《Borrowed Time》Travel
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Having finally calmed down, Mei sighed and asked, "Princess, er, your Majesty—"
"You can call me Rina."
"...Princess Rina, why did you... uh, honor us with your presence?"
She thought for a minute, before exclaiming, "it's a secret!"
"But—" Mei objected, before realizing who she was arguing with.
"Don't worry about it, she's here. We'll return her after we're done with the request."
"What!? We're not turning back?"
Marc gave her a look as if she was stupid. "Of course we're not going back now. It'll be our fault then. This, at least, gives it us more options. Maybe the Empress will forget or something."
"It's her daughter!"
"...on second thought, she probably won't forget. But we could escape the country or something. In any case," he said, looking towards the young princess, "you will cooperate with us, yes?"
She nodded in response. "Rina has something she needs to do."
"So she can disguise herself as just a random girl. No problems there, I doubt many people have seen the Imperial Princess, after all."
"...I suppose."
"Great; now that that's settled, I want to take a nap."
Mei sighed again and slumped into her seat. "This isn't going to go well..."
They continued to travel outwards. True to his word, Marc soon fell asleep, leaning against the door. The princess was next, falling asleep against Marc. Mei felt that a princess should really have more reservations about sleeping next to strange men, but there wasn't much she could do about it.
She herself was too agitated to sleep, and instead spent the time fidgeting and thinking about the terrible things that could happen to her.
As the orange rays of sunset began to permeate through the small cabin, the carriage suddenly came to a stop. Marc woke up instantly, while Mei was already on alert. There was a knocking on the wall behind Marc, and a panel slide open, revealing the driver.
"Bandits," he spoke in rough Western.
"How many?"
"6 or so."
Marc sighed. "Not an unexpected obstacle. Hand me a sword."
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"Will you fight? Ay, more help is good," the driver said as he tossed a worn iron short sword through the slot.
Mei looked at Marc seriously. "We should try negotiating first. If that falls through, I'll take the princess and run. We can't let her fall into the hands of bandits."
The princess had woken up. "What's going on?"
Marc looked over and smiled. "There are bad men outside."
"Don't worry, your Majesty, we will keep you safe if it means our lives," Mei reassured her.
"Won't Yao Tzen or Zhan Sun save us?" the princess said, a little worry in her voice.
"I have no idea who those are."
"They're Heavenly Warriors; legendary masters of martial prowess who do good deeds and fight evil," answered Mei.
"Superheroes, got it. Well, don't worry, I'm more than enough."
The princess looked at him wide-eyed. "You are? Really?"
"Yes," Mei sighed, "he is." This was ridiculous, but she needed to play along.
"Driver, keep going," Marc directed.
"Plan?" he asked, while shooing the horses forward.
"Tell me when we get close to them."
"200" he said, referring to the distance.
"150"
"100"
"50"
Mei tensed up.
"Hey, do you have a handkerchief?" Marc asked offhandedly.
"Huh? Well, yeah, I do..."
"Do you mind if it gets a bit bloody?"
"What? Uh... no, I guess..."
"Give it to me."
"Sure..." she said, handing it over. What was he going to do?
"They are here," the driver said gravely.
Marc lifted the sword out of its sheath. "I never like doing this," he said with sad smile.
Suddenly, he seemed to shift in place slightly, as if his body teleported slightly to the left. What was more striking was that the right edge of his sword was now coated in a thick layer of fresh blood. Screams could be heard outside.
The driver turned back, "they're all..." he began, slowing as he saw Marc's bloody sword, "...dead."
Marc didn't respond, simply wiping the blood off of the sword.
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No one said a word for a bit. Then, the princess spoke up: "D-did you do that?"
"Why, yes, I did."
"Wow, you're amazing!" the princess exclaimed, a sparkle in her eyes.
"But how—!" Mei interjected.
"I am very fast," Marc said simply.
"But—"
The princess was the one who interrupted her this time. "He's a Heavenly Warrior; they can do anything!"
"This guy, a—" she began, but stopped herself. Six men had died, and there was only one person who could've done it. It was an inhuman feat—she couldn't deny it.
"I am nothing so great, simply a magician, who uses trickery and techniques to do the impossible. A magician cannot, however, reveals his arts."
"Wow, you're so cool!"
"Am I not? Aha!"
The princess continued to praise Marc and he continued to indulge it in. Mei could do nothing but sit and sigh. She did, however, feel more and more that he was not as plain as he said he was.
In a few days of travel, they neared their destination. They met one or two more interruptions, but they were quickly resolved. Marc stopped the carriage at a nearby stable. He wandered off for a bit and came back with a wooden wagon and two plain sets of robes.
"Here, wear these. We'll be keeping this carriage here; from now on, we're incognito."
"Are we seriously running then?" Mei asked.
"What? No. We're going to do our jobs. This is part of that."
Mei looked over at the princess, who was fiddling with her brownish folds of cloth.
"No, really, we're not running. Yet."
The driver came near.
"Ah, yes, you're dismissed. Here's your pay."
He nodded. "Ay. I be around. Will come with you again, very impressive sword." He walked off.
"Who will drive, then?" Mei asked.
"I will."
"Do you know how?"
"Probably."
She sighed. "Good enough."
After the girls changed their clothes, they continued their journey. They were only a few hours away from the supposed center of trouble. Loose, dirt roads turned to cobbled ones, and soon enough they entered into the town proper.
Marc paid for a room at an nearby inn and hired a stableman to handle the horses, then told Mei to amuse herself and wandered off. With the princess left in her care, she decided the safest thing to do would be to return the room at the inn.
Roughly an hour later, he returned.
"What have you been doing?"
"Me?" Marc asked, pointing to himself. "I've been gathering Intel."
He walked over to a chair and sat down. "Looks like a standard political feud. There are two clans vying for power and they're causing a ruckus. The good part is that neither side is trying to subvert Imperial power. That makes it easy for us."
"What do you plan on doing about it?"
He sighed. "We'll have to wait. It'll probably be a few weeks before I can act."
"Really? Well, I don't understand."
"Indeed you do not."
"What is that supposed to mean!?"
"In any case," he continued, ignoring her, "we have nothing to do until then. Why don't we have some fun?"
"Fun?" Mei asked skeptically.
"Fun. We managed to get here during a full moon, and the people here look like they're having a festival."
"Oh, yeah, the Moon Festival," Mei remembered. "I'd forgotten with everything that happened recently."
"Moon festival!?" the princess exclaimed. "I've never gotten to go."
Marc nodded. "No doubt. Everyone would either be scared witless of offending you or try to kidnap you. Well, don't worry, right now you're just an ordinary, not scary girl that most people won't try to kidnap."
He stood up. "Well, let's go. There's no point in waiting, right?"
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Dungeon Core Chat Room.
This is a slower-paced "experiment and dungeon building" web novel that tries to use the idea of peer-to-peer communication with Dungeon Cores instead of Dungeon to slave monster communication to break up the detailed dungeon building. Rank 1 description: (minimum met for system initialization...detailed description as follows) Each race was given a system by the gods to make up for their shortcomings and balance their place in this world. Humans: Abysmally bad at understanding and using magic unable to use more than the lowest of magic were given the "Skill System" magic in the form of premade skills with use, study, and mastery tied to experience. Elves: Intuitively understand magic and have long lives leading to vast knowledge and skill in their chosen fields. However, as a species, they have nearly zero sex drive and less than low fertility, so they were gifted the "World Tree System" with experience gained through the care of natural areas – gifting the chance of children to increase their numbers without dirty copulation. All “natural” or “wild” monsters are given an "Evolution system" designed around killing and consuming as many creatures as possible, slowly increasing strength and, at thresholds, allowing mutations to alter them multiple times. Dungeon cores are different. Unlike humans, they can see, manipulate and live off mana. Unlike Elves, they naturally crystallize after extended periods of time in high mana level areas. However, they cannot easily move or communicate and typically go insane without companionship. As a species other than the odd eccentric they are unimaginative. Brute forcing solutions without the drive to truly innovate. Thus they have been gifted with the "Dungeon Connection System" a magical version of the internet accessible by their peers that allows them to barter and sell: bait, traps, monsters, and knowledge, as well as entertain each other with “adventure streams” using exciting recorded battles and humorous reels of arrogant chumps biting off more than they can chew to often fatal effects. This is the casual story of a dungeon unluckily spawned far from potential adventurers forced to innovate beyond its peers to find its place in this world. Rank 2 Description: Justification. I've been on a dungeon core kick for months and while I love the genre – it's sparse with entries. Often the forced conflict gets repetitive and frantic solving of threats "power levels" the protagonist to god levels to progress the plot – taking away the nice steady progression fantasy I'm looking for. (Progression in this story is linked to how strong of monsters/traps/whatever he can create not his "level"...this is demonstrated by some of his newer monsters beating his older monsters not with discrete "this monster has 10 attack this one has 40") Additionally, the focus on 3rd parties with their drama takes away from the reason I’m reading dungeon core novels in the first place – I'm looking for magical crafting, experimentation and kingdom building – not defence from higher and higher levelled enemies looking to steal/destroy/control the MC. This novel is kind of just me writing the story I wish I could read. I like thinking about the experimentation that can be done in fantasy settings using 'mana' as an excuse to make up rules and try to keep them internally consistent. IE once I define how a rule works, I'm going to commit to keeping it – no breaking hard truths I've given when it's convenient, even if it backs me into a corner. Hopefully, that should make the story interesting to read even if it's SOL and less action-oriented. There will be problems to solve and a clear progression in strength (of created monsters and knowledge) however due to not wanting to force conflict for the sake of conflict the general theme will be closer to slice of life with few action sequences and no overarching goal so please keep that in mind when picking this up as the genre is not for everyone. Finally, I have a clear goal of what I want from this story (not an endless romp but a series of arcs and then a conclusion that's a couple of dozen medium-sized chapters long) I want to commit to finishing it or at least bringing it to a point of rest. I hate all the engaging stories that stop with a “hiatus” indefinitely so in the event I lose motivation I'll work to end this even if the ending becomes rushed/unsatisfying just to give a sense of closure. I’m planning on including several polls in terms of direction and taking feedback heavily into account if I get enough readers (but may choose to ignore it if it deviates too far from the direction I want to take this as in feedback like: “The MC needs a cartoonishly evil arch-enemy that wants to enslave him and force the mc to pump out magic items” or “the MC needs to make a body and learn teleportation then live with humans” will get shot down without consideration.)
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For millennia, planet Earth has been a prison planet. The confederation of 116 planets once imprisoned earthlings. She is now ready to free the prisoners. But at what cost ?On an overpopulated and divided planet, a young woman tries to save her sick brother. She does not know that many trials await her
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The ancient's believed that a man's fate or destiny is written already, and that only God or maybe the Gods could change it. If they did change it, it was believed it was for a purpose unknown to that man or for maybe for the ammusement of those higher beings. However, whether that is true or not, one thing is for certain. Changing a man's fate will create a ripple of changes. Join our hero, who whether by luck, by some divine intervention, or by his own choice, separated from the fate that he shared with his fellow earthlings. Watch him struggle in his new world. Watch him grow. Watch him learn. Watch him walk a path oustside what destiny has for him. FYI: The magic concept in this story is high fantasy with involvement of polytheistic religions and demons. There will be a mix of GameLit style writing mixed with traditional magic novel style writing. The plot developement will be slow in the first volume, as I will focus on world building and character building. The main character will not be OP immediately and will develop into one in his own way over time. This series is built less like modern Japanese, Korean, and Chinese webnovels and more like the old school fanstasy novels like DND and Forgotten Realms.
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So try and love me while you can [Zacky Vengeance]
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