《The Nine Circles of Hell (Dropped)》 Prologue This is a quick short prologue It''s basically a quick short info dump on the world. The next chapter though is bigger, about twice the size of this one. Well enough of this author''s note, Enjoy! +-+-+-+ There is a place known as the Nine Circles of Hell. As to why it received such an ominous name it is unknown but it isn¡¯t as quite as bad of a place as it sounds. It is composed of Nine Realms with different properties and rules and each are connected to each other by a realm that acts a bridge, this realm is known as purgatory and is a rather safe place since there are no monsters, which of course, does not include people. Each of the realms have a name directly connected to how the realm acts and its rules, which led to the naming of the entirety of the realms. The first realm¡¯s (circle¡¯s) name is Limbo and it is a constantly changing place with the rules of time and space being distorted and sometimes outright broken. The second realm is slightly different being called Lust, this leads to the entirety of the people living here being quite openly romantic. Beware though, there is hidden danger to this realm which is a constant typhoon that assault the entire realm relentlessly. The third realm is gluttony here food is a very easy to get commodity; but this leads to there being a very large influx of large and powerful predators making this one of the most dangerous realms out of all of them. The name of the fourth realm is Greed which makes it the richest realm of them all. Again this lead to the danger of this realm, it is here where dragons have claimed their home and they are a constant threat to everyone. Anger is the fifth realm and here there is the hottest of all the realms. There are deserts that stretch for miles and fires on everything possible is a constant occurrence. Next as number six is the realm called pride. While possibly being one of the safest realms it could also be the most dangerous because the inhabitants of this realm are all so high and mighty that they might suddenly lash out each other for no reason causing a random civil war. The seventh realm is similar to the fifth but are quite different, this realm is called violence. Here mercenaries and bandits call home it its forests and mountains. This realm is battered by tornado''s and thunderstorms with an excess of lightning. Realm number eight is called fraud and it is realm filled with monsters and creatures that can either shape-shift or use illusion magic. Additionally this realm is only a series of floating islands in an ocean of clouds making high winds common. The last realm is known as Treachery and it is a frozen wasteland. This place is ruled by the one known as Lucifer who lives is his palace made from frozen corpses. Out of all the realms there is nothing to gain here at all, only a death from cold or a fatal encounter with Lucifer¡¯s army. The realms are filled with a large variety of intelligent sentient races with the most common being: human, elf, dwarf, demi-human, demon, dragon, and celestials. There are a few communities of some rare intelligent races out there like the Automata who are a group of people made from clockwork that gains a soul. The best researchers and scholars from each of the races wanted to find the origin of life for the intelligent races and they found something quite interesting. All of the researchers were working in their respective communities across the entire nine circles and ended up discovering the exact same thing. For anything that has an intelligence and is self-aware, the soul isn¡¯t created during pregnancy, the soul is instead attracted to the empty shell of the living being and is attached to the living being and that is what the origin of the soul is. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. After that was discovered and each of the researchers and scholars found out others found very similar results they formed a group dedicated to finding out more about this phenomenon. They discovered that there were specific rules for the soul to attach, firstly it had to be an intelligent self-aware being no matter what; the soul cannot be disturbed otherwise the soul does not attach and the baby dies instantly when it is born; lastly the soul is made out of magic and is possibly the reason why it takes ten years after being born for someone to be able to use magic safely because the soul slowly creates and stabilizes the mana pool during those years. +-+-+-+ One of the scholars that was in the group was a human who went by the name of Faust. He was originally a doctor that treated simple colds in a small village with his extensive knowledge of magical alchemy but he was drawn to the unknown so he started to research the soul. He discovered the same thing as the others and was invited to join the group. He was part of the group for three years before he started to have some troubles. The others started to disregard him as a mad man with outlandish theories that could not be proven. The madman part was actually quite true, during the three years he attempted an experiment to try and control his soul within his body. Technically it worked because he did change something about his soul but it led to the deterioration of his mind. He started to become fixated on the strangest things like the sound of the ticks in a clock or the organization of a sand hill. Theories that were just too idealistic to believe were starting to come out of him and led to his eventual dismissal from the group. +-+-+-+ In the realm Pride another civil war had just ended. The battlefield is littered with corpses from both sides, most are that of the losers. The smell of death and iron float in the air warning those that death still lurks nearby but inviting scavengers for a meal. The only thing strange about this battlefield would have to be the flow of the magic in the area. All of the magic was converging on one point in the battlefield, a small hole filled with blood. Slowly this blood starts to collect itself together into a ball, tendrils of blood start to flow across bodies and grass over to the ball of blood. Once it reached about one and a half feet in diameter it started to float up into the air. It was at this point a spectator who if it was anyone else would have run away, started to run towards the ball and used magic to compress it into a large jar. This person was of course the delusional Doctor Faust. ¡°They called me crazy! But at last my theory was right! In a field that has been stained by death for multiple millennia, the amount of souls that leave the bodies here may cause an anomaly like this! An intelligent creature born from an object that isn¡¯t living, it shouldn¡¯t be possible but here it is right in front of me!¡± He screams out jumping up a small bit in joy. He stands there holding the jar triumphantly in his hand and continues on rambling about the greatness of his discovery for hours on end. Chapter 1 In a dimly lit room filled with moth eaten drapes and books scattered across the floor a man was sitting in a chair holding a cage that glowed with a slight purple glow. ¡°The worlds are amazing and there are so many assorted sights to take in and pick up. Starting with purgatory, the city of rust is quite the place with everything constantly staying in the state of rust.¡± The man sits there talking to the cage for many hours. After a large portion of time had passed the man grabbed a mouse that was running across the floor by his feet with inhuman speed. ''Ah a small rodent. Well anyways it will be good feed for you now wouldn''t it?'' Holding the mouse by the tail the man drops it through the bars of the cage where it lands dazed. As the mouse gains its wits again it notices the mass of blood that is moving towards it. Panicking the mouse runs away but the cage is enchanted so that nothing can escape. The mouse scratches the walls as the blood approaches. When the blood reached the mouse it slowly covered it starting at its tail and slowly going up its body. When the blood reached the mouse''s mouth it poured into it at which point the mouse''s struggle ceased and lifeless eyes were slowly covered by crimson. ¡°Ah you are still you are you? Well in that case, I the great Faust will search for more books and materials to teach you.¡± He jumps out of his chair hold the cage and starts spinning around the room holding the cage before him. The blood would have flown everywhere but thanks to the magic it stayed put. After a minute of spinning, Faust places the cage on a counter and he pulls up a chair and starts writing in a journal that sat near the cage. ¡°Before I forget, I am not sure if you will remember this but if you do its great so that way I won''t have to read my journals. Scholars have determined that spirits or as they are also called souls attach themselves to creatures with a degree of intelligence before they are born. This I agree with, its fact, but I have discovered something else. No scholar has ever stopped to think just where does this spirit come from, this I have found. The spirit is actually a being that died in another world and has forgotten itself. The soul then comes here to the nine hells where it lives for a lifetime, dies and then it returns to its realm. It¡¯s a never ending cycle. Now, what does all of this research have to do with you my little crimson friend? Well that¡¯s simple, you were found on a battlefield but you aren''t a spirit of a soldier that was attached to blood. No it¡¯s completely different. I believe that this is the first time ever that an artificial spirit has been made. That means you are the first of a kind, a different type of soul than any other which allows you to be attached to blood not a living creature. Now we have no clue as what this will mean in the future but as of right now, I just have one question for you. How smart can you become?¡± +-+-+-+ I woke up a week ago. Things are strange, I know a lot of things but I am unaware as to how I learned of that information. When I had first woke up there was a man sitting in a chair with me in a cage. He was reading a story to me about a group of angels who went against god and lost. It is strange waking up from a waking dream, I was watching for years but it is hazy and I can''t remember anything and during the dream I couldn''t control my body. On the first day the man noticed nothing and had fed me a rat which I kindly devoured with my blood coating it and dissolving it into nutrition for my blood to keep clean and working. I am unaware as to why I don''t get larger or have no waste. It is strange. The pattern of me pretending to be how I used to be continued till today. It all started when I got bored of him reading a story and I moved to look out the cage. ¡°Oh my look at this! Quite a bit of unnatural behavior¡± he exclaimed as he abruptly picked the cage up to his eyes and he stared right at me. ¡°Flatten if you understand me little one¡± His eyes glared right into me and honestly I felt a bit scared of this eccentric man. It took about a few moments and then I flattened. ¡°Yes yes I knew it! Teaching you for the past decade was honestly worth it.¡± I stayed there flattened as I realized just how long I had been not in control of my actions. ¡°You are intelligent aren''t you and self-aware, it¡¯s only a matter of time before you can do more than this my little puddle of blood.¡± Wait I can do more than be a blob of blood? That may make things easier than just being like this. Hmmm with this amount of blood I should be able try and become a small goblin or something similar. Focusing on controlling the blood I slowly form a skinny and spiny arm. Once I finish that I test out the arm. It moves just like I hoped and surprisingly it doesn''t require any effort to keep it shaped once I got it made. Once I was done testing the arm I made an opposite arm, this one didn''t take as much effort make and both arms required no effort to keep them up. After a short while of testing my arms I started to make my first leg, it was skinny and spiny just like my arm but I added a curved horn to the knee. This was a lot more difficult to make then my arm and took me about 3 days of focusing to get it done I would have loved to test my leg but I needed another which I proceeded to create. Again it was easier to make but it still took a whole day. When the second leg was done I moved both legs around a bit and then I planted the feet on the ground and tried to stand up. It did not go well as I did stand up but my arms were dragging on the ground as my body was still the soft and malleable blood. I left my legs and arms so that they were arranged in a cross shape while I laid on the floor of my cage and proceeded to create a body and head. Firstly I focused on creating my body by compacting the blood into a denser structure. I gave myself no reproductive organs as that would be useless. The body or torso matched my arms with how skinny and spiny/bony it is. There was still a mass of blood left so I used that to create a head that composed solely of a round sphere for the head with only two depressions where the eyes would be. My body was complete and I attempted to stand up. It was difficult but somehow I was able to, I had to lean against the wall of the cage to stay standing though. My balance was a tad bit too bad. Again as a nice surprise it took no effort for my blood to keep this shape. It was about this point that I noticed that the blood that layered on the top was changing into a skin for this body. It was pure white and it slowly started at all points on my body and ended after a few seconds. I spent a few moments observing my body. And it was all white excluding the horns in my knees which were now a deep dark red instead of regular crimson. I was slowly learning to walk around the cage one day when it was suddenly picked up and I was slammed into the ground. ¡°I was only gone for two months and look at what you''ve become my little blood.¡± after that he rushes over to his desk and tosses the cage lightly onto the counter and sits down and furiously begins writing in his journal while mumbling. ¡°The blood has formed itself into a bipedal creature with opposable digits most likely for constructive purposes. The form seems to be based on a story of the doll demons who had featureless faces while having spiny and skinny limbs. I am unsure as to what the purpose of the horns on the knees though, in all honesty they would be a detriment to high sped movement. A better place for them would be the elbows, a lot more use for them there. The most confusing though would have to be the fact that the blood created a skin for itself which has made it turn white. There could be a purpose like keeping the core of the blood clean of dirt and filth.¡± Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. The man keeps on writing and rambling underneath his breath. While he does that I want to see if there is a way out of this cage. I comb the glowing bars with my hands for any sign of weakness. After a few minutes I found nothing at all and exasperated fall back onto my back as I think of anything I could use. What comes to my mind is a book called: A Brief Curriculum on Magic Manipulation. A basic summary of the book would probably be something like this. Magic is a primordial substance that exists alongside the sciences. Some people have called it dark matter as it has nothing that can be measured by science except for the fact that its mass is in the negative. Magic has been able to be manipulated by all living creatures and soul filled creatures and by using this substance the very basics of science and common sense can be broken. Manipulation can be very tricky for a large amount of reasons. Firstly living creatures have to develop the ability to do so before they can. Magic starts to gather in a pool that exists in the soul at a very young age. This pool is limited and the magic the creature is able to cast is dictated by the size of the pool. There are ways to increase the capabilities of this pool which can be found in the next book. Well in order to utilize this pool to use magic to manipulate others or personal magicks, it firstly requires an affinity to be determined. Affinities break up into two categories, basic, and complex. Basic affinities are ones like fire, lightning, water, earth, air, light, and dark. Everyone has at least two of these affinities that they are attuned towards but less are in tune with the complex affinities. These affinities aren''t well known but the known ones are death, life, time, and chaos. There may be more complex affinities but the requirements are unknown for them to be obtained. To find out your affinities, lie down on your back and meditate. Focus on one thing only and that is the first colour that comes to mind. Eventually if you are talented enough with magic, an affinity may be formed within you. You will know you have gained an affinity when a tattoo with the symbol and colour for your affinity shows up on your left arm. Don''t worry this tattoo will only show when wanted, this is to prevent magic affinity from becoming public knowledge that can be used against you. Now with an affinity the first basics of magic is to create mana channels to your hands. This is achieved through meditation and trying to force the mana for your pool to your hands. This is a dangerous process and should only be done for a short period of time per day. Otherwise the mana may blow up inside you either crippling you or downright killing you instantly. Since this is a very likely possibility, it would be best to create the mana channels for at most one hour a day. This process is most likely going to take at least 1 month to 1 year based on the person and if it¡¯s done safely. Once the channels have been created mana can be pushed into your hands where it can be manipulated by your thoughts. Still be careful, magic is a volatile substance that if handled incorrectly will result in an explosion that will cause massive destruction or drain the caster causing extreme magic exhaustion. Now only draw out a small amount of magic and will it into a ball, if this is done correctly a small ball with a purple colour will appear in your hand. If not done correctly there is a high possibility that too much mana was put into the ball which will cause the caster to faint from magic exhaustion. This is the beginning of magic manipulation and if done correctly this method for creating a magic light can be modified by the user for a multitude of purposes. This can be anything from offensive magic, defensive, entertainment, enchanting, alchemy and research, or change the properties of an already in effect magic. To do these types of magic manipulation it is quite easy, a few examples being; adding an explosive effect to a magic light by filling it with compressed magic power; creating a defensive wall by spreading out the mana and reinforcing it; changing the colour of the magic light can be an entertainment; filling an object with mana so that way when doing it¡¯s intended purpose, magic is added; alchemy and research is a gray area and requires lots of trial and error; out of all these though, changing the properties of magic is quite difficult. Changing already set enchantments or magicks requires a high level of skill, intelligence, and patience since it requires a small stream of mana to be injected into the magic and then a battle of wills to change the set effect. It is a very slow process which makes it useless in any battle situation. After I finished my recollection of the books contents I sit up and start planning my course of action. Firstly, I will learn how to use magic, then I would escape this cage and this crazy man, and lastly, I will explore the Nine Circles of Hell. So starting with my first task, I fall onto my back, close my eyes and started meditating to find my affinities. The only colour that came to my mind was blood red crimson. I don¡¯t know how long I was meditating before something strange started to happen to me, my body became light and felt like I was being lifted off someplace. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of a raised platform in front of an altar with nothing on it, in a perfectly white temple. The stone that made up the temple was extremely white with no blemishes and no cracks. In front of me was a white altar with the only thing that wasn¡¯t pure white in the room, a small, battered, blood red book. When I reached out to grab the book, a moment before I reached it, it suddenly opened and a large screech echoed through the room deafening me. The walls of the temple started to crack and blood poured through staining the white temple red. I looked at the book really quickly and inside all I saw was a drawing of a humanoid monster. The monster started to move and looked right at me and the entire page turned black except for a toothy smile that stayed white. It was at this point that the cracks had reached the roof and chunks started to fall down, I was too paralyzed by the entire situation that I couldn¡¯t avoid the rubble that came falling down onto me. I woke up in a flash with jump. Before I even realized I was doing it, I was checking my body for any damage. Thankfully I hadn¡¯t been hurt in anyway but on my left arm by my wrist there was now four fading tattoos. I guess that experience must have been related to the magical affinities I am in tune with then. The first tattoo was of a flame so obviously fire affinity, second was of a red droplet so I guess this may be a unknown complex affinity for blood, third and fourth tattoos were mysteries to me that I could even guess. The third tattoo was a black silhouette of a person standing, it wasn¡¯t dark or death affinity because dark is always a black square and death always has a skull. The fourth tattoo was just as great of a mystery because it was just a line, that s all, nothing at all like any of the symbols of the known affinities. This is honestly a surprise, I thought that I would only have two basic affinities but having the blood affinity isn¡¯t really that much of a stretch now that I think about it, but the other two affinities those are a strange mystery. Since I have no clue what they are I guess I will just train the ones that I know. Well I won¡¯t get anywhere if I just sit around here thinking so let¡¯s get started on those mana channels. +-+-+-+ Here we go a second chapter in succession, Woot! Sadly it might take a while for the next chapter but its coming. Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Finally after weeks I have created the mana channels from my soul to my hands. Although it took forever, I think that I finished much faster than anyone else would have; probably due to my nature as a new type of spirit or soul (whatever it¡¯s called). Over the weeks while I was creating the mana channels the man who has me here in this cage, doctor Faust, was busy pouring over notes and books, mumbling under his breath, suddenly screaming eureka, and running all over the place. I am honestly unsure if he has even slept the entire time. Currently he is at his desk near my cage with mountains of books, a few are moldy and some have been chewed on by rodents. There is one particular book he is reading right now while taking some notes: The Origin of the Automata. The automata were the only anomaly to the spirits being attracted to a baby being born and attaching since there is nothing organic about them. They are a race of clockwork machines that are born by being built to a specific specification that only they know of. Out of all the races they are the newest, excluding me, being created approximately 3000 years ago by the long gone Allagan Empire. Since the automata do not age, there actually is still automata that were created in the empire still walking around. I am going to assume he is reading the book because they are the only exception to the rule that souls bind to only living things with the potential for complex thoughts and intelligence. If I remember correctly, when I was read the book it stated that the reason why the Automata were able to have the soul attached were their cores. Not much is known about these cores except for the fact that as long as their core is intact, they still live even if they were missing a body for a millennia. That means that the core is where the soul is stored. Hm, I guess that means my blood that makes up my entire being has the same quality as the core of an automata. Well, that¡¯s as far as this line of thought will reach today, also I am really excited about trying magic for the first time. Remembering the simple light spell I send a small amount of mana to my hand and force it into the air. Since I am not trying to add an affinity to it a small ball of blue light appeared. Apparently mana is blue so guess if a water affinity was added it would turn into water? Meh, I won¡¯t be able to test that since I don¡¯t have that affinity. Now that I think about it this is really easy, maybe I am just really talented with magic? Well, no problem with that, it just makes my task of escaping easier. I dispel the magic light and it dissipates into the air. I sit down and start thinking about how I can train my magic ability: there is a few ways I can go about it. Firstly I can just play around with this simple light spell with affinity-less mana in order to increase my ability with handling magic in general. This is a good plan but it might be lacking in combat and situations that need practical magic. Secondly, I can practice using fire magic so that I can learn how to use it effectively. While probably a great idea, I am stuck in a cage that won¡¯t give me enough room to avoid burning myself. Thirdly, I can practice and learn how to use blood magic however it is used. Learning how to use this magic will be difficult in general since I have no clue about how it¡¯s used. Lastly, I can attempt to learn what my unknown affinities are and how to use them. Out of all the possible things I can try this will be probably be almost impossible to figure out. Thinking about the ups and downs of each of these methods, I am really leaning towards training the blood magic and just testing the unknown affinities just to figure them out. I start by summoning the mana light again and I start adding the blood affinity to it. Immediately my hand warps a small bit and blood flows out and into the mana light creating a ball of blood in the air. Well this is disappointing, it turns out blood magic is what I used to create my body in this form. It probably has its uses but honestly I was hoping for something cooler or so. Disappointed I continue testing blood magic and I discovered it actually is different than what I used to create my body and it is really useful for me. I was able to instantly turn my hands into spikes and create a sword out of a large portion of my body. The sword was two times as tall as I, rectangular shaped, double sided blade, thin at the bottom and getting thicker at the top, and since it was made out of my blood magic it was light enough for me to swing with one hand. I decided to call the spell that made my hands into spikes: Blood Lance, and the large sword, Blood Zweihander (even though I only used one hand). Naming spells serves as a way for the magic to be cast quicker, some people yell out the name but honestly that¡¯s just unnecessary, the name only needs to be thought. The really useful thing I found out about blood magic is that it only uses my mana when I am actively morphing and changing the blood, once I am done it doesn¡¯t use anymore mana and the blood I morphed gets a hard white coating on it. This makes really sharp weapons and serves as a pretty good armour. I would create armour but that¡¯s actually how hard my skin is at this moment, it would probably compare to iron with how hard it is. My tests with blood magic actually went on for weeks, the previous bit is just the summary of what I had discovered that was of great interest. Well I did discover that by creating a hollow body I was able to make myself bigger but it was at the cost of mobility and balance. I honestly wonder if it is possible for me to become large than I am right now but that will just have to wait. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Once I was satisfied with the tests with blood magic I moved onto just manipulating affinity-less mana. I spent another few weeks just experimenting with this and actually discovered quite a lot and proved my doubts about learning this magic wrong. It turns out this magic that I have now come to calling arcane magic is very diverse in its uses and is very well suited for battle. For example, my first realization that it could be harnessed for combat was when I attempted to compress the light ball and was given a tiny pea of magic. I lost concentration for a moment and this pea of magic shot off a laser that ricocheted off the caged and shot back into my upper left arm, severing my entire arm. It was also at this point that I discovered that I do feel pain, honestly while extremely painful it was a useful experiment in many ways. I learned that this arcane magic can be used in combat; I do feel pain; and lastly, my blood magic allows me to reattach severed limbs in mere seconds. The lasers are the simplest version of combat arcane magic can do I discovered but it isn¡¯t the only thing I can do. By using arcane magic it is possible to enchant weapons for a short period of time so that they are stronger than usual. A barrier created out of magic can be used to defend against simple magicks and projectiles like arrows. It can be used for lighting and creating illusions by distorting light beams. The possibilities of arcane magic is endless only limited by what can be mana can be used by the caster and their imagination. By this point I realize that I can probably escape but honestly I want to attempt using my other affinities first. I firstly attempt the silhouette affinity first, summoning a magic light I inject the ball with the image of the silhouette. Immediately I realize something is wrong as I am no longer in the cage but now standing on top of rubble in the ruined temple. Everything here is stained with blood including the white broken blocks of stone I am standing on. I look up remembering that the roof had collapsed and all I see is a void devoid of anything at all. Remembering not to panic I calmly analyze my situation. After using that unknown affinity I am back in the temple which is now covered in blood and has almost completely collapsed. Last time when I was here there was a book that I opened and then I was back in the regular world. Based on that I start looking around the rubble to see if I can find that small book. To begin, I get off the stone I am standing on which would be easy for a normal sized humanoid since it is 5 feet off the ground but I am only 2 feet tall. Two seconds after trying to climb down safely, I slip and fall down and slam onto my back causing me some pain. While recovering I notice that the stone is held up by something and there is a 2 inch crack allowing me to see under it. Underneath the stone I see a smashed altar which is just barley holding up the rock and the book lying next to it, just out of my reach by 6 inches. Using blood magic I rearrange the blood in me to get rid of my left arm and double the length of my right arm so I could reach the book. The moment my hand touched the book I was transported someplace different. The place I was now was and endless black room with a ceiling and walls that couldn¡¯t be seen. The room was not empty, in fact far from it with thousands, possibly millions, of ropes stretching taut all over the place in random directions. Some led straight up, other across and some used other ropes to go in a jagged line. I did not know what to do as I didn¡¯t have the book anymore and there was no clear direction to go. Wait, I actually never tried to ¡®will¡¯ myself out of here, if this was caused by my own magic then by trying to stop it I should be able to leave. I try this and immediately I am back standing in the cage. Well I have no idea what that magic was since it doesn¡¯t seem like my body actually ever left the cage since this was the position I was in just as I was about to cast the light spell and both of my arms are normal, I didn¡¯t fix my arm after the book was obtained so I only had one really long arm. Based on what happened it seems this affinity is responsible for that weird occurrence that happened during the meditation for affinities. Honestly that was a quite interesting event and it makes me want to try this other affinity that I have which is the line. This is going to be interesting to test out. I summon the magic light and then I begin to imagine the line affinity affecting it. Again I immediately notice something is going wrong. I wasn¡¯t transported to another dimension but the magic light starts to vibrate and get brighter. It gets so bright that I am unable to see and this lasts for a short time, about 5 seconds. Once my eyes? (I don¡¯t know what I have) readjust to the dim light that illuminates the room I realize something immediately. My right arm which I hold out to summon the magic light is no longer held out in front of me and I feel a bit lighter. In plain and simple terms, my entire right arm has disappeared. +-+-+-+ Author here. Sorry for long wait but the series is not dead, just real life is kinda getting in the way of writing. Also this chapter is shorter than my 3k word count goal because the point I wanted to end it at just came way too quickly. The next chapter might take a similar amount of time to come out since I am really busy with work right now.