noct

203. Wake Up!

Rhys snapped awake with a jolt and immediately sat upright before he even comprehended where he was or what his eyes saw. For a second, he sat there dazedly, gazing into the middle distance, and th...

202. Secret Time

Rhys poured his mana into the small secret realm. It had been used as a trash heap for so many years that it bore the essence of trash, that it had, itself, acknowledged that it was a place for tra...

201. Touching Me (Touching You)

Daran stared at Rhys’s hand, and Rhys stared at Daran. Slowly, he reached out and swiped at Daran’s shoulder. His hand passed right through, as he’d expect. The man was still just as immateri...

200. Myriad Realms in the Dark

Rhys stared at the mana battery. Thoughts whirled through his head. Other realms. This delicate battery. The Empress, stealing peoples’ cores. The mana battery, which was the closest thing magic ...

199. I Get Why They Defeated You

“You are insufferable,” Daran grumbled.

“Yeah, but I’m not insufferable enough to get an entire nation to band together to overthrow me, so you’ve got me beat there,” Rhys returne...

198. Alone in a Pocket Trash Dimension

Rhys wandered around the heap, picking things up, then putting them down. The more he inspected, the deeper the frown on his face grew. This stuff was trash.

That was fine, of course. He love...

197. Into the Darkness

Rhys had to duck to fit through the opening in the hut. His vision went pitch black the second he edged inside. He walked hunched for a few moments, then stood a little and realized there was nothi...

196. The Assault Begins

Rhys kept all his attention trained on the gas ball. It was the only way he could keep from losing track of it with Mouse’s influence on it, and that was with her trying to let him in particular ...

195. Arrival at the Heap

A/N: Good news! The laptop survived! We're back in business! And I've also backed up everything so I won't lose it all like an idiot if it goes down again. Thanks so much for all your support and n...

194. Off To See The Trash Heap

Rhys felt like a man finally facing his truth, as if he were achieving a great thing that he had desired after for a long time. In reality, he’d just forgotten about the trash dumps for a long ti...

193. Counterattack Thoughts

He couldn’t help but think about the counterattack, now that he knew there was a counterattack on the horizon. It lived in his head rent-free, whether he wanted it to or not, lurked in his mind l...

192. Hello Again

A/N: fair warning: my cat just decided to water my computer. I don't know that it's dead, but I haven't checked if it's alive either--most online guides say to wait 48 hrs to a week to allow it to ...

191. Criminals Cleared

Once the camp had been sorted, Rhys led their new recruits back home. There were too many to teleport, and anyways, he wanted to keep that kind of on the down low, if at all possible, so they had t...

190. Rushing Into Danger

It only took Rhys a few moments to clear out the cave, mostly because he stood in the middle of it and sucked it all into his core like he was a giant vacuum. He could sort the contents out later, ...

189. Misunderstandings

The snakes, too, were sucked into the figure, and within the cave, Madame Quast frowned. If he was a weak damage sponge, faking his tier, he shouldn’t have been able to do that. Or… was he some...

188. From One Poison Master to Another

He bounded through the forest, closing in on the Tier 4 signature. Sable caught up with him, clawing from tree to tree with her bonus limbs, and followed along, easily matching his pace. They clear...

187. New Sword, Who Dis?

They’d been in the woods all morning, waiting in their predetermined spots for the ambushees to show up. Most of them had thought it was somewhat stupid to try and enact an ambush, with no abilit...

186. Magical Engineering

Mouse knelt at the magical circle, tilting her head left and right as she got a closer look. “It really is a portal… but if you’re asking me if there’s something else attached…”

�...

185. Searching the Brothel

They proceeded deeper into the brothel. Further—further, Rhys corrected himself. There was a lot of ‘deeper’ going on around them, and it made it hard to keep the word out of his min...

184. Criminal Cores

As Rhys had predicted, the Empire immediately leaped to Lord Estos’s assistance. The hunt for the camp escapees died down with the arrest of a few known criminals and familiar dissidents, leaving...

183. The Time Has Come

Lord Estos strode to the head of the ballroom, a confident smile on his face. No troublemakers had showed up to his ball—in fact, according to the guards, they hadn’t even sensed an attempt on ...

182. Why're We All Wearing Masks, Anyways?

A second before he panicked, Rhys took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. It was okay. He was in disguise and wearing a mask. Laurent hadn’t necessarily recognized him. He wa...

181. The Ball Begins

Rhys yawned, then finally lowered his book. By the volume alone, the ball was well and truly going by now, not to mention the smell of delicious food and the delicate music wafting on the breeze. &...

180. The Pivotal Moment

Lord Estos, the lord holding the ball, had added special precautions to ensure no one undesirable arrived at the ball, such as, for example, Adelise Infernon’s ghost, or, according to him, the ne...

179. Could It Be You?

The sharp tap-tap of jackboots sounded close on Rhys’s heels as he powerwalked away at top speed. “It’s you, isn’t it? R…Rhys?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Rh...

178. Offloading

They lurked home from the ball, wandering naturally out into the surrounding yard, then sprinting home through the trees. The servants were already kicking up a fuss about the empty carriage, the a...

177. Ball Organizers Hate This One Neat Trick!

In the back of the carriage, Rhys quickly drew all the curtains and pulled all the slots shut. He was very clearly not Lord DeVeers, and didn’t want to get called out on it, but based on the man�...

176. Party Time

At last, the time was upon them. The day had come. The dawn broke, and the sun shone upon a new day. The day… of the ball.

He’d found one. It was in a little city far from the capital, no...

175. Everything's Softer When It's Wet

Lira splashed down into the river, laying back and splaying in the water. Her hair and clothes flowed around her, pitch black hair billowing around the white cloth as it welled up like the water th...

174. Crashing a Ball for Fun and Profit

It was shockingly easy to obtain information about the nobles, once Rhys started trying. He took a slot as a front man, and rotated through a few of his shops, listening to the people coming by to ...