《Bloody Specialist》#7 - Meeting x Favors
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Months passed and both Shakal and his friend, Eden, advanced into the Heavens Arena. The two made a lot of money, surpassing the huge amount of 300 million jenny. Aside from the incredible amount of money, Shakal gained a lot of experience in combat. Fighting twice a day for three months, without counting the daily training, He managed to improve his combat skills to an incredible level, beating most of the fighters at Heavens Arena. His nen also strengthened, in the first two months, he managed to completely dominate the basic principles, and although not perfectly, he could now use In and Gyo in combat without having to focus on them.
He learned to control his Blood Manipulation technique almost perfectly, creating various weapons such as daggers, a scythe and some swords. Instead he did not have the opportunity to practice the other skills he possesses.
The two of them made it to the 200th floor, passed the tests, and won their respective battles.
Shakal tried to find Dorian, but unluckily he had already left the arena.
Shakal also knew Eden more deeply, apart from his background, as the member of a mercenary, who shielded their support for the one who paid the most and his long journey to raise enough money to pay for his departure from the clan.
The two friends also fought each other for practice several times, although Shakal was rarely able to claim victory, as Eden's nen type makes him extremely strong in one-on-one combat.
Inside his private room, Shakal was lying on the bed, holding his mobile phone in his right hand.
"Hey, how are you?" - the boy asked Eden.
"I am resting, it is very rare that you call me on the phone, I think this is the third time in all this time." - Eden replied.
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"Yes, I hate talking on the phone. Look, I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I'm going to sign up for the hunter exam. I'll be leaving very early in the morning, so we won't see each other for a while. " - Shakal said.
"Very well, once I get to make the five hundred million jenny and buy my exit from the clan, we will meet at the assigned point. Until then try to recruit more people for our group and above all get your hunting license. " Eden said.
"Understood, be very careful with the leaders of the upper floors. They seem quite strong. I'll call you back once I get my hunting license. In the meantime, if I meet someone interesting, I will invite him to join our group. " Shakal replied.
After several more minutes of conversation, the two said goodbye.
The next day, first hour in the morning, Shakal already packed all his luggage in a small backpack.
These months, despite having a lot of money, he doesn't bought too many things, the little free time he had was dedicated to his training, so he did not have time to go shopping.
Shakal said goodbye to the two girls at the reception and quickly headed towards the train station.
Now his mission was to find a guide to take him to the location of the exam. The first thing was to get out of the city of Heavens Arena and head towards a coastal city. There he will find a broader source of information about the hunter test.
Time passed quickly and the train was about to reach the closest city to the ocean.
When leaving the train, Shakal observed a young girl, quite short, with pink hair, wearing a ponytail.
A pretty attractive girl. The woman was resting with her eyes closed on a bench covered by a cement roof to protect from the rain, but what alerted Shakal was the huge crack that was quickly opening in the cement of the roof.
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Shakal quickly, with his inhuman speed obtained after several months of training, came right in front of the woman. Although Shakal did not pay much attention to her since he was concentrated to see where the roof was going to fall, he managed to see that when he arrived right next to her, the woman quickly opened her eyes and tensed her entire body.
Shakal quickly realized that the woman was a nen user since she sensed his presence immediately. Seeing that Shakal was standing right in front of her. She opened her aura to intimidate him into walking away. But without the woman expecting it, Shakal grabbed her hand to save her.
When Shakal's hand grabbed the girl's arm, she was already on the verge of counterattacking him, but stopped when her aura came in contact with the huge concrete slab that fell from the ceiling.
Once out of danger, Shakal gently released her arm, and raised his hands, trying to calm the lady down.
The girl quickly understood the situation, and withdrew her aura either in a zetsu state or perhaps in a In state.
"Sorry, I scared you! I saw that the building was about to fall and I ran as fast as I could." - Shakal said returning to his normal body position.
The woman stared at him for a while before speaking.
"My name is Machi, thank you very much for helping me." - replied the girl, bowing her head.
Don't worry, it was nothing. Take better care of yourself next time, bye! " - Shakal said as he walked towards the exit of the station.
"One second" - Machi shouted for Shakal to stop. "I don't like to owe people favors, there is something I can help you with, anything."
Shakal thought for a few seconds, before answering.
"I would like to participate in the exam to become a hunter, but I have no idea where the tests take place. Won't you know somewhere where I can meet a guide? " Shakal asked.
Machi pondered for a bit before speaking.
"Currently a friend of mine took his license a short time ago, he could give you the address of the city where he found his guide." - replied the girl.
Without letting the young man speak, Machi opened his mouth again.
"I think that with just this little information, the debt would still not be paid, so you can ask for something else. "
"Hm, thank you very much for the information. It really is not necessary. This information is enough for me. " Shakal replied.
"For me, owing someone a favor is very important. So tell me whatever else you need. " - Machi said.
"I see that you insist a lot on this. But I also have nothing else to ask you. " Shakal replied.
Without giving him time to say anything else, Machi quickly spoke.
"Think of something, anything." - said the girl.
"Hm. Then join me in taking the exam, unless you already have a license. " Shakal said.
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- In Serial20 Chapters
Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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