2026-03-30 23:34:43
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at are you even—" Hadwin pauses, sighing as he looks up at me.What? Why is everyone sighing so much around me?"You are ruining this corgi," he says, stepping closer. I notice he is holding a nicely crafted shield, and I can even feel some mana emanating from it.I'm not ruining Biscuit! He was ruined from the start. I mean perfect. He was perfect from the start. Moreover, I have to do things like this once in a while. It continues to make me feel better, even though it might seem silly.But now, "Show me your shield," I gesture to Hadwin. The man, not even surprised at this point, hands me the shield.Reflective Shield (Uncommon):A shield that creates a weak shimmering barrier and reflects a portion of incoming attacks back at the enemy. It strengthens with each reflected assault but requires mana.Oh ho, isn't that interesting?"You can't have it," I hear somewhere in the background. I decide to ignore it, already sending my mana into the shield to observe it.The moment my mana en
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A young boy, barely over ten years old, slowly opens the door to the apartment. It squeaks as he closes it and locks it. His face bears no emotion as he looks around.After checking the floor and not seeing another pair of shoes, a small smile flashes on his lips. He quickly takes off his old, battered sneakers and removes his bag from his shoulder. The entire time, he is careful to use only his right hand.Then he rushes towards his room, and his smile becomes even bigger when he notices the light shining under the closed door. Without knocking, he barges in, only to be rewarded by a long, annoyed sigh from a girl sitting behind a table, reading.Her posture is near perfect. She sits without rounding her shoulders and holds the book in front of her to avoid slouching and bending her neck. There is a lamp next to her, shining on the book that she now puts on the table as she turns to her brother.“Nat, how many times…” she pauses and her eyes move up and down her brother.Another long
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Nathaniel, laughing, looks so different from his usual self. His face seems softer, friendlier. He even appears handsome now.This time Cipher seems to seriously panic and quickly starts talking, “I'll do everything you want. I won't ever talk back to you. I'll do anything, just let me…”“Shhh,” Nathaniel just lifts one of his fingers and Cipher stops moving. Only his eyes continue to tick from side to side. The man is terrified. Nathaniel closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath, a big smile on his face, “That's an interesting experience, I don't think I've ever turned off my [Focus] so totally ever since the tutorial started. The weird thing is, it also slightly affected my emotions,” he opens his eyes again and takes one more step towards the duo that is unmoving, “well, it's not like it matters.”On the opposite side, Lily is not affected at all and continues to look at him without saying anything.“That's it, I guess, you stepped over a line you shouldn't step over,”
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Sophie tries to catch the sparrows with her [Manipulation], but unfortunately, she was unsuccessful. The moment her mana reaches towards them, they fly away.On the other side, I was able to kill multiple of them, yet every time not much was left of their bodies. My attacks needed to be too fast in order to kill them, obliterating them in the process, barely leaving anything behind.When I try weaker attacks, they just bend around the birds or miss them. The sparrows are even able to sense the mana threads I create in an attempt to trap them.It's annoying, it really is, and more so now that we are without food.Aaron and Lily are sometimes too weak to even walk and need to be carried, although all of this is alleviated by the water that Cipher creates. But he doesn't complain, not to me. He doesn't tell me how dumb of a decision it was to give up the trap. He is too smart for that.His companions, on the other hand, give me angry glances when they think I don't see it.In comparison
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That's it, just one single sentence.It almost makes me want to scream. All this time, I thought I would just get an upgrade change token that would take me to a higher difficulty, always luring me to use it. Yet, I was bamboozled.Goddammit.The only change is that both of my tokens are gone, replaced by this:[%e^*@d D#ff!culty entrance token - 3/4 conditions met]So what are the conditions? Use of the upgrade token is one of them. The second and third could be either me reaching 300 points in the mana stat, me killing a monster 50 levels higher, or me creating an especially strong attack. Heck, even seeing Lisandra's [Singularity] could be one of them.I do not know, it could also be all the things combined to fulfil one of the requirements. Maybe there's something else I didn't think of. But it doesn't matter that much as there is still one condition, and the system didn't give a hint. There is nothing at all.At this point, I'm not surprised at all.As usual, I show the middle fi
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have to do that.As I enter the hideout, I spot Lily talking to Cipher and Goldie. Cipher is even smiling at her a bit, while Goldie just stares at the petite brunette. Then Lily notices me, and a big smile flowers on her face. She immediately ignores the duo and comes running to me.I notice a short flash of annoyance on Cipher's face before it disappears as if it never existed. The man then waves at me and points at a few filled bottles near Tess, and I nod at him. Surprisingly, Goldie seems to be even more annoyed than him, and she is not hiding it that well. But Cipher just grabs her arm and pulls her away.Should I beat them up?"Look, look!" But Lily is already here, waving at me with her fully restored left arm. The color is still pale, the same as mine, but she doesn't seem to be angry about it and even confirms it. "In the middle of the restoring, I learned how to give it some color, but I decided to keep it pale." Her eyes keep glancing between her and my arm, and when I try
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