[Ascension Trial: Level any active skill to Level 3 has been completed!]
[Congratulations, Sorrinn Songscribe, you have reached Level 5! You have received the following as a reward: +3 Essence of Ascension, +5 Essence of Cultivation.]
Sorrinn peeked up from the rich-scented pages of the tome he was reading where he lay on the general room’s rug. He’d been passively channeling [Ethereal Surge] while he relaxed and studied every day for about three and a half months then. The skill had already reached level four. That popup had been pestering him for a while, sprouting up again once a day to remind him he’d completed the trial task. Nonetheless, he’d been pushing it off to the side and never confirming it, because he knew once a new trial task was delivered in its stead, he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else except it. It was cooling down, but it still was hotter than it was cool. All he cared to do whilst The Sustainer’s radiance climaxed above was stay inside, spare his pale skin from the UV, and engorge himself on the feast of knowledge entroved within Orrillimmirr’s study.
“Mama?”
“Yes, lovely?” Maeve was hanging out on the couch she frequented. Although, as opposed to any housework, she was working on restoring her guitar-adjacent instrument back to quality. She’d been at it for a few days then. He wondered why when she said she’d never had any genuine passion in music—simply prodigious talent.
“What season is it?”
She smiled at him in that adoring way only capable of a mother, answering, “It’s autumn,” before resuming where she left.
He guessed it was time to shift gears back to the mystic arts once again. At last, he pressed [Okay].
The Ascension points went into Arcana as always, raising his PV to ninety-five. Two more levels until cracking a hundred.
As for his Cultivation points, he had to browse the shop. There wasn’t anything new to grab. He was making good strides with Elven Common on all fronts—reading, writing, and spoken—so acquiring skills to boost his effort there seemed excessive. [Hastened Assimilation] was tempting. Receiving a boost to his general skills of comprehension had its uses on the route he rode. [Learning] was also tempting. He’d continue doing that for all of his life; it’d definitely scale into the later portions of his life, and what he hoped to avoid was purchasing things that’d become redundant over time. He still wasn’t interested in morphing the rudimentary spells into skills. Honestly, he was leaning toward one of the Wisdom skills—[Investigate] or [Survey].
(Wisdom Skills)
* (Cost: 5) [Investigate Lvl 1] - (Wisdom) - (Active): Reveal information about a selected living being’s status/condition with a small chance to reveal details you are unaware of.
* (Cost: 5) [Survey Lvl 1] - (Wisdom) - (Active): Scan the environment within your eyeview and reveal information about what is seen with a small chance to reveal details you haven’t detected.
He imagined they’d scale well into later stages of his life, especially as they leveled up. Since he wasn’t the most interested in people in the present, he opted for [Survey]. If he ever did go on an excursion into the Great Forests, it’d be useful for identifying and navigating the terrain, as well as uncovering its well-hidden secrets. The sooner he got it leveled, the better. When he’d be able to tiptoe away from magic long enough to train it? Who knew. And he’d double back for [Investigate] at level six if nothing better became available.
While he had his menu up, he jumped to the Log to check out the new trial.
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A new trial has descended…
{Trials of the Ascendant}
[Ascension Task]: Travel to a Gateway and participate in a Forsaken Realm combat challenge (Solo) once.
[Completion Reward]: Level +1
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Sorrinn’s pale brows curiously arched as the Map opened on its own on a separate page. A small piece of the fog of war faded away. A flashing new pin of a stone archway planted itself somewhere not too far out in the middle of the southern plains. A Nomadic Gateway, it was labeled. It was the only one on his map at present.
If he was participating in an RPG-like game, was a Forsaken Realm challenge something like an instanced dungeon?
He swallowed a cumbersome gulp. A bright, fluttery sensation bloomed in his gut. If that was the case, that was an exciting development. But was he prepared to take on something like that? He doubted it’d be hard since he was still in a tutorial-like section of his ascension process. Be that as it may, he was still only a third of the way through five years old. He was a fragile thing. One hit and he was dead. Were the rudimentary spells enough to carry him through it? So many thoughts of which he didn’t know whether to fear or to be ecstatic about. His head was too full and astir. He needed to move—to work off that excess of bubbling energy. Something in the forefront of his mind made him stand and pace back and forth across the general room as his hands restively flapped and fidgeted and his fingers subconsciously writhed in all manner of shapes. He needed a moment to get his thoughts in order.
After a stretch of ceaseless pacing and fidgeting, the boy froze stiff as a statue. His conclusion on the other side of his contemplation: He needed to get to work immediately. Three months had passed and that was three months he wasn’t honing his primary attribute—Arcana. He grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and screamed from the visceral depths on the inside as his body violently quavered.
His body snapped round toward his mother, expression a befuddling soup of tense, anxious, overjoyed, restless, and verged on tears. “Mama, can I go outside?” Somehow, he managed to sound happy and sad at the same time.
Maeve had one gander at him before her brows furrowed to her bemusement’s whim. “…Are you… okay, lovely? Why are you making that face?” She nervously laughed, uncertain whether it was serious or a case of kids being kids.
If he was making a face, he couldn’t tell. The only thing he felt was five notches beyond overwhelmed. But the question made him spiral into rumination, and the next thing he knew, he was palming the side of his head, crying, whining, and choking out sobs without being entirely sure why. It just… happened. He walked over to his mother amidst tears and hugged her leg. His head laid on her lap.
She ran her hand through his hair. “O-Okay… Okay, what’s wrong? Is something hurting?”
Only his spirit. He was punching the air for not getting back to his magic training the second [Ethereal Surge] hit level three. Stupid five year old brain. He couldn’t parse complex emotions at all. And in the absence of comprehension, its first instinct was to cry and seek parental comfort.
“Is something making you sad? Is— Is something making you upset? Talk to me, lovely.”
Her mouth briefly squished to the side. “Hm…” Having received no response, she resorted to the thing she knew best. Her fingers settled upon the strings and she began to play something light, gentle, and lovingly assuaging with a hint of latin flare. And she was correct, because he stopped crying and focused on the mesmerizing sounds born by her finesseful fingers. Once she had his attention, she smiled, amping the flare, extravagance, and energy up to ten like a burning goddess of salsa had inhabited her fingers. She was doing some crazy maneuvers and producing some funky sounds on that guitar. He’d never seen her ignite like that. Was that what her presence was like when she graced the spotlight?
His foot tapped on instinct.
“C’mon, show me what you’ve got,” she playfully urged with a gesture of her hand.
All Sorrinn could manage after being put on the spot like that was an awkward and stiff sway.
It was so bad, she cut the music short with a sharp snort. A series of laughing exhales fell out of her. She cupped his little chin and gave it a loving squeeze, saying with a smile, “Oh dear, looks like you’ve inherited your papa’s dance skills. That won’t do at all, darling son of mine.”
He looked up at her questioningly.
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Maeve set her guitar down beside her and stood before moving a fair distance away toward the other side of the general room. The Mystic Force descended from above as her wealth roused from within her like ribbons of distorting gas. Her head bobbing in tempo, she passed her son a light-hearted smile.
Soon, she began snapping her fingers to that rhythm existing in her head on every second beat. The echoes of force rippled outward like jumping soundwaves, hit the walls, and reverberated back in. She stopped snapping, yet the sound of snapping fingers persisted, multiplying as it bounced around the room’s walls. Her groove shifted to her feet and she started to shuffle to the beat, grooving her arms in sync. She fleshed out the beat with her mouth and clapping hands as her percussion instruments, tangible sound waves emitting from the sharp spits of her pressing lips and the union of her palms. That was when she plucked at the air before her like it was the thread of a bass. The sound to pair impossibly rippled through the air. She strummed out a whole groovy bassline overtop the repeating percussion on the spot, melding into the rhythm like a DJ over the booth. Then she set the bassline free with a fluid toss and let it loop in the ambiance as a completed funk.
“Now we’re speaking my language.” Her smile broadened. Her hips fluidly swayed. Her shoulders shimmied to the music. She two-stepped her way over to Sorin, grabbing his hands amidst her groove. “C’mon, you’re my son too. I know you’ve got it in you somewhere. Shake that Elven stiffness out and be free, my love.”
Sorin cracked into the biggest of grins in spite of his prior tears. He acted coy like he wasn’t for it, then broke into unfettered crazy leg shimmies. She didn’t know the demon she had just unleashed. Chest popping to the beat, he retreated from her clutch with a mean grimace soured by the dance music’s funk. His shoulders loosely popped from side to side alongside the bobbing of his head. He swept them off before hitting her with the back-leaning, rolling belly rock and wavy arms. Then he busted out the stanky leg as he turned the soil with an invisible shovel, stirred the pot to the left, stirred it to the right, and skipped in place as he rowed the boat. He dropped it low and walked that duck like a gun was pressed to the back of his head and the trigger would be pulled if he didn’t drag the house down.
Maeve was shocked. More than shocked—gagged; jaw to the floor flabbergasted. “Okay,” she guffawed, clapping hysterically. “Alright, I see you’ve been holding out on me. Yeah, maybe you are my child, after all. I see you, Sorrinn. Yeah, let’s go.” She passed him a side-eye, readying her fish hook before casting its line over. She reeled it in, her feet trotting sideways toward where he danced carefree, and joined him like no one was watching.
They joined hands as they swayed and stepped together on the impromptu dance floor. His mother spun him round and round by his hand before scooping him up into his arms, continuing to spin with him in tow. With a snap of her fingers, everything silenced in an instant. The two were left in the presence of their smiles and rushing breaths.
She softly bumped her forehead against his before wiping the remnants of his tears. “All better?”
Sorrinn nodded. His mother was far more incredible than she let on. And weren't those phantom instrumentals Illusion magic?
“Then yes, you may go outside, but only to where your brother is, okay?” She booped his nose. “I’m trusting you not to wander.”
“‘Kay, Mama.” He was in his head for nothing. He enjoyed the time he spent learning and reading and the time he spent with his father. None of it was a waste and his ascent wasn’t ruined because he allowed himself to get sidetracked from the grind. His life wasn’t solely the grind or a game to win. It was the culmination of everything he held dear and his experiences with them. The grind was something so easy to get caught up in and wholly orbit around if he wasn’t careful.
His mother sat him down, at which he scurried off through the front door to get to work. He didn’t know what awaited him in that challenge, but he was going to be prepared for it. There wasn’t a time limit, anyhow, so he’d be ready for it when he was ready.
Maeve stood in place for a bit even after he was gone, a lingering question forming a line between her brows. “What could he possibly have to be so stressed about?” She shrugged, supposing it was part of having such a peculiar and potentious child. “Back to business.”
***
Sorrinn was pleased to feel the chill in the air as he dashed along the village path to the spot Asammirr and his group of friends often convened. It was true: while The Sustainer was present, its all-enveloping splendor was less intense then. The sky was a nice, calming cloudy gray—the ideal conditions for some training.
His keenness was succeeded by curiosity when he arrived at the stone pillar of his making, however. Why: well, there was some other kid casting spells in his spot—a true-blooded Elf who was around Sorrinn’s age, from the looks of it. Ominous masses of writhing, hissing darkness swelled into being above his left palm before he cast them forth with nonchalant sweeps, drowning the pillar in an absolutely opaque veil of pitch black that lingered for a few seconds before dissipating like smoke. He didn’t seem to be training as much as he was killing time—waiting.
The little boy was of an Asuuriian bloodline too, Sorrinn discerned. He learned that Asuuriians’ albinism was a key trait of the bloodline. It was hypothesized to be a result of Asuuriians commonly harboring vaster quantities of mystic energy compared to that of their vital energy. The bodies of Asuuriians were so occupied with bearing their copious mystic wealths that things like melanation were evolutionarily deprioritized in favor of incorporeal resilience.
All Sorrinn saw before him was a kind of Creation magic he was unfamiliar with. He ran right over for a closer look with stars in his eyes, hoping to learn it or take something new away from one of his fellow Elves. Although the boy heard his approach and turned to face him. That was when Sorrinn saw them—those pale silver orbs like gleaming, twin full moons embellishing blackened sclera. It wasn’t that the boy had albinism how Sorrinn did; he simply lacked any and all color, painted unnaturally grayscale in his entirety. Not an undertone of red or gold lustered his flesh. Not even The Sustainer’s radiance was able to impart any of its light unto him.
The boy smiled and a wave of razing cold ripped across Sorrinn’s flesh—a sensation kindred to what he experienced when he encountered the souleater. Something within him reacted violently to the boy’s presence. A slumbering eye unsealed with the impetus of a supernova, its omniscient gaze ferrying the concepts of knowledge and evolution itself. It felt like a nuke set off in his core, pulsing a deep pressure through him as every cell in his body vibrated. The next thing he knew, his hand was outstretched and he was aiming a devastatingly dense, compact, and hot Firebolt at the unknown child upon an unknown instinct.
It was strange. He wasn’t afraid or anything of the sort. His head was clear; he didn’t know why he was reacting as he did. It was as if someone else’s memories of animosity and caution were focusing through him.
“Please,” the boy scoffed with a whisperish, spacy tone. His voice originated from every direction at once, both near and far, loud yet soft. He blew a short breath through puckered lips. The Firebolt was extinguished in an instant like it was naught more than a mere candle’s flame. “You should know such tricks are futile against me.” He began on a slow approach toward Sorrin, a menacing look in his colorless irises, bottomless abyssal vortexes leading to nothing but absence stirring where his pupils should’ve been. “Sit and observe as I tear yet another of your little saplings’ roots from this seedbed of yours, o’ Sagacious Mother.”
The cascading waves of [Equanimity] kept Sorrinn’s head on straight and his heart calm. If he couldn’t fight, the next best thing was flight. And flee he did. He backed away a few steps before whipping it in the opposite direction like his life depended on it—the way for his home. The boy was waiting for him when he turned, however, having shifted from one place to another in a blink of an eye. His throat rushed into the clutch of the boy’s reaching hand and he was hoisted off his feet like a stuffed toy in the hands of a child.
The boy’s hand didn’t clench; he wasn’t trying to kill him—at least, not immediately. Sorrinn could feel something vile, slimy, and dark encroaching into his mystic pathways to the boy’s touch, threatening to corrode them forever and sentence them to disrepair. Black lines painted themselves across his further-paling flesh as the accursed substance tainted his being a similar hue. He was being devoured by the silence, unraveled into nothingness with the passing second—something he was all too familiar with.
He didn’t panic, struggle, or acquiesce to fate. He stared into the boy’s forsaken eyes, resolute and unwavering.
[Warning: Unknown substances are attempting to corrode your soul. Would you like to Rebel against them?]
“Absolutely.”
That prismatic flame within him burst into a roaring tower of color. The intensity and resplendence of its light expelled all that was unwelcome from his spiritual domain in a crashing wave like daylight warding off the night.
That solved it: Whatever the boy and the souleater were, spiritual energy was their kryptonite.
The disembodied, phantom hands of the many Calebs gripped onto the boy’s arms one after the next and pried his venomous clutch from Sorrin’s neck. Sorrinn hurried away in a series of retreating steps the moment he was freed. His wand materialized into his grasp. He whipped its aim toward his assailer, an all-out Wind Burst vortexing at its tip at the ready. The energies of [Ethereal Surge] dyed his mystic wealth with all colors, rendering his spell undevourable by the boy’s potent ‘Absence.’ Its influence suffused discernible iridescence onto the tempestuous gasses. “Who are you?” he interrogated. “What are you? Why are you trying to hurt me?”
The boy didn’t answer. Worse, it was as if he couldn’t see Sorrinn at all. Sorrinn’s words were insignificant in his ears—naught more than the clicking chatter of an insect—and all he perceived were the exalted ones from which Sorrinn’s reverent mantle had fallen. “So this is how you have chosen to answer me: Coronating one of your kin who harmonizes with the Color of All Things as the receptacle to your enlightenment?” Impassive as his expression and tone was, the one enduring dreg of color within the festering abysses of his eyes was an everlasting, sweltering rage aimed high at something unreachable. “Laughable. Futile. So long as the bearers of your fruit remain of flesh, they can and will perish.”
Sorrinn blinked. The boy had vanished into thin air the decimal of a moment his eyes were closed. He searched every way for any signs of him, but there wasn’t a trace left behind. Even then, the boy’s baleful voice continued to whisper close into Sorrinn’s ears: “No matter… There are other means of making a vibrant tree wither before it’s able to flower and bear fruit. Heed my words Apotheos of Illumination, you will regret being born. You will know despair.” Then the voice and the presence was gone. All which remained was the blowing wind, the chatter of the susurrating grass, and the distant jovial screams of his brother’s friend group.
Sorrinn kept his wand primed just in case. He waited a minute, vigilant, scanning the plain and watching Asammirr and his friends play in the distance.
In the clear, he released [Ethereal Surge] alongside the breath he’d been holding, returned his wand to the Inventory, then bolted toward his house. Training could wait another day. What he needed first and foremost were answers.