The Path of Ascension-Chapter 404
Viviana wanted to go practice outside, but her parents told her she needed to come inside and watch Ascender Indomitable Titan’s news broadcast live. But she wanted to be a delver, and she needed to get better if she was going to make it, and wasting possibly hours wasn’t how she was going to do that.
The five local guilds who had been recruiting through her prep-school hadn’t seemed impressed with her abilities, despite being better than quite a few of her classmates at the advance delvers’ preparatory school. Instead, they seemed to focus on the exceptional few.
Or rather, the rich few who had Tier 10 or higher parents, who could afford to have their kids go to specialized schools since they were twelve. Brad, Kayla, and Samantha weren’t bad people, but apparently having skills as Tier 1s just made them better prospects.
And if Viviana wanted to compete with them for the best delving contracts, she wanted to— needed to— practice more. Wasting possibly hours just a month before the end of the year tests, where every hour mattered, grated on her, even if it was for Ascender Titan.
That was why she wanted to go outside and practice. Her Talent wasn’t great, but it gave her staying power.
Her complaints vanished as Ascender Titan got on stage and her parents teased her relentlessly, which was entirely unfair. She would have been content to listen to a broadcast or a cut down version, so why were they teasing her for watching him when they made her?
Sure, she had a poster or five of him in her room, but basically every straight girl at the delvers’ prep school had at least one poster of him, Light, or Duke Waters. Or they were liars. At least three girls got busted for having the very same posters they made fun of others for just in their class, which she didn’t understand. They were mega celebrities and super attractive. It wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about.
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None of that changed her parents wanting her to watch it in person. It just seemed like a waste of perfectly good hours of sunlight when he was probably going to talk about things for higher Tiers again.
But as Ascender Titan began to speak, her attention, as well as her parents’, was locked to the screen.
[Solar Flare] seemed a tad weak for what it was, but she was sure Samantha was already begging her parents to buy it for her, being the fire maniac she was, even with her already having [Fireball].
[Fury of the Blade], however, seemed amazing, and she wondered just how expensive these new skills would be. That skill seemed super useful for a frontline fighter like her.
Viviana swore that half of the melee classes at their prep school were them getting swarmed by numerous smaller opponents. She spent a precious few seconds as Ascender Titan walked around the stage to congratulate the two lucky kids in question, letting her mind imagine herself there.
It seemed unfair they got to interact with an Ascender themselves.
She wanted to be them, damn it. How amazing would that be?
Her attention was ripped back to the screen as she saw two new kids run an obstacle course.
[Physical Empowerment] was everything she had ever wanted in a skill.
Maybe if she wrote to Ascender Titan, and he saw it, he might give her the skill for free? It couldn’t hurt, and maybe it would get him to read her other letters. Actually, maybe not all of them. Some of them were too embarrassing to think about. She had started sending them when she was six.
Thoughts of her ill-sent letters vanished as she heard him say, “Skills that any freshly awakened Tier 1 can make in their spirit in two to four years, with a little training and about two or three hours of work every day.”
Skills anyone could make in their spirits.
Anyone meant people like her.
“We have free training programs already available for download that have proven effective. Half of the children were taught using only that and a Tier 5 specialist, acting as a more experienced sounding board, while the remaining five used the same training program but paired with someone experienced with making several of the skills already. But I’ll bet most of you can’t actually tell who is who just from their demonstrations.”
Holding the moment, Ascender Titan smiled a smile that told her he knew he had everyone's full attention. It was so confident. So attractive. “Now, I will take questions.”
She wished she could shout through the screen, but instead her attention went to the broadcasted webpage that appeared, directing her to a page on her own planet’s LocalNet where all the information was readily available.
Scrambling to her feet, she raced to get her pad from her room, despite her parents' calls.
Tapping at the pad, she ignored them as they both came into her room.
The loading bar chugged for a long few seconds, as she was sure everyone else was trying to load the page, but after a couple more seconds, the icon showing what she was connected to switched to the CityNet, and it sped up a lot.
Her father put a hand over the pad and spoke loud enough to get her attention. “Vivi, why don’t you come to the table and we can look at this together.”
She wanted to say no, but she knew it wasn’t an unreasonable request. “Okay!”
Darting between her parents, she ran down the hall and right past the dining room table to turn up the news reporters who were talking about the announcement. She wanted to be able to hear if Ascender Titan started talking again.
Her mother rolled her eyes at her antics but sat down while her father stood there, dramatically tapping a foot waiting for Viviana to take her seat.
“Sorry, dad.”
After she sat down, he ruffled her hair and took his place. “Okay, now let’s carefully go over this. I know I heard Ascender Titan mention at least twice that this could be dangerous.”
“Everything could be dangerous, Dad, but this is something I'm sure I can do! Look at all this information! It's spelled out. I can definitely do this myself!”
Her mother grabbed her free hand and squeezed it. “Honey, you’ve complained so much about the others being able to afford proper skills, we are just worried you’ll rush into this. Remember, we had dreams of being delvers when we were your age, so we do understand, even if we didn’t become delvers. Rushing into things like this is just rushing towards an early grave.”
Viviana rolled her eyes so hard it hurt. “Mom, you know me. I'm not going to rush into something and get myself killed in a rift, and I won’t do the same with this.”
Her parents shared a look she didn’t understand, but she barreled through. “Mom, Dad, look at those skills.”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the screen, which was replaying the showcases in parallel. “Those are perfect for me. Or, at least two of them are. Ascender Titan said two years of work with only five hours or so of time a day. I’m not going to rush into them, but I’m sure I can do it faster with my Talent. It's all about going longer than anyone else can.”
Her father took a deep breath and grabbed her other hand. “Then let’s take the time to research and get you what you need to succeed. A week or two delay won’t kill you, but messing up will. We want you safe, honey, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. Promise us you won’t dive into this right now.”
“Da—”
He squeezed harder and Viviana saw that her mother’s eyes started to look watery.
Not wanting to see her mother cry, Viviana slumped in her chair. “I promise.”
That seemed to lift a weight off her parents’ shoulders, and the mood slowly lightened until it was even better than it had been during the announcement.
The information provided was extensive.
Each skill had its own video series explaining how to create the skills in a step-by-step manner, along with training exercises that complemented the skill in question. It was more complicated than she initially suspected, with advanced logic making sure that variations in different people’s spirits were properly accounted for. It seemed super complicated with dozens of parts that needed to be done in a specific order, but from the descriptions it seemed… Not easy, certainly, but entirely doable.
Viviana wanted to skip to the [Physical Empowerment] skill, but her parents made them go through from the top, which made that the last skill they got to see.
Having seen on the showcase what [Physical Empowerment] could do, Viviana was already sold, but what she saw on the CityNet only reinforced that goal.
The largest downside of [Physical Empowerment] was that it drained the caster’s stamina for the extra power.
It was as if Ascender Titan had made the skill for her personally with her Tier 1 Talent.
Tier 1 Talent: Earth mana present in your body is beneficial.
It was a bit of an awkward Talent, in her opinion. The fact it had given her earth-aspected mana was quite nice, but beyond that… she wasn’t lucky enough to get an innate skill, it wasn’t really a unique ability, and it wasn’t really a passive. If she wanted to get anything out of it without wasting huge amounts of mana, she needed to cycle mana out of her mana pool and back in. And doing it for an extended period of time was tiring in a weird way that she didn’t have the words for.
It would have been worthwhile if it gave her super strength or made her skin as hard as rock or something, but mostly it just boosted her energy, making it feel like she was fresh off a perfect nap. Cycling her mana in different ways had slightly different effects, but none of them were really worth the weird aches she got from messing with her mana so much.
But a skill? One which flooded the body with mana? And could just be kept active? That would basically turn her Talent into a passive that gave her endless amounts of energy, and made [Physical Empowerment] absolutely perfect for her. Even her parents could see that, but they made her promise that she wouldn’t do anything until things settled down a bit. To keep them from worrying too much, she reluctantly agreed.
Seeing that she had given in, they didn’t even try to make her come inside when the sun went down, which they usually insisted on. That ended up biting her in the butt, as she was so excited that she ended up staying up well past midnight, when her imagination had finally squeezed out the very last possibility of cool things she might be able to do with a spell she could make herself.
Still, the leftover adrenaline hit her when she woke up, and she blew half her mana fueling her Talent to wake her up as she raced to her delving preparatory school. It was times like this that she was grateful she lived only three miles away, which made it just close enough to run to class every day. If she needed to sit on a bus this morning, she might have exploded.
She was so full of energy, she ended up arriving at the auditorium almost half an hour before classes started, but she was hardly the only one.
More than half of the students were there, and they and all of the teachers were gathered in the largest workout hall.
Mr. Baker, one of the teachers she was working with, nodded to her as she came towards him and tapped at his pad. When she made to ask him about the skills, he held up a hand.
“Yes, we are going to talk about the skills. Sit down and wait for everyone else to arrive, and we'll go over it then. None of us are going to explain it to every person individually.”
The following twenty minutes felt like years, but finally, when everyone arrived, the head teacher took to the stage and addressed the news.
“As a delving preparatory school, we here at Landrest are dedicated to making you as prepared as possible for your lives as guilders or independent delvers. To that end, we will be offering follow-up classes for anyone wishing to learn how to create the five new skills. We are passing out forms to everyone for signup now. Normal classes will be suspended for the next month as we deal with this new development.”
Viviana was surprised they weren’t just rolling this into the existing classes, but when she saw the price, she nearly choked. They wanted to charge twice the typical rate of a year of classes for the ‘advanced skills course’. The normal classes had already wiped out Viviana’s parents’ savings, and she knew there was no way they could afford these new classes, even if she was willing to go.
Which she wasn’t.
She wasn’t stupid. None of the teachers would have any more experience with the methods than she or anyone else would. They should be offering the classes for free in exchange for having willing people to learn the ins and outs of this new practice.
As someone closer to the front asked to clarify and the head teacher confirmed, Viviana stood up and walked out along with a few others. There was zero reason to waste her time, or the money from her parents, listening to the spiel any further.
She would just need to figure out how she was going to explain this to her parents.
As she predicted, they weren't happy, and tried to push her into agreeing, saying they could take out a loan for the necessary money, but Viviana flatly refused.
She had gone over all of the information, and at the cost of a slightly newer pad, she could download the trainer, which could explain to her what she needed to do and answer most questions she had.
Her refusal nearly caused a fight, but savings in hand, she went to the nearest store and bought the best pad she could and downloaded the trainer, as well as grabbing a scanner recommended by the trainer after she saw they were nearly sold out.
Thankfully, the trainer was free, which made her appreciate Ascender Titan even more. A single local delving preparatory school was charging a decade’s worth of her parents’ savings, while he had just given everything away for free.
Going to the nearest park that allowed martial training, Viviana found herself a shady spot below a tree and started going over the skill lessons.
It… wasn’t really what she had expected?
She didn’t know what she had expected, actually. Some kind of impenetrable, arcane text that she needed to puzzle through and meditate on, like some kind of ancient hidden text from a movie where the hero was trying to unlock a hidden cultivation technique.
Instead, she found step-by-step instructions, masterfully illustrated and with easy-to-understand terminology, explaining exactly what to do. It didn’t go into heady technical details, though there was an extensive series of footnotes describing what each process was meant to do and why.
Instead, it just had her doing basic things.
Like pushups. And breathing exercises. And dieting advice? It built up over time, but the starting instructions made complete sense and were simple enough she felt anyone could follow them, even if they didn’t understand the why of what they were doing.
Her eyes skimmed over the sections, and her eyes lit up at one of the later steps. It had a portion regarding special mana cycling techniques and what they did. That by itself would be well worth the cost of the pad for her, even if nothing else worked.
She puzzled over the overall program for a bit, then jumped back to the introduction to actually start, and realized it explained exactly the point of the overall program three paragraphs down.
Oops.
But it was so interesting! Apparently, the entire guide was meant to give her a personalized guide on how to build up the skill, piece by piece, in easy-to-do chunks, and finally save those pieces in her spirit. On their own, none of the fragments would do anything, but the last few sections were dedicated to combining those pieces together, until she had a skill made in her spirit, just like that. It made it sound like anyone could do it, and well… she agreed.
Oh, it was absurdly complicated, to be sure. It had been broken into tiny pieces because some of the sections required her to do things like flawlessly perform a thirty-minute stretching exercise of both her spirit and body, and the buildup to that was learning just how to perform the ritual. But it was all laid out so clearly, and with notes on potential problems she might run into at basically every level. She’d literally made food using recipes more confusing than this.
The footnotes were also incredibly interesting, though it went far more in-depth than she could really understand. According to them, certain steps were meant as a sort of test that brought her down different paths on what she realized was an extremely complicated flowchart. It took into consideration things like how many skills she had: zero, which seemed to be the easiest possibility; her mana type: Earth, which wasn’t; and things she didn’t recognize, like ‘spiritual resonance class,’ ‘NAI-type compatibility,’ ‘iezarchirical fluxian density,’ and more, to ensure she wasn’t doing anything that would seriously injure herself. Though, there were still warnings on symptoms that indicated a major problem in some steps, which instructed her to immediately stop and go to a hospital if she experienced any of the symptoms.
And then… hope they had a spiritual expert available or something, Viviana guessed? She had a hard time imagining her family doctor trying to figure out what it would mean if her ‘iezarchiric flux’ was ‘globulating periodically’ out of tune with her ‘animusial rhythm’ and what kind of potion she’d need to drink to fix it.
Viviana just made a note to be careful and not to mess up so she’d never experience those things.
She threw herself wholly into the lessons, spending four hours a day following them. She would have liked to spend more, but the lessons were truly exhausting, and the mild discomfort she’d felt with her mana cycling was nothing in comparison to how she felt after forging some of the earlier skill fragments.
Thankfully, as she didn’t have a job and was still supported by her parents, she could devote that much energy to it alone. Her brain felt cramped from trying to learn everything, her spirit was wrung absolutely raw from the stretches it was doing, and her body was left exhausted from the physical exercises involved. Early on she relocated to a park to ‘sprint in a straight line until your heart rate is twice your resting rate,’ and stayed there afterwards for the other activities required.
Though, just two weeks into her self-imposed work, she found herself joined by one of the boys who had been in the same classes as her, Jake.
According to him, the lessons taught at the prep school were little more than what she was doing, with the teachers having little to add to the trainers, if anything at all. As he told it, half of the students had left and demanded refunds, which the school was refusing. And according to him, there were legal threats being thrown around, which was when he figured it was time to leave.
It was really just a long-winded way of asking if he could join her, since he didn’t really have the money to buy himself a pad good enough to run the trainer.
They weren’t really friends, but she was probably spending about as much time not using the pad as actually using it, so she couldn't really come up with an excuse to reject him.
A good thing, as it turned out that having someone else to bounce ideas off of was useful.
Together, they spent most days at the park, or when it rained, at a gym that they could rent by the hour.
Those days kind of sucked, but between the two of them, they could cover the costs without too much hassle, though they both agreed they would need to do something else once the rainy season came.
Their answer came just a few weeks later, when another three kids their own age approached them while they were training and asked to join.
They hadn’t been training to be delvers at a prep school, but were instead friends who wanted to form a delving team, and Viviana saw no reason why they couldn’t join.
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As it turned out, one of the girls, Abigail, worked at a rec center part time and got them access to a training room when it rained during the day, whilst most people were at work.
It wasn’t perfect, but split five ways and with Abigail’s discount, the price was manageable.
Over the next few months, a few more newly awakened joined them, and by listening to the trainer provided, none of them hurt themselves more than what a few days of rest could heal. Which was more than Viviana’s old preparatory school could claim, as two students ended up in the hospital when they followed bad advice.
Viviana even got a part time job, wanting to repay her parents since she hadn’t ended up joining a guild or started delving when she intended to, despite their assurance she should dedicate all of her time to preparing herself. Once she was done with the initial phases, the physical aspects of the learning greatly diminished, and it turned into a more meditative endeavor.
Waiting tables wasn’t flashy or fun, but it earned decent credits, which let her start saving up for armor, and was a better use of her time now that she was nearing the end of the course.
Four and a half years, not quite to the day, after she first started the lessons, Viviana finally completed the very last cut, fusing the final two skill fragments together in her spirit. The moment she did so she felt raw, unbridled strength flood her body.
She could feel her Talent filling her with energy, but beyond that was the way she literally glowed with power, colorful bands of light appearing around her heart with every beat and then moving outwards, rushing down her skin and invigorating her muscles.
She felt like she could rip a tree out of the ground with just a tug, but refrained from trying. Deliberately damaging a tree would be a good way to get fined out of her small accumulation of wealth.
As it turned out, Ascender Titan’s two year prediction was a lower bound, with most people taking an average of five years unless they had a skilled teacher. The thought of somehow going through those exercises faster than she had was rather harrowing to Viviana, but if someone could manage it, good on them.
Instead of immediately throwing herself into a rift like she wanted to, she waited for Jake and Abigail to finish up their first skills. Over the years of practice and joint learning, they had all become good friends, so the three of them together bought a delving slot, not wanting to change what worked for them in practice. In what felt like just a few clicks and an hour's paperwork they were suddenly an official delving team.
It was an even more magical moment for Abigail, who had never thought she could be a delver, thanks to the associated costs and inherent dangers of not having training or gear. Except now, as a mage with [Solar Flare], she was possibly the best prepared out of them all. She was even able to get by with second-hand armor that cost a whole lot less than new stuff.
Viviana had almost bought the same set, but her parents had bought her a new suit of full plate armor with the money they had gotten out of the preparatory school’s settlement for canceling classes.
Jake, on the other hand, went with [Lesser Fire Weapon] and rounded out their complement.
Annoyingly, the cost of a rift slot had jumped up, but, between the three of them, they managed to snag a one delve a fortnight slot. They needed to take a two hour bus ride to reach its location, but it was a rift, and it was theirs.
Their first delve was nerve wracking and scary, but they succeeded and came out six mana stones richer, along with a few pounds of metal in the form of the gnolls’ weapons, which they were able to sell to the local recycling plant.
It wasn't much, but it more than covered the cost of the delve and the few item repairs they would need.
It was euphoric.
Something all of them had dreamed of since they knew what delving was, and they had done it. And not just done it, but done it with a measure of safety and efficiency that few could match.
It was everything she had dreamed of and more.
They also may or may not have let their emotions get the better of them, but they all agreed to never talk about that again.
Not that any of them stopped learning the new spells. Once they each finished their first, they immediately threw themselves into a second. The carving wasn’t any easier the second time, but with practice and experience, as well as not having to go through the manipulation exercises, they were more efficient, which reduced the time from an average of five years to three or so.
In Viviana’s case, she chose to learn [Fury of the Blade]. As a frontliner in heavy armor and empowered by her Talent, she took hits and was more often than not surrounded by two or more enemies, while Abby peppered the enemies with [Solar Flare] and Jake took care of anything that tried to get around her, or attacked the monsters from the flank.
Even in their city, there was already a trend of those who wanted to be delvers working part time like she had. During their off time, they worked on their fighting abilities while carving one of the five Tier 0 skills into their spirit, as they were coming to be called.
In an amusing turn of events, the preparatory school she had once gone to had gone out of business, as they were undercut by new business which used more advanced trainers for less money.
Or, she thought it was funny, until the city mayor approached her group and offered to lease the building to them, if they would open their own unofficial training academy as a non-profit.
At almost twenty one, she was nearing the peak of Tier 2 and had nearly finished her second skill, but she felt she was still unprepared for such responsibilities. However, with the encouragement of her parents, Abby, and Jake, the three of them and the other original group members spent their free time there in exchange for a reduction of their delving taxes, as well as preferential rift slot access.
They agreed to keep prices at or as near at cost as they could, but even with that, they had so many people signing up that they ended up with a surplus, which they used to expand their facilities and to teach melee fighting courses in between delves.
By the time Viviana reached the peak of Tier 3, and was considering moving to a new world, their little academy had become a cornerstone in their city, and taught thousands of kids every year. The rich still bought skills or went to one of the better academies, which could teach the skills in less time, but Viviana was genuinely proud of what they had accomplished.
Interestingly enough, some of the skills, namely [Lesser Fire Weapon], [Fury of the Blade], and her favorite, [Physical Empowerment], were starting to appear in rifts, while the most popular skills, [Hand Shield] and [Solar Flare], had not yet appeared in a rift. The debates as to why were endless, but none of that really mattered to her, as it simply meant those who could afford to buy the new skills couldn’t buy them all.
Despite people trying to give her credit, she didn’t feel like she earned any of it. She just did what was best for herself with what Ascender Titan had given them. In comparison to that, creating a school was easy.
It might not have changed her life like it had for others who didn’t have parents willing to go quite so far for them as her own had, but even just fifteen years after the information had spread, she could see that things were starting to truly change.
Then, people started to create their own higher-Tier versions of the skills.
Through near daily use and careful nudges, Viviana’s skills had grown and shifted. Her [Physical Empowerment] now gave more strength at the cost of higher mana and stamina usage, which was nicely counteracted by her Tier 3 Talent, which allowed her to draw mana directly from the ground to fuel her skills. It wasn’t perfect, as it strained her spirit to do so, but it let her act as an even better frontliner for her team.
She had directed her [Fury of the Blade] into making its area of effect much smaller, but more concentrated, so that when she swung her blade, she was encased with a small but deadly ring of wind.
Jake went in the opposite direction, and made it so when his [Fury of the Blade] activated, it did so in a pulse that radiated outward like an explosion.
Abby, on the other hand, focused her efforts on making her [Solar Flare] as powerful as possible.
From the little dart of fire it had started as, her spell was now a small but raging inferno that had the habit of over penetrating the weaker monsters they encountered, or punching through shields for those that were more well-defended. She had the ‘bad habit’ of one shotting bosses that didn’t properly protect their heads, not that Viviana or Jake actually minded. Except for that one that had a really pretty tiara. Abby always got mad if they broke it in their battles, even if it wasn’t valuable.
Still, their experience was indicative of seemingly everyone’s experience with the new skills. Having spent so much time and effort making them, combined with their relative simplicity, people were fairly comfortable in modifying the skills, which then led to a rise in sales of end points.
End points were the name for distinct skill structures based on the basic five Tier 0 skills. Stuff like Abby’s damage penetration was a fairly common end point, but it was hardly the only one.
Viviana chose not to sell her modifications, but many, many others did, and some of the best were making their makers rich.
In fact, schools like the one she helped set up started offering advanced classes to those who wanted to push their skills forward past Tier 5 or so.
[Physical Empowerment]’s main weakness was that it was dependent entirely on the physical body instead of essence, which meant that, even with modifications, it fell off as one Tiered up, with Tier 10’s getting nearly zero relative effect for it, but Viviana hardly minded. As a Tier 3, reaching Tier 10 was a long way away, and it didn’t do her any good to start worrying about something that was at least a century in the future.
[Solar Flare], on the other hand, only grew more and more popular, with many people saying it was just better than [Fireball]. Its lower mana cost made it more effective for the first few Tiers, where [Fireball] was overkill, which was better for a mage’s longevity. It also was so simple that it was easy for anyone to make stronger.
Within the first decade, there were dozens of upgrade paths for [Solar Flare] depending on how one wanted to use the spell. One of the most popular for melee fighters, that Viviana also chose to create, transformed the spell into a shotgun effect that made the spell create half a dozen projectiles at the cost of range and damage. Bad for a traditional mage, but for a frontliner like her, it was a perfect way to deal with lots of small enemies before they got on top of her.
Abby disparaged that direction, championing that more damage applied effectively was always better, but she still helped Viviana with every modification.
Jake, on the other hand, took his [Solar Flare] in a less popular direction, with a modification that made it add a damage-over-time effect, by turning the spell partially liquid. The problem with the skill was that this liquid spread to anything it touched, making fighting the enemies a giant pain in the ass, as Viviana didn’t appreciate being cooked in her armor any more than she already was.
Still, it was a good problem to have.
Before their generation, few, if any, delvers would have a skill at Tier 3. Things were so different now, though.
All because Ascender Titan had decided to share the method with everyone.
It had most certainly changed Viviana’s life; and for that, she would be forever grateful.
***
Gabriel Sutula paced across his tiny living room as Ascender Titan’s message played on repeat, as it had been doing every day for the last two months.
It was almost two and a half years after the announcement, but he still hadn’t decided if he wanted to go through with his plan.
His plan was insane.
It was genuinely a bad idea.
It was foolishness of the highest order.
It was dumb to do it.
But the words of inspiration which had started this madness played on repeat.
He had never intended to delve, let alone advance, but with the announcement of skills anyone could make, he was tempted. Tempted out of his boring but stable life.
Once, when he was a kid, he had wanted to delve and to be a great big hero, but when he awakened such a bad Talent, he had given all of that up.
Allegedly, it was Exceptional. The ‘experts’ said it was phenomenal, that he was lucky to have it, that it was ‘a pseudoelemental Talent’ and he could be rich and famous if he just ‘listened to them’ and ‘worked for them’ and ‘would stop being so damned paranoid.’
But they didn’t know, and they couldn’t know the true depths of what his Awakening had tapped into, what it had exposed him to, what it threatened to turn him into.
Tier 1 Talent: You may allow the Eldritch pseudoelement to taint your skills.
‘Pseudoelement’ was such a hollow word. They claimed that it was simply a false element, something created and sustained by his Talent alone. That nothing existed beyond the magical properties his spirit granted unto it.
But Gabriel could feel the thing lurking in his spirit, just beyond the veil. He could sense its malice, the way it was trying to get a foothold into true reality, how it would hollow him out and unmake him were he to give it an opportunity. No, unmake far more than just him. He was the gate, a crack in the prison for something unfathomable and maddening and terrible, and if he let it loose, it would annihilate him as it was unleashed upon the Realm.
Gabriel didn’t want to be a doorway for anyone.
But, when his wand repair job at the enchantment repair facility was made redundant by the new skills, he was left with an opportunity to become a delver. To Tier up and gain mastery over his Talent instead of letting it rule him.
The thing beyond the veil, it was mighty and it was powerful and it was oh so terrible. He wouldn’t let it get its claws in him, but the moments when he listened to the whispers always provided him with relief. But the faint touch of mana releasing from his fingers was too much. The chill of the Beyond racked him every time it caressed him, horrifying and euphoric. If he was to seek relief from the Eldritch, he needed to give it a target, and a skill which carried it away from him was the only way he could see.
Using his savings, Gabriel started making one of the skills that had cost him his job.
His world being a Tier 5 world had more Tier 1 rifts than they knew what to do with, so getting a delving slot would be easy, but he had a choice to make.
Which skill?
There were five for him to choose from and all seemed equally viable and equally awful.
And yet, there was only a single true option for him to prevent the Eldritch from touching him. [Solar Flare] was the simplest option, and it was also the one which would pull the Thing furthest from him.
That, and one of his workmates had created a delving team and said they could use a mage.
Gabriel didn’t ask what had happened to the mage he was replacing, and they didn’t offer any hints.
He threw himself into his work, the furious whispers from Beyond driving him to many a sleepless night as he assembled the skill, perhaps a widening of the crack to the Thing, perhaps a way to reduce its influence. He didn’t know. But he managed to create the skill in just shy of three years. The [Solar Flare] brought a hunger to him that he’d never known before, but seeing it was so… pure. So untainted. It was painful to see something so beautiful, yet wonderful to see something unadulterated.
But widening the crack in his spirit ever so slightly to turn it into an [Eldritch Flare] was wholly different. For a moment, Gabriel was in absolute bliss at seeing what he had let loose into the world, and then he realized what he had been thinking and stared at it with horror.
He could not allow the Thing to corrupt him!
But it was oh so mighty, and he felt such sweet relief from the whispers afterwards, he couldn’t help but want to use it again. To preserve the sanctity of his mind and spirit, though, he would only ever utilize it on a rift monster, never once in practice.
His new teammates thought he was crazy, but when they saw the corruption inherent to the spell, the way its flames folded in on one another and vanished from sight, only to reappear inside the dodging goblin’s guard and slam into its head with a burst of purple flames glowing with shadows, they understood.
When the goblin started to scream and clutch his head, his teammates looked at him strangely.
When his former coworker slew the beast and they saw that its skull had turned inside out, and the inside of its burned mouth sported a trio of dead eyes along the tongue, no one would get within arm’s reach of him.
Gabriel couldn’t blame them.
He wished he could get away from himself at that moment.
Thankfully, nothing else of note happened in the rift, and even the extraordinary could be gotten used to with enough time, though there was a noticeable distance between his team and himself. Still, there weren't any other mages who had homing attacks at Tier 1 for them to recruit.
In the year and a half that they delved together, Gabriel made [Physical Empowerment] but with his experience of his Talent, didn’t allow its influence into the skill. The entity that hung over him had several suggestions that made the entire process almost too easy.
Still, he didn’t allow even a touch of taint into the skill, despite the whispers.
He didn’t want to grow more eyes or tentacles like what happened to monsters which were hit by his [Eldritch Flare] were wont to do.
With the distance, he wasn’t at all surprised when at the peak of Tier 1 and when the three of them advanced to Tier 2, the team tried to turn on him.
It felt like retribution for his temerity of trying to delve with such a Talent.
But their mistake was attacking someone who was as afraid of death as he was.
Gabriel was willing to do anything to avoid the reaching tendrils that his Talent said were waiting for him when he died, now that he tasted of its power.
Against his better judgement, he flooded his right arm, his non-dominant hand, with a tainted [Physical Empowerment].
His arm turned into agony as his arm just under his shoulder bubbled and split into five whipping, purple tentacles.
He managed to keep the taint of [Physical Empowerment] out of the rest of his body, but he knew his arm was physically, permanently altered by his acceptance of the Eldritch inside of him.
As his former teammates tried to attack him, his tentacles acted as if they had a mind of their own. Two shielded him from the blades, while a third stretched impossibly far to grab the archer who was trying to get an arrow off.
Gabriel could feel as his neck snapped, even through the stretched appendage. It tasted like honeyed wine, and he felt the entity behind him shiver.
The other two didn’t last much longer than that, as their offense turned to defense and was then overwhelmed by massively strong tentacles that didn’t mind being hacked at.
They repaired themselves with his former teammate’s blood.
Surrounded by corpses and caressed by reassuring tentacles, Gabriel wondered just how much he was going to sacrifice in his quest to not lose everything.
It didn’t seem like it was worth it, but he refused to go into the embrace of the Eldritch entity riding his shoulder.
Instead, he reported his crime to the delving guards hoping they would kill him and take the choice away, but instead, they and the investigators believed his story despite his mangled arm. And so, he was left with no other choice than to hope his Tier 3 or Tier 25 fixed his Talent and let him block out the voices.
It felt wrong to swim deeper into the murky uncertainty of Tiering up, but he saw no other way out.
And he needed to find a way out.
***
Daftar slithered forward, letting his belly scales silently slip over the rocks of the canyon. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel Yajar’s spiritual sense weighing over himself and all of the other fledglings.
He was the best, and this moment was going to prove it.
Taking in a deep but agonizingly slow breath, he let the air run over his tongue and analyzed the smells, looking for a single scent in particular.
It took forever, almost five minutes, but he finally scented his prey, and set his feet as he readied his pounce.
Yesterday, the jump would have been impossible, but today was a new day. A new him.
Springing forward, he flared his wings and flapped them as hard as he could, but, still being a fledgling, they were undersized for actual flight. Not that that mattered, his strength came from his new skill and his raw physical body. The flapping was just to guide his jump.
And it looked cool.
Being honest with himself. It was mostly because it looked cool when the adults flared their wings as they dropped onto something.
With the silence of a predator, he landed on the golden scaled form of his neighbor, and bit her in the base of the neck.
She tried to twist and roll with him to send him to the bottom, but with his skill active, he had suddenly become the strongest fledgling in the canyon.
Kaia finally squeaked out her defeat. “Get off of me, you brute!”
Still with a mouthful of her neck Daftar growled. “Not until you surrender.”
Bucking her hips and flaring her wings, Kaia tried to knock him free, but with his skill-backed strength, he held onto the older fledgling.
“I SAID GET OFF MEEEEEEE!”
Realizing that, with her being older than him, she might be able to outlast his mana pool, Daftar lowered the mana he sent into [Physical Empowerment] to a level where he could flare it if she struggled.
After a full minute of trying to get free, Kaia sagged. “I give up.”
Letting go, Daftar hopped off the older dragon. “That makes me the boss today, then!”
Sulking she growled. “Yeah, for today. We’ll see about tomorrow.”
Daftar snorted out a jet of steam. “As if a slacker like you could finish your skill in just a day. You never pay attention to the lessons.”
“I do, too!” Kaia looked up as if expecting Yajar to be standing over them. “It's just really hard. The lessons don’t really make sense. It's not fair that you figured it out so quick. I think you are just hiding something.”
Daftar shrugged his wings. The skill lessons were really easy to him, which is why he had been able to make his skill in just over two years, where everyone else was further behind.
Which was why he was now the boss of their flock.
Slapping Kaia with his tail in a way he knew she hated, he stretched his neck up and slightly flared his wings to look bigger. “Well I’m the boss today, so you need to listen to me.”
Growling, she let out a puff of golden metal that clung to the stone in front of her and made it brittle enough to crumble when she stomped on it. “Enjoy it while it lasts, little Dufus. The moment I become the boss again, I’m going to make you suffer for everything you make me do!”
Daftar had to fight the reaction to slink into himself. Kaia was really scary when she was so motivated. But she was already a tyrant, so there was no reason to give into her threats so easily.
“I’m just going to have you do what you make everyone else do for you.”
As the two of them walked through the canyon, they reached the center area with the twin lakes. One boiling hot and the other with blocks of ice floating in it.
Giving Kaia a smug look, he flared [Physical Empowerment] and launched himself at the sprawled out form of Yajar, who was in charge of the younglings for this year.
Daftar was just about to land on the older fire dragon when his tail, larger than Daftar a dozen times over, lifted up and caught him by the belly and tossed him into the middle of the two pools where the water was the steamiest.
His much deeper voice was amused as he reminded, “Don’t get too full of yourself, little Daftar. Pride cometh before the fall.”
As Daftar crawled out of the pool and shook himself off, he ran right back at Yajar. “Do it again, that was fun!”
After getting tossed half a dozen more times for trying to climb on the older dragon, Daftar and everyone else found themselves blocked by an invisible wall.
Turning to everyone else, including the other flocks, Daftar stretched to his best height and let out a long stream of steam.
“I have defeated Kaia and am the leader of my roost. Fear me for—”
His words were cut off as everyone else started pestering Kaia for information.
“Hey! I'm the boss now, ask me the questions.”
When the other dragons didn’t listen, he growled and jumped onto the nearest one, starting a brawl.
By the time it was over he was nearly out of mana, but he had cowed everyone else with his magnificence.
The other fledgling leaders even let him into their circle, which made Kaia roaringly mad, and that made everything worth it.
Best of all, Daftar was a minor celebrity for making his skill so quickly, and everyone wanted tips, which was different from usual, where he was one of the youngest and smallest of their flight.
The moment he crawled off Yajar’s back as he was dropped back off to his parents, he ran to the living room.
“Mom! Dad! You won’t believe it! Guess what, guess guess!”
His father, in his human form, reached out and rubbed Daftar’s head even as he kept chopping the alchemical ingredients.
“What happened, buddy?”
Seeing his mom slink out of his parents’ room in dragon form, Daftar launched into a retelling of his day's adventure as being the boss of his flight.
Hearing his parents' praise made steam leak out of his nose, but Daftar didn’t mind until his father said something that brought him up short.
“Maybe ease up on Kaia tomorrow, ey buddy?”
Falling onto his butt, Daftar reared back. “Dad! What?!?!? No way. She deserves it for bullying me for so long. She always makes me wash her scales and bring her water. It's not fair that I need to be nice now that I’m the boss.”
His parents shared a look Daftar didn’t really get, but his mother was the one to lower her head down to the ground so she could look at him in the eyes.
“Okay, she was a little mean, but how about you just ignore her tomorrow and see if she brings you water and stuff. I’ll bet you a roasted summer goat that she does it if you just aren't mean to her tomorrow.”
Daftar was torn, as he really liked summer goat, but his parents rarely made it, saying it was too expensive. But on the other hand, his vengeance was at risk.
In the end, his stomach won out, and he got to watch as his parents started preparing the goat.
He watched, salivating the whole time, but his father, now in his dragon form, reminded him that if he broke his promise, they would be the only ones eating it.
Sadly, he knew that Yajar would be watching them and would report any infraction of his bet. His parents always knew when he got caught by Yajar, which just felt unfair. The older dragon should know better than to tell on everything they did.
As it turned out, his parents were right, and by ignoring Kaia the following day, she was super attentive as a minion.
Just six months later, the next dragonling made a skill, though in their case, it was Marco who created [Lesser Fire Weapon], which was entirely unfair. As a fire dragon, the flames could lick his hands and muzzle without issue. It also empowered his breath attack, which made everyone super jealous that there weren't other more complicated elements available, because only a few of them were fire bloodlines.
It also looked super cool, and Daftar along with everyone else burned with envy as Marco strutted around with his front limbs entirely engulfed in flames, leaving little burn claw marks in the grass.
It took another few years, but eventually everyone had a skill. Most went with [Physical Empowerment], but not everyone. Kaia had gone with [Fury of the Blade], which enhanced her gold breath attack, and they finally got to start advancing.
Kaia, having a skill, was easily able to reclaim her spot as the flight leader, but Daftar didn’t mind too much, as she was far more reasonable and way nicer now. He would even go so far as to say they were becoming friends, if it was possible to be friends with someone as bossy as her.
Daftar turned his free time to trying to make a steam version of [Lesser Fire Weapon]. The water version had come out, and while most didn’t think it was too useful in comparison to fire, he was willing to put in the work on trying to merge the two.
It took until he was Tier 5, but he eventually, finally, created his own [Lesser Steam Weapon], letting his teeth and claws become imbued with the best element.
It was amazing at first, until everyone else demanded he figure out how to make variants of their elements.
Truly, being the best was a curse.
