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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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
14 | Tempus Finitum
The giant didn't respond.Kiona made it out.That's what matters.She'll find help. She'll tell someone. She'll...She'll be okay.His thoughts drifted. Scattered like leaves in the wind.Calypso.Her face swam up from the darkness. Sixteen years old. That smile she got when she thought she'd fooled him. The way she pretended not to care about things she cared about more than anything.I'm sorry.Your big brother wasn't strong enough.I wanted to give you everything. College. A house. A car. A life where you didn't have to worry about bills or groceries or whether the heat would work this winter.I wanted to be the kind of brother you deserved.But I guess...I guess this is as far as I go.His eyes drifted to the wall. To that pillar with the Roman numerals.The shadow crept across the stone.IV.Almost at V.Huh. Guess time's almost up anyway.The giant raised its sword. That massive black blade that could cleave him in half without effort."TEMPUS FINITUM." Its voice echoed through
13 | Concessum Est
"Pro... victoria mea..." Rome's voice was a rasp. "Peto... salvum conductum... pro ea."For my victory. I ask safe passage. For her.The arena went silent.The giant statue turned its massive head. Those burning eyes fixed on Rome. On the broken hunter lying in a pool of his own blood beside the corpse of its soldier.Seconds stretched into eternities."INSOLENS." The giant's voice rumbled like thunder. "SED... IUSTUS."Insolent. But... fair."UNUS VICTOR. UNUS SALVUS."One victor. One saved."CONCESSUM EST."It is granted.Rome let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.She's safe.Kiona's safe.That's... that's enough.He fumbled at his pocket. His remaining hand, his only hand now, was clumsy. Numb. The essence stones he'd collected earlier spilled across the sand. Eight of them. Maybe more."Kiona."She was still beside him. Still crying. Her hands pressed against his stump like she could somehow put him back together through sheer force of will."Kiona. Take them.""What?
12 | Not Dead Yet
He drove what remained of his knife into the creature's eye.The light went out.The soldier slumped.Didn't move.Didn't breathe.Dead. Actually dead.Rome stood over it. Chest heaving. Blood dripping from his face, his hands, his everywhere.He raised the broken knife above his head.I won.Holy shit, I actually won.Screaming.Someone was screaming.Not cheering. Not celebration. Terror. Pure terror.Kiona's voice."Rome! YOUR ARM!"His arm?He looked down.Oh.Oh.Where his left arm should have been, there was nothing.Just a ragged stump below the elbow.Just bone and meat and blood pumping out in rhythmic spurts.Huh.That's... that's not great.When did that happen?Was that when it grabbed me? Must have been when it grabbed me.I should probably be more concerned about this.The world tilted sideways.Rome's knees buckled.He was falling. Had been falling for a while, maybe. Hard to tell. Time was doing something weird. Stretching and compressing like taffy.He hit the sand.S
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