Ascend: A World of Ga'em LitRPG (The Chaos Emperor Book 1)

by Dhayaa Anbajagane

  I smiled.

  The princess had come.

  ***

  “What the heck did you put in that smoke?!”

  We ran through the forest, away from the Knights and toward the Kelras Mountains. Valentine grinned. “A few burning leaves.”

  “I still had a few bunches of the Somnia plant,” Stan said.

  “You got that into your smoke bomb?” I turned to the princess. “How?”

  “A girl learns things when she’s locked away with toys like those,” she said.

  “How much longer do we run, Death-Man?” Luna asked.

  I looked up. The peaks were much closer now. “We’re maybe an hour away.” My chest thumped. Only an hour more. Aegil was within my grasp.

  “The Knights will wake up soon.” Valentine increased her pace. “The smoke diluted the essence from the leaves, so the effect won’t be as strong.”

  I nodded. “They don’t have any horses, so we should be fine for now.”

  “They’re Knights,” she chuckled. “No we’re not.”

  Our footsteps landed, heavy, over the soil as we raced through the trees. I slid open my Ga’em menu and found notifications on my Player Menu, then tapped on the icon and opened them up.

  Congratulations! Your party has defeated:

  Zevalon Knight (Lv. 37)!

  So, uhh … looks like you’ve advanced from slicing a throat with one blade to now doing it with two. Good job? Reward: 13500 XP. Reward: Reputation decreased by -100.

  Yeah, but I lost those two daggers. I gritted my teeth.

  DING!

  Congratulations! Your level has increased!

  Level 23!

  Well. You got stronger again. Now you can go kill more people. Yay! You gain 4 stat points to spend on your skills. You also gain a 25% advancement to the skill of your choice.

  DING!

  Congratulations! Your Reputation has increased!

  Infamy Level 2!

  “Is that blood on your shirt?”

  I chuckled.

  Should probably update my stats, I thought, and opened my Stats Screen. I had 20 points I hadn’t used, and this time, I added them all into Agility and Dexterity, with a skew towards Agility.

  Name

  Levi Ryder

  Level

  23

  Health

  200

  Constitution

  20

  Mana

  200

  Intelligence

  20

  Stamina

  200

  Endurance

  20

  Strength

  21

  Wisdom

  20

  Agility

  34 → 49

  Dexterity

  34 → 39

  Charisma

  4

  Luck

  4

  I closed my screens. That should keep me prepped up for the coming battle.

  After another bout of complaining about taking so long from Luna, we were at the end of the forest. The trees were scarce, now, and smaller plants covered the ground. We ran out the last line of trees, huffing and heaving, and looked ahead.

  The massive Kelras Mountains stood before us. The short range hadn’t been more than a mile high this close up, but the actual range was at least ten times that. Maybe more.

  We have to scale that thing?

  “Luna thinks mountain is not a good place to go.” The elf’s eyes moved through the peaks.

  Valentine looked around as well. “It is pretty steep.”

  “It’s not like we have a choice.” I stepped forward. “Let’s go.”

  Luna groaned.

  We ran to the foothills. Small rocks lay like steps where the land began to incline. The initial incline was shallow, but a glance about two miles higher up told a completely different story.

  We don’t have a choice, I thought once more. I don’t.

  I checked my Stamina gauge. I was at 60% right now. Should be enough to climb up a few miles. But I’d have to replenish it soon. My Stamina regeneration rate wasn’t high enough to help me keep this up for too long. Maybe Valentine has some potions I could use.

  I stepped onto the incline and ran up the mountain, with the other three a yard behind me. A sensation sparked into my mind. At first, I thought it was the sensation of fire and ice I normally felt. But it wasn’t.

  It grew stronger in an instant, and I stopped myself.

  “Levi?” Valentine looked at me.

  The part of my head between my eyes throbbed. The pain pulsed through the body with every heartbeat, and I gasped for air.

  I glanced around. Aegil is close by. My chest thumped, and sweat lined my brow. The pain in my head increased. Wait a minute. My eyes widened. Why was I so stupid? Damn it!

  “Death-Man, are you okay?” Luna grabbed my shoulder.

  “This is the wrong way.” I turned around and stepped down the incline.

  “Eh?” Stan said. “B-But didn’t the scroll say—”

  “It said ‘mountains’; it didn’t say where on them.”

  They followed me down and we stepped onto the foothills once more. The sensation in my head was as strong as ever, and I felt it at the right of my head now. I walked, following the feeling like it was some sort of mental compass.

  My heart thumped harder. I could almost feel myself grabbing onto the relic. The excitement was bursting through me. I couldn’t wait any longer.

  A minute later, I was standing before an incline yet again, only this one was on an adjacent mountain. What the heck? I looked up to the peak. Is it asking me to climb this one instead?

  The moment I looked up, the sensation shifted to the bottom of my head. No. I looked down, at the incline.

  I frowned. Really? I knelt and pushed apart the sand on the surface. There were just more sand and pebbles underneath. I looked back Luna. “Can you bring out your weapon and stick it into this part?”

  The elf nodded and obliged. Her double sword thudded into the surface, and like I expected, it broke right through.

  A crack formed on the incline, then another, and in a second, a fissure of ten yards broke through the surface. “Get back!” I pulled the elf toward me and stepped away. A part of the surface crumbled, and an odd opening stood where it had been.

  I peered into it. A staircase of dark stone lowered into a chamber that had a soft bluish-grey light emanating from it. It was almost as though a part of the mountain was hollow.

  “Whoa.” Stan stood beside me, eyes were wide open.

  “We’re going in.” I descended the first step, and then waited.

  Nothing happened.

  I walked down the staircase, quickly now. It went down for only twenty yards, and ended in a large cavern. Sharp stalagmites of pale blue crystal stood on the surface, and loomed a few yards over me. Stalactites of the same crystal hung from the ceiling as well, and looked even more dangerous. The walls were all a pitch black, as though they were made of obsidian.

  The sensation in my head had disappeared now, but the fire and ice inside me were brimming. It’s here. My eyes darted around, searching for what I had come for.

  “This place goes in deep,” Valentine said, standing beside me. The other two were behind us, glancing around the place.

  “Yeah, it’s huge.” I looked around. The sensation in me grew as we walked further in. A pillar of stone stood at the far end of the cavern, and the moment I caught sight of it, the fire and ice inside me surged through my blood.

  “That.” I ran forward.

  “Levi, wait!” Valentine came after me, but I just kept running. My heart thumped hard, my hands shook, and my vision swam. I stopped before the pillar and just stood there, gazing at it.

  It was made from a rough, black stone—not obsidian, but something else. I touched its surface, and though it looked jagged in many places, it actually felt soft, like I was touching silk robes.

  I ran my hands down its surface, and then did it aga
in. My fingers caught a sudden jar in the structure, a well-defined line of roughness. I knelt to take a closer look at it.

  It’s been cut. A wide grin curled onto my face. The stone had been sliced at one particular section. I stood up and put my hands on the top of the stone. I pushed forward with all my might, but the thing didn’t budge even a bit.

  “Death-Man is very weak,” Lune smiled and put her hands next to mine.

  “I agree.” Valentine did the same, and so did Stan.

  Working together. I smiled. “On three,” I said. “One …two …three!”

  We pushed, and the stone budged now. The top of the pillar had definitely shifted, albeit maybe half an inch or so.

  “One more time,” I said. “One …two …three!”

  We pushed even harder than before. The stone rumbled as we slid it, and then finally fell over, onto the ground behind. I puffed out big breaths of air, and my chest tightened, not from exhaustion but from the excitement coursing through me.

  Fire and ice burned through my body, and I stared at the half-cut pillar. A hemispherical cavity sat in the center, and within it was an item—a silver chain with an oval pendant of black crystal set in the middle.

  “Aegil.”

  My trembling fingers picked up the object, first by the links in its chain, and then by the pendant itself. I touched the crystal, and the sensation of fire and ice burst through me. Flashes of orange and blue pulsed in front of my eyes, and I gasped out in pain.

  Valentine stepped to me. “Levi!”

  I held my other hand up and stopped her.

  Calm down, I thought. I breathed and focused on the pendant. I imaged my consciousness as a sphere of darkness, and pushed a part of it into the pendant. A heat passed through my arms, and a small white light sparked inside the gemstone.

  Black miasma floated out of it, and surrounded my body. Tendrils of darkness sparked from it, as though black lightning was descending to the cavern. An icy chill rose up my limbs and pressed into my heart. Heat followed through a second later, and I grinned.

  I looked up, and my gaze caught a blue crystal at my side. My reflection stared back at me—not with eyes of violet, but eyes of a solid black, as though I had been possessed.

  Possessed. I chuckled.

  The light died down after a moment, as did the sensations of fire and ice. I caught a glimpse of myself in the crystal once more and saw that the darkness in my eyes had gone away as well.

  “L-Levi, are you okay?” Stan asked.

  I grinned. “Never felt better.”

  “That is good to hear,” a voice boomed.

  I turned toward the entrance. Elya and his band of Knights stood halfway up the staircase, and in front of them was Sage Auron.

  “How wonderful—the whole party is here now.” He smiled. “Now hand over Aegil, Ryder.”

  I glared at him. I was done kneeling to power. I was done accepting every single unfair thing that was cast onto me. I wasn’t going to bow down to strength.

  I was going to challenge it.

  “You can’t command me.” I stared at him.

  He smiled. “Enrietta!”

  A blast of darkness surged from his hand, and I dived out of the way. The attack crashed into the lower half of the stone pillar, and the rock crumbled to pieces.

  Auron sighed. “I missed. How unfortunate.”

  My eyes went wide, and I turned to the Sage. He had a dark miasma around him now, and his eyes were the same shade of black mine had been.

  He clenched his fists, and the miasma turned denser. “Choose your next words carefully, Ryder,” he smiled. “The darkness never forgives.”

  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “How entertaining.”

  Horace sat on his crystal throne. He hadn’t moved in nearly two hours. He couldn’t remember the last time something like this had happened. He was literally on the edge of his seat, watching this boy.

  He stared into the circular screen before him, at the feed that played inside the outline. The young boy—Levi—stood inside a dark cavern, and opposing him was an old sage—Auron, he was called.

  “So many plot twists,” Horace said. “It’s almost as though someone wrote these events out.”

  A flame of darkness spurred behind his screen, and grew ten feet high in a second. Horace glanced at it, and a man walked out. He wore black armor, with cuts and edges that made it look like even touching it could hurt someone. He wore a helmet of the same make, hiding his face from sight.

  “So, this is what you’ve been up to, Horace.” The man walked up to the throne.

  “I was not expecting a visit from you, Azmuth.”

  “Well, you would have if you actually checked your messages for once.”

  Horace opened his Ga’em menu and noticed that his Message Menu icon had a notification badge over it with the number 42 inside.

  He squinted at Azmuth. “You sent me forty-two messages? That seems excessive.”

  The man chuckled. “I sent one. You should probably see what the other forty-one are about.”

  “I can’t help it if people are always asking me for favors.”

  Azmuth’s head turned to the screen. “What are you watching?”

  “A wonderful source of entertainment,” Horace said.

  “A by-product of someone’s requests?”

  He nodded. “I had written him off as a moody kid at the start. But, as it happens, that isn’t all he’s good for.”

  “Seems interesting,” Azmuth said. “What’s his name?”

  Horace chuckled. “That information is off limits.” He swiped his finger in the air, and the image shifted. A middle-aged man with black hair and grey eyes walked through a corridor, toward a set of double doors.

  “Things are getting interesting.” Horace tapped on his crystal armrest, and a chuckle left his lips. “Very interesting.”

  ***

  “You know the Dark Arts.” I stared at Sage Auron.

  A man from Zevalon City wasn’t supposed to know the Dark Arts. At least, a man who wasn’t in prison. Stan had been thrown into a cell just for being a creature from the darkness, a creature that had the ability to learn the Dark Arts. And yet here was a man at the top of Zevalon’s social hierarchy, and he knew the Dark Arts.

  The Knights behind Auron were all visibly shocked—eyes were wide and faces were pale. But the men didn’t fall back. They stared down at the four of us, and their weapons were still tight in their hands.

  Loyalty to an ambassador of Zevalon’s royal family. A chuckle left my lips. What a pathetic attempt at doing what’s right.

  “You seem shocked, Ryder.” Auron walked down the staircase, with the Knights right behind him.

  “I’m just trying to see how you’re not a criminal,” I said.

  He smiled. “Simple. I’m the Sage for the royal family.”

  “Not anymore.” Valentine stood beside me.

  “Ah, Valentine,” he said. “I did not notice you were there.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said. “Because that thing there” —she pointed to the pendant— “is more important than finding a lost princess, isn’t it?”

  “Lost princess?” He raised an eyebrow. “What I see here is a princess who abandoned the royal family and ran off with two creatures of darkness and a murderer, apparently in an attempt to steal a relic of the darkness.” He looked back at the Knights. “It seems the princess has committed treason, hasn’t she?’

  “Yes, sir!” Joseph raised his hand. Voices followed right after, and soon every Knight but Elya was glaring at the princess, completely taken over by the mind games this sage was playing.

  He looked at me. “So, what will it be, Levi?” he asked. “Give me Aegil, or I will kill you.”

  I gritted my teeth. What do I do here? My eyes darted around, but I didn’t see anything that would help, anything that would give me an edge.

  Auron sighed. “I will help your decision. Either you giv
e me Aegil, or” —his hand moved toward Valentine and the other two— “they die.”

  “You lowlife,” I hissed.

  “Goodbye, Le—”

  A rock shot past Auron’s face and hit a Knight right behind him.

  “Old man is talking too long,” Luna yelled. “Luna is bored!” She had her blade out in front of her, and Stan had his short sword out as well.

  “Levi.” Valentine tossed me a dagger—the white one she’d given me before.

  I clutched it and swung it through the air. “You’ve got stronger Light Arts attacks than just agility boosts and a ball of light, right?” I asked her.

  She grinned. “Leave it to me.”

  “Enrietta!” Auron yelled.

  A blast of darkness shot forward. We all moved out of the way and let the attack hit the back of the cave. The walls rumbled, and the vibration rose through our legs. The Knights charged toward us, with spears and swords in their hands.

  A dagger isn’t enough, I realized. I looked at the pendant in my hand. Let’s test you out. I put it around my neck and touched the crystal. A gentle shock rose up my fingers, and a black miasma emerged around me. The sensations of fire and ice rose from deep within my bones, and a smirk curled onto my face.

  A flash of light shot out from behind us and blinded half the incoming Knights. I charged up to the closest one, a Level 31 man, and stabbed my dagger through his neck. Blood splashed over my clothing, and the man dropped to the floor with his health at zero.

  The dark miasma around me grew, but by just a little. I grinned. Good.

  The rest of the Knights diverged and took all of us on. However, I had a different plan.

  “Stan, do you have it?” I asked.

  The vampire scampered to me, right before the two Knights reached me, and tossed me a pouch. I gripped it and surged away, past the Knights, and right to Elya and Auron. The Knight Captain shifted his stance, and pointed his sword at me. I kept my pace strong and leapt up with my dagger ready to swing. But instead of attacking, I threw the pouch at them.