2026-02-16 05:24:54He 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. Soft. That's nice. The arena ceiling spun above him. Dark and distant and full of shadows. A sound. Grinding. Stone on stone. The archways. The doors. They were opening. "THE EXITS!" Someone shouted. Not Reyes. One of the others. "THEY'RE OPEN! RUN!" Movement. Footsteps. The thunder of boots on sand. Rome turned his head. It took enormous effort. Like his skull weighed a thousand pounds. Hunters ran for the exits. Eight of them. Maybe nine. Sprinting with everything they had. One tripped over Patterson's body. Went down. Scrambled up. Kept running. Another shoved past Kiona. Her broken leg twisted beneath her. She screamed. They didn't stop. They didn't look back. They just ran. Cowards. Running while Kiona screams. Running over the people who can't. We were a team. We were supposed to be a team. The first hunter reached an archway. Plunged into the darkness beyond. A wet sound. A thud. Something rolled back out into the torchlight. A head. The second hunter tried to stop. Too late. He crossed the threshold. Another wet sound. Another thud. Oh. The doors weren't an exit. They were a trap. We were never meant to leave. The knights emerged from the archways. Eight of them. One for each hunter who'd tried to run. Their black swords dripped red. The remaining runners tried to turn back. Too late. Too slow. Rome watched them die. One by one. Cut down like wheat. Eight hunters who'd been alive thirty seconds ago. Eight people with families, with dreams, with reasons to fight. Gone. Ha. The laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep. Somewhere broken. Ha ha. They're all gonna die. We're all gonna die. I cut off my own arm to kill one soldier and there's still twelve more plus that giant and we're all gonna die in this stupid hole. This is so dumb. This is so incredibly dumb. I just wanted to buy Calypso a car. His vision was going dark at the edges. The blood loss, probably. Hard to think about blood when so much of it was outside his body. Kiona was crawling toward him. Dragging her broken leg. Tears on her face. "Rome. Rome, stay with me. STAY WITH ME." I'm trying. I'm really trying. But I'm so tired. And the sand is so soft. And Calypso's gonna be so mad at me. The darkness crept closer. The last thing Rome saw was Kiona's face above him. Those sharp eyes filled with something he'd never seen before. Fear. Not for herself. For him. Huh. That's... that's kind of nice. Dinner. I still owe her dinner. Can't die before... Before...
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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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