2026-04-24 15:11:57“Did I make it? It's been a hundred regressions. Which version of the world did I arrive in?” A man muttered.
He opened his eyes, only to be blinded by a red liquid.
Blood.
His ears rang, and he could faintly hear the screaming of a crowd.
“Where am I?” He rose to his feet, but his body felt like lead.
“Woah! Flint stood up from that move.”
“I honestly thought he died after Elton's elite move.”
“That move would have sincerely killed me.”
“Why would you pick Elton as your freaking challenger?”
The voices were starting to get clearer.
The man looked down and realized his hands were covered in blood.
“My name is still Flint, even in this world.” He muttered to himself.
An elderly man stepped forward, placing his hand on Flint's shoulders.
“Give up on becoming a mage, Flint. You can't even get past the trial with someone like Elton. If you call it off now, I'd be able to save you some face.” The elderly man uttered.
Flint raised his head, staring at this opponent in front of him.
He had regressed into another world.
A hundred times.
A hundred different villains.
A hundred deaths.
Regressors had a limit to how many times they could move through various worlds.
This was his last time.
If he didn't pull through in this world, his soul was going to oblivion.
“I have faced death a hundred times, Sir. My trials would amount to nothing if I can't defeat someone like him.” Flint said.
The elderly man merely shook his head, before turning away. He had tried his best.
Elton frowned when he saw Flint was still standing.
“Aren't you going to kick the bucket so I can win this match?” He called out.
This wasn't the plan he had done with this Flint.
Did Flint forget that if he did something otherwise, his family would pay?
“Even if you pass the mage trial. You won't amount to anything as a filthy peasant, Flint.” Elton called again, wanting to jog Flint's memory.
Flint remained quiet. The memories of this body and previous memories of his other hundred lives were intertwined together.
It was confusing for him to place them rightly
Seeing that there was no reaction from Flint, Elton pushed further, “You already failed the magic aptitude test. Flint. You are useless in this world without magic.”
Met with silence, Elton was enraged. When he was done here, he would make sure that the peasant’s family paid dearly for their son's disobedience.
“If you won't learn a lesson, then I'd beat it into you. Earth Fist!”
Pieces of rocks separated from the ground.
They wrapped around Elton's fist and he shot forward.
The trajectory of the move heading straight for Flint.
Flint didn't flinch.
As soon as Elton was within point distance, it only took one side step.
The side step was fueled by muscle memory, after training all through his hundred lives. Flint was confident he didn't need magic to destroy this wimp.
Dodging the attack, Flint delivered a clean upper cut.
“You are wide open.”
It was an instant knock out.
The referee of the match ran forward.
Even he didn't expect such a turn of events.
“Elton Black, Status: Unconscious!”
Hearing that, the crowd was awed.
Someone began to clap and soon everyone followed.
Flint cracked his hand, he had exerted too much power on his current body.
“How can a body be so weak?” He muttered to himself.
The referee took hold of Flint's arm.
“Winner! Flint Hayd has passed the mage trial.”
Flint bowed slightly, before going to the elderly man who had advised him to quit.
His memory clicked and he remembered the man's name.
“Elder Gaut.”
"Well done Flint, you surprised everyone here and have earned the academy admission scroll.”
Flint collected the scroll and went back to his seat.
As soon as the event was done, he followed his memory and found his way home.
“A weak and powerless body. This is the first time I'm getting anything like this.”
Flint uttered, standing in front of his door.
Before he could know, a man and a woman kicked open the door.
“Flint! It's okay if you didn't make it. Don't feel bad, now you can even spend more time with us!” The woman said, enveloping him in a tight hug.
Flint recognised her as his new mother, he was about to say something when the other man also stepped forward.
“We made your favourite meal just to cheer you up. You can always try for the mage trial next year.” The man said.
Flint instantly understood what was going on.
Although his parents were supportive, they didn't believe he could pass the trial.
“Mum, Dad. It's okay. I passed.” Flint said, raising the golden painted scroll.
His parents were shocked, and before they could say anything, Flint squeezed himself into the house.
“Please don't ask questions right now. I'm really tired and need to rest. I'll see you tomorrow!” He quickly said, running into his room and shutting his door.
There was a strange feeling bubbling inside him.
“What is this?”
Why did it suddenly feel like he could move a mountain?
Flint stared at the ground.
“You have to be kidding me but why do I feel like trying Earth Fist.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the ground separated.
Pieces of earth flew to his hand, surrounding his fist.
It was exactly like Elton's spell.
“I thought I didn't have magic?” Flint was confused.
“This is something else.” He said, looking at the Earth Fist he had created.
His own move was even bigger and smoother than Elton.
Flint chuckled, “Never in a hundred worlds.” He muttered, “But how does it work? Do I copy every power move I can see? Or do I need to watch them practicing it?”
He couldn't tell.
The pieces of rock left his hands, and Flint suddenly felt sleepy.
“That takes a lot of energy.” He mumbled, before falling straight on to his bed.
Just as his head hit the pillow, a sharp, piercing sound echoed inside his skull.
[CRITICAL SYNC INITIALIZED]
Flint froze. A translucent, obsidian-colored screen manifested in the air, pulsing with a faint crimson light.
[USER IDENTIFIED: FLINT HAYD]
[SOUL FREQUENCY: REGRESSION #100 (FINAL ATTEMPT)]
“A system?” Flint hissed through gritted teeth. “I didn’t have this in the last ninety-nine lives.”
[CORRECTION: SYSTEM HAS ALWAYS BEEN PRESENT.]
[FAILED REGRESSION PENALTY: Your current weakness is a direct result of Soul Erosion from 100 previous deaths. Your physical stats have been reset to zero to ensure your soul didn't shatter during the final leap.]
Flint stared at the flickering text. “Eroded? You mean I’m dying?”
[ANALYSIS: AFFIRMATIVE.]
[THE COST OF 100 REGRESSIONS: PHYSICAL INTEGRITY
HAS COLLAPSED TO LEVEL 1. YOU ARE CURRENTLY THE WEAKEST VERSION OF YOURSELF TO EVER EXIST.]
Flint let out a bitter laugh. “Level 1. So if I regress again, I'd die instantly?”
[AFFIRMATIVE.]
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
THE ACTIVE READING
The split happened the way significant things happened when they had been agreed upon the night before — without ceremony but not without weight.Jolene went first.She left at the hour before dawn, before the sky had changed from black to grey. She had her pack and her notes and the guild contact information she had been building since the Northern Highlands and she left the waypoint without waking anyone except Flint who was already awake.She stood at the waypoint door.She looked at him."The maritime operation." She said."Yes." He said."And after." She said.He held her gaze.She was asking something specific. Not about the maritime mission. About what happened after — what the north would look like, whether the group would reassemble, whether what had been built would still be intact when the dust cleared."After." He said. "Find us."She looked at him for one more moment.Then she turned and walked northeast and was gone before the sky changed.He stood at the door and watche
CARAVAN COUNTERMEASURE
They stopped at a waypoint structure at the end of the second day north.Not a settlement. A trade rest point — four walls, a fire bracket, a well that was still showing contamination from the vein network's pre-reversion state. Terra sealed the well. They used water from their packs.That night Flint laid out the split.He did it the same way he did everything — in sequence, without weight added by inflection. But the group was quiet in a different way than it was quiet for tactical briefings. This was the quiet of people who had been moving through significant things together for long enough to know when something was ending."Dylan and Terra to the academy." He said. "Valdris's pattern gives you the three administrators. You need names. Jolene's notes on the decision records will give you the method for identifying them without tipping Soren's network." He looked at them both. "The goal is not arrest. Not confrontation. Document what they are and who they report to. Give it to some
The Dragon Marrow
They moved north at first light.The Hollow followed.Not from the direction Flint expected. Not north behind them — it was simply present, the tooth running its inverted wave at a continuous low frequency that said proximity without saying location. It had no location. It existed in the space between detectable things and moved through that space with the patient disinterest of something that had been given a function and had an unlimited amount of time to complete it.Caravan walked at the group's rear.He had said at dawn that holding the Hollow at distance cost him. Not in the catastrophic way of running a skill against its own limit — in the slow way of something that required sustained focus to maintain. Like holding a position in deep water. You could do it. Not indefinitely.He had not said how long indefinitely was.Flint had not asked because the answer would not change the direction.They walked north.---By midday the territory had changed enough to confirm the reversion.
DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRESS
It came that night.Not into the camp. Near it. The tooth woke him from sleep at the second hour past midnight with the inverted wave running so fast the luminescence was continuous rather than pulsed. He had it in his hand before he was fully upright.He pressed two fingers to his lips.The camp was dark. He could see Dylan's outline against the sky — on watch, the position he took in the second rotation. Dylan had seen Flint move and had gone completely still the way he went still when he was waiting for an instruction.Flint looked at the tooth.Then north.Then at the camp perimeter.Pack Sense registered nothing. The absolute nothing of something that was not a mana-present entity moving through a field that Pack Sense read for mana signatures.But the
DESTRUCTION METHOD
He told the group at dawn.Not everything from the night before. The Hollow first. The detection, the loss of the sigature, what Valdris had said about its nature. He laid it out the same way he laid everything out — in sequence, without weight added by inflection, and let the information carry its own mass.It carried significant mass.Dylan was the first to speak."Pack Sense caught it once." He said."At the edge of range." Flint said. "Northern bearing. It registered as nothing classifiable and then it was gone.""Gone or suppressed." Jolene said."I don't know." Flint said. "The signature did not fade. It stopped. Like a door closing."Jolene looked at her notes from Valdris's account. She had been reading them since before the group assembled. She had the expression she wore when data was not fitti
NO CONDITION
He sat outside the camp at the edge of the cleared extraction ground and looked at the stars.The stars above the western territory were wrong in the same way everything above it was wrong. The contamination in the ground reached high enough to affect the ambient mana in the air and the air affected how the stars refracted through it. They were the same stars. They looked slightly different. He had spent enough lives looking at different versions of the same sky to find it interesting rather than troubling.He was thinking about his wife.Not the way he thought about the mission. Not operationally. He was simply thinking about her the way you thought about someone you had not seen in a very long time — without agenda, without the forward pressure of wanting to get back to them. Just the fact of them. The specific fact of a person who existed somewhere and was real.Her name was Sael.He did not use it often. He had learned across enough lives that names were the most dangerous thing to
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