2026-02-16 05:15:36The soldier was fast.
Way too fast for something made of metal. Rome barely got his knife up before the black blade crashed into it. The impact rattled his teeth. Shook his bones. Sent him skidding backward through the sand like he weighed nothing. Holy shit. That's not One-Star. That's not even Two-Star. What the hell IS that thing? The soldier pressed forward. Another swing. Horizontal. Aimed at his midsection. Rome threw himself sideways. The blade passed close enough to shave the threads off his jacket. He rolled. Came up. Backpedaled. Think. Think think think. It's stronger. It's faster. Its weapon is longer. Its armor is— The soldier's boot caught him in the chest. Rome flew. Not metaphorically. Actually flew. Through the air. Across the arena. He hit the sand hard enough to see stars and taste copper. Okay. Getting kicked hurts. Note to self. He pushed himself up. Spat blood. The soldier was already closing the distance, that black sword raised for a killing blow. MOVE. Rome rolled right. The blade buried itself in the sand where his head had been a half-second earlier. It's slow to recover. That swing, there's a delay before it can pull back. That's something. That's not much, but it's something. He scrambled to his feet. Created distance. Circled. The soldier tracked him. Those burning eyes never blinked. Never wavered. Okay, genius. You've got a knife. It's got a sword. You've got a jacket. It's got armor. You've got twenty-one essence points and a community college education. It's got the power of ancient murder and zero sense of humor. How do you win this? The answer was simple. You don't. Not fair, anyway. Good thing I've never fought fair in my life. Rome's hand dropped to the sand. Scooped up a fistful. The soldier charged again. Wait for it. The sword came down. Wait. Rome could see his own death in that blade. The angle. The trajectory. The way it would split him from shoulder to hip. NOW. He threw the sand. It caught the soldier in the face. In those burning eye-slits. The creature flinched. Just for a second. Just a twitch. Rome was already inside its guard. His knife punched into the gap between helmet and chestplate. The joint where metal met metal. Something gave. Something cracked. The soldier made a sound. Not a scream. More like metal tearing. Yes. YES. You can bleed, you piece of— A gauntleted fist caught him in the jaw. Rome's world went white. When his vision cleared, he was on his back. The sky above was darkness. His knife was still in his hand, somehow. Blood filled his mouth. One of his teeth felt loose. Okay. Punching back is also on the table. Good to know. The soldier loomed over him. That black sword rose. Rome kicked sand into its face again. Same trick twice? Really? The soldier didn't flinch this time. The blade came down. Rome rolled. Felt the wind of it pass his ear. Heard it bite into the ground. Shit shit shit— He grabbed a handful of the soldier's cape. Yanked. Hard. The creature stumbled. Lost its footing for just a moment. Rome drove his knife into the back of its knee. The joint buckled. The soldier went down on one leg. IT'S WORKING. HOLY SHIT, IT'S ACTUALLY— The pommel of the sword cracked against his temple. Blood. His blood. Running down his face. Into his eyes. Everything was red and spinning and wrong. Get up. He was on the ground again. When had he fallen? GET UP. His arms shook. His legs refused to cooperate. The soldier was rising. Its knee sparked and ground, damaged but functional. Get up, Rome. Get up or die. Calypso's waiting for you. You promised you'd take her to that Korean BBQ place for her birthday. You can't die before Korean BBQ.
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20 | No Incentive Required
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Host Status — Authenticated 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Name: Rome D'AngeloAscension Rank: 1━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Vessel Metrics 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━VIT ·········· 10FOR ·········· 10REF ·········· 10RES ·········· 20INT ·········· 10Available Points: 0━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 S.E.E.D.S」 ☆ 0 / 2━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━· · ·· ☆ ·· · ·━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Inherited Arts (1/3)」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━- Scion Vitality━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「Ongoing Quests」 ⚠️━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「Completed Quests」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rome squinted at the screen. Most of it matched what he'd seen before, but now there were new sections visible."Scion Vitality?" he muttered. "The hell is that?"『An Inherited Art. You received it as part of the covenant establishment process.』"An
19 | Flying Under the Radar
She turned back to Rome, composing herself. "I apologize for my partner. He can be... abrupt.""Don't worry about it," Rome said. "He seems like a real charmer."That earned a small smile. "Mr. D'Angelo, we really do need to understand what happened in that gate. The survey team found evidence of a collapsed arena structure and eleven deceased hunters. The survivor accounts don't make sense.""Survivor accounts? Plural?""Ms. Tsukimori provided a statement. Though she wasn't present for most of the... incident."Because I got her out.Rome studied Agent Briscoe's face. She seemed genuinely concerned, not just going through bureaucratic motions."Those weren't statues," he said finally. "They were knights. Guardians. Something old.""Old how?""Like, 'predates the Hunter Association' old. They spoke Latin."Briscoe pulled out a small notepad. "And they attacked your team?""We attacked them first," Rome admitted. "Sort of. We took their treasure.""The gold found in the collapsed chamb
18 | The Fed Who Knew Too Little
The doctor swept into the room with a chart tucked under his arm and a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Behind him trailed two nurses and what looked like a medical student, all staring at Rome like he was some kind of science experiment gone wrong."Mr. D'Angelo, you're awake! This is quite remarkable," the doctor said, his voice carrying that forced cheerfulness medical professionals use when they're surprised you're not dead. "I'm Dr. Matsuda. How are you feeling?""Like I got thrown off a building, hit by a truck, then dragged through hell," Rome said. "So better than expected."Considering I was literally dead less than a day ago. Or however long it's been.The doctor laughed, a short professional chuckle. "Well, your sense of humor is certainly intact." He pulled out a penlight and shined it into Rome's eyes. "Follow the light, please."Rome tracked the light while the nurses checked his vitals and the medical student scribbled notes in the corner."How long was I out?" Rome as
17 | The Plausible Narrative
"That's vague as hell."『Specificity will come with progress. For now, you should focus on recovery and understanding your basic capabilities.』Rome walked to the window of his hospital room. Outside, the sky was dark. Night time. How long had he been here?Then another thought struck him."Wait. If you restored my 'vessel' or whatever, why am I in a hospital? Shouldn't I be completely healed?"『External healing was necessary to stabilize your condition until our covenant could be fully established. Additionally, sudden miraculous recovery tends to raise questions. This provides a plausible narrative for your survival.』"So I'm still supposed to be injured?"『You were in critical condition when admitted. Multiple fractures, severe blood loss, internal injuries, and a severed limb. Your survival was considered medically improbable. Your current state would be... suspicious.』"Great." Rome sighed. "So I have to pretend to still be injured?"『For now, yes. Though your recovery can be exp
16 | Grow
A window appeared in the air before him. Glowing green text on a translucent background, hovering impossibly in the empty space above his hospital bed.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Host Status — Authenticated 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rome D'AngeloAscension Rank: 1━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Vessel Metrics 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━VIT ·········· 10FOR ·········· 10REF ·········· 10RES ·········· 20 ← UnusualINT ·········· 10Available Points: 0━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 S.E.E.D.S」 ☆ 0 / 2━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━· · ·· ☆ ·· · ·━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Inherited Arts 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━No Arts Acquired.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rome stared at the window with his mouth hanging open."What... is this?"『This is your status screen. It displays your current attributes, abilities, and progress within the Ancestral Resonance Cultivation Ascension Nexus system.』"The... what
15 | Where I Have Always Been
Wheat rustled around Rome, golden stalks swaying in a gentle breeze that carried the scent of soil and sunshine. He pushed himself up to sitting, his head foggy like he'd slept for a thousand years."What the actual hell?" The sky stretched above him in impossible shades of purple and blue, colors that had no business being natural. Clouds drifted lazily, white puffs against a backdrop that looked like someone had spilled watercolors across the horizon.Rome patted himself down, feeling his chest, his legs, his—"My arm." He stared at his left hand, turning it palm up, then down. Flexing the fingers. "I still have my arm."The hand looked real. Felt real. He pinched the skin and winced at the sharp pain.*Okay, so either I'm dead, or I'm hallucinating. Great options.*He stood, wheat parting around him as he turned in a slow circle. Nothing but golden fields in every direction except—A hill rose in the distance, and atop it sat a small farmhouse with a peaked roof and wraparound por
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