eye view, rendered in 4K resolution and forced directly onto his retinas without consent.Now where are you?Kael focused his will, manipulating the spectral interface. The map obeyed his thought with terrifying fluidity, zooming past layers of

Chapter 120: Pressure of Memory“Fuck…” Kael forced the word through clenched teeth as the invisible weight inside his body compressed inward, as if unseen hands were squeezing his organs with patient cruelty, testing how much strain a living thing could endure before it cracked.The pressure was not sharp, nor was it explosive, because it was worse than that, slow and intimate, wrapping around his ribs, pressing against his lungs, sinking into marrow and nerve until even the act of breathing felt like an insult to whatever force was crushing him.Time stretched in an ugly, uncooperative way, yet as moments dragged on, something inside Kael adapted, not because the pressure lessened, but because his body refused to break the way it was expected to.Muscle fibers tightened, mana pathways thickened, and his bones hummed faintly, as if remembering an older blueprint of strength that had been buried beneath layers of mortal limitation.That d

C123 – Halls of Reflection, Part FourBaldor, you idiot, Kael thought, and even as the words formed, a laugh slipped out of him like a guilty secret, because the memory that had been stuck, stale, and half buried suddenly began to move again, stirring like a pond after a stone is thrown.Their friendship had always been rooted in something older than mere companionship, a bond so deep it felt like it existed before either of them could even stand upright without wobbling, and it was the kind of connection that made it seem as if they had been friends since the first time they learned how to walk.They lived in a city that hung in the sky, a place built on the edge of clouds and supported by technologies that seemed more like miracles than machines, where angels moved through the air as naturally as fish swim through water, and where every breath felt like inhaling electricity.There were also those disgusting winged blobs floating around, grotesqu

C125 — Mirror of the Past Michael’s neck healed at a speed that felt almost insulting to reality, as if his body were tired of waiting for permission and simply decided to fix itself, and as he adjusted it back into its normal alignment, the pain that had pinned him down finally faded into a dull memory, leaving him with the strange sensation of being both alive and somehow newly borrowed from death. He pushed himself upright, still unsteady, as if the act of standing was a complex negotiation with gravity, and his eyes immediately locked onto the figure standing before him, the same golden-haired man from the arena, the one who had been responsible for the halo that now hovered like a silent verdict above Michael’s head. “Why are you here?” Michael asked abruptly, the question slipping out of him as he stood up, almost losing his balance because his body had not fully remembered how to cooperate. Th

C127 – Echoes of the System Kael’s lips curled into a small, unintentional smirk as the System teased him, its voice full of that irritatingly smug tone that felt like it was enjoying his discomfort. He barely reacted, though, because he was too absorbed in the sudden explosion of numbers on his status page, as if the system had just handed him a brand new body and dared him to complain. The mana purity had skyrocketed to 200 percent. Just a few moments ago it had been 121 percent, and now it was practically screaming at him, glowing with a strange, almost holy intensity that made him feel like he could lift mountains if he wanted to. He had already known he was strong, but this was a different level of absurdity, a new tier of power that made him question whether the universe had finally decided to stop being fair. The System, however, refused to let him bask in it for too long.