[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 115: A Look Forward

Sam sat by the cookfire. The sun was setting, but the high wall to the west bathed the encampment in shadow. It had been a productive day. Not only because of the wall being halfway done, but because he had gotten a host of skill ups and a couple level ups for his Path.

And he wasn’t the only one.

All around the cookfire people were staring at their notifications, going through their progress and some even distributing stats.

Sam’s arms ached and felt like lead, but given the progress they had made, it was hard to complain too much.

Besides, leveling up his Path was an important step towards hitting a Perfect Ascension for the next Rank. Whenever that was.

Ever since he saw the description, he intended on getting his Path up to the same level as his Job—a difficult feat since training didn’t give the same amount of Experience as monsters—then acquiring a Profession and spending time doing nothing but improving it.

If he could get all three of them to within a level or so, he hoped it would give him something more than an Imperfect Ascension.

At the moment, that was impossible. Nobody had any Profession except Lenal, but with the Academy on the horizon, everybody was waiting to see what sorts of Professions would be available.

Even if the Academy didn’t directly reward them, Sam wasn’t alone in thinking that they could barter for the Professions in some way.

He didn’t expect to get them for free. Sam wasn’t that naïve.

What he did expect, however, was to strike a deal with the professors at the Academy to be able to share information with the newly minted kingdom, Sil’mara, in exchange for safety and protection.

Several of their students and researchers had already perished. Surely, they understood how dangerous the world was now. And while Sil’mara was yet small, their contributions would weigh heavily.

Your [Heavy Blade] Ability has reached (★ Common IV).

Your [Heavy Weapon Handling] Incarnate Trait has reached (★☆ Uncommon V).

Your Metal affinity has reached (★ Common II).

Your Void affinity has reached (★ Common II).

Sam was a little surprised at that. Two tiers for each affinity? That was a first, wasn’t it?

Everything tended to go up one at a time, then wait a little while between. Perhaps his use of both was abnormal.

It certainly felt like it.

Level Up!

Your [Void] Path has reached Level 17.

+1 Insight Talent | +1 Strength Talent

+1 Arcane Talent | +1 Vigor Talent

Level Up!

Your [Voidknight] Legend has reached Level 13.

+2 to all Stats

+1 to all Talents

Level Up!

Your [Void] Path has reached Level 18.

+1 Insight Talent | +1 Strength Talent

+1 Arcane Talent | +1 Vigor Talent

Level Up!

Your [Swordsman] Job has reached Level 23.

+6 Strength | +6 Vigor | +3 Agility

+3 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

So close to another Legend level, he thought. And with his rampant use of Void mana to corral the energy of his [Heavy Blade], he was getting some good training in with not only Void mana but his Void Path as well.

Unfortunately, [Heavy Blade] was a Swordsman ability, and it clearly had a larger part in giving him Swordsman levels than he had first thought.

If I spend more time training after this, I should see what happens if I level the rarity of several Skill Spheres at once rather than focusing on just a single one.

Sam could imagine he was getting a certain amount of Experience for each rarity increase. The higher the rarity, the more the Experience. So for now, any of his lesser skills would be easier to level up, but they wouldn’t provide much EXP.

However, that didn’t matter quite as much as having a powerful set of abilities and skills that he could rely on. Fighting on its own wasn’t enough to raise all of his skills appropriately. Some he couldn’t use reliably—[Void: Surge] came to mind—and others weren’t that useful for a given battle.

Damn good turnout all the same, he thought. Leveling up his Void Path seemed easier than his Swordsman. Maybe it was the level difference, but he didn’t think so.

It could have something to do with how rare Void mana is to use, and so using it at all confers a greater amount of Experience. Or it could be that, being a highly specialized Path, it simply leveled faster.

In a paradoxical way, it was more difficult to level his Void Path until now because of the way most of his Void Arts worked. They didn’t lend themselves well to being used in different fashions.

It had all started with [Void: Smother], really.

With the addition of Void affinity, Sam could utilize his Void mana much more effectively and do some really interesting things that had been nearly impossible.

He was curious to re-attempt scooping out mana from different receptacles and placing it in entirely different items. That had been utterly beyond him before, but maybe with Void affinity he could take another stab at it.

Once he was done playing as Paul Bunyan, that was.

The work for Sil’mara came first. It was his kingdom after all. He should have a hand in how it starts out, right?

Besides, only the dullahan rivaled his Strength and they were stretched thin as it was. Good thing they didn’t seem to need sleep or food. Sam wasn’t sure how they would have gotten half as far as they did on the wall without them.

Matt couldn’t wield an axe to save his life, but he was trying to use one of those crude stone axes that the demons had been fond of, sloppily cutting some of the trees down to size.

It was on more than one occasion that Sam heard Matt mutter, “This works like crap.”

The thing was, for every tree he cut up, Sam or the dullahans could manage ten times that number.

He also went through so many of the damn things that they were in real danger of running out of demonic axes for him to use. It was one way to use up their stockpile of shitty demonic weapons, at least.

Though in hindsight, it would’ve been better to feed to Chompers at a later time. Having a stockpile of [Alkahest] would be useful, if not valuable, to trade with the Academy.

Sam didn’t know whether it was from the poor stats on the weapons mixed with Matt’s non-existent [Axe Foundation] Skill Sphere, or because the jet-black wood was incredibly tough.

Though Raiko had to use MP to cut the trees, she was far more effective at it than Matt, except when Chaos mana switched up her mana type to something less practical against wood.

Mostly, Raiko concentrated maintaining everyone’s MP. The Ninja scoured the trees Sam was working on with her manatuned katana, afflicting [Rift: Mana Draw] to a similar result as the Zuu monsters.

When he chopped those afflicted trees down, an even greater portion of his mana replenished than before.

Similarly so, she struck the trees the dullahan worked on as well, speeding up their efficiency. They largely ran on energy, MP being the primary resource at their present level. She suggested that they might need broader pools of energy when they were stronger.

With only two bonus points to spend, Sam took a glance at his [Status] and winced. He wanted to spend both points on Mind to increase his MP. Without Raiko’s Glyph, the work on the wall would be at most half of what it was now.

If he had a larger pool to draw from, they could have gotten even further. And without Raiko, his mana management was quite poor. Komachi was hoping to luck out with an MP refresh song, but there was no telling when she would get new Bard songs.

Let alone what she would get when they were offered. All the while, she was playing [Haste Mazurka] as much as her mana permitted, improving everyone’s Agility.

Raiko was pressed as it was keeping up all the mana restoration spells, so she only spared the occasional [Glyph: Refresh] for Komachi.

Sam’s previous assessment of leaving his MP at a third of his HP no longer seemed feasible. It sucked. Least of all because his MP went up slower than his HP.

And though more damage would allow him to finish a fight faster, allowing him to effectively save both HP and MP by killing a monster before the fight dragged on, there were some things that could not work on.

Case in point: the trees.

The amount of work ahead of them was so gargantuan that there was no way he could just “finish it faster” and save MP. He wouldn’t need his HP if he was mindful of the falling trees, but there was only so much mana he could channel in a day.

Even if Raiko was able to miraculously keep him at 100% MP all day, he doubted he could have gone an entire day without rest. His body was more built to haul the trees up and down hills than to do that.

Needing to rest, however, was fortunate. It allowed him to naturally regenerate his MP. When paired with Raiko’s Glyph, the downtime was even more valuable.

As he soon learned, receiving a Glyph while he was currently using his MP acted as if he was in battle. It lowered the effect substantially, making it harder to regenerate even with the buff.

But with his HP at 1,999… Sam couldn’t put both points into Mind. Being literally one point away from 2,000 was criminal.

The Shard had to know what it was doing. The devious thing. So, Sam split the two points between his HP and MP, increasing Vigor and Mind by one.

It wasn’t much, but at least it would no longer drive him a little crazy seeing his HP.

[Status]

Name: Samuel Hunter

Race: Human

Legend: [Voidknight (Lv.13 - Unranked)]

Job: [Swordsman (Lv.22 - Copper)]

Path: [Void (Lv.18 - Unranked)]

Profession: [N/A (Lv.0 - Unranked)]

Health(HP): [1,700/2,010]

Mana(MP): [91/582]

Attunements

[Void Mana] (F-Class Apocalypse Gate) (★★★★Legendary IV)

Affinities

[Fire Mana] (F-Class) (★ Common I)

[Metal Mana] (F-Class) (★ Common II)

[Void Mana] (F-Class) (★Common II)

Physical Stats

Strength(STR): 176 (+22)

Dexterity(DEX): 69 (+8)

Agility(AGI): 82 (+3)

Vigor(VIG): 149 (+18)

Awareness(AWR): 32 (+18)

Magical Stats

Arcane(ARC): 34

Control(CTL): 22

Resonance(RSN): 27

Mind(MND): 54

Insight(INS): 47 (+17)

That [Roasted Zuu] really pumped up my Agility, damn. With 23 Strength, Vigor, Dexterity, and Agility Talents now, his Path and Legend were beginning to show their strengths.

His grand total of Strength was an absolutely mind-boggling 198. Nearly 200 points of Strength, and he was only a Copper.

I have no idea if that’s normal or not. Are other Coppers as strong as that, or am I an outlier?

It was hard to tell. And since nobody else had a Path except him and Raiko, he couldn’t compare with non-Incarnates either.

Thinking of Raiko got him to wondering if she was closer to her Ascension… and then that reminded him of a quest he had thus far forgotten about entirely.

Wasn’t there some sort of “Ascension quest” that I meant to read and put off? Sam wondered to himself.

He searched through his quests and found it easily enough. It wasn’t like he had a lot of them. Only his [Breaker Questbook] seemed to have a series of quests, and the next one had yet to show up.

Ascension Quest: First Layer

Your journey has only just begun. The First Layer is the lowest, weakest Layer. In order to progress further, you will need to ascend to the Second Layer, and to do that you must brave the Maelstrom. Unlock the path to the Tower, survive the ordeals within, and emerge victorious to climb to the Second Layer.

Requirements: Tower Key (First), Copper Rank in at least one Job, Path, or Profession, Belong to a Skyshard Faction, and a Skyshard  capable of withstanding Second Layer mana.

Just as Sam turned to talk to Raiko about the quest, multiple Ascensions went off. Most of them dullahan.

Sam didn’t even know they could Ascend.