《Conquer {BLEACH}》(13).
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After that first visit in her Inner Sanctum through jinzen, Agito was desperate to go back. There was just too many questions that needed answers and now that she knew that she was getting somewhere, she wanted to meet her zanpakuto. Besides, the next morning she would be training more with Ukuru-sensei and it would be more helpful actually having her zanpakutou ready than to just go without.
So late at night, when the whole manor was asleep, Agito lied on her back and focused deeply on the burning sensation she could feel throughout her limbs. She felt so hot and to latch onto the river of lava in her blood was painful but she slowed her breathing and leapt into the magma.
Awareness of the world faded.
The sound of a raging fire welcomed her within.
Agito opened her eyes and she was back. But there was something different. Everything was on fire. Everything was alive. It was still night time with the stars twinkling overhead. But before the fire had been more red and orange than yellow or white. Now though, the fire was golden.
Sparkling gold glowing white it nearly blinded her but this was her own soul. Despite the initial flinching to the brightness, she didn't react to the change other than looking around.
The wind and screaming from before was gone. The forest was as still as a forest fire could be. Agito walked through the woods, looking for any signs of the earlier turmoil that upended her rage and reiatsu in one single visit.
"Hello!" she called out, wanting her zanpakuto to appear before her, "I know you're out there so come out!"
She wandered for a while, changing direction whenever she wanted cause this was her soul goddamn it, she wasn't going to act desperate! She arrived at ... a place. A very weird place. It was a clearing just like any other, nothing remarkable.
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Other than there was something smeared all over the tree bark. The pine needles didn't seem to be stained with it, it looked like the trees were bleeding. One fire and bleeding from within. Agito edged to her trees closer, never fearing the flames that licked at her skin. She touched the liquid and recoiled at the feeling of ... oil?
It was a black tar. It oozed and signed from the golden light and it was disgusting and odd compared to the rest of her surroundings.
"What the fuck?" she muttered.
"You shouldn't be here."
Agito didn't know that voice. It was a voice that carried the weight of prophecy. It had an accent that she didn't recognize and how the hell cant she recognize it? She only knew one language.
She stepped back from the bleeding trees and turned to look at her zanpakuto.
All she saw was red.
His skin was red, all of it, covered in blood. He was ridiculously tall, like six-foot-seven-inches tall, broad and muscular. He looked like a centurion Roman soldier, dressed only in a skirt of pleated leather, a belt of brass, barefoot and bare chest except for the black cape that fluttered from his shoulders down to the ground. At his back were six massive wings.
Two were at his neck and drawn up past his head to look like a Valkyrie crown. Two, the largest, were spread the farthest he could go and though they didn't so much as flutter, somehow they kept him levitating above the forest floor. The largest wings were huge, stretching nearly forty feet in diameter, so big they dwarfed the spirit they were attached to, but they didn't subtract from the power of him, no his enlarged wings only added to the presumed power of him. The last two wings were at his lower back, nearly his hips and were enfolded over his feet. His wings were not made of feathers, but of gold. The metal glittered in the firelight and any other person would be dazzled at the beautiful display but Agito was a bit more pessimistic and noticed the red blood dripping off the razor sharp edge of every single feather.
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Agito looked her zanpakuto in the eye and regretted it.
His face was the face of a high born faerie elf. Perfectly beautiful it was completely inhuman. He was so beautiful but only the most beautiful things hide the most deadliest. Agito was convinced that whoever her zanpakuto is, no matter how awesome, gorgeous, or whatever positive adjective she would want to describe him ... he must be just as lethal, perhaps even more so.
"Are you my zanpakuto?" Agito asked. The spirit didn't answer. His eyes, though they weren't eyes so much as fire pits burning in empty eye sockets, looked impassively down at his beholder.
"You are aren't you? Your my-"
"You are the Beholder: That Which Excludes."
"What?" she demanded because she didn't like at all what her zanpakuto just said.
"Yes," the spirit said, "You will serve well."
"I serve nothing but myself!" Agito snapped, "In fact, you serve me since you're the zanpakuto!!"
"Zanpakuto," the spirit repeated as if trying out the word on his tongue for the first time, "Yes, you need a sword. I shall give you one." Before Agito could ask what the hell was going on because was too confused, there was a burning sensation in her hand. With a yelp, she dropped the object that was, to her surprise, a zanpakuto! It was her zanpakuto, in its sealed state, a silver katana with a blood red hilt and a circular hand-guard that looked like molten metal violently cooled.
"What is your name?" Agito asked, returning to a script she knew. She picked back up the blade, turning its perfect weight in her hands.
"A name?" the spirit asked.
"Yes, she said, "You have a name. I need it. Tell me your name."
"My name," the spirit said straightening up as if calling some ancient power, "-is מִיכָאֵל."
"What?" she asked cause what the hell did he say? Ukuru-sensei once said that in the beginning most Shinigami cant hear their zanpakuto's name, that it sounds like nothing or pure gibberish. But this ... sounded like something. Like he said a name in some other tongue.
"מִיכָאֵל"
"Mai-" Agito cut herself off, trying to sound out the words on her tongue, "Mai-ki-e-ru? Maikieru? Mai-"
She coughed once and said, "Michael?"
The spirit smiled, revealing a dozen needle like teeth.
"Yes," he said sounding very pleased, "Michael."
~~~
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Editing is kicking my ass
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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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