Ascend Online

by Luke Chmilenko

  Drace’s massive size and reach, however, made it difficult to judge where my support should start or end, resulting in an inadvertent elbow to my face on his backswing. As I spat a mouthful of blood out, I silently envied Constantine’s choice to be on Drace’s shield side.

  Funny how they never show the heroes in stories getting coldcocked by a training accident.

  “Shit, Lyr! I didn’t realize you were so close!” Drace apologized profusely.

  I shook my head as I exhaled through my mouth, already feeling the cartilage re-arranging itself as I healed the damage. “Joor – You’re not supposed to, I’m still getting used to your swing with a mace.”

  Adding onto the difficulty of judging Drace’s reach were the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between attacking with a sword, mace, or spear. I wanted us to be ready to switch weapons at a moment’s notice if we fought a creature resistant to a type of damage. Not to mention Drace’s base class requirements to become a Warrior required that he at least have three weapon skills at level 7.

  After an hour of practice, slip ups, and a handful of minor injuries, I added Sierra, Halcyon, and Caius into the equation. They had spent the morning carefully watching our quirks, stances, and positioning as we drilled together. Now their job as ranged combatants was to find holes to shoot through.

  “One, Two, Three, Step, and Fire!” Sierra called out the cadence as we ran through a drill at quarter of combat speed.

  Constantine, Drace and I slowly attacked our imaginary enemies, and on Sierra’s cue took a single step away from Drace. An arrow whizzed by the spot I just vacated, followed by two magical bolts in Constantine’s. The second the ranged attacks passed by Drace, he sent his weapon in a wicked cleave, clearing the ground in front of him, followed by Constantine and I quickly collapsing back into line with him.

  Ideally, if we could successfully execute similar drills in combat, we could quickly devastate a line of enemies while keeping one another safe from counter attacks.

  “Good!” I called. “Again!”

  As before, there were mistakes and slip ups as we trained. But before long we were able to run through the drill at nearly full speed, reasonably confident that we wouldn’t accidentally, stab, scorch or shoot one another.

  As an added bonus, everyone reported multiple skill increases to boot.

  “Lyrian! I see you have taken a liking to my practice field,” the Bann’s voice called out at the end of a drill. “Perhaps my lessons yesterday weren’t wasted on you after all!”

  “Good morning, Sir!” I greeted the Knight as we broke formation, all happy for a bit of a break. “We still need quite a bit of practice, but we’re getting there!”

  The Bann had brought a small entourage with him to the practice field this morning, the same group of Militiamen from yesterday, as well as a much healthier looking Natasha.

  A slight wince passed across Aldwin’s face as he heard my greetings. “Please, just Aldwin or even Fredric if you prefer, this is a frontier village after all! We have far too much work to do than worry about silly honorifics all day!”

  I sensed there was a great deal more behind those words than the Bann was letting on, but I nodded in agreement. There would be another time to find out more about Aldwin’s history. At the moment, though, he was absolutely right. There was a ton of work to do.

  “We didn’t have a chance to meet everyone yesterday, but these are my friends.” I quickly introduced everyone as they stepped forward to shake hands. After our sparring wound down yesterday, the Bann had retreated to his study, even having his meal sent up to him. Though seeing Natasha here, it now occurred to me that he may have been keeping her company.

  “It’s good to see you on your feet, Natasha! Are you feeling better today?” I noticed that the dark haired novice seemed a little cautious at meeting everyone all at once and stepped to the side as everyone continued with their greetings.

  “Good morning, Lyrian!” She smiled at me with a nod, looking more comfortable talking to someone she knew. “Ah! Yes, I feel like my old self again. Shelia has been taking great care of me.”

  “I’m happy to hear that!” I said honestly as I looked back at the party. It seemed Drace had quickly hit it off with the Bann and Militiamen, having formed their own semi-circle as they spoke. Caught between two groups, Sierra and Halcyon gradually began to edge their way towards us as they debated which conversation to join. “So, what are your plans now? Are you going to set off looking for your comrades?”

  “Well… I want to, but Aldwin doesn’t seem to think I should.” Natasha’s demeanor became visibly frustrated as she spoke. “And truthfully… I don’t even know where to begin looking…”

  “What do you mean?” Sierra asked, having turned her full attention to our conversation.

  “I don’t remember where our camp was,” Natasha admitted with frustrated sigh. “We spent days trekking through the forest and when the goblins attacked in the middle of the night… I couldn’t even tell you what direction I ran in, thanks to the trees. I just grabbed the first backpack I saw and ran into the night once I saw they were taking prisoners.”

  “I didn’t even get a chance to open the pack before I got caught by those spiders!” Natasha said as she gestured to me. “If it wasn’t for Lyrian… I’d of ended up as spider food.”

  “We? You were with others?” Halcyon joined in on the conversation, having shifted over from the other conversation. “Err, sorry for interrupting.”

  “Oh, no worry! I was part of an Eberian Mages Guild expedition exploring the area,” Natasha explained to Halcyon, shrugging off his interruption. “I don’t really know too much about it… the expedition leader, Adept Donovan Kaine, kept referring to a ‘Ruptured Ley Line’, and was trying to find a ruin that the Surveyors Guild casually noted a few months back in a report…”

  “A Ley Line?” Sierra repeated. “I don’t do magic, what’s that?”

  “I’m not sure… something, magical? Can’t be any good if it’s ruptured, though.” Natasha shrugged.

  “It’s like a magical pathway,” I said. “Probably not a good thing if it’s ruptured…”

  “Definitely not a good thing if it’s ruptured!” Halcyon exclaimed. “It’s more like a magical river, or a highway!”

  “So what will happen if it stays ruptured?” Sierra asked looking at Halcyon with a bit of alarm.

  “Do I look like a wizard?!” Halcyon grunted in exasperation. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Uh… Halcyon…” I cocked an eyebrow at the mage. “You kinda-sorta are a wizard.”

  “Shit!” Halcyon cursed under his breath. “…I kinda-sorta am a wizard now. Uh, well.”

  “I would consider a Ruptured Ley Line as being a Bad Thing.”

  “What kind of advice is that?!” I hissed at Halcyon’s unhelpful information as I swatted him in the arm. “Anything ruptured is a bad thing!”

  “It’s wizardly advice,” Halcyon hedged as he reached out and tugged on Caius’s arm. “My wizardly advice is also telling me that this would be a perfect time to leave!”

  I slapped the fleeing mage on the shoulder again as he made his escape with Caius. “Go train your shit! Smartass…”

  For Halcyon and Caius’s base classes, Mage and Warlock respectively, they had a similar wide range of requirements as Drace did for his Warrior class. In their case, they had to reach at least Level 7 in three of the five Arcane trees – Abjuration, Alteration, Conjuration, Divination or Evocation. Since I had other plans for my day, I told them to focus on leveling their skills together for the time being.

  “What…?” Natasha shook her head in confusion as Caius and Halcyon made their escape. “What just happened?”

  “Just Halcyon being… himself…” Sierra said to Natasha with a shrug. “You’ll get used to him.”

  “Yeah… I keep telling myself that too…” I muttered under my breath as the Bann’s circle shifted to fill the gaps left by the two mages.


  “Everything alright, Lyrian?” Aldwin asked nodding his head in the direction of the departing spellcasters.

  “Yeah… there’s no problem…” I paused for a moment. “Well… not a problem we can do much about right now.”

  “Oh?” The Bann looked at me cautiously and understandably so. I was starting to develop a reputation for bringing him problems.

  “Has Natasha told you what their expedition was looking for here?”

  “Yes, something about a Ruptured Ley Line, and a ruin.” Aldwin fell silent for a moment. “Though I confess… I really don’t have any idea what that means.”

  “Neither do we…” Sierra sighed. “Probably not good, though.”

  “Hmmm….” Aldwin looked to the sky for a moment, likely praying to, or berating, his deity of choice. “I see…”

  “We’ll look into it… eventually, it’ll just have to be another problem for the future for the moment…” I echoed Sierra’s sigh, starting to realize just how many problems my future was filled with. “We have more immediate things we want to sort out.”

  Aldwin smiled as he motioned to Drace, clearly happy to be on more familiar ground. “Ah yes! Drace here was telling me about your plan to take my Militia out into the wild?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded looking at the group of semi-eager Militiamen. “Training will only get them so far and now is a good time for more practical experience.”

  “I was hoping you would be willing to assign them to Drace for the day.” I motioned to the half-giant. “He would take them on a circuit around Aldford, clearing out creatures and prospecting for metals. With any luck, they’ll come back having been bloodied, and we’ll have some more material to go around for Aldford.”

  “If it helps, Sierra and I will also be on hand nearby,” Constantine finally spoke, having been content to listen up until now. “The both of us need to practice our stealth skills and can shadow them from afar.”

  “Oh! Can I come?” Natasha’s request caught everyone off guard. “I’ve been cooped up too long… and I could use the practice…”

  “Sure!” Sierra nodded excitedly. “We’ll need to find you a weapon, though…”

  “Jenkins made a few bows yesterday evening,” Aldwin said nodding at Natasha. “They should be stored in the Workshop. Just help yourself to one.”

  “Ah! Thank you, Aldwin!” Natasha replied graciously.

  “So, what you do think?” I prompted the Bann. “Can we borrow the Militia?”

  “Hmm…” the Bann mused as he turned over the idea in his head, clearly pleased. “I like it.”

  He looked to Drace and nodded. “Bring them back in one piece, but don’t coddle them either.”

  “Will do!” Drace said with a grin as he beckoned the Militiamen to follow him.

  “So where does that leave us today, Lyrian?” Aldwin looked over at me. “Seems to me we’re the only ones without a task.”

  “Well now, Aldwin… funny you should ask…” I grinned at the Knight. “How many shovels do we have?”

  Chapter 19

  “Had I known I’d be spending my morning digging a Shit Pit, I’d of slept another hour or three!” the Bann grumbled as he shoveled a mound of dirt out of the ditch.

  With the second step of my plan complete, the party now focused on training the last few skills needed to unlock their Base Classes. I was in the process of beginning step three, building the defenses of Aldford.

  Right now that had me, the Bann, and practically every other villager in Aldford, save Ragna and Shelia, digging a ditch around the perimeter of the village.

  “Hah! And miss out on some honest work? What sort of Country Knight are you? I thought this is why you settled out here in the frontier.” I laughed as I paused my own shoveling to wipe the sweat off my brow and look back at the work we’d completed so far. A few hours of work had given us nearly a hundred feet long and four and a half feet deep ditch, though we still had about twice that much to go lengthwise, just for the northern side of the village alone.

  That we even made that much progress was because Ascend Online thankfully struck a balance between Realism and Practicality, as well as accounting for super-human strength when it came to digging. “Besides, a common shit pit or a latrine, for those with gentle ears, wouldn’t be nearly as helpful as this ditch will be.”

  “There is that,” Aldwin admitted grudgingly as he continued to shovel. “Though, it’s been forty-five years, since even the idea of a real ‘Country Knight’ existed, let alone one with practical experience.”

  “There are no Country Knights in Eberia?”

  “No… not really at any rate.” The Bann shook his head. “Anyone with the skill or standing to be considered a Knight was needed on the wall - The Bulwark – that protected us from the Orcs. If they weren’t there, they were busy training the next generation.”

  “Or dead,” he added grimly. “Between the fall of the Empire and The War, we’ve lost a great deal since we had to abandon Assara – the Old Continent.”

  “You lived on the Old Continent?” I was extremely curious to hear more about this world’s history and hadn’t realized that Aldwin had likely been born before the Ascendant Empire’s fall. “How old were you when the Empire fell?”

  “Me? Hmm…” He stopped shoveling as he thought. “I must have been… seven… or eight years old. It was a long, long time ago.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “During the Fall?”

  “I don’t really know…” Aldwin sighed as his eyes took a faraway look. “I was too young to truly understand what was happening at the time. I remember that we first lost contact with the Capital, and then shortly after entire cities started disappearing.”

  “I was told some vanished like they were never there - cities hundreds of years old, suddenly replaced with fields or fully grown forests. While others were torn and shattered beyond recognition. The most terrifying thing I remember though… was hearing about the cities where the people simply vanished without even a sign of where they went.”

  “I remember my parents grabbing me one day, and before I knew what was happening – we were on a ship.” The Bann spoke softly as he resumed shoveling. “It took us eighty-four days to make landfall here… things became so desperate aboard the ships, that had it been another few days, we might have not made it at all, as it was, we barely had a chance to catch our breaths before the Orcs found us.”

  We dug for a few minutes silently as the Knight wrestled with his memories. “As The War escalated, and more bodies were needed to hold the Orcs at bay, we started to make compromises in teaching and training. If it wasn’t related to actively fighting the war, then it wasn’t taught.”

  “By the time we realized our mistake, all the experts were dead, and their knowledge gone with them.” Aldwin paused in his shoveling to gesture at me. “That’s why we all… tolerate… and encourage you, Adventurers. Whatever spark it is that allows your kind to transcend death, also gives you a unique font of knowledge to draw from. One that we pray will be used to help us recover what was lost… and not held over our heads.”

  Now it was my turn to dig silently as I contemplated the Bann’s words. “I appreciate your trust,” I said finally, starting to understand how and where Adventurers fit in this world.

  “I think you’ve more than earned it by now.”

  “Yo, Lyrian,” Jenkins called from nearby. “Spare a minute to look over the plan?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” I waved goodbye to Aldwin as he resumed digging through the soft dirt as I heaved myself out of the ditch. Jenkins and Ritt had set up a table nearby where they had sketched out a rough outline of the village, along with the proposed plan that I’d set up.

  “Alright.” Ritt greeted me with a simple nod as he indicated the paper. “So with my rough pacing, we’re looking at about three hundred feet across the north part of the village, three hundred and forty-five feet to the southwest, and three hundred and fifty-five feet to the southeast. The river
takes a bit of a jink along the way we’ll have to avoid.”

  “Looks good to me.” I nodded at the young merchant. “It’ll give us plenty of room inside the Village to expand.”

  “Judging on how fast we’re going today… that’ll take us roughly three to four days to dig… if we do nothing but dig,” Jenkins calculated. “When are you expecting other Adventurers to start arriving?”

  “No earlier than three days from now,” I replied. Based on what the others told me about the lay of the land it’d take roughly a week to dogleg around from Eberia, up the ridge and over here. If a group was dedicated enough, they could be here as early as Sunday afternoon or evening. “Likely four to five.”