Eden's Gate: The Ascent: A LitRPG Adventure

by Edward Brody

  “Okay, well if there’s a chance, I’ll take it,” I said.

  “A chance,” Darion reiterated. “But there’s a higher probability that you’ll die.”

  I followed Darion to the room with the Omnicron, and we homed in on the few areas covered in red on the map.

  “There aren’t many red zones in this region,” Darion said. He pointed towards a tiny circle far to the south of Edgewood but north of the Crystal River. “I know this place. It’s nearby and in the Freelands. I’d say it’s your best bet unless you want to travel far.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A tomb filled with liches,” he said.

  “And you think I’ll have success there?” I asked.

  Darion chuckled and shook his head. “No, but a group would have a better chance against liches than an Ancient Beast.”

  “And you’ll help?” I asked.

  Darion jerked his head back. “Of course not. I’ve been to the lich tomb once and was almost handed my last breath.”

  I frowned. “Then why are you suggesting that place specifically?”

  Darion placed a hand on his hip and looked down on me. “Because you’re insisting on finding an ancient weapon. You’ll likely die no matter which red zone you go to, but at least this is close.”

  “Even with my guild, you think we’ll die?” Will all my questioning being answered with hopelessness, I felt like I was pulling for any sort of positivity.

  “You may make it through part of the tomb, but I’d be highly surprised if you made it to the end where you’d likely find the best items.” Darion shrugged. “But perhaps Reborns are capable of more than I know.”

  I groaned and thought about the trouble I had put my guild through at Dragon’s Crest. My desire to save Adeelee had already caused several deaths, and I didn’t want to see them killed again.

  “Maybe I’ll just go with the Reborns,” I said.

  “A smart idea,” Darion said. He cleared his throat and suddenly changed the topic. “And I believe you still owe me the gold I loaned you for your spell?”

  “Oh umm…” I scratched the back of my head. “Yeah, I totally forgot about that. I’ll get you the gold.”

  “When, might I ask?”

  I was surprised by the urgency in his voice. Was he just as greedy as Eanos? I wondered. “As soon as I’m back from the lich tomb, I guess.”

  Darion smirked and raised his chin. “Okay. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  2/12/0001

  I recalled to Edgewood, walked to our village from the mines, and immediately headed into the guild shop.

  “Hey, hey, Gunnar,” Gerard cooed.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Business is as good as ever.”

  I nodded. “Can you round up 5,000 gold for me?”

  “Oh,” Gerard said, jerking his head back. “I’m afraid I can’t. We’ve only got about 200 gold in the shop at the moment.”

  “Huh?” I asked and tilted my head to the side. “I thought we were pulling over 2,000 gold per day?” I focused on opening my manifest and saw we were indeed netting more than 2,000 gold.

  “That’s about right, but we’ve been buying up the Vorporite ore that the dark elves have been bringing to the shop. It’s expensive material, and as always, I’ve been paying them a fair price. Aaron is holding it all if you’d like to see it.”

  Damn, I thought. I hadn’t even considered the economic impact it would have to order the dark elves to mine the Vorporite ore.

  “That’s what you wanted, right?” Gerard asked, a concerned look etched across his face. “Do you want to start refusing the ore? It’ll be quite useful once Aaron can start crafting with it.”

  I shook my head. “Just keep everything running as-is, and give me some time to think about it.”

  “Heading out again?” Gerard asked.

  “Yeah, soon,” I said.

  “Where to this time?”

  “A lich tomb in the Freelands.”

  “Whaaaaat?” Gerard asked, shaking his head. “You don’t want to do that. Liches are nasty creatures.”

  I looked up to him as I lifted a pair of leather gloves that were sitting nearby. “I’d love to skip it, but I need an ancient weapon. Any idea where I might be able to find one?”

  Gerard raised an eyebrow. “Um… yeah. No.”

  “Well, then I’m headed to the liches.”

  Gerard whistled and shook his head. “Good thing you’re a Reborn.”

  He wasn’t helping with my confidence.

  I showed Gerard the basic gloves, so he could log that I was taking them. They were standard, non-magic gloves with no special features. I considered grabbing leggings and a chestpiece to put under my robe as well, but I felt lighter since I had been without them, and I hoped it would help me move faster. After all, the whole objective of being a mage was not taking damage in the first place.

  “Got ‘em,” Gerard said, “and good luck,” as I headed out the door.

  Sung and Jeremy were standing under a tree talking about something, and Ozzy was readying a horse as if he was about to leave.

  “Hey Oz,” I yelled out.

  Ozzy looked up, stopped, and gave a nod of acknowledgement when he saw me.

  I walked up to him and tried to act as composed as possible. “You up for another adventure today?”

  “Going to Highcastle. Training with the Fighter’s Guild today,” he said.

  “Can you skip it?” I asked.

  Ozzy raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “What’s up?”

  I raised a finger and waved at Sung and Jeremy to join us near the stables.

  “What’s up?” Jeremy asked when he was nearby.

  “I was just asking Ozzy if he could join me for another outing today,” I said. “It’d be pretty great if you guys could come too.”

  “I’m all about leveling,” Sung said, “but after yesterday, we might need a break.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “Just one more attempt…”

  Jeremy’s eyes shot open. “You want to go back to Dragon’s Crest?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Another place. A tomb with liches from what I’m told.”

  “Wait, is this still about rescuing that elf girl?” Sung asked.

  I nodded.

  Sung sighed and seemed unenthused.

  “Man,” Ozzy groaned. “We didn’t do too well at Dragon’s Crest. If this is another high-level zone, I’ll pass.”

  Jeremy turned to Ozzy and curled his lips. “I’d say we actually did pretty well considering our levels.”

  “Considering our levels, yeah,” Sung said. “But… it was a failure overall.”

  “Look,” I said. “We just go and check it out. See how deep in we can go. If it’s too hard, we’ll pull back. If there’s a chance we could find an ancient weapon there, I want to try.”

  “Just a look, huh?” Ozzy asked.

  “We’ll try to dive it, but we’ll be a little less reckless than last time,” I said.

  Jeremy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Alright, I’ll go. But only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “If we fail, you give up on trying to get an ancient weapon until you’re a higher level. I know you want to save Adeelee and all, but this might be something that’s just out of our hands.”

  “Yeah,” Sung said, waving his hands in a scissor motion in front of him. “If we go there and die, we tone it down. We need to be grinding in logical places. The XP from the higher-level encounters is great, but having to sneak past everything and losing your progress on death kind of cancels it out. I lost almost an entire level’s worth of gains last time.”

  “Alright,” I said with a huff. I knew they were right, and time was winding down for me to save Adeelee anyway. If I wasn’t able to find an ancient weapon in the lich tomb, then I’d probably have to save defeat. “This is the last one.”


  Jeremy, Sung, and Ozzy all looked at each other and nodded.

  “Saddle up, boys,” Ozzy said.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  2/12/0001

  “Yo, Jax!” Jeremy yelled across the village after jumping onto Rarri. “You and Rina gonna join us?”

  “Where ya headed?” Jax asked, turning away from a conversation he was having with Trynzen.

  I waved a dismissive hand in Jeremy’s direction. “No, we don’t want Jax or Rina,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Jeremy asked. “We need Rina for heals and Jax for DPS.”

  “Reborns only,” I explained. “We could’ve lost some friends yesterday. I don’t want that to happen again today.”

  Jeremy pressed his lips together hard as if he were unsure about the decision, but his eyes told me that he understood. He was growing just as close to the NPCs in our guild as I had. He looked back up to Jax, waved his hand, and said, “Never mind.”

  Keysia seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Where are you all headed?”

  “A little south,” I said. “We’ll be back soon.” I had already gotten enough warning from Darion and Gerard. I didn’t want to worry the rest of the guild with the details or have them scare the others out of joining me.

  Keysia shrugged. “Okay then. I’ll see you soon.”

  Aaron looked up from a piece of metalwork he was doing and waved goodbye. I had given him a brief warning of where we were heading. He’d rolled his eyes and told me it was a stupid idea but seemed otherwise uninterested. He just figured we’d all return regardless since we were Reborns.

  The trip through the Freelands and to the tomb was fast on horseback. I had traveled to the Crystal River enough times that I had a good sense of the area and didn’t even need my compass to navigate us to the location.

  The tomb was obvious when we came upon it—a plain grey, stone building, squared off with four slightly raised platforms on each end. A single stone door was at the front, and surrounding the tomb was a metal, spiked fence. Several tombstones—mostly broken—were scattered about in the area inside the fence. The grass inside the fence was a little browner than the beautiful green Freelands grass outside of it, and there was a rough wooden sign posted right before the fence’s door.

  KEEP OUT. DANGEROUS ZONE.

  Avoid the immediate area at nightfall.

  “Looks like they want us to go inside,” Ozzy joked as he pointed towards the sign.

  “At least it’s not night time,” Jeremy added.

  We dismounted, tied the horse off, and Jeremy left Rarri to guard it.

  The metal fence squeaked loudly when we pulled it open, and I kicked a piece of broken tombstone out of the way and some stray, barren branches as walked towards the entrance.

  I pulled open the heavy metal door, and a thick, rotten smell of death immediately hit my lungs.

  Everyone took a step back and started coughing.

  “You sure you wanna do this?” Jeremy asked through continual coughs. “It smells like my grandma’s ass.”

  Sung made a hocking noise deep in his throat, leaned over and started spitting. “That’s disgusting, whatever it is!”

  Ozzy coughed a few times in his fist, stopped, then suddenly jerked his head towards Jeremy. “Wait. How do you know what your grandma’s ass smells like?”

  Jeremy coughed one more time, straightened his back and scratched the side of his head. “Umm, well. I guess I just imagined it would smell something like that.”

  Ozzy lowered his brow at Jeremy suspiciously. The silly rogue may have been honest, but he had a hint of deceit in his voice. I didn’t want to know if he was lying or not.

  “Let’s go,” I said after releasing my final cough. “The smell isn’t going to get any better.”

  Ozzy led us in, and before we let the door close behind us, I cast a round of Divine Sight on everyone. We took a moment to form a group and drew our weapons.

  The walls, floors, and ceiling inside were dull and covered in filth, and right behind the entrance was a small hallway. The hall turned left, and then turned right before opening to a large, square room with two large stone coffins on the floor. In between the coffins was an alter with a pile of human skulls on top of it, and the far wall seemed to be made of metal prison bars, though there was a visible prison door built into its front.

  The room appeared empty of threats as we crept inside, but as soon as we were a few feet in, there was a wicked human laugh to our right.

  Something that I could only describe as looking like a living corpse or zombie was standing in the closest corner and must have been hiding along the wall to go unnoticed. It wore a severely torn grey robe—a variety of holes revealing its skinny dead body underneath, and in its hand was a straight black staff with a glowing white ball on the top. Hanging from its decaying scalp was thin, matted grey hair.

  You have failed to inspect your target!

  “Ha, ha, ha!” the dead creature laughed again as it held out its decrepit hand and released a bolt of grey, spinning energy from its palm. The energy flew towards Sung, and Ozzy did his best to run and dive in front of it with his shield.

  Unfortunately, Ozzy wasn’t fast enough, and the energy smashed into Sung, flinging him back towards the hall from which we had come and into a heap on the ground.

  I glanced up to see Sung was down to only 10% health from that single attack. I wasn’t sure if the corpse-thing was a lich or not, but whatever it was, it strong as hell.

  Ozzy picked himself up, stepped forward, and yelled loudly at the monster.

  The creature glanced at Ozzy for a split second, but then seemed uninterested in his Intimidating Shout. Instead, it held its staff out in the direction of Jeremy and me.

  A single massive flame shot up from under my feet, briefly covering me in fire. It burned like hell and caused me to jump back and wave my arms. Thankfully, I may have resisted part of the effect as my robe was singed a little at the bottom hem but didn’t completely catch fire.

  When I looked over, Jeremy’s armor was covered in flames, and he fell into a roll in an effort to put them out. It seemed that he had been hit with the same spell.

  Ozzy rushed forward with his shield out in front of him, winding his hammer up like a windmill as he closed in for any attack. When he was in striking distance of the creature, he swung his hammer down at the monster, but the monster’s eyes flashed at him right before the hammer made contact.

  Ozzy looked like he was suddenly frozen in place—his shield held out and his hammer motionless in his palm.

  The monster raised its staff, and a huge flame rose from under Ozzy’s feet. Ozzy cried out but didn’t budge until the creature thrust his decrepit hand out, releasing another bolt of grey, spinning energy. Ozzy went flying backwards, sliding across the floor during his fall.

  I shot a Fireblast, an on-cast from my staff, and an Arcane Missile, each attack hitting the creature at its center of mass. The creature moaned at each strike and took a single step back each time it was hit.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jeremy had snuck behind the monster as I was attacking it. As the monster stepped back, Jeremy lunged in with a hard backstab.

  The creature’s skin stretched tight when its mouth went wide from a ghoulish howl, but only a second after expressing its pain, it raised both its hands high in the air.

  The monster instantly vanished and reappeared several feet behind Jeremy.

  Jeremy looked perplexed as he looked down to his dagger stabbing the air, and then went flying forward and onto his face as the monster shot him with something from behind.

  Shit, I thought. Things were going downhill even faster than they had at Dragon’s Crest.

  Jeremy and Sung were both at around 10% health. Ozzy was down to 5%, and while I had yet to be attacked, I know there was no way we were going to beat the monster. I focused my eyes immediately in front of the monster and raised a Fire Curtain between us and it.

  “Run!” I yelle
d to my team. “Fall back!”

  Sung and Ozzy had both made it to their feet, and I ran to Jeremy to help him up. He groaned as he grabbed my hand, and then I yelled at him to run again.

  I fled right behind Jeremy, and when I glanced behind me, the monster had teleported across the flames.

  “Ha! ha! ha!” the thing heckled again as it raised its hand out towards me and shot another spiral of grey energy in my direction.

  I attempted to duck, but the velocity of the blast was too fast, and it still managed to smash me in the shoulder.

  I stumbled and fell forward. The area where I had been hit stung tremendously.

  Jeremy reached down and held his hand out to me. “Come on, man!”

  I grabbed his hand, scrambled up, and rushed for the door with the rest of the team.

  All I heard behind us was another echo of the, “Ha, ha, ha!” as we slammed the door to the tomb shut.

  The whole encounter had been a complete disaster.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  2/12/0001

  Everyone fell to the ground or dropped to their knees as we caught our breath.

  “Holy shit!” Jeremy said.

  “It almost one-shotted me,” Sung said.

  “What the hell was that thing?” Ozzy asked.

  I shook my head as I breathed heavily. “A lich maybe. Something like a lich if it wasn’t one.”

  “No easy monsters? No warm ups?” Jeremy asked. “If that was the first thing we encountered, I’d hate to see what else is deeper in there.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed tight and exhaled hard. “I’m sorry guys. I made the wrong call.”

  “It’s alright, brotha,” Ozzy consoled. “No one died this time.”

  “We almost did—all of us.” I glanced up to my health, and I was at 15%. When I reached behind my head to touch my shoulder, my wound almost made me cry out in pain. The area was blackened as if it had been burned, but there was no blood.