2026-02-16 05:26:37"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?" "The stones." He tried to push them toward her. Managed to scatter them further instead. "Take them. Go." "I'm not leaving you!" "You have to." "NO!" Her voice cracked. Raw. Desperate. "I won't! I refuse!" Rome laughed. It hurt. Everything hurt. But he laughed anyway. "Dumbass." The word came out soft. Almost fond. "I'm dying. Just... go. Please." "Rome—" "Put in a reservation for us." He forced his lips into something like a smile. "Somewhere nice. With candles." "Stop it." "You said I'm paying, right? So pick somewhere expensive. Really... really bleed me dry." "Stop TALKING like that!" "Kiona." He found her hand. Squeezed it with what little strength he had left. "Go. Come back with help. Or don't. Either way... you live. That's... that's the deal." She stared at him. Tears carved tracks through the dust and blood on her face. "I'm coming back for you." Her voice shook. "Do you hear me? I'm coming back. Don't you dare die before I get back." "Wouldn't dream of it." Liar. You're such a liar. Kiona grabbed the essence stones. Shoved them into her pocket. Her eyes never left his face. Then she moved. One of the fallen knights lay nearby. Its sword had fallen a few feet from its body. Kiona crawled to it. Grabbed the hilt. Used it as a crutch to lever herself upright. Her broken leg dragged behind her. Each step was agony written in the lines of her face. But she moved. Toward one of the archways. The one the giant had indicated with a slight tilt of its head. The one that led somewhere other than death. Good. Good girl. Keep going. Rome watched her hobble toward the exit. Watched her silhouette grow smaller against the torchlight. At the threshold, she turned. "I'm coming back!" He nodded. She disappeared into the darkness. She made it. She actually made it. Okay. Okay, that's... That's good. That's really good. Rome lay there for a moment. Let the relief wash over him. Let himself feel something other than pain for just a few seconds. Then he moved. What the hell are you doing? His body screamed at him. Every nerve ending lit up with white-hot protest. But he moved anyway. You should stay down. His hand found something in the sand. A staff. Long. Wooden. It had belonged to the spear woman. Sarah? Sandra? He couldn't remember her name. Couldn't remember if she'd been one of the ones who ran or one of the ones who'd died in the fall. It didn't matter now. You should just let it end. He used the staff to push himself up. One knee. Then the other. Then his feet. The world swayed. Tilted. Tried to throw him back down. He stayed up. The giant statue watched him. Those burning eyes held something that might have been curiosity. Or amusement. Hard to tell with a face made of stone. Rome pointed the staff at it. His arm shook. The staff wobbled. He probably looked ridiculous. A one-armed, half-dead OIne-Star threatening something that could crush him like a bug. "You're next." His voice was barely a whisper. "Asshole."
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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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