The streets were busy during the evening in New York. Many people were coming and going, many were walking with a forward-facing gaze. Tunnel-visioned into their destinations.
No one paid any mind to an old man sitting by the road, seemingly a normal beggar, missing both legs, near him was a wooden sign that asked for just a bit of kindness.
No one paid him any mind. In the sea of faces, his was the only one that was avoided. Even the occasional kind soul didn't look in his direction. Maybe it was because of his grotesque appearance?
A face mangled, scarred over already, looked like a pack of rabid dogs had once eaten it.
Even then, some would still find pity in such a tragic existence, still, no one paid him any attention... All but one person, Alexander Nikolia.
That old man had stood there for many years.
Alexander had seen the old man on numerous occasions sitting, waiting. Many times in different places even.
It was as if the old man was searching for something. Despite his appearance and obvious disability, he wasn't unable to move...
No, if one was to track down the old man, they could find him in numerous places... On numerous continents, dozens of countries all around the world.
But how could such a thing make sense? How could something like this even be possible? Well...
Alexander tried to tell all of his friends about it. All of the people that he knew just looked at him weirdly... Asking him 'What old man are you even talking about?' or saying things like 'Has all of that reading finally turned you insane?'
In truth, Alexander had somewhat considered the second a few times. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.
But that also simply didn't make any sense at all. Sure Alexander was not a bright-eyed young man, but he was no old decrepit man either. He was merely 49 years old currently.
If any one of his friends were to describe him, they would all call him adventurous and curious, a great conversationalist and an amazing sommelier.
A black-haired man with a trimmed beard and green eyes, always clean-cut and presentable, most of the time wearing formal clothing. His muscles were well-defined and his face was what one would consider conventionally handsome.
A man that had seen many walks of life and one with a name that sent waves through quite a few fields. Especially his main field of study, archaeology.
He was known to be the man to have discovered an even older civilisation than that of the Sumerians.
He unearthed something in the place where one would least expect to find anything, but also in the place where such a civilisation could be expected to have existed.
The deserts of Egypt, and it was because of the discovery of that civilisation, that his name had become renowned worldwide in the field of archaeology.
He was the one to discover the civilization that preceded the Ancient Egyptians, after a few years of research, he also managed to reverse engineer the language that the ancient civilisation used.
He had found great help in the form of Jean-François Champollion's research into the decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts. The languages were different, but he had managed to find some similarities between them.
And from those slight similarities, he managed to unravel an entirely new language. If anyone else was to describe it, then it would be simply called the work of a genius.
So, how could such a genius have simply gone insane like this? Alexander could feel the paranoia creeping in with each day that passed.
Each time he tried to point his acquaintances in the direction he had clearly seen the old man, the old man was never there. Seemingly a figment of his overacting imagination.
But he knew, he knew that the old man was real...
The old man had only started appearing after he had unravelled that civilization... Rather, that was when Alexander took notice of him.
With all of his curiosity, an unnerving feeling still prevented him from approaching the old beggar... Each time he took a step toward the old man, he could feel his bones shaking as his back filled with cold sweat. That was when he stopped and turned around usually.
But this night things were different... Why?
Well, it all had to do with his last excursion to the site of the ancient civilisation that he had found. More and more relics were being discovered by the teams he was leading.
Being the only person with a perfect grasp of that language, he was called to the scene to investigate a few new relics and to help decipher a few tablets.
Amongst those antiques, dusted and destroyed by time, Alexander's eyes caught something that made him curious. A very large and thick stone tablet, about as tall as he was, and he was exactly 1.95 meters.
A portrait, or rather, the ancient version of one, a stone engraving depicting a very familiar figure...
An old man with a long white beard, two missing legs, hands hidden by clothing, face mangled beyond the limits of brutality...
Alexander could only gulp as he looked down at the text underneath that depiction.
He could make out the words rather quickly, having already spent years deciphering texts of that nature... 'Always be wary of the wanderer. He doesn't repay kindness with kindness.'
Alexander could only gulp, he called one of his many students there to confirm that he wasn't truly delirious.
The student was a bit confused at why his teacher was so stressed out about that stone engraving, but he did confirm being able to see it. Even managed to explain to his teacher the circumstances in which they had found it.
"It was simply sitting up straight in the middle of the desert... We assume that the recent sand storms uncovered it, otherwise it's hard to believe that this was missed completely until now..." The student seemed to ponder for a moment.
Then he also saw the text that his teacher had already translated.
"How interesting! Such an ancient civilisation had its own version of folklore... The wanderer must be some kind of boogie man for them, maybe a tale they used to tell to their children, to make them a bit more distrustful of strangers..."
The student did give an extremely great explanation with the evidence provided, after all, Alexander's students were all geniuses in their own right.
But Alexander just nodded a bit. "Thank you, I just wanted a bit of confirmation..." He knew better... This was no child's tale...
And now, there stood Alexander, face to face with the old man that had haunted him for so many years. The wanderer.
He gazed down, he powered through the unnerving feeling seeping into his bones, his curiosity had finally been able to overcome whatever that feeling was.
As Alexander had expected, the old man did finally notice his presence, looking up at his face with a pair of cold and dead black eyes.
"Spare a coin for an unfortunate one?" That was all that the old man said.
Alexander looked down at the enigma in front of him, only one question on his tongue: "What are you?"
Alexander simply tilted his head when asking that question, not adverting his gaze or blinking even once, afraid that the old man was just going to disappear on him again.
"Spare a coin for an unfortunate one?" The old man simply repeated, his eyes didn't even seem to register Alexander's question, it was as if Alexander was not even there... Yet the old man was staring right at him.
Alexander at this point simply didn't know what to do... With a sigh, he took out a stack of bills from his pocket, something he had prepared beforehand.
To him, money was more of a concept, a means to an end, it didn't mean anything in his eyes. So he had no qualms giving the old man a bit more than a coin.
Alexander crouched down and placed the money right into the old man's lap. The money seemed to be swallowed up in the old man's clothing.
Then, something else happened, Alexander could see a light glint into the wanderer's eye, a toothy grin spreading on the old man's disfigured face.
"Kindness never goes unrewarded~" It was a creepier voice than before, but a lot less robotic at the very least.
Alexander almost took a step back when hearing the tone, but he wasn't fast enough.
That ancient thing, whatever it was, opened its mouth completely, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its mouth then expanded, towering over the tall Alexander in less than a second.
In that split second, Alexander froze, because he saw something even stranger inside that being's mouth... He saw stars, he saw... Another pair of eyes.
In that instant, Alexander was shocked, it took only a half-second of hesitation. His entire body was swallowed up in an instant.
And just like that... The greatest archaeologist of that century had disappeared completely...
__________________________________________________________________
Hi there, VeganMaster here.
Hope you liked this first chapter! I started posting this here since webnovel is being bad now.
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster on Patre_on, you'd also get 10 chapters in advance (or 5 depending on tier)Research and Abnormality
Interesting.
Sometimes i think of going to webnovel since it seems like a lot of good authors are there, but then i remember its webnovel and lose all desire to even think of that site.
I mean I agree on spme level, the authors and books there are amazing, But there's also a 1/3 chance that when u try to read a book you'll come out asking yourself why they let the patients at the local insane asylum start writing novels, so ya I get ya, and take my word for it I know from experience, I just switched from there to here like last week.
@MinecraftFanatic not to mention the chapters being locked after something like ch.30, and either you pay or read 3 chapters a day (and not 3 chapters per book, but 3 chapters across the books)
@MinecraftFanatic I switch between this, webnovel and royalroad. Don’t know any other sites.
@Shaady You can also read on pirated sites like ranobes, allnovelfull, novelfull, and others. There's also foxaholic, box novel, novelcool.
@retiisi If you are purely looking for reads without paying then there are some in webnovel that don't paywall their novels and also have great novels. El Don is subjectively one of the best for me, the one who wrote Honkai Impact: Invictus is also a great one. There are a lot of great ones there.
A style I use is go to webnovel to hunt for good novels or filler novels, and if paywalled, look for pirated sites that post them.
@Bellaluin Lol that’s what I do.
@Bellaluin I prefer reading sites that have original novels because it’s easier to find novels at the source. I only go to pirated sites if I have to.
@Bellaluin I have no problem with them paywalling as long as the author gets a good cut (which they apparently don't do I've heard); what I do have a problem with is them making it harder to support authors.
@Basically_God If I am not mistaken Webnovel has the shittiest pay ratio in the writing industry, but it gives you a ton of exposure easily due to recommended throwing sh*t at you and there being a new novels specific portion. Basically, only if you ttruly love writing or are doing it for the money will you write at webnovel.
@Bellaluin I mean I've seen some novels on there that I've been like "yea I'll support you" but can't now since even paying for chapters requires the app.
@Basically_God yeah the site is a hellhole, just like tumblr(with less good parts)
A lot of people here(sh) seem to not like webnovel much. I personally use the webnovel app and it ain't that bad other than the paywall and tickets to read the chaps(I usually only use wn to search for good stuff and use Google-Fu to read on free sites). So why do you hate wn, other than its attacks of signing you out and you trying to find a way to sign in again?
@Liber8T
No.1: They apparently treat the writers like shit
No.2: They're slowly phasing out the browser version by making it so, even if you want to buy chapters, you can't breach the paywall.
No.3: Bugs like scrambled text & not being able to read/write comments is common as well as likely not going to be fixed.
@Liber8T Other than what Bascially_God said, Webnovel has some of the best and most dedicated writers I have seen, and literally in the fanfic sections you can see most of those who truly write because they love it and not for money. But Webnovel, man that site sucks. The site literally has you scrambling for things and even their paid coins, they expire. Yeah your paid for coins expire. I mean I am level 10 already but its bad.
@Bellaluin yea most reasonable people don't hate the content creators but the platform.
Bruh that's messed up. Ain't they basically the dark web for good shits(novels) at this point?? Good thing I never spent a penny on wn
@Liber8T for anyone who has been around since before that site was here, we will never forgot how much damage/chaos they caused when they strong armed their way into the scene.
@Bellaluin I'll be completely honest, the moment they faze out the browser version completely for web novel is the moment I'm going away from it :)) I mainly use browser, and I personally hate the phone version cuz it's really buggy, at least for me. I don't know how u managed to reach level 10 honestly, I seem to be stuck at 5 and I have a lot of comments there(since I interact with the ppl reading a lot in comments)
@VeganMaster you need a membership to level up past a certain point; also I'm the same where I just can't stand the idea of using it on my phone. Partly because, I'm sure your the same, since I also write I do a lot of reading and holding a phone for that long is gonna give my hands all the f*cking cramps.
@Basically_God Yea, it's not very comfortable to just read that much from your phone. I genuinely despise reading stuff off my phone, which is why I wouldn't be able to handle moving to the app completely. There are plenty of ppl like me from the look of things since there were quite a few ppl in forums talking about migrating after the last time they tried to kill the web page
I only read in my phone. It can be painful sometimes but I got used to it over the years
@VeganMaster i dont think they realize the western market isnt big on apps like their home market is lmao
@VeganMaster While the only bug I have ever received from it mobile version is it sometimes logs me out, yeah its annoying. The App could actually be great if they just use what they squeeze from the authors into upgrading it.
@Bellaluin I always have problems with comments not showing up, and sometimes stuff just being added to my library, it always prompted me to choose my gender and placed random books in my library depending on the gender I chose, that was an annoying thing for a while. After that I kinda stopped using it completely tbh
@VeganMaster Ahhhh, it may be because your library is empty, they always try to show you novels or manga you might like based on your previous read novels and your chosen liking. Those books are marked with You might like or suggested novel and they will refresh every time you refresh your library. Basically, it is a rotating wheel of novels.
@Bellaluin it logs me out too and logging back in is annoying as hell and sometimes doesn't work. I've encountered a couple of wn refugees here and most have experienced this. It's basically an event that only happens sometimes at this point
@Liber8T on browser it'll randomize the characters sometimes; making the entire thing impossible to read & noticed a few "borrowing" sites accidentally copy that scrambled text instead which is funny at least.
@Basically_God yea I've read from "borrowing" sites before and sometimes the words are scrambled... I guess I know now where they borrow from....
@Basically_God Interesting... I have actually been using the browser more than the app(which I already have my account at level 10 so that says something about me) and I have actually never witnessed or tried that scrambling bug you guys are talking about. Maybe it has more to do with other factors than its browser version? Not defending the website but I, at least haven't tried it despite using it for 3 of my daily reads here, and more than 5 for intermittent ones.
@Liber8T In a cruel twist of irony, I have encountered the jumbled words for the first time... though annoying that is still fine, what pisses me off are clearly cut chappies and blank chappies
@Bellaluin yes. I've encountered that more than once. And I hate it when I only realize I missed something when I read from the original "fixed" sources
@Liber8T it's weird how it just pops up for people; hadn't even happened to me until a few months back.
@Basically_God it just pops up for everyone at the same time(most likely) cuz wn immigrants here also call it "The Strike of Webnovel" or just say "Webnovel Strikes again"
@Liber8T Webnovel Strikes Back
@sombreado https://ranobes.top/ https://www.panda-novel.com/top https://novelfull.com/ https://hostednovel.com/
@Shaady Fanfiction.net and AO3 is one of the best sites for fanfictions.
There are countless ff there of all genre.
@HellboyMC They are quite nice sites for ff, the problem is with their UI and their whole searching mechanisms. They are not problematic per se, it just does not seem like a nice Design for me.
@Bellaluin I first thought like that too but over time I got used to it.
Fanfiction.net UI is still better and it has dark mode for reading too, so I have gotten used to it.
@HellboyMC Yeah, my problem with FF.net is that the words are smaller than usual due to the layout being limited, and if I enlarge it the words look hella weird. So yes, it is mostly personal preference as to why I don't switch to FF.
@Bellaluin Yeah I get that.
Btw you can also change font there too if it helps.
I read on laptop so I don't mind it much.
@HellboyMC Yeah, if I get bored enough I do read some there, an example of which is a Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei FF I found which only has 5 chapters and almost 100,000 words....
@Bellaluin Yep, I found that site when looking for some good One Piece fanfics.
Do you know any other good fanfic for OP ?
@HellboyMC Nope, I don't usually read OP FF, but when I do its always somehow trashy
@Bellaluin Yeah man, there aren't many good OP fanfics.
So I am glad I found this one.
@Bellaluin I’ve only ever had two bugs occur when using the app, and both of them are some of the worst things that could ever happen in a reading app.
1) The app crashes when loading a chapter. This one is annoying, but for what it’s worth, it could just be a problem on my end, such as my phone being a slow piece of shit.
2) After updating my phone to a newer version (Note that when I say newer version, I mean going from say, iOS 16 to 17, not 16.X to 16.Y or whatever, since when you do the former, it treats it as if you’re starting it up for the first time with the welcome screen and everything), all of my unlocked chapters were locked again. The ones that I spent my money on to unlock and read. I was this close to just giving up in finishing the things I was reading.
@retiisi They are especially annoying when they have hundreds of chapters