[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 10: Initialized

Sweating, Sam shifted the coffers to be in front of Komachi so she could choose without having to move at all. “Twenty seconds, Komachi!”

The cat looked up at him with her deep emerald-green eyes, made a grumble in the back of her throat, and gently batted at the nearest coffer out of idle feline curiosity.

Sam wasn’t even sure why he was stressing about this, but the ticking of the timer grew so loud he could hardly hear his own thoughts.

It was nerve-wracking even if it didn’t mean anything, and he had a faint suspicion that if they both completed their quest, something extra might be awarded.

With the haughty air that only a cat could ever truly master, Komachi picked up the key with her surprisingly dexterous paw and slid it into a coffer, seemingly at random.

A pile of loot dropped on top of the cat, burying her meow of indignation.

Quest Completed: Initialization in the Nexus

Objectives completed: 4/3

Select starting Job (Complete)

Select starting equipment (Complete)

Select starting Legend (Complete)

[Hidden] Complete both Initialization Quests (Complete)

You have limited time remaining to complete this Quest.

Time remaining: 2s

Successful completion of additional hidden objectives provides additional rewards:

(1) [Camping Kit]

(10) [Simple Rations]

(1) [Primitive Health Potion]

(1) [Primitive Mana Potion]

A swirling portal opened up beneath Sam’s feet. With the sudden lack of anything solid to stand on, he dropped as fast as if he jumped off the edge himself.

He had enough time to look down. “Well, shit.”

As he fell, the portal twisted and corkscrewed until he was flying sideways. The shift in gravity and direction was an incredibly disorienting and unpleasant experience all around.

One Komachi mirrored by throwing up mid-portal. Caught between realms, dimensions, or whatever the hell these places were, the splatter reached all sides. Nowhere was safe, from nexus to wherever he was going now.

He heard the crystal butler belt out some real colorful swears before the far end of the portal was cut off and Sam saw their destination clearly.

Scattered from horizon to horizon were fantastical floating islands of all sizes, spread out above a sea of clouds. Some islands were as huge as continents, others as small as boats, and everything between.

Waterfalls spilled off their edges, pouring infinitely into the clouds below. Flying creatures darted around jagged crystals sticking out of the earthy underside of many islands.

Some were forested, mountainous and untamed, whereas others had disparate structures like medieval castles, eastern pagodas and… modern skyscrapers?

“Is that a Starbucks?” Sam asked in disbelief. He could barely hear himself against the roar of the wind.

Somehow, these landmasses were moving. One landmass crashed into another, and the two broke apart into several smaller Skyshards.

So many questions sprang into his head. Was Islegard always like this, or was the Shard shattered when it Ascended? Or was this Earth? Or… Il’dran? Sam didn’t have any idea.

Better yet, were the two Worldshards still breaking down and changing? Maybe this was a tutorial of sorts.

Before his eyes, one of those distant continent islands broke apart into three lesser ones. Even though it was far away, it still sounded like a mountain crashing into another mountain.

Sam and Komachi were shot out of the sideways portal at the same time as the surroundings dimmed. Grabbing his cat who—somehow—managed not to get any sick on her, they tumbled against something smooth, cold, and hard.

Initialization Complete.

Welcome to the Lesser Shardrune Realm of Il’dran (First Layer).

Well, that answers some questions.

Hands gripped Sam’s shoulders and hauled him up to his feet.

The shock of somebody touching him was only rivaled by the person now looking back at him.

“Kale?!” Sam couldn’t contain his surprise and gave the man a one-armed hug. “How?”

The big black man, who had been like a brother to Sam since the two were little, beamed down at him. “Notice anything else?” he said, doing a terrible imitation of an Irish jig.

Sam took a moment to piece together what he was doing, then said with a laugh, “Somehow you’re an even worse dancer than when you were in a wheelchair?”

Kale clapped him a bit too hard on the back. “Good to see that you’re still you.”

“Seriously though,” Sam said, looking at his old friend, “I’m happy for you. What happened?”

“Stats evolve everybody!” Komachi said with enthusiasm, wagging her rear like a dog.

Kale raised his brow at Sam’s cat, then looked back at Sam. “Somehow, your cat being able to talk doesn’t seem that strange. I’ve seen people who were dying from a gut wound walk around like it was nothing after… that nastiness.” Kale’s expression turned pained. “I tried to find you, Sam. We all did, but there was so much chaos, things coming out of the ocean, the sky cracked like glass….”

“It’s all good,” Sam said. “I’m just glad you’re okay. What about Kylie and Chris?”

“Ask them yourself,” Kale said, motioning to the side.

For the first time, Sam truly looked around him.

And familiar faces looked back. Friends, coworkers and even managers, all crammed into this octahedron chamber. People in all sorts of different states, from disheveled to newly outfitted with gear.

Strapped to Kale’s waist were a pair of axes and clutched in shy Kylie’s shaking hands was a wooden bow. Chris was rocking a spellbook and a staff, with a stupidly wide grin on his face.

Unfortunately, Matt and Darren were there as well, the manager and assistant manager to his store. Not exactly the sort of people you want to see when the only silver lining to the world ending is no more 8 to 6 job, no more schedules or “uh, hey, can you come in on Saturday?”

Matt, at least, had the uncomfortable smile-frown that showed he wasn’t happy about the events either. Darren, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to come over and berate Sam for stocking too slowly, a favorite pastime of his.

“Yeah,” Kale said softly. “It’s not ideal, but for whatever reason, we’re stuck together, yeah? Might as well make the best of it.” He looked around the smoked glass platform they were on within the octahedron. “Where’s that pretty haole that was hassling you this past week?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I haven’t seen her since I was sent to… that weird nexus place.”

“Creepy floating crumbling islands?” Chris asked, coming forward with his sister, Kylie, and putting a friendly hand on Sam’s shoulder. “The dude there was pretty helpful, wasn’t he?”

Sam looked from Kale to Chris. Were they joking? “No?” Sam hazarded.

That seemed to be a surprise to the others. As it turned out, the others had different crystalline people, none of which resembled the “butler” that Sam had seen. Some were women—or at least feminine in shape—and others were unidentifiable.

Kylie had called hers “a scary talking geometric shape” and she wasn’t alone. But what set Sam’s experience apart was the sheer unhelpfulness.

Whoever that crystal butler was, he had given Sam nothing,while the others had all gained at least a modicum of information.

All told, there were a dozen people in there with Sam. Most of them were known to him, or acquaintances of acquaintances. Kale, Darren, and Sam were, oddly enough, the only Fighters. Kylie was clearly a Scout, Chris a Mage, and most of the others were either Scouts or Mages with Kai, Leilani, and Komachi as the Clerics.

Sam had felt confident that Kai, probably the largest human being to ever exist, would choose Fighter. It was almost comical when he took out a small wooden wand that looked like an elongated table tennis paddle.

Most of the others received some method of assistance in picking their Job, explaining what the pros and cons were of the Job. Why Sam hadn’t been aided in any way shape or form, he wasn’t sure, but one thing he did know was that nobody else had a quest for kitting themselves out like he did.

Which meant nobody else had the items he had.

Aside from a few torn clothes from Earth, almost everybody else wore whatever equipment they received from their Job’s coffer.

The truly odd thing was that for a dozen people, their Jobs were evenly distributed. There were three of each Job, which must be some sort of record as far as Sam figured.

For all the advice given, nobody understood what any of their stats did, what skill spheres were exactly, or how they could progress besides the obvious leveling up which anybody with two brain cells to rub together would understand immediately.

What they did find out, however, was that Earth was “gifted” with Advancement. Every single person Sam spoke to told him that their crystalline envoy confirmed that the Earth they once knew was gone, and each person was “uplifted” to this new reality.

A new reality that joined multiple worlds together into something greater than the sum of its parts.

“The girl I spoke to,” Kale said, pacing back and forth, “made it clear that without Earth being uplifted, whatever apocalyptic creatures were attacking would have overrun us. You should have seen it. I thought we were all going to die.”

“It was terrifying,” Kylie said, hugging her bow to her chest.

Chris put an arm over his sister’s shoulders. “It’s a good thing we were coming to the beach. I heard that the mainland was hit way harder. Whatever came from the sea seemed like it was being burned by the water, not that it stopped them from ripping the tourists apart.”

At the mention of that, the only person Sam didn’t know at all flinched and whimpered.

“Sorry, Lisa,” Chris said. He dropped his voice and leaned toward Sam. “She was on vacation with her fiancée. Dude pushed her into the sand and booked it at the first sight of the monsters.”

“Sounds like a haole,” Kai grumbled behind Chris.

“Saw him trip over a downed tree and totally eat shit on the pavement. Not sure if he survived, we were too busy running,” Chris added.

“So where were you, bro?” Kale asked Sam.

That was the question he was dreading since he had no idea how to answer it.

“Sam was fighting!” Komachi said, stunning everybody except Kale. “He was the reason you didn’t get eaten by those Empty monsters!”

Sam couldn’t help but smirk at the absolutely flabbergasted expressions of those nearby. He didn’t blame them for not believing. Turning, he pressed his hand to the onyx wall, wondering what was beyond them.

At his touch, it turned translucent. In fact, the whole chamber did, startling everybody. A couple people even screamed, because it almost looked like the chamber disappeared and they were going to fall to their deaths.

Beneath their feet, past the smoky glass floor they were all standing on, Sam could see a forested land growing larger.

The capsule they were in was descending.

And past the now see-through wall, Sam could see many more onyx capsules descending.

They weren’t the only ones being let out into this forest.

Sheltered between terraced cliffs at the center of the island, an ogre slept with its bulky arms wrapped around an old wooden lump of a club. The crude weapon looked like an ancient redwood ripped out of the earth.

With the ogre’s stone-like skin, it almost blended into the surroundings, despite its massive size.

Sam might have missed it, if not for the set of three curving health bars hovering around its head.

Of course, the timer ticking down right above it was so easy to notice you’d have to be blind to miss it.

And if that wasn’t enough, everybody received the same quest. Just in case they were oblivious to the threat at the center of the large floating island they were rapidly descending toward.

New Quest: Battle Royale I

Escape the starting island to survive the ogre’s coming rampage.

Time remaining: 1day 23hrs 30min