It was nice. I hadn’t actually done anything except press the button, was currently far too busy enjoying my pleasant and painless dissociation. The fun only lasted until my nose started itching. It felt like I didn’t have a nose to scratch or arms to scratch it with, so impulse quickly turned into annoyance. Fine. At least there would be no surprises thanks to the nerds who catalogued previous experiences. Upgrade my ability and skills, pick new magics and off I fucked.
No stats, no dinner and drinks and only the barest of explanations - which I skimmed but there was nothing new there.
I no longer needed to breathe, eat or sleep but was still recommended to keep doing so. Basically all bodily functions could be sustained by sacrificing my regeneration and apparently my healing too, effects might vary in extreme conditions, bla bla. I could now awaken items, but they required 4950 hours of labor on them first, so quality 100. Outsourcing the effort didn’t work due to synchronization issues. Boring, also bullshit because the initial build didn’t count, this put the real total at 4949. Take that System, I’m better at math than you are, an insult for the ages.
Every ability and skill had three potential improvements and this time previews were included. Something had finally happened in the user-friendliness department, rumor even had it I would get to pick my new magic from a list of all things - even if the same wasn’t true for a new cantrip.
But first up was my ability. Selecting an option actively changed the text and even highlighted my current choice instead of locking me in instantly.
[Summon Sword]
“Summon a magical sword under your control for you to wield. Range: Touch. Cost: 50 energy.”
Power: Powerful magical sword.
Speed: Two magical swords.
Endurance: 30 cm range.
Access to better projectiles was a no-brainer, I had a distinct problem with not killing things quite hard enough and this presented an easy fix. Twice the swords wouldn’t help if they didn’t connect properly and the range was just nonsense compared to the alternatives.
Next were all my skills.
[Sheath]
“Place or withdraw a sword under your control into or from an extra dimensional storage space. You can store up to three swords simultaneously. Range: Touch. Cost: None.”
Power: Place or withdraw regardless of spatial interference.
Speed: Store up to thirty swords.
Endurance: 30 cm range.
I had no clue what spatial interference actually meant, although it might’ve had something to do with how binders and endurance mages prevented the phase worms from fading into the ground. My quiver was functional and here to stay, but unsuited for specialized ammunition due to mid-fight risks of erroneous weapon selection. Moreover, one sheath slot had to stay open to actually make practical use of the skill and the spatial nonsense had never come up before, but probably warranted some research into the subject. Next.
[Control]
“Manipulate up to three swords you control with your thoughts. Exertable power is half of yours. Range: 3 meters. Cost: None.”
Power: Exertable power is equal to yours.
Speed: Up to thirty swords.
Endurance: 30 meters range.
Sustained fucking flight. While speed and endurance seemed ostensibly hilarious, this still wouldn’t make mind-swording useful against anything but the weakest Errant. The power pick blew them out of the water. It also helped with aiming, the telekinetics failed to keep up with my running speed by roughly half, forcing me to make snapshots. My mind wandered a little in idle fantasy before moving on.
[Launch]
“Launch a sword you control in the direction that the point is facing, twice as hard as you can throw it. Range: 3 meters. Cost: 5 energy.”
Power: Four times as hard
Speed: Choose an additional direction.
Endurance: 30 meters range.
Tempting. While the speed upgrade brimmed with potential, my core plan was to hit harder - hopefully that meant also needing to hit less. Most fights were short and brutal affairs while my energy consumption already shot through the roof when going all-out. More ways of spending mana would only increase my vulnerability to attrition and poverty both, which was bound to get me killed at some point. The future had plenty of conflict in store, especially with the direction our Company was headed.
I gave my choices a final once-over. System-enabled combat felt like something of a paradox, incredibly lethal yet it was difficult to put someone down, it rewarded versatility but demanded focus, was filled with nuance yet straightforward. Nearly all my choices were power, even though my original aim involved expanding my long range capabilities.
It took me a while to figure out, but my [Control] and [Launch] skills determined my effective range. Moving projectiles out to their edge slowed down my rate of fire, but allowed for precision sighting by lining up swords between target and eye, like the difference between a pistol and a rifle – it was all in the length of the barrel. So far I’d been coasting by purely on feel, or maybe subconscious understanding. Thus the appropriate choices would’ve dramatically increased my stand-off viability. Tweety the terror lived up to her nickname however, successfully instilling a deep fear in me. What if I can’t hurt my opponent? Even worse, it came paired with an intrusive thought. Agonizingly boring.
The realizations unsettled me. Had the last six months changed me so radically that I mostly cared about how to hurt things and having fun while doing so? My thoughts and feelings crashed head first into each other among a landscape of internal contradictions, demanding further examination. Hence, I procrastinated – possibly indefinitely. When all you do is bend, a few things are bound to break. No biggie.
Magic sounded like more fun anyway.
Vocalize a cantrip. Fuck you, I don’t have a mouth. Trying to ‘say’ ‘light’ somehow worked regardless. My voice sounded… off, as if listening to a recording of myself. Weird. We all agreed everyone needed flares since they were just too useful in too many ways… What the fuck, System? Why did this one get an actual description?
[Light]
“Create a visible light-source extending allied havens. Duration: 1 hour. Cost: 1 energy.”
It was finally time for the main event, low-magic. Again, the primer taught me nothing new. I guess the whole ‘Cant’ thing really worked out, although Breathless mentioned something about the restrictions loosening after the eclipse. It was a passive toggle, naturally improving magic stats determined tuning options, previews were enabled, yada yada.
And most glorious of all, there was a list.
The font was a bit on the small side and it was a single line - a little collapsible ‘categories’ bar.
I mentally clicked it.
That’s... a big damn list.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
The various categories were expandable too albeit with far smaller lists. I mind-scrolled my way through it in alphabetical order even though it allowed reordering, sadly ‘class optimal’ wasn’t a viable sorting priority. Quite a few of these were your usual standard fantasy fare, like elemental magic.
Earth, fire, ice, lightning, sound, water… What the fuck is the difference between ice and water magic? Also sound is not a goddamn element. I’d been singing the Systems praises’ too early because this didn’t make any sense.
I selected ice plus magical endurance, then water plus the same.
[Ice Shield]
“Summon a barrier which obstructs physical attacks you can perceive, automatically.”
[Water Shield]
“Summon a barrier which obstructs magical attacks you can perceive, automatically.”
Sure, cool. Not my thing however – already had it covered. A whim brought me to Jerry’s choice. It was wind, and then power.
[Wind Funnel]
“Ignore all detrimental environmental pressure and friction to a certain extent. Range: 30 centimeters.”
It still balanced on the edge of vagueness and bullshit but I had to admit the spell was pretty good. Even so, it really leaned into the physical speed angle.
I skipped a bit and spotted theoretical magic. What horrors await here, I wonder? Not many, it turned out. It showed space, time and gravity. I’d known one of those existed beforehand as Breathless had ‘time’ for his big spell, chosen by vocalization. He’d drunkenly commiserated that he’d been hoping for some kind of rewind or check-point spell but instead ended up with D&D shadow magic.
I’d originally mistaken him for a lightning mage due to his lakeside display, but what he could really do was copy weaker versions of spells he’d already seen. Apparently limitations and conditions surrounded the whole thing, giving him endless headaches. It also sucked a bit because pure mages could infuse the ‘element’ of their high-magic into their skills and ability, which caused a substantial weakening in his case and thus wasn’t particularly useful despite the massive variety he painstakingly gained access to.
Picking gravity plus endurance gave me the result of [Float] and did exactly what it said on the tin – I briefly wondered if you could apply it on other people, which would’ve been murderously effective. Switching to power composed [Gravity Field], which upped the passive G’s on enemies within 3 meters. It didn’t say by how much.
Been a while since I’ve done any doomscrolling. Conceptual magic… Light, dark, shadow, life, death, yeah - whatever. Classical magic… These were just a straight expansion on D&D schools… Aligned magic; good, evil, harmony, discord… I felt like yawning, but couldn’t.
The spells were cool and it wasn’t hard to think up uses for the infinite variety of spells available, whether for combat or utility - most had a lot going for them. But I didn’t need auto-shields, friction reducers or aerial aides.
The aligned stuff was especially weird, since the power varied based on either distance or closeness to your personal morality or values - although the effects were pretty straightforward, providing passive auras of damage or defense. Psionic magic… System save me, all of this was psionic magic – it contained telekinetics and telepathy. The last presented an anomaly, having ‘linked’ range.
That was somewhat interesting at least since we hadn’t come across any mental shenanigans besides Walt’s buff, which probably had more to do with sudden stat gains than anything else. Downing potions resulted in hubris as well. Although just like with Walt, temporary increases muted the overconfidence.
I restarted, slow-scrolling alphabetically from the start again when nothing caught my eye. Oh, now we’re talking. The jackpot appeared nearly at the end: War magic. Please be good.
The choices were duel, small group and large scale. I didn’t even have a hard time deciding between the three. Dueling was for the suicidal and slotting into larger formations was more a question of stats than what kind of magic you were packing, if experiences were anything to go by.
Of course, I still had a look.
Mixing large scale with endurance produced [Awareness], informing me of any long range attacks which included me in the blast radius, while omitting any mentions of things without a blast radius per se. Not falling for that one.
Power came the closest to a video game buff yet, it increased my magical power by 10% for every Ascendant Weapon Mage within three meters. It seemed hilariously powerful, which I supposed made it useful for war and possibly a necessity for doing any damage through layered defenses.
I considered starting over, taking the stacking buff and switching two upgrades to endurance. Magical power influenced launch, regardless of what the skill said. A true long distance, anti-tank setup loomed right on front of me, yet failed to appeal. We only had two weapon mages left and the other dude was a physical type who dual wielded maces. As such, ‘good someday’ lost against ‘good now’ and life as a turret sounded like torture anyway.
The thought unnerved me, again. System flavored Xanax was in effect, enhancing my reflective qualities, urging me to indulge in them. My increasingly wild appreciation for fights didn’t normally bother me so much, but here the knowledge of it felt like an intensely nagging insecurity. Despite whatever was going on, my personality won through and bottled it all up in favor of continuing my ascension – even if the churning black mass in the back of my mind felt filled to the brim, approaching the breaking point. But only here.
Dueling and endurance formed [Counter], which automatically performed a ‘class specific counter-attack with all remaining energy’, whatever that meant, when someone successfully attacked me. Tempting, but no. I wasn’t quite vengeful enough to dedicate my pick to sheer spite.
Dueling and power flipped the large scale one around into a 10% MP boost when there weren’t any allies within 300 meters of me.
Of course detriments and limitations scale harder than positives, why not? Also It’s pretty clear there’s a built in IFF, so why the fuck can’t we access it? Dude needs to open a phone line. A couple of billion calls a day should cure the System of this crap. “Hello, I’d like to know how my shit works. No, no, you’re mistaken, it’s supposed to work this way. Turn it off and on again? How? Can I get a refund? I know it’s been six months, but I need an exception. Excuse me? Put your manager on the line.”
I selected small group and endurance first.
[Suppression] allowed ‘manipulation’ of my ‘haven’ for ‘offense’, but would not penetrate a ‘sanctuary’. The [magical endurance divided by ten] meter range implied ‘haven’ as the vision bubble, so ‘sanctuary’ probably referred to the ten-meter minimum, interesting. Deductions aside, a lack of indications about how this interacted with flares made the light cantrip look like a hard counter. I didn’t like it.
C’mon small group and power, be good… Ding, ding, ding.
It was the Holy Grail, [Aim-assist]. The range was ‘personal’, the name a misnomer – it should’ve been combat overlay or something. It allowed me to preview theoretical trajectories and a bunch of other useful shit including the IFF overlay. You listening? I hope not. I settled on it right away despite a decent track record so far. Making my own luck by avoiding attempts at moving targets and going in recklessly close could only get me so far.
I’d already seen enough combat at longer ranges, not to mention the potential of the endurance line in extending that, to prompt a pity prayer for the melee-inclined. Aim-assist also conveniently replaced the function of said endurance upgrades. Yeah, okay, I retract my complaints.
All done, I pressed the blinking ‘Finalize’ button and promptly got crushed by a giant bag of loot amidst a crash and my own screams. It was lifted off me, followed by gasps and then a panicked rush to our brand new infirmary where I lost consciousness. I woke while being force-fed an endurance potion, got buffed by Walt and wrapped in bandages.
Jen expressed her concern by shaking her head and saying “I knew this would happen.” She still smiled a little from the corner of her mouth so I wasn’t in too much trouble at least. Or so I thought.
All I wanted was to sleep for a bit more and then spend a couple of days relaxing but Mel and Breathless had other plans.
I protested weakly. “Can’t this wait? Bit inhumane to force this on me while I’m hospitalized. At least let me recover first.”
Mel looked at me intently, as if considering something. “Absolutely not. I’m certain you’ll run away the very moment you can.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
Jen snitched on me. “He’s lying.”
“The fuck, Jen? You weren’t supposed to use that power against me.” She could tell when I lied, always. It made our relationship far more challenging than any before, but luckily I enjoyed rising up to the occasion nowadays.
“And you promised not to get yourself killed.”
“But I didn’t!”
She dropped her secret smile while looking me over. “It’s close enough to count.”
Then Mel, Walt and Breathless responded in unison. “Agreed. Indeed. Sustained.”
Meanwhile my vision filled with rapidly changing color coded target indicators, potential trajectory arcs and…
I sensed an imminent collision with the limit of Jen’s patience. “What the fuck is wrong with your eye?” she said.
My diplomatic response failed to appease her. “Huh?”
“You look like some bitcoin guy’s twitter pic.”
“You’re going to have to be a little more descriptive, I’m afraid.”
“Your right pupil turned red and it’s emitting crimson light. It even trails when you move. Did you pick something just to fuck with me?”
Oh, yeah that would piss her off. “I had no idea it would do this, I swear.” I deactivated my aim-assist.
“I’m going to check, you know. Tell me what it was.”
“War magic, small groups, power. Go ahead. Wait, what? I can say this? Weapon mage. Summon sword. Control. Sheath. Holy shit.”
Right, we had a priest in the room and he looked deeply disappointed while he refreshed my buff. “You have a skill called ‘Holy Shit’. Why am I not surprised?”
“No, no, it was just-” The chuckles clued me in. Bastard caught me while still playing defense.
Jen continued. “Well whatever, just don’t use it to start making jokes.”
“Limited to you, right?”
“My general presence.”
“Deal.” Sadly I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
This was going to be my greatest challenge. I’d have to summon all my determination and willpower to scrape by the skin of my teeth, continuing onwards no matter what. My body was broken, my mind exhausted, yet I persevered. A full day of endless suffering passed, pushing me against my limits and beyond, over and over.
They wanted a detailed recollection of my time in the Ascension games.
And that was how long it took to finish all the goddamn paperwork.
Afterwards, I rolled it off my tongue. “Ascendant.”
Yup, that’s me all right.